52 Replies to “The Decline And Fall Of The American Empire”

  2. Krauthammer is right but it isn’t simply about the disappearance of American influence in the region. It’s what Obama’s abandonment of the Bush Doctrine has set up that is the problem.
    The Bush Doctrine included not only a confrontation with jihadism and a clear agenda of marginalizing it but also, a commitment to enable these regions to set up the institutions and infrastructure to enable a democracy. Obama rejected both actions.
    His anti-terrorism (and he’s forbidden the use of the term, renaming it to ‘overseas contingency operations, or ‘man-caused disasters’)has been reduced to singular drone attacks. And there’s a psychologically perverse nature to these drone killings. Obama skips most intelligence briefings, he has little time or interest in talking with the military commanders. He had to be dragged into Libya, he has no interest in Syria, he ignores Iran’s nuclear weapons, he insults and rejects Israel. But, he personally, on his own, picks out Who Shall I Kill by Drone today. That’s perverse.
    What Obama has done is to enable a vacuum of power to emerge in the MENA. With the withdrawal of US interest, what has developed are two disastrous situations.
    First, within the states that have thrown off their dictators are weak governments without democratic constitutions and institutions (Bush Doctrine point 4) that are as yet unable to fend off, militarily or legally, the feuding radical ethnic and ancient groups that have emerged and are fighting each other, and the new government, for power.
    Second, with the clear disinterest of Obama in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Iran has stepped up as the pre-eminent power in the region, with links in Syria, Gaza, Egypt, Iraq – all of which are terrified of its imperialist agenda. And they know that the US won’t protect them.
    Result? Will Israel be forced to fight this battle alone? It is a monstrous and evil action to force this task on it, yet this is what Obama seems to be doing.
    The murders in Libya were not due to any trivial film but were planned retribution for yet another of Obama’s drone killings. I’d suggest that the other attacks are motivated by Iran, which wants to destabilize Egypt, first, and the other regions as well.
    What does Obama do? He’s busy campaigning and telling the adoring crowds that he loves them. And putting out ads chastisizing Romney for criticizing Him. Steyn is right, Krauthammer is right. Will Americans wake up?

  3. Yeah wadda ya expect from an amateur?
    It’s like the morons who accept “Palestinians” as aboriginals in “Palestine”….
    There is a war going on and it has been ongoing for nearly 1400 years. Sunnite VS Shiite.
    The Muslim Brotherhood is attempting to consolidate the ME as a caliphate and Iran is seeking nukes to effect the same result. Iran with nukes makes arabs pee their pants….
    Isreal’s existance is as relevant to this situation as that silly video trailor….
    Al Qaida/Muslim Brotherhood is seeking street creds with these embassy attacks….soft targets thanks to the Obamaites….Isreal is a known hard target.
    And the isreali’s know this and have futilly advised such to the arragant fools in Clintons State Department who are no more genius of a new order anymore than that late Austrian Corporal was.
    It’s now down to which comes first…the fuse burns down or November 6.

  4. ET – Seriously give it a rest, carbon copy comments from the last 3 days isn’t going to sell your flawed view any further than its gone already, which is nowhere.
    You’ve simply exhausted everyone from debating you further with your unreasonably stubborn opinion. That does not mean your right nor does it mean you’ve won the debate.
    Kind advice: Your incessant one way street thrashing of the matter borders on a cut and paste propaganda campaign that’s loosing you allot of credibility.

