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Spengler’s Odd Conclusion [Dan Collins]

In an otherwise sensible article concerning Obama’s relation to his church, Asian Times’ Spengler reaches a strange conclusion:

Obama holds his own views close. But it seems unlikely that he would identify with the ideological fits of the black-power movement of the 1960s.

Maybe.

Weathermen, on the other hand . . .

They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.But — unlike some other fringe figures of the era — they’re also flatly unrepentant about the bombings they committed in the name of ending the war, defending them on the grounds that they killed no one, except, accidentally, their own members.Dohrn, however, was jailed for less than a year for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members’ robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed.“I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough,” Ayers told the New York Times in 2001.

100 Replies to “Spengler’s Odd Conclusion [Dan Collins]”

  1. Carin says:

    I don’t know about that Spengler article. I would have appreciated a bit more discussion regarding black theology. It would appear to be the crux of the matter.

  2. Victor. says:

    Speaking of Liberation Theology, again.

    What are the odds for a surge of MSM reporting on Iraq and McCain’s 100 year Blood lust?

  3. Ric Locke says:

    Carin, you will wait a loooooong time for that.

    Regards,
    Ric

  4. Karl says:

    Carin,

    It’s coming. Believe me.

    Dan,

    My comment from the earlier thread still stands:

    I live in fear that someone will be thorough before I finish my piece.

    Hint.

  5. Carin says:

    Well, Karl, why don’t you get busy instead of commenting?

  6. If you had read the preceding articles Spengler’s written regarding Obama’s wife and his mother, you’d have a better sense of Spengler’s more abiding doubts about the Anthropological Fascism that has influenced Obama’s life. Better reading than all the current red-herring stuff about J.Wright.

  7. Pablo says:

    Victor.,

    What are the odds for a surge of MSM reporting on Iraq and McCain’s 100 year Blood lust?

    Hillary took care of that in her speech this morning. She too completely misquoted McCain. You must be so proud.

    If only Maliki shared your concern….

  8. MC says:

    Re black liberation theology… I’ve got a start at it in the Pub.

    Just a hint of the elucidation coming from Karl…

  9. Daryl Herbert says:

    Black theology is the same as white theology, but their crosses are twice as big.

  10. lee says:

    it seems unlikely that he would identify with

    Unlikely?

    When electing a US president, I want better odds than “unlikely”.

    Oh, and nice one Daryl! I like it.

  11. nishizonoshinji says:

    far be it from me to point out facts, but some of Wrights statements are true.

    1. chickens coming home to roost.
    a lot of our trouble in MENA has been caused by the CIA’s assassination of Iranian leader Mossadegh and installation and support of the [american puppet] ruler the Shah.

    2. blacks are being given AIDS by the government.
    blacks WERE injected with live syphilis cultures by the GOVERNMENT in a set of horrific experiments.
    given homosapiens sapiens proclivity towards conspiracy and the higher incidence of AIDS in blacks, it is pretty natural for blacks to make the projection AIDS is being spread thru the africanamerican population in another experiment.

    i dont think O believes any of this stuff.
    or i wouldnt vote for him.
    i remember politely listening to the story of Jonah and the Whale as a gradeschooler.
    i knew the priest was full of crap but i didnt correct him.

  12. nishizonoshinji says:

    conspiracy theory.

    these are grievance politics, not religion.
    it is not “black theology”, dolts.

    and like i proved to you all…..jesus certainly could have been black.
    or half black like O.
    ;)

  13. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    blacks WERE injected with live syphilis cultures

    Stopped reading at the first lie.

    Sorry.

  14. B Moe says:

    blacks WERE injected with live syphilis cultures by the GOVERNMENT in a set of horrific experiments.

    No. Blacks already in late stage syphilis were studied and not treated, which is horrific enough, but no one was deliberately injected with the disease. But thanks for your hysteric demagogery, very scientific of you.

