Why 2011 is not 1995

The April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing is thought by many Liberals and the Media (the two are interchangeable, for all practical purposes) to mark the beginning of President Clinton's comeback after Republicans retook the House in the 1994 midterm elections. The bombing, and Clinton's blaming of Talk Radio, Rush Limbaugh, and conservatives, was not the reason for his comeback. The Dot-Com bubble, cheap oil prices (West Texas Intermediate spot oil was $17.3 per barrel on July 1, 1995, which would be equivalent to $24.75 today). Nevertheless, the media and liberals both seized on the parallel, because of their tendency to act like a herd (and group-think), making Sarah Palin the Emmanuel Goldstein subject to the two minutes of hate (for Liberals and the Media, the novel "1984" is a how-to manual, not a warning). Which will ultimately fail. Because the modern media smog, while able to nudge culture in ways it wants to go anyway, is not as effective as people think.


Maudlin, emotion-mongering and two minutes of hate against Palin, might stimulate a few for a while but the effects merge into attention over Snooki and the Situation's antics, the doings (such as they are) of the Kardashians, gossip over a reputed catfight between Scarlett Johanssen and Sandra Bullock, and the return of American Idol. Everything seems to merge together into the culture/media smog, and nothing matters. Constant repetition over years can make some ideas seem "reasonable" (such as Hollywood's constant depiction of a Black President as wise, noble, tough, courageous, and redeeming) but only if the culture wants to go there.

Presidents are like football coaches. They have to deliver. And Obama must produce results. Just ask Denny Green, or Perry Fewell, or Herm Edwards, or Mike Singletary. All fired as head coaches. Results matter. The American people, including even SWPL White women, and professional class women, demand at the very least, no erosion in the amount and value of cash in their bank accounts. People like to spend. Buying things might be "retail therapy" but in the stress of isolation of modern life, it matters. The converse is also true, people, even SWPL women and professional class White women, ground zero of PC and "diversity" and multiculturalism, don't tolerate for long a grinding budget battle, in their own personal spending, as rising prices and stagnant wages make their discretionary spending each month, smaller and smaller.

Obama won, over John McCain, largely because the financial crisis under George W. Bush eroded any argument McCain had over competency, particularly given McCain's fairly obvious attempts to hand Obama the Presidency in order to gain the good opinion of the New York Times. But that same process requires Obama to post victories. Not meaningless legislative victories for passing bills (ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, Gays in the Military) that most oppose or don't care about. Instead, Obama has to get the equivalent of wins and playoff victories in the NFL. Or he will get fired.

Muni bonds are crashing, and the outlook for many bonds of this class is not good. Illinois is as much as five months behind payment to some vendors, and is floating a bizarre deal on Wall Street whereupon Investment Banks like Goldman Sachs would pay the vendors upfront, and then earn 1% each month from Illinois until the state can scratch up enough money to pay back the Investment Bank. Special-purpose bonds for say, Harrisburg's incinerator, or water districts, or sewage districts have already defaulted or are in the process of defaulting. Meanwhile, the WSJ reports:

Moody’s said the vendor assistance idea may alleviate near term hardships on the vendors, but will not deal with the underlying problem: the state doesn’t have the cash to pay vendors. The financing scheme essentially shifts the debt from the vendor to a private investor.

The tax raises in Illinois, to the tune of 75% or more, are unlikely to raise the revenue projected (people will pull in spending, move jobs out of state, and otherwise reduce their tax exposure as much as possible).

Meanwhile OPEC says no relief from oil price rises. The CEO of Gulf Oil believes $150 a barrel for oil is going to be a lengthy reality. Meanwhile there is a global food crisis that is only getting worse as we compete for China and India for food (and other commodities). The overthrow of the Tunisian President is unlikely to be the only fallout of the crisis. Food price rises have not been as dramatic in the US and developed world, but it will hit us eventually. Massive rises in feedstocks such as corn, wheat, and soybeans, up almost 80% (for some feedstock) from a year ago will increase, radically, the cost of meat, dairy, and eggs. Livestock don't exist on unicorn farts and rainbows. Meanwhile cotton prices are at historic highs, and so too are substitutes such as rayon.

What does this mean?

It means the average White professional woman, will be paying considerably more, in taxes (to bail out bankrupt states and municipalities). While shelling out more for gas every week at the pump, and the grocery store. Cotton clothing will be far more expensive, perhaps unaffordable (given 90% price rises from the past year), and rayon too will be far more costly (rayon being a rather inferior substitute for cotton, and far less comfortable). She'll be eating less of what she likes, and more of what she doesn't. Buying far less clothing, and inferior clothes to what she purchased just a few years ago (under George W. Bush).

These key voters, who will form either Obama's victory coalition (pushing him over the top along with Gay, Black, Hispanic, and elite White voters) or margin of defeat. Obama has already lost White male voters, blue collar White voters, while retaining Black and Hispanic voters. The margin of victory or defeat, is contained within the SPWL, professional class White woman voter demographic.

Obama's allies, no doubt Obama himself, and the media, have bet pretty everything that a massive campaign of two minutes of hate against Sarah Palin, maudlin emotion mongering, and blaming the Tea Party, Palin, and Rush Limbaugh for a leftwing nutcase's shooting of an obscure, if youngish White professional female Congresswoman, will be enough to win the votes of the SWPL female demographic.

It is a poor bet. One likely to fail. Yes, making Limbaugh and others in the Conservative movement in 1995 look responsible for Oklahoma City certainly helped with the Gender Gap, and generating White female votes for Democrats. But the real reason Clinton won was cheap gas and a booming economy. And that was with about 300 people killed. In a year, no one will even remember Gabrielle Giffords, sad to say. The American attention span is short. People are concerned mostly about their own economic situation.

Yes, the victims killed in the shooting were ignored, in favor of the photogenic, SWPL-like Congresswoman, to appeal to the emotions (along with the slain nine year old girl) of SWPL women. No doubt that is partially effective. But far more effective is the argument, "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" It cuts to the heart of the matter. Presidents are expected to deliver results, just like football coaches.

Obama, who has NEVER been able to deliver concrete, measurable results to voters, must now play defense, and deliver results. In less than two years. He must drive gas and oil and energy prices down. Considerably. While creating new jobs, wage increases, and an increase in real purchasing power (by increasing earnings more than price rises for commodities). It does not matter if a few million yuppies have enough money to buy new Iphones. What matters is Jane Professional woman, having enough left over after savings, paying for gas, and food, and other necessities, can spend enough to make her feel good without a gnawing anxiety over her personal budget.

Just ask Mike Singletary.
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Charlie Sheen Vs. Jared Lee Loughner

Over at Citizen Renegade, Roissy has a post on the parallels between Jared Lee Loughner and George Sodini. He's utterly unsurprised that a man with psychotic tendencies, paranoid schizophrenia, experiences sexual rejection, and that this helps create a vicious circle culminating in a murder spree. While Roissy points out this guy was likely too far gone in mental illness (perhaps genetic) to benefit from Game, others not so far gone can be at least reduce some of the factors in the vicious cycle of social isolation in mental illness.

Let's test that theory with a comparison of Charlie Sheen, and Jared Lee Loughner.


Now, while this considers only data points of well, one each for a man with no problems in accessing women, and one with no ability whatsoever to access women, Hollywood is a cruel place. It both attracts, and helps create, people with mental instability. Indeed, drug habits, mental illness, psychotic behavior, are often no barrier at all to highly paid actors and actresses working, often fairly steadily. As long as a person can get a completion bond / insurance, they can work in Hollywood. Even say, Randy Quaid should his legal problems disappear, could find work. Someone will inevitably hire troubled Lindsay Lohan (who her parents by exploiting her ruthlessly helped create the dysfunction). Britney Spears has control of her life passed over to her father, and yet still works (recently appearing in "Glee.")

What is different about Hollywood is that the most junior, minor, D-List male celebrity can have ungodly, unbelievable sexual/romantic access to women.

So let us compare Sheen and Loughner. Both are well-known 9/11 Truthers. Check. Both have documented issues with drugs and alcohol. Sheen's brother and father checking him into rehab during the late 1990's, and Sheen recently spent time at rehab again for drug and alcohol abuse as part of his plea bargain over his Christmas Day assault on then wife Brooke Mueller.

Sheen has had a number of incidents relating to violent behavior towards women. He pled guilty to domestic violence in the incident where he held a knife to his then wife's (Brooke Mueller) throat on Christmas Day, threatening to kill her. Sheen was taken by police to a hospital after the porn star in his room called 911 alleging Sheen was going to kill her (reportedly she was hiding, naked, in the closet, as Sheen trashed the room in a rage). Denise Richards made allegations of abuse and violence and porn addiction during their divorce hearings. [Another link regarding the NYC incident can be found here] Kelly Preston was engaged to Charlie Sheen when he accidentally shot her in the arm. Sheen claimed at the time the gun went off "accidentally" when he was cleaning it. Preston promptly ended the relationship and engagement. Recently Charlie Sheen was spotted partying and drinking in Vegas with porn stars. Another story here.