  5. Knight99 – same to you. Your repetition of your opinions that my views are flawed and yours are right doesn’t mean that you are right.
    I’m certainly not intending my comments for you to read. Skip them. I skip plenty of other posts on these threads. You and I have nothing in common and rarely agree. There are, however, others with whom I can debate who understand my points, and accept some or all or a few of them.
    So far, nothing you have written has convinced me that my analysis of societal structures and the role population and economics play in their political and social systems, is wrong.
    I follow Braudel’s historical analytic approach, and frankly, I respect his approach, that of the Annales school, with its emphasis on long term wide ranging socioeconomic factors and geo-ecological variables, more than I respect yours.
    I note that Krauthammer is saying what I am saying, that Obama’s abandonment of the MENA has resulted in a vacuum of power, now being filled with various fighting warlords and radical groups. The Bush Doctrine’s point 4 was meant to prevent this vacuum of power.
    See also Breitbart, who is also chastizing the White House for its red herring of ‘it’s all due to the video’. This ignores also, that Bill Maher, who donated 1 million to Obama’s campaign, made a video mocking not only Christianity but also Islam. Yet, Obama accepted the money. And there haven’t been any insulted Muslims rioting over that video.
    What we are seeing is the result of Obama’s policy of ignoring what doesn’t wave and cheer back to him.

  6. The drones of the Obama presidency are the cruise missiles of the Clinton presidency. They are at best a psychological tool with little military value, except when taking out high value targets, again of limited value since successors are groomed and waiting in the wings, feeling even more justified in their terrorist attacks and faux outrage riots.
    We have the Bush doctrine of insisting on democracy reforms as a prerequisite to dialogue and aid in ME (and yes backed up by the threat of direct military force), sandwiched between the no boots on the ground, let’s keep a low profile and be nice doctrine of Clinton and now Obama. A disaster looms.
    Clinton’s silly approach allowed the buildup of funding and capability of AQ and the execution of 9/11 can be laid at the feet of his administration. Obama’s appeasement of militant Islamism has emboldened its leaders and any thought of democratic reforms is long gone. I believe Obama’s poor leadership is just as disastrous as Clinton’s because it allows Iran and AQ/affiliates unfettered ability to destabilize the region. This encourages another major terrorist attack, for which I believe, admittedly just a feeling without real evidence, planning is now underway with no deterrence to its execution.
    Obama needn’t worry, if that happens, he will simply blame Bush, though the truth is his and Clinton’s piecemeal and incoherent answer to the problem is what has truly emboldened the enemies of the US, and by extension her allies. Of course, Obama can throw Israel under the bus; they are convenient proxies for military action and, of course, blame when this action leads to widespread conflict.
    Obama doesn’t want to take any risks in his presidency but asks the American people to risk all and give him another chance at the White House. This man has been a weak president and that is the reason for poor economic and foreign policy results.
    I sincerely hope Americans recognize this by election day and realize they can’t risk another Obama term, especially one where he is no longer accountable to the voter.

  8. ET….Canada went into Af’stan,and shed blood and billions of dollars on infrastructure.New schools,wells,roads,markets.Problem was,the terrorists blew them up/burned them down in under 3 days of completion.
    Maybe,just maybe we are dealing with a death-cult political party from 700 AD disguised as a religion,who DO NOT want a middle class screwing up their system? In other words,the barbarians have never left the gates,they just slum around,keeping their skills up killing off each other,until something happens in the Great Satan that allows them to scurry out of their holes.

  9. Barry and Hillary have been totally “outfoxed” by the Muslim Brotherhood and their friends. Putting aside what seems to be total incompetence by these two, the White House’s insistence that the cause of the terror attacks is some ridiculous movie has emboldened the thugs in the Middle East to up their demand for a worldwide “nobody can offend Islam law”. The White House has now given the go ahead to these terrorists to continue. Hillary should be FIRED and Obama has to go in November.

  10. ET >
    “ I note that Krauthammer is saying what I am saying,” – ET
    No he’s not, in your own words again – “Krauthammer is right but it isn’t simply about the disappearance of American influence in the region.” – ET
    Heh.
    “I am saying, that Obama’s abandonment of the MENA has resulted in a vacuum of power, now being filled with various fighting warlords and radical groups.” –ET
    You are saying what EVERYONE else who argued with you over the last year has been saying. The only thing you have done is take the “Arab Spring” failure that you righteously and vehemently defended at the time and twist it into your own version of events using Obamba now as your scapegoat.
    The “Arab Spring was a failure from the beginning, everyone but you and Obamba knew this, that is why he circumvented Congress to attack Libya and you applauded him for it at the time.
    Now you backpedal and throw out endless threads of academic mumbo jumbo to hide the fact that you were wrong, wrong, wrong. North Africa and the Middle East are enflamed and on the brink of war, NOT that you predicted it accurately, you said that there was going to be a burgeoning middle class that would emerge from the “Arab Spring”. Then as things went sour over the months you faked it and said “oh, it’ll take a generation or three”, now you flat out say that Obamba just didn’t do it correctly. Garbage.

