Patterico's Pontifications

9/19/2012

Sekrit Romney Video Sekritly Edited?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:52 pm



David Corn says the machine was turned off and then back on, but Kevin M. at Not Yet Europe begs to differ:

Mother Jones would have you believe that 1) the recording device suffered an unknown failure; 2) this was discovered and fixed; and 3) the device was either never budged in this process or it was placed down exactly in the same place afterwards.

I call [B.S.]. I have had electronic devices fail, sure, but it has never been so obvious that I could fix it without at least picking it up and looking to see why. Further, Corn[] isn’t an idiot, so this was obvious to him, too. He’s clearly lying and knew that the tape had been edited in a critical place right from the beginning.

Which makes this a fraud and that gap most certainly contains context that spoils the narrative.

Read the whole post for the full argument and evidence.

I’m not sure he’s right and I’m not sure it matters, but it’s worth considering — and I don’t trust David Corn to give me the straight scoop.

I still think the context for what Romney said was pretty clear, and he can still defend the basic points he made.

312 Responses to “Sekrit Romney Video Sekritly Edited?”

  1. Ding.

    Patterico (83033d)

  2. Corn certainly has not given us reason to trust him.

    SPQR (2c7c53)

  3. i ate corn
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    pdbuttons (2e58a9)

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    pdbuttons (2e58a9)

  5. complete sentence number one
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    pdbuttons (2e58a9)

  6. No, it does not matter:

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/19/cbs-poll-gop-voters-getting-more-enthusiastic-about-election-huge-edge-over-democrats

    Come hell or high water it won’t matter either, but 57% are not voting for the Incumbent.

    All Romany really needs now is a pulse. MN is a tough pickup, our economy is hanging in there despite $3.90 gas. But turnout and undervotes should give Willard a margin of a few thousand.

    The Alien leaves too many cold.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  7. It’s a trap. If Romney says something that appears to explain that’s different, the mistake in the recording will be discovered to be “correctable”.

    htom (412a17)

  8. They missed Romney singing the Internationale.

    beerandcoffee (15c8d4)

  9. “I still think the context for what Romney said was pretty clear, and he can still defend the basic points he made.”

    LOL And you say you’re not funny.

    “I think we ought to let him hang there, let him twist slowly, slowly in the wind.” – John Erlichman, Republican, counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Richard Nixon.

    “FIDO says it couldn’t be any better.”- NASA PAO, STS-1, 4/14/81

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  10. Why does IMP keep reminding everyone that Obama ate Fido?!?!?

    JD (dbb735)

  11. That did go away didn’t it? Too bad they couldn’t base the RNC on it, and had to go with the ‘didn’t build that’ trope.

    beerandcoffee (15c8d4)

  12. “Why does IMP keep reminding everyone that Obama ate Fido?!?!?”

    JD – The funny thing is in his typical braggadocio, DCSCA has the quote attribution wrong regarding the wind speed for the landing of the first Space Shuttle Mission. The words came from CAPCOM, not a PAO. DCSCA Fail.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  13. I’m not sure I’m right and I’m not sure it matters, either, but I’d bet more on the first than the second.

    If this were a authorized recording, I’d accept that the camera was set in such a way that this might work, but as a surreptitious recording, supposedly fixed in haste it doesn’t pass the laugh test. I am encouraged that several video experts tell me that everything indicates an edit.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  14. I am sure that anything that’s missing would simply be something that separated “deadbeat” from “not paying taxes”, as that is the attack the Dems are trying make with the SocSec recipients. Who all vote.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  15. “I am sure that anything that’s missing would simply be something that separated “deadbeat” from “not paying taxes”, as that is the attack the Dems are trying make with the SocSec recipients.”

    Kevin M. – I think Sammy filled in the missing parts of the tape on a few other threads based on his mad skilz if you want to update your post, but I’m not sure which version is final or if anyone can interpret it.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  16. It clearly was stopped and started again, but that’s not he same thing as an after-the-fact edit.

    Now there was an after the fact edit – but later NBC (and who else?) got more.

    The camera was probably in a fixed location, disguised as something else, or hidden in something else. A button could easily have been inadvertently pushed, but more likely someone stopped the recording, not to edit it but to conserve what he feared was limited recording time. This is exactly how people act in such a circumstance. They didn’t know how long it was going to run

    It stops at the wrong point (at the middle of a sentence, that. however, you can easily finish) for an edit that was intended to fool anyone into thinking it was complete. But it is exactly the right place if, while you are recording, you don’t want to duplicate what you have, because maybe then you’ll have no space for something good later.

    It’s possible there is still a whole section that is missing, but the recording is not likely to have been continuous.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  17. Good Allah, Sammy.

    JD (dbb735)

  18. Comment by daleyrocks — 9/19/2012 @ 8:56 pm

    I think Sammy filled in the missing parts of the tape on a few other threads based on his mad skilz if you want to update your post, but I’m not sure which version is final or if anyone can interpret it.

    I really can’t figure out what possibly could have been worth editing out. The only things I can think of are:

    1) Mitt says something which undoes, in some way, the impression created by what he said earlier. Now you’d only need to omit a shorts segment.

    2) Mitt speaks super coherently and eloquently.

    3) Mitt makes a convincing argument for his election, or a convincing argument against Obama.

    4) Mitt says one thing some place which is so significant that then all references to what he said have to be edited out.

    5) Mitt mentions some scandal, perhaps in UNITE HERE.

    But I don;t think any of these are likely.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  19. Comment by JD — 9/19/2012 @ 9:24 pm

    Good Allah, Sammy.

    Theres no reason to chop it off at the point where it was chopped off, unless the recording itself was chopped off there.

    If it was edited after the fact, it would be much better to stop at what looks like a pause, and there;’s no reason at all to pick that spot

    On the other hand, if somebody stopped and started the recording, that’s a good place to stop because Mitt is just repeating himself.

    Why stop at all? Fear that the recording would run out of time.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  20. Read Kevin’s post.

    JD (dbb735)

  21. What did I say about mad skilz?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  22. There is always the possibility that the Romney campaign recorded the entire session. If they didn’t, I bet they do in the future.

    BarSinister (664312)

  23. Via zerohedge, part of the recorded, unedited sekrits:

    “Romney: [The] former head of Goldman Sachs, John Whitehead, was also the former head of the New York Federal Reserve. And I met with him, and he said as soon as the Fed stops buying all the debt that we’re issuing—which they’ve been doing, the Fed’s buying like three-quarters of the debt that America issues. He said, once that’s over, he said we’re going to have a failed Treasury auction, interest rates are going to have to go up. We’re living in this borrowed fantasy world, where the government keeps on borrowing money. You know, we borrow this extra trillion a year, we wonder who’s loaning us the trillion? The Chinese aren’t loaning us anymore. The Russians aren’t loaning it to us anymore. So who’s giving us the trillion? And the answer is we’re just making it up. The Federal Reserve is just taking it and saying, “Here, we’re giving it.” It’s just made up money, and this does not augur well for our economic future. You know, some of these things are complex enough it’s not easy for people to understand, but your point of saying, bankruptcy usually concentrates the mind.”

    Yesterday Japan injected 10 Trillion yen, roughly $100 Billion, into the money supply to knock down the yen’s FX price. The effect lasted 9 hours.

    What do you suppose the world’s central bankers will do as Bennie forces the USD lower in FX price, making everyone elses prices higher?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  24. John Erlichman

    — Disco Stu and his spellcheck fail spew!
    [It’s “Ehrlichman”, IMP]

    Icy (981d7a)

  25. 23. Cont. 70% of US Debt is in short-term notes, 5 years or less, earning as little as zero interest.

    That is all people feel safe in buying. Operation Twist, ending recently and now being continued as QE3, buys the worlds’ long term bills in return for more short term notes.

    Partially due to drought, but mainly central bank devaluations, food prices are expected to jump 15% over the next year, beginning now.

    Bennies’ balance sheet, $2.7 Trillion and rising $90 Billion per month thru 2012, is worth pennies on the dollar. Bend over people, you’re getting it hard.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  26. * It may not make difference in law if this was amateurish and unplanned, or done by a professional technician who worked in the movie business, but it makes a whole lot of difference in what happens to the person(s) who did it.

    I’m so ahead of the story…..but why? Are there n lawyers here?

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  27. I am encouraged that several video experts tell me that everything indicates an edit.
    Comment by Kevin M — 9/19/2012 @ 8:44 pm

    I especially liked the point the fellow made that the auto-focus would/could account for the slight difference when you toggle between the two images. That makes more sense than nearly perfect repositioning.

    There is always the possibility that the Romney campaign recorded the entire session. If they didn’t, I bet they do in the future.
    Comment by BarSinister — 9/20/2012 @ 6:56 am

    Good point. While technology is making it easier to have glimpses of unintended flubs, it is also making it more dangerous for people to try to distort with selective editing.
    On the other hand, if people don’t care about the truth, like ignoring in-your-face lies on Letterman, then there is still a problem.

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  28. So it turns out the two retired SEALs that took up weapons in the Benghazi attack weren’t on the security detail after all. They were consultants who jumped in when the Ambassador was cornered and defenseless.

    I think the fact that Romney disrespects the 47% playing the system as typical humans everywhere, implying that they don’t care where other peoples’ money is wasted, so completely trumps our government wasting its own people in careless disregard that Romany is surely toast.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  29. I don’t know what kind of camera was used, but there are remote controls for cameras that could be use to start and stop a camera without touching it.

    Like this (purchase through Pat’s Amazon link!)

    http://www.amazon.com/Canon-Wireless-Remote-Control-Cameras/dp/B00004WCIC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348152311&sr=8-1&keywords=digital+camera+with+remote+control

    Pious Agnostic (7c3d5b)

  30. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 7:38 am

    70% of US Debt is in short-term notes, 5 years or less, earning as little as zero interest.

    That is all people feel safe in buying.

    No, no no. Nobody can buy what the Treasury isn’t selling. Longer term debt would cost more interest but it could be sold. And at not that much more higher rates.

    The debt is tilted so much toward short term obligations because the Obama Administration wants to keep the deficit as low as possible. That is a very bad policy. Pressure to avoid raising the debt ceiling only encourages more very short term borrowing.

    Operation Twist, ending recently and now being continued as QE3, buys the worlds’ long term bills in return for more short term notes.

    Partially due to drought, but mainly central bank devaluations, food prices are expected to jump 15% over the next year, beginning now.

    Bennies’ balance sheet, $2.7 Trillion and rising $90 Billion per month thru 2012, is worth pennies on the dollar. Bend over people, you’re getting it hard.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  31. 30. Sorry, Sammy, but the Fed is currently buying, within a couple weeks of auction, >80% of all US Debt maturing in 7 years or more.

    It has a price, that is manifestly depressed by the knowledge that it can safely be passed on to a sucker with deep pockets.

    Moreover, 50% of that debt, passes into hands which earn commissions on resale to the Fed.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  32. Think about it for a sec, a 30-year T-Bill is currently paying maybe 3.7% if held to maturity. Bennies’ “core inflation”, producer prices with energy costs extracted, is running roughly 2%. Why would anyone buy those products if not to sell them quickly?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  33. Comment by BarSinister — 9/20/2012 @ 6:56 am

    There is always the possibility that the Romney campaign recorded the entire session.

    No, I don’t think so, although lawyers for people who might come under investigation might offer that idea in the hopes of heading off an investigation. Then, you’d only have to find out who stole or illicitly copied the tape.

    But I think the Romney campaign would abide by he law. In Florida, that means letting everybody know it’s being recorded and it would probably be stated on the tape. And that didn’t happen.

    If they recorded it themselves, the chances of whatever he said getting out would be multiplied, and Romney is very much afraid of making flubs. he made several here including some that weren’t picked up.

    The West Bank does not share a common border with Syria.

    He also said pre-1967 Israel was only seven miles wide somewhere near Tel Aviv and one of the people there had to correct him to 9 miles.

    If they didn’t, I bet they do in the future.

    I bet not. 100 pennies maybe.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  34. Moreover, 50% of that debt, passes into hands which earn commissions on resale to the Fed.
    Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 7:54 am

    Where can I apply for a job doing that??

    MD in Philly (3d3f72)

  35. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 7:54 am

    0. Sorry, Sammy, but the Fed is currently buying, within a couple weeks of auction, >80% of all US Debt maturing in 7 years or more.

    The Fed tries not to buy anything with credit risk. They are trying to reduce longer term interest rates because banks aren’t lending.

    It’s not that debt can’t be sold.

    It has a price, that is manifestly depressed by the knowledge that it can safely be passed on to a sucker with deep pockets.

    The fed is now setting the price. They are trying to flatten the yield curve, but that doesn’t mean it coudn;t be sold at all at a higher price.

    In principle, nobody should buy debt maturing more than a few years from now – only dividend yielding stocks in a business that can withstand inflation.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  36. 33. “The West Bank does not share a common border with Syria.” Jordan lost it in the ’67 war.

    Syria lost the Golan Heights.

    The Oslo accords guaranteed the Palis a government for land, the extent of which, to be negotiated. In return, the Palis acknowledge Israel’s right to existence, in peace.

    The Palis want out.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  37. I mean sold at a higher rate. That’s a lower price for bonds.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  38. 35. “The fed is now setting the price.”

    Only in its promise to buy, the market sets the price. The Treasury announces an auction, the maturity and size. Bids are taken by Direct and Indirect purchasers.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  39. 35. “They are trying to reduce longer term interest rates because banks aren’t lending.”

    Not exactly related by cause and effect. The MBS purchases are an attempt to spur lending. They take bad debts off the books and raise bank reserves. The Fed currently has $1.7 Trillion in bank reserves it is paying 0.25% to the banks for holding, which originated in the Feds purchase of MBS.

    Purchase of US Debt helps mortgage rates directly only because traditionally they are tied to the price of the 10-year T-Bill. That connection is loosening as we speak beginning a couple of months back.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  40. 33. “The West Bank does not share a common border with Syria.”

    But Mitt Romney said it did. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I think he was saying a Palestinian state just east of the main part of Israel might become another Jordan, but there was also a little bit of a chance it could become another Syria, but later I realized that his remarks were premised on the idea that the West Bank has a small border with Syria.

    MITT ROMNEY: The other side of the West Bank, the other side of what would be this new Palestinian state, would either be Syria at one point or– or Jordan.

    I was thinking he meant what was on the other side of the Israeli border. But he meant the eastern border of the Palestinian state!! (nobody assumes the Palestinian state would include any territory that is now part of Jordan, and nobody has ever proposed any land swap that would take the Palestinian state to the Israeli-Syrian border. Topologically, everybody assumes it would only include what is now called the West Bank, even if a little bit of land was swapped near the Green Line.)

    I wondered so much at this statement that I went to an Atlas just make sure I wasn’t wrong right, and yes, the West Bank still shares a border only with Israel and Jordan. At a certain point, the Jordan River becomes the boundary between pre-1967 Israel and Jordan.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  41. More from Mitt Romney:

    And– and of course the Iranians would want to do through the West Bank exactly what they did through Lebanon. What they did– into Gaza. Which is the Iranians would wanna bring missiles and armament into the West Bank and potentially threaten Israel.

    People in Israel must have been warning Mitt Romney about this, but it wasn’t premised on the West Bank, like Lebanon, sharing a common border with Syria!! It was premised on smuggling.

    So Israel of course would have to say, “That can’t happen. We’ve got to keep the Iranians from bringing weaponry into the West Bank.” Well, that means that who, the Israelis, are gonna– are gonna– patrol the border between Jordan, Syria and– and this new Palestinian nation?

    There’s a place where Jordan, Syria and the West Bank meet?

    Mitt Romney thought so.

    Oh, the Palestinians would say, “No way. We’re an independent country. You can’t– you can’t bor– you know, guard our border with other Arab nations.”

