Althouse: At the Wednesday Night Cafe...

March 6, 2019

At the Wednesday Night Cafe...

... you can talk talk talk.

96 comments:

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: oh good! A new thread to crap up!
JUST KIDDING !

play nice now!; 3/6/19, 8:50 PM
Birkel said...: ICTARM is wrong and I am calling him out.
:-); 3/6/19, 9:03 PM
tim in vermont said...: It’s kind of amusing to remember the news stories where the Democrats were colluding with the Chinese, and the Canadians during the NAFTA negotiations, giving them advice as to where to most precisely target their tariffs to impact Trump’s support. Now, out of 2.2 million farms in the US, the Democrats are going batshit crazy about 40 farms in the upper midwest that are going bankrupt.

It’s almost like they had a plan from the beginning and they are going with it and pretend it’s not a damp squib.; 3/6/19, 9:08 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: we're a 'we'!! Mais Oui!

We're impish, but filled with Love, Unbridled; 3/6/19, 9:09 PM
tim in vermont said...: BTW, that’s 0.001818182% of US farms.; 3/6/19, 9:10 PM
Lucid-Ideas said...: Watching this anti-Semitism thing go down with the dems has convinced me of the following

1) the old guard won't be able to control anything for much longer.

2) dems are actually the 'reactionaries' now as in they have jumped off a cliff reacting to Trump and the awakening of the 'deplorables'. Their leftward shift is going to resonate - mostly negatively - for years.

3) the WTO anarchist/commune faction of the left has officially made its first real inroads towards normalization within the dems. They will not be expunged without a fight and I see no one strong enough within the dem establishment with the strength to send them packing.

4) regarding a 'fight' they are officially impervious to reason. Did anyone see that college conservative event protester at UCLA? The trans-advocate that stood in front of the projector? This will get bloody. They are literally making up lies in plain sight and get called out in real time...yet will not change.

5) 'this will get bloodier'. They cannot acknowledge that the liberal order's failure is the primary cause of their stagnation, not conservatives. Failure to acknowledge means doubling down...

Omar, tlaib, and AOC are the canary in the coalmine. They are the full manifestation of the liberal idea for the government, economy, and social hierarchy.

Purchase shares in gun companies. Now.; 3/6/19, 9:11 PM
traditionalguy said...: Ash Wednesday ritual tonight was a reminder that we are made from earth and return to earth. But at least it’s beautiful place. The service seems to encourage 40 days of fasting, which Jesus did to defeat Satan and his temptations to rebel by quoting scripture. But Calvinists accept the good news that Jesus already finished all that for us.; 3/6/19, 9:16 PM
J. Farmer said...: So saddened to hear the terrible news about Alex Trebek. Hoping he does end up beating the odds. Was shocked to hear he is 78. Trebek's is one of those voices that feels like it will always be there.; 3/6/19, 9:17 PM
Big Mike said...: Now, out of 2.2 million farms in the US, the Democrats are going batshit crazy about 40 farms in the upper midwest that are going bankrupt.

Anybody know what was the annual average number of farms that went bankrupt during the eight years of Obama’s administration? Just thought I’d ask. I remember one farmer got hit with s one million dollar fine for plowing a field without explicit EPA permission. I suspect that put him out of business. Obama’s administration tried to put the Bundy ranch out of business, but perhaps branches don’t count; 3/6/19, 9:18 PM
narciso said...: This is when they bring the fog machine:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-47409909; 3/6/19, 9:18 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Lucid Ideas:

the WTO anarchist/commune faction of the left

What exactly is a "WTO anarchist/commune?"; 3/6/19, 9:18 PM
tim in vermont said...: What exactly is a "WTO anarchist/commune?"

If you don’t know, you probably are one.

Basically think of them though as the intellection class who views average Americans as disposable pawns whose interests are of minimal concern, same as the Yellow Vests are considered utterly unimportant to their vision for the French Republic.; 3/6/19, 9:25 PM
narciso said...: They call themselves antifa or previously occupy, before that they were the black bloc.; 3/6/19, 9:27 PM
walter said...: Is Sean Penn still alive?; 3/6/19, 9:29 PM
YoungHegelian said...: Remember, man, thous art dust and onto dust thou shall return.