  11. I’m not this great student of history like some here, but it seems to me what we’ve been doing over there to engage them and nudge them in a democratic direction has been a miserable failure. Unless the milieu changes over there drastically, democracy will NOT flourish there until the people over there are willing to spill their own blood to actively achieve it. No, an uprising like what happened in Egypt and Libya doesn’t count; all they wanted and ended up doing was maintaining the status quo in one form or another. Unless they are willing to TAKE it for themselves, to really want it, to bleed for it, to work for it, to EARN their democracy themselves, it will NEVER happen. We had to bleed for our democracy, it certainly didn’t come easy. Let them bleed for their’s.
    More and more I am starting to believe that we should either do MUCH more to wean ourselves off of Arabic oil and try to make do with what what we have in the Western world, or we find some other sort of reliable energy source so that we can tell the M.E. to enjoy their sand. Then we can practice a form of containment and tell them to come out when they finally demonstrate that they can play nicely. And we need to communicate the message that “enough is enough. Any more of this nonsense like 9/11 or what has been going on lately and we turn your deserts into glass”.

  12. knight, Krauthammer is saying what I am saying, both about the vacuum of power and the rejection of the Bush Doctrine (which he has said many times).
    And I stand by my support for the ‘Arab Spring’. I said then, and I repeat, that it’s naive to think that one structure transforms as in a Harry Potter transfiguration, instantly into another structure. It will take time, I’ve suggested before, decades, and it requires that fourth part of the Bush Doctrine, the assistance to set up a democratic infrastructure and set of institutions.
    That’s right, the Arab Spring is the first phase of establishing a middle class economy, which is a free and independent majority of the population engaged in private small busineses. The political system of democracy empowers this middle class.
    You, on the other hand, consider that such a change, which you don’t believe in anyway, for you consider Muslims intellectually incapable of either democracy or a middle class, …must take place instantly. That’s naive.
    I suggest you read Natan Sharansky’s The Case for Democracy. Reading what others think isn’t such a bad idea, you know.

  13. I dunno, ET. You say that a burgeoning middle class economy is what will carry the day, however, when I think of how Islam has insinuated itself in so much of their culture and society, including and referring to their economy, I don’t see how that can occur the way things stand.
    As I say, I’m not an academic or great student of history; I merely speak from the perspective a a peasant’s common sense.

  14. ET >
    ‘….for you consider Muslims intellectually incapable of either democracy or a middle class, …must take place instantly. That’s naive.”
    Yea, I’ve lived with them one on one to know what my views are, most Muslims in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria places I’ve been a resident for decades would tell you the same thing I have. They are not shy about it, because they live in the real world.
    But we are the naive ones, please. Your comments on the matter are unbelievably embarrassing to yourself to those that actually have a clue.

  15. Knight 99, I suggest that you give up trying to get me to agree with you; I certainly am not interested in your agreeing with me. Stick to your own views as you like them.
    I never talk about my own experiences and will not do so now. But I stand by my analysis of the fact that the post war populations of the MENA have risen beyond the carrying capacity of a one-industry statist redistributionist economy. The rest of the world cannot support them; they must find another means of wealth production and that is the middle class private sector business economy.
    Michael, yes, Islam is not really a religion for it has little to say about the metaphysical. It’s primarily a sociopolitical and economic dogma, frozen by defining it as a religion. And certainly, it rejects the freedom of thought and action that is the basis of a middle class economy. However, my view is that reality trumps fiction, and that includes the Koran; you can’t eat ideology.
    Of course the Muslim current views on individualism, private enterprise and so on, are also formed by their socialization in the statist dogma. But you can’t eat ideology. It was exactly the same in the West, which also denigrated and sneered at individual free thought, at private enterprise, at the use of reason. The West had to change as well. It too went through a traumatic and violent number of years, in this case, hundreds rather than the decades I am suggesting for the MENA – but, it changed.

