[1]Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere… Bit’sBlog’s Nightlty Ramble.
Nearly the last one of the year. A slower day than some, so tonight’s ramble through the headlines will be a shorter one than some.
- Speaking of the new year; Are you making new year’s resolutions? This time of year is often a time for reassessing one’s life and it’s direction. Frankly, I’ve not bothered, this year. As I remarked yesterday, this is a year the conditions of which nobody predicted. And even under more stable and more predictable conditions, I’ve never been able to keep resolutions I’ve made. I had goals set me for years, most of which involved my obtaining a better position at a job I had. I did well, but the division I was working for was closed. They’re tearing down the buidling I was working in, next month. Yes, I suppose that perhaps this is a wekaness on my part, but having gone through this 50 some-odd times, now, I’ve given myself to the reality of the situation… the chances are fairly good that I’m going to, for some reason or another, not achieve the goals I set at the end of this year, by the next. That said, I did manage it one year; I got Donna to marry me by New Years day, 1990, getting under the wire by a month. Best thing I ever did. So, yes, there is a plus side to setting such goals.
- A second place over at OTB’s Caption Contest [2]. Sometimes the tried and true stuff is still the best.
- We’ve commented several times, now, and in several Rambles that the Dutch appear to be retreating from their supposed “open-mindedness.” The International Herald Tribune examines this in some detail, today, in an article entitled: From the left, a call to end the current Dutch notion of tolerance [3]. A part, here:
Two weeks ago, the country’s biggest left-wing political grouping, the Labor Party, which has responsibility for integration as a member of the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats, issued a position paper calling for the end of the failed model of Dutch “tolerance.”It came at the same time Nicolas Sarkozy was making a case in France for greater opportunities for minorities that also contained an admission that the French notion of equality “doesn’t work anymore.”
[4]But there was a difference. If judged on the standard scale of caution in dealing with cultural clashes and Muslims’ obligations to their new homes in Europe, the language of the Dutch position paper and Lilianne Ploumen, Labor’s chairperson, was exceptional.There’s an old saying about Kids…. if you hear a toilet flushing and the words “Uh-oh” from a child’s voice, it’s already too late. It seems clear what’s going on here is the dim and belated recognition by the left that they’re being over-run, and that the policies of multi-culturalism aren’t working out quite as billed. I’ve warned of this before in these spaces and not only in the case of the Dutch, but America, as well. The myth of multi-culturalism is based on the notion that everyoe will willingly become a part of the culture and they of ours… our cultures will integrate. That, however, leaves two questions; Will they in fact do so, and with what are we integrating? I asked a while ago [5]why the social left wasn’t recognizing this point… and now it appears at least in the case of the Dutch, that they have started to. I wonder, though, if, as with the recognition of the small child that there might be a problem with flushing whatever-it-was… that it’s already too late… that what we had, culturally, is gone forever, because the consequences of our chocies weren’t understood. Certainly, what we’re seeing from the Dutch is tatamount to a child going ‘Uh-oh…”
- Steyn notes the above story [6]and points out that we in the west are far too quick to bend over….:
Whatever the belated awakening among certain European politicians, the default mode in western institutions will remain pre-emptive capitulation…
Indeed, and in a comparison of the two, those bent on the Islamic takeover of our culture, and of the left of the west, bent on handing it to them, the latter will be by far the harder to overcome.
- Speaking of that… If it’s anti-Western, Bozo moonbat Cynthia McKinney can be counted on to back it. As in this case [7]. Too bad they didn’t sink her. Think of the lives that could have been saved.
- I remakred yesterday about the small mountain of corruption within the Democrat party. It’s starting to look like they were waiting until after the danger of losing the election has passed, as I said yesterday, to take action. CNN is now following the situation with Charlie Rangel [8]. Any further denials about how the Dinosaur media is working for the left should die a quick and painful death, when someone notes that prior to the election, the rpess couldn’t be bothered to pursue the issue of Rangel’s corruption as it should have been. And then, there’s William Jefferson, and Chris Dodd [9], (And Chris Dodd [10]) and Barney Frank [11], whose corruption the dinosaur press is pretty much ignoring. Are you getting the picture, yet?