    Meaning the non-existant border between the West Bank and Syria.

    Nobody caught this!

    I’m so ahead of John Batchelor, it’s scary!

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  42. Sammy, in other words, Romney was correct to say Syria or Jordan. You insist it’s Jordan… well, Romney said that it could be Jordan, so he was right. Borders change over there a lot, and there’s no real certainty to where the Palestinian state would be and which states would give up territory for it.

    I also think the ‘seven miles’ vs your ‘nine miles’ does not constitute a flub. No one cares about that.

    But you are onto something. Romney was not speaking precisely when he made these comments. He was relaxed. No doubt the 47% term was not intended to be precise either. Perhaps he meant ‘a really large segment of this country’ rather than any specific number, and simply misspoke.

    As for your claim that there is no reason for it to be chopped off as it was, we can’t know that if we don’t know what was cut. Also, the cut could be made cleverly (backed up into the prior sentence enough that there is no hint as to what was excluded, and also so folks like you find the timing to prove it wasn’t cut at all). Game theory.

    Dustin (73fead)

  43. Via HA, Conroy at RealClear:

    “A more likely strategy for Romney to survive, should he lose Ohio, would be for him to hang onto Virginia and then pick off either Iowa or Wisconsin — states Obama won by double digits in 2008.

    Iowa affords a relatively modest six electoral votes to the winner but has been a major focus of the Obama campaign lately. (The RCP Average shows the president with a razor-thin 0.2 percent lead.) He took a three-day bus tour of the state last month and Vice President Biden has also traveled there frequently.”

    On the premise that OH will actually be close, VA and WI are going R&R, IA might be close but no closer than MN. MI and PA will actually be more interesting than any of the foregoing.

    In the heartland only IL is safe for Ogabe, and even there it should concern him but for the bad news elsewhere. Blowing time and money in IL would be a flag of surrender.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  44. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 8:07 am

    Jordan lost it in the ’67 war.

    The West Bank. The West Bank is that part of the Palestinian mandate not incorporated into Israel that is not continguous with that part of the Palestinian mandate not incorporated into israel that borders Egypt.

    Syria lost the Golan Heights.

    Later on, after the 1973 war, Henry Kissinger negotiated a disengagement agreement that altered the boundaries a little from what they were 1967-1973. Hezbollah , in order to have a cause of war with Israel, is claiming a small piece of the Golan Heights (Shabaa Farms) really belongs to Lebanon and not to Syria. Syria, by the way,m has never defined a border with Lebanon, I believe. However in all the agreements it is internationally recognized to be part of Syria, and Israel capturedit from Syria and not Lebanon and Israel couldn’t just give it to Lebanon. There may be some military strategic issues as well.

    The Oslo accords guaranteed the Palis a government for land, the extent of which, to be negotiated. In return, the Palis acknowledge Israel’s right to existence, in peace.

    Now Abbas called for a discussion about tearing up the Oslo agreement.

    The Palis want out.

    Abbas is just trying not to get assassinated, that’s all.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  45. gary – The Fed purchases of Treasury bonds and ballooning of its balance sheet has been going on for a while. It is scary and it’s nice to see it getting more attention. Of course the Fed doesn’t want an audit!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  46. Sammy – The point is that if the Palis and Arabs actually wanted peace, there would be peace. They don’t, so we continual, circle jerks, but everybody is afraid to recognize it.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  47. 45. And I was greatly reassured to see that Romney understands all that. Yes, he is supposed to, but in the run up to clinching he never gave evidence.

    The ‘EU disintegration hypothetical’ comments I can therefore discount as well.

    Now if he’d only jettison half his consultants, like Norm Coleman and Tim Pawlenty for starters.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  48. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 8:29 am

    On the premise that OH will actually be close, VA and WI are going R&R, IA might be close but no closer than MN. MI and PA will actually be more interesting than any of the foregoing.

    The greatest mystery in American politics: Why Pennsylvania is considered a swing state.

    Romney, in all probability needs to carry Florida.

    It could be a real squeaker and he might need Iowa and New Hampshire (and Wisconsin)

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  49. 46. Right now the Israelis are their primary means of support. Their Arab relatives, not so much.

    Doubtless life as no one’s client goverened by Hamas or Fatah or neither does not appeal.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  50. The a few faithless electors would vote for a third party candidate and deprive the Republican ticket of an Electoral College majority, while anyway Wisconsin (and maybe Iowa) remained in dispute.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  51. _____________________________________________

    And while the MSM actually has the gall to cluck its tongue and wag its finger about some big-whoop-de-doo issue involving Romney, the nitwit in the White House is doing things like this…

    israelnationalnews.com, 9-20-12:

    Tensions between Israel and the current U.S. administration further deteriorated last week when President Barack Obama refused to meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his upcoming visit to New York, where he will address the UN General Assembly. The White House insisted that the meeting would not take place due to the president’s pressing “campaign obligations” which would take him out of New York.

    Obama has further snubbed Israeli leaders by refusing to meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who will also be in New York next week, WND news station reported.

    Barak is scheduled to attend the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative, an annual summit of high-powered political and business leaders scheduled to overlap with the U.N. General Assembly. While the President has not cited any pressing “campaign obligations” that would take him out of New York during Barak’s visit, he has, nonetheless, refused a meeting, WND reported.

    While Obama will not meet any Israeli leader during their visits to New York, he will, however, find time to meet with Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi. The president is also expected to meet Libya’s new prime minister, Mustafa Abushugar, though the meeting has not yet been announced, according to WND.

    Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney is also expected to attend the Clinton summit and efforts are reportedly underway to arrange a meeting between the GOP nominee and both Netanyahu and Barak, during their time in New York.

    Mark (94ed7f)

  52. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 8:29 am

    And I was greatly reassured to see that Romney understands all that. Yes, he is supposed to, but in the run up to clinching he never gave evidence.

    Understands what? The danger of Iran?

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  53. 50. Three votes? Not going to be that close. Sorry. Bamster is known by one and all to be a celebrity cipher, offered without apology.

    His approval on foreign policy fell furthest among Indies this past week, to 41%.

    He won’t do better than 225 EV, losing MI and/or PA will be that much worse. Harrisburg defaults in October.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  54. 52. Not Iran, but(and Ryan clearly understands) a 100% rise in the cost of financing the National Debt will occur within a year’s time.

    Bennie has guaranteed a foreign exchange war. See Japan at 23.

    This week China, holding $200 Billion in BOJ debt, insinuated a bond war. Existential peril.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  55. 52. Worse – Reportedly, the Obama Administration has ordered an evaluation of the idea of releasing Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the leader of the group responsible for the original 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as a goodwill gesture to Egypt.

    O eyes ‘blind sheik’ release/GOPers blast idea to appease Egypt (New York Post)

    Officials: Obama Considering Release of ‘Blind Sheik’ (Foxnews.com)

    I am not making this up, and neither I think is Rupert Murdoch, although its possible this story is a campaign dirty trick, and Obama’s going to deny it and the sources will be exposed as frauds.

    But…

    There’s a new cause in the Arab/Moslem world: Free Omar Abdul Rahman.

    That was the official cause of the people who killed the Ambassador in Libya. Morsi or the Moslem Brotherhood seems to be behind it also.

    Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman was an Egyptian.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  56. 53. Cont. Have a gander:

    http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/university-of-colorado-model/

    Now obviously local knowledge may quibble with a handful of states but the effect is spread evenly. I might color PA blue and IA red but D*ckhead won’t get closer than that even if the Israelis pull the trigger and we come out smelling like a rose.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  57. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 8:59 am

    #

    52. Not Iran, but(and Ryan clearly understands) a 100% rise in the cost of financing the National Debt will occur within a year’s time.

    I don’t think Ryan has said that.

    I also think the cost of financing the national debt is more likely to rise with Romney as president than Obama, because he seems to be aginstthe Roosevelt-Truman policy of keeping interest rates low. There is no real choice now. They have to be kept low.

    Bennie has guaranteed a foreign exchange war.

    And Romney wants the yuan revalued up. That is, he wants us to lose that war, it appears.

    This week China, holding $200 Billion in BOJ debt, insinuated a bond war. Existential peril.

    The new Chinese leader, should he take over, will be nothing but trouble.

    Sammy Finkelman (71800b)

  58. 57. Actually there’s video of Ryan bludgeoning TTT Geithner over “bond vigilantes” before committee.

    Last seen at HA. To the degree these vids expose Romany as a conservative and he steps up to defend, the result will be

    entirely

    to his benefit.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  59. 57. “And Romney wants the yuan revalued up. That is, he wants us to lose that war, it appears.”

    Check that. Revaluing the yuan up against a basket of the world’s currencies is manifestly not winning a race to the bottom.

    Have a care.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  60. 57. “the cost of financing the national debt is more likely to rise with Romney as president than Obama”

    A certainty either way. Now, granted, Bennie has played his hand out in such a protracted manner he has made me, and the ‘experts’ I rely on, an alarmist many times over.

    But the endgame is fully launched in October with Spain opening the pocket book and nada, moscas, to show all. Either they default or accept ECB bailout and conditions, and are launched into depression in either case.

    Greece is due, like today, to pay, probably getting an extension and no money.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  61. 48. “The greatest mystery in American politics: Why Pennsylvania is considered a swing state.”

    Because they, unlike NJ, have swung. Electric utilities are closing PA power plants, Big Coal is being shut down. Just as in WI union workers note when Dhimmis cut them out of jobs.

    Undervoting and turnout will be critical and weather could be a factor. PA is probably going Dhimmi but who shows to vote will be the proof.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  62. “A certainty either way. Now, granted, Bennie has played his hand out in such a protracted manner he has made me, and the ‘experts’ I rely on, an alarmist many times over.”

    gary – Agreed. Keeping interest rates artificially low is not a long-term winning strategy, it helped give us the housing crisis. Unwinding is likely to be better absorbed during a Romney administration than a clueless Obama administration tossing out short-term knee jerk fixes left and right.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  63. 62. Indeed pain is unavoidable. Too bad we didn’t just let AIG sink or swim. Europe was a gonner anyway.

    We’d actually be in recovery now.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  64. @12- ROFLMAOPIP Except you’re wrong, as usual Dailyrocks. FAIL. Idiot.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  65. @12- ROFLMAOPIP Except you’re wrong, as usual Dailyrocks. FAIL. Idiot.
    Comment by DCSCA — 9/20/2012 @ 11:50 am

    — So, what, are you just gonna lie now?

    Transcript, as published in the April 14, 1981 Space News Roundup, the official newspaper of the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center:
    CAPCOM Airspeed 271 knots. FIDO says it couldn’t be any better.
    PAO Eleven thousand feet.

    A PDF of the original publication is archived on the Johnson Space Center website.

    Icy (981d7a)

  66. – So, what, are you just gonna lie now?

    Yes, duh.

    Dustin (73fead)

  67. Now Abbas called for a discussion about tearing up the Oslo agreement.

    The Oslo Accords are, as Arafat put it, caduc.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  68. DCSCA – You are a moron.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  69. Disco Stu – Snort my taint, buffoon.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  70. True, Syria doesn’t border Samaria (the northern part of what the western media insist on calling “the west bank”); but it’s less than 25 miles away, which is close enough that even a reasonably educated person can’t automatically be expected to know. It’s on par with being able to name the president of Fiji.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  71. Dailyrocks. FAIL.

    — YOU said it, Disco Stu. If you’re gonna lie to daleyrocks, you could at least spell his name correctly.

    Icy (981d7a)

  72. DCSCA, as the International Man of Parody, you have a responsibility to say dumb things. Carry on.

    SPQR (6f30cb)

  73. Let’s think about the missing time on the tape – is there anything Romney could have said that can undo the damage made by the rest of the comments?

    If something was edited out, it’s probably the coup de grace, saved for the very end of the race. This is not the same as a context-changing edit or overdub, this is a missing middle portion.

    What could he possibly have said that the left would want concealed? Did he apologize for everything else he said before and after?

    Mahalia Cab (a6f7dc)

  74. Did he apologize for everything else he said before and after?

    I would certainly hope not.

    Perhaps just noting the 47% figure wasn’t precise?

    Otherwise, isn’t Romney obviously on the money? There are a lot of democrats who are moochers and don’t care about good tax policy because they don’t pay income tax anyway. Obama has them and there’s no reason for a patriotic politician to cater to them.

    Dustin (73fead)

  75. @#12- a postscript to #64: The NASA PAO quoted is the late Jack Riley, who passed in 2003- one of several on staff at MCC/Houston at that time. Riley was an old timer from the Apollo days and the PAO during the first moonwalk (the CAPCOM was astronaut Bruce McCandless) and for several of the early shuttle flights, including the EDL for STS-1. The CAPCOM for the STS-1 EDL was astronaut Joe Allen.

    “The funny thing is in his typical braggadocio, DCSCA has the quote attribution wrong regarding the wind speed for the landing of the first Space Shuttle Mission. The words came from CAPCOM, not a PAO. DCSCA Fail” Funny, indeed, idiot. Always a pleasure to educate another ignorant conservative. =eyeroll= And of course:

    “FIDO says it couldn’t be any better.”- NASA PAO, JACK RILEY, STS-1, 4/14/81

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  76. Obama ate Fido

    JD (dbb735)

  77. @65/66/72- The transcript is inaccurate, you incredibly lazy, flaming IDIOT. You should listen to the real time audio whicH is clear as a bell, IDIOT. The individual who states that is JACK RILEY not Joe Allen, IDIOT. Riley was the MCC PAO for the STS-1 EDL. Allen was the CAPCOM. Allen did not say that. Riley did. IDIOT. daileyrocks is wrong. IDIOT. YOU are wrong. IDIOT.

    Apology not necessary. IDIOTS. The pleasure of correcting incredibly ignorant and idiotic conservatves knows no boinds. Yes, indeed:

    “FIDO says it couldn’t be any better.”- NASA PAO, Jack Riley, STS-1, 4/14/81

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  78. DCSCA seems to be easily distracted and wrong.

    Dustin (73fead)

  79. Don’t burst a vessel DCSCA

    elissa (549857)

  80. 69. “Snort my taint, buffoon.”

    Having hot dogs again tonite, eh rocks? You poor, poor 47%-er.

    “FIDO says it couldn’t be any better.” – NASA PAO, STS-1, 4/14/81

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  81. @78 Speak for yourself,Dunny. Have a hot dog.

    @79- And if DCSCA does, it’s covered under Obamacare.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  82. “You should listen to the real time audio whicH is clear as a bell,”

    Disco Stu – Got a link, lumpy?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  83. The International Man of Parody is a master of what he does, self parody.

    SPQR (6f30cb)

  84. @82- Find it yourself, IDIOT. DCSCA has the real time video/audio feed from 4/14/81, you incredibly ignorant IDIOT.This just doesn’t get any better.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  85. IMP has the fry wig and floppy shoes on again.

    SPQR (6f30cb)

  86. IMP is talking about itself in the 3rd person, again. Never gets not funny. And ALL CAPS!

    JD (dbb735)

  87. “Find it yourself, IDIOT.”

    Disco Stu – I’ve got the transcript, which I assume is right, because you have no supplied any evidence to the contrary, buttplug.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  88. @87- The transcript is inaccurate you incredibly LAZY IDIOT. finmd the audio/fideo feed- it’s as clear as a bell about 2 minutes before touchdown, YOU LAZY FRIGGING IDIOT.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  89. ZOMFGWTF

    JD (dbb735)

  90. The transcript is inaccurate you incredibly LAZY IDIOT.

    DON’T PANIC

    Dustin (73fead)

  91. @87-Never ASSUME, IDIOT ROCKS. The ‘transcript’ is inaccurate,incorrect, aka WRONG. Find the audio/video feed you lazy, stupid IDIOT. The IDIOT DALEYROCKS is talking buttplugs now– having cheese dogs, instead, tonight, eh… you lazy and incredibly ignorant IDIOT. After you find and listen to the audio/video feed, you can dessert on humble pie. No apology necessary, IDIOT.