  15. B Moe says:

    it is not “black theology”, dolts.

    I think nishi has gotten bored with being a Professional Genius and decided to be God now.

  16. guinsPen says:

    some of Wrights statements are true

    Nothing you noted, unfortunately.

  17. Cowboy says:

    Pablo:

    She too completely misquoted McCain

    I heard this too, Pablo. Didn’t she have McCain saying that he supported “one hundred years of war in Iraq”?

  18. B Moe says:

    far be it from me to point out facts

    She did get that part right.

  19. nishizonoshinji says:

    kk..i didnt google.
    still, the syphilis experiments are a fertile substrate for conspiracy theory.

    still…..just because YOUR spiritual leaders can shape ur lives with goofy supernatural beliefs doesnt mean O’s can.
    i think u are projecting.
    just because your pastors and ministers can influence your thot and shape ur perception, doesnt mean O’s does.

    and im correct about Mossadegh and the jesus genotype, lawls.

  20. RTO Trainer says:

    You can’t even get your rebuttals right. Mossadeq was NOT assassinated. He was removed by a coup in 1953. He did not die until 1967. Mossadeq was supposed to have been the Shah’s Prime Minister, but forced the Shah into exile in 1952. The coup, which was supported by the CIA and MI6, restored a Consitutional Monarch. And there was the usual justification; the Iranian Communist Tudeh Party was a major part of Mossadeq’s power base. Added to Mossdeq’s nationalization of Iran’s oil fields in 1951, it looked like the beginnings of a Soviet satellite state.

    If the Senator didn’t beleive what was being preached, why did he stay in a church were it was preached?

  21. Cowboy says:

    nishi:

    I was on the debate team in high school. I wasn’t very good because I was more interested in getting high than in research. There were many people, however, that were worse at debate than was I.

    The worst of them could drive a Peterbilt through #11.

    A Peterbilt hauling one of those “WIDE LOAD” Fema trailers.

  22. Major John might show up any time and y’all are gonna waste his time by engaging the latest TTP. just something to think about….

    *glares at RTO*

  23. cjd says:

    RTO,

    Thanks for pointing that out re: Mossadeq, I was going to point that out to nishi the other day but decided to take a nap instead. Arguing with nishi won’t go far, but it will be fun when she throws another temper tantrum when her oh so obvious superiority goes unrecognized…again.

  24. B Moe says:

    still, the syphilis experiments are a fertile substrate for conspiracy theory.

    Largely because of people who think capitalization implies truth.

    still…..just because YOUR spiritual leaders can shape ur lives with goofy supernatural beliefs doesnt mean O’s can.
    i think u are projecting.

    Then you would be wrong, I have no spiritual leader. What does it say about Obama that he would feign belief in Black Theology for twenty years then? Is it acceptable to you than he would pander and use these people to get a boost up politically? Is it acceptable to you that he is so vacuous and mercenary that no one apparently has any idea what the fuck he believes?

  25. McGehee says:

    You can’t even get your rebuttals right. Mossadeq was NOT assassinated. He was removed by a coup in 1953. He did not die until 1967.

    Doesn’t matter, she’s still right. She possesses a +6 Shield of Stupidity that wards off facts like yours without her even needing to make a saving throw.

  26. RTO Trainer says:

    cjd;

    Here to help.

  27. nishizonoshinji says:

    sry RTO, but i am talking about wat ppl BELIEVE.
    the citizens of MENA pretty much believe Mossadegh was deposed and the Shah installed thru american meddling.
    colonialism.
    that is wat has lead to our very bad relations with Iran, to our support of Uncle Saddam in his war against Iran.
    that is how they see us, colonialist meddlers.

  28. nishizonoshinji says:

    it isnt “black theology”, dopes, it is black grievance politics.

    it was Mossadegh’s deputy that was killed, my bad.
    still that is wat the citizenry of MENA believe and it didnt make the aftermath of Gulf II easy.
    MENA doesnt trust America….those chickens came home roost at 3,000 times.

