Open Thread – 12 October, 2020

Posted on October 12, 2020 by Pat Lang

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48 Responses to Open Thread – 12 October, 2020

  1. Fred says:
    October 12, 2020 at 11:56 am

    Happy Columbus day everyone, especially to all our Hispanic readers. Where would we be without him?

  2. Degringolade says:
    October 12, 2020 at 12:40 pm

    Colonel:
    I read both the books (nine and eleven) and both of them have some merit. Both seem to come out of academia, with the usual gloss and prejudices therein, but neither are terrible and there is food for thought there.
    The Red-Blue divide is real. The difference is that the blue seems bent on making all the country blue while the red seems to just want to be left alone.
    American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America: Colin Woodard
    The Nine Nations of North America: Joel Garreau
    What the left can’t seem to accept is that the country is constituted as a Federal Republic, Not a Democracy

  3. Laura Wilson says:
    October 12, 2020 at 1:17 pm

    Is anyone else watching the hearing in the Senate?

  4. turcopolier says:
    October 12, 2020 at 1:38 pm

    degringolade
    IMO, the left and its relative, the neocons, are not interested in either the federal republic or democracy. What they want is power, just power so that can move to a global state.

  5. turcopolier says:
    October 12, 2020 at 1:41 pm

    Laura Wilson
    I gave up after the semi-hysterical performance of Klobuchar. The quavering voice, the sentimental talk of her second grade teacher mother’s honesty. How sad! I had thought that she was one of the more rational Democrat politicians. i read just now that Harris says that Ginsburg’s legacy is in jeopardy. Well! Well! That is the idea. She was a decent person but sadly deluded as to what the law was written to be.

  6. Ed Lindgren says:
    October 12, 2020 at 1:51 pm

    Not being terribly familiar with the life and written work of Sir John “Pasha” Glubb, I was not aware that he had developed a theoretical framework to explain the rise and fall of empires.
    In his essay The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival, he outlined six stages to describe this process: The Age of Pioneers; Age of Conquests; Commerce; Affluence; Intellect; and finally the Age of Decadence.
    The website Quillette posted an essay at the end of September which attempts to apply Glubb’s vision of how empires evolve to our contemporary world. Readers here may find it of interest:
    https://quillette.com/2020/09/30/pasha-glubb-and-avoiding-the-fate-of-empires/
    A pdf copy of Pasha Glubb’s essay will be found here:
    http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf

  7. turcopolier says:
    October 12, 2020 at 2:19 pm

    Ed Lindgren
    Glubb Pasha, not Pasha Glubb. Lt Gen Sir John Bagot Glubb. Served in Iraq and Jordan for about 35 years. He wrote half a dozen very readable books in ME history.

  8. TV says:
    October 12, 2020 at 4:41 pm

    Col:
    Ginsburg’s judicial philosophy was very simple:
    “If I don’t like it, it’s unconstitutional.”

  9. Deap says:
    October 12, 2020 at 4:54 pm

    Indigenous Americans celebrate Open Borders Day.

  10. Deap says:
    October 12, 2020 at 4:59 pm

    Do any former female POTUS candidates still wonder why they got no traction; and why the most eager loser amongst actually got the Biden VP slot? And why they too should believe in the power or prayer that they dodged the Biden bullet.

  11. Daniel Lennon says:
    October 12, 2020 at 6:03 pm

    Degringolade
    I recently read a good one called Revolt of the Elites by Christopher Lasch, that makes the case that the America’s elite class now more closely identifies with European/international values than it does middle America, are embarrassed by the rest of America, and need to change the rest of the country to suit their purposes.
    Amazingly the book is from the 90s and remains entirely relevant – they’ve been doing it for 30 years now, we’re just at the point where its become unavoidably obvious.

  12. rho says:
    October 12, 2020 at 6:27 pm

    Erdogan is increasing Turkey’s military involvement in Azerbaijan while the Turkish lira is tagging new record lows almost every day.
    https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/turkish-lira-at-record-low-on-geopolitical-worries-2020-10-08
    I think he will drive Turkey into bankruptcy before he can establish his Neo-Ottoman empire.