Sing along, kidz!; 3/6/19, 9:30 PM
FullMoon said...: A reminder

The Mensa membership year begins April 1.; 3/6/19, 9:30 PM
320Busdriver said...: Sometimes I enjoy jalopnik.com for car stuff. Like “nice price or crackpipe.”

The other day I found an article titled “No, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Isn’t Coming to Take Your Cars Away”
The nice chap writing this article seems to think the green new deal is not a big deal. But it gets better, in the comments things go sideways and that is where the author responds to criticism of his take on AOC’s turd by saying:
“Capitalism is the path to totalitarianism. It always has been and always will be and can not be anything other. Big C capitalist beliefs must be crammed down on a majority at the expense of a minority and that takes force. If you want to understand this, read Marx’s “Das Kapital”.

Holy crap....we are F”@#$&

Bye bye Jalopnik; 3/6/19, 9:31 PM
Inga...Allie Oop said...: Is anyone surprised?

“Famed attorney Alan Dershowitz was accused of involvement in billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking ring by an attorney for one of Epstein’s victims, who claimed in federal court on Wednesday that the release of sealed documents will prove it.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-alan-dershowitz-and-pals-accused-of-sex-trafficking-ring; 3/6/19, 9:32 PM
Lucid-Ideas said...: WTO anarchist/commune - Proper Noun - A gathering of far-left socialist-leaning fundamental anti-socials that have found purpose and meaning through congregating with other similar anti-socials in a hatred for capitalism while simultaneously advocating MMT (Modern Monetary Theory).; 3/6/19, 9:34 PM
walter said...: Inga...Allie Oop said...
Is anyone surprised?
-
Because he's a Dem?; 3/6/19, 9:34 PM
Inga...Allie Oop said...: Poor woman, I’m glad she has a voice now.

https://apnews.com/7a1986f0196d4561af702b90dc8826b4

“WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Martha McSally, the first female Air Force fighter pilot to fly in combat, said Wednesday that she was sexually assaulted by a superior officer, and later, when she tried to talk about it to military officials, she “felt like the system was raping me all over again.”

The Arizona Republican, a 26-year military veteran, made the disclosure at a Senate hearing on the military’s efforts to prevent sexual assaults and improve the response when they occur. Lawmakers also heard from other service members who spoke of being sexually assaulted and humiliated while serving their country.”; 3/6/19, 9:38 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: A reminder

The Mensa membership year begins April 1.

Damn. We missed it.; 3/6/19, 9:38 PM
Inga...Allie Oop said...: “Because he's a Dem?”

Because he has something in common with Trump?; 3/6/19, 9:41 PM
narciso said...: I don't think they gave a coherent theory but the brigatte the baader the weather underground did come from the militant student movement.; 3/6/19, 9:41 PM
narciso said...: This is a very puerile understanding of Marxism, even with cliffsnotes its pitiful.; 3/6/19, 9:42 PM
FullMoon said...: A RAPPER has weighed in to the transgender athlete row by beating a host of female weightlifting records while “identifying as a woman”.

Hip-hop artist and Oxford graduate Zuby is on a mission to compete alongside women.
He was filmed last week beating Britain’s women’s deadlift record while and the video has been watched over a million times since he shared it online.

Zuby, 32, also went on to smash the UK women’s bench press record and claimed his work was “strong, stunning and brave”.; 3/6/19, 9:45 PM
walter said...: Inga is stretching more than Pelosi's face; 3/6/19, 9:45 PM
Ty said...: Damn. We missed it.

Haha! That reminds me of one of my favorite Far Side comics.; 3/6/19, 9:46 PM
narciso said...: Can we stop with the crazy, men are men a d women are women, the rest is what you be in the dsm, now behavior is something else.; 3/6/19, 9:48 PM
FullMoon said...: "Haha! That reminds me of one of my favorite Far Side comics."

Fairly certain every location has that cartoon-poster size.; 3/6/19, 9:49 PM
narciso said...: Now when R Kelly started acting someone should have had a tranq dart handy,; 3/6/19, 9:50 PM
FullMoon said...: “Because he's a Dem?”

Because he has something in common with Trump?