  29. nishizonoshinji says:

    at least 3,000 times.

    maybe this our penance for abandoning the shi’ia after Gulf I, and for meddling in Iran.
    maybe we have to pay in blood for our screw ups.

  30. RTO Trainer says:

    I don’t care what people believe (and you should read this to learn why). I’m concerned with facts. And you’re simply a liar. You didn’t couch your comment on Mossadeq as other people’s beliefs, just another in a long line of bald, and wrong, assertions.

  31. MayBee says:

    How many Iranians highjacked the planes on 9/11?

  32. oh, you know, MayBee, all those people look alike.

  33. nishizonoshinji says:

    RTO, do you think that America “did the right thing” vis a vis Iran?
    as an american u might i guess.
    as an Iranian i think u might feel ur sovriegnity was violated big time.

  34. B Moe says:

    it isnt “black theology”, dopes, it is black grievance politics.

    We didn’t name it, you ignorant fucking twit. That is what the practitioners call it.

  35. nishizonoshinji says:

    maybee…i said MENA.
    the reason MENA resents us is because we did this shit.
    we meddled.

  36. B Moe says:

    as an Iranian i think u might feel ur sovriegnity was violated big time.

    Because all Iranians think exactly the fucking same. Not a single one of them preferred the Shah to the Ayatollahs. Just when I think nishi can’t be any more foolish, she somehow manages to pull it off.

  37. JD says:

    facts, they are just things to be ignored in nishi’s world.

  38. Pablo says:

    kk..i didnt google.

    IOW, I was blowing it out my ass, and I was wrong, again. So was Wright.

  39. Pablo says:

    and like i proved to you all…..jesus certainly could have been black.

    …but for the fact that he wasn’t. Wright said he was. He, like you, is wrong, again.

  40. nishizonoshinji says:

    c’mon RTO.
    tell me we did the right thing.
    for altruistic reasons.

    Mossadegh was eventually removed from power on August 19, 1953, in a coup d’état, supported and funded by the British and U.S. governments and led by General Fazlollah Zahedi [4]. The American operation came to be known as Operation Ajax in America,[5] after its CIA cryptonym, and as the “28 Mordad 1332” coup in Iran, after its date on the Iranian calendar.[6]

    In March 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles directed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was headed by his younger brother Allen Dulles, to draft plans to overthrow Mossadegh.[18]

    On April 4, 1953, CIA director Dulles approved US$1 million to be used “in any way that would bring about the fall of Mossadegh.” Soon the CIA’s Tehran station started to launch a propaganda campaign against Mossadegh. Finally, according to The New York Times, in early June, American and British intelligence officials met again, this time in Beirut, and put the finishing touches on the strategy. Soon afterward, according to his later published accounts, the chief of the CIA’s Near East and Africa division, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr. the grandson of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, arrived in Tehran to direct it.[19].In 2000, The New York Times made partial publication of a leaked CIA document titled, “Clandestine Service History – Overthrow of Premier Mosaddeq of Iran – November 1952-August 1953.” This document describes the planning and execution conducted by the American and British governments. The New York Times published this critical document with the names censored. The New York Times also limited its publication to scanned image (bitmap) format, rather than machine-readable text. This document was eventually published properly – in text form, and fully unexpurgated. The complete CIA document is now web published. The word ‘blowback’ appeared for the very first time in this document.

    im just talkin chickens, u know.
    as in coming home to roost.

  41. Cowboy says:

    those chickens came home roost at 3,000 times.

    nishi:

    This is just plain too far. I don’t mind you being ignorant and pretending you’re a genius, but don’t you ever, ever denigrate those lives in this way.

    These are not simply checkmarks with which you can tally supposed American wrongs against those innocent, non-military, unsuspecting, productive American lives.