  16. “And I stand by my support for the ‘Arab Spring’. I said then, and I repeat, that it’s naive to think that one structure transforms as in a Harry Potter transfiguration, instantly into another structure.” ET
    I agree with your stand on the Arab Spring; any move towards democracy must be supported, or we are hypocrites.
    What bothers me is the Obama Red Herring’s, is he that stupid or do we have something else going on that I am missing?
    1. The NYC trials & Ground Zero Mosque was nonsense by any measure. It was silly & never a serious policy
    2. That the Film started this violence. Nonsense! If that is true let the Missiles glass over the childish fools.
    3. If not the Film! Then the absolute control by/of the Muslims is a coordinated Act of War. No need to feel sorry for the critters
    We don’t have time or blood for Stupid!

  17. However, my view is that reality trumps fiction, and that includes the Koran; you can’t eat ideology.
    Hmmm, perhaps. But then again, nothing says “reality” more than the fact that they are willing to DIE in a spectacular fashion just to make a point; to recruit children to the glory that awaits them for doing same. With that in mind, how much is on the dinner table sort of pales when the two are juxtaposed, wouldn’t you say?
    *Waving my hand* and respectfully, please don’t attempt to sell me on moderate Islam. When I consider that the ones that come here to “get away” often seem to be the ones that want to continue the more fundamental aspects of Islam (i.e Sharia Law, Jihad, etc.) as a way of life when they get here, is the idea of “moderate Islam” even tenable?

  18. sasquatch
    Well said!
    Obama is making America become as protectionist since before USA. He wants the USA shrunk till its completely irrelevant. Mean while he steals Americans rights right under them.

  19. ET >
    “I suggest that you give up trying to get me to agree with you;”
    I am not. Anymore than I would try to get an Islamic extremist to agree with me, I gave up on that a couple of threads ago once I nailed down your shtick.
    I believe it’s far more important to just expose you and your rhetoric for what it is, and not the veiled gibberish that confuses others into thinking you actually know what you’re talking about.

  20. Charles Krauthammer is an optimist. If we have seen Obama’s pivot to the Pacific, it hasn’t gone much better than his Middle Eastern policy. No, we are seeing the – writhings – death agonies perhaps? of an America which has failed, which seems to be made up of has-beens and losers, which seeks only quietude in which to die in peace.
    Of course Obama is a ghastly mistake. But the US up until say 1990 wouldn’t have made that mistake. And they are about to make it again. The America of today thinks that the kleptocracy in Washington is perfectly fine. The America of today thinks it fine that its “generals” order its men unarmed into harm’s way. The America of today accepts Iranian nuclear weapons, and no doubt will accept the promised activity of the Iranian Navy in the Atlantic and off its shores. The response will probably be more intrusive patdowns by the TSA goons at the airports; perhaps even immigration restrictions at its borders.
    The winding-down of the UK was at least carried out decently. This is beyond pathetic, beyond disgusting.

  21. Bang on, Shamrock. It seems that the next 9/11 is inevitable. This start of a general uprising could be the start of something similar, although writ more gradual.
    The truly scary thing is that there is a Nero in the White House who seems content to do nothign other than cuing up his fiddle.

  22. With all due respect, ET, there is nothing to suggest that there will ever be democracy or a middle class in the ME under Shari’a law.
    It is neither inevitable nor an evolutionary probability that a society governed by tribalism and a cultish “faith” like Islam will ever wake up to Western democratic values.
    The difference is the underlying principles of democracy, originating in Judeo-Christianity, and by contrast, the underlying principles of Shari’a Law, which deny equality to anyone but the male of the species and which, in fact, gives dominance to males. I can’t see what would change over 1,000 years of Islamic practice that would open its adherents to democratic freedoms and values for all of society.