Now, by any reasonable accounting, Charlie Sheen's history with women is not exactly one filled with rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns. Women generally don't stay with him. But they do find him intriguing. Kelly Preston, after all, when she was young and beautiful, did agree to marry him. Same with Denise Richards. Brooke Mueller is easy on the eyes as well. For Richard and Mueller, Sheen's well known involvement with Heidi Fleiss's prostitution ring (he bragged about being a client), his drug and alcohol problems, and his prior failures were not deterrents to a relationship. Both were beautiful women who did not exactly lack for male attention.

While I would not characterize Sheen as stable, he is at least functional, able to do his TV show for CBS. He hasn't killed any one.

Who said "Die Bitch!" Was it Charlie Sheen, or Jared Lee Loughner? Answer: BOTH!

According to TMZ, Sheen's ex-wife Denise Richards might testify in the comedian's criminal case next month. The disturbing reason?

The district attorney is interested in a declaration Richards signed (under penalty of perjury) on December 30, 2005. On that day, she got a restraining order against the Two and a Half Men star and swore the following in court:

In the middle of an argument, Denise was holding her and Charlie's daughter Lola. From there, Sheen "pushed me, shoving me with his two hands between my shoulders. I was forced backwards and tripped over one of the children's toys and fell on the floor with Lola."

Under oath, Richards said her husband screamed: "I hope you f-cking die, bitch... You are f-cking with the wrong guy."

Obviously, Loughner was far more troubled, than Charlie Sheen. Who himself has a history that does not inspire confidence, in stability or sobriety. No amount of success with women would "fixed" Loughner, what was required was commitment to a mental health facility and long term treatment. Loughner did not even get the short-term treatment that Sheen got. While obviously not long-term effective, the short term stays in rehab might have prevented worse problems from cropping up in Sheen's life. Loughner did not even get that, as it seems that Loughner's mother, Amy, who worked for Pima County as a manager for the Agua Caliente Regional Park (according to Wikipedia). One would assume that there is more to this story, given the "pull" that prevented the five documented contacts with the Sheriff's office over death threats that Loughner made never resulting in an arrest or removal of Jared Lee Loughner to a mental health facility.

But there is some supporting evidence to suggest that unstable Men who retain the ability to function in a work environment in Hollywood do not commit the mass murders that similar types (George Sodini) in the ordinary world go on to commit. Mostly, this is because their access to women is so important they'll moderate even their instability, in order to retain it, and critically they have hangers-on, handlers, and retainers who act to keep their meal ticket earning money. You can't earn money in prison (or dead). For the most part. It does not make them sane, or stable, or anything like it. They can still be a menace for drunk driving and the like, and it does not affect women and girls in the same way. The sad case of Demi Lovato seems to mirror that of Lindsay Lohan. Men are more violent and dangerous than women. If Demi Lovato punched me in the face, it would have no real lasting impact. She's a slender, 18 year old girl. Mostly, absent drunk driving, a danger to herself not others.

Where the effect on society is really, in terms of success with women moderating violent, spree behavior, is on the margins. We live in a society where there are a few "superstars" with near unlimited access to women, a few "role players" who have fairly good access, and everyone else has fairly poor access to women. For fundamentally violent, dangerous, and mentally ill people, access to women is irrelevant, they are a danger to others and need institutional treatment, not having sex. Which is unlikely to do much good anyway. [Sheen has plenty of sex, it has not "cured him" in any way. Merely moderated the worst of his behavior with help of his entourage and created his own self interest not to go too far.] But for those on the margins, where a marginal more success with women can matter, in terms of dialing down the desperate craziness to keep rewards that matter (sex, affection) it does matter. Sex and affection is not a panacea. It does not cure mental illness. But for those on the balance point, between managing their illness and being functional human beings, and those descending into full blown madness and worse, horrific actions, it does matter.

And to the extent that success in the sexual marketplace is concentrated among a fortunate few "players" this pretty much guarantees on the margins, a few more spree killings each year than a more balanced, broadly spread access would create.

This by itself is likely not important (except to the victims and their families), but is indicative of a wider spread of resource inequality, a few hyper, mega winners and a lot of those with only the crumbs. That in and of itself does not create a resilient society capable of responding strongly to crisis. Be it earthquake, enemy attack, floods, fires, hurricanes, or something else.
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The Arizona Shootings, and Those Yet To Come

While not everything is yet clear about the Arizona shootings that left Arizona Congresswoman Giffords fighting for her life and six dead, including a child, a fairly clear picture of shooter Jared Lee Loughner has emerged. He's a nut. And a hard core leftist. But the shooting itself, other than the pathetic attempt to paint Loughner, a mentally ill and leftist nutcase, as a Tea Partier, by the media and Democrats (but I repeat myself), really is not that important. Because its not part of the violence and shootings to come. No, that wave of murder, assassinations, and violence is coming from Mexico. Courtesy of the Gulf Cartel, and the Zetas. Violence in Mexico does not stay in Mexico. This has happened before. In Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916. It will happen again. A lone nut can by killing or wounding important people (Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, George Wallace) change the course of politics by removing important decision makers from influence. But the broader effect is when this happens society wide, down to the level of ordinary women protesting their daughter's murder (and the release of the killer).

There are killings, yet to come. Done not by nutty leftists, but hardened Mexican professional assassins.

Updated!

Loughner's classmates describe him as Left Wing Pothead


That Loughner is a nut is obvious. As is his fairly hard-left politics, as much as can be discerned through the fog of his mental illness. Zombie from Pajamas Media has a copy of Loughner's videos, including statements that (Christian) religion amounts to government mind-control, his favorite books (including To Kill A Mockingbird, the Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and the Phantom Toll Booth), and videos of himself burning a flag in the desert. His favorite band was Anti-Flag, a group that makes Rage Against the Machine look like Pat Boone crossed with Ted Nugent:

Anti-Flag is a punk rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States, formed in 1988, and known for its outspoken political views. Much of the band’s lyrics have focused on fervent anti-war activism, criticism of United States foreign policy, corporatism, U.S. wealth distribution, and various sociopolitical sentiments. … Anti-Flag is known also for their advocacy of progressive political action groups such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International.

…

The most recent protest they performed at was outside the Republican National Convention in 2008; they were supposed to be the last band to play but they had been touring with Rage Against The Machine and had decided it would be a good idea to get them involved since they had a long history of getting involved in related events. When officials found out they were going to perform, they shut down the stage’s power and the band performed two songs using megaphones.

They also regularly support political organisations which include:

Democracy Now!, the latest headlines from which can be found on the band’s homepage.

PETA, who were one of the sponsors of their 2010 ‘The Economy Sucks Let’s Party’ tour.

Amnesty International, to which the band donated money from the sale of The People and the Gun, have supported for a long time and who were one of the sponsors of their 2010 ‘The Economy Sucks Let’s Party Tour’.

Greenpeace, with whom the band worked in order to persuade world leaders to attend the climate conference in Copenhagen and who were one of the sponsors of their ‘The Economy Sucks Let’s Party Tour’.

Useless, whom they sold screen-printed limited-edition T-shirts with to raise money The Kandorwahun project, while raising awareness and visibility for Useless.

The band’s song “Die for your government” was sung by anti-war protesters who briefly blocked a road to prevent US troops from deploying to Iraq in August 2010. They have appeared in the 2010 music documentary Sounds Like A Revolution, about new protest music in America.

The man was a hard-core leftist. If anything, Loughner can be lumped in with other "anti-Racists" like the man who shot Pim Fortuyn:

"Facing a raucous court on the first day of his murder trial, he said his goal was to stop Mr. Fortuyn exploiting Muslims as 'scapegoats' and targeting "the weak parts of society to score points" to try to gain political power. He said: 'I confess to the shooting. He was an ever growing danger who would affect many people in society. I saw it as a danger. I hoped that I could solve it myself.'"

It is highly likely that Congresswoman Giffords was targeted because she supported Arizona's anti-illegal Immigration Law. And criticized Obama's attack on the law. Loughner and Volkert van der Graaf (the killer of Fortuyn) seem almost like identical twins. Motivated by hard left ideology, in their mental illness.

Loughner, of course, is different than the Virginia Tech shooter (Seung-Hui Cho), or the Columbine killers, or George Sodini. Men who were mentally ill, socially isolated, sexually frustrated, or in the case of the Columbine killers, "folie a deux." These men, unlike Oswald, or Sirhan Sirhan, or Loughner, or van der Graaf, had no real ideology except general insanity. They targeted merely ordinary people, often those they had only a casual contact with. Mark David Chapman (the killer of John Lennon), John Hinckley Junior, David Berkowitz, would also fall into this category: men gripped in the throes of mental illness who kill or attempt to kill out of psychotic delusions. Hinckley sought to re-enact Taxi Driver to impress (not so closeted) Jodie Foster. Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, thought his neighbor's labrador was giving him orders to kill. Chapman thought killing Lennon would bring him fame. A different sort of crazy than the ideologically motivated Loughner, Oswald, and Sirhan Sirhan.