    I’m willing to believe happyfeet that I should give you some latitude, but that is a line that I am not willing to have even you step across.

  42. Pablo says:

    Cowboy,

    I heard this too, Pablo. Didn’t she have McCain saying that he supported “one hundred years of war in Iraq”?

    Yup.

  43. MayBee says:

    I wonder why all those Saudis and Palestians and Egyptians were willing to die for what happened in Iraq almost 50 years prior.
    Fwiw, I have a lot of recently immigrated Persians in my neighborhood. I don’t think they relate to Wright at all.

  44. RTO Trainer says:

    Nishi, it’s clear you know nothing about any of it and you can’t even be bothered to look it up.

    I’d answer someone who was receptive to that answer. You’ve demonstrated your closed mind often enough for me thank you. In addition, much of what you are asking is about what I believe, which is none of your business.

    I will point out that those who allow themselve to be ruled by what they “feel” are, rightly, headed for a huge fall into a stone wall of reality.

    The most I’ll give you, on the off chance that you might actually think about it, if only for a fleeting moment despite your lack of qualification, is that “Iranians” in 1953, hell, Iranians now, have no concept of “sovreignty.” Mossadeq did for a few years. The Shah certainly did. You are allowing your experience in the US to color your fevered imaginings of the “feelings” of Iranians a half cnetury ago. Ludicrous. Mind boggling. You might be able to write a passable romacne novel on the depth of your understanding, but you’ll never make it as an historian.

  45. B Moe says:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_theology

    Notice who is first on the list of scholars. This is a quote from Cone, listed as one of the founders:

    Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community. . . . Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

    via Taranto.

    Nothing supernatural about it nishi. Nothing very changey, hopey or unifying about it either.

  46. Mikey NTH says:

    Geez, guys – why do you still engage the nishi? There isn’t any there there to engage; just a sorry bigot using text-message vocabulary to seem hip and cute. I.E.; “fifty years after the overthrow of this one prime minister Iranians are rightly aggrieved against the USA.’

    If that is true (which I doubt) then Iranians have issues that won’t be settled without finding the grave of Alexdander the Great and peeing on it. And if their greivances run that deep (no other historical examples of that kind of grudge given) then they need to isolate themselves as far and away from other people as can be done.

    Or you can all ignore nishi’s rants.

  47. Pablo says:

    im just talkin chickens, u know.

    no, nishi, you’re just talking shit, that which, other than eggs, comes out of the backside of chickens.

    Osama has laid out his reasons for the 9/11 attacks and Mossadegh isn’t one of them.

  48. MayBee says:

    I mean Iran, of course. Was it a regional thing, do you think? Did a lot of their parents go over to Iran and fight the Iran/Iraq war?

  49. B Moe says:

    im just talkin chickens, u know.
    as in coming home to roost.

    So is the survivor of one of those 3000 decides to kill you as revenge against Islam, would that just be chickens coming home to roost, also?

  50. lee says:

    it was Mossadegh’s deputy that was killed, my bad.
    still that is wat the citizenry of MENA believe and it didnt make the aftermath of Gulf II easy.
    MENA doesnt trust America….those chickens came home roost at 3,000 times.

    When you don’t even know the truth, you want us to believe you can comfortably speak for “the citizenry of MENA”.

    sheesh

    I miss Witheld

  51. nishizonoshinji says:

    Not a single one of them preferred the Shah to the Ayatollahs.

    oh i call bullshit.
    we had a persian housekeeper when i was growing up, she was Iranin, RTO.
    do u know wat she said?
    “during Shah, they wud come and take and take u away at night.
    during ayatollahs, they come day or night.”
    every Iranian, Turk, Saud, UAE citizen i knew in school was bitterly resentful of the CIA action.
    btw they were all young men.

  52. RTO Trainer says:

    WTF is “MENA?” Anyhow?

  53. RTO Trainer says:

    You are not believable Nishi. Piss off.