What is it?; 3/6/19, 9:50 PM
narciso said...: Oh never mind:

https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2019/03/thousands-of-fake-government-ids-made-in-covert-lab-in-woodburn-were-sold-across-us-prosecutors-say.html; 3/6/19, 9:52 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: @Ty
hey! We resemble that remark!; 3/6/19, 9:52 PM
Mark said...: Alex Trebek seems to have taken the news pretty well.

On this day (of Ash Wednesday) we should all have such awareness of our inherent mortality.; 3/6/19, 9:53 PM
Sebastian said...: 76K illegals cross border in a month.

At what point, dear Rand, do we have a crisis? At 80K? 100K?

And at what point, dear Althouse, would a Dem who wants the flow to continue become unacceptable?; 3/6/19, 9:54 PM
narciso said...: That egg on the face of CNN, yet again is hard to scrape off,; 3/6/19, 9:59 PM
Sebastian said...: "Trump's love is not real love"

Ilhan Omar's love, by contrast, is the real deal. Suck it up, Dems.; 3/6/19, 9:59 PM
Mark said...: The median survival rate for stage 4 pancreatic cancer is between two and six months.; 3/6/19, 10:03 PM
FullMoon said...: 76K illegals cross border in a month.

At a measly $100.00 per week in govt food, medical and housing support, comes out to $7,600,000 a week.

$3,95,200,000. per year. Just for that one months crossing.; 3/6/19, 10:03 PM
FullMoon said...: Previous Jeopardy host Art Fleming died of pancreatic cancer on April 25, 1995, just before turning 71.; 3/6/19, 10:08 PM
bgates said...: Will Smith is clearly too light-skinned to play roles like Richard Williams, or Heimdall, gatekeeper of Asgard.; 3/6/19, 10:11 PM
narciso said...: That's ridiculous, but then so much of this,; 3/6/19, 10:12 PM
iowan2 said...: Inga...Allie Oop said...
“Because he's a Dem?”

Because he has something in common with Trump?

This is so illuminating. Repeating lefty talking points and have zero knowledge of the subject.
Dershowitz is a Democrat. A lefty Democrat. The quote chosen to post here has zero facts other than Dershowitz name, and an accusation linking him to pedophilia. Lacking all other facts. I will take the side of the law (just like Dershowitz does) and declare him innocent.
Dershowitz has never sided with President Trump. He always sides with the law and the Constitution. Always. If that happens to support the President, it shows that the President and Dershowitz both agree with the law and/or the Constitution.

If you post the facts, instead of talking points, all of this would be plain and simple.; 3/6/19, 10:13 PM
buwaya said...: "Rampage: MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila"
James M. Scott
$16.95 on Amazon Kindle

A "Cornelius Ryan" style treatment of the battle of Manila (ended this Sunday, 74 years ago).
Very journalistic, but that's the sort of history writing that makes the medicine go down.
I am not sure that this medicine is to the taste of many though, no matter the style.
Cornelius Ryan did not have to write about anything quite like this. The other comparable mass market book about a similar incident is Iris Chang's "Rape of Nanking", which should clue you in to what we are dealing with.

A telling point, from the WSJ review, is that the US Army switched immediately from treating Manila as a battlefield, to treating it as a crime scene.

I am working on my own full review, which is of course from the point of view of one who grew up among the ruins. I have often touched the stigmata. I don't need the maps, I know every step of every street. And I was raised in families of survivors, who had to live with the consequences.

There are very few works that deal with the entirety of this. The other two are by Connaughton (a military history, mainly) and Aluit (treating the thing chronologically, day by day, as a series of crimes and stories of survival), both from the 1990's.

Scott repeats much of whats in Aluit, though he writes in a smoother style. He did not have Aluit's advantage of having been able to interview a few of the last adult survivors. But he does use material published after Aluit, such as Jack Garcia's (a family friend) memoir. Garcia was a child at the time, one of the refugees sheltering in the trenches on the St. Scholastica's College playground, trapped by the walls, under Japanese mortar bombardment. He saw when the US Cavalry tank broke down the convent wall, freeing the survivors there to escape to US lines. Many years later my sisters and I attended kindergarten there in the care of the German Benedictine nuns. That refuge and trap of Jack Garcia's family was our playground, and we knew the story of the tank, and could see where the wall had been broken.