  23. Phillip G. Shaw >
    “I agree with your stand on the Arab Spring; any move towards democracy must be supported, or we are hypocrites.”
    Then as a non hypocrite, you would obviously support an invasion and occupation of China and North Korea, yes?
    “is he that stupid or do we have something else going on that I am missing?” – Phillip G. Shaw.
    Now you’re getting to the heart of the matter, what are we missing? Everyone who supports Obamba’s Arab Spring by de facto supports his circumvention of Congress to attack Libya. If you believe that supporting Obamba and circumventing Congress was in America’s best interests, you are most definitely missing something.

  24. It is neither inevitable nor an evolutionary probability that a society governed by tribalism and a cultish “faith” like Islam will ever wake up to Western democratic values.
    Again, bang on. There is absolutley nothing compatible between democratic values and Islam, so no, there is nothing to “work towards”. Wondering how they are going to feed their family pales BY FAR in comparison to and considering what they believe regarding Sharia, Jihad, full stop.

  25. Phillip G. Shaw,
    I also wonder about Obama. I consider him basically, a clinical or malignant narcissist. That’s not simple egoism; it means that nothing has any reality outside of Himself and he must feel in control of all others with whom he is in contact. If he can’t control them, he will first try to malign and reduce their power, or if that doesn’t work, he’ll ignore them. Whatever Obama cannot control has no existence for him.
    Obama, in my view, makes no policies. It’s all done by his backroom gang. So, the NY trials and so on, would have been arranged by his gang. I think that Obama is narcissist enough to believe that all he has to do is ‘talk’ to the Islamists, and they’ll fall over in adulation. So he ends up doing nothing in the MENA; all he’s fit for, frankly, is campaigning and appearing on pop culture shows. He’s an unethical and unprincipled person, and anti-American.
    Propaganda, such as ‘it’s all due to the film’, ie, we are the guilty ones, is a form of control of us. Most people would take a firmer stance, and cut off funding to Egypt etc.
    Michael, yes, the ones who set up children to die are fanatics. They aren’t the majority although they are the ones we see on the media. As for, can there be a moderate Islam, well, yes and no.
    The moderates who exist now, and they do exist, are ones who don’t take the Koran as dogma and also, ignore the later writings, the violent ones, of the hadiths. I think that this proportion can increase. But, I think it can only increase as they become more active participants in their own economy and political system. That’s because the Koranic political and economic system is fit only for the 7th century. They have to adapt.
    I am strongly against multiculturalism in the West. What it does is it isolates the group from integration and collaboration with other peoples. In many cases, the host nation financially supports this isolation and supports a kind of continuation of ‘the old ways’ in the new land. This sets up a kind of hotbed of ignorance and hatred. Add to that, in many cases, this isolation is also economic and political, and you get mini-Islamist fascist terrotories in the West – as in the UK and France.
    What Harper is doing is right; he is insisting that immigrants must integrate, learn the language, follow our laws and customs.

  26. “Take your extended debates and/or flamewars to private email.” as the lady says. Some here are ruining the thread.

  27. The ME conflicts are not problems for the US or the rest of the world. You can’t blame the current situation of Bush, Obama or any of their predecessors from the UK or even the USSR.
    Read your Q’ran. The people in this reagion have been fighting each other for milennia. Stepping in between them is like stepping in between two brothers in a schoolyard fight. When you step in you expose yourself to a punch in the face. You also run into the danger of them ignoring their differences for a second while they both purposefully punch you in the face.
    Best remedy is to quarantine them. When their behaviour starts to get beyond what is acceptable in polite society – step in and stop it. When they stockpile guns and amo to use on each other and their neighbors – take it away before somebody gets hurt.
    Quarantine requires active measures to be present to enforce. It is not the same as leaving the area.