  54. nishizonoshinji says:

    just tell me this.
    did we do the right thing?

  55. B Moe says:

    That was me, not RTO, and I was being sarcastic. You continue to live up to the last sentence of that post.

  56. nishizonoshinji says:

    Middle East North Africa.

  57. nishizonoshinji says:

    did we do the righ thing?

  58. B Moe says:

    And I was in school with several dozen Iranians during the transition. Before the fall, they were about 50/50 in support of the Shah, both men and women. Afterwards, it was 100% for the Ayatollah among the men, the women weren’t around any more.

  59. nishizonoshinji says:

    tell me please.

  60. nishizonoshinji says:

    did we do the right thing?

  61. JD says:

    I KNOW EVERYTHING AND YOU KNOW NOTHING STOOPID FACTS JUST GET IN THE WAY OF MY STORY U FUCKIN THEOCON THEOCRATZ ARE LED AROUND BY YOUR SILLY BIBLE WHILE ME ALLAH AND MO ARE ON THE PATH OF ENLIGHTENMENT AND SCIENCE AND U FRUCKING THECONZ WOULD DENY ESCR AND THINK FROZEN EGGS ARE POTENTIAL MURDERS AND U CAUSED ALL THAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD BUT I AM A REPUBLICAN VOTING FOR O BECUASE EVEN THO HE STANDS FOR NOTHING HE WILL BRING RESPECT BACK TO THE US AND FIX ALL THAT AILS US AND FEED THE KIDS AND MAKE SUPERMAN WALK AFTER HE BRINGS HIM BACK FROM THE DEAD AND YOU BROUGHT 9/11 ON YOURSELVES WITH YOUR EVIL WAYS AND MEDDLING AND SHIT AND KYOTO

  62. MayBee says:

    did we do the righ thing?

    What would have happened if it hadn’t been done?

  63. To get back on-topic for a moment: I have a extra-smoldering hatred for 60s radical flotsam living on tuition in America’s universities. As Lileks once said, leftists didn’t do despicable things because the times were crazy. The times were crazy because leftists did despicable things.

  64. RTO Trainer says:

    I’m not answering your question. You didn’t even read the partial answer I did give. Your’e an intellectual charlatan. Piss off.

  65. cjd says:

    The citizenry of MENA? So is that one big monochromatic block of people, nishi? You know what nish, I’ve lived/worked/traveled all over the Middle East, spoken the language and have interacted with all sorts of people: Shi’a, Sunni, Assyrian, Kurd, Alawite, Sufi, you name it. Most of them look at people such as yourself with contempt. I agree that our image isn’t the best with a lot of folks there, but there are plenty of them who don’t believe the bullshit you’re trying to peddle here either. Whatever our image, we’re still considered the most honest broker out of all the other wondrous nations they could choose from, mainly because they understand that we’re the only one with the real power to make things happen. You would understand this if, you know, you actually spent time really talking to people and getting to know them, their language, culture and history, instead of just believing what you want and making the rest of it up as you go along.

    You’re a joke, nishi. And like RTO said, you’re a fucking liar too.

  66. And as for doing the right thing, nishi; we deserve an engraved thank-you from the Iranians, for every year since the 50s that they didn’t have to live under Islamic fundamentalism.

  67. B Moe says:

    did we do the right thing?

    I would ask you to be more specific, but I am busy trying to teach my cat to make a Denver Omelette and a pot of coffee for in the morning.

  68. Cowboy says:

    I’m with you, RTO. nishi has, for me at least, gone beyond the “Pale” with the “chickens” comment.

    I’m sorry Jeff G., happyfeet, but she’s a bigotted idiot who sees everything through a lens darkened by her own twisted sense of what Christianity actually is and what Islam (even her own “special” version) has NEVER been.

    I’m not all that smart, but I’m smart enough, and I’ve been in the “academy” long enough to recognize nishi’s particular brand of “smarts.”