This is only partly a military history, and only partly a story of a psychotic slaughter, an officially sanctioned genocide carried out very personally. Besides both it is a story of masses of civilians trapped in the crossfire. It was a very strange mix of a high intensity battle with all the advances of modern firepower and a "hostage crisis" on an enormous scale, with the villains interspersed with their victims, the whole thing fought out, in the end, with aerial bombardments and heavy artillery. This was no neat swooping down to the rescue by specialist antiterrorist units. Sometimes each terrorist had to be blasted out of his last hole with howitzers, at the cost of ten innocents. Justified, perhaps, maybe, by what these demons had been doing to the innocents.

Bernard Fall wrote a book, "Hell in a Very Small Place", about Dien Bien Phu. The battlefield of Manila was about the same size, but with about a million people in it. There was that much more hell.

The book has the advantage, or courtesy, to be well padded by the back story, as Aluit also did (Aluit goes back a couple of centuries to explain the city, a bit much I thought). So the Western reader is is not plopped into this weird city unprepared.; 3/6/19, 10:13 PM
narciso said...: I wondered what your perspective on it was, some fault MacArthur for scapegoating yamashita when others were clearly at fault.; 3/6/19, 10:17 PM
buwaya said...: "some fault MacArthur for scapegoating yamashita"

After so many dead, one scapegoat more or less doesn't matter.
The Filipino point of view, and that of any other survivor of the city, was that another dead Jap was all to the good.

My great uncle testified against Yamashita.; 3/6/19, 10:20 PM
narciso said...: So how did they feel about MacArthur proud about the liberation but cross about the collateral damage.; 3/6/19, 10:24 PM
narciso said...: I was reminded of this:

http://www.cafeaulait.org/cryptonomicon.html; 3/6/19, 10:25 PM
iowan2 said...: A judge ruled President Trump could not ban one person from press conferences. In contrast, the DNC is going to ban FOX News from all Presidential primary debates. Make no mistake, Democrats are strong supporters of freedom of the Press. As long as its their stenographers.; 3/6/19, 10:25 PM
narciso said...: Angry probably, this was the scenario they had painted of the approach to Baghdad this urban warfare came later.; 3/6/19, 10:27 PM
traditionalguy said...: The murderJaps earned all the nuclear bombs we dropped, many times over.; 3/6/19, 10:30 PM
buwaya said...: "So how did they feel about MacArthur proud about the liberation but cross about the collateral damage."

Collateral damage was blamed solely on the Japs, from the beginning, until the leftist tide had made academic anti-Americanism fashionable in the 1970's. Since then its been mixed. You will find such thinking, to a degree, in Aluit.

I don't see what else could have been done, under the circumstances. There were no good options.; 3/6/19, 10:31 PM
narciso said...: Much as it was with Berlin, and if needs must tokyo,; 3/6/19, 10:35 PM
FullMoon said...: "For his part, Dershowitz and his lawyers are also requesting the court release the trove of documents to the public—but they say it’s in order to prove his innocence.

Outside the courtroom, Dershowitz railed against Giuffre and her attorneys, accusing them of fabricating Giuffre’s claims that Epstein forced her to have sex with Dershowitz. He alluded to emails between Giuffre and a friend that he claims will reveal Giuffre made up the claims against Dershowitz at the behest of her lawyers. "

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epstein-alan-dershowitz-and-pals-accused-of-sex-trafficking-ring?ref=scroll; 3/6/19, 10:41 PM
narciso said...: And this happened even with mcarthurs spy ring.; 3/6/19, 10:44 PM
narciso said...: Dien bien phu was apart from the larger urban centers though, in a valley If memory serves.; 3/6/19, 10:47 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Lucid-Ideas:

WTO anarchist/commune - Proper Noun - A gathering of far-left socialist-leaning fundamental anti-socials that have found purpose and meaning through congregating with other similar anti-socials in a hatred for capitalism while simultaneously advocating MMT (Modern Monetary Theory).

What does any of that have to do with anarchism?; 3/6/19, 11:13 PM
Howard said...: J. Farmer: Those people need boogeymen like Linus needs his blankey. Thus provide fuel for violent fantasies of civil war to sublimate impotence in a way that only deplorables can applaud.; 3/6/19, 11:21 PM
Howard said...: I thought Trump sealed the border?? Now we have record illegal crossings? More winning!; 3/6/19, 11:23 PM
Lucid-Ideas said...: MMT = Anarchy

Not sure where YOUR disconnect comes from...