  28. In retreat? Good heavens, why, when the United States have enough nuclear weapons to clean out those cesspits once and for all? Because a few self-styled Christians thought they could help the Muslims by making friends with them? All the Muslims have proven is that they’re not worth trying to help. They have the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels. If there is a righteous man among the Muslims at all, let him listen to them.
    Krauthammer is a Montrealer who styles himself a Jew. Someone needs to remind him that God’s command to Krauthammer’s people was not to make peace with or convert the sons of Amalek, but to destroy them.
    A million Muslim necks are not worth a hair on a Christian’s. Yes, this is war, the most ancient war we know of. Christians and Jews have been granted the means to end it once and for all. The sooner that is done the better.

  29. Krauthammer is without doubt the best armchair quarterback in the right wing punditocracy, bar none…..except for Limbaugh, Shamity, O’liely, or anyone else in the yahoo Fox News South/North echo chamber.

  31. batb, I fully agree; they have to reject tribalism and all its axioms of gender inequality and etc. It’s been done by all other peoples who were also tribal (the West, Judaism) and who also at one time believed in inequality, rejected reason, rejected individual free will and so on. The Muslims will have to do the same.
    And I agree, it’s not ‘an evolutionary probability’. I reject determinism in history. The only reasons are, again, the size of the population and the ability of the economy to support that population. Everything else shrinks to irrelevance before those two variables, and that includes the Reich’s siege of Stalingrad.
    The reason is: economic. A tribal economy has no means of growing wealth. Its economy is stable and no-growth, relying on a stable land base. The Islamic population is too large for this type of economy.
    Their single industry state owned economy can’t support them. The rest of the world can’t support them, and the 50 odd billion the US gives to them every year (why? how?) can’t support them.
    Morsi is trying for a 4 plus billion loan from the IMF and something from the EU. They aren’t going to give it to him if Egypt is unstable. And even then, it’s not enough.

  32. ET, as a point of practical debate here, the issue is whether or not a middle class and all that that implies will ever emerge within the MENA. Since for reasons I articulated in another thread make that unlikely within our lifetimes, the point is moot. We will have to live with ME religious fanaticism whatever the future holds.
    And how do we live with it? Obama’s policy of encouraging the fanatics, assuming that Arab Spring will turn into some kind of democracy has obviously failed. Morsi is only acting polite because he needs billions in IMF loans.
    And the Bush Doctrine failed on point 4. Afghanistan will revert to tribalism the second after all Western troops are out.
    As I pointed out earlier, both approaches failed. The only thing left is containment.
    rroe, you are very close but not quite. Containment is indeed the requirement. But never intervene in their local quarrels. Let them kill each other off if that’s what they insist on doing. People only really learn through the harshness of bitter and painful experience. Containment is for the purpose of squashing them the moment they try to export their violence elsewhere. Otherwise, you’re bang on the money.

  33. cgh, yes, it’s going to take decades for the full transformation but, in my view, using only the variables of population and economics, it has to happen.
    You can try, as did the West, to reduce your population drastically by at least 50 million and more, to see if the old economic mode can provide enough, but is that feasible?
    My question to you is: how do you plan to ‘contain’ them?
    Informationally, it’s impossible. Materially, it’s equally impossible; if you trade commodities, then you must also set up official trade agreements, overseas offices, bank exchanges, etc.
    If you mean by rejecting immigration, heh, how did that work in the US, which now has how many illegals in its borders? And in Europe, which is also inundated with illegals? Greece, for example, gets 100,000 illegals from the MENA area a year.
    How are you going to contain them?

  34. Isn’t one of the rules for comments in Kate’s blog to “Take your extended debates to private email”

  35. Knight99
    I think you fail to grasp that you and ET are “seeing” things from a different social level and in different time frames, your POV is at a “street” and day to day level, while ET’s is at an over all view that functions in a much longer time frame that your POV. You want immediate results, use nuke tomahawks (my preferred option), ET’s time frame is just to long. Kristianity took a few hundred years to shake off and modify before IT would allow Democracy to flurish

  36. Containment would start in our own backyard. Cease ALL immigration from Middle Eastern nations immediatley. That would the most practical starting point and most prudent in any case.

