Slow news…
…is good news.
Have you noticed that for the last couple of weeks there’s been a lull in the news? This often happens in August. Congress is on recess, and can’t do much mischief. People are on vacation—and that has included President Obama for much of the time lately.
The majority of the news involves the upcoming election, now almost exactly two months away. There’s a sense of Republican inevitability, but it may be illusory, especially if there’s an October surprise. We also wonder about an ominous predicted September surprise (is that an oxymoron? a predicted surprise?) involving the stock market, a traditional time for downturns.
But right now all is relatively smooth. Bloggers thrive on fast-breaking, intense news stories, and so far we’ve had quite a lot of that during the Obama administration. But what we like as bloggers we dislike as people. It’s not good to have the sense that this administration is a runaway train, accelerating ever faster to a destination we’re not pleased about. So for the moment, it’s good that there’s at least the illusion of a pause.
Or is it just the calm before the storm?
When in a little boat on a sea and a big storm starts to brew, pray to God…and row toward shore.
Now that it’s quiet, Obama can get the golf clubs out and take a well deserved vacation.
There’s plenty going on under the MSM’s vivid surface, it just depends on your focus and priorities, and spin:
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/09/net-neutrality-update/
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/09/radical-obama-justice-department-sues-sheriff-joe-arpaio/
No man or his property is safe when the legislature is in session.
George Pal wins the thread
Not too worried about any kind of September or October surprise as long as they are trying to boost the economy.
After all, everything else these guys have done has failed spectacularly. If they could do something between now and election day, IMO they’d have done it already earlier this year.
As bad as Obama is…
The truth about the Federal Government is the following: If they all took of 10 months out of every year, stayed home, shut up, and most importantly did absolutely nothing, we would be infinitely better off.
They should never be allowed to pass a law longer than 20 pages.
They should be required to repeal 100 laws per year.
They should always have to live by every law they pass, first and forever even when they leave Congress. The Justice Dept. should be required to see to it that every congressperson was adhering 100% spirit and letter to every law they ever pass, until they die.
Mike Mc.:
Turn those suggestions into a Constitutional Amendment.
That would be more than an incremental change, and these days adoption might just be possible. It would tend to split both the Rs and Ds into factions, and would sidestep the problem of the people not believing politicians and election promises.
Let’s have a vote about something other than a particular person and particular office.
It’s slow because they dont want to tell you whats going on, at least not with a long enough lead for you to ‘get it’.
Check out the farm bill… socialists are going to play with our food supply, again… FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S.510)
why not read about how Russian nuclear subs are now back to their 1987 levels of games. they are also hanging outside Faslane Naval Base attempting to get acoustic profiles of the Vanguards. [the cross dressing spy Williams killed by another spy from another country was a signals officer]
Russian submarines are hunting down British Vanguard boats in a return to Cold War tactics not seen for 25 years, Navy chiefs have warned.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/7969017/Russian-subs-stalk-Trident-in-echo-of-Cold-War.html
funny guys, they even went so far as to buy expensive blow up copies of their own military equipment.
Alexander Talanov, the director of the scientific research centre that makes the rubber models, told state TV that the defence ministry was particularly keen on acquiring more copies of the truck-mounted Soviet-era S-300 surface-to-air missile system.
He said such models were designed to fool satellite and air reconnaissance and that the United States and China had invested heavily in replicas of their own hardware.
The news was pretty silent in discussing and tearing apart the life, beliefs, motives, and inspirations of someone who just committed a terrorist attack on discover channel. its interesting to note that he is a product of a liberal education system in which his learned helplessness was so great, that a desperate irrational ineffectual act is all he had left.
they could also cover the news about the various inter race attacks. The spanish being attacked in long island. whites being attacked at the fair. beat down films of random victims in Colorado. A girl getting ‘acid’ in the face. http://www.columbian.com/news/2010/sep/02/acid-attack-victim-i-could-hear-sizzling/
how about discussing how arizona requested 3000 troops, and got 1% of that request. how they had to put signs almost 100 miles inland that basically say they have lost control of that part of the US.