Jesus...even lefty econocrats have come out as being anti-MMT. Cowen, Brooks, even Krugman...

Robert...fucking...Reich....

Howard is a slope-head neolithic. Their kind wants the inevitable. Like Japan in WWII (allusion to @Buwaya), we stand ready to DELIVER.

BRING. IT. ON. Some of us have combat experience. Please. Thank you. You're welcome.; 3/6/19, 11:34 PM
Gahrie said...: What does any of that have to do with anarchism?

There is a faction of the violent Left that claims to be anarchist, but is actually a desire for chaos.; 3/6/19, 11:35 PM
narciso said...: So sison and biscayne co founders of the npa are still around?; 3/6/19, 11:36 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Howard:

to sublimate impotence in a way that only deplorables can applaud.

While I am closer to the deplorables politically, I think the whole capitalist-vs-socialist framework is a hopelessly anachronistic, Cold War-era relic. I think ethnicity, tribalism, and sectarianism are all far more potent in modern politics than 19th century economic debates.; 3/6/19, 11:36 PM
J. Farmer said...: @Lucid-Ideas:

MMT = Anarchy

Not sure where YOUR disconnect comes from...

How do you have MMT without a state?; 3/6/19, 11:39 PM
Seeing Red said...: Who knew if you raised the minimum wage, hours would get cut? Not the BS of E sitting in Congress, that’s for sure.; 3/6/19, 11:43 PM
Lucid-Ideas said...: Easy.

MMT is fundamentally tribalist. Made for a micro-economy. A limited economy. A 'chieftain' and controlled economy. An MMT economy is a 'household' economy made large and most importantly exclusive...which is the most hilarious thing of all considering the current rhetoric.

MMT is a theory-based-college-level-anthropolgy economy relying on ideas and theorems quarantined inside parameters proven repeatedly again and again to be failed concepts leading to ruin.

In short, you get MMT 'without a state' because that is precisely what it will destroy if adopted, and upon looking back over one's shoulder, you will say "haha see? There wasn't a state so our premise didn't apply....."

"....REAL COMMUNISM HAS NEVER BEEN TRIED!!!"; 3/6/19, 11:56 PM
narciso said...: And yet like unicorns they are popular:
https://www.nysun.com/editorials/what-would-de-gaulle-do/90598/; 3/7/19, 12:03 AM
buwaya said...: The battlefield of Manila, those parts within more or less contiguous Japanese fortifications, covered roughly four miles by two. My mother sent me a 1938 aerial photo showing the whole of it, in one shot. About a million people were packed in there, about half of them refugees.

Thats like San Francisco roughly from Fishermans Wharf to Potrero Hill, and from the Embarcadero to Van Ness. All of SF is seven miles by seven.

Dien Bien Phu, between the strongholds of Gabrielle and Isabelle was about eight miles, and across the hill masses where the Viet Minh artillery had direct fire below, and were regularly subject to aerial bombardment and counterbattery fire, was about six to eight miles. So Dien Bien Phu was a much larger battlefield.; 3/7/19, 12:15 AM
narciso said...: That is a large battlefield, how could they have hoped to defend it?; 3/7/19, 12:19 AM
J. Farmer said...: @Lucid-Ideas:

In short, you get MMT 'without a state' because that is precisely what it will destroy if adopted, and upon looking back over one's shoulder, you will say "haha see? There wasn't a state so our premise didn't apply....."

I have never met, spoken with, or read any anarchist who was pro-WTO and pro-fiat money. Have you?

As for the communist line, I think you are being hysterical. What the majority of the American left see as the goal is what's often referred to as the Scandinavian model: higher marginal taxes, a bigger welfare state, and greater regulation of the labor force. You do not have to agree with any of those objectives to recognize that it is not communist. In fact, the Scandinavian countries and the US (and all developed countries) practice the same economic system: a mixed economy.; 3/7/19, 12:31 AM
buwaya said...: The Japs had 16,000 men on a frontage of eight miles, or 2000/mile, or one per yard of front roughly.