  38. NME666 >
    LOL, you made me laugh, thanks.
    Good try at psychoanalyzing our personalities and POV, maybe close on one level but not quite.
    I don’t fail to grasp that we see things on a different level, and I’m not looking at a narrow view from the street. Indeed ET is well educated, much better educated than myself; on the other hand I am very well travelled, and for all intensive proposes self made and considered fairly “successful” by anyone who knows me. Hardly a butt crack plumber, but thanks again for the imagery.
    “You want immediate results, use nuke tomahawks (my preferred option), ET’s time frame is just to long.” – NME666
    You need to track the arguments on the other threads over the last few days to understand my point clearly. It’s been rehashed so often that I yawned and squirmed when I saw ET’s continued argument yet again at the top of a new thread. The cause of my initial off-topic rebuttal to her.
    In a nutshell, yes ET’s time frame is too long, aside from the fact that we should not be embroiled in these ME/ NA regional strife’s or Europe’s foreign entanglements in the first place.
    There is no time frame to worry about if we’re not there to begin with.
    I mirrored CGH’s argument about “Quarantine” in a different way – ET defined it as “Isolationism” for me which was never my argument, simply a lazy way to marginalize my argument.
    I also put forth that any aggression towards us should be met with “extreme prejudice”, but that quantifies if we are minding our own business and are attacked unprovoked, a 9/11 event obviously qualifies. Extreme prejudice does not include occupation, rebuilding, and liberal lawyers minding everything. It means smash them and get out.
    These are the tactics of the Israelis, enemies and neighbors of Islam since its inception. They understand the Arab/ Islamic mindset better than anyone, only an imbecile could think that we have a better way of dealing with the Arabs than the bulk of the globes Nobel Prize winners.

  39. When I think of Hillary Clinton. This picture always comes to mind. She is a political harlot , that would lie, kill, steal or do anything for political power.To cover up her misdeeds along with her many mistakes. Needless to say the Dragon is Islam in my mind. Just a secular take from a Prophecy. An image of a Women completely be spelled & damned by her own inability to see any danger while others are suffering under the yoke of a demonic cult.
    Rev 17:3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns.
    Rev 17:4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.
    Rev 17:5 And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.”
    Rev 17:6 And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marveled greatly.

  40. Good Grief I scroll through all of ETs repeated ad nauseum drivel only to see her intellectual twin sister ok has spewed some drivel of her own.

  41. Posted by: phil at September 15, 2012 7:39 PM
    Holy cow phil typed a whole sentence with out mentioning farmer once.
    Posted by: ok at September 15, 2012 11:50 PM
    For sure. Harper is useless if we could only get mulchair then we would be farting through silk.
    What everyone is missing is that the moderate Muslim is the radical and the Islamist is the normal. Like it or not since the fall of the Ottoman empire strong men have kept them down. Now the strong men are gone and the Islamist is back.
    Like it or not as of Sept 11 2012, it is now them against everyone else including the moderate Muslim.

  42. new – Freedom of Expression is a very, very, very important Westen value. Freedom is important to us. But you can’t understand that any better than Bernie Farber does, can you?

  43. new – we do not like to be slaves. If you like to be a slave, go to a Muslim country and live like a slave. The government will be your master and your husband will be your master. Free people do not let the government tell them what they are allowed to think or say. We are free people. Our freedom does not go away because some Muslims cannot control their bahaviour when they are “offended”.

  44. I want them to be licensed to make Palliwood films and bad films about Jews in the Middle East.
    I want anyone publicly saying bad things about Jews to go to jail or to be hanged.
    When they do that “ok” maybe we can look at your suggestion more carefully.

  45. “only an imbecile could think that we have a better way of dealing with the Arabs than the bulk of the globes Nobel Prize winners“. Knight.
    Well here you go phil, the floor is yours. Lay it out for us.