But for all the fuss, and media frenzy trying to make Sarah Palin "guilty" (of the actions of a Left Wing Lunatic) or the Tea Party (Congresswoman Giffords father blamed the Tea Party), the shootings, tragic as they are, remain at best a sideshow to the coming slaughter.

Because the killings in Mexico are unlikely to stay there. They haven't before. Police in Mexico have found 15 bodies, 14 decapitated, in the resort town of Acapuluco. The killings were attributed to the Sinaloa cartel. Other places in Mexico have become ghost towns, as real life emulates the movies "Yojimbo," or "High Plains Drifter," or "Last Man Standing," and ordinary people flee towns fought over by rival cartels. Cuidad Juarez has seen most of its middle class flee (to Texas or Mexico City) as cartels kidnap and randomly kill even the middle (and now working) classes.

The LA Times has a collection of drug war deaths and violence and the details are horrific and shocking: seventy-two Central American immigrants in Mexico murdered, among them pregnant women, by cartel members (Zetas). Press coverage stopped, by means of killing reporters and editors. Mayors and Police and Army commanders routinely assassinated. Clergy assassinated. The combined death toll since 2007 over 30,000. Only 2% of all murders even resulting in an arrest, let alone a conviction. Massive corruption on a mind-boggling scale of the police, and army. Mexicans returning to Mexico for the Holidays escorted by the Army in daylight only to prevent their being kidnapped, robbed, and sometimes killed (these returnees are not rich, having at best only a few thousand dollars of available cash for ransom).

The drug war in Mexico, between rival cartels and the government, has gone insane. When working class men like taxi drivers are kidnapped for ransom, the purpose is not money. Since they have none, and the split between kidnappers makes the whole exercise pointless, less than working at a minimum wage job even in Mexico. No, the point is violence for the sake of violence, like killing helpless Central American immigrants, even pregnant women.

It is NOT about the money. Rather, the blood-lust. Which has gripped Mexico like it has gripped much of West Africa. General Butt Naked of Liberia would be at home with Mexico's cartels. Killing for the sake of killing is bad for business. Capone at his worst moderated his murders to maximize his cash. The thugs and criminals in Mexico cannot even do that much. The mass killings, on a wide-spread scale throughout Mexican society and geography (no place is immune not even pricey resorts like Acapulco) are not even for political effect, like the killings done by Pablo Escobar's forces, designed to force the Columbian Government into an accommodation and power sharing with the drug kingpin. Because no one person controls the killing. It is truly a war of all against all.

And this is why the shootings of Arizona Congresswoman Giffords, and others, as tragic as it may be, are in the end unimportant. Another lone nut, will kill again, out of inchoate craziness, or craziness directed by some ideology (often, Leftist) however loosely formed. The desire by the ACLU, and the Left, to prevent the civil liberties of crazy people from being infringed, and the failure to build large capacity mental hospitals, guarantees that crazy folks who are exhibiting dangerous lunacy will not be committed. Loughner was like Cho, and the Columbine kids, and Sodini, obviously crazy. Yet his civil liberties outweighed the lives of others. This is a decision that the Left has imposed on society, and there remains no willingness to say, cut welfare and health spending on illegal aliens to fund Mental Hospitals, let alone forcibly commit crazy people to them.

But the intermittent, spasmodic killings won't fundamentally change society.

The coming slaughter on American soil, will.

Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the US, and is the second place world kidnapping capital right behind Mexico City. The kidnappings are mostly of Mexican nationals done by cartel members. The kidnappings are likely to grow, and include American citizens (and Whites) as victims. This is inevitable. Kidnappings, murder, beheadings, these won't magically stay on the Mexican side of the border. People flow through the border, which Democrats like Keith Ellison want to be irrelvant. Cartel members know they can always flee to Mexico, and remain immune from seizure or prosecution. And sooner rather than later, they will start killing and kidnapping Americans, particularly Whites.

Since there has been no real action to deter that sort of thing. These are dangerous, often semi-literate, and killing addicted men. Sicarios often start killing at a young age (boys are seen as less of a threat, and more invisible). The 14 year old assassin who beheaded four men in Mexico, is an example. Allegedly, his sister helped him kill men for the Cartel, and torture them. The boy was born in the US, though he holds Mexican citizenship. Movies and TV shows depict assassins as clever, ruthless, sexy, highly educated men: George Clooney in "the American" or Jason Statham in the remake of "the Mechanic." The ugly reality is killing addicted, semi-literate, thugs, who enjoy the killing, operate in a society of general lawlessness, and cannot operate in productive, middle class society.

Mexico has been, in NFL parlance, "exposed" as a failed society, and a failed people. Like Muslim societies, it has far too many people, and no ability whatsoever to compete with Chinese manufacturing. Which can produce superior goods at even cheaper labor prices than either Mexican or Muslim societies can, or could conceivably ever produce, no matter how much investment in education and capital equipment takes place. Thus, the giant sucking sound Ross Perot referred to in the debates with then Vice President Al Gore, were from China (taking US manufacturing jobs) not Mexico. Which in turn has no way of becoming anything other than a violent, all against all thug-ridden hellhole. Mexico is not even Russia, held together by an oligopoly of former KGB thugs, and extensive patronage. Thugs in Mexico increasingly answer to no one but themselves. There is no "boss" to make a deal with, and the cartel leaders themselves are being killed off by rivals, or the government and the killing on a society wide scale only spreads.

Because the killing is the point. The sicarios don't make that much money. The killing of human beings is ugly and disgusting, to most people, and it takes considerable training to get most ordinary human beings to do it. The natural sympathy, empathy, and cooperation that human beings need to survive (a man alone is easy prey for animals or others, a man with a group can dominate the environment) is very hard to overcome. Yet once done, it is almost impossible to re-instate. West Africa after the violent, ethnically and gang-related wars that racked Liberia, Ivory Coast, the Congo, and more, remains mostly a hell hole of random violence and no real ability to do much of anything, productive. West Africa cannot even produce textiles, leveraging its cheap and abundant labor.

And there is all that spoils, inside America, just beckoning. For hardened men, who enjoy killing, to deal out more of it. Often on a racial basis (it is easier for humans to kill and torture those who do not look much like them it seems). The killing in Mexico is proceeding on a staggering scale. The government is unable to stop it (largely because there is no one or several bosses to kill to stop it, unlike say Pablo Escobar in Columbia). Simple human nature ensures that the killings will start in the US.

And once they start, they will proceed like wildfire. It won't be a limited incursion like Pancho Villa's. It will instead be the fairly spontaneous actions of thousands or tens of thousands of Mexican sicarios, often themselves shockingly young and ill-educated, heedless of consequences. Which in turn will spark a demand to do something, anything, to stop middle and working class Americans (principally, Whites but also Black and Hispanics as well) from being slaughtered, kidnapped, tortured, and beheaded, as ordinary Mexicans are now enduring.

Where that demand will lead: giant Berlin Wall style fences, military intervention into Mexico, ruling Mexico as a protectorate, sponsoring a US backed military government, or something else, is another story. But clearly, the killing will only stop when the killers are pretty much killed. An offer of a middle class job he can't handle won't stop a 14 year old already addicted to killing.

Which in turn makes the coming slaughter on American soil, not a lone nutcase, the real story.
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Why Selling New York Is Important

Sometimes reality TV can be simply silly. A diversion of no consequence. History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers" or "Axe Men" fall into that category. Shows of interest mainly to a male audience, that has entertainment value only. No lasting cultural consequence like E! Network's "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" (feeding the princess fantasy by pushing the spoiled brat becomes the girlfriend of a wealth/famous Black athlete). Or "Teen Mom" on MTV, which has normalized (by making famous "stars" out of its participants) and encouraged teen pregnancy. But likely most important of all, is HGTV's "Selling New York." Which shows just how different the uber-rich really are. And how, well shockingly gay and female the spheres they inhabit really are, compared to that of ordinary people. Since the uber-rich shape the culture, through their immense wealth and power, this is important.




"Selling New York" follows (this season) three different real estate brokerages, focused on high-end real estate that only the super-rich can afford. What immediately strikes everyone is how, well gay the men seem. Absent the pater-familias of one agency (the Kleiers) who is apparently not allowed near the clients, focusing on finances, and management, there doesn't seem one normal, straight guy in sight. The women all seem shallow, brittle, immensely uptight and nervous. While the men seem just on the verge of losing it, both sexes coming off as immense phonies constantly afraid they will be found out. Everyone seems profoundly uncomfortable in their own skin (in a Nixon, walking the beach at San Clemente in a three piece suit and dress shoes way).