This was all built-up, and moreover most of it was fortified with street corner bunkers and barricades besides hundreds of more substantial works built in to reinforced concrete or stone buildings.; 3/7/19, 12:37 AM
buwaya said...: There is a big difference between what the US endgame is intended to be and Scandinavia. These are small countries and their scope for ambition is small.
Centralization doesn't work so well, as its that much harder for an elite to separate itself, to avoid their neighbors, and the payoff is not so good. Economies of scale you see, are just not there.

The US can dream big however. Centers of power can be isolated and aloof from the masses. The US endgame is not Scandinavian welfare statism but something quite different. Mussolini-ite corporatism is a start, but only a start, to a system of imperial capitals.; 3/7/19, 12:48 AM
Rosalyn C. said...: From the Tuesday Night Cafe: @BigMike said, "Thanks to modern automotive designers the C pillars are often wide and restrict vision behind the car." Are wide C pillars' design supposed to make the cars safer? All I know is I've had trouble shopping for a new car in part because they are not designed to have any visual awareness of the car's dimensions and don't have as much visibility as my old car.; 3/7/19, 12:53 AM
J. Farmer said...: @buwaya:

There is a big difference between what the US endgame is intended to be and Scandinavia. These are small countries and their scope for ambition is small.

That's beside the point. Whatever you think of the wisdom or advisability of the goal, it is not "communism." And the notion that American electoral politics involve grand ideological chasms like socialism versus capitalism is, I think, nonsensical. The neoliberal, business-friendly policies of the last several decades are what have primarily given us "free" trade and massive immigration, both of which have helped smash communities in America.; 3/7/19, 1:04 AM
J. Farmer said...: p.s. I agree with your larger point, and I think social democrats get the causation exactly backwards. Sweden and Norway are successful societies not because they have successful governments. Rather, they have successful governments because they have successful societies. Even if the US could replicate all of the social welfare and regulatory policies of the countries that social democrats like so much, it is highly unlikely we would have similar results.; 3/7/19, 1:07 AM
Big Mike said...: Howard is a slope-head neolithic.

Not hardly. By the time the Neolithic began the Neanderthals were extinct (and modern research suggests that their heads weren’t all that sloped, anyway). What Howard is, is an educated fool. The chances he’d last a week during Neolithic times is pretty slim.; 3/7/19, 4:01 AM
Big Mike said...: Rather, they have successful governments because they have successful societies. Even if the US could replicate all of the social welfare and regulatory policies of the countries that social democrats like so much, it is highly unlikely we would have similar results.

@Farmer, I think you have a verb tense problem. They used to have successful societies, mostly, I have always thought, because of the homogeneity of those societies. The influx of large numbers of Arab and North African Muslims into those societies has placed both the governments and the societies under enormous strain.; 3/7/19, 4:28 AM
Kevin said...: Because he has something in common with Trump?

Neither one colluded with Russia, but both are being targeted for personal destruction because they stood up and said so.; 3/7/19, 5:22 AM
Ralph L said...: In the last few weeks, breakthroughs in both pancreatic diagnosis and treatment were announced. I hope they pan out, and quickly. Last summer I passed the age when my mother died of it. She had 8 months, her father about 6 weeks.

New test

New treatment; 3/7/19, 5:40 AM
Rusty said...: Blogger J. Farmer said...
@Lucid-Ideas:

In short, you get MMT 'without a state' because that is precisely what it will destroy if adopted, and upon looking back over one's shoulder, you will say "haha see? There wasn't a state so our premise didn't apply....."

I have never met, spoken with, or read any anarchist who was pro-WTO and pro-fiat money. Have you?

As for the communist line, I think you are being hysterical. What the majority of the American left see as the goal is what's often referred to as the Scandinavian model: higher marginal taxes, a bigger welfare state, and greater regulation of the labor force. You do not have to agree with any of those objectives to recognize that it is not communist. In fact, the Scandinavian countries and the US (and all developed countries) practice the same economic system: a mixed economy.

You have to admit that it takes a lot of capitalism to reach that point. The population also has to give up a certain degree of autonomy to the state as well. The socialism expounded by the US left more closely resembles failed state socialism.; 3/7/19, 5:57 AM
Robert Cook said...: "So saddened to hear the terrible news about Alex Trebek. Hoping he does end up beating the odds. Was shocked to hear he is 78. Trebek's is one of those voices that feels like it will always be there."