  13. gaikokumaniakku says:
    October 12, 2020 at 8:29 pm

    Some amateur historians of my acquaintance have observed that Rod Rosenstein bears an uncanny resemblance to Reinhard Gehlen.
    https://files.catbox.moe/0mxm3e.jpg
    Some of these amateur historians claim that Nick Noe is a legitimate whistleblower with regard to Benghazi.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_VQ0CP2S5U

  14. Deap says:
    October 12, 2020 at 11:51 pm

    Benghazi –Benghazi — Benghazi — the story that still will not die – a new twist or a new tweak? https://djhjmedia.com/kari/explosive-cia-whistleblower-exposes-bidens-alleged-role-with-the-deaths-of-seal-team-claims-to-have-documented-proof/

  15. vig says:
    October 13, 2020 at 8:07 am

    Posted by: gaikokumaniakku | 12 October 2020 at 08:29 PM
    I understand that Michael Flynn wanted to prove deeper Iranian connections to 9/11 and/or Al Qaeda. … But one way or another was fired? Or resigned.
    Hillary and Biden concocted this plan to keep Osama Bin Laden in Iran to then deliver him to Pakistan for the staged killing? Which then helped Obama to win the election?
    And as Trump always said, America had to pay loads and loads to the Iranians to deliver Osama to Pakistan for the killing? That weren’t ever Iranian frozen assets to start with, as they claim, America had to pay billions to make that happen! Not sure I understand.
    You feel this could be the October surprise?

  16. Richard Morchoe says:
    October 13, 2020 at 9:06 am

    rho,
    “The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
    Ernest Hemingway
    Who knows? One of the Sultan’s gambits may work well enough that he can loot something to rebuild the Lira. Maybe not.

  17. jonstan says:
    October 13, 2020 at 10:09 am

    Col, I noticed something wrong with Senator Amy K as well.

  19. fakebot says:
    October 13, 2020 at 2:27 pm

    Daniel Lennon,
    I think all of us can be made to believe in a planetary government akin to the one in Star Trek and that such a development is inevitable. My biggest bone is why many of our “betters” ascribe to a world government so fundamentally against basic American values and principles–or perhaps more generally speaking, why they favor positive rights over natural rights. What they peddle is a “benevolent serfdom” and think the rest of us are too backwards to appreciate what’s best for us.

  20. Mike46 says:
    October 13, 2020 at 3:13 pm

    Colonel Lang wrote: “IMO, the left and its relative, the neocons, are not interested in either the federal republic or democracy. What they want is power, just power so that can move to a global state.”
    The question I have is: Can we survive as a nation by being part of a global state or does it require that we dominate and control the global state?

  21. BABAK MAKKINEJAD says:
    October 13, 2020 at 4:46 pm

    fakebot
    I am opposed to planetary government.
    As for Star Trek, in that show, only primitive people have a revelatory religion; everyone else has so moved on!
    The two religious orientations that receive some positive press in that show are the Bajorans that finds its Naturalistic explanation in the Denizens of a nearby Lorentzian Worm hole, and the other is the shamanistic rites that the character Chakotay practices.
    I must say, however, that Star Trek has been, over the last 50 years, the only TV programme which had consistently portrayed a positive view of the future – for the techno-scientific elite.

  23. Deap says:
    October 13, 2020 at 5:31 pm

    Mike, as an elected school board official for 20 years I made it a rule ..never give up the district’s autonomy to any outside group.
    That meant for me voting no or abstain on any cockamamy “resolutions from outside groups that came before the board – make the campus nuclear free – sign this petition in support for world peace — etc.
    I also voted against and LEED building projects because i was not going to abdicate autonomy over even construction projects voluntarily to some outside “green building” guru, just to get an expensive plaque in return.
    One can get to desired outcomes without being joined at the hip to a third party entity over which one has no control or later find initially common paths have diverged. Or the supporting agency was not really who you thought they were. I say play close to home and close to your chest.
    One can work in harmony when and where one can; just no a fully committed but vague partnership. Unless it is a very specifically defined in-writing mutual compact, with a bonded liquidated damages clause.
    But then I was a guardian of tax dollars on that school board so I did not want to burden taxpayers with even the hint of later unintended consequences. (In this state, this was not the majority thinking and I no longer serve at the “will of the people”.
    And now the institution is in serious debt and over-staffed with a white elephant LEED building whose “green roof” captures rain run off in a state where drought is our problem, not bioswales to decontaminate what paltry percipitation we actually get.
    Meanwhile the LEED demanded “green roof” demands precious water to keep it green, while waiting for its few moments when it will filter even fewer raindrops before it runs out to sea (and past massive vagrant camps who are dumping who knows what every day into our creeks, oceans and groundwater.)
    Notes from a “progressive” paradise. Who gave up its autonomy to Democrat special interests almost exactly two decades ago.

  24. Fred says:
    October 13, 2020 at 5:35 pm

    Babak,
    Star Trek is the place where the one commandment, the prime directive, was generally the first thing to be violated. It progressed from there to worse, except, as you point out, for the techno-elite.

  25. Mike46 says:
    October 13, 2020 at 6:19 pm

    Re: Neither
    How would all those Americans survive & what would they do? There are limits to growth and natural resources.

  26. turcopolier says:
    October 13, 2020 at 6:42 pm

    Mike46
    Explain the limits to us.

