If we are to take the Obama administration seriously, Egypt is not an ally of the United States and the U.S. ambassador to Libya was assassinated due to a cheesy video that was released on the Internet several months ago. While the incompetence of the current administration has often been on display and never been in doubt, the way in which the White House first paved the road to the Benghazi incident, then completely bungled its response to the assassination, is indicative of new depths of ineptitude.
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NFL Week Two 2012
This would be your weekly open NFL thread.
Absolving Obama
Maureen Dowd is far from the only one to somehow attempt to blame both Bush and Romney for the recent unrest in the Arab world, while refraining from placing any blame on the current occupant of the Oval Office:
You can draw a direct line from the hyperpower manifesto of the Project for the New American Century, which the neocons, abetted by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, used to prod an insecure and uninformed president into invading Iraq — a wildly misguided attempt to intimidate Arabs through the shock of overwhelming force. How’s that going for us?
After 9/11, the neocons captured one Republican president who was naïve about the world. Now, amid contagious Arab rage sparked on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, they have captured another would-be Republican president and vice president, both jejeune about the world.
The neocons aren’t slithering back. Obama has been going along with their strategic insanity to nearly the same extent as Bush. But that’s not enough for them – one wonders what would be enough – and ominously, Mitt Romney is showing every sign that he will make Bush’s foreign policy look like the humble one it was once promised to be by comparison.
But the media must be truly fearful about the electoral backlash facing Obama as a result of the recent incidents in Libya and elsewhere across the Arab world, considering their desperate attempts to change the subject to Bush, or Romney, or anything but the man who is nominally in responsible for addressing them. And they must be terrified about what he’s going to say next after producing that “I don’t think that we would consider them an ally” gem about Egypt.
Never count on a court
They always find a way to do what the politicians want them to do. Their job isn’t oversight, as it is commonly thought, but finding ways to publicly rationalize the obviously ridiculous:
Germany’s top court on Wednesday rejected calls to block ratification of the European Stability Mechanism, triggering a modest sigh of relief from financial markets and clearing the way for implementation of an important tool in Europe’s effort to contain its three-year-old debt crisis.
In a decision read from the bench of the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, the red-robed judges rejected six requests for an injunction to prevent Germany’s president from signing the treaty establishing the 500 billion euro ($643.7 billion) permanent rescue fund.
Reuters Judges at Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.The decision eliminates the threat that Germany, the euro zone’s largest economy and paymaster, would be blocked from participating, which would have effectively scuppered the fund and potentially set off a financial panic.
What the courts do, both in Europe and the USA, is to come up with language to circumvent the clear language of black letter law. Consider the following text:
a) Article 136 (3) TFEU does not change the orientation of the monetary union, nor does it remove the prohibition contained in Article 125 TFEU of assuming the liabilities of other Member States; it merely contains a clarification. The measures of stability support of the Member States are not measures of monetary policy for which, under Article 3 (1) point (c) TFEU, the European Union would be competent. The granting of financial assistance is a measure of economic policy, for which the Member States are competent.
In other words, the prohibited action is legal, not because the prohibition has been removed by court fiat, but because the prohibited action is supposed to not be the action everyone knows it to be. In this case, mere assistance is being granted, which is legal, instead of liability being assumed. Of course, the assistance being granted is the effective assumption of the liability.
This is why Tocqueville was correct to point out that it was America’s populace, and not her laws, that made America great. But America’s populace has changed dramatically, and that is why, as Tocqueville correctly predicted is no longer great.
VPFL 12 Week One
67 Moundsview Meerkats (1-0)
65 Bailout Banksters (0-1)
97 Fromundah Cheezheads(1-0)
73 Greenfield Grizzlies (0-1)
70 ’63Mercury Marauders(1-0)
57 RR Redbeards (0-1)
52 Bane Sidhe(1-0)
48 D.C. Hangmen (0-1)
98 Luna City Gamma Rays (1-0)
71 Suburban Churchians (0-1)
Some minor revenge for last year’s championship game isn’t particularly satisfying, but at least the Meerkats are off to a decent start.