Everyone is focused on appearances and status-jockeying. No one really makes any real contribution to much of anything, other than salesmanship. All the people, men and women both, are utterly replaceable absent personal relationships with clients, and it is likely they know it, hence the gnawing anxiety.

The only likable client from the first season was the hair dresser making millions (an immigrant) who exuded calm self-confidence and common sense. Though eventually humoring his wife who wanted to build out a shell of an apartment, he figured if you paid millions of dollars, you might as well buy something already done and just move in. Seeing as he had both a business to run and three kids, that attitude made sense. Every other client exuded an attitude that stank, right there on screen. That they were indeed, better than everyone else, and god's own gift to mankind. Arrogance mixed with status-seeking seemed the order of the day.

And this attitude is everywhere in the US and global elites.

The Atlantic has a new article on the global elites. In it, this gem is written:

If you are looking for the date when America’s plutocracy had its coming-out party, you could do worse than choose June 21, 2007. On that day, the private-equity behemoth Blackstone priced the largest initial public offering in the United States since 2002, raising $4 billion and creating a publicly held company worth $31 billion at the time. Stephen Schwarzman, one of the firm’s two co-founders, came away with a personal stake worth almost $8 billion, along with $677 million in cash; the other, Peter Peterson, cashed a check for $1.88 billion and retired.

In the sort of coincidence that delights historians, conspiracy theorists, and book publishers, June 21 also happened to be the day Peterson threw a party—at Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant, of course—to launch The Manny, the debut novel of his daughter, Holly, who lightly satirizes the lives and loves of financiers and their wives on the Upper East Side. The best seller fits neatly into the genre of modern “mommy lit”—USA Today advised readers to take it to the beach—but the author told me that she was inspired to write it in part by her belief that “people have no clue about how much money there is in this town.”

Holly Peterson and I spoke several times about how the super-affluence of recent years has changed the meaning of wealth. “There’s so much money on the Upper East Side right now,” she said. “If you look at the original movie Wall Street, it was a phenomenon where there were men in their 30s and 40s making $2 and $3 million a year, and that was disgusting. But then you had the Internet age, and then globalization, and you had people in their 30s, through hedge funds and Goldman Sachs partner jobs, who were making $20, $30, $40 million a year. And there were a lot of them doing it. I think people making $5 million to $10 million definitely don’t think they are making enough money.”

As an example, she described a conversation with a couple at a Manhattan dinner party: “They started saying, ‘If you’re going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you’re going to do the NetJet thing’”—this is a service offering “fractional aircraft ownership” for those who do not wish to buy outright—“‘and if you’re going to have four houses, and you’re going to run the four houses, it’s like you start spending some money.’”

The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.”
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The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds told me that his firm’s investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today’s economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn’t really matter. “His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade,” the CEO recalled.

I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. Internet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he’s nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. “We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.”

This is indeed the attitude of the global elite. But it is also, very gay, and very female-oriented. With all that money, chasing ever higher status, status seeking itself finds massive inflation. With elites no longer even caring about their nation, or their fellow nationals (indeed contemptuous dismissal of America is the norm), this attitude percolates downward from the new hyper-global hyper-rich hyper-elites.

America does indeed have an aristocracy. Not one of ancient families seeking ancient, feudal rights, but a recent one, no more in many cases than twenty years old, and international in allegiance. More akin to princes of the Catholic Church than anything else. Seeking not just temporal wealth, but spiritual dominion over the globe. Thus telling everyone how to live, what religion to worship, and what the rites are. The arrogance of a foreigner, a man not really American (foreign born) telling Middle Class Americans to take a pay-cut is astonishing. Yet there it is, and the attitude could certainly be replicated by any of the clients or brokers featured in "Selling New York."

What makes this toxic, is that this attitude is often aped, in the White Female College Educated class. The sorts of folks who read the New York Times, or New Yorker, or even (yes) the Atlantic, along with Vanity Fair, in an attempt to find out what the "important people" are thinking, saying, and doing. If Blue collar and lowbrow women are the targets of US Weekly, People, the National Enquirer, and Star Magazine, then the New York Times and New Yorker are aimed squarely at the White College Educated female reader.

You'll see the same dismissive attitude towards America, Americans, and the middle class in all sorts of entertainment aimed squarely at this upscale female demographic. Don't believe me? Watch any of these NBC shows: Chase, the Event, Law and Order Los Angeles, or Special Victims Unit. Cable shows like Nurse Jackie, Californication, Damages, and Mad Men certainly exhibit this same attitude. As does, of course, Fox's Glee, and almost anything on the CW (teen girl only) network. Movies made by and for this demographic, including Green Zone, Towelhead, American Beauty, Michael Clayton, Up in the Air, and Scott Pilgrim vs the World fall into the same attitudes.

Its not that every TV show or movie needs to be a "salt of the earth" worshipping Grapes of Wrath update. Rather, that the arrogant dismissal of all forms of national sentiment, attachment, or even concern for the American middle class is self-evident over and over again. The White middle class suburb is even depicted as hell on earth (for those tragically hip elites making do on only $20 million a year, it must be).

At least part of the solution must be Nationalism and populism, combined, to smash down this attitude. To intimidate, as much as possible, even the thinking of such sentiments. To suppress their spread from the global elites to those who follow them most closely: White college educated women.

Because make no mistake, the key battle for America will be fought in the minds of college educated female White professionals. They are the key, swing vote for victory or defeat in the alliance of the Democrats and Obama. Possession of nearly all of them gives forces aligned against Obama, Democrats, and the global elites at least the possibility of victory. If even a significant portion of college educated, White professional women hold to the attitudes of the global elites, then the global elites win. Get to hollow out America, in pursuit of greater wealth and more important to them, more status. Posturing as the great philanthropists (and anti-White anti-Racists) by discriminating against the "average White guy" as Ace of Ace of Spades noted, the pursuit of status by the Liberal Aristocracy is characterized by ever greater amounts of money chasing status. Hence the Gates Foundation, explicitly excluding White kids from any aid. While Gates pours money into Africa (to demonstrate his nobility). As Ace notes, a great deal of this pours out of the media, which tends to form the opinions particularly of the White female college educated professional, due to their status anxiety and low position of the PC driven caste system.

The media cannot be changed. They will always be hyper-liberal, because they aspire to please the global elite, their prospective employers, patrons, and backers. The media can be intimidated, however, by populist and nationalist anger. Nationalism has to be part of the equation, as well as populism, and enemies of both need to be made explicit examples of. By being given, of course, the full Wikileaks treatment. There are few media figures, whose personal failings, flaws, and family histories can survive unshaken, the unblinking eye of full disclosure and examination. Destroy a few, say a Katie Couric here, to the point where they are no longer welcome at Davos, and the point is made.

Otherwise it will be a "Selling New York" world. Where everyone is frantically nervous, desperate to appease the new global elites. Who rule with a nasty, celebrity-derived touch.
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Obama's Coalition: The Patronage, Stupid!

A fascinating article by National Journal shows how politics in America reflect the patronage that the Democratic (and Republican) party distributes. Whites, except college educated White women, have turned away from Obama, his policies, and Democrats. Meanwhile both Obama and Dems depend on non-Whites, young voters, and college educated women. It's the patronage, stupid, as Clinton might have remarked. Obama's policies create winners and losers among these groups, and the way for Republican victory over Obama and the Dems is to split off the only group they can win: College Educated White Women, by offering them a bigger cut of the pie.


The article covers racial breakdowns of exit polling on Election Day, 2010, purchased by National Journal from Edison Research. The finding were not released previously by media outlets, obviously for fear of illustrating the vast racial divide (and the vast divide in racial spoils). Every political policy creates economic, social, and cultural winners and losers. As federal and state governments have grown, the winners and losers have won and lost ever more in earnings, social power, and cultural attitudes. Coming to a boiling point, likely irrevocably, in Election Day 2010.

First, the core findings. A full sixty percent of Whites nationwide backed Republican candidates for the House of Representatives, only 37% supported Democrats. This is better (for Republicans) than the 1994 landslide. White voters also posted deep unhappiness with Obama's performance, the Democratic agenda, and widespread skepticism about the expanded role of government Obama and Dems have pushed. Non-Whites expressed almost exactly the opposite attitudes than Whites.

In a non-Presidential election, the Hispanic vote for Dems slipped to 60%, compared to 66% in 2008 for Obama. About 73% of non-Whites voted for Dems. Meanwhile Republicans took 60% of White voters, something never before seen in three decades of tracking by race.