  27. Mike46 says:
    October 13, 2020 at 7:41 pm

    Deapster wrote: “Mike, as an elected school board official for 20 years I made it a rule……”
    I’m not interested in politics. I’m posing a question that needs to be addressed – the sooner the better.

  28. Fred says:
    October 13, 2020 at 7:42 pm

    Mike46,
    We could always send back all the non-citizens, the fake ones and the H1Bs. That would cut resource use and give us negative population growth for a couple of years.

  29. Mike46 says:
    October 13, 2020 at 7:59 pm

    Sorry Colonel, I can’t. It’s an unknown. I do know this: The limit is not infinite and in the short term the world is using it faster than it can be mined, pumped or grown.

  30. turcopolier says:
    October 13, 2020 at 9:32 pm

    Mike46
    If you don’t know, shut up! Instead you make stupid uninformed political claims.

  31. ked says:
    October 13, 2020 at 9:35 pm

    Trump made his best possible pitch today, speaking directly to suburban women, “I can do it, but I gotta go quickly.”

  32. Babak makkinejad says:
    October 13, 2020 at 11:17 pm

    Fred
    Heeding Prime Directive would have served the United States well, in my opinion.

  33. Babak makkinejad says:
    October 13, 2020 at 11:35 pm

    Mike46 | 13 October 2020 at 06:19 PM
    I used to think like that decades ago but subsequently came to change my mind.
    In principle, breeder reactors that consume abundant U238 (dissolved in sea water, for example), can supply indefinte energy.
    There is also plenty of natural gas; in the United States, a single gas field – among many untapped ones in that area – can power the United States for 300 years alone.
    We also recycle metals, there is a 50 year cycle for Iron and a 30 year cycle for Aluminum, if I am not mistaken. We also have better materials like plastics and ceramics than 50 years ago.
    Countries with high levels of know-how and organization, can grow indefintely if they do not make life miserable for young people (Italy, Singapore, Japan, Korea).
    With inexpensive energy, one can increase agricultural productivity. I do not think that hunger is due to the absence of technology, it is due to political contingencies that causes Somalis to be treated as an independent state and not a ward of some other powerful country that could feed them in cases of famine.
    But your assertion made me think about certain basic metals common to all life. If there is not enough of them, life cannot expand. Their abunance in the Earth’s crust is known and one can infer the potential mass of combined animals and plants if all of those elements could become part of living systems.
    A related train of thought was an interpretation of a verse of the Quran that I once heard on Day of Judgment; it would take place when all of Earth is
    /has become/will be alive.

  34. Babak makkinejad says:
    October 13, 2020 at 11:40 pm

    Fred | 13 October 2020 at 07:42 PM
    Nope.
    You cannot send 12 million souls back ( where is back anyway?).
    Not going to happen.
    That is not the problem in any case: 8 trillion for war, nothing for education, healthcare or jobs.

  35. gaikokumaniakku says:
    October 14, 2020 at 6:33 pm

    Flynn was not just fired; Flynn was illegally spied upon. His family was threatened by organized spooks. His lawyers betrayed him by persuading him to plead guilty with the false hope that it would save his son.
    >Not sure I understand.
    I suspect nobody understands, aside from a few very well-connected insiders.
    >You feel this could be the October surprise?
    I believe that this is just one of several October surprises. What would happen, for example, if the White House insists on releasing declassified docs that Gina Haspel does not want to release?

  36. Fred says:
    October 14, 2020 at 7:41 pm

    Babak,
    “nothing for education, healthcare or jobs.”
    You sound like one of Whitmer’s flunkies. What happened to all that money spent by DOE?
    “Department of Education Discretionary Appropriations (Department of Education Discretionary Appropriations) 2014 $67.3”
    Source: Obamba’s DOE budget request for 2016, page 3. Please not that is discretionary funding only.
    https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget16/summary/16summary.pdf
    It only went up from there. Just because the left pissed it away on common core, college prep and misc. crap doesn’t make it “nothing”.
    “You cannot send 12 million souls back”
    Wrong, no one has tried. All it takes is incentivization.

  37. Babak makkinejad says:
    October 14, 2020 at 7:50 pm

    Fred
    Go ahead, make my day, send them back….
    Where is the money going to come from.
    Still unwlling to admit US has serious social problems, eh?
    Just get rid of the Strawman de jur, the Left, and everything will be peachy in the United States, so much so, that the roads in Michigan will become just as good as they are in the European Union.
    I am glad that you mentioned DoE, funded by both Republicans and Democrats, another example of party-neutral political corruption in the United States.
    Just like the roads in Michigan over the last 50 years.

  38. turcopolier says:
    October 14, 2020 at 7:58 pm

    Babak
    You are defining yourself as an enemy of the US. Adios.