    She has swallowed whole hog the notion that she is special just ‘cuz, she’s her. The more individual, the more exotic (see her take on Islam), the more eccentric (see her inability to write a complete sentence within the standards of English, disguised by an affectation of hip text language), the more UNIQUE DAMMIT, she is–why, the more worthy her opinions. Actually, I should say “opinion,” because she really only has one:

    I am cool because I’m different.

    You’re not, because I can pigeon-hole you into the category that best suits my purposes at the time.

    You, nishi, got no cred. And your “tribe”? A bunch of posers.

    And what you know, down deep inside, is that I’m right.

    Sucks to be you.

  69. Rick Ballard says:

    I really don’t think she’s posing as a moron, Cowboy. The very saddest thing is that some school may have given her a diploma. Gresham’s Law is going to drive the value of a BA right down to GED level.

  70. Fucked in the head moonbat says:

    Kate just needs to get laid. The Catholic church was too hard for her, and believe me it’s a mess, imo, so she jumps in with the fake muslims, and her mind is fucked. Totally and immeasurably fucked. She’s not quite one of us because of all that small government nonsense, but this crazy biatch is close. Oh so close! Kepp on reachin for the stars, nishi. Er, Kate.

  71. MayBee says:

    I really really do not want a President that is going to sit down with the Iranians and the Syrians with the idea in his head that Sept 11 was chickens coming home to roost, as nishi and Wright do. If Obama thinks that, I want him to say it now. Then nishi and Wright can vote for him, and I’ll know not to.

  72. lee says:

    I’m not positive nishi is a stupid, bigoted, lying, dipshit…OK, let me try again.

    I’m not positive nishi is stupid, maybe she’s just very unaware of her colossal ignorance.

  73. JD says:

    I have an Aunt, Uncle, and several cousins who are Iranian. Just for shits and giggles, I called Aunt Fatima and Uncle Hafez, and ran some of nishi’s drivel past them. The whole MENA thing kind of threw them, and that was the high point for nishi.

    Your world, nishi, it is odd.

  74. Pablo says:

    still…..just because YOUR spiritual leaders can shape ur lives with goofy supernatural beliefs doesnt mean O’s can.

    I don’t have a spiritual leader, let alone one shaping my life with goofy supernatural beliefs. You’re projecting, nishi.

  75. Cowboy says:

    Gresham’s Law is going to drive the value of a BA right down to GED level.

    I’m sorry to say, Rick–on more than one level–, but you are most likely right. I had the opportunity recently to run an English class using an 1923 high school literature and grammar textbook. My Sophomores and Juniors, in college, were almost universally behind what was taught to children five to seven years younger than them.

    Truly, what passes for a B.A. today, easily passed for a high school diploma then.

  76. narciso says:

    Yeah, Yeah, no; Mossadegh was a midlevel official in the 1920s
    (minister of labor)who was elected
    on the demagogic platform, which was
    stupid in 1953, idiotic now. Mossadegh
    didn’t have much of a following, except among the Tudeh, because he was too secular (ticked off the mulah, like
    Ayatollah Kashani)and the bazaaris
    (merchants)who could figure out that
    nationalization today, is confiscation
    of your business tomorrow.Unfortunately,
    the Shah didn’t learn his lesson, for his land reform plan, alienated the merchants, his other initiatives, the mullahs. The first wave of Khomeini’s men like Yasdi, and Mustafa Chamran, first defense minister and patron of
    Hezbollah, was western educated; yet
    that didn’t stop them from swallowing
    the jihadist koolaid

  77. lee says:

    Cheer up Cowboy, at least todays students are sensitive. And have good self esteem.

  78. Cowboy:

    Bear in mind that, in 1923, your college sophomores and juniors would most likely not be in college. They’d be down on the farm, working in the brickyard, or making their way in the business world. One of the consequences of our modern attitude that “college is for everyone”, is that college isn’t college anymore. In many cases, it’s 13th grade.

