That headline can be read in several different ways — all of them perfectly apt, if I do say so myself. Trust me. Or, if you don’t trust me, a violent and fundamentally unserious pseudo-intellectual psychosexual predator and Visigothic purist, unhelpful defamer of all who are good and just and brave and sincere, then here: see for yourselves.
Convinced?
Good.
Told you so. Squishes.
And what do the hearty utopians of Ameritopia say continually to persuade themselves?
Utopioink.
It’s important to distinguish between the wild-eyed, irrational utopians of the Democratic Party and the feral-eyed, semi-rational utopians of the Mittpublican Party.
Because if that distinction is unmade, why the result will be a slightly less rational utopia! And that’s simply unacceptable! Fall into line, you Visigoths! What’s in your wallet!?
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2012/03/11/#006450 Some Sunday comics for you McGehee.
Off topic on the utopianism, but Thomas Sowell gets to the motivation of Derrick Bell. http://moneyrunner.blogspot.com/2012/03/derrick-bell-at-harvard.html#links
Back on the utopian theme: Sister Toldjah had this gem: http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/2012/03/11/meeting-young-obama/
Detroit, and thinking about thinking about Detroit.
Murder, in a time of war.
From the AP story in the last link above:
And Elliot Abrams, looking at the sourcing of those terms “formidable air defense systems” etc.
Michigan Democrats hope to make the entire State into Detroitopia.
Coming soon, Michigan, we’re like Greece but colder and our ruins are newer.
I read Day By Day every… day…
I ain’t no squish – I is a outlaw.
Seems like Sarko is coming round, too. Could be EUtopia is just a dream.
Detroit ought to offer a deal to movie makers to use their cityscapes as backdrop in disaster and apocalyptic movies. I see a remake of “Blade Runner”, “Mad Max” and many others. Think of all the money to be saved on set construction.
Of course, providing security for highly paid movie actors would have to figured into a cost/benefit analysis.
Or you Michiganders could offer to annex the city to Canada. Having imported one of theirs to serve as Governor, it’s not to much of a stretch.
That was a wisecrack source about the Clint Eastwood/Chrysler ad, leigh. They had to film it in LA because GM was using Detroit for their Superbowl ad.
If Democrats can amend the constitution of Michigan then Republicans can too so it’s not really much of a bulwark if it is an unpopular measure and the political tides are turning. I does tie the hands of judges since you can’t credibly claim that part of your constitution is unconstitutional. .
Texas already makes frequent major and minor law changes through amendment to the Texas constitution even for ad hoc local causes via public referendum because it is a little bit easier than getting a real state law passed. It makes the constiituion hard to read but that’s about it.
Take your pick. Low prices and going lower.
I didn’t know that, Pablo. That’s funny and sad at the same time.
Damn, geoff. I’ve seen some of those pictures before and it never ceases to depress me. It’s like people literally took flight and left everything behind to turn to dust.
Sad.
There’s some good “back to nature” living to be had in Motor City.
I used to drive around Philadelphia and Camden back in the late ’80s and early ’90s specifically to look at similar instances of rot in formerly great (arguably the greatest, even) industrially productive cities. These sorts of corruptions have been long in the making in America, and driven by similar political and social motions wherever they’ve taken place. It’s hard to think of instances where such deteriorations have been reversed to be put back on as steeply upward sloping a path as the downward slopes of the paths they’ve been suffering through though, isn’t it?
“It’s hard to think of instances where such deteriorations have been reversed to be put back on as steeply upward sloping a path as the downward slopes of the paths they’ve been suffering through though, isn’t it?”
Graph it!
link
link
This is silly, incoherent as a rationale [for a visit], plainly. Right? That is, what is reassuring, what demonstrable of a “US commitment to defend Israel”, how would that commitment be “unshakable”, should the external circumstances of the strategic picture the Israelis understand themselves to face — determined largely by the Iranians, say — in their own defense necessitate an earlier go date than “Sept.” and certainly November? It’s asinine to begin with to think such a thing, such a position, comforting or reassuring. It would have, on the contrary, precisely the opposite effect.
nr,
I saw the same story at Heritage too. They have a link to the White House logs at a government site which I looked at but I may not have the right software for them as they seem to be a jumbled mess as far as finding some certain visit.
Does anyone know the secret to getting them in some nice order such as ABC by last name or by visit?
If we had an “unshakeable commitment” to defend Israel much of the Middle East would be quaking in their boots and some of it would be glassed over and unapproachable for decades by now.
Darn wrong thread.
Ah well, my fault geoffb, truly. dagnabit
Here’s some more of that vetting.
geoffb, the column headers have sort options. You have to mouse over them to see them. There’s also a search function @ top left, but it’s balky.