    Because:

    “FIDO says it doesn’t get any better than this.” NASA PAO JACK RILEY (<– for the education if the IDIOT daleyrocks), STS-1, 4/14/81

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  92. Disco Stu – Don’t stroke out on us, geezer.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  93. Disco Stu – Why haven’t you gotten NASA to correct the transcript if this is SOOOOOOOOO important to you, cheese dick?

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  94. The IDIOT DALEYROCKS is talking buttplugs now– having cheese dogs, instead, tonight, eh… you lazy and incredibly ignorant IDIOT.

    Is anyone able to read this without laughing?

    Dustin (73fead)

  95. teh CHEESEDOGS, tonight, you INCREDIBLY LAZY MONSTER

    Dustin (73fead)

  96. Does DCSCA realize that Obamacare can’t help him if the aneurysm is fatal?

    elissa (549857)

  97. FIDO says,”don’t eat me, Barack”

    JD (dbb735)

  98. @92- Rest easy, IDIOT DALEYROCKS, CONSERVATIVES are coverd under Obamacare, too. You made the IDIOTIC error @12 smart-azzin’ around and it just ‘doesn’t get any better than this,’ you incredibly lazy IDIOT.

    “FIDO says it doesn’t get any better than this.” – NASA PAO Jack Riley, <- FOR THE EDUCATION OF THE IDIOT DALEYROCKS) 4/14/81

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  99. Dustin – if you can read IMP without laughing, you have no sense of humor. Comedy gold.

    JD (dbb735)

  100. I am sure that IMP wrote the transcript himself 30 yrs ago and put the error in just to fool us idiots…

    SPQR (6f30cb)

  101. Comment by daleyrocks — 9/20/2012 @ 8:39 am

    47.Sammy – The point is that if the Palis and Arabs actually wanted peace, there would be peace. They don’t, so we continual, circle jerks, but everybody is afraid to recognize it.

    It’s a really big scam. Arab countries like Saudi Arabia explain their non-co-operation about anything by saying their people are prejudiced against the United States because there is no Israeli-Arab peace – then they secretly pressure Palestinians not to make peace or even come close.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  102. @100- RU,SPQR?

    Priceless.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  103. 57. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 9:10 am

    Have a gander:

    http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/university-of-colorado-model/

    Now obviously local knowledge may quibble with a handful of states but the effect is spread evenly. I might color PA blue and IA red but D*ckhead won’t get closer than that even if the Israelis pull the trigger and we come out smelling like a rose.

    They’ve got New Mexico and Nevada blue (but have Romney winning Colorado) and not only Wisconsin but also Michigan

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  104. You know that lip sincing youtube account, “Bad Lip Reading“?

    They could save a lot of time by using DCSCA’s comments for scripts of random nonsense.

    Dustin (73fead)

  105. @93- The IDIOT daleyrocks is too lazy to source the original material before trying to hot-dog and smart-azz around. IDIOT. Priceless. Because:

    “FIDO says it doesn’t get any better than this.” – NASA PAO Jack Riley,(<- for the education of the IDIOT daleyrocks) 4/14/81

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  106. For his next trick, the International Man of 0arody will take us backstage to show us the real feud between cereal pitchmen, Snap, Crackle and Pop.

    SPQR (6f30cb)

  107. 57. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/20/2012 @ 9:10 am

    Have a gander:

    http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/university-of-colorado-model/

    Now obviously local knowledge may quibble with a handful of states but the effect is spread evenly. I might color PA blue and IA red but D*ckhead won’t get closer than that even if the Israelis pull the trigger and we come out smelling like a rose.

    Maine is neither red nor blue in that model but green. What’s green? A split state?

    (I see the model assigns one electoral vote from Maine to Romney. Maine has only 4 electoral votes – it’s hard to split. The other state that votes by district is Nebraska. It has 5 Electoral votes. In 2008, Obama carried one Congressional district – the one that included Omaha.)

    Iowa goes Democrat, but Minnesota goes Republican?

    It seems to me they probably have more accurate information on some states than others.

    Romney carries all the Bush 2004 states, as well as Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, except for Nevada, which he loses?? (Iowa and New Mexico went for Bush in the year 2000 but for Kerry in 2004. New Hampshire swiotched the otehr way.

    Otherwise the Electoral College results were identical in 2004 and 2000, but Bush gained 7 electoral votes from reapportionment, and 8 Electoral votes from the switches because:

    Iowa [7] + New Mexico [5] = 12 – New Hamphire [4] = 8.

    So Bush got 271+15=286 in 2004.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  108. FIDO wishes IMP would quit molesting him.

    JD (dbb735)

  109. @105 And you could save a lot more time by not wasting it watching YouTube clips, you poor and ignored 47%-er.

    Just priceless. Conservatives are passing the word. The boats won’t hold 47%:

    “AHOY DOWN BALLOT! AHOY DOWN BALLOT!
    ABANDON MITT! ABANDON MITT!

    IT’S EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF! AS USUAL!”

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  110. Comment by Milhouse — 9/20/2012 @ 12:29 pm

    True, Syria doesn’t border Samaria (the northern part of what the western media insist on calling “the west bank”); but it’s less than 25 miles away, which is close enough that even a reasonably educated person can’t automatically be expected to know. It’s on par with being able to name the president of Fiji.

    If someone had not paid any attention to the matter, that might be so. But there’s a significant difference between almost having a border with a country and actually having a border. It probably makes a difference in the calculation of things that Jordan does not share a border with Egypt.

    May 2012 is rather late in the game to become familiar with things.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  111. Disco Stu – Slacker, Dan Rather would have gotten the allegedly incorrect transcript corrected.

    Fido says arf arf – Disco Stu the bumbling fool – 9/20/2012

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  112. “It’s a really big scam.”

    Sammy – Exactly. So once again the big problem the media had with Romney’s statement – he told the truth.

    OMG, we can’t have politicians telling the truth, the world might end!!!!!!!!

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  113. IMP hasn’t looked at the recent polls. Too busy buggering FIDO, which is only marginally better than getting eaten by Obama.

    JD (dbb735)

  114. Nonsense, Finkelman, as Syria must still be dealt with in any comprehensive agreements as they still influence factions in the PLO they were part of creating. And it is still more knowledge than Obama demonstrates of the region today, speedread briefings or no.

    SPQR (6f30cb)

  115. @112- The IDIOT DALEYROCKS again FAILS to source the ORIGINAL MATERIAL and admit its IDIOCY at trying to smart-azz around. There is nothing ‘alledged’ except by YOU, IDIOT DALEYROCKS, the shiftless and ASTONISHINGLY IGNORANT, IDIOT too LAZY to source the real time a/v feed.

    This is priceless. Because:

    “FIDO says it doesn’t get any better than this.” – NASA PAO, Jack Riley (<- for the benefit of the IDIOT DALEYROCKS), STS-1, 4/14/81.

    Enjoy that humble pie with those cheese dogs, you incredibly ignorant, 47%-er, Piglet.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  116. MEMO TO MITT’s CREW:

    The idiot daleyrocks demonstrates he’s a solid 47%-er and thereby doesn’t rate a seat in a boat.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  117. Disco Stu – Change your Depends. I can smell you from my house.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  118. DCSCA, you don’t seem to realize that no one is laughing with you. They are all laughing at you. You are the joke.

    SPQR (6f30cb)

  119. @114-

    FOX NEWS POLL HAS OBAMA LEADING ROMNEY BY 7%

    =yawn= Your lifeboat station is #7– unless you cop to being a 47%-er.

    Cling to the down ballots after he goes under– and avoid his suction. Because as we all know, he’s a candidate that REALLY sucks. It’s your only hope. Then book passage for 2016. There’s plenty of space aboard the SS Christie– and it clearly has a splendid buffet, 24/7.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  120. @119- ROFLMAO the joke is on you. We call it Mitt.

    Priceless.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  121. It’s a really big scam.”

    Comment by daleyrocks — 9/20/2012 @ 3:30 pm

    Sammy – Exactly. So once again the big problem the media had with Romney’s statement – he told the truth.

    OMG, we can’t have politicians telling the truth, the world might end!!!!!!!!

    Sometimes that’s the supposed problem with what Romney said. That includes the answer to a question by Brian Williams about the Olympics.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  122. Comment by SPQR — 9/20/2012 @ 3:33 pm

    Nonsense, Finkelman, as Syria must still be dealt with in any comprehensive agreements as they still influence factions in the PLO they were part of creating.

    Syria is important, but it doesn’t share a border with what is called the West bank. Romney was actually citing that imaginary border in his reasoning.

    You know very simply, Syria – well now Hamas is getting close to Egypt, but the boss of Hamas used to live in Syria. Syria can make a lot of trouble.

    And it is still more knowledge than Obama demonstrates of the region today, speedread briefings or no.

    In some ways, yes.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  123. 121. Comment by DCSCA — 9/20/2012 @ 3:57 pm

    Cling to the down ballots after he goes under– and avoid his suction. Because as we all know, he’s a candidate that REALLY sucks. It’s your only hope. Then book passage for 2016. There’s plenty of space aboard the SS Christie– and it clearly has a splendid buffet, 24/7.

    Well, you know Santorum and Jindal have already scheduled trips to Iowa, and their not campaigning for Romney.

    Here’s Santorum and Jindal:

    http://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2012/09/santorum-jindal-join-iowans-for-freedom-on-no-wiggins-bus-tour/

    Pleasant Hill, IOWA. – Former Pennsylvania Senator and 2012 Presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal are joining Iowans in their fight against judicial activism. Senator Santorum will join the tour for the Des Moines, Pella, and Ottumwa stops on Monday, Sept. 24 and Governor Jindal for stops on Wednesday, September 26.

    Christie’s campaigning for Steve King:

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/09/20/13989567-why-christie-is-cozying-up-to-king?lite

    Also there:

    Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was in Iowa last month to headline a GOP event hosted by the National Rifle Association.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  124. I think DCSCA is advocating the worst candidate.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  125. @124/125- Maybe. Maybe not, Sammy. Jeb may run. Jindal and Santorum are feckless fringers. Jeb has an appeal to the moderates, indies and Latinos. By 2016, the stink from Dubya’s crapfest will have degraded to mulch.

    Christie has the hearts and minds of the Right, right now, who matter and w/that powerbase can muster the financing. They all but begged him to run already. Jersey’s a small but tough state to manage. But the Jersey style doesn’t always play well west of Trenton. It’s an acquired taste– but effective none the less, badda-bing. He’d likely give Hillary a run- if his legs and heart hold out. And that will be an issue- he’s a walking coronary waiting to happen so given the stresses of a presidential run, shedding a few pounds would be in his interest– and the party’s as well.

    Still, if- or more likely when- HRC makes the run, she’d likely win. First woman presdient and all that. Two termer. Which works out just fine for Lyin’ Ryan, as in 12 years, he’ll only be a young 54. Matured, ‘Rand-ready’ to run.

    Of more immediate joy is Romney’s slo-mo trainwreck. Go back and review not just the transcripts (we know how they can be unreliable, don’t we) but the video of his on camera debating skills through the primaries. There were a lot of lesser, B, C & D list dweebs running against him and he still struggled to win. Even ol’Newt beat him – and got a fiscal carpetbombing for his trouble. In the debates themselves, for the most part, Romney stood there and smiled. Like a mannequin. And the few responses he gave were vague platitudes and noncommittal, blatant flip-flopping or callous commentary. His strategy. But the true reveal is that video and dismissing the 47%. That’s the real Mitt. The plutocrat jawboning w/his cronies at $50K a plate, fundraising. 50 days out and he was still fundraising. And he’s not going to suddenly acquire nimble, down-to-earth debating skills he clearly doesn’t have. Even Teddy whipped his azz back in the day. This guy’s a businessman through and through. A technocrat. Not a pol. And thinks ad buys will win the gig. He’s going to do real damage to the down ballot candidates. The smart ones are already distancing themselves from him. And it’s a good bet that after October 3, a lot more will smarten up join them.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  126. Romney will trounce Obama in the debates. He has an unfair advantage though, in Obama’s failure of a presidency. He has a long list of things to mention that Obama has no good answer for.

    Dustin (73fead)

  127. I always look to DCSCA for the best possible information and insight on the current Republican campaigns and strategy, the appeal of specific Republican young guns, and team R prospects for 2016.

    elissa (549857)

  128. elissa, on the internet, no one can hear you giggle as you type.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  129. Syria is important, but it doesn’t share a border with what is called the West bank. Romney was actually citing that imaginary border in his reasoning.

    Of course the fact is that the distance between the occupied Golan Heights and the northern corner of the West Bank, depending on how you measure, is on the order of magnitude of 15 miles, shorter than my daily commute to my office.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  130. “First woman presdient and all that.”

    Disco Stu – I thought Obama was the first woman president, no offense to women intended.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  131. Will someone please call teh ASPCA and have DCSCA put out of his misery PDQ?

    Colonel Haiku (7f832f)

  132. I thought Obama was the first woman president.

    — He’s the first “mom jeans” president.

    Icy (ef28b1)

  133. Actually, I find DCSCA amusing. I have some theories about him. One thing to keep in mind is his long, long history of Walter Mitty posts. Throughout, he claims to be influential and well to do—very much the 1%, despite his quite silly populist prattling (like Spiro Agnew, it is pretty easy to imitate his faux-clever writing style).

    Anyway, it is interesting to note that he has claimed to have a “lake house” and a “fleet” of collectable automobiles. So his “rich people are eeevvviiiillll” smears are as hypocritical and amusing as they are coming from that man-crone Letterman.

    Who, just to be clear, was boffing his female staff…while carrying on about how poorly the Right supposedly treats women.

    Getting back to DCSCA, perhaps he actually lives in a cardboard box near the rescue mission in San Diego. But if he is as rich and successful as he has portrayed himself…well…

    As for Romney’s debating skills, it doesn’t matter. The Kneepad Patrol of the MSM will defend their boyfriend—just as DCSCA will—no matter what. Though it was interesting to read all of DCSCA’s upset over Obama’s trashing of the space program. All better now, apparently.

    Anyway, Obama’s act on Univison was remarkable. When asked by a hispanic interviewer what he is least proud of in his administration, he said he hadn’t dealt with immigration reform.

    This, a week after an American ambassador was raped, suffocated, and dragged through the streets in front of a burning embassy.

    Or, I don’t know, a 16 trillion dollar deficit. Or, heck, >8 unemployment for how many months? Or…

    Well, you get the picture.

    It was despicable pandering, and the Kneepad Patrol people like DCSCA are, um, lapping it up.

    “Lyin’ Ryan” sure is funny, huh? DCSCA thinks he is witty, and is half right.

    Simon Jester (0ffd2c)

  134. Simon – Another week of Romney gaffes and Mitt will win in a landslide.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  135. Funny that it took Univision to actually ask Obama some questions, right? I’m guessing they will receive their autographed kneepads soon.

    Simon Jester (0ffd2c)

  136. [45] WOMG FOX – 9:00 PM — GLEE! cc – (comedy)
    “Britney 2.0.” Rachel adjusts to life in New York

    [46] AMC- 9:00 PM – “Groundhog Day” (1993) cc (comedy) Bill Murray.
    A TV weatherman’s day keeps repeating

    [47%] WLZR FOX – 9:00 PM — “THE ROMNEYS!” cc – (drama)
    Mitt gets a spray tan. Ann orders Peggy to stop it.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  137. IMP is insane.

    JD (1b45d7)

  138. 135. We’ve got the ingredients.

    Complete and total failure, policy, events, vision, campaign, messaging, panic, .., nothing positive, nothing negative missing.

