Although in many ways a fine president, Dwight Eisenhower (as he later admitted and as his Vice President at the time Richard Nixon also said) badly bungled the 1956 Suez War. All it did was enhance the prestige of the Arab fascist dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser, and helped drive our allies Britain and France out of the Middle East, (French distrust of America after World War II dates from Suez) all the while helping the Soviet Union consolidate its position in Egypt. Eisenhower learned the hard way (but at least he learned) that the problem in the Middle East was not the Arab-Israeli conflict but Arab imperialism (now it is Islamic imperialism). I doubt whether Chuck Hagel or Barack Obama are capable of learning those lessons
by Lee Smith
When Barack Obama first came to office, the model bandied about by journalists and academics was Abraham Lincoln. The 44th president of the United States, our first African-American commander-in-chief, was the embodied legacy of the man who banished slavery and unified the country. And Obama, like Lincoln, assembled a “team of rivals”—a Cabinet not of “yes” men, but of prominent statesmen and policymakers in their own right, some of whom had a rocky history with the president, including most prominently his onetime rival, Hillary Clinton.
But now, with Obama’s second term just under way, the focus has turned to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Evan Thomas, author of a recent book on Eisenhower, suggested that Obama might look to Ike’s example for how to get out of Afghanistan and “draw down military spending.” The key lesson, wrote Thomas, is “have the confidence to be humble.” “Obama,” argued one Los Angeles Times editorial, “would do well to emulate [Eisenhower's] patient pursuit of a peaceful world and productive economy.” And Clinton even bluntly cited the 34th president as a model in the recent 60 Minutes interview with her and Obama. [........]
That’s the version of Ike held by the Obama Administration: humble, prudent and patient. A five-star general who led the allies to victory over the axis knew how to corral America’s friends and thrash its enemies, but warning against the “military-industrial complex,” he also knew the limits of military force.
It’s easy to see why this version of Eisenhower would appeal to the president and his new Cabinet picks—especially his nominee for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, whom Peter Beinart called the “new Eisenhower,” and who called himself an “Eisenhower Republican.”
According to David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Hagel bought three dozen copies of a recent book about Eisenhower to distribute to Obama and top Cabinet officials, like Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Eisenhower 1956: The President’s Year of Crisis—Suez and the Brink of War, is the latest book by Eisenhower scholar David Nichols, who’s also written a book on Eisenhower and civil rights and is working on another about Ike and the supreme court. But Nichols’ recent effort, writes Ignatius, “is a useful guide to how Hagel thinks about American power in the Middle East.”
Not unlike Obama, Eisenhower came to office believing that his predecessor had tilted too heavily in favor of Israel. After all, Harry Truman, the American president who recognized the Jewish state, once boasted that he was Cyrus, the ancient Persian king who saved the Jews from annihilation. Eisenhower believed it was necessary to recalibrate America’s Middle East policy lest it alienate the Arabs and put them all in the Soviet camp. The struggle then was essentially over Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Whoever won the allegiance of the leading Arab nationalist of the day, a man who seemed to capture the collective Arab imagination stretching from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, would win the Cold War struggle for the Middle East. Seen from this perspective, siding too much with Israel was a non-starter.
Accordingly, when Israel, together with France and Great Britain, invaded the Suez Canal after Nasser had nationalized the strategically vital waterway, Eisenhower compelled the three American allies to withdraw. The United States, he believed, should never be perceived to be collaborating with the great European colonial powers, or else the Soviets could rightly portray Washington as complicit with colonialism. Eisenhower’s triumph at Suez then amounted to recognizing when the interests of U.S. allies clashed with our own and putting them in their place.