- So, the Democrats in Congress are thinking about hearings on Madoff? [12]Why does this strike me as an opportunity for Democrats to execute damage control? The image of a freshly painted white fence leaps to mind. [13]
- Me at OTB’s comments section [14] this morning, responding to Steve Plunk, who says in part:
Can we now expect OPEC to behave like the Federal Reserve? Inject a little oil to boost the economy, reduce production to cool it off. I understand the number one priority is price support but they just learned how high prices can dampen economic growth. Will they learn to play it both ways?
I’ll tell you this; that’s the best illustration I can think of for the futility of a bunch of old men sitting around a table in Washington DC trying to dictate economic policy. The fact of the matter is, that energy is the basis for all the rest of it. Without it, anything anyone, particularly government, does, is utterly meaningless.
We opened ourselves up for the economic collapse we just experienced, by not using what energy is available. By refusing to drill here at home. By refusing to increase refining capacity here at home. By refusing to dig what coal we have here at home. By sacrificing our energy usage to the great myth of global warming.
By no means am I suggesting that energy independence is possible or even desirable. What I’m saying is that everybody else, (particularly countries that don’t like us very much) has levers with which to manipulate our economy. If they hadn’t figured that part out before this most recent collapse, they sure as hell have now. Our only option is to create a few levers ourselves. Given who is in control in Congress, and the White House, do you suppose there’s a snowball’s chance of it?
I can tell you now, that I don’t. Mostly, because they’re so enamoured with restricting our energy use, that they lose sight of the damage it’s causing. As for OPEC and it’s intentions, Steve Verdon notes there, in the original post, that…
OPEC is determined to get the price back up to a more acceptable level. So when the economy does recover it is likely that we could see oil prices move upwards rather sharply. Especially if during the economic downturn and period of lower prices oil companies cut back and lay off employes and cut back on new investments, especially in refining.
Frankly, I’m unconvinced that’s going to happen. Certainly their cash reserves in the Arab oil world would preclude that as a nesessity. Their taking that action may be a question mark, but I don’t see it as a sure bet.A lot of what we see going on in OPEC just now is politics which have to do with the price of extraction. Some places are content at current prices because they’re making money. Others, not so much. Which is the more troublesome of the world stage? The ones with higher extraction costs, for the most part. the higher the price of oil goes, the better Iran for example, is able to fund it’s nuclear ambitions. Even other Islamic nations aren’t too happy about that, and they’re making money at the lower price anyway, so they’ll be less vocal in their push for higher prices than they might be otherwise.
- Billy; [15]
Tell me what I should write about that. That’s been on my mind for days now, almost like a debt that I don’t know how to pay. I don’t know how much more clearly one could see what that man is writing about, and I feel like I could write all the time for the rest of my life and never help anyone see it. Certainly not to any degree that could alter the alterable that must be altered. None of this is ordained. It is merely happening, but what is happening is a necessary matter of cause and effect, and that is a matter of human purview.
Well, you could start, Billy, by reminding both your correspondant and yourself, that there’s a major difference between voting here and voting in the country he left. In some ways, he happening here is far sadder. That’s because while their vote was a sham from the start over there, and at the point of a gun. Meanwhile, over here, too many people gave their vote away to people who promised them the moon… and gave it willingly. Far as I can see, the former is the abuse by government, submitted to unwillingly, and of the voter. The latter is willing and non-thinking abuse OF government BY the voter. That’s a major difference and shouldn’t be overlooked. I say again…as I have for years, now… Our system only works with careful consideration of who is elected. Can you honestly tell me that kind of consideration has been given on the whole, since 1980? I would add that’s an opportunity they don’t have elsewhere, this opportunity that has been squandered in this country all these years. Clearly the problems you both decry (and rightly) are founded not in that the system is corrupt, but in the fact that such consideration and care wasn’t given. We’ve had discussions before about why that’s so. Education, for one thing. these things could have been overcome and might be yet. But as it is, the culmination of all of that is the most recent election.
- Lots of blog awards going out just now, being we’re on the end of the year. And BitsBlog is still not on any of them, (Sigh…) though I note a lot of our friends are. [16] I see Hawkins running his own list, too, though I’ll have more to say on that point tommrow.