    World depression, world war, world liberal ineffectuality, corruption and collapse.

    Let’s review: 57% of electorate will not vote for Incumbent Disaster. Primaries indicated among supporters, the 43%, up to a 40% undervote, not that primaries predict election voting.

    Turnout further tipped by 20% differential in voter enthusiasm. Early affliation sampling, Rasmussen, points to a 33/37/20 per cent breakdown, an historic alignment for GOP.

    Undecideds at 5%, traditionally break en toto for challenger versus unpopular incumbent.

    Every move Urkel takes blows up in his face.

    Lookit the Paki incitement by State today.

    There’s a significant chance GOP runs the table and Ogabe doesn’t make 190 EV. About the best he can do is 260.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  139. 138. Indubitably.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  140. did i mention lately how much i love happyfeet/
    cuz i r rrrrreally do

    pdbuttons (da480e)

  141. said dustin @74:

    “Perhaps just noting the 47% figure wasn’t precise?

    Otherwise, isn’t Romney obviously on the money? There are a lot of democrats who are moochers and don’t care about good tax policy because they don’t pay income tax anyway. Obama has them and there’s no reason for a patriotic politician to cater to them.”

    The 47% figure is precise if you’re talking about the # who pay no federal income tax, but this is not the same set of folks that voted for Obama. That’s the whole reason this tape blew up in Romney’s face, he doesn’t even understand his own race.

    If Fred is employed full time, but has eight kids, he probably doesn’t pay federal income tax. That’s not a moocher, that’s a legit deduction, we don’t want to discourage people from having kids.

    What makes Romney think Fred likes Obama? Fred sees this tape and now hates Romney. Same for a a retiree. If he pays no federal income tax, is he a moocher? Same for a venture capitalist who took a loss, he might not pay taxes, why is he necessarily an Obama supporter?

    What about a cop whose house is underwater – his federal tax burden might be offset by interest deductions – is he a moocher? Someone who put all their taxable income into a tax deferred college account or used it in an adoption? Someone who gives huge amounts to charity?

    Romney’s critical mistake was mixing up the number of people who sponge off others (an unknown percentage) with the people who simply happen to have no federal taxes due, which is about 47%.

    Romney does not understand this difference, or was lying to these donors, which is bad either way. But there were other parts of the tape that were even worse, the left just hasn’t gotten around to them yet.

    I predict an ad will come out that shows Romney telling the lady that key swing voters don’t understand the issues, that the critically needed 4-6% of undecided independents judge a candidate on how he looks or whether they like the guy.

    When it starts playing in OH, VA, FL and CO, those voters will be extra-insulted and especially because it’s true. It’s awful to see him coming clean – to rich folks – answering tough, real questions truthfully – to rich folks – saying things he withheld from the press and public – to rich folks.

    If you don’t see how bad that looks, you have blinders on, you should bail before the ick gets on you too. I know his supporters are trying to double down and defend the comments one by one, but that’s not as important as the fact that Romney was exposed as being totally different in private than he is in public.

    Regardless of all else, I wouldn’t trust anyone with the nuclear football who couldn’t anticipate the possibility someone in one of those fundraisers could record him.

    Mahalia Cab (140634)

  142. But there’s a significant difference between almost having a border with a country and actually having a border.

    Do you think the Jordanian army would pose a significant barrier to the Syrians, should they choose to march to Samaria?

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  143. Mahalia – by all means, don’t vote for him. Just quit acting like he lost your vote.

    JD (1b45d7)

  144. Mahalia, I am supposed to trust with nuke codes someone who tells Dave Letterman he doesn’t know the amount of US debt? I can rattle it off to four significant digits.

    SPQR (3823b3)

  145. Of course the fact is that the distance between the occupied Golan Heights and the northern corner of the West Bank, depending on how you measure, is on the order of magnitude of 15 miles, shorter than my daily commute to my office.

    The Golan Heights haven’t been “occupied” since 1981, if I remember correctly. There’s no military governor, the Defense Minister doesn’t have any power, etc. They’re part of Israel, just like any other part. Yes, I know, the media are still living in the ’70s, but so what? And the USA doesn’t even recognise most of pre-’67 Israel as being in Israel; it’s still stuck at the ’47 proposed border than never took effect.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  146. I measured it on Google Maps, as the crow flies, and got more like 25 miles. Which, as you say, makes very little difference.

    Milhouse (15b6fd)

  147. “Regardless of all else, I wouldn’t trust anyone with the nuclear football who couldn’t anticipate the possibility someone in one of those fundraisers could record him.”

    Mahalia Cab – Regardless of all else, I wouldn’t trust anyone with the nuclear football who believes in unilateral disarmament and not effectively deterring Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. I see no evidence of the conclusion that Romney could not anticipate the possibility of being recorded. What I don’t understand is your evaluation of his remarks as a prepared policy speech rather than unrehearsed answers to a question about the process by which he achieves electoral victory.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  148. Comment by Dustin — 9/20/2012 @ 8:28 am

    Sammy, in other words, Romney was correct to say Syria or Jordan. You insist it’s Jordan…

    He said Jordan and Syria. It’s only Jordan.

    well, Romney said that it could be Jordan, so he was right. Borders change over there a lot, and there’s no real certainty to where the Palestinian state would be and which states would give up territory for it.

    I also think the ‘seven miles’ vs your ‘nine miles’ does not constitute a flub. No one cares about that.

    The second one is not a flub – but it does indicate an unbfamiliarity with things. These kind sof details are sometimes used to test people. They are not so important in themselves.

    But you are onto something. Romney was not speaking precisely when he made these comments. He was relaxed. No doubt the 47% term was not intended to be precise either.

    There’s no problem with the number just wiuth teh general idea.

    Perhaps he meant ‘a really large segment of this country’ rather than any specific number, and simply misspoke.

    That’s the problem.

    As for your claim that there is no reason for it to be chopped off as it was, we can’t know that if we don’t know what was cut.

    the next few woirds are 90 to 95% certain and there’s no reason to chop it off right at that point. the edit was made when recording.

    Also, the cut could be made cleverly (backed up into the prior sentence enough that there is no hint as to what was excluded, and also so folks like you find the timing to prove it wasn’t cut at all). Game theory.

    They’d probably try to make it look like he was finished, and probably could do so.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  149. The mention of Syria was really about a pre-war situation.

    Israel did threaten to iontervenme if Syria marched into Jordan in 1970

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  150. Finkelman, you really think that seven miles versus nine miles is significant? That it indicates “unfamiliarity”?

    You remain ridiculous.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  151. Lyin’ Ryan booed by 47%-ers at AARP. Priceless.

    ________

    Wheels stop.

    And with that, shuttle Endeavour, perched atop its 747 carrier, parks at LAX to roll into retirement. A 25-year old, roughly $3.5 billion space age artifact, destined for display at the California Science Center in downtown Los Angeles. Shipping and delivery costs- estimated at $28 million. Sister ship Discovery is already on display at the NASM annex outside Washington, D.C.; test bed Enterprise was barged to the USS Intrepid along the Hudson in Manhattan for view and Atlantis will be displayed at KSC in Florida.

    The space shuttle era is over. And that’s as it should be.

    The program, spanning more than three decades, is benchmarked with multiple successes and two deadly, disastrous failures. The accomplishments are easily researched- from deploying (repairing and servicing) the Hubble Space Telescope to assembling the ISS, refining space walking and habitation techniques- even carrying Russian cosmonauts- once fierce rivals in the space race of the 1960s [when NASA’s share of the federal budget was roughly 4% as opposed the one half of 1% today]- up to and back from space.

    Advocates of course know why it was time to ground these birds. The march of technology for one (shuttle was mid-70s engineering and upgraded to the max over the decades)– and the cost of simply maintaining and operating the fleet, along with the support teams, had become prohibitive. Fated similarly to Concorde, shuttles are relics of out-dated policies, victims of changing economics, advances in engineering and shifts in priorities from the last century. They have earned their places in museums.

    Originally sold in the Nixon era as a reusable system to deliver large payloads to low Earth orbit (LEO) with reduced launch costs and a two week turnaround, shuttle never came close to fulfilling that sales pitch. It was never truly ‘operational’ and always ‘experimental’ by nature. And by design. In the end, shuttle was costing roughly $1 billion/launch when the program came to a close. And the turnaround times were measured in many months, not a few weeks. Re certification for flight – mandatory per the CAIB report- was cost-prohibitive as well. And post Challenger and Columbia accidents [sourced to both poor management and flawed engineering] the total down time can be counted in years. Still, compared to its capsuled predecessors, the versatile, winged space glider was an engineering marvel, rivaling, if not surpassing Apollo in technical achievement for human spaceflight (HSF).

    The immediate issue, of course, is the famed ‘gap’– something Apollo veterans Gene Cernan, Jim Lovell and the late Neil Armstrong, among others, expressed alarm and concern about in Congressional testimony and various OpEds as well. [There was a six year ‘gap’ between Apollo and shuttle but there was work being done.] President George W. Bush accepted the recommendations of the CAIB report, terminated shuttle and proposed developing elements of Project Constellation as an overlap to minimize the gap, shifting shuttle funding and base technologies into a new program, a government space project of scale, to move beyond LEO and return Americans to the moon, refine methods, procedures and hardware- then press on eventually to Mars. Unfortunately, like GHWBush’s space initiative in 1989, neither Dubya’s Dad nor Dubya pressed Congress for adequate funding. And in the case of Constellation, poor management and cost overruns in development of the Ares rocket- the base launch system which the entire Constellation program was planned around- all but devoured available funding.

    When President Obama was elected, aerospace panels, industry execs and competing camps inside NASA concluded the numbers made it all but certain Constellation could not meet its projected target dates even with immediate increases in funding- a luxury clearly unaffordable in austere times. The economics forced the shelving of Constellation and a re-think on access to LEO, via government contracting and subsidizing the development of ‘private enterprise’ space firms (like Space X and others)making the best use of existing assets and through purchasing rides on the 40-plus year old, reliably operated, Russian Soyuz, for astronauts bound for extended-stays aboard the ISS, which has Russia as a partner. Russian unmanned Progress spacecraft continue to deliver supplies as well. In addition, Congress continues to support development the SLS (the Space Launch System) and its proposed, heavy lift rocket, similar to the Saturn V moon rocket from Apollo days, and the development of the Orion spacecraft to press on out to beyond Earth orbit (BEO) objectives. (The Rabid Right routinely, and wrongly, chides Mr. Obama for canceling shuttle. Dubya did. And avoid acknowledging Mr. Obama’s support of private sector, commercial space initiatives.)

    But costs and management problems continue to plague the civil space agency– with in-fighting below the media radar. The JWST is a fiscal mess, with astronomical cost overruns now in the $15 billion-plus range and all the characteristics of an out-of-control, big science jobs program, similar to the doomed Super Collider a generation ago. And unlike the HST, JWST cannot be serviced in the event of a failure. Costs for the latest Mars rover, Curiosity, soared to roughly $2.5 billion, in an era when the cost of throw-away, unmanned space probes should be dropping, like disposable electronics are dropping worldwide. (Its two predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity cost a third of Curiosity.)

    These massive, government financed, civil space projects of scale have been scaled back- or outright terminated- because in an era when the government has to borrow 42 cents of every dollar it spends, they are easy targets as high-profiled luxuries America cannot afford. Which makes the crocodile tears from flag-waving commentators over shuttle’s end all the more amusing. Conservatives and progressives will point out that the civil space program has strong national defense overlays beyond the obvious soft power projection and emotional point of national pride. To be sure, shuttle had DoD ties- which affected how the orbiters were designed and funded through development- but the DoD bailed on shuttle after the 1986 Challenger accident, mothballed its multi-billion dollar launch pad at Vandenberg AFB and returned to using less costly, more reliable and timely, ELVs (expendable launch vehicles). And poll after poll over the years has shown public support for the space program waxes and wanes, but in general remains broad but shallow.

    The $100 billion-plus ISS, doomed to a Pacific grave, originally proposed by President Reagan nearly 30 years ago, continues to sail on (at roughly $3 billion/yr., in operations costs) and should remain in orbit until splashed in the early 2020s. Still, it is a relic of late 20th century Cold War planning; an aerospace ‘WPA project’ as the late Deke Slayton called it. Today, it is an ‘orbiting zombie,’ an expensive platform sustained with dubious and shifting rationales and questionable return when subjected to down-to-earth, 21st century cost-benefit analyses. But it is splendid engineering; a bright point of pride in the night skies.

    However, it is inaccurate for media types, from Brian Williams to Chris Wallace, to declare America’s HSF program ‘dead.’ SLS is in development, Orion in work and ‘private-enterprised,’ crewed spacecraft are on the horizon. But compared to the half century of United States HSF projects of scale, it will seem a lengthy gap; a muted decade of under-reported busy work and experimentation, full of potential and promise. Until, perhaps, a new competitor, eager to hallmark this century as their own with their own ‘endeavor,’ draws attention with a challenge and launches out toward the moon. Luna awaits fresh footprints, in the hear and now of a new century, as the PRC well knows. The question is whether the Americans of today– the same Americans who cheered and waved as Endeavour flew over the Los Angeles basin– will be contented to watch it all unfold on their IPads— made, of course, in China.

    DCSCA (9d1bb3)

  152. ^ Weirdo

    Dustin (73fead)

  153. Whoa, issues at work here.

    Ag80 (b2c81f)

  154. Sammy Finkelstein Syndrome.

    Simon Jester (8ef222)

  155. ZOMFG WTF BBQ

    JD (1b45d7)

  156. So if “Lyin’ Ryan” is so clever, perhaps we should just call this Mensa nutjob “Crazay DCSCA.”

    I think that he is not employed at present. Doesn’t the Wall O’ Text read like an essay written for some other venue than Patrick Frey’s blog on politics?

    We could ask Rand Simberg over at transterrestrial.com if he gets daily speeches from Crazay DCSCA.

    Bet he knows the guy.

    Simon Jester (8ef222)

  157. IMP has gone full-Monty off the rails.

    JD (1b45d7)

  158. Yeah, Rand Simberg has heard of Crazay DCSCA:

    “….The other dumb thing about this is the notion that any space activity is “exploration.” This is one of the ignorant straw-man shibboleths of the bashers of the new plan (notably, by the moronic commenter “DCSCA” over at Space Politics) — that “exploration” is being turned over to private enterprise, which they claim won’t work, because it’s not profitable. But all that the plan actually calls for is to get NASA out of the business of transportation to LEO, so that they can finally focus on real exploration…..”

    Oh, I wouldn’t call DCSCA a moron. There are other names that fit a bit better.

    Simon Jester (8ef222)

  159. I wonder how Rand would respond to a litany of DCSCA’s many bizarre and clearly fabulistic stories of his own grandeur.

    Simon Jester (8ef222)

  160. Simon – Nice get.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  161. It’s still a giant irradiated squirrel, JD

    narciso (ee31f1)

  162. Disco Stu is back to his usual cut-and-paste antics.

    Icy (b8a192)

  163. There’s a great takedown of the “remote control” theory by a commenter at NYE.

    Basically she notes that in setting up, there is no evidence of a remote. Also, the camera and its placement can be seen by reflection, and it’s just a camera.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  164. Comment by SPQR — 9/21/2012 @ 3:09 pm

    Finkelman, you really think that seven miles versus nine miles is significant? That it indicates “unfamiliarity”?

    A god test of how well you know a subject, is how well you know little irrelevant details. It’s a bad idea however, to go out of your way to teach them, and they can’t be taught in isolation. So it’s kind of dangerous to make it a practice to test for that – but this not a test.