According to Ignatius, that’s the sort of strategic courage that Hagel prizes in Eisenhower. The problem, however, is that since neither London nor Paris have a position in the Middle East any longer, Hagel’s fascination with Suez—his determination that Obama’s senior decision-makers should all learn the same lesson from the same book—tends to underscore his unseemly obsession with Israel. Worse yet for the former Nebraska lawmaker, who once went out of his way to clarify that he was not an “Israeli senator,” is the fact that Eisenhower’s strategic understanding of the Middle East was long ago discredited—by none other than Ike himself.
In fact, Eisenhower came to believe that Suez had been the “biggest foreign-policy blunder of his administration.” In hindsight, it’s not hard to see why. He ruined the position of two longtime allies, effectively driving Britain out of the Middle East once and for all, and without any benefit to American interests. If Eisenhower expected Nasser to be grateful, he was sorely mistaken.
“From Nasser’s perspective, he played the superpowers against each other and came out the winner,” says Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy. “What Ike thought he was doing was laying the groundwork for a new order in the Middle East, a third course between the re-imposition of European colonialism and the Soviet Union. [........]”
Doran, a former George W. Bush Administration National Security Council staffer in charge of the Middle East, is finishing a book about Eisenhower and the Middle East that looks at how Eisenhower’s understanding of the region changed over time. “Eisenhower slammed his allies and aided his enemies at Suez,” Doran explains, “because his policy was based on certain key assumptions of how the Arab world worked. The most important of these was the notion of Arab unity. [......].”
Chief among them, Eisenhower and his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles believed, was the Arab-Israeli conflict. They saw the role of the United States then as playing the honest broker, mediating between Israel on one side and the Arab world on the other. If this conceit is still popular today with American policymakers, says Doran, “it’s partly because some Arab officials continue to talk this way. The idea is, to win over the Arabs we have to stop being so sympathetic to Israel.”
But in the wake of Suez, Eisenhower came to see the region through a different lens. He paid more attention to what Arab leaders actually did, rather than what they said. “Between March 1957 and July 1958, Eisenhower got the equivalent of the Arab spring,” says Doran. “It was a revolutionary wave around the region and for Ike a tutorial on Arab politics. There was upheaval after upheaval, in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and then the Iraqi revolution of 1958 that toppled an American ally. All of them were internal conflicts, tantamount to Arab civil wars, and had nothing to do with Israel. With this, Eisenhower recognized that the image he had of the Arab world had nothing to do with the political realities of the Middle East.”
[.......]
In 1958, Nasser was enjoying his heyday, boosted largely by the victory in Suez that Eisenhower handed him on a silver platter. Evidence that Ike came to reject his earlier understanding of the Middle East was his decision to land the Marines in Lebanon in 1958 to protect a pro-U.S. government. “Nasser was monkeying around in Jordan and had stoked a low-level civil war in Lebanon,” says Doran. “The U.S. was aware that its allies, Camille Chamoun in Lebanon, and King Hussein in Jordan, were embattled. Eisenhower had already watched the pro-U.S. Hashemite dynasty in Iraq fall and saw it as a disaster for the West, and a victory for Nasser and the Soviet Union. [........]”
This Eisenhower—defending allies and vanquishing foes in order to advance American interests—squares with neither the outdated and uninformed version of Ike that Hagel promotes, nor with Hagel’s own policy prescriptions. Hagel is against sanctions on Iran and even voted against designating its Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, and wants to engage other terror outfits, like Hamas. [.......] Because, by all indications, he has thus far been pushing an account of history more than 50 years out of date.
Read the rest – Eisenhower’s new fans
Tags: Chuck Hagel, Dwight Eisenhower, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Lee Smith, Suez
It is not that they can’t learn the lesson, rather that they take away from the lesson something different than you or I. We look at Islamic Imperialism, and say that it must be countered and stopped. They look at Islamic Imperialism and smile. They see it as something that must be nurtured and encouraged. So when they look at the Middle East and see Israel as the great impediment, don’t think that they mean an impediment to Peace. Rather, they see Israel as standing in the way of a successful Imperial Islam that would dominate that sector of the world.