  39. Babak makkinejad says:
    October 14, 2020 at 8:53 pm

    Col. Lang
    As you wish.

  40. Fred says:
    October 16, 2020 at 7:51 pm

    Artemesia’s deleted comment.
    A new comment from “Artemesia” was received on the post “Banned by Biden! A Digital Iron Curtain Descends Upon America. By Fred” of the blog “Sic Semper Tyrannis ”.
    Comment:
    regarding C-Span: ” In related news C-SPAN suspends political editor Steve Scully. Yes, he was going to be the presidential debate moderator at the second debate; now he admits he lied about his Twitter feed being hacked. Blue, check.” I watch C Span online; have done so for years. I think C Span is one of the more insidious of the media outlets, precisely because people think it is so “fair and balanced,” “not like Fox or CNN” that have an obvious bias. C Span’s unobvious bias is what you don’t hear — never, ever hear, and that is any word that disparages ADL, AIPAC, or the narratives they and their myriad associated organizations hold dear. Steve Scully has been one of the fiercest defenders of that invisible protective barrier, their Golden Boy for most of his career and most of C Span’s existence. Maybe Scully is becoming too expensive: C Span has begun posting advertisements before granting access to live stream programs. Or perhaps he’s aging out. The people who ensure the above-mentioned policies prevail are unabashed about their practice of hand-picking people like Scully: Irish, Catholic, innocent choir-boy appearance. As Plaintiff’s Exhibit #1 I offer statements from Anita Weiner’s Expanding Historical Consciousness: The Development of the Holocaust Education Foundation https://tinyurl.com/y5q7eg5v a book describing how, in the late-1980s and early 1990s Zvi Weiss proceeded step-by-step to include “holocaust education” first at Northwestern University, where Weiss selected Irish Catholic scholar of German history Peter Francis Hayes, spent $3000 for a substitute teacher for Hayes’s classes while he spent the semester in Israel being prepped to spearhead Weiss’s agenda. Weiss’s success at Northwestern propelled him next to Notre Dame, then to universities across the country, and then to US military academies. In 2013 a department of holocaust studies became fully integrated into Northwestern University; it’s reasonable to assume Northwestern is not alone in this.
    Commenter name: Artemesia

  41. Serge says:
    October 16, 2020 at 7:59 pm

    Something to lighten the mood:
    Feds Arrest Rapper Who Bragged About Getting Rich From Filing EDD Claims In Music Video
    https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/10/16/feds-arrest-rapper-bragged-about-getting-rich-filing-fraudulent-edd-claims-music-video/
    Music video here:
    https://youtube.com/watch?v=QZKnNhCTmeA

  42. turcopolier says:
    October 16, 2020 at 8:10 pm

    fred
    I don’t recall deleting any such comment by Artemesia.

  43. Fred says:
    October 17, 2020 at 11:39 am

    Col.,
    You didn’t. I deleted it off my posting. I didn’t feel it relevant but he whined enough I put in on an open thread rather than get in a flame war with him.

  44. Artemesia says:
    October 17, 2020 at 12:47 pm

    Fred, you did not delete THAT comment, you deleted a subsequent comment.
    The original posting of the comment you re-posted is HERE:
    https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2020/10/banned-by-biden-wheres-hunter-by-fred.html?cid=6a00d8341c72e153ef026be41aec04200d#comment-6a00d8341c72e153ef026be41aec04200d
    The response to that comment directly addressed systemic censorship and biased programming.

  45. Fred says:
    October 17, 2020 at 1:53 pm

    Artemesia,
    Excuse the hell out of me. I acknowledge your virtuous position that all comments on this blog – especially by you – must be posted or lest this place be condemned for “systemic censorship and bias”. You should start your own blog with that policy and see where it gets you. Feel free to repost your complaint about “A conflict involving Connie Doebele and Deborah Lipstadt that occurred 15 years ago” on this open thread.

  46. turcopolier says:
    October 17, 2020 at 4:04 pm

    Artemesia
    For 15 years it has been my policy that comments sent to SST are moderated by me or authors of posts. I do not post comments that I find offensive or not contributory to the discussion. If that is unacceptable …

  47. Serge says:
    October 17, 2020 at 5:04 pm

    The Caliph of Lisson Green
    https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-caliph-of-lisson-green/
    Excellent article I read today, I highly recommend it.

  48. Artemesia says:
    October 17, 2020 at 5:33 pm

    I understand that, Col. Lang.
    Was it you or Fred who judged Unacceptable my comments about censorship & bias in C Span programming? Without intending to engage in a “flame war,” Fred is mischaracterizing my comments, both in tone and in content.
    It was not my intention to participate in a playground do-si-do, but nothing in my comments personally attacked Fred or anybody else.
    If the content of my comments were “unacceptable” to SST standards, then my I accept the chastisement.

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