The atheist problem of evil
I have pointed out many times that the so-called “problem of evil” is not an actual problem for Christianity. Indeed, Christianity is predicated on the existence of evil. This post, discussing how the modern academy blunders about completely failing to grasp the basic concept of evil, tends to underline that point:
Hindered by their postmodern moral relativism, many participants tended to be tentative and vague in their ruminations on moral evil (except when it concerned political conservatives). Some of the better papers concerned the theme of evil in great writers such as Kafka and Dostoevsky but left the concept of evil undefined. Only a few papers addressed the problems of the origin of evil and the essential nature of evil. One of these was a Hungarian scholar’s treatment of Plato’s thoughts on how a good deity (the Demiurge) could allow for the existence of evil. I had no idea that thinkers other than Judeo-Christian monotheists had dealt with this issue. The paper demonstrated that the existence of evil is a real intellectual puzzle that merits deeper attention than the sort of superficial, conventional moralizing on display in other presentations
As a general rule, if your first thought concerning evil revolves around political party identities, you’re totally missing the point.
Ignore the polls
When they’re being run by pro-Obama Democrats, it should hardly be surprising that they are wildly inaccurate:
The Pew Research Center and Rasmussen Reports were the most accurate in predicting the results of the 2008 election, according to a new analysis by Fordham University political scientist Costas Panagopoulos. The Fordham analysis ranks 23 survey research organizations on their final, national pre-election polls, as reported on pollster.com.
On average, the polls slightly overestimated Obama’s strength. The final polls showed the Democratic ahead by an average of 7.52 percentage points — 1.37 percentage points above his current 6.15-point popular vote lead. Seventeen of the 23 surveys overstated Obama’s final victory level, while four underestimated it. Only two — Rasmussen and Pew — were spot on.
It’s not an accident that 17 of the 23 polls overstated Obama’s vote margin. And keep in mind that this is a comparison of their final polls, which is when the more egregiously pro-Democratic organizations suddenly start cleaning up their act a little so they don’t get it too noticeably wrong. And where are the Pew and Rasmussen polls today?
Rasmussen has Obama 50, Romney 45. Pew has Clinton 29, Obama 16, and Michelle Obama 15, but their poll concerns who gave the best speech at the DNC so I don’t think there is much to be learned from that. What might be informative would be to look at where the 23 polls were in the middle of September 2008 and compare them with the current polls. I may do that at some point, but not today.
Trekkie Game
Contemplating the important questions at Alpha Game:
You can always trust a smart, unattractive man in the mold of Isaac Asimov to leap with certainty to the wrong conclusion when women are concerned. Just as you can trust a young woman to have no idea what it is that is tripping her attraction triggers. Granted, Asimov himself knew better – hence his joke about growing his ears out – but men are as deluded about the sex appeal of intelligence, honor, godliness, sincerity, and dedication as women are about educational degrees, snark, and being gainfully employed.
Intelligence is a useful DHV when a man is already considered attractive, but his intelligence is not why Spock was considered dreamy by women. After all, Scotty was plenty smart too and women didn’t think he was dreamy.
Macchiavelli on immigration
One of the great benefits of reading history is that one often learns that one’s thoughts are neither new nor original. Consider how the implications of Machiavelli’s observations concerning how Fabius Maximus earned his agnomen relate to present US demographics:
From the readiness wherewith the Romans conferred the right of citizenship on foreigners, there came to be so many new citizens in Rome, and possessed of so large a share of the suffrage, that the government itself began to alter, forsaking those courses which it was accustomed to follow, and growing estranged from the men to whom it had before looked for guidance. Which being observed by Quintius Fabius when censor, he caused all those new citizens to be classed in four Tribes, that being reduced within this narrow limit they might not have it in their power to corrupt the entire State. And this was a wisely contrived measure, for, without introducing any violent change, it supplied a convenient remedy, and one so acceptable to the republic as to gain for Fabius the well-deserved name of Maximus.
– CHAPTER XLIX, Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius
The Romans segregated four tribes out of thirty-five in order to prevent the corruption and collapse of their republic. The Hispanic influx into the USA is roughly equivalent to the percentage of the Roman population that belonged to the four urban tribes, but because their vote has not been limited in a similar fashion, the political corruption they brought with them has not been limited. It is not an accident that the worst abuses of the housing bubble took place in the Hispanic-heavy states of the Southwest. Since the USA did not follow the Roman lead, we can reasonably conclude that the US political system will collapse in considerably less time than the 233 years it took for the Roman system to be rendered moot by Julius Caesar.
As I have repeatedly said, I expect it to take place within 21 years, by 2033.
Mailvox: an uneven match
George: In the end, adherence to divine command theory is the province of lazy minds.
So, in the one corner, we have the irrepressible George as well as the snowflake moralist, INTJ. In the other, we have William of Ockham, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, John Calvin, Immanuel Kant (arguably), and bringing up the rear, Vox Day.
I certainly don’t mind finding myself in the company of such “lazy minds”.