I just had several tabs open and wrote on the wrong one but not wrong completely as sdferr had posted a matching comment.
Enterprise leaves for Gulf. Godspeed to them who go in harms way.
Thanks Pablo.
Is he for real? Is this really where he wants to go? Am I starring in The Truman Show or something? Is Ashton Kutcher running his campaign? What in the everloving hell is this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=eeaM4t2Ycgk
why vagina warriors are idiots:
Kate Bush The Big Sky
shake that che proggtards
Lee, that graph looks like a hockey stick to me. Better check your data with Prof. Mann.
Along these same lines, I was having the same argument I always seem to have with my brother today. Romney is his guy, and it’s so frustrating because my brother is the embodiment of the old adage “you can’t argue someone out of a position they didn’t come to through reason and logic in the first place.”
Some people have themselves convinced if only we change the name on the door of the White House, and have an (R) next to his name instead of a (D), all will be well.
geoffb my son is on a ship escorting the Enterprise.
Pablo says March 11, 2012 at 8:10 pm
“Is he for real?”
Whenever I think “yes, let’s have this fight. Let’s make Barack Obama put up or shut up when it comes to any number of things, including what he stands for in race relations,” I remember we have a guy as the titular head of the opposition party, a guy who doesn’t want to upset anybody with attacks or negative comments. We’re going to go to war with a pacifist as our commander.
Thanks, Republican Party.
Far be it for me to question the great Walter Russell Mead, but I think his description of Detroit’s problems are a bit simplistic. As a number of liberals in that thread said, there are plenty of lefty cities around the U.S. that are doing pretty well (in fact, all of them are doing better off than Detroit). So it ain’t just the blue vs. red paradigm.
It was a combination of two things that ruined this once great city:
One, the city was never able to adapt to a changing economy – the big three in particular, 2 of which still haven’t completely adapted. There are no other major industries in the Detroit area (pizza comes the closest); other cities were able to adapt because they had other industries to fall back on (New York had textiles and the financial sector, for example).
Reason number two is more politically incorrect. Because Detroit did as well as it did starting with the post WWII period, every uneducated ethnic group migrated to the Detroit area from the south (this is not a knock on southerners by any stretch). When the economy changed, these people couldn’t adapt either. Add in the Great Society changes (which decimated the black family), and you have a prescription for total disaster.
People started self-segregating when the writing was on the wall (starting with the riots of 1967). Now, the suburbanites are overwhelmingly white, and the urbanites are overwhelmingly black, and the two sides (at least here) don’t trust each other at all. Just peruse a story in the Detroit News about a murder in the city, and read the comments afterward. That’ll give you a flavor of the atmosphere here.
Would more government fix anything?. No. And I don’t even know what would help, other than poor people not breeding. I just don’t think it can be defined as a left-right issue.
JMHO
BT,
May God bring him back home safe and sound.
As sad as Detroit is, what’s happening to Detroit is nothing more than history repeating itself. Cities have always had a life span, some longer than others.
Detroit may come back, but it will take a combination of government getting out of the way and a visionaries who are willing to take risks.
Thanks, Callahan.
I often wondered why the music industry didn’t pick up some of the slack. Granted, I have never been to Michigan nor do I claim to know much about it, but wasn’t Barry Gordy a kingmaker at Motown?
I think a lot of the problems in major urban centers, such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore were ushered in when Public Housing was constructed. People were moved into terrible (but new!) concrete block apartments with hurricane fencing surrounding them, taken away from their old neighborhoods and neighbors and left unmoored psycholgically and dependent on government largess.
Pittsburgh had a thriving black community in the Hill District that was victim to Imminent Domain when the city decided to build a hockey arena and move the residents out and into public housing.
Now, public housing is crumbling and the answer is Section 8 housing that creates big problems with home-owners who resent the tenents moving into their neighborhoods.
What a mess.
God speed to your son, BT.
I often wondered why the music industry didn’t pick up some of the slack. Granted, I have never been to Michigan nor do I claim to know much about it, but wasn’t Barry Gordy a kingmaker at Motown?
I’m not sure, but I can tell you that Berry Gordy sold Motown years ago, and it hasn’t been in Detroit for longer than that (probably somewhere in California). The only thing that’s left is the “Hitsville Museum” on W. Grand Blvd.
Hitsville
As for your points about public projects – the Great Society rears its ugly head once again. That is the part where the blue vs. red divide really does count, but that was just the last nail in the coffin as a whole.