    Let me put it to you this way: It’s not really important to know all the area codes of Los Angeles. But if you can only name 213 and maybe 818 then you are probably not really that familiar with Los Angeles. If you garble an area code, you are not all that familiar with what’s going on there. If you can’t even name 213, you know even less. If you spell Los Angeles, Los Angelos, you probably haven’t spelled it very much (or it ids something you always spell wrong)

    Mitt Romney showed a certain unfamiliarity with things but not a complete unfamiliarity.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  165. Does Romney know that some of those 47% are republicans and are (or at least were) going to vote for him?

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  166. * A good test!

    Comment by SPQR — 9/21/2012 @ 3:09 pm

    Finkelman, you really think that seven miles versus nine miles is significant? That it indicates “unfamiliarity”?

    You remain ridiculous.

    One member of his audience corrects him. That Israel within the 1967 borders is “Nine miles wide” is very famous.

    Actually, they all get it wrong, and Mitt Romney isn’t so wrong – he is a little bit shaky as to where this applies and he says he is shaky.

    And he’s not all that wrong. “Seven miles” doesn’t come out of thin air.

    This is how it went:

    MITT ROMNEY: …..And I– I don’t have a map here to look at the geography. But– but– the border between Israel and the West Bank is obviously right there, right next to– to Tel Aviv, which is the– the financial capital, the industrial capital of Israel. The center of Israel. It’s– (MALE VOICE: UNINTEL)

    –well, the border would be maybe seven miles from Tel Aviv to what would be the West Bank.

    MALE VOICE: Nine.

    MITT ROMNEY: Nine miles. Okay. (LAUGHTER) (UNINTEL) close. Nine miles (UNINTEL). The challenge is the other side– (Mitt Romney then goes on to say that on the other wide – not of the Israeli border, like I first thought, but the other border of the Palestinian state would be, at one point, Syria)

    They’re BOTH wrong.

    The Green Line is SEVEN miles away from Ben-Gurion (formerly Lod) Airport, which serves Tel Aviv (and Israel) but is not inside Tel Aviv.

    That’s probably where Mitt Romney heard the figure of seven miles.

    As in: A missile could be fired from across the border to shoot down civilian planes.

    NINE miles is the width of Israel from the West Bank to the sea, at its narrowest point, which is about 15 miles or so north of Tel Aviv.

    And finally, Tel Aviv itself (or its municipal boundaries) is ELEVEN miles from what would be the boundaries of a Palestinian state, if the boundary were the same as the 1949-67 ceasefire lines.

    Except that just about nobody in Israel has any intention of agreeing to any such thing, which would leave some big long established communities, near the old border, outside of Israel..

    And what looks really terrible, is that Mitt Romney seems to think that the danger of missiles being in the future Palestinian state is based in large part on the “fact” that the West Bank has a common border with Syria, the way Lebanon does. But it is not based on that at all.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  167. Lesson to future candidates?

    Always carry a tablet computer, or a printed atlas or almanac with you, so you can check your facts when you talk.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  168. I’m not sure if a tablet cures stupidity, Sammy.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  169. Finkelman, so you double down on ridiculousness with another MEGO attack.

    SPQR (269a12)

  170. 167. No offense Sam, but if you are the measure of informed we need to just throw in the towel. I mean human kind.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  171. Finkleman, I lived in the Los Angeles suburbs for more than three decades and can’t remember all LA area codes. You are beyond parody now and I am tempted to name you IMP Jr.

    SPQR (269a12)

  172. Most Republicans I know, old and young, are economically literate and know exactly what Mitt was getting at, Mr. Sean. They are not influenced or fooled by trolls and the leftist media’s spin. I am looking at you David Gregory! A lifetime of ever increasing dependence on government largess (otherwise known as the taxpayers) or renewed opportunities and incentives to work and learn and move up the economic ladder in America. Safety nets available for citizens in real trouble and keeping promises to seniors–not permanent gimme gimmme gimmme. Firming up the financials of Medicare and Social Security. Math. These things are what the election is about.

    elissa (e37e35)

  173. No offense… but here comes a blatant insult.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  174. Elissa- They are willing to overlook their presidential candidate insulting them?

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  175. Does Romney know that some of those 47% are republicans and are (or at least were) going to vote for him?

    Raise your hand if you believe Mr Sean is changing his vote because of this doctored video.

    JD (318f81)

  176. Doctored video? You are in it deep.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  177. No offense is always followed by an insult.

    Mr Sean is invested in this being an ongoing meme.

    JD (318f81)

  178. What happened to the video that was cut out?

    JD (318f81)

  179. Sean, so you are unfamiliar with basic facts about the video. Quelle surprise.

    SPQR (269a12)

  180. Do you think that that part included Romney saying “just kidding. I mean, could you imagine a presidential candidate actually saying that to people and believing it. If people thought that that is what I believed it would totally ruin my candidacy.”?

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  181. 178. Like Herodotus ignoring Israel, and the Jews specifically. They had been nobodies for 3 centuries, Solomon coming five centuries earlier.

    They had just finished their rinky-dink copy of the original Temple. The northern kingdom was defunct.

    What was he ignoring?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  182. ____________________________________________

    Regardless of all else, I wouldn’t trust anyone with the nuclear football who couldn’t anticipate the possibility someone in one of those fundraisers could record him.

    It’s a big laugh when a liberal takes the idea of national security and the “nuclear football” so seriously. It’s like when those on the left suddenly express a new-found religion about the harm of tons of red ink in government budgets. BTW, I know 2 liberals who back in 2008 loved to slam Bush for being a spendthrift — which he certainly was an enabler to — but now are strangely quiet about Obama.

    As for the reliability of a president who is so idiotic (or irresponsible, or both) when it comes to national security, the nuclear football and related matters that he still resists the idea that the destruction of and killing at the consulate in Libya was the act of terrorists instead of a bunch of local protestors who got a bit too rowdy, that speaks volumes. That suggests someone who’s so flaky that he might accidentally trigger a nuclear device just because it would help satisfy his inner rage — ie, his “goddamn America!” sentiments — over racism, imperialism, sexism, capitalism, and Islamphobia and homophobia.

    “Yea, I’ll teach the world a lesson in just how bad and cunning the US is. Yea, I’ll show ’em!”

    Mark (dd745b)

  183. Comment by Mr. Sean — 9/23/2012 @ 10:50 am

    Does Romney know that some of those 47% are republicans and are (or at least were) going to vote for him?

    I think he knows now but as of last week, a day or so after it became public, he still didn’t realize it was a large number, like 30%, even for a somewhat unfavorable to him subgroup.

    Mitt Romney has been quick to assert now, after Barack Obama kind of deliberately confused this on the David Letterman show and other places into Mitt Romney saying he wasn’t interested in the well-being of 47% of the American people, that he wanted to be president of 100% of the American people, or words more or less to that effect.

    But he still may be missing the fact that this is political nonsense, even if it has a long pedigree, going back to British Socialist writer George Bernard Shaw

    A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

    – George Bernard Shaw, (1856 – 1950) Everybody’s Political What’s What? (1944) ch. 30

    Or this: http://thethinkerblog.com/?p=1905 (Robbing Peter to Pay Paul? October 7th, 2009)
    where you can find the 47% statistic.

    Only it’s wrong that they never vote a Republican As the graphs on that very page demonstrate. (in some of these charts, the Republican side has been corrected to blue)

    Bush in 2004 still got about 35% of the vote of people with under $15,000 of annual income, and he didn’t get above about 62% of any income group.

    In 2008, the disparity was somewhat greater, related maybe to higher poor black turnout or possibly due to worry about the economy, or simply due to the fact that the Democrat had around 10% more of the vote in that election.

    The same 10% drop shows up in all income categories, although proportionately it’s a bigger drop (close to one third as opposed to one sixth) in the lowest income category.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  184. Mr Sean previously regaled us with Ryan not knowing his PR as showing he was unfit for office. And that the OBama economy was better than the Romney/Bush economy. And that because Obama’s cutsmto Medicare haven’t kicked in yet it is dishonest to mention them. In short, a lying troll. Shocka,

    JD (318f81)

  185. Legal Insurrection said the same thing on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 4:23pm i a post entitled “Tax Free Tyranny”

    Of course, it’s one thing for William A. Jacobson to say this. It’s another thing for a major Presidential candidate to say that.

    Then it becomes an exploding cigar.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  186. Show me where I said that specifically, JD.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  187. Mr. Sean,

    If Romney is allegedly “stupid,” then how come he’s worth hundreds of millions, while The Prophet Obamessiah needed to rely upon a known money launderer (Tony Rezko) to help finance his property ?

    And how come an alleged “dummy” such as Romney can find a way to support his family, but millions of Obama supporters need handouts from the government ?

    You think it might be that Romney is very intelligent and hard-working, or is it just that the brilliant Obama supporters on welfare are simply lazy ?

    Elephant Stone (65d289)

  188. Most of the ones who say they are highly insulted, or took umbrage, or took extreme offense, or felt victimized by his off the cuff statement and besides that, waaaaaah!!,were never going to vote for him–that’s the point he was making at the fundraiser. But see, not all the people whom you so want to convince yourself feel insulted, are feeling insulted, Mr. Sean. But no one here really expects you to understand that.

    elissa (e37e35)

  189. Comment by Mr. Sean — 9/23/2012 @ 10:58 am

    I’m not sure if a tablet cures stupidity, Sammy.

    They’re too hard to use, as Barack Obama proved.

    No, they don’t cure stupidity, but in the case of the Middle East comments Mitt Romney knew he didn’t have the exact facts on the tip of his tongue.

    Mitt Romney: I don’t have a map here to look at the geography.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  190. Actually Obama must be pretty smart to be elected to the highest elected office in the land with that alleged smudge on his record.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  191. Elissa, actually I disagree. There are elderly independent voters who, I’m quite sure, are insulted by that slight.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  192. _____________________________________________

    Raise your hand if you believe Mr Sean is changing his vote because of this doctored video.

    Actually people like Sean are a variation of what Romney was referring to. In effect, they’re such dyed-in-the-wool, hard-core liberals that they’d never favor any person running for the presidency who wasn’t also of the left. There’s a good number of such people in the electorate, perhaps as high as in the upper 40-percentile range. That’s more startlingly evident this year than ever before.

    After all, we are witnessing a White House occupied by an ultra-liberal in the guise of Obama and, in turn, a Republican candidate with the rather squishy, semi-centrist nature of Romney. IOW, one has to be a mindless, chronic liberal to be so emotionally invested in a president of “Goddamn America” background, and so resentful towards a Republican who somehow managed to become governor of an uber-blue state like Massachusetts.

    Mark (dd745b)

  193. How is that? I just mentioned that Romney insulted the very voters that he would have needed to convince in order to win the election and now I’m a hardcore liberal?

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  194. Comment by Mark — 9/23/2012 @ 11:24 am

    As for the reliability of a president who is so idiotic (or irresponsible, or both) when it comes to national security, the nuclear football and related matters that he still resists the idea that the destruction of and killing at the consulate in Libya was the act of terrorists instead of a bunch of local protestors who got a bit too rowdy, that speaks volumes.

    To give him his due, I suspect he had some intelligence that contradicted the idea this was planned.

    Supposedly, there’s no way they could have known the Ambassador was there.

    Supposed this was connected to the video and the protests in Egypt, and of course there’s no way anybody could have known about the video, or that there would be a mass protest in Egypt about it, before it happened.

    The U.S. really did have a lot of wrong information. For instance they thought there was a protest in Benghazi about the video. There was no protest at all. It was completely a surprise attack.

    People who have access to intelligence may have a ard time getting around to the idea that some of it has been coming from double agents, or a deliberately lying foreign intelligence agency.

    The consequences are too troubling, and immense.

    That suggests someone who’s so flaky that he might accidentally trigger a nuclear device just because it would help satisfy his inner rage — ie, his “goddamn America!” sentiments — over racism, imperialism, sexism, capitalism, and Islamphobia and homophobia.

    “Yea, I’ll teach the world a lesson in just how bad and cunning the US is. Yea, I’ll show ‘em!”

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  195. No, your history here demonstrates that.

    JD (318f81)

  196. What history?

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  197. Sorry I didn’t cut out some of the quote:

    That suggests someone who’s so flaky that he might accidentally trigger a nuclear device just because it would help satisfy his inner rage — ie, his “goddamn America!” sentiments — over racism, imperialism, sexism, capitalism, and Islamphobia and homophobia.

    “Yea, I’ll teach the world a lesson in just how bad and cunning the US is. Yea, I’ll show ‘em!” </I.

    It's below the bottom of the screen or the input box..

    No, I don't think the fact that the administration was the very last group of people to acknowledge that the attack on Benghazi was planned (for months!) it suggests special incompetence.

    It suggests that they were the victims of disinformation – faulty intelligence.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  198. ________________________________________

    and now I’m a hardcore liberal?

    You remind me of a guy who I was arguing with a few days ago. That person is such a leftwinger that he sympathizes with no less than a radical character like Hugo Chavez. Yet he resisted my labeling or describing him as a liberal.

    This also makes me think of all the clowns in the media who continue to say their industry isn’t tilted to the left, because, heck, they’re owned by corporations, and therefore how can they be biased in favor of liberals?! (A hearty ‘hello’ to George Soros!! And a big ‘how ‘ya doing?!’ to Warren Buffett!)

    Mark (dd745b)

  199. What have I said here that would cause you to label me as a hardcore leftwinger?

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  200. ==Elissa, actually I disagree.==

    Well then, if you disagree, that changes everything.

    Oh, by the way, do you think there are any “elderly independent voters” who may not like that Obama is gutting current Medicare to pay for his pandery insurance prize Obamacare, (and are well aware that he is blatantly lying about it?)

    elissa (e37e35)

  201. As I said I am pretty sure that the Moslem Brotherhood was responsible not only for the translation of the movie trailer, but for its existence, and the whole purpose of it really was, to be a red herring.

    And we can go further and deduce, that, probably with the help of a foreign intelligence agency, and I mean Saudi Arabia, they were able to mislead U.S. intelligence.

    I don’t know whether this idea is correct or not, but they may even have manufactured a threat to the embassy in Tripoli, in order to drive the Ambassador to Benghazi.

    It is very important for any future investigation to find out why he made that trip, and who recommended it.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  202. Mr Sean. All one has to do is look up your past comments here. The google is not that difficult.

    JD (318f81)

  203. ____________________________________________

    It suggests that they were the victims of disinformation – faulty intelligence.

    Yea, and I’ve been told that Obama was totally in the dark about Jeremiah Wright’s tendency to say unkind things about the USA.

    Mark (dd745b)

  204. Sammy is in Sammy’s own little world. Again.

    JD (318f81)

  205. Elissa you need to inform yourself about who those cuts actually affect. Furthermore, you should refrain from labeling someone a liar simply because you are uninformed. Those are only suggestions. This is America and you are welcome to continue to be the ignorant voter that you’ve worked so hard to become.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  206. I just feel so bad that Mr. Sean is insulted by what Romney said.

    elissa (e37e35)

  207. JD it sounds like you put your foot in your mouth and you’ve chosen to double down on your lies rather than actually admit them.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  208. __________________________________________

    Sammy is in Sammy’s own little world

    He leans left way more than I originally assumed or estimated. There have been times when bits of common sense have somehow managed to work their way through his postings, but it’s obvious that he’s more emotionally tilted to the left than I at first believed to be the case.

    Mark (dd745b)

  209. Mr. Sean,

    C’mon bro, you don’t have to do the bob and weave…why do you suppose all those brilliant people on welfare are incapable of supporting themselves if such an “idiot” like Romney is somehow able to do so ?

    Elephant Stone (65d289)

  210. I’ll take your helpful suggestions under advisement Mr. Sean. And thank you for your concern. Every day in every way I do strive to be a better person and a more informed citizen.

    elissa (e37e35)

  211. ___________________________________________

    What have I said here that would cause you to label me as a hardcore leftwinger?