Meanwhile, Republicans, with their 60 percent showing, notched the party’s best congressional result among white voters in the history of modern polling. Media exit polls conducted by Edison Research and its predecessors have been tracking congressional elections for about three decades. In no previous exit poll had Republicans reached 60 percent of the white vote in House races. The University of Michigan’s National Election Studies, a biennial pre- and postelection poll, is another source of data on voting behavior dating to 1948. Republicans had never reached 60 percent of the congressional vote among whites in any NES survey. Only in the NES surveys had Democrats reached that 60 percent congressional support level among white voters: in their 1974 post-Watergate landslide and in Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 rout of Barry Goldwater.
…
First among those was Obama’s performance. Exactly 75 percent of minority voters said they approved; only 22 percent said they disapproved. Among white voters, just 35 percent approved of the president’s performance, while 65 percent disapproved; a head-turning 49 percent of whites said they strongly disapproved. (Those whites voted Republican last fall by a ratio of 18-to-1.)

The racial gulf was similar when voters were asked whether they believed that Obama’s policies would help the nation in the long run. By 70 percent to 22 percent, minorities said yes; by 61 percent to 34 percent, whites said no. On election night, much attention focused on the exit-poll result that showed voters divided almost exactly in half on whether Congress should repeal the comprehensive health care reform legislation that Obama signed last year or should preserve or even expand it. But that convergence obscured a profound racial contrast. The vast majority of minority voters said they wanted lawmakers to expand the health care law (54 percent) or maintain it in its current form (16 percent), while only 24 percent said they wanted Congress to repeal it. Among white voters, the sentiments were almost inverted: 56 percent said that lawmakers should repeal the law, while much smaller groups wanted them to expand it (23 percent) or leave it alone (just 16 percent).

The gap was also wide in attitudes about two fundamental tenets. Minorities were almost exactly twice as likely as whites to say that life would be better for the next generation than for their own; whites were considerably more likely to say that it would be more difficult. And on a question measuring bedrock beliefs about the role of government, the two racial groups again registered almost mirror-image preferences. Sixty percent of minorities said that government should be doing more to solve problems; 63 percent of whites said that government is doing too many things that would be better left to businesses and individuals.

Clearly, most Whites do not relish being, as Obama has pushed forward, the numerical minority in their own country, in their own lifetime, and being told, as Obama said recently, to "get to the back of the bus." Just as clearly, Whites can figure that a Government run health care plan will generally, screw them over in order to provide more or better care to non-Whites (principally, illegal aliens, who are uninsured at present and likely make up most of the uninsured in America). Whites (particularly White males) are not likely to be able to get jobs in Government, absent high-level political connections (such as Obama Car Czar Steve Rattner, just recently settling a record fine with the SEC and NY AG office for securities fraud). The transformation of America from a mostly private enterprise, small business oriented nation to one of giant corporations and government, makes life good for non-Whites (who gain massive preferences and privileges) but hurts Whites.

This is "baked in the cake" of Democratic politics, though Obama has pushed it farther than most, including Bill Clinton. You cannot construct a massive government run system controlling most of the economy and have Affirmative Action and other myriad preferences and not hurt Whites, particularly Blue Collar White men and women and White collar men. White women with college educations are another matter, as we'll see, but this is the essence of Democratic policies: helping non-Whites by hurting Whites.

Measured both geographically and demographically, these new exit-poll results show that Democrats maintained openings in only slivers of the white electorate. In House elections, the bottom fell out for Democrats in both the South (where they won just 24 percent of whites) and the Midwest (37 percent). The party remained relatively more competitive along the coasts, capturing 46 percent of white voters in the East and 43 percent in the West.

A separate National Journal analysis of the results from exit polls in Senate elections found similar trends. Edison Research conducted exit polls last year in 26 Senate races; in 19 of them, the Democratic Senate candidate won a smaller share of the white vote than President Obama captured in the state two years earlier. Democratic Senate candidates carried a majority of white voters in just seven races and reached 45 percent of the vote in only two more. Except for West Virginia, those states were all near an ocean (or, in Hawaii’s case, in one).

Democrats have been losing support among blue-collar white voters since the 1960s, but in this election, they hit one of their lowest points ever. In House campaigns, the exit poll found, noncollege whites preferred Republicans by nearly 2-to-1 with virtually no gender gap: White working-class women—the so-called waitress moms—gave Republicans almost exactly as many of their votes as blue-collar men did.

These blue-collar whites expressed profound resistance to Obama and his agenda. Just 30 percent of them said they approved of the president’s job performance (compared with 69 percent who disapproved). Two-thirds of them said that government is doing too many things. An approximately equal number said that Obama’s agenda will hurt the country over the long term. Only about one-fifth of these voters said that the stimulus had helped the economy, and 57 percent wanted to repeal the health care law—even though they are uninsured at much higher rates than whites with more advanced education. [Emphasis added]

Well, color this obvious. The transformation of the Democrats from the FDR/Pat Brown dam-builders, road builders, University of California (aimed squarely at White middle and working class people under Pat Brown) … to Jerry Brown and Barack Obama, pushing paper studies, endless race/gender/gay wars over preferences against what Ace of Spades termed "Straight White Married guys" and a government that only produces paper reports, not actual infrastructure built by and for the White middle and working class, was bound to create a backlash by the Blue collar White demographic.


The Senate races, as the National Journal article points out, were different in only a few places. Barbara Boxer of California, and Michael Bennet of Colorado, won despite carrying only 33% or so of Working Class White voters. Russ Feingold in Wisconsin did as well as Boxer and Bennet did among non-Whites, and better than they did among Working Class White voters, about 40%. What doomed him was that there were fewer college educated White women in Wisconsin. Which is why he is now ex-Senator Feingold, and Bennet and Boxer were returned to office.

Democratic support in the heartland, cratered even among college educated Whites. Along the coasts, and Upper Midwest, the Democrats retained about 50% to 45% (depending on region) of college educated White voters. Everywhere else, Democrats did far worse (under 45% support for college educated Whites).

Critical to this difference was the kind of college educated people in key states. In places where Democrats won Senate races, it seems they had far more college educated White women, who are traditionally far more liberal than their male peers.

White-collar men and women also parted ways much more significantly than their blue-collar counterparts did. College-educated white men backed Republican House candidates and registered negative views of Obama’s job performance as overwhelmingly as blue-collar whites did. College-educated white women, though not immune to these trends, displayed more resistance. Although traditionally the most liberal portion of the white electorate, even these women cooled toward Democrats last year. In contrast to the majority support they provided Obama in 2008, they voted 55 percent to 43 percent for Republicans in 2010 House races. In the exit poll, most of them agreed that government was trying to do too much, and a slim majority of them said they wanted Congress to repeal the health care law.




In key Senate races, however, especially in culturally more liberal states, these women backed Democrats in substantial numbers. Both Bennet and Boxer, for instance, carried about three-fifths of this bloc, which proved essential to their victories. Obama’s popularity among these college-educated women deteriorated, but in the exit polling, 45 percent of them still said they approved of his performance, far higher than the rate among most other whites. [Emphasis added, and note Obama's approval by all Whites was at 35%. meaning College Educated White Women approve of Obama by a full ten points higher than Whites in general.]

As the article notes:

Minorities, most important, more than doubled their share of the vote from 12 percent in 1992 to 26 percent in 2008. In his victory that year, Obama won only 43 percent of the white vote (and merely 40 percent among noncollege whites). Yet he captured a larger share of the overall popular vote than any Democratic nominee since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 by winning 80 percent of that growing pool of nonwhite voters, along with majorities among whites under 30 and college-educated white women.

America is now racially, class/gender, and geographically divided. Non-Whites are growing rapidly, but the growth still remains mostly in the coasts and upper Midwest. College educated White women generally flock to where there are lots of non-Whites, and massive urban centers with lots of wealth and "proper" or "respectable" jobs in fashion, media, finance, corporate HR, government, and entertainment. This is Obama's coalition. The people who vote for him, and Democrats, because they get rewarded. More government (to help pick winners and losers, ala Steve Rattner, or George Soros, or any other Hedge Fund or I-Bank bigshot) that also helps non-Whites, and college educated White women, by hurting White men (both Blue and White collar).

As pointed out in the article:

But Wadhams quickly adds that Obama might be able to persuade some of those voters to support him anyway in 2012 if Republicans select a nominee they find unacceptable, particularly on social issues. Wadhams has painful recent experience with that phenomenon: Despite widespread dissatisfaction with Washington, Bennet won reelection to the Senate last fall partly because so many white-collar Colorado suburbanites (especially women) found Ken Buck, his tea party-infused Republican opponent, too conservative on abortion and other issues. “If our presidential nominee in 2012 … appears too extreme on abortion or gay marriage or some other social issue, there’s a slice of the electorate that clearly could go back to Obama,” Wadhams worries.
…
More specifically—and perhaps more revealingly—Axelrod also has his eye on the Colorado example, where the exit poll found that Bennet lost blue-collar white women by double digits and blue-collar white men by more than 2-to-1. Yet he prevailed by amassing strong support from young people, Hispanics, and other minorities; holding his deficit among college-educated white men to single digits; and routing Buck among college-educated white women. A similar formula, Axelrod suggests, could be available to Obama in 2012, especially if the Republican presidential primary process, as he expects, tugs the eventual GOP nominee toward the right. “The Bennet thing was particularly instructive,” Axelrod said. “They made a big effort there not only among Hispanics but women. The contrast he drew with Buck was very meaningful. That’s why I say the gravitational pull of those Republican primaries is going to be very significant.”