  79. lee says:

    And by sensitive, I don’t mean the compassionate kind.

    More of the raw, exposed nerve kinda sensitive.

  80. RTO Trainer says:

    I only know two Iranians personally. One will probably never be able to go back. He started a riot in Tehran in 1978 that provided the cover for COL “Bull” Simmons (ret.) and the team of EDS employees he was leading to get two other empoyees out of the city.

    The other once asked me when we (the US Army) would be able to do for his country what we’d done for Iraq.

    It’s a very narrow sample, but ti sure doesn’t square with the picture presented.

  81. happyfeet says:

    oh. No. Chickens? Chickens mean that we are irredeemably bad,* and that they are irremediably victimy. People who want to be victims will be I think. But there’s so much we can do to help.

  82. JD says:

    Cowboy @ 8:32 – Spot on.

  83. RTO Trainer says:

    Are these chickens, black, white, red or brown? I don’t know why, but I’m sure it matters.

  84. Cowboy says:

    That’s right, TSI.

    If everyone is “special,” no one is.

    Every day, I see so many students who would be much happier pursuing a job that didn’t require a college degree. My little brother admits freely that he had no desire to go to college, became a skilled tradesman and makes far more than I do, having gone to college for 14 years (OK, I wasn’t exactly a quick learner!).

    On the other hand, I have been involved in advising and admitting students who clearly had no chance of succeeding beyond the first semester. Advisors were told to simply register the students for the easiest classes possible. Of course, in most cases, they failed. However, the university I worked for received the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, from so many students they KNEW wouldn’t pass that first semester.

    On the other hand, I have taught in “vocational/technical” schools which are, in Indiana, being slowly phased out. I cannot for the life of me understand why we have ignored such a valuable part of our culture, our economy.

  85. happyfeet says:

    Fuck the chickens is what I think. Chickens what roost near innocent civilians? Buh-bye, and when we track down where those chickens came from, buh-bye. The remaining chickens learn to roost more wisely that way. It’s evolution. Nishi’s down with that.

  86. lee says:

    Nishi, If you really want to get to the root, forget about the Shah.

    It is all FDR, Stalin, and especially Churchill’s fault. They drew the map, literally, after WWII.

  87. Dan Collins says:

    Yeah. Fuck the chickens.

    Man.

  88. happyfeet says:

    We had our revolution. Iran had theirs.

    Ours was way more better I think, but you want we can compare and contrast.

  89. B Moe says:

    Fuck the chickens is what I think. Chickens what roost near innocent civilians? Buh-bye, and when we track down where those chickens came from, buh-bye. The remaining chickens learn to roost more wisely that way. It’s evolution. Nishi’s down with that.

    And just like that, ‘feets wins another thread. He is like the Sid Finch of blogging, that boy.

  90. MC says:

    Damn, I love the smell of fisking in the evening…

  91. alppuccino says:

    Comment by Cowboy on 3/17 @ 7:39 pm #

    I was on the debate team in high school. I wasn’t very good because I was more interested in getting high than in research.

    Miss Wilkins: …..and that’s why I think we should switch to Charmin Quilted in all the restrooms. Thank you.

    Moderator Mr. Cowboy, you have 2 minutes to rebutt.

    Mr. Cowboy Dude. You said ‘butt’. *blink* *blink* Whoa! Was that like a half hour? I never heard the buzzer man!

  92. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    just tell me this.
    did we do the right thing?

    You mean preventing the Soviet Union from grabbing the Iranian oil fields, turning Iran (and possibly the entire Middle East) into another Communist slave state, and getting unfettered access to warm-water ports?

    Yep. We did.

    Next.