    Okay, so how would you — yourself — characterize your own biases and, in particular, your voting record through the years?

    I will say that if you’re still rather young, around your 20s or not much older than your early 30s, I’ll accept the idea that your outlook on things is still evolving. However, if you’re like Obama, then you’re inherently, intrinsically liberal. After all, Jeremiah Wright’s former pal is in his 50s, and so is the person who I was debating with a few days ago, who I mentioned above.

    Mark (dd745b)

  212. Initial full throated support of Barcky lie :
    I have the same health care plan. I like it. I kept it.

    Mendoucheous defense of Obarcky’s Medicare slashing:
    So you’re complaining about something that will potentially happen? Do you also believe the ‘apology tour’ lie? I just want to know what type of person I’m talking to and if you answer that one in the affirmative I will have all of the information I need to dismiss your opinions.

    Continued
    So you’re admitting that it was a lie, Steve. Why lie about that? Quite adolescent if you ask me. I wonder what else he would be willing to lie about. Maybe that the 716B cut to Medicare (which wasn’t actually a cut to the recipients) was something that he had in his own plan?

    Here you profess your undying love of Obarcky, followed by lies about Bain destroying a town and your love of Bambi’s failed economy:
    I would have signed over my wedding gifts to Obama, but I’m from a town that Bain destroyed. My family was out of work until Obama took over, and they’ve had jobs since then. It has taken them a while to recover from the Romney/Bush slam though.

    Now we get into your thinkregress phase:
    Did he lie about eating a dog? No, he told the truth. Honorable man, he. Ryan not so much.

    Continued, with an added Romney tortures dogs:
    So if you are claiming that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s book maybe it was Bill Ayers that ate the dog. Either way, I’m sure the dog was killed in much the same way that cows are for beef. The dog was most definitely not slowly tortured on the roof of a vehicle for hours on end.

    After claiming to be a runner, you then claim a 4 hour marathon quite average:
    Not only that he claimed to be ‘fast’ when he was younger when his interviewer reacted with awe. That should have been a clue. A four hour marathon is quite average and not ‘fast’. Not an honorable man, he.

    More leftishness:
    Romney’s repeal of the health care bill will increase the deficit by an additional 100 or so billion. FYI

    JD (318f81)

  213. I await your apology, “Mr Sean”

    JD (318f81)

  214. I’m sorry that the educational system has failed you so, JD.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  215. Bugger off. Your passive aggressive nonsense, and lying, yes lying, is beyond tiresome.

    JD (318f81)

  216. A four hour marathon is average. My personal best is 3:51 and if somebody reacted with awe when I told them that I would question whether my listener heard me correctly.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  217. Now, off to enjoy the rest of this beautiful fall day. Enjoy watching Mr Sean try to deny his words say what they say.

    JD (318f81)

  218. Congrats, you are fast. The average listener could never conceive of even attempting a marathon, much less do one in 4 hours. Bravo, good work.

    JD (318f81)

  219. BTW, shortly I’ll be leaving to attend a family birthday party where the guest of honor just turned 65 and there will be a number of quite elderly relatives present. I’ll report back later about the screeching and cane pounding and walker revving and arch-supported foot stomping I witness over what that mean Mitt said. While driving there (over an hour) I’ll be on the lookout for Obama Biden signs and bumper stickers too. So stay tuned.

    elissa (e37e35)

  220. Wait, did you read that correctly? 🙂

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  221. Comment by JD — 9/23/2012 @ 11:51 am

    Sammy is in Sammy’s own little world. Again.

    We ALL live in the Sammy Zone.

    Sorry, I seem to be ignoring some of this discussion.

    While I am writing, other things are going on.

    Suddenly, it heated up.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  222. ___________________________________________

    Obama’s wonderful, informed supporters.

    And liberals (particularly in the upper social strata of sophisticated, well-educated Manhattan) have the nerve to accuse the Republicans, the Tea Party-ers, the right, of a lack of intelligence?!

    Mark (dd745b)

  223. Ronald Reagan coined the term “safety net”

    Mitt Romney, Idon’t think hs ever used it.

    He’s spending millions on ads and probably doesn’t know what to put in them.

    One ad now focused on Nancy Pelosi turning off the speakerphone (according to a Bob Woodward book) when Barack Obama was calling her and others during a meeting with the tag line if he can’t lead his own party how can he lead the country?

    What’s wrong with this:

    1) It doesn’t say that anything Obama wants to do is wrong.

    2) Nancy Pelosi has denied the story, as Democrats are telling people, and that may be correct because the source is Bob Woodward of Watergate and Bob Casey speaking after a brain operation fame.

    3) Most people don’t want members of Congress to be slavish followers of a president.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  224. The big problem is that candidates in the race for the nomination drop out too easily, and there are not enough of them.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  225. Mr. Sean,

    How is that you can sleep well at night knowing that you spend so many hours per week selfishly training for marathons, all the while there are disadvantaged youths in your community whom you could otherwise be mentoring or assisting with their homework ? You sound like a selfish guy.

    You seriously do not volunteer your “fair share” of time to disadvantaged youths in the community.

    Obama says we can best commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 by giving service to the community, as well as by allowing our foreign embassies to go unprotected in the face of Jihadist threats.

    Maybe you’re just not really sold on all that “it takes a village” and “hopey-changey” stuff, huh ?

    Elephant Stone (65d289)

  226. Mitt Romney was lucky to run into the right people while in college, and maybe also learned a little bit from when he grew up, and he very very careful when investing, and did not touch any ideas he didn’t understand (a luxury not available in public office especially to a president) and asked many many questions (also possibly a luxury at that high level) and rejected the overwhelming majority of proposals brought to him, and almost didn’t invest in Staples, and when he was finally ready to do so, Staples had found other investors, but they took him in because he and his company also wanted to give continuing advice.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  227. How do you know that I do not help the youth in my community? As a responsible citizen of my community I know that keeping myself healthy will lessen the burden of my eventual health care on the rest of the community. I appreciate your concern, but it is not necessary.

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  228. Sammy–do you think President Obama has said anything clearly and honestly about how he will lead, what he wants to do in a second term and how he plans to accomplish it? I admit don’t see a lot of presidential campaign ads in the deep blue state where I reside. But from what I hear from others elsewhere, and from what I witness from Obama himself and his surrogates on the talk shows, he seems not to have put out much of a plan or roadmap to get the country out of its economic doldrums or its scary foreign policy challenges.

    I’m not asking you for a cut and paste of what somebody else said or thinks. I am asking you to respond personally to my question.

    elissa (e37e35)

  229. “It suggests that they were the victims of disinformation – faulty intelligence.”

    Comment by Mark — 9/23/2012 @ 11:51 am

    Yea, and I’ve been told that Obama was totally in the dark about Jeremiah Wright’s tendency to say unkind things about the USA. /i>

    Obama never claimed he was totally in the dark about Jeremiah Wright. He hoped most people would think the problem were limited to a few sermons (the media never said anything different) and denied being present at those particular sermons, which was probably correct since he probably rarely attended them, having joined the church for political reasons.

    Now that last fact may speak volumes about Chicago politics in the black community.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  230. The people around here sure don’t seem to be very nice. Is this indicative of the right in general or just the people who comment here?

    Mr. Sean (db27ab)

  231. Sammy,

    I think you read too many comic books and too much Daily Kos.

    But you’re absolutely correct…if not for all those roads and bridges that Obama himself built with his own two hands, Mitt Romney’s horse & buggy would have become permanently stuck in the mud, and he never would have been forced to risk tons of money in Staples ! And if Romney hadn’t serendepitously run into all those well-connected people at BYU during the 1960s, he never would have become successful in Boston !

    Thank God that Romney never randomly became close friends with angry Joo-haters such as Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Jeffrey Jones, or Rashid Khalidi ! Otherwise, he might have constructed a life based on his alcoholic father’s Marxist dreams that the hipsters would publicly characterize as, ” ‘da bomb !”
    (Oy vey.)

    Elephant Stone (65d289)

  232. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/23/2012 @ 11:24 am

    Like Herodotus ignoring Israel, and the Jews specifically. They had been nobodies for 3 centuries, Solomon coming five centuries earlier.

    Herodotus ignored the Jews on purpose – in fact that was the whole purpose of his writings. He claimed to be telling about ALL people, but what he did was he carved the Jews out of history. He wrote at the instigation of Egyptian priests, who had no love for Jews because of what hey said about the ancient Egypt.

    Herodotus undoubtably thought this was completely ridiculous, but he did it, although he did not fail to include a couple of inside jokes almost, like mentioning how important a cupbearer could be. This was an allusion to Nehemiah, who I think was the Governor of Judea, which his Egyptian patrons didn’t catch or didn’t care enough about.

    Herodotus in fact is full of all sorts of lies and distortions, not just the omission of any mention of Jews, and many ancient writers noted all sort of lies there.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  233. _____________________________________________

    Obama never claimed he was totally in the dark about Jeremiah Wright.

    Well, that’s a bit better than the meme that he and his people are pushing in regards to the American consulate in Libya. [Snerk] I feel so much better. [Snerk]

    Whatever the case, it’s merely a distinction without a difference, since while Obama may be a fool, he’s certainly not ignorant about the sentiments of either a Reverend Wright or the nature of the Islamic world. Obama, therefore, does have a sympathy with a “goddamn America” ethos, whether it’s emanating from a church in Chicago or the mosques of the Middle East.

    Mark (dd745b)

  234. Furthermore, Herodotus does not take the history of the Persian Wars down to his own time, and I think the reason is that if he did , he would have to mention Mordechai, the “prime minister” of the Persian Empire at the end of the book of Esther, who negotiated the peace with Greece about 449 BCE.

    He tells an anecdote about Artaxerxes I that took place while the negotiators were in Persia but nothing about the substance of these negotiations. Because it would be just simply too much to write a lot about it, and carve out Mordechai.

    As I said Herodotus must have thought this was ridiculous, but the Egyptian priests were looking toward the far future, and thought that one Haman failed, another might succeed, and there would be no more Jews and therefore they could lie about the Jews, or wouldn’t have to deal with the Jews’s account of their ordeal in Egypt and the Almighty’s opinion of the Egyptian religion.

    It actually took about 550 years or more for them to begin killing Jews in Egypt, but it did start in the reign of Trajan.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  235. Mr. Sean,

    We’ll allow you to run a couple miles a day to maintain your health—training for marathons, on the other hand, is merely an indulgence on your part. After all, time spent training is time that could be spent tutoring disadvantaged youths.
    And believe me, we do know how little time you spend volunteering in the community because you’ve been under surveillance for some time, now.

    But at least you admit you focus on your own health, at the expense of the health, education, and general well-being of less fortunate people in your community. That’s a sure sign that you’re greedy. As Obama has often stated, “That Mr. Sean can afford to spend more time volunteering in the community. And he doesn’t need to buy those $150 New Balance running shoes, when there are kids in the neighborhood who don’t have warm jackets for the forthcoming winter.”

    C’mon, Mr. Sean, seriously, rather than focusing on your own well-being, isn’t it time you start focusing on the well-being of disadvantaged people in the community ? Besides, you didn’t build those roads and bridges that you run on. Those roads and bridges lead to the homes of disadvantaged youths, yet you run right past them.

    Stop being so selfish with your time and money. We’re all in this together.

    Elephant Stone (65d289)

  236. ____________________________________________

    Is this indicative of the right in general or just the people who comment here?

    In honor of people like you, I occasionally post the following. Yea, I know it uses some of Patterico.com’s bytes, but it’s such a very telling reminder to anyone out there about the true idiosyncrasies of human nature and one’s political biases. Idiosyncrasies that are seldom mentioned, rarely pointed out, and even presumed to be just the opposite of what, in effect, is basic reality.

    Investors.com, March 2012:Not exactly shocking news for those exposed to them for years, but the respected Pew Research Center has determined that political liberals are far less tolerant of opposing views than regular Americans.

    In a new study, the Pew Center for the Internet and American Life Project confirmed what most intelligent Americans had long sensed. That is, whenever they are challenged or confronted on the hollow falsity of their orthodoxy — such as, say, uniting diverse Americans — liberals tend to respond defensively with anger, even trying to shut off or silence critics.

    The new research found that instead of engaging in civil discourse or debate, fully 16% of liberals admitted to blocking, unfriending or overtly hiding someone on a social networking site because that person expressed views they disagreed with. That’s double the percentage of conservatives and more than twice the percentage of political moderates who behaved like that.

    The proportion jumps even higher when someone on a social site disagrees with a liberal’s post. Only 1% of moderates would block or shut out someone who dared to disagree with them, compared to 11% of liberals, whose rate was nearly three times that of conservatives.

    nytimes.com, Nicholas Kristof, December 2008:

    This holiday season is a time to examine who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but I’m unhappy with my findings. The problem is this: We liberals are personally stingy.

    Liberals show tremendous compassion in pushing for generous government spending to help the neediest people at home and abroad. Yet when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.

    Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

    Other research has reached similar conclusions. The “generosity index” from the Catalogue for Philanthropy typically finds that red states are the most likely to give to nonprofits, while Northeastern states are least likely to do so.
    “When I started doing research on charity,” Mr. Brooks wrote, “I expected to find that political liberals — who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did — would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views.”

    According to Google’s figures, if donations to all religious organizations are excluded, liberals give slightly more to charity than conservatives do. But Mr. Brooks says that if measuring by the percentage of income given, conservatives are more generous than liberals even to secular causes.

    Conservatives also appear to be more generous than liberals in nonfinancial ways. People in red states are considerably more likely to volunteer for good causes, and conservatives give blood more often. If liberals and moderates gave blood as often as conservatives, Mr. Brooks said, the American blood supply would increase by 45 percent.

    Dailycaller.com, March 2011:

    Social scientists usually measure traditional racism against African Americans by looking at the survey responses of white Americans only. Among whites in the latest General Social Survey (2008) [conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago], only 4.5% of small-government advocates express the view that “most Blacks/African-Americans have less in-born ability to learn,” compared to 12.3% of those who favor bigger government or take a middle position expressing this racist view.

    [A]mong whites, Republican advocates of smaller government are even less racist (1.3% believing that blacks have less in-born ability) than the rest of the general public (11.3% expressing racist views). Thus, in 2008 Republicans who believe that the government in Washington does too much have 10 times higher odds of not expressing racist views on the in-born ability question than the rest of the population (79-to-1 odds v. 7.9-to-1 odds).

    In 2008, only 5.4% of white conservative Republicans expressed racist views on the in-born ability question, compared to 10.3% of the rest of the white population. [T]his same pattern holds for white Democrats compared to white Republicans: in 2008 12.3% of white Democrats in the U.S. believed that African Americans were born with less ability, compared to only 6.6% of white Republicans.

    In sixteen surveys from 1977 through 2008, overall white Republicans were significantly less racist on the in-born ability question than white Democrats (13.3% to 17.3%), and white conservative Republicans were significantly less racist than other white Americans (11.7% to 14.7%)…

    [O]verall white Democrats were significantly more likely to support segregated neighborhoods than white Republicans (30.4% to 26.3%).

    Mark (dd745b)

  237. They had just finished their rinky-dink copy of the original Temple. The northern kingdom was defunct. </I.

    No they hadn't finished it. That was stopped by order of Artaxerxes very early in his reign (Nehemiah did not dare to ask for more than the wals be rebuilt) and it was not rebuilt till the 6th year of the rule of Darius II.

    What was he ignoring?

    Not only Mordechai and Nehemiah, and what really stpped the Assyrian army (he changed the location from Jerusalem) and Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jer: 44:30) that a certain Egyptian Pharoah would fall into the hands of people who wanted to kill him (although he goes on in much detail to tell the story of the great lengths that Pharoah’s enemies went to make that prediction not come true, till they finally decided they had to kill him – he tells of that, and that it was predicted, but he never says who predicted it!! And of course, the big thing, how the Persian Wars came to an end.