Signs in Arizona warn of smuggler dangers
Drivers advised to travel north
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/31/signs-in-arizona-warn-of-smuggler-dangers/
The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.
They warn travelers that they are entering an “active drug and human smuggling area” and they may encounter “armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed.” Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to “use public lands north of Interstate 8” and to call 911 if they “see suspicious activity.”
how about bank runs, and almost 900 banks to fail..
how about discussing that they are about to twiddle with social security?
how about covering the 2010 white water races in st petersburg on blow up sex dolls?
how about the NC gun issue?
“Upon Governor Beverly Perdue’s declaration of a State Of Emergency on September 1, 2010 Dove Hunters, Concealed Carry Handgun Licensees, Target Shooters and all other gunowners cannot possess, transport or use firearms off their personal property as per N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.7”
[this ban was also put in force during a snow storm]
so as to the guns issue which was a long discussion before i don’t wish to see repeated, they been putting lots of things in place that are like placing a rook in line to protect a bishop. for those who care or don’t know, Dove season opens Saturday.
a state of emergency exists “whenever, during times of public crisis, disaster, rioting, catastrophe, or similar public emergency, public safety authorities are unable to maintain public order or afford adequate protection for lives or property, or whenever the occurrence of any such condition is imminent.”
of course the aforementioned can be grouped with the woman who used her concealed gun to stop a robbery…
then there is the new oil rig explosion
want to talk history? Japan surrendered today…
everyones now angry at the Roma “cant say that word anymore or the sisters will get me” all over europe, and in the UK.
how about the FCC?
FCC spells out possible new mandates for broadband providers
thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/116807-fcc-spells-out-possible-new-mandates-for-broadband-providers
or i can go back in time and we can discuss the parallels of whats going on now with what happened where and when then…
🙂
Art,
I think you are a very thoughtful and informative person. You got tons of “stuff”, but often it is way too much and too long – so I don’t read it. We miss the good stuff. Your replies are usually longer than the original thread.
Can we get bullet points and your main ideas? I’m losing those in the bulk.
Thanks.
Re “They should be required to repeal 100 laws per year.”
Now *that* is a really great idea.
I’d settle for a requirement to repeal two laws for each new law that they pass.
Art, yes keep bring up the Food Safety Modernization Act. when I looked at it a while back it basically required every farmer/ rancher to get a liscence to raise cows or crops. Had an implied huge number of new government workers to do the enforcement/ inspection. And would have pushed our food supplies into much fewer hands as most of the little part time ranchers (who have other jobs and /or retired) would simply close up shop.
People are on vacation–and that has included President Obama for much of the time lately.”
It will include me next week; I’ll be at a condo in Great Barrington, Massachusetts… 😉
We’re in the the calm before the kamikaze attacks on our Constitution by the lame duck ‘most ethical Congress evah’.
(I have this fantasy of watching Boehner walk up to
Madame DefargeNancy Pelousy [assuming she wins reelection which, given her gerrymandered San Fran district, she will] and telling her to give him the damn Speaker’s gavel. Nancy’s bitter tears will be sweeter than any nectar could ever be. An with no transfats, that nectar might even pass muster with Nanny Bloomberg.)There is a very clear reason why Leftist oratory tends to sound good: Sounding good is all that the Leftist aims for. His own personal self interest is all that he really cares about so if the policies he advocates sound good now, but lead to ruin and destruction in the future, he shows a psychopathic disregard for such future consequences; While the poor old conservative is left in the position of pointing out all the negatives Jon Jay Ray
I tend to describe it as lies vs truths, with truths losing because the truth is never as pretty as a lie. the lie never has to meet reality, it only needs to meet an aesthetic that has been normalized. Hence we love our cancers, and will not get out of the tar pit unless we can stop administrating to an aesthetic.
“”“They should be required to repeal 100 laws per year.”
Yep. You’ll be breaking 14 laws unbeknownst to you just by taking a kid fishing.
How about the Republicans calling Obama on his “do you want to go back to the policies of the last 8 years.”
The answer should be absolutely. Lower unemployment, tougher on world terror, lower deficits in spite of the fact that the Democrats controlled the Congress.
With more state polls showing Bush more popular than Obama, the Bush years are looking better every day. “Do you miss me yet?” should become a campaign slogan.
Mike MC,
[Long explanation deleted]
Why don’t you take one of my long posts, get the gist of it, rewrite it, and show me how its done?
you can rewrite the above, or any one of my prior posts which cover out of print, old texts that most people dont know exist.
why dont you explain my point here, as to long posts. when i was a child, i read the books mentioned below, most adults no logner can. so is the issue really my desire to communicate fully, or the lack of ability of the reader? and why would the reader have such lack?
Is it easier for the reader to desire a facilitation to their level, or is it easier for the reader to upscale back to the basic skills of an earlier century? Would a modern person know the difference?
below is an ecerpt that makes my point as to reading ability, whats changed, why we ask for what we ask, etc.
PLEASE TEACH me how to make this point in one short paragraph, and not be called funny names.
The challenge is on you sir…
I will be fair to point out that often times i am quoting much better authors than me who couldn’t explain the point shorter than a book, so you do have a big challenge. Even more so since i quote Cicero and Balthazar, and they are some of the best writers orators in human history.
Personally i am not up to condensing information devulged by better authors who arent short themselves.
But i am sure your going to teach me!
Consider how much more compelling this steady progression of intellectual blindness is when we track it through army admissions tests rather than college admissions scores and standardized reading tests, which inflate apparent proficiency by frequently changing the way the tests are scored.
Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered. According to the Connecticut census of 1840, only one citizen out of every 579 was illiterate and you probably don’t want to know, not really, what people in those days considered literate; it’s too embarrassing. Popular novels of the period give a clue: Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826, sold so well that a contemporary equivalent would have to move 10 million copies to match it. If you pick up an uncut version you find yourself in a dense thicket of philosophy, history, culture, manners, politics, geography, analysis of human motives and actions, all conveyed in data-rich periodic sentences so formidable only a determined and well-educated reader can handle it nowadays.
Personally i loved the unabridged original version when i read it back when i was 10… (i had an old style full education, not the education that was common – you cant get to Bx Science without autodidact erudition and self drive)
my reading has grown and never stopped, so i write long things with mixes of philosophy, history, etc.. its what i learned when i learned to read these kind of CLASSIC books, along with the full canons… including gurdieff, voltaire… and not even limited to the west, as i can also bring up lots of Chinese history (but that would be so alien that no one would understand my references at all!)
Mike MC, what all you guys always tell me is that i dont belong as long as i am me and express me as me, and think the way i do. your missive ends up being, we would love you if you were what we wanted you to be, but yor not, so maybe do this, and lets see if we can love you then. not nice, is it?
i don’t belong anywhere. got that?
no place ever invites ME in…
most of the time i am humored and warehoused
or used and discarded
[i long ago learned that the carrot of belonging people offer, is a big as lie, and have been free of manipulative bs for a long time because i learned it as adults tried to use me as a child for their ends – what do you think these self ingratiating social experimenters do when they find an outlier?]
that’s just how it is… and after nearly half a century of it always being the same, i am quite sure that doing the same experiments (you don’t think your original do you?), over and over for the edification of others who just don’t care (and wasting what little lifetime i have left), tends to be tiring as old people leave and the new ones think they have the answers, while i just sit there doing the same unworkable stuff over and over to prove to someone helping that they should go beyond those suggestions… as they don’t work.
Yet in 1818 we were a small-farm nation without colleges or universities to speak of. Could those simple folk have had more complex minds than our own?
By 1940, the literacy figure for all states stood at 96 percent for whites, 80 percent for blacks. Notice that for all the disadvantages blacks labored under, four of five were nevertheless literate. Six decades later, at the end of the twentieth century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all.
Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled.
Before you think of anything else in regard to these numbers, think of this: we spend three to four times as much real money on schooling as we did sixty years ago, but sixty years ago virtually everyone, black or white, could read.
In 1882, fifth graders read these authors in their Appleton School Reader: William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others like them.
As i child i loved these books.. is it any wonder that i dont want to write or express myself in ways less than those people? i have read all the works of shakespeare, including the sonnets, and did so before i left grade school.
I am lucky enough to own a green felt early edition of alice and wonderland, and through the looking glass with Tenniels illustration. a numbered copy of Oscar Wildes intentions also graces my shelves. as horatio hornblower, all of mark twains work. ALL this stuff was my education before i left grade school.
Mike MC PLEASE teach me to write for the common man… when i was a kid, it was proper to write at a 8th grade level for common communication. [there is even a software tool in word processors so you can insure that you have dumbed down your correspondence enough]. now i am told i have to write at the level of a 5th grader.
but to me a 5th grade level aligns with mark twain, not hannah has two momies.
so i am completely lost…
and i know i dont belong, and never will belong until something i do makes me a darling.
being aware of reality the way i am can be very painful if your not used to it. otherwise, like lao tsu, you smile at the vinegar as that’s ok!!!!!!!
In 1995, a student teacher of fifth graders in Minneapolis wrote to the local newspaper, “I was told children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, have, he, home, if, in, is, it, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?”
personally i think its nuts.
Farragut had his first Navy commission at the age of 12, Alexander the great had conquered the known world by 24…
i watched as they slowly erased the fruit of mankind thinking over the past 3000 or so years.
sad really…
I can’t wait till you show me how its done… 🙂
If i ask the question, what is the sound of one hand clapping, how many would know the answer is enlightenment, and not launch into some common pedantic something they think clever?
if i ask which came first, chicken or egg, do i get the erudite answers or some inane self made up erudition of the moment by someone who is completely ignorant, and too lazy to even read prior erudition?
if i refer to Baio, will they answer as to the Chinese history, or think i am talking about Chachi and whether he loves Joanie?
to tell you the truth, i don’t get to talk much to people. they would rather make up stuff, and pretend to each other who are also making up stuff, than actually openly participate and learn from each other (which their self confidence would have to accept hat they don’t know)
personally if Leonardo da Vince was reborn today, he would be in a mental ward, or disenfranchised…
after all, what is produced, also has to be understood, and often i am not understood, till way after someone else does it. or it happens the way i said, and all those long posts turned out not to be long enough to make the successful case.
I am what i am and that’s all that i am – Popeye
and will ever be
sorry i am not what you want
(or what anyone really wants for that matter)
given a preference, i wouldn’t pick this.
but who is given a preference as to who they are?
remember
Its smarter to be lucky than its lucky to be smart – Pippin
Art, i’ll take a shot at consolidating your post.
The average man is actually below average. Which means liberty is destined to be overtaken by tyrrany. Which means feminism lies at the core of it all. And shit happens but is always predictable if a person read the right 5000 books.
How’d i do? 🙂
SteveH,
Funny… and if that’s your intent, you did well to amuse similar fellows, if not then I guess you didn’t others results may vary.
The average man is average, but the point of measure has changed…
Liberty is destined to tyranny is correct, but so is tyranny destined to liberty, nothing is static
Socialism, and communism, progressivism is at the core, and feminism is one of the movement’s earliest co-opted groups. One would know that, if one knew the history, but one doesn’t, so one doesn’t. Its easier to belittle the empirical facts, than to learn and debate. You have learned and normalized how to act in such a way that the idiots link up and oppose the more knowledgeable, the dialectical process which leads to a dumbed down populace of crabs pulling each other back into the bucket of misery.