@ Iron Fist:
mornin IF,
here is a chuckle to start the day
ZUCKER UNTUCKED: @RuPaul scored 565,000 viewers on LOGO vs @piersmorgan 545,000 on CNN in Monday 9 PM showdown…
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
How unbelievably pathetic, Piers Morgan is on CNN, RuPaul is on some channel I’ve never heard of called Logo TV.
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
‘Til it’s gone
They’re demolishing & paving over Reagan’s childhood home
And putting up a parking lot for Obama’s presidential library.
then there is this
The head of the New York branch of a Hamas-affiliated group is seeking a seat on the New York City Council
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/01/30/cair-leader-to-run-for-seat-on-new-york-city-council/
(yeah, he’ll probably win)
Fritz Katz wrote:
Even aside from the historical significance, it’s a lovely century-old building that would seen to have value in its own right. The lyric selection is as perfect as it gets, kudos!
@ rain of lead:
All of CNN’s ratings are in the shitter. I saw where they are canceling Soledad O’Brian. Good. I haven’t watched CNN since the ’90s. They are so last century!
@ Fritz Katz:
Enemy action, that’s all it is. Time to memory hole all the good Republicans have done.
@ rain of lead:
He will be cross endorsed by the Democrat and Republican Parties. McCain will campaign with him.
@ Iron Fist:
They are cencelling her?!?!? NICE!!!!! You made my morning which was going downhill from having a director with unrealistic schedules. In the project plan we are looking for the box that says… then a miracle happens…
The GDP drop is no big deal.
Why the GDP Drop is No Big Deal
@ Iron Fist:
Maybe Charles Johnson will get a show.
@ MikeA:
I love those project plans! Actually, where I am right now they have pretty realistic schedules. It is a nice change. At my last job we didn’t have a schedule, so the lead developer on the project was always refactoring code that worked to make it more textbook “perfect”. That got old. We spent more time rewriting code that worked than we did writing new code.
@ Rodan:
Hippie-palooza?
Rodan wrote:
yup cause in a good economy companys lay people off and close stores
and shift to part time help as much as they can and reduce incentive/
bonus plans,and trim and cut and lower costs as much as they can…
cause that’s what they do…..when the economy is strong
/
( very bitter / tag)
Rodan wrote:
Whew, that was a close one! I feel sooomuch better now.
Iron Fist wrote:
He can do specials on the Nazi threat. Hes back railing about Nazis taking over.
@ rain of lead:
@ MacDuff:
This is the strongest economy since the 90′s!
///
That’s what I read on some blogs.
MacDuff wrote:
They can’t wait to demolish anything that deals with Reagan.
Rodan wrote:
They can call it “The Wide-Angle Lens,” since they’ll want to fit him into the TV frame.
Rodan wrote:
Back in 2006 he appeared on CNN.
Rodan wrote:
Tennessee is crawling with Nazis; shockingly, there’s a Nazi flag flying over the capital in Nashville!
Rodan wrote:
Someone buy him William Shirer’s “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” or better yet Ian Kershaw’s one volume biography “Hitler” already!
Fritz Katz wrote:
Destroying affordable housing.
MacDuff wrote:
Nashville is the new Munich 1933!
@ Speranza:
A certain family will approve of this!
@ Speranza:
He probably has all of them!
Fritz Katz wrote:
How much space do you need for unread copies of Das Kapital, Invisible Man, and the Constitution, and well-thumbed paperbacks of Rules for Radicals, Derrick Bell’s Critical Race Theory, and Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, anyway?
Boom Times!
Income Surges, Spending Edges Higher
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I’m sure he will have a spot for Mein Kampf as well.
Rodan wrote:
And The Mendacity of “Hope.”
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
As an aside, I am interested in foreign financing of presidential libraries. I have read that carter and the klintons had significant saudi financing. I wonder how oil-tick money will be laundered to komrade zero.
Rodan wrote:
That’s a one-time thing that is over and done with now. And GDP still went down. I’m not an economist, but it seems that I can read the writing on the wall better than the economists. Real unemployment is about 11%, with about 3% of that unemployment being people who have been out of work so long that they’ve stopped looking. Anyone who call that a good economy is delusional.
@ Iron Fist:
Like the article says its concentrated with only certain workers. That is the rich Leftists on Wall Street.
@ Iron Fist:
Jobless claims are up. Boom!
@ Rodan:
Who took the dividends to avoid paying their Fair Share®…
Iron Fist wrote:
You should have heard NPR this morning explaining that government spending is down.
@ Iron Fist:
Like Al Gore!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
That’s why we borrowed $1.6 trillion dollars last year. Where do they come up with these people? This shit really isn’t that hard.
Rodan wrote:
Yesterday Medved called Gore “a high functioning lunatic”. Pretty apt description except I might add “amoral”. Watching his TV tour of late, I was positively chilled to think just how close he came to being President.
@ MacDuff:
He’s had a nervous breakdown.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Clearly, they put several shots of vodka in their Kool-Aid.
@ Iron Fist:
@ MacDuff:
If you remove entitlements from “government spending,” and only talk about, say, drops in procurement of military hardware, thus re-defining what falls within “government spending,” then you can say this sort of thing with a straight face.
It’s a matter of moving the goalposts and obfuscating the fact that you’ve moved them, knowing that most people will accept your statements at face value if they are said earnestly and, preferably, uttered by someone with a nice resonant-sounding credential.
MacDuff wrote:
We dodged a bullet in 2000. (Thanks to morons in Florida).
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
The Collective Works of Kim Il-Sung.
Rodan wrote:
Yes he has. He (Al Gore) is an embittered aging man sort of like a fat fellow in Culver City.
O/T My hat’s off to parents. As difficult it must be to be one, I don’t see how they can cope with public schools.
I have posted recently on a few instances locally here in MD where little kids were suspended by making guns with their extended index finger and thumb.
6-Year-Old Expelled for Bringing Toy Gun to School
I know this is a big country and if you are looking for lunacy you will find it. However IMHO on display here are the dangers of an all powerful government making decisions for everyone’s good.
@ Speranza:
Part of me thinks it would been better for Gore to win. He would have wrecked the country and the GOP would have come to power in 04 nor 08. There would be no Obama and the economy would be good now. But this is all retrospect.
I hope people here are reading the article I posted about Eisenhower. It is very interesting.
Chuck Hagel comes before the Senate today for questioning. Watch him sound more pro Israel than Benjamin Netanyahu.
@ Iron Fist:
Mark Pryor says no way to Dianne Feinstein’s bill!
Rodan wrote:
Oh I absolutely agree. If it would’ve spared us Obama it might’ve been worth it. I got an indication in the Autumn of 2000 of what W. would be like (the passive “turn the other cheek” fellow that would manifest itself throughout the next eight years) when he was not saying a word during the recounts all the while Gore and the Democrats were hogging the TV screen.
@ Speranza:
The Democrats on the Committee will spend more time paying tribute
to Hagel than they will asking any probing questions.
@ Speranza:
I think Gore’s 2000 loss caused his breakdown.
BTW- Fulton Chain had a meltdown last night.
RIX wrote:
McCain will ask him a question (which he probably told Hagel in advance what it will be) in order to sound tough and then go back to his “my good friend and fellow vet Chuck Hagel” bullshit.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
With the increasing availability of alternate news sources via the internet and renewed interest in world events, I was able to fact check many stories on NPR, especially its coverage of Israel.
I stopped listening to NPR over a decade ago. Lies are still lies even when delivered with a honeyed tongue.
Rodan wrote:
Bait and switch.
Feinstein’s bill is intended to go down so that something at least as bad, but more “reasonable”-sounding, can garner support under the theory that “we must be seen to be doing something.”
Rodan wrote:
Really (Fultonchain?). Let me look at it.
Too many meltdowns lately and frankly I am sick of them.
if Mike Ditka would have accepted the Republican endorsement for the US Senate
from Illinois things would have been different.
Obama would have lost the race & would not be President now.
@ Speranza:
Check it out.
citizen_q wrote:
I find it invaluable: proggie will talk candidly about his intentions when he figures he’s talking to his pals. You can get the regime’s talking points a day early if you listen to NPR.
@ RIX:
Yeah Ditka screwed the country up.
Count on it.
Speranza wrote:
I don’t understand how people can purport to be suckered into believing a tiger is changing his stripes when trying to be confirmed for high office.
Or for that matter think others will believe uncle tom’s, cough cumo cough, stamp of approval.
Bet that he wishes that he had that back.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
I think you are right, there. Feinstein’s bill is a dream bill for the gun-grabbers, and it lets you know where their intent is, but I don’t think it ever had a prayer of passing. What comes down the pike next will probably be a plea to “close the gun showw loophole”, but as David Kopel testified yesterday the only way they could ctually enforce that would be with universal registration. Which is a prelude to near universal confiscation (they’ll leave gns in the hands of the politically connected and the gang-bangers).
RIX wrote:
16.4 TRILLION UPDINGS! Yes, I think Coach Ditka is very, very regretful at this decision.
@ Rodan:
I just read it. I did not like the swarming all over Fultonchain. He is a liberal but a pragmatic one and I do like when he comments here. Frankly I think some of the posters on that thread were imbibing.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Good point. MEMRI operates very successfully under the same principal.
OTOH, back then I would listen to NPR while stuck in Washington D.C. area roads in bumper to bumper traffic while commuting. I did not need anything more to anger me.
@ Iron Fist:
How many of those “viewers” are actually folks trapped in waiting rooms, airports, etc. and not voluntarily watching that crap channel? As I’ve pointed out, we’re forced to watch CNN (without sound, thankfully) on our commute buses because that is the channel some libturd at the corporation yard decided we needed to tune to. The awful thing is that in the timing of my commute, I have to look at Piers Morgan for 35 minutes. His look is always that of a man who enjoys the smell of his own farts.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Jay Nordlinger suggested years ago a “CNN FREE ZONE” at airports.
16.4 TRILLION UPDINGS! Yes, I think Coach Ditka is very, very regretful at this decision.
@ Macker:
And Ditka would have been a piece of work in the Senate and a lot of fun,
Carolina Girl wrote:
Indeed. And you are right. CNN’s viewership would be far worse if they didn’t have captive audiences like that to bolster them. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if they are still in business in five years unless they change their model. They can’t compete with Fox on the right and MSNBC on the Left. They aren’t really centerist, either. They are like MSNBC-lite. There’s no market for that.
@ Iron Fist:
Didn’t you hear? The whole government spending is the problem is a lie being promulgated by Fox News, according to the always dumber than crap Mary Landrieu.
I’m enjoying the fact that her brother Mitch is being roundly kick about on the internet by New Orleans residents after he “instructed” them to be on their best behavior during Super Bowl week and especially to be nice to Roger Goodell since he “gave” the City a Super Bowl.
If I’m Goodell, I’d be ordering room service only and making sure the wait staff doesn’t know it’s me. Waiters in New Orleans are avid Saints fans.
RIX wrote:
I am not so certain Mike Ditka would’ve won.
@ Speranza:
Fulton started it and was not himself. His first comment was nasty and not in his nature. I did not attack him.
@ Rodan:
@ Speranza:
“What if” arguments are the stuff of science fiction, but I don’t think “totally wrecking the country” is a particularly good strategy in the long, or short run. I think Al’s been quite mad for quite some time (though it does seem to have accelerated of late) and I see no benefit to having him ensconced in the Oval Office at any time. It’s impossible to say how history would have been changed had he won (change one thing and everything changes), but I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been for the good.
BTW, take a look at the increasingly-ubiquitous “Stop the NRA” sign.
They’ve been at a lot of demos lately. The white in the middle, flanked by red, with heavy black type is reminiscent of the red Nazi flag with the white circle and black swastika. And, while the eagle is an American eagle, the Nazis used a lot of eagle imagery too—often in the red-black-and-white palette.
Rodan wrote:
I did not read it that way but to each his own.
MacDuff wrote:
I see your point. I was only speculating.
Had Gore been POTUS on 9/11/01 he would have spoken about Global Warming and Carbon Foot prints.
@ Iron Fist:
Actually, I think MSLSD has the lowest of all the ratings, although that honor might go to Headline News, home of the defunct and now relegated to the Siberia known as Current TV monstrosity called the Joy Behar Show.
Actually, add up the ratings for MSLSD, CNN and Headline and they STILL don’t equal the viewership of Fox.
@ RIX:
@ Speranza:
Obama probably would be mayor of Chicago.
Carolina Girl wrote:
And Fox has gone down in my estimation recently yet they still are better then the other two CNN and PMSNBC.
Rodan wrote:
That was his original goal.
Speranza wrote:
Chicago and the rest of the State still lives worships the 85 Bears Super Bowl Team.
The Union guys even would have for for Ditka. Da Bears.
But you make a good point, you never know.
@ MacDuff:
This was my thought on a President Gore
Again, we will never know.
Which would have been better than screwing up the whole country.
@ RIX:
no No NO! It’s DA BEARS! No mixed case there!
@ RIX:
Well, all I know is Ditka didn’t do a damn thing for the Saints. Of course, it’s the Saints…..miracles may not have been his long suit.
@ Speranza:
Shuda Wuda Cuda will always twist you into a pretzel.
Carolina Girl wrote:
I know. I love it!
@ Speranza:
Yep, I think Fox is trying to be more “centerist”. The only thing in the middle of the road is road-kill. They made their reputation by being willing to represent the Right side of the view, and that is why they have their audience. They need to play to their audience. If they don’t, a competitor will rise up, just as they did, and take their audience away from them. I think one of the reasons Current TV sank was because there are so many places the Left can go to get the news that they want to hear. The Right doesn’t have so many options.
Macker wrote:
Got ya.
Oh dear, God, we are DOOOOOMED Dept. From Homeland Security:
The real question is -- are they allowed to RUN with them?
@ Speranza:
If you think Bush’s “Turn the other cheek” response to 9-11 was bad, it was down right militaristic compared to what Gore would have done. He’d have broken a sweat cutting Israel off so fast, for one thing, and pulled the US out of the Middle East entirely. As bad as Obama’s been, he hasn’t yet had the oppertunity to fuck up on that scale.
@ RIX:
Upward inflection on the first word, of course.
@ Carolina Girl:
I’d rather shoot back, but I guess it isn’t PC for Homeland Security to talk about that…
@ Carolina Girl:
BOOOOOOOOOOOO!
@ Macker:
Yeah, if I’m ever the victim of a home invasion, I’ll forego the 12-gauge and grab my sewing kit instead….
re-post:
I’m NRA You Hate, I Am
—apologies to Herman’s Hermits, and “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am”
I’m NRA you hate, I am
NRA you hate, I am, I am
I own guns and I want to buy more
You keep asking what I need ‘em for
But thanks to the Second Amendment (Amendment!)
It’s none of your business what I need (Indeed!)
Whether for sport or personal defendment
NRA you hate I a-a-a-a-am
NRA you hate I am
Second verse, same as the first!
A little bit louder, and a little bit worse!
I’m NRA you hate, I am
NRA you hate, I am, I am
I own guns and I want to buy more
You keep asking what I need ‘em for
But thanks to the Second Amendment (Amendment!)
It’s none of your business what I need (Indeed!)
Whether for sport or personal defendment
NRA you hate I a-a-a-a-am
NRA you hate I am
@ buzzsawmonkey:
You need to post that at PJ’s and Zip, Buzz. That’s BRILLIANT. I’m sending that out on my email.
Yeah, things didn’t go well for Ditka with the Saints.
Actually, the 85 Bears were so dominant, probably any coach
would have won.
But Ditka gets the credit & I think that would have beat Obama.
Besides he would have been a colorful Senator
BTW folks…I survived the Court hearing on Tuesday. She did not show up; and I was the second case of the afternoon…those with Attorneys get to go first.
It lasted all of five minutes, the Referee signed the decree, and sent it to the Judge for his signature. I should have the final doc no later than Monday next week.
And that’s all she wrote….
Carolina Girl wrote:
I think the GM/Coach/QB triad the Saints have now has a lot of synergy and bodes very well for the future. As for Ditka, great coaches aren’t necessarily interchangeable between teams; they’re often the right guy in the right place at the right time. That doesn’t diminish their greatness, but greatness oft depends on the right situation. I don’t think George Washington would have necessarily achieved greatness in another environment.
Washington and the Saints, all in one paragraph!
@ Iron Fist:
Other than arm Israel, that’s my stance. I’m tired of nation building and being buddies with the Muzz.
Macker wrote:
I suspect “CONGRATULATIONS!” is in order? I never know what is apropos……
Iron Fist wrote:
Hey you get no argument from me. The 1988 Gore I would have been fine with but not the Gore of the past 13 years.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Sent it to PJM. Zip, maybe later.
@ MacDuff:
I’m just grateful that I can approach the game on Sunday without thinking “okay, wonder how much we’ll lose by THIS week?”
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Oh, send link -- I’ll leave comment.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Probably won’t go up for a while; there’s a certain lag time, which varies. I’ll post it here when it does.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Whoa—that was fast: “I’m NRA You Hate, I Am.”
China’s new militancy. For those who thought my questioning of China’s long-term designs was totally off-base…
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Check my comment, toots!
Carolina Girl wrote:
Saw it—great idea, especially if it could be done with a guitar made from a rifle stock.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Indeed. We order “Direct Ticket” so my expatriate wife can watch the Saints; we’ve had good times and bad, but this season was particularly exasperating. Next year’s gonna be much better!
@ MacDuff:
I have it as well, and for that reason. I didn’t even realize it until someone at the Black and Gold forum turned me on to it in 2003. It’s my yearly “Xmas and Birthday” gift to myself, in six equal installments!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
And you just KNOW that Uncle Ted has to have something of that nature in his ax arsenal.
Iron Fist wrote:
I’m sure if Obama bows deeply enough they’ll leave us alone, right?
@ MacDuff:
Maybe we can give them another State Dinner?
Iron Fist wrote:
Ming China is back!
After the recent GDP figures, I guess they decided their work is done…
That evil extremist TEA Party tried to tell them….
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/01/31/unions-grow-wary-of-obamacare-after-fighting-tooth-and-nail-to-help-pass-it-complain-it-is-driving-up-costs-making-unionized-workers-less-competitive/#disqus_thread
Carolina Girl wrote:
Catered by Panda Express
@ lobo91:
So much for that laser-like focus….
@ lobo91:
‘
Now with real panda!!
Carolina Girl wrote:
It was a laser pointer cat toy from PetsMart.
And the batteries ran down.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Kinda lazy-like…
@ Carolina Girl:
Screw ‘em. Union membership needs to start drawing up their own “Declaration of Independence”….
Now that he’s done fixing health care, jobs, and the economy:
Minneapolis? Why isn’t he going to Chicago, where there’s an actual problem?
@ lobo91:
The economy is booming!
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Wasn’t that Jobs Council made up of those millionaires and billionaires that really wanted him to pass higher taxes? Maybe that was the extent of their input. Then they looked at their bank account statements and said “WTF?” I wonder if the Council didn’t “disband” so much as “walked off the job.”
@ Carolina Girl:
They haven’t met in two years, anyway.
@ lobo91:
The “Jobs Council” was like that treadmill that has been sitting in the closet, unused, and now it’s being set out for the trash to make room for a wardrobe of “fat clothes”.
Rodan wrote:
Yeah it is self exploding like one of those suicide vests.
@ lobo91:
We have had it snarked at us very recently that we’re ridiculous and delusional that the government would take our guns. I’m not saying they can, but based on the previous statements of Oblahblah, Feinstein and others, I have no doubt in my mind that if they thought they could, they would. I have no doubt that if they had both houses of Congress they would pass laws that severely curtail gun ownership rights and that it would take a litigation to restore them, a la Heller.
My biggest worry is that whole “mental health” prohibition they want to pass. Not that I think those with severe mental illness should have guns, but since Democrats can’t define “assault weapons” and thing $250,000 is actually $1,000,000, I would not trust them to define “mental illness.” I was depressed -- severely -- in 1983/84 and required medication. I would not trust the government to call that a “history of mental illness” and advise me that I should not own a firearm.
@ Carolina Girl:
They passed it and we still don’t know what’s in it, because they are making it up as they go.
@ Carolina Girl:
The mental health prohibition is already spelled out in current law. You’re prohibited if you’ve been involuntarily committed or if you’ve been ruled incompetent by a judge.
The problem is that in most states, that information isn’t transmitted to the people in charge of the NICS records.
Carolina Girl wrote:
IMHO, one only needs look at the old soviet union. They jailed opponents of the regime in mental institutions.
I have no doubt our crop of marxists will also use such thinking with regards to healthcare access.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Given that there are “studies” being spat out by “respectable academic sources” which have attempted to claim that it is a mental illness to hold “conservative opinions,” any mental health provisions that are going to be written should be looked at extremely askance. It is both a means to get gun ownership under “public health” restrictions, and eerily similar to the Soviet Union’s practice of locking up dissidents in mental hospitals.
@ Carolina Girl:
Janet says to stretch well before doing your scissor attack.
@ lobo91:
If he does go to Chicago my advice would be that he and his security detail to move from place to place in a serpentine fashion.
That should come naturally but if he needs advice on acting like a snake he can ask Rahm.
@ Carolina Girl:
I can see my membership in the NRA being an issue. I mean look at the extremist rhetoric they are throwing around about the group right now.
@ lobo91:
IIRC, the Sheriff in Tucson who ranted about guns after the Giffords shooting conveniently ignored his own culpability in that he knew Loughler was a lunatic and did nothing to stop him obtaining weapons.
@ unclassifiable:
They’re being called a “terrorist” organization in some quarters. I do not trust this criminal enterprise of an administration or their cohorts in the Democrat Congress as far as I can throw them.
Carolina Girl wrote:
Yes, he did. Loughner’s mom was a long-time county employee, and he kept information about him out of the system because he thought it would make her look bad.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Being a pathological narcissist hasn’t stopped Obama from becoming the President of the United States, and as President he has control of the most fearsome weapons on the planet. Is Obama sure he wants to take this route? A wise man once said before you bitch about the mote in my eye, do something about the beam in your own…
@ Iron Fist:
the most fearsome weapon on the planet is the America voter…which has been mothballed in front of their tv sets
I think I see where Fultonchain and theoutsider get their information:
And this clown actually won a Nobel Prize in economics…
Rodan wrote:
lobo91 wrote:
There have been times when unscrupulous people have used subterfuge to get a harmless (and perhaps entirely sane) person committed involuntarily or ruled incompetent so as to gain control over their wealth and property.
I think there should be some legal safeguards there, to expunge this from the records if it comes to light that the person was wrongfully committed or wrongfully declared incompetent.