  93. Carin says:

    Cowboy at #84 – man, are you singing to the choir here. Pisses me off on so many levels; one of them being the dumbing-down of high school so that kids almost HAVE to go to college to have any sort of working knowledge of history. But, what i wanted to mention was that Michigan’s STAR GOV Jennifer Granholm keeps touting that education (as in “higher”) is the solution to Michigan’s economic woes. GENIUS. We simply have to get all these kids to go to college. She announces enrollment rates as if it means anything.

  94. psa says:

    Wonder what Sen. Obama and Rev. Wright think about the treatment of Christians in Muslim nations as in Egypt today (esp. comments #107, #188):

    http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28894_Video-_Treatment_of_Christians_in_Egypt#comments

    “The postmodernists tell us that there is nothing outside the text and that the whole world is a text.

    In short, they run a sort of moral protection racket. They make people feel guilty, and then they offer them absolution. They are our only protection against hellish shame and humiliation. Join them, and your sins are washed away. Refuse, and bear on top of your own sins, which were already too heavy to carry, the burden of the sins of the whole world.” – Jonathan David Carson, Ph.D., “Original American Sin,” http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4813

  95. Slartibartfast says:

    but i am talking about wat ppl BELIEVE

    You’re in no position to talk to what people believe, nishi. You can’t even coherently describe what YOU believe, and you’re the only person qualified to do that.

    Don’t speak for other people’s beliefs, unless they ask you to. It’s presumptuous and arrogant.

  96. nishizonoshinji says:

    then that is ur answer.
    “we did the right thing for us.”

    then accept the consequences.
    Operation Ajax is one reason we are distrusted in MENA.

  97. Spies, Brigands, and Pirates says:

    then that is ur answer.
    “we did the right thing for us.”

    We did the right thing for the world. The Communists won’t be murdering another hundred million people this century.

    Sorry about that.

  98. nishizonoshinji says:

    sbp, that may even be true.
    my point is, Operation Ajax was meddling, and left us a legacy of distrust in MENA.

  99. Slartibartfast says:

    This presumes that MENA is some homogeneous culture, all identically aware of and concerned with what was going on in Iran.

    Israel is part of MENA, no?

    Also, is nishi really arguing for US noninvolvement in Iran? Even if it were to have, for instance, cost us an extra couple of hundred thousand lives to win WWII?

    If we had more fully backed the Shia uprising in Iraq, and the Shia had managed to overthrow Hussein’s regime, would that have been meddling, or would that have been a smart, prescient way to have prevented both GWII and its aftermath? Or, possibly, would that have precipitated a wholesale slaughter of the Sunnis?

    Nuance. Not just for breakfast, anymore.

  100. RTO Trainer says:

    Nonintervention is not what the people of most of the third world want from us. They want just the opposite.

    What they see is a nation that is flush with resources and wealth and power. Surely we could, if we wanted to, just flex our pinkey toes and instantly rescue all of them from the oppression, poverty, disease….

    Then they wake up.

    Actually they don’t. If they did, they might realize that it’s not that easy, can’t be done overnight, and back in the Cold War it wasn’t even that simple, or not that simple in the terms which they, not we, found compelling.

    When we have trod on the side of the Angels, we take flack form those we help, from political opponents at home, and from a myriad of bystanders, not because we are trying to help, but because it isn’t done overnight. We are plagued by the constant and looming specter of Unreasonable Expectations.

    It’s unreasonable to expect a government that can support nd defend itslef to be formed and running in less than 20 years.

    It’s unreasonable to expect an insurgency to be fully defeated in less than 9 years.

    It’s unreasonable to expect the blind and lame to be healed by touching the hems of our garments.

    But that’s what they want.

    Then there are those times that we ahve ignroed the huddled masses and assisted the oppressive dictator, just because he wasn’t as bad, we thought, as the Soviets. Clinton never figured out that he didn’t have to be shackled by that consideration anymore. W, however, did.

    But we get no credit for turning on the strong men that we once, regretably, winked at. And we get no benefit in consideration that we are trying to do the right thing, where once we failed at that consideration.

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