    And he attributes the origin of circumcision to Syrians, not Jews.

    And while he knows nothing of Judea, he does know of “Palestine”

    And there’s more. You are now about to enter the Sammy Zone, if you haven’t already.

    Herodotus tells us nothing of the building
    of the Parthenon, because a Jew paid for that (although he wasn’t using his own money)

    That was probably paid for by Persia – an inducement or a bribe to Pericles to keep the peace, and very probably, it was a condition of thegiving of this moey that it not be used for idol worship, and Pericles very clearly stated that the statue of Athena inside was not an idol, but was rather a gold reserve. They could advertise the Parthenon as a temple, so it wouldn’t be looted, and they did, but it was not actually a temple, and the money never would have been given if there was a possibility that it could be.

    A lot of terms of the Peace of Callias were secret and there was a later dispute even whether there was such a treaty, because some of the terms, or the extended terms, were kept from the king.

    tory of how

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  238. I thought Herodotus was the father of history, but I guess Sammy Finkelman thinks it’s himself.

    Nice one with the Book of Esther, BTW, Sammy, but you left out the Mega-bees(sic). Books I and II that the Jews learned how to write when they came into contact with Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans; who were literate and not alternating between nomadic shepherds and slaves.

    And what in The Name Of Jehovahs Great White Beard does Jewish myth have to do with this topic?

    nk (875f57)

  239. Forget it.

    On my site, any commenter can delete his own comment, made to an idiot. I wish I could do it, here, this time.

    nk (875f57)

  240. Comment by elissa — 9/23/2012 @ 12:37 pm

    Sammy–do you think President Obama has said anything clearly and honestly about how he will lead, what he wants to do in a second term and how he plans to accomplish it?

    Not at all. Some elements may be honest, like raising taxes on the highest brackets, but a lot is left out, and his arguments aren’t honest at all.

    He’s totally dishonest about what the Republicans want, although he will avoid too transparent lies, and he will alter his claims when they become more untenable – for instance, he has dropped (from his speeches, I don’t know if this is continuing in any ads) the claim that Romney or Ryan’s reform of Medicare would lead to great out of pocket expenses for Medicare beneficiaries, but he has added the claim that Romney would tax all Social Security benefits. (supposedly Romney would need to do this to make his promises work)

    I admit don’t see a lot of presidential campaign ads in the deep blue state where I reside.

    It’s not here either. I only read about ads, or see them played on news or interview shows, or maybe the Internet. But what about Wisconsin, or is the Chicago media market to expensive? Can they reach Kenosha from other places? Do you ever see or can you get Milwakee TV?

    But from what I hear from others elsewhere, and from what I witness from Obama himself and his surrogates on the talk shows, he seems not to have put out much of a plan or roadmap to get the country out of its economic doldrums or its scary foreign policy challenges.

    Nothing, but then neither his Romney. Rmney seems to be promising what is being predicted for anyway.

    Romney’s not worried about the economy, which he thinks will recover without Presidential intervention. He worries about the size of the debt. Romney does think, however, he can take advantage of the bad economy politically.

    I didn’t cut and paste anything from the sekrit video.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  241. Neither candidate has anything actually to say about what would improve the economy. Obama sort of hints that taxing the upper brackets would solve…?

    He also accuses Romney of wanting to tax everybody else and in general maybe ruin people financially in a couple of years, through tampering wit Medicare and Social Security.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  242. Sammy, have some chicken soup. I don’t guarantee that it will help but it won’t hurt.

    nk (875f57)

  243. Mark I’d have a hard time talking much to a birther, or someone who thought Obama was a socialist hellbent on destroying the constitution.

    Howard Stern talking about Romney.

    Stern is backing Obama.

    sleeeepy (b5f718)

  244. Mr. Sean, we are nicer than left wing sites. This is shown by our tendency not to call for or celebrate the death or illness of our political opponents.

    Oh, and we make common cause with those whose free speech is threatened regardless of their political alignment. The latter largely the opposite of the behavior of left/liberal sites.

    SPQR (9bed9b)

  245. Comment by nk — 9/23/2012 @ 1:35 pm

    I thought Herodotus was the father of history, but I guess Sammy Finkelman thinks it’s himself.

    I can’t do that.

    Herodotus is also known as the Father of Lies

    Photo caption to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Herodotusstatue.JPG

    In main article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus

    The statue of Herodotus in Bodrum, ancient Halicarnassus. He has been called “The Father of History” (first conferred by Cicero) and “The Father of Lies”.[11] As these epithets imply, there has long been a debate—at least from the time of Cicero’s On the Laws (Book 1, paragraph 5)—concerning the veracity of his tales and, more importantly, the extent to which he knew himself to be creating fabrications.

    I say the number one distortion is his total omission of any mention of Jews, which he did because that was the desire of the people who commissioned the book (actually originally lectures) and in fact it was the whole *reason* for writing it. Say you talk about everybody and never mention Jews.

    The people who knew the facts, knew there were all kinds of things wrong in it, not just the omission of Jews, which they don’t even know about or include, (except for Josephus) but too many people have too much invested in his reputation.

    Josephus actually does not say Herodotus deliberately omitted Jews, but that he was used to say that Jews did not go back a long time (and he wrote his Antiquities of the Jews to counter that) and he cites something to prove that Herodotus was aware of Jews, but that just proves to me how Herodotus was carving Jews out of history because he calls Jews Syrians. Actually he attributes to Syrians what is true of Jews. (circumcision)

    Nice one with the Book of Esther, BTW, Sammy,

    I quite independently, long before I linked anything there to Herodotus omissions, established its time period, which is not what a lot of people say, but is quite easy to show.

    This was the A* who ruled from India to Ethiopia. There was a later king of the same name who didn’t. There was a final king who did, but Alexander the Great conquered Egypt a few years later, and that establishes that the date of the final edit of the book of Esther was before. (and there wasn’t too much time to edit it before that power was lost because it was lost after the conquests of Alexander the Great)

    Furthermore Ezra 4:7 (in Aramaic) is clearly a repetition of Ezra 4:6 (in Hebrew) and that also shows you that Ahasueros = Artaxerxes. He starts all over because he’s about to quote a e=letter in Aramaic. Traditional Jewish sources tend to assume that Ezra 4:6 is a one sentence reference to a different king than Ezra 4:7)

    Furthermore the beginning of Nehemiah, which is the one part of the Bible that everyone, from the most militant atheist to the most devout believer, agrees on who wrote it and when it was written, is the account by Nehemiah of his conversation with King Artaxerxes, and as he’s telling it, he realizes he left something important out, and he backtracks a bit or possibly mentions it because of something unsaid, and says (Neh 2:6) that the queen (shegal) was sitting next to him. In other words, he thinks maybe that’swhy he the king agreed – and whywould he mention it unless the queen was Esther? Thhe word shegal actually has somewhat wider and less polite meeting than queen – it may mean someone he sleeps with, but with some honor

    You just look at this source and at that source and see how it all fits together.

    but you left out the Mega-bees(sic).

    I am not sure whether you mean Megabyzus – it was in connection with the revolt of Megabyzus that the tax mentioned in Esther 10:1 was put in place. The peace with Greece came later, but all that was cut from the final edition of the book of Esther which refers you to the Persian archives (which were however, destroyed in the conquest by Alexander the Great)

    Or you mean Maccabees. The Maccabees happened 3 centuries after Herodotus.

    The early secular Zionists actually went along with Herodotus – they didn’t even believe in the Babylonian exile and the First temple – and they started the history of the Jews with Alexander the Great, and so it was and maybe still is in some textbooks in the Israeli school system.

    Books I and II that the Jews learned how to write when they came into contact with Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans; who were literate and not alternating between nomadic shepherds and slaves.

    Where does it say that? Where does anything say that?

    Actually the alphabet (as opposed to all writing) was invented either by Jews or people they came in contact with and possibly intermarried with in Egypt, because Jacob and his family were mostly all sons, and they took it with them when they came out of Egypt and gave it to to the Phoenicians who gave it to the Greeks and Romans. Babylonian writing existed before but it was syllabic not alphabetic.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  246. And what in The Name Of Jehovahs Great White Beard does Jewish myth have to do with this topic

    I wouldn’t call it myth.

    I mentioned some of this about Herodotus in another thread, I think maybe about the Parthenon, and then in comment number 183 by gary gulrud on 9/23/2012 @ 11:24 am (which refers to 178 but that seems to be wrong) brought this up.

    I think the subtopic might have been crazy things that I’ve said. Meaning that the tape was edited rather than what I said, the recording stopped.

    In comment 30 Pious Agnostic says there are cheap ways to remote control a camera. And a reason for putting in that capability is that the people who recorded it could not have known how long it would go on. Today the conversation with a comment by Kevin who linked to somewhere where someone argued that it was only a camera, nothing fantastic and it was adjusted while it was being started and the camera was not fixed in place by a box or whatever. But that doesn’t preclude remote off and on.

    And they did cut it first showing much smaller fragments. It could be this is all.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  247. MEGO attack in progress.

    SPQR (9bed9b)

  248. But that doesn’t preclude remote off and on.

    And being down 27-3 in the last 4 minutes of a football game doesn’t mean you cannot win (it has been done). But it isn’t what you would call “likely.”

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  249. Sammy, just because your magic magnifying mind presents you with serial fantasies of what might have happened, each of which you find some sliver of evidence for, does not mean that the end of the cascade is fact.

    Try Occam’s Razor some time.

    Kevin M (bf8ad7)

  250. Ouch, Occam’s Razor is sharp.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  251. “And what in The Name Of Jehovahs Great White Beard does Jewish myth have to do with this topic”
    “I wouldn’t call it myth.”

    I really liked this bit: “I quite independently, long before I linked anything there to Herodotus omissions, established its time period, which is not what a lot of people say…”

    and this: “Herodotus tells us nothing of the building
    of the Parthenon, because a Jew paid for that (although he wasn’t using his own money)”
    As Allan Sherman would say “Oouh… Boy”

    All of this sidesteps the main issue, which is that the stories you’re talking about are from thousands of years ago, and none of you have had family on this continent for more than a 300 years at the most. My family one one side goes back 290. And that’s rare enough. The Apache don’t really care.

    And “Finkelstein” is old German for “diamond”. My name is Jewish/German as well.

    One more thing. For all the worries that someone might have manipulated the tape we know for a fact that the GOP did just that. NBC has the original.

    Carry on.

    sleeeepy (b5f718)

  252. sleeeepy, none of us have had family on this continent for more than 300 years? More of your fatuous horse manure.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  253. Actually it’s in keeping with what he lectured on;

    http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/2008OBAMA_LAW/Obama_CoursePk.pdf

    narciso (ee31f1)

  254. SPQR – slurpee is on another billionaire coke ho bender.

    JD (89e14d)

  255. I like Sammy. He makes me look sane. He’s nuts, but always in a nice way.

    Sleepy would not make a pimple on Sammy’s behind. Sleepy is pus.

    nk (875f57)

  256. Probably right, JD, since now sleeepy is bringing up Obama spin that was debunked what … a week ago?

    SPQR (26be8b)

  257. nk, but sleeeepy would make a fine boil on someone’s ass, you must admit.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  258. Sammy,

    By Mega-bees, I meant the Maccabes. Their first mutual defense treaty was with Sparta. Where I’m from.

    We can devote several volumes to Judaio-Christianity. But it’s already been done better than I could possibly do it by The Seventy. And Herodotus and Thucidides, classical history.

    nk (875f57)

  259. Well, you know that Herodotus described the abduction of Helen as just another ordinary case of woman-stealing that the Greeks overreacted to …

    SPQR (26be8b)

  260. nk, but sleeeepy would make a fine boil on someone’s ass, you must admit.

    Comment by SPQR — 9/23/2012 @ 4:59 pm

    But then you’d need Lysol or 409 to clean the toilet seat.

    (The daughter went back to mama and I’m meaner than a rattlesnake with a toothache.)

    nk (875f57)

  261. 252. I am copacetic with this account, the earlier one at 250 is nice for the quotes but otherwise muddled as the latter gives evidence.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  262. The Trojan War, SPQR, can be described in three ways, none exclusive of the other:

    1. Young mortal shepherds on a Greek mountainside should not judge the relative beauty of goddesses even if the goddesses bribe them to;
    2. Keep your hands off another man’s woman;
    3. Troy is rich, let’s find an excuse to pillage it.

    Hector and Diomedes were the only true heroes in the Iliad.

    nk (875f57)

  263. Just another misunderstanding, it seems’

    http://academic.reed.edu/Humanities/hum110/Hdt/Hdt2.html

    narciso (ee31f1)

  264. I had to explain to my daughter (ten) why mama gets custody and not daddy. I described Caeserian. Showed her on my body where the doctor cut mama. She understood why daddy would not take mama’s baby away from her.

    I hate ….

    nk (875f57)

  265. 250. Interesting, the map even omits the Philistines. The Phoenicians, remnants of the Minoan culture, were well established early at Lybia as well.

    Israel, the northern kingdom was a suzerain of Assyria at the point of Babylonia’s resurgence and Judah attempted to press its suzerainity with Egypt but the latter was receding in power.

    Hence, the twelve tribes, their religion and their upper crust were stripped from the country for two and a half centuries.

    Judah’s prominence for her religion awaited the Hellenistic world still to come.

    The point is Herodotus can be faulted for his details, much gotten at second hand, but regarding the Jews there was no story he could have told. They were a backwater.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  266. Us Julio-Claudians are still annoyed that its called “caesarian” …. hehe.

    SPQR (9bed9b)

  267. Libya*. Dang, that one always gets me.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  268. Actually Libys, seems to have plenty of entries in the histories, so no dice, gary

    narciso (ee31f1)

  269. Actually Obama must be pretty smart to be elected to the highest elected office in the land with that alleged smudge on his record.
    Comment by Mr. Sean — 9/23/2012 @ 11:31 am

    — Sure, THAT’S how he got elected, cuz of his wicked smarts.

    The people around here sure don’t seem to be very nice. Is this indicative of the right in general or just the people who comment here?
    Comment by Mr. Sean — 9/23/2012 @ 12:38 pm

    — Aww, the poor babe in the woods! Oh wait, you’ve been here before, so you already know that we play tough but fair.

    Icy (f5258c)

  270. Like the Piranha Bros, lol.

    narciso (ee31f1)

  271. Schmuck, I’m a “Joooo” and I’m tired of white people.
    Comment by sleeeepy — 9/6/2012 @ 10:30 pm

    Icy (f5258c)

  272. Dinsdale!

    Icy (f5258c)

  273. “But that doesn’t preclude remote off and on.”

    Comment by Kevin M — 9/23/2012 @ 4:24 pm

    And being down 27-3 in the last 4 minutes of a football game doesn’t mean you cannot win (it has been done). But it isn’t what you would call “likely.”

    But there is a logical reason to prepare remote off and on. If the people doing the recording did not know how much recording time they would have (you have to know a lot about SD cards and how many kilobytes of storage space you use up per second, and they did not know how long Romney would be there and talk, they might have wanted to skip dull spots. If so, they would have wanted the turning on and off of the camera to be unobtrusive.

    Post production is harder to understand than a live cut.. The tapes start in the middle and the first one ends in the middle – you can’t claim nothing is missing. It stops even in the middle of a sentence which you know how it is going to end.

    The camera continues to be moved a few times, till 8 minutes in according to Not Yet Europe..

    There is no movement between the end of the first video and the start of the second, but the second video is louder? What would explain that?

    Perhaps it was chopped up a bit. It had to be anyway, two separate files.