If you’re ever in Michigan, the surrounding suburbs do NOT have the problems the city of Detroit has. 2 Detroit suburbs are in the top 20 safest cities in the U.S. (Troy, Canton Twp):
Rankings
The ‘burbs get the negative connotation just because we’re nearby.
or when the revs jackson and sharpton were fixtures on msnbc with the bell guy talking shit about whitey. go forit niggas
these folks want civil war. be locked and loaded.
From EBL’s link (which I’d point you to if only there was some way of distinguishing it;):
“Drew then recounts his satisfaction at thinking he had begun the process of steering Obama away from revolutionary Marxism toward bringing about Socialism through the electoral process.
I think he’s right. As revealed by Kurtz in his investigations, Obama over the next few years and as he learned while working as a community organizer and with people affiliated with the Midwest Academy, evolved into an “incremental” Socialist, seeking to bring about Socialism through gradual but irreversible change — such as ObamaCare.
But his commitment to that Socialist future has shown no sign of ever wavering.
PS: Some may argue that this is of little importance to the forthcoming election, that what matters is Obama’s miserable record in office. I disagree. While Obama’s record is crucial, without understanding his background, beliefs, and goals as best as we can, we have no context in which to truly understand that record. Thus books such as Kurtz’s and articles such as John Drew’s are still of singular relevance.”
This raises two questions:
1. What do we do with these revelations?
and
2. Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if the lsm fails to report it?
I will say this: Drew has a fantastic memory for events that happened 32 years ago. I’m calling embellishment on the details, for now.
That was almost like reading an Augusten Burroughs memoir.
Some seem to think this, “The Vetting”, is a stupid thing to do an bound to not bring down Obama as all this “news” is old news and ho-hum.
When Insty posted it I wrote this which is what I see that is happening with the Breitbart “Vetting”.
The other thing I didn’t mention is that every year this thing we call the internet becomes a larger presence in every news story political or not. Breitbart’s people can gain access to things like that video that are difficult for an average citizen to get to but once there is a point of departure for searching a crowd, “Davids” eh Insty, can locate more pieces to fit into the picture and find the people with expertise to explain what they mean and how they fit. And then spread the information all over.
Yeah, geoffb, some folks think seeking the truth is a boring waste of time, no matter when it’s undertaken. They may be right about themselves, but it has always struck me as strange that they’d make any such recommendation to others or for others.
If you tell someone not to look for something, it could be because you know it isn’t there, and don’t want that person to waste his time, or you could know it is there, and don’t want that person to find it.
Of course, you may not know if it’s there, but still don’t want it found if it is.
The truth of course is that Obama was and is a radical. The problem is that radicalism has been domesticated, and radicalism reduced to nothing more than a “phase.”
Sorta like the lesbian until graduation myth. People kept telling me about it, but I could never find any evidence for it.
I guess maybe I didn’t run in the right circles.
The truth of course is that Obama was and is a radical.
That’s as may be, but I still think the more important element of the recent ‘vetting’ back-and-forth is that it shows the news media as the shills they are. People may believe what they want about Obama — that he was young and foolish, or that his ‘radicalism’ (their scare quotes) is taken out of context.
That argument is fine, but what’s more important to me is that people understand that the networks and the 24-hour cable channels buried these stories to keep their audience from worrying their pretty little heads over them. The arrogance and condescension behind those decisions (“The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”) need to be brought to light, so that the offenders can be stripped of their remaining authority and influence.
More vetting, beware auto-play.
What can bring about undeserved victory for one side can do the same for the other. It’s the One Ring, and Surber, intentionally or not, is advocating that instead of being destroyed, it be carried to Gondor for use against Sauron.
…or worse, given to Saruman.
People may believe what they want about Obama — that he was young and foolish, or that his ‘radicalism’ (their scare quotes) is taken out of context.
Funny thing is, Squid, I haven’t even seen them trying to pitch that one. “Oh, come on guys, who wasn’t a lefty in college? But look at us now, we’re all grown up.” They won’t even touch that one with a barge pole. The approach has been to deny any radicalism, and you can bet there will be no movement on that until the election – probably even after. The media are purely the propaganda organ of OfA.
It’s almost like they’re ashamed of socialism, or something.
Surber is probably right that merely talking about Barack Obama’s lefty ties alone will not change the election. But does talking about them help get him elected? If they motivate the right to act for his defeat, that is alone a good reason to talk about them.
The more that the media (like Soledad Obrien recently did) reveals themselves as water carriers for Obama, the better.
Speaking of O’Brien, she really stepped in it, again, this morning.
Soledad O’Brien’s “Expert” On Critical Race Theory Lied.
I think he missed the better quote from Dorothy Brown’s book: