Ronald Reagan explains exactly what Obama is doing, and Obama explains exactly what he’s doing. Amazingly, the explanations match up perfectly. Reagan has Obama nailed.
Via Riehl World View.
It’s the Endarkenment, folks, writ plain, writ loud and proud. Obama’s accomplishing exactly what he and his mentors intended.
Instead, wear T-Shirts celebrating kind, decent friends of the people like Che, Marx, Lenin, and even Stalin.
Not a “text book sociopath” like Ayn Rand.
There’s something deeply unsettling about living in a country where millions of people froth at the mouth at the idea of giving health care to the tens of millions of Americans who don’t have it, or who take pleasure at the thought of privatizing and slashing bedrock social programs like Social Security or Medicare. It might not be as hard to stomach if other Western countries also had a large, vocal chunk of the population who thought like this, but the US is seemingly the only place where right-wing elites can openly share their distaste for the working poor. Where do they find their philosophical justification for this kind of attitude?
It turns out, you can trace much of this thinking back to Ayn Rand, a popular cult-philosopher who exerts a huge influence over much of the right-wing and libertarian crowd, but whose influence is only starting to spread out of the US.
One reason why most countries don’t find the time to embrace her thinking is that Ayn Rand is a textbook sociopath. Literally a sociopath: Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of “ideal man” that Rand promoted in her more famous books — ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America’s most recent economic catastrophe — former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox — along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate “entitlement programs” increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked “Atlas Shrugged” as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after The Bible.
Does the author of this piece, Mark Ames, wear T-shirts emblazoned with Che, Marx, Lenin, or Stalin? Beats the heck out of me. But it’s clear from his article that far worse, he embraces their ideas, and thus the mass murder of millions.
Even if Rand burned candles to William Edward Hickman, the man she’s accused of admiring, her ideas have caused nowhere near the slaughter that Marx and his worshippers committed, and continue to commit to this day.
This is some of the most extraordinary restoration work on an electronic system I have ever seen.
[This is a huge web page with many pictures, but it's well worth waiting for the slow load.]
Project manager was Phil Cirocco.
It’s a 1934 Hammond Novachord polyphonic synthesizer. The tone generator unit alone contains 146 tubes. Cirocco believes that most are the original Sylvania units, but cannot verify that.
There are links to sound files demonstrating the capabilities of the instrument, and documenting “the first spooky sounds it made”, I take it before tuning. Even that first (rather harsh) recording makes it clear you are hearing a synth, not a mere electronic organ or simple tone generator.
The work included completely stripping the point-to-point wiring chassis and polishing the metal, because PCB and tar capacitors had leaked and contaminated everything. The fabric-covered wiring also had to be replaced because it, too, was contaminated.
All resistors and capacitors were replaced, because they had drifted in value over the decades. Modern parts do not drift nearly as badly. Also, as Cirocco notes in the conclusion:
Thousands of passive components must be replaced. A warning to those who tread in my footsteps. I am not being negative here – just blunt. These are the harsh realities of Novachord restoration. This was an incredibly massive job! Don’t embark on it unless you can handle it. For those of you who think you don’t have to restore your Novachord, keep this in mind – The positive rail is at 300v DC. The negative rail is at -300v DC. With more than 1000 70 year old capacitors across those rails, the failure probability factor is nearly 100%. Keep a fire extinguisher on hand.
Lovely job restoring the wood cabinet, too, although as Cirocco says, “[I am] grateful that I am an electronic tech and not a woodworker by trade – to put it nicely.”
The tube power supplies and amplifiers are just gorgeous.
Power supply before:
Power supply after:
National Rifle Association files “Brief for Respondants…in Support of Petitioners“. The NRA is, as I understand it, a party to the case, not just an amicus, but they had filed their own case, which is still pending. McDonald will resolve their case, too, most likely, hence the rather odd “respondent in support of petitioners” label.
I’m about 3/4 of the way through petitioner’s brief, which focuses more on the 14th amendment than the 2nd. Huge chunk of history there, and if the Supremes rule on the question, rather than on some minor side issue, a huge chunk of precedent, based on the much-maligned SlaughterHouse cases, will be vacated.
McDonald’s brief makes very clear how the 14th Amendment, and hence the 2nd, was blocked for profoundly racist reasons — to deny freed blacks full citizenship.
Naturally, though, the laws denying blacks the right to defending themselves against marauding whites ended up disarming the whites as well.
If this gets taken care of, then let’s dispose of Kelo.
And if Kelo goes, then we can work on the granddaddy of them all, the hook that about half the Federal Government hangs from: Filburn v. Wickard.
Ha ha ha, I can dream, can’t I?
Dave Kopel writes about McDonald at the Volokh Conspiracy. [If you have any interest in the law, particularly Constitutional law -- and the only reason you shouldn't be interested is because you choose to live outside the law, or beneath its notice) you really need to be following VC.]
Here’s why Petitioner’s Brief concentrates on Privileges or Immunities, while NRA’s brief focuses on Due Process:
Many folks have been wondering why the Gura brief concentrates so heavily on the bolder theory (Privileges or Immunities) rather than the one that courts have used over the last century (Due Process). Here’s the answer: After Heller, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the National Rifle Association each filed separate lawsuits against the Chicago handgun ban. The cases were consolidated in the Seventh Circuit; after the panel ruled, SAF and NRA each filed separate petitions for certiorari. The Supreme Court granted cert. in the SAF case, McDonald v. Chicago. A few weeks later, the Court added NRA to the case as a party. So NRA is now a “Respondent in Support of Petitioners.” The suburb of Oak Park, which had been sued by NRA but not by SAF, was also added as a party.
So as a party, NRA filed its brief yesterday. The lead attorneys on the brief are Stephen Poss (attorney of record), Stephen Halbrook, and others. The NRA brief takes the more conservative approach. It mainly argues for incorporation via Due Process, with only a brief discussion of Privileges or Immunities. NRA does not ask for any cases to be over-ruled, since Slaughterhouse, Cruikshank, and Presser are all P or I cases, and predate the Court’s recognition of selective Due Process incorporation.
Because the Question Presented by the Court asked about both P or I and Due Process incorporation, it was appropriate that one party brief focused on the former, and the other party brief on the latter.
The comments at VC are especially well informed, as well, although frequently too many pile up to follow.
I especially like Alec Rawls’ comment here:
The 2nd Amendment is the one amendment that does not need incorporation, since it was written from the outset to apply to every level of government. It does not say “Congress shall pass no law,” but asserts without qualification that the the right “shall not be infringed.”
Too bad that so far, no court has seen this, and enforced the 2nd at state level and below.
Having attacked Obama for having bowed to the Emperor of Japan, in fairness I offer this historic bow, delivered by one of the founders, John Adams, as ambassador to the King George III of England, and, until very recently (at the time) King of the American colonies as well:
For those among my patriotic friends on the right who are so deeply distressed, let me offer this story – possibly the first encounter between an American citizen and foreign royalty (the contacts between Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and the French preceded the British surrender, and so one can make a claim that they were not yet truly American citizens).
John Adams was presented to King George as the first American Ambassador to the Court of St. James (from Page Smith’s delightful John Adams biography)…
The Foreign Secretary then carried Adams with him in his coach to the court and ushered him to the antechamber, “very full of ministers of state, lords, and bishops, and all sorts of courtiers.” The Dutch and Swedish ministers, perhaps noticing Adams’ agitation came up to chat and in a few minutes Carmarthen returned to escort him to the King’s closet. The door was closed after him and Adams found himself alone with the Killoro and the Foreign Secretary. He bowed the three times that etiquette required – at the door, again halfway into the room, and a third time standing directly before His Majesty. It was a strange and dramatic confrontation – two short, stout men, both rather choleric, stubborn and strong-willed, sharing a certain emotional instability and a native shrewdness and wit. They were both great talkers and both, in their hearts, farmers. They both lived in worlds where they felt frequently that every man’s hand was turned against them. One was the King of the most powerful nation in the world, the other’s permanent rank that of a provincial lawyer and farmer. It was the New England fanner who represented victory and the King who had been forced to accept defeat. The name of Adams, John or Samuel, had been a stench in the nostrils of George III for almost twenty years and now an Adams stood before him, ambassador from those colonies which not so long ago had been the King’s special treasure.
Both men were agitated and ill at ease. Adams, obviously nervous, (”I felt more,” he wrote later, “than I did or could express”) delivered his speech as best he could and the King listened “with a most apparent emotion .. . very much affected” and replied with a tremor in his voice: “Sir…the circumstances of this audience are so extraordinary, the language you have now held is so extremely proper and the feelings you have discovered so justly adapted to the occasion, that I must say that I not only receive with pleasure the assurance of the friendly dispositions of the United States, but that I am very glad the choice has fallen upon you to be their minister. . . . I will be very frank with you,” the King continued slowly, rather haltingly, searching out his words. “I was the last to consent to the separation; but the separation having been made, and having become inevitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.” Then in a more informal spirit the King asked Adams if he had come most recently from France. “Yes, Your Majesty.” The King gave his short, barking laugh. “There is an opinion among some people that you are not the most attached of all your countrymen to the manners of France.” Adams was disconcerted at the remark, but he adopted the King’s light air and answered: “That opinion, sir, is not mistaken; I must avow to Your Majesty I have no attachment but to my own country.”
“A honest man will never have any other,” the King replied.
The King spoke a few words to Lord Carmarthen and then turned and bowed to Adams, signifying that the audience was at an end. The American retreated, walking backward with as much grace as he could affect, bowed a last time at the door, and withdrew.
So it’s quite possible to bow and speak frankly in defense of American interests.
Let’s judge Obama less on the bowing and the dressing and pay more attention to the speaking.
Armed Liberal has other cogent comments as well, and you should read them, as well as the many links he has on offer.
For my part, though, I must say that Obama is President, not an Ambassador; that the status of the United States as a nation not ruled by some kind of monarch (and indeed, among nations in the European sphere, not ruled by a monarch very closely related to the other European monarchs) was in Adams’ time very, shall I say? “raw”; and that Obama bowed very much more deeply than Akihito did.
Even AL acknowledges that it was at the very least an unbecoming error, and possibly a misunderstanding of Japanese custom.
As noted before, the State Department maintains an Office of Protocol, the job of which is exactly to instruct the President and other traveling dignitaries on how to behave when acting in their official capacity. Obama needs to stop goofing off in class, and do his damn homework.
Once again, Obama shames his fellow Americans, the Americans he claims to lead, even rule, by bowing before a foreign Emperor.
The first time he did this, it was before the filthy tyrant king of Saudi Arabia, a man who might charitably be called an enemy of the United States; certainly someone who is openly contemptuous of American ideals.
This time it is before the figurehead of a nation which, although it was once our declared mortal enemy, is now our true political ally, a nation whose scientists, engineers, artists, and writers have been prodigiously fruitful and influential.
It doesn’t matter, though. Of all the people in the world, the American President, acting in his official capacity, ought bow to no one. Nor, I must add, require anyone, citizen, enemy, or ally, to bow to him.
No, wait, that’s not strong enough.
No American ought to feel bound to bow to anyone else.
No, wait, not even that suffices.
No one, no one, ought to bow to anyone, except as a deep, personal expression of profound earned respect for the person receiving the bow. The person, mind, not the office.
For anyone to feel obligated by protocol to bow before anyone else, simply by virtue of the respective dick-drips that quickened them, and the twats that squeezed them out, is disgusting.
For the President of the United States, acting in his official capacity as our leader, to bow to any such person, is utterly at odds with the founding principles of the nation he pretends to lead.
And that’s all Obama does. Pretends. He has absolutely no understanding of or respect for the principles he has taken a sacred oath to defend.
If he should bow before anyone, it should be before us, The People, his masters. And he should bow, kowtow, deeply, kissing our feet, wailing in shame, to apologize for this insult to us. He is bowing for us. When he bows, it is as if we all bow.
I will not bow, Mr. President, you low life little putz. And I will not have you bow on my behalf.
Obama’s personal respect is his to bestow towards whomever he considers his betters. His official respect he owes to no one but us.
[Picture from SondraK at Knowledge is Power, who also has some photos of other world leaders not bowing to the Emperor of Japan. Sovereigns, potentates, and Presidents do not bow before each other, except in surrender.]
One of the few stories paying proper attention to The Evil Empire, and the tearing down of the Wall that was its greatest symbol.
I’m currently in Wisconsin, and tonight on Wisconsin Public Television I watched a show recapping the rise and fall of the Soviet Union Joe McCarthy, Senator from Wisconsin. Because one story supports the Narrative, and the other one belongs down the memory hole.
The Green Bay Press-Gazette ran the Berlin Wall story in a few inches at the end of Section A. The top third of the editorial page was devoted to explaining how we must not jump to conclusions as to what motivated the Ft. Hood killer.
Always remember, children, America is Bad, m’kay?
update:
Here’s an account by Harald Jäger, the East German guard who opened the wall.
Yeah, so maybe I’ll just put a link redirecting my visitors here to Mike over at Cold Fury until I can find the time to actually do some writing, because, I mean, damn:
Oh for Christ’s sweet sake — and no, that is most assuredly not a reference to our egomaniacal-shitheel Current Squatter:
Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it,” Obama said.
A history lesson for the Narcissist In Chief: Mr Obama, The Berlin Wall was brought down by better men than you could ever dream of being. Ronald Reagan was a LEADER, and a great one; you aren’t even fit to stand in the shadow of the truck that carried his jockstrap to the laundry. Ronald Reagan played a very large part in the liberation of millions; everything you do will only serve to enslave and impoverish a formerly free and prosperous people. Reagan’s “Mr Gorbachev, open this gate…Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” will ring like a bell — or a call to arms — in the ears of liberty-loving men and women down through the ages. Your vapid, droning “uhh…umm..ahh…let me be absolutely clear…uhhh…umm…there are those who would have us…uhh..duhhh…drooooolllll…ME! ME! ME!” will be forgotten before you leave the national stage, which glorious day cannot come soon enough.
You refused to go to the wall because you don’t identify in the least with the courage, integrity, and dedication to freedom that liberated those millions from the tyrannical system you espouse, and you don’t consider it a victory, but a defeat. Because for you and your despicable ilk, that’s exactly what it was. You’re far more interested in building more of those walls, right here in America That Was, than you’ll ever be in tearing any of them down. The walls you’re building may not be of brick and mortar; they’re built instead of strangling overregulation, government encroachment, stifling of all dissenting opinion, and the thousand different slimy tentacles of a federal behemoth that has far outgrown its original mandate, its legitimacy, and its claim to the loyalty of its subjects. But they serve the same purpose. The so-called “soft” tyranny you’re perpetrating is still tyranny.
You are a disgrace, a loathsome toad. You are without honor, and without shame. You couldn’t even consider going to a commemoration of a truly historic event that promised you no spurious awards, or ill-gotten gelt for your Chicago cronies.
…
You are a sorry excuse for a President, a sorry excuse for an American, and a sorry excuse for a man. History will remember you neither kindly nor fondly. And it gives me no small satisfaction to know that of all the insults that could legitimately be hurled at you, that’s the only one that would ever really matter to you.
I just randomly deleted chunks so as not to quote the whole delicious thing.
Damn. Just damn.
And in case you think Mike’s being just a tad harsh, a tad overblown, this from Firehand, the other guy I want writing my blog for me:
But as he heads to Japan,Obama he promised a reporter that he will visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki sometime in his presidency.
Hey, visiting the ceremony of the falling of the Berlin Wall would have been uncomfortable for him; he probably wishes the Soviet Union was still operating and crushing freedom. Whereas if he goes to these cities he can make some references to how mean and nasty the US was to Japan, which would fit right in as a continuation of his Apology Tour.
Obama’s shame for the country he pretends lead has nothing on the shame and disgust many of us feel for him.
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