From Axelrod's statements in the article, it would seem that Obama will go all out to cobble together again the anti-White Guy coalition that brought him victory in the first place. More Affirmative Action (to help non-Whites by hurting White guys), more government growth (to help non-Whites and college educated Women by hurting White guys), more importation of Mexico's desperately poor and uneducated, Amnesty, more regulations (more paperwork for the college Educated White women and selected non-Whites to oversee), and more insider picking and choosing of winners (for hedge fund and I-bank windfalls). There will be no move to the center, just re-assembling of what Obama has done all his life: play the anti-White guy card. That is who he is, and it is who the Democrats are.

The battleground will be College Educated White women. They, and they alone, will determine if America slides into a Yugoslavia style ethnic conflict, inevitably, as White voters become more and more tribal as the lose out … on pretty much everything, as numerical minorities in a system designed from the ground up to punish them (for bad things Whites did to Black people fifty or a hundred and fifty years ago).

While seriously difficult, appealing to these voters by conservative Republicans is not impossible. As I've previously discussed, Republicans must go Hunk and avoid female candidates. White women college educated voters have resoundingly rejected the Carly Fiorinas, the Meg Whitmans, the Sharon Angles, and the Christine O'Donnells. RINO, hard right, working class, Ivy League, attractive, unattractive, working stiff, or corporate bigshot, it did not matter. White college educated women don't like these candidates. Avoid them.

Instead, go hunk. College educated White women are still … women. A hunk, with a positive, sunny, Alpha Male attitude of bigshot-ism, is catnip for these voters. Even very conservative, pro-life positions can be swallowed whole (Marco Rubio) if the guy is a hunk, and even better a hunk and non-White (College educated White women voters detest Beta Males).

College educated White women are naturally sympathetic, and like non-Whites, seeing them as allies against their main enemy: Beta Male White guys. The latter acting as both competition for White collar jobs, and lacking any sex appeal while constantly bothering them for dates and such. This SNL skit with Tom Brady illustrates the double standard that exists. [Sorry, can't embed it.] Besides, the cultural clues all point to how lowly Beta Male White guys are: they are the one group that is mocked and disparaged mercilessly. The lowest on the totem pole of Multiculturalism and Diversity and PC.

But beyond mere sex and race appeal (nothing is more undesirable for College Educated White women than Beta White guys, while non-Whites get cultural/social boosts from the better way they are treated), College Educated White women have specific economic interests that are different from, and indeed in opposition to, those of the rest of Obama's coalition: non-Whites.

College Educated White women are at the bottom of the PC/Diversity preference list. They are vulnerable to being pushed out by non-Whites, who have more preference and legal standing our PC caste system. After all, the Supreme Court under Sandra Day O'Connor held under Grutter v Bollinger that is acceptable to discriminate AGAINST Whites (even White women) in the interests of promoting "diversity" and a "critical mass" of non-White students at the University of Michigan Law School, and other places besides. While absolute quotas are out, anything else is pretty much in. Thus, extreme anxiety among College Educated White women about their place and security, and the most rabid support for anti-White guy politics and culture (to affirm their place and beg not to be kicked out for a person of color).

Women are risk averse, generally, compared to men, so offering better opportunities under conservative politics is not going to be a winning hand. Relatively few women played the Dot-Com gamble, after all. Despite the big winnings for those who rolled the dice. Losing was too hard. Instead conservatives and Republicans need to play on the fears of College Educated White women, of losing their place to a person of color. But do so skillfully, so their targets (College Educated White Women) can deny their votes and political actions are taken out of fear (rational in any case) of losing their place to a person of color.

A great way to do this is to use the H1-B visa issue as a wedge between this voting group and Democrats. Conservatives and Republicans should proclaim that Dems and Obama plan to massively increase H1-B hiring in finance, accounting, media, fashion, entertainment, corporate HR, and government, all the places where College educated White women work. To "save money" and pay for ObamaCare with the savings, either direct government expenditure or corporate efficiency (more profits equaling more tax revenues). Republicans can offer then to "save" the patriotic, American worker from the threat of foreign workers "taking their job" and aim it squarely at College Educated White women.

They live in fear, anyway, that they will be found not PC enough, and replaced with someone who is non-White, and thus much more preferred in our complex PC caste system, that has both legal and cultural backing. Make the fear explicit, and cast in terms of patriotism (who can be FOR replacing US workers with foreign ones) that allows this voting group (College Educated White women) to vote their real fears without actually naming it.

Just make sure the Republican Candidate is non-White, and a hunk. Older guys, and women, need not apply. Because College Educated White women will not vote for them. Care also has to be taken not to create fear the other way (the government related employment of College educated White women must not be threatened). Downsizing the government should be carefully positioned as aimed at ObamaCare (which does not yet have massive employment patronage) and various corporate winners-losers picking. Not the "nice White lady" working in education, or some nothing policy department.

A certain loser is going after non-Whites. They'll never vote for Republicans, why would they? They win in a nation where the anti-White guy policies slice the pie to their advantage. No rhetoric will sway them from the reality of a much bigger slice of the pie under Democrats. Meanwhile College Educated White women have rational fears their slice of pie can be taken away at any time. This should be played up as much as possible, with a nice, hunky Alpha Male to sell it.
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Weimar Cities: No One Dies For A Target Ad

Ed Driscoll notes in his post Decline of the West, that City Journal writer Claire Berlinski writes about Weimar Cities being particularly fertile for lasting contributions to world culture, not the least because they are doomed. While the main part of Driscoll's post concerns Joel Kotkin's piece on why West is doomed to lose to China and India, not the least of which is the West no longer believes in much of anything (that works). This latter point is worthy of another post, but one of the most annoying cliches is the doomed city creating great art.

This just isn't so. Besides, no one ever died for a Target Ad. Multiculturalism and PC may be status climbing tools, but no one really loves it. Weimar Cities produce edgy art that no one really loves or even remembers much. Even if the art is PC and multicultural (i.e. denigrates the West).


In order to create lasting art that moves people, across time and cultures, artists need both stability (it is hard to create art when survival takes precedence) and the ability to get paid (and earn a living). This is why great art, art that still moves people (as opposed to stirring snobbery tendencies in edgy and hip trendoids) is associated with stable societies, that had a means of paying artists.

The extraordinary outburst of creativity in the Italian Renaissance cities in the 1400's, is due to their relative stability (for the time) coupled with the ability to actually pay artists. Other places had perhaps greater stability, but not the patronage network (and various strong men eager to display their positive attributes by commissioning works). Later, power, stability, and patronage shifted north, to places like Amsterdam, or London, with artists from Vermeer to Rembrandt to Turner creating lasting works of art.

But it is in the 19th and 20th Centuries that the hypothesis of the Weimar City, doomed and knowing it, creating great art as it dies, is proven wrong. Consider art people have actually heard of, and loved. Throughout the ages. From Sherlock Holmes, to Peter Pan, to Charles Dickens, to Beatrix Potter, to Winnie the Pooh, to Harry Potter, to Narnia, to Lord of the Rings, to Mr Toad and "Wind in the Willows," a certain type of Englishness still holds the world's imagination. Perhaps no more powerful (and tragically sad) statement can be made than a young girl at Beslan, who reported that she prayed that Harry Potter would come with his invisible cloak to rescue them all. She didn't want an Angel to rescue her. Or a hip, gay, trendy and uber-PC Multicultural spokesman. Nor a combination of Michael Moore, Sean Penn, and Alec Baldwin. She wanted Harry Potter. The very model of a young English boy filled with magical goodness.

All of this, created by Englishmen, in and around London's metropolitan area, or Oxford, with the work they did either paid for by publishers, in the case of Arthur Conan Doyle and Dickens, often serialized first in newspapers and magazines, or subsidized by University professorships (Tolkein and Lewis). That power, so evident that people of a foreign language and culture, turn to it for comfort facing near certain death and horror, of a fundamentally decent Englishness, has greater pull than anything done by Bertolt Brecht or Kurt Weill. No one in great distress turned to the songs of "Threepenny Opera" for comfort and fantasy. The doomed children of Beslan did not dream that Mack the Knife would come rescue them (the whole point of Mack is that he doesn't rescue anyone, he's just a thug). Threepenny Opera perhaps being the most accessible and well known piece of art from Weimar. No matter how edgy, hip, and despairing, the work of Weimar artists from F.W. Murnau and Georg Grosz and Brecht and Weill, pale before the power, emotionally and intellectually, of the comfort of the "English Vision."

Sherlock Holmes offers the prospect of hyper-rationality coupled with artistic instinct and moderated by solid English heroism (Watson), the ability to uncover and punish wickedness, no matter how bizarre and sordid and hidden. Winnie the Pooh, the Wind in the Willows, and Beatrix Potter offer a stylized and comforting version of the English countryside, for children and adults. Peter Pan, a vision of one last childhood adventure on the verge of adulthood, and the fantasists of Tolkein, Lewis, and Rowling, offer a particularly English assurance that decency can still win out over depravity no matter how powerful. This fundamental decency and optimism has power still, even as the worlds its creators lived in no longer exists (and modern Britain slides into Dalrympian levels of depravity and post-Christian post-Nationalism).

Who was it that the UN turned to, in order to produce a pamphlet to warn children in former war zones of the dangers of discarded land mines? Why, Superman and Wonder Woman! Not Mack the Knife or Dr. Caligari, nor Dr. Mabuse.

And that leads to the other problem with the doomed city hypothesis: the extraordinary output of first London and England, from around the late 1700's through the early 20th Century, followed by the pulp and pop energy of America, offer in both volume and emotional power, so much art and culture that both in sum dwarf everything ever produced by "doomed cities" facing a Weimar future. It's like the Sun itself versus a candle. No contest.

Consider the extraordinary burst of heroes created, in just a few years, by supremely talented writers and artists when it became clear that the youth of America loved weird and strange heroes. From 1938 (and the first publication of Superman) through the early 1940's, Batman, Captain America, Hawkman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, and more were created. Characters famous, and loved still. In the 1960's, a similar short burst created the Incredible Hulk, the X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, and more. Again, still loved today. All from a city, New York, that was among the more stable, and safe, in the Western World. A city still mostly middle and working class (and majority White). Monocultural, and not buffeted by the "diversity" that Berlinski champions in her piece.

Then of course, there is music. While Rock music was not created in Memphis, Tennessee, the Sun Records songs recorded by Elvis Presley in July 1954 certainly helped popularize it, and led to an explosion, again in the US and Britain, of Rock styles and music. Musicians came from all sorts of cities, from Liverpool, or Memphis, or London, or Los Angeles (the Doors and X), or Minneapolis (Prince and the Replacements), larger cities like New York and London. None fit the description of dying Weimar cities. While the decaying remnants of Imperial British Liverpool are long gone, we can hear the echoes of what it was, in the songs of the early Beatles. Just like you can hear Memphis in the early songs of Elvis Presley, or what 1980's Los Angeles was like in the early songs from X, or what New York was like at the same time from the Ramones. All have an emotional pull and staying power that simply obliterates that of even the most accessible Weimar stuff (and Threepenny Opera is stunning in its craftsmanship, it just isn't very fun to listen to much). After all, the Music, and "Dream Police" (to steal from Cheap Trick) won't arrest you if you choose to listen to Brecht and Weill, instead of say, Presley and McCartney. Just very few people do.

In movies, of course, it is not even close. Weimar cities produce horror and other films that film geeks know and love, but don't come close to satisfying people the way, say, "Toy Story" did, or a film about a guy trapped in skyscraper filled with terrorists, as he cuts them down one by one. And that is the key difference between Weimar Cities and those that actually produce great and lasting art of meaning.

Weimar Cities are filled with despair (naturally) and what little is produced, shows the despair. Few artists can produce anything meaningful, and powerful, to most people's lives, in such situations, lacking any regular patron in any realistic manner, and without much prospect of long-term stability. Meanwhile stable cities, and not necessarily even great ones, can produce art that moves people throughout time. Elvis Presley will be loved and remembered by billions of people, as long as his recordings survive. F W Murnau, is a mere footnote, an in joke for art-movies that few see. And it is the optimism, the sunny spirit, be it of the fundamentally fair-play, decent English variety, or the brasher, mix-up Southern version of Elvis, or the weird pulp vision of comic books, or the brash can-do attitude even when there is little to do, of the 1970's "Rockford Files." Even the downbeat Jim Rockford had something to look forward to. He may have lived in a trailer, but it was his, it was at the beach, and at the end of the day, fishing with your Dad beat pretty much everything else.

And that points to the flaw in the idea that Weimar Cities create great art. No one is inspired by, much less willing to die for, a Target Ad of carefully multicultural, multi-racial, multi-confessional people playing about in John Lennon's "Imagine." Long after everything but the melody is forgotten, people will still love the old heroes. King Arthur, or Beowulf, at the dawn of European civilization, trying to keep order as the Roman Empire fell and the monsters rushed in. Huns, and Goths, and Angles, Saxons, Jutes, pagans all, practicing bloody sacrifice. Or Robin Hood, El Cid, Roland, and Ivanhoe, slightly after, fending off Vikings, or marauding Muslims, or the tyranny of the feudal princes, in reclaiming ancient liberties lost but not forgotten.

This is why JRR Tolkein and CS Lewis still have power, they evoke the Dark Ages or Medieval past, and show up over and over again. The scene where the Fellowship of the Ring glide past giant, broken statues of ancient kings, would have been familiar to Dark Ages warlords passing by the ruins of Roman Aqueducts, things they could no longer build, much less maintain. So too, the obsession with the fall of the Roman Empire, which shows up in such various forms as the films of John Carpenter ("Ghosts of Mars," "Assault on Precinct 13"), the Road Warrior/Mad Max films, and many others, the images of civilization being overwhelmed by illiterate barbarians who can create nothing, only destroy. The desire to preserve what was left, resonates still (Tolkein's "White City" in the Lord of the Rings is oh so obviously Constantinople).

Thus King Arthur is always the same, the once and future king who preserves the last, best of the West and the Roman Empire against the Darkness. Robin Hood is always the same, a rogue fighter for freedom and ancient liberty lost to a tyrant. The character might have a light saber (and be called either Luke Skywalker or Obi Wan Kenobi) instead of an old fashioned sword, but he's still the same in essence. The Count of Monte Christo might be Charlie Crews (in NBC's late series "Life") or he might be "the Cape" coming this Sunday on NBC. He is still the same.

Because the West is still the same. People fundamentally don't believe in PC, or Multiculturalism, or diversity. Shiva is not more popular than Superman, in the West. People read Harry Potter, not magical realist novels like "One Hundred Years of Solitude." And there is a reason for that. People want heroes. Heroes who share their fundamental concerns: will there be something I did that lives after me? Will I matter? Did I change anything? Will the language I speak, the beliefs my people hold, my people themselves, live on or will they be subsumed by alien peoples and beliefs and languages?

This is why Sherlock Holmes is always a proper Victorian Gentlemen at 221 B, Baker Street. And why people love him far more, in the West, than say, "Super Barrio." People want and need heroes. Neither Weimar Cities, nor the tragic hipsters of TV and movie multiculturalism who emulate the Weimar crowd, can create them. Much less heroes about both ordinary Westerners and Western civilization.

Yes, Captain America can in his current owners be turned into a raving hyper-liberal. And more waify ass-kickers "sticking it to the man" be put on TV. But sales figures and ratings don't lie: the audience for it is marginal, compared to straight out heroism, from say the latest Batman films to Iron Man to "Taken." Because no one will die for a Target Ad of multiculturalism. Kotkin is right that something is wrong in the West. It is at least in part, its entertainment, which derides Western heritage and culture and tradition, in order to rectify past wrongs of Segregation and Slavery (both paid in full, in blood, a long time ago). The culture on offer, of endless debasement and cringing apologies in service of the Target Ad that never ends, is not of any real interest to anyone. No matter how much it copies the form of Max Schreck.


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Oil Prices Enter the Danger Zone

The Financial Times has a scary article detailing how oil prices are entering the Danger Zone.

As the graphic shows, OECD countries are shifting from an average of around 1.4% of GDP for the US (oil import expenditure), 1.0% of GDP for the EU, and 1.8 for Japan, to 2.5 for the US, 2.1% for the EU, and 2.6% of GDP for Japan. For the US this amounts to another $72 billion in money out of the economy, sent to foreign oil producers. Barack Obama is a very stupid man. Whatever temporary economic stimulus he has constructed, out of a two year extension of the Bush Tax Cuts and a one year 2% reduction in the employee payroll tax, will be obliterated by the constant rise of oil prices. In part, due to Obama's own stupidity, in his policies and failures to act. Obama is a man stupid enough to believe in Cloward-Piven (move the system to failure to enact massive changes). As a man widely seen moving the system to failure, he's not likely to be given a free reign to remake America into his cherished ideal of a Black National Socialist Utopia (with cringing, permanently apologetic Whites and a Colors of Benetton style PC/Multicultural society). Quite likely a Reagan-esque figure offering to "take Back America" to prior greatness (and cheap gas) by "whatever means necessary" will be the person with the winning hand. No one is going to die for a Target Ad.