    Now Mother Jones is not telling the truth. But hey want people to believe this is all. Why would they make more signs of a gap than they have to? Maybe because the gap in not under their control, maybe not under anybody’s control because it is not post-production.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  274. For what it is worth, David Corn claimed on Face the Nation this morning, that they knew of the video at the end of August (about 3 weeks before its release) and had it for about a week and said they delayed releasing it because they wanted to check or test its authenticity.

    David Corn. it seemed to me, was defending himself mostly against the possible charge of selecting the date or collusion with the taper. H

    He derided conspiracy theories, which is usually done, in my opinion, when some kind of conspiracy is true but there are also some others that are straw men. He didn’t say what the conspiracy theories were or even what they were about.(the original taping? The handling of the tapes?)

    Nothing about the gap, or even this being in two unconnected parts, came up, as far as I know.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  275. Q. If the first video some standard number of minutes or kilobytes?

    If edited, was someone paying attention to P-frames and I-frames and stopping it only at a place where a stop by the camera would be plausible?

    Both of these ideas could explain why it stops in the middle of a sentence (not a spot to intentionally break a tape in post-production)

    If it looks pre-production, because it stops with a right kind of compression, and it was really post-production, a lot of care would have had to be taken.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  276. It’s a myth, SPQR. Fiction. Homonyms. Caesar’s stirps was not named because of the operation and the operation was not named after Caesar’s stirps. It’s “cesare”, to cut, incision.

    According to Robert Graves, Caesar means “hairy beast” (head of hair), fictionally translating the Sybil.

    (I am from the Antonians. My cousins have married with the Cornelians but my brothers and I preferred northern barbarians.)

    nk (875f57)

  277. Well, doesn’t PA beat all?

    “Obama polled 47 percent to Romney’s 45 percent among likely Pennsylvania voters, with 6 percent of voters undecided and 44 days until Election Day, according to the survey by Susquehanna Polling & Research. The survey of 800 voters, conducted Sept. 18-20, has a margin of error of 3.46 percentage points.”

    Exit polling will call the contest before 8 PM PST.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  278. 800 polled? 800? In a black gay bar in Pennsylvania? Sigh.

    nk (875f57)

  279. 281. The 6 percent undecided will break unanimously for the white guy.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  280. Among pollsters, is “likely voters”

    Don’t answer
    Hang up
    Swear and hangup
    What color underwear are you wearing?

    nk (875f57)

  281. As part of a 300 level statistics course, in college, I had to conduct a survey. According to statistics, a significant sample for statistics is 27. Yes! Twenty-seven.

    So I decided to find out how many Americans had telephones, in America, in 1978. So I called twenty-seven people, picked at random out of The White Pages, and I asked them if they had telephones. They all said they did.

    nk (875f57)

  282. Looks like college was well worth the money for you.

    BeerandCoffee (77ac66)

  283. The spin is that Mother Jones got the full video, and then NBC did.

    Maybe it happened the other way around.

    Sammy Finkelman (9ef46e)

  284. 251. Comment by narciso — 9/23/2012 @ 4:25 pm

    http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2012/03/herodotus-palestine-and-jews.html

    All this, of course, is premised on the idea that Herodotus is not malicious.

    From that web page:


    Now it is clear from all the mentions that Herodotus gives of Palestine and its people that they did not have a particularly odd monotheistic religion (which the Bible claims they did) as if they had done so: it is the kind of thing that Herodotus was and is apt to mention. However none of his informants mention this and thus neither does Herodotus. Indeed the only mention we have of a temple is of a pagan one; to Aphrodite, who was apparently much favoured by the locals in Ascalan; modern Ashkelon, who were supposedly jews at this time according to the Biblical narrative. This is certainly an odd omission not easily argued against.

    The omission is easily explained by the hypothesis that Herodotus is maliciously lying.

    The page is quite right in refuting Josephus (that’s who argued that he did mention Jews) about Syrians of Palestine that he is talking ,i> honestly about Jews. Herodotus is flat out lying.

    The Phoenicians and the Syrians of Palestine themselves admit that they learned the practice from Egypt, and the Syrians who live near the rivers

    Now Syrians of Palestine probably is meant to be Jews – but the last thing any Jew would say is that they learned the practice from Egypt.

    Herodotus is lying.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  285. 253. http://www.bible.ca/archeology/bible-archeology-exodus-ancient-geographers-maps-sinai-egypt-midian-arabia-kadesh-barnea-shur-herodotus-484bc.htm

    That page says Herodotus was aware of the Jews using the same circumcision argument. But if he means to refer to Jews he is clearly lying.

    It says he used the term “Palestine” to refer but the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt, including the promised land.

    What part of the area between area between Phoenicia and Egypt, is not the “promised land”

    Interesting thought: The page does argue that maybe copyists after 135 CE changed a word that Herodotus used to Palestine, so that indeed Hadrian may be the first use. The oldest extant manuscript is from about 900.

    My rough feeling was that Herodotus uses the word “Palestine” to refer only to the coast.

    Otherwise he probably used the word Syria, or Syria modified by some other (perhaps lost) noun, which perhaps in a few cases was changed by later copyists to Palestine-Syria, because they knew very well that south of Phoenicia it is no longer Syria.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  286. The Promised Land is America, Sammy. There is no place whenever, wherever, that Jews had it better.

    I suppose we could specify Miami Beach. 😉

    nk (875f57)

  287. 288. Sammy, you’re reading Herodotus in translation. In fact, the sources are all from the last millenium. The link at 252, apart from giving quotes is crappy.

    And just because the Jews were released to return in 523, doesn’t mean they had substantially done so before the birth of Herodotus.

    Daniel dates to 490. Nehemiah returned well ahead of Ezra.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  288. 291. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/24/2012 @ 9:51 am

    288. Sammy, you’re reading Herodotus in translation. In fact, the sources are all from the last millenium. The link at 252, apart from giving quotes is crappy.

    WhI know its’;s translation. Therefore I wondered what word Herodotuis used for “Palestine” Now I am reading that this was perhaps altered from what it originally was. I find it perfectly plausible that Herodotus used the word Palestine -it would be further evidence of his deliberate distortions.

    And just because the Jews were released to return in 523, doesn’t mean they had substantially done so before the birth of Herodotus.

    I know there weren’t rttoo many people there. I know it has been argued that the Jews in Judea were too inconspicuous for Herodotus to notice them.

    But he doesn’t just not mention the Jews, he doesn’t mention the Samaritans, either! At that time, they made a bigger population we would guess.

    He doesn;t mention them because if he mentioned them – hed’d have to mention their origin – that they are a replacement population brought in when the Assyrians deported the majority of the tribes.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  289. Herodotus and Nehemiah and Judea

    He knows about it. He knows about it. He rather sneakily hints about it. But he doesn’t reveal it to anybody who doesn’t already know

    He writes at 3:34 (about Cambyses)

    http://www.iranchamber.com/history/herodotus/herodotus_history_book3.php

    He was mad also upon others besides his kindred; among the rest, upon Prexaspes, the man whom he esteemed beyond all the rest of the Persians, who carried his messages, and whose son [maybe – see below] held the office – an honour of no small account in Persia – of his cupbearer.

    Now, what does he mean by this:

    “an honour of no small account in Persia”

    Is then truly a king’s cupbearer a great position???

    Not normally.

    This is snarky reference to Nehemiah and the fact he became Governor of Judea. The fact that a nobody acquired a position of high honor. So Herodotus jokingly refers to his previous position as one of high honor.

    It passed the censorship of the Egyptian priests who were paying for lifestyle.

    What was a cupbearer? Only a position that a king trusted a person – trusted that his wine wouldn’t be poisoned. But not one of high honor. So it was in the case Herodotus cites.

    Perhaps somebody’s son was in it. Even so, the son was not an important person himself. Just trusted not to participate in an assassination plot. A kind of technical position.

    Where else do you see any evidence that this was a great position?? (it’s also in I think the book of Judith or Tobit but that was after Nehemniah and they are fiction)

    Nobody else says that a cupbearer is such a great position, and it doesn’t apply, – would his baker also be an important person? – and

    http://www.livius.org/as-at/aspathines/aspathines.html

    Herodotus may have lied about him being the son of Prexaspes (the person Cambyses was speaking to when he casually mentioned he was not drunk because he could shoot accurately and let him prove it by shooting his cupbearer)

    Herodotus tells the story because the king klilled him and made it look like a whim.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  290. Herodotus gets the joke past the Egyptian priests because the person reviewing his work does not know that the position of cupbearer is NOT a position of high honor in Persia .

    It isn’t anywhere else – that’s the point. It actually wasn’t in Persia either. To make this work, herodotus may have had to change the ancestry of the cupbearer.

    Now Nehemiah probably had his position because he was Jewish, because the king trusted Mordechai to see he wouldn’t be assassinated, but it still wasn’t a personally important position so that a person who had occupied that position would be come a Governor or something like that.

    In a world that functioned predictably.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  291. Comment by Mark — 9/23/2012 @ 11:24 am

    he still resists the idea that the destruction of and killing at the consulate in Libya was the act of terrorists instead of a bunch of local protestors who got a bit too rowdy, that speaks volumes.

    I think this is so stupid it has to be the result of faulty intelligence.

    But that advertisement he ran on Pakistani TV – what that’s doing is giving Khamenei and company the idea that he’s weak, and now they are threatening that if Iran is attacked – even by Israeli forces alone – what we saw last week is only the beginning and they’ll also attack U.S. military bases in the region and no country in the region will be able to remain neutral.

    The Iranian mullahs are making the same mistake they made 32 years ago. They are going to elect the Republican – or they going to educate the incumbent and change hsi policy. (Barack Obama is NOT Jimmy Carter, and he has his example, too)

    Are they that stupid – or is that they don’t care who is president of the United States, because they’ve got a secret plan to defeat the United States no matter what.

    Like Romney said: http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/18/13943563-full-video-and-transcript-of-leaked-romney-fundraiser-remarks?lite

    This is a couple years ago. When we had one of our aircraft carriers (UNINTEL) by– by Japan. And– and the Chinese pulled up behind it in– in a diesel sub, a super quiet diesel sub. Pulled up behind it. They could have te– torpedoed it…

    Now China has rather good ,ilitary relations with Iran. They sell stuff:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/world/asia/05china.html
    The cables include a stream of messages from American to Chinese officials about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and missile technology, usually from North Korea or from Chinese companies to Iran. In cable after cable, Americans warn of attempts by an Iranian front company in Malaysia to purchase nuclear components; a North Korean flight to Iran, via Beijing, that may have carried ballistic missile experts; and Iranian efforts to buy aluminum plates from a Chinese company for use in cruise missiles. Other cables cited Chinese companies’ efforts to sell prohibited technologies or materials to Pakistan.

    What the Chinese did with the warnings is not stated. In some cables, Chinese officials repeated the government’s firm commitment to control nuclear and missile proliferation, and pledged to pass the messages to relevant agencies. In others, they expressed doubts about the veracity or completeness of American information.

    And in several cases, the American Embassy was forced to use go-betweens in the Chinese government, apparently because Chinese arms-control offices had suspended contacts with Washington in the wake of American weapons sales to Taiwan.

    So the Iranians undoubtably know of this stiry – and more. Of course so does the U.S. military, and it may prevent that. But the Iranians may think it won’t be prevented and that that would knock the U.S. out of the war.

    Already Russia has called for relaxing of sanctions.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  292. Sammy, knock it off. Herodotus was a Greek. And Ganymede and Hebe, Zeus’s cupbearers, were gods and held high positions. (I think Hercules replaced Hebe.) Why the hell should Herodotus care about a bunch of runaway slaves, on the ragged edge of starvation, stealing sheep in the Sinai? And mana? Sycamore seeds?

    Knock it off with this Old Testament myth rewriting nonsense. Judaism was never an important religion until Saint Paul and The Seventy incorporated it into Christianity.

    nk (875f57)

  293. 293, 294. “Egyptian priests”

    Stupid question–What have Egyptian priests to do with Herodotus?

    Cupbearer not a position of any account–Being governor of a sh*thole is an estimable position?

    No kidding Sammy, we could drive an Iron Range dump truck through some of these lacunae in your citadel.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  294. Comment by gary gulrud — 9/24/2012 @ 1:41 pm

    Stupid question–What have Egyptian priests to do with Herodotus?

    Herodotus was probably living in Egypt when he wrote the first version of his writings (which were actually lectures)

    It is hard to find out just where he was when, but he spent a lot of time in Egypt talking to Egyptian priests.

    http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh2000.htm

    and I heard also other things at Memphis when I had speech with the priests of Hephaistos. Moreover I visited both Thebes and Heliopolis for this very cause, namely because I wished to know whether the priests at these places would agree in their accounts with those at Memphis; for the men of Heliopolis are said to be the most learned in records of the Egyptians. Those of their narrations which I heard with regard to the gods I am not earnest to relate in full, but I shall name them only, because I consider that all men are equally ignorant of these matters: and whatever things of them I may record, I shall record only because I am compelled by the course of the story.

    And he didn’t visit a lot of places he claimned to visit.

    So I am saying they paid for this. Everyone is assumionmg he was very rich.

    This was maybe not the first person they tried to get too write such a book. the firsty was Hecataeus of Miletus (c. 550 BC – c. 476 BC[1]) same idea: World survery.

    <i Cupbearer not a position of any account–Being governor of a sh*thole is an estimable position?

    How many Governors did they have? And this was close to Egypt.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  295. Sammy, given your usual incoherent long stream of consciousness writing, I can’t tell if you are ridiculing concerns over the vulnerability of US CV task forces to Chinese submarines or not.

    But you should be aware that a well-handled, well-maintained, diesel-electric boat, even of many decades of seeming “obsolescence” is a very serious threat to a CV task force. If well handled they are very stealthy subs.

    SPQR (8134d6)

  296. I believe that small diesel-hydrogen-electrics have been in our fleet for a while, SPQR, as chasers of noisier subs. And the Germans are producing them and marketing them?

    I read that the Japanese have developed a silent, magnetically-propelled sub, but I suppose they’re waiting to use it against North Korea as a message to China?

    nk (875f57)

  297. The Chinese are not expansionist. They are a strong and proud people. Who have lived without foreign invaders only since 1945. We’ll see.

    nk (875f57)

  298. 298. Sam, Herodotus never travelled to Palestine or Egypt. WTFU.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  299. 298. “How many Governors did they have? And this was close to Egypt.”

    I’m not going to bother establishing the Governor of territory including the former Israel and Judah but assume he was situated somewhere on the Orontes.

    Judah had no aristocracy, no priesthood, no scribes, no temple, just a gaggle of itinerant farmers and marginal commerce. Governor of Judah was a big step down from an emperors court however you paint it.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  300. Sammy. Safe, but the obligatory ode to the Muses is boring. Hesiod’s Godbirth: http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hesiod/theogony.htm

    nk (875f57)

  301. So what was that Chinese fleet, that was turned away in 1298 thereabouts, by a typhoon, the origin of the word ‘kamikazi

    narciso (ee31f1)

  302. Mongols. They were high plains horsemen who conquered China and got the Chinese to build them boats for themselves and their horses. They tried to invade Japan, to punish the Japanese pirates (the way we punished the Barbary pirates a while later), but a “kamikaze”, a “holy wind” crashed the Mongol horde against the shore.

    nk (875f57)

  303. Not all the Mongols drowned. Some survived to land and test their horses and bows against the horses, bows, spears and swords of the bushi (I’m not sure “samurai” was in use back then).

    nk (875f57)

  304. Well written justification for one of the two PA polls showing it to be a one-point contest.

    http://sprblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/why-our-recent-polling-is-accurate-and-shows-a-close-election-for-president-by-james-lee-president-of-spr/

    Note, their poll put undecideds at 6%. Dead Dog Meat Barcky.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  305. nk, there are no longer any diesel-electric submarines in US Navy. As you point out many of our allies still operate such non-nuclear hunter-killer subs.

    SPQR (5884a8)

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