  46. I want to say “hello” to Micheal Harkov; you seem to have the common sense that some here lack.
    It’s no secret that there are wolves and sheep. Muslim sheep, for the most part, are content, like the rest of the world, to work, have families, and live in peace. But Muslim wolves are always slavering, always looking for something to attack, and their efforts can stampede the sheep, as we saw this week in Tunisia and Egypt. Unfortunately, we can’t separate the sheep from the wolves on sight.
    Some here have contended that Islamic fascism is a recent event. My mind reels. For centuries, they rampaged across MENA with the command “Convert or die”. If that’s not fascism, I don’t know what is.
    Others have contended that, even as the ‘middle class’ is vanishing in Western Europe and North America, that it’s possible to spontaneously create one in the MENA. Not going to happen, but I’ll have to continue in another post, as any time I go beyond 3 or 4 paragraphs, my efforts get held and never released.

  47. ET bloviated:
    >>>The Bush Doctrine included not only a confrontation with jihadism and a clear agenda of marginalizing it but also, a commitment to enable these regions to set up the institutions and infrastructure to enable a democracy.

  48. In another thread, I commented on diffusion, which some immediately misinterpreted. Again, because of this uncertain filter, I’ll have to spread my comments over two or three posts.
    Anyone with a smattering of knowledge understands thermodynamics. Energy flows from places of great potential to places of lower potential. Niagara Falls, for example. If you have the capacity to extend that concept, it becomes clear that wealth comes from controlling the flow of something – goods, labour, information. Authors depend on copyright, which is the control of copying their information. Unions depend on the control of labour. Tariffs and trade barriers depend on the control of goods. I’m not going to provide an exhaustive list.
    More in my next post, assuming this one isn’t caught in the nebulous filter.

  49. Once you accept that wealth flows from a high concentration of something to a low one – e.g. doctors have a high concentration of knowledge of the human body, which lay people don’t have, so lay people pay for that transfer. People who could never build an iPhone to save their lives willingly pay $500 for the latest edition, and monthly fees for connection. People willingly pay for an efficient transfer of information or ability.
    Trade barriers prevent this flow. Americans are paying billions of dollars for corn-based ethanol from midwest farmers, when they could be importing it from Brazil at 1/4 the price. Think we have free trade with China? Guess again.
    I stated in another thread “Middle classes are always the product of historical accident, temporary dislocations, and trade barriers.” Consider WWII: the US and Canada created huge industrial machines which ultimately pounded the Axis into submission. Our separation from Germany and Japan by thousands of miles meant we were exempt from the ravages that Britain, Western Europe, China, and southeast Asia endured. At the end of the war, all of our productive capacity was intact, while that of the rest of ‘industrialized world’ was in tatters. No wonder we prospered; no wonder we were masters of the world. But I consider that historical accident. If the Germans had realized the power of carriers in 1935, and built a dozen of them, the Battle of the Atlantic would have been lost. I’m glad we won, but to consider that it was due to some innate superiority is ridiculous.
    More in my next post.

  50. Final post:
    The age of a high percentage of middle class is gone. Any job that can be done at a distance – manufacturing, farming, resource extraction – will occur where it can be done at the lowest cost. Many jobs will exist in local services – dry cleaners, barbers, and restaurants – but they will pay very low wages. Some professions will continue to pay decent wages, but as the Ontario government makes clear, there are many alternatives to high priced emergency rooms, and the rise of paralegals is putting pressure on the lawyers.
    So I repeat: the future will be one of the very smart, the very (mostly inherited) wealthy, and the very politically connected. The rest will live in what was, 150 years ago, relative splendour: they will have homes, running water, TV, air conditioning, and maybe a car. But relative to the truly wealthy, they will live lives of dramatically reduced choice, dramatically reduced social mobility, and dramatically reduced opportunity.
    I don’t wish that this were so. But the people unwilling to accept this don’t realize Sturgeon’s Law applies to people.

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