Charles Krauthammer is also profoundly stupid. Unable to see that ordinary people live and die by cheap energy (it was partially the energy/gas shocks that drove the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis as people could not make both mortgage payments on distant exurb houses and fill up their tanks to go to work). Krauthammer thinks (because he's rich and a clueless elitist) temporary measures in tax reduction will offset massive increases in costs that directly and immediately affect both businesses and consumers alike. Nor can Krauthammer see that the effect in places like China will be even worse (already the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal have been running articles on spiraling prices of such staples as cooking oilrising 27% or more, fueling social unrest). Massive social unrest sparked by massive increases in energy and oil are likely to make China more, not less adventurous abroad (a war can drain social unrest and channel the considerable Chinese nationalism against enemies).

The Financial Times notes:

High oil prices threaten to derail the fragile economic recovery among developed nations this year, the leading energy watchdog has warned, putting pressure on the Opec oil cartel to increase production.

Over the past year the oil import costs for the 34 mostly rich countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have soared by $200bn to $790bn at the end of 2010, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency.

The increase, due to high crude prices, is equal to a loss of income of about 0.5 per cent of OECD gross domestic product, according to the IEA.

“Oil prices are entering a dangerous zone for the global economy,” said Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist. “The oil import bills are becoming a threat to the economic recovery. This is a wake-up call to the oil consuming countries and to the oil producers.”

Oil prices have edged closer to $100 a barrel in recent weeks and Brent crude hit $95 a barrel for the first time in 27 months on Monday as the economic recovery has gathered pace.

The article goes on to note that while OPEC (and the Saudis in particular) favor a price band of $70-$80 a barrel, there will be no further meetings (to increase production) before the scheduled June 2nd meeting this year. OECD account for 65% of all global oil imports. China is not a member of the OECD, but increased demand in China as it modernizes (and hundreds of millions of Chinese switch from walking on foot, to bicycles, to mopeds, to motorcycles, to small cars, roughly in that order) is driving increased demand. OECD demand has remained relatively stable over the past twenty years, as conservation and lower population growth (or negative growth) have sharply cut straight-line increases in oil and energy uses from the early 1990's. Increased immigration however has muddled that picture. According to the IEA (International Energy Agency) in the article, the EU has seen its import bill rise by $70 billion during 2010, more than the budget deficits of Greece and Portugal combined.

Why is this crisis occurring?

First, there has been a failure by the West (and China) to secure rapidly increases in oil production to keep the world economy moving. Far too many have succumbed to naïve and stupid ideas about how the world works, and bet on toothless "development deals" instead of concrete action to increase production. Nigeria remains mired in corruption and open rebellion, in oil producing regions. Iraq's ability to pump oil is constrained by considerable Iranian influence, as is that of the Gulf region as a whole. And the interests of Russia and Iran, net oil exporters, with bankrupt and non-functional economies, are directly opposite the roughly shared interests of the US, China, Japan, and the EU (i.e. cheap oil and gas and energy).

Russia and Iran have regimes in power by means of paying off lots of gunmen and goons. It is that simple. In order to pay off the goons, the only levers the regimes of both nations have is expensive oil. Therefore, when looking at the actions of both, it is important to realize that their survival, depends on making oil as expensive as possible (they cannot increase production to Saudi levels and make a profit at $40 a barrel). This is why Russia has been aiding Iran's nuclear program, and why Iran has basically fought the US in a shadow war in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan, seeking power or actively using its own forces to kill American troops (Iraq and Afghanistan). Against a weak and toothless response from first George Bush and then Barack Obama, neither Russia nor Iran fears any meaningful reprisals in an effort to control Iraq's oil production, and intimidate the Gulf into accepting $100 a barrel oil, and even further price increases.

That the price increases could long-term, destroy the Western economies, is not something the regimes of Iran and Russia care much about. They are gangsters, they care about paying their goons and thugs, not long term prospects. Indeed if the economies collapse around the world, to their thinking, so much the better. More power for them to grab, regionally. To reconstruct fallen empires.

If George W. Bush deserves a good deal of blame for weakness facing Iran (and failure to communicate clearly to Americans why Iran is our enemy: because we need cheap oil and they need expensive oil), Barack Obama's actions are even worse. He's already seen that what Bush did has not worked, and got elected basically because oil was at $140 a barrel, briefly. The Wikileaks fiasco shows that the Saudis wanted him to bomb Iran. A deal could have been made, bomb Iran (and remove a threat to the Saudi regime) in exchange for oil at $40 a barrel (i.e. Saudis pump oil like crazy). Everyone wins (except Iran and Russia). Gas at $1.10 a gallon would immediately jump start the US economy (by making almost everything overnight much, much cheaper).

Even worse has been Obama's failure to act regionally. Venezuela's oil industry is in a mess due to Chavez's meddling and corruption. He's also planning to base Iranian missiles aimed at the US, a clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and akin to the Cuban Missile Crisis (except without a nuclear armed Soviet Union backing him up). Toppling Chavez through military invasion to remove any possibility of Iranian nuclear (or otherwise) tipped missiles at the US and make oil cheaper would be quite popular (except among the anti-War left). Indeed a military build up puts people to work, immediately, and puts real money in pockets to stimulate the economy (unlike Obama's failed stimulus measure which bailed out State welfare programs and put money in allies pockets).

But domestically, Obama has been even worse. Wedded to an idiot notion of "green" energy (the man is not very bright), he has delayed drilling permits already in process in the Gulf of Mexico, costing thousands of jobs and significantly slowing US domestic oil production. The permitting slowdown includes shallow as well as deep water drilling. Meanwhile Cuba is drilling off the US coast, in deep water, with Obama's administration doing nothing. Thousands of jobs have been lost, in a deep recession, while Obama sings the praises of "green" energy. In addition, the EPA has been issuing regulations to enact cap and trade by executive order, as the bills pushing sky high energy costs have died in a Democratic led Congress. The cost to the US in radically increased energy bills, as the cost of almost every energy production: coal, gas, oil, increases to the rates (about eight or ten times higher) of solar and wind (themselves not very reliable) is an economy killer all its own, without a massive increase in oil prices.

This idiocy is entirely consistent with Obama's desire, stated in the election of 2008, to see energy prices skyrocket, just "not all at once" and see coal plants put out of business. Is Obama as stupid as say, former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who believed AIDS was caused by spores? Or current President of South Africa, Jakob Zuma, who believes AIDS can be cured by sex with a virgin? Nope. By all accounts the man is even stupider. Obama's election will live or die by the answer to the question "are you better off now than you were four years ago?" Sky-high energy costs, by either failure to act to create robust domestic and international supply, or enacting hideously costly energy regulations, will kill his re-election. In a way that the South African Presidents idiot beliefs about AIDS did not threaten their Presidencies.

Obama's model of action seems to be Zimbabwean President Mugabe, who presides over a nation where more people starve to death (around 2,00o a week estimated by Catholic Charities) than are killed in Iraq each week. Held together by ethnic / racial based thugs and such, and milking international donors for payoffs and bribes. This is a model for failure in a nation as big as the US. But one Obama seems to have adopted.

What is likely to happen?

First, Obama is unlikely to back down on his attempt to ramp up energy prices domestically by sticking cap and trade on Americans through the EPA's regulations. He believes in it (not the least of which is that it "punishes" White Americans, a notion central to all his actions). Regardless of the cost, he is determined to push ahead and is likely to be able to outflank Congressional Republicans on this matter (by shifting funds from other agencies to fund this effort, likely from the Defense Budget). Secondly, Iran and Russia, sensing terminal weakness, are likely to pressure OPEC to keep oil prices sky high by further limiting production. Oil is very likely to reach $140 a barrel, or even considerably higher.

China, of course, cannot tolerate these prices. The Chinese will act, in some fashion. First they will encourage allies inside the US political system to remove Obama, and secondly they will be likely to seize oil resources for themselves. This is after all, the main reason besides Taiwan that they have engaged in a massive military build-up.

But the US political response is likely to be impeaching and convicting, President Obama. Clinton was impeached, but not convicted, because of the revulsion people felt over his actions, but the comfort they had with his economy. It is the economy, stupid. Obama does not have that margin. A caretaker President Biden, or perhaps even another figure (if he is medically certified as unfit to serve) muddling through is the likely political response oil at $140 a barrel for an extended period of time. Oil at that price level made Obama President, and it is likely to unmake him. Even the most loyal Democratic Senator would prefer to wait out racially motivated riots over the conviction of President Obama, than lose office entirely in 2012 over rage at being suddenly made poor by unsustainable energy prices, rising in a manner of months not decades.

If the Tea Party was the revolt of the White middle class over unsustainable tax burdens and government control of their lives, particularly medical care, to provide for (essentially) free medical care to illegal aliens, imagine their revolt over gas at $5, or $6 a gallon, courtesy of Barack Obama. All the spin in the world by the media, won't fix that problem.
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