Rider On The Storm

In 1959, Marine Corps pilot William Rankin was cruising at nine miles above the earth in an F-8 Crusader combat jet when his engine failed and he was forced to eject.

At approximately 6:00 pm, Lt Col Rankin concluded that his aircraft was unrecoverable and pulled hard on his eject handles. An explosive charge propelled him from the cockpit into the atmosphere with sufficient force to rip his left glove from his hand, scattering his canopy, pilot seat, and other plane-related debris into the sky. Bill Rankin had spent a fair amount of time skydiving in his career—both premeditated and otherwise—but this particular dive would be unlike any that he or any living person had experienced before.

At the apex Rankin caught up with his parachute, causing it to drape over him like a wet blanket and stir worries that he would become entangled with it and drop from the sky at a truly terminal velocity. Again he fell, and again the updrafts yanked him skyward in the darkness. He lost count of how many times this up-and-down cycle repeated. “At one point I got seasick and heaved,” he once retold.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:39 PM | Comments (546)
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Last debate of the year.

Fox News Channel - 9pm. **LIVESTREAM**

Drink up.

Standard reminder: Your comments do not automatically display. So don't ask "Why aren't my comments displaying?" They don't display.

They're not posted comments a la chat room. Instead they go to queue, which the producers (cobloggers) read, and we post them, by hand, if we think they make a good point.

Liveblog thingy below the fold. more...

Posted by: andy at 04:45 PM | Comments (762)
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It is a wonderful moment when a liberal feels comfortable enough to say out loud what's on his mind. To drop the pretense and finally admit that Democrats must cheat and dilute the influence of (disenfranchise) legal voters to remain in power.

We all know what has been going on all along; now he just wants to make it official.

New Haven Mayor John DeStefano plans to ask the state Legislature to allow illegal immigrants who live