The early feminists, like the early progressives, had not learned to hide their goals, methods, and ends. You wonder why you are on the cusp of capitalisms financial collapse enduced as planed by these people. if you go back and read the plan, like going back and reading mein kampf, its eye opening. But like mien kampf, the idiots who didn’t take it seriously sentenced the rest to death, torture, extermination, and suffering unseen by mankind before.
The blame lies on people juust like you… keep fiddling while rome burns…
As far as shit happens, it always does, and history has known many people who have laid out the NEAR future… cause, follows, effect, and not to get that, is to not understand most of reality. Reading books, informs you of cause, effect, and actions outside your own ability to conceive them over time.
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Kind of makes those who said history repeats just plagiarizers, no? Heck if you know your literature you can see how Marx stole from the bible too.
Want to know where the people who we are discussing learned how to do what they are doing, and how to arrange it, and screw you out of your live and everything you own, and succeed in preventing you from any recourse?
They read the books which taught them. The SAME books you don’t want to read!!!!
You have access to their game plan!!!!!!!! But you’re too lazy, ignorant, and loving your place to want to read the game plan, the goals, and methodologies!!!
This is why they say its not a conspiracy! Its in the open!!
Its relies on your nature to be incurious to protect happy ignorance
And it allows them to freely transfer knowledge, expertise, coordination and all that in the open, in front of you. you know, like when parents used your inability to spell so they could talk about things in front of the children and the children wouldn’t know
[edited for length by n-n]
Sometimes these interactions remind me of that commercial where they show you what a dog is thinking. and the dog perks up to words like bacon, his name, etc.. but the dog doesn’t understand what neuter, kennel, and all that means.
Here we have the complaining that its not fun o learn what neutered means, and what it means to them.
Making jokes belittling the fact that i know what it means, doesnt change the outcome for you, does it?
It kind of seals the fate
prevents you from running away
you gladly will laugh and hop into the car for the ride
you might even stick your tongue out at me while you drive off.
but it wont change the outcome because you didn’t change what you knew, and so changed how you could respond to it.
and it brings me back to what i have said over and over.
sooner or later we all are forced to dine at a table laden with the consequences of our actions or inactions…
bon apetite mes ami!!!
Mike Mc – I had a similar thought, that all legislation should come with a one-page warning label, as we all get for medication, before it is passed. What is the expected effect and the possible side effects?
It would be the usual government bureaucratese as first, but citizens being able to go back with the printed document – perhaps even as the basis of a suit overturning the law, could grow powerful.
At minimum, it would tie up their hands with regulations, interfering with producing their product, much the same as they interfere with others.
Anti-Intellectualism: Hostility toward intellectual pursuits and the use of reason and scholarship to
solve problems, favoring the use of emotion, tradition, and action.
ALAN & THERESA Von ALTENDORF, Isms: A Compendium of Concepts, Doctrines, Traits and Beliefs, 1991.
Prejudice: An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination
of the facts. The act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.
Irrational suspicion or hatred of a particular group. AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, William
Morris, editor, 1981.
Practically speaking, the groups generally described as cults today share in greater or lesser degree
the following attributes: an authoritarian structure, the regimentation of followers, reunification of the
world, and the belief that adherents alone are gifted with the truth. All the other qualities associated
with cults derive from these characteristics: an attitude of moral superiority, a contempt for secular
laws, rigidity of thought, and the diminution of regard for the individual. WILLA APPEL, Cults In
America: Programmed For Paradise, 1983.
When something is done again and again it is assumed that it comes from the deliberate judgment of reason. On these grounds custom has the force of law, and abolishes a law, and is the interpreter of
laws.
THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-1274), Summa Theologiae.
Historical understanding consists of perceiving difference among similar phenomena and similarities
among different ones. RAYMOND ARON (1905-1983), “Evidence and Inference in History,” in
Evidence and Inference (Daniel Lerner, ed), 1959.
Conformity can be defined as a change in a person’s behavior or opinions as a result of real or
imagined pressure from a person or group of people.