I think he's putting on a valiant face, but the reality is grim. My mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in Feb. 2013 and by September, we had to place her in hospice, where she lingered for a week. I've heard the usual survival time after diagnosis is six months, and that is just how long she lasted.; 3/7/19, 6:33 AM
Robert Cook said...: "They call themselves antifa or previously occupy, before that they were the black bloc."

These things are not the same thing.; 3/7/19, 6:35 AM
Robert Cook said...: "'What exactly is a "WTO anarchist/commune?"'

"If you don’t know, you probably are one."

1. How can an individual be a commune?"

2. How does it follow that if an individual doesn't know what a term means that he "probably" is (part of) that thing?

Lot of gibberish for so few words.; 3/7/19, 6:39 AM
tim in vermont said...: It was a joke Bobby.; 3/7/19, 6:43 AM
Michael McNeil said...: Buwaya, where are you going to publish your review. Do you have a blog?; 3/7/19, 6:45 AM
gilbar said...: Robert Cook said...
"They call themselves antifa or previously occupy, before that they were the black bloc."
These things are not the same thing

Robert is Right!
they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS, that happen to:
Have the same members
Have the same goals
Have the same tactics
Have the same methods
But have TOTALLY DIFFERENT NAMES!; 3/7/19, 6:46 AM
rehajm said...: They say she wasn’t trying to be emphatic and close the door on running when she spoke to a local reporter yesterday, and that she was surprised by how definitively it played. The person also says she is extremely unlikely to run, but that she remains bothered that she’s expected to close the door on it when, say, John Kerry isn’t...She has told her team she is waiting at least to see the Mueller report.

Yah, she's running. Likely a 2016 Romney- wait out the carnage and plan to step in as the elder statesman after the debris settles a bit.; 3/7/19, 6:48 AM
tim in vermont said...: They don't want communism in any form that has been tried before, they want the pure stuff, back to the Garden of Eden, before the fall of man. They are fundamentalist Marxists in other words.; 3/7/19, 6:48 AM
Robert Cook said...: "76K illegals cross border in a month.

"At what point, dear Rand, do we have a crisis? At 80K? 100K?"

Perhaps when the number of illegal immigrants crossing our border starts abruptly going up, rather than than continuing its decade-plus long downward trend?; 3/7/19, 6:48 AM
Ralph L said...: They're trying to sneak in before the Wall gets built, which is why Trump shouldn't have waited 2 years. And why that judicial holdup to the Travel Ban was evil, not just unjustified.; 3/7/19, 7:02 AM
Rusty said...: Robert Cook said...
"76K illegals cross border in a month.

"At what point, dear Rand, do we have a crisis? At 80K? 100K?"

"Perhaps when the number of illegal immigrants crossing our border starts abruptly going up, rather than than continuing its decade-plus long downward trend?"

Oh. That makes it OK, then?; 3/7/19, 7:17 AM
Rusty said...: Blogger Robert Cook said...
"They call themselves antifa or previously occupy, before that they were the black bloc."

These things are not the same thing.

fascism always goes by different names yet it is always the same. "The bitch is in heat again."; 3/7/19, 7:21 AM
narciso said...: Its like the peoples front of judea not thr judean peoples front.

Why do they all support Chavez fidel or Ortega, and not Lopez and now guaido; 3/7/19, 7:22 AM
Robert Cook said...: "Oh. That makes it OK, then?"

No. It is a problem to contend with. But it is not a crisis, not an emergency.

If a man kills two people, and the media report that he killed 10, it is inaccurate, (or a lie, depending on what they knew to be true). It does not excuse the killer for his murders to dispute the false reporting of eight extra victims.

This is not simply a matter of misstating reality; it misstates what happened in a way that excites or frightens the public. And repeatedly misstating reality to excite and frighten the public is purposeful deception, intended to achieve a particular end that may not be warranted.; 3/7/19, 9:17 AM
Robert Cook said...: This is elementary stuff, really. I have to wonder if those who don't appear to get it really do get it, but pretend otherwise because they want the deception to succeed, as they favor the end desired by the deceiver(s) and are willing to countenance lies as long as it brings about those results they desire.; 3/7/19, 9:21 AM