…A group is more effective at inducing
conformity if (1) it consists of experts, (2) the members (individually or collectively) are important to the individual, or (3) the members (individually or collectively) are comparable to the individual in
some way. ELLIOT ARONSON, The Social Animal, 1976.
so why don’t i listen to the group tell me what to do? they fail on all three points… (not that succeeding would work with me either).
and on feminism:
Social institutions are what they do, not necessarily what they say they do. It is the verb that matters,
not the noun. ANEURIN BEVAN (1847-1960), In Place of Fear, 1952.
It would be interesting to read a volume of history which dealt not so much with the masters of men and their feats of conquest as with the personality disorders which impelled them to their particular course of action… In the appraisal of history hypomania is as important as gunpowder and
schizophrenia may be as significant as the atomic bomb. C. S. BLUMEL, War, Politics and Insanity,
1948.
yes it would..
for that is the majority subject of my discourse.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes — our ancestors. It is the democracy
of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely
happen to be walking about. GILBERT KEITH CHESTERTON (1874-1936), Orthodoxy, 1909.
if you dont read, how do you know what your ancestors discovered? your nanny?
Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in. ARTHUR
SCHOPENHAUER (1783-1860), Essays and Aphorisms.
but what of whom that has read them?
and here is a good missive as to why telling me to be someon else wont work
To be able to live among men and women we must allow everyone to exist with his given
individuality. If we condemn another man absolutely, there is nothing for him but to treat us as a
mortal enemy; for we are willing to grant him the right to exist only on condition that he becomes
different from what he invariably is. ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1783-1860), Parerga and
Paralipomena, 1851.
but then again.. who reads Schopenhauer any more?
heh… 🙂
I’m the last person in the world who is anti-intellectual. I noted Aquinas up there. I’ve read him in moderate detail and think he’s fab. I won’t read you citation because I don’t have the time, and he’s mixed in with too many other people.
Don’t you have to tailor content to forum and readers? That includes the amount. If people can read 5 pounds worth, and you give them 30 pounds worth, they will pass over your thirty and read someone else’s 5.
That’s not being anti-intellectual. That’s only having 5 pounds worth of read in you at any given tie one visits a forum like this.
Mike Mc
You are not the first person to give Artfldgr that advice.
I doubt you will be the last.
Re “Don’t you have to tailor content to forum and readers?”
Indeed you do, if you want to *have* readers.
Artfldgr, if I may, here are two suggestions:
(1) Mix it up a bit in terms of post-length. Yes, sometimes more space is needed to explain a particular point, but as Mike Mc suggested, most people don’t have all day to read blogs. Stopping by here for fifteen minutes, one may read five posts of others or one post of yours. By always posting at such length, you do in fact make yourself less likely to be read.
(2) Learn to compress. Done right, compression does not equal butchery; on the contrary, it produces clearer, more effective writing.
(3) Remember, you want to be read. If others tell you your posts are too long, don’t imply their criticism springs from anti-intellectualism. Rather, thank them for their feedback, as they are telling you how to keep and gain more readers.
I would second what JR Dogman says. I usually pass over the long postings from artfldgr, not out of disagreement with what he says, but because they are too damned long. Brief, concise, and to the point, as my Design professor said.
Gringo, et al: I understand the problem with the length of Artfldgr’s posts. But I also see the dilemma. If a lot of what he is saying is controversial and goes against common knowledge or common belief, I can see why he feels it’s important for it to be heavily documented in order to convince. Most of what he writes (not all, but most) consists of that supporting documentation. And most of the time he can’t just post links because most people don’t have online access to the sources and databanks he’s getting the quotes from.
It’s the internet…we welcome unsupported assertions!
Artfldgr, have you considered a strategy of just making your points and then unrolling the evidence when/if you are challenged? Social conventions guide us to keep much of our nature at a discreet distance. Schopenhauer is no excuse for littering the commons.
As it stands, I get zero of your wisdom. If you can make a provocative case, I might find myself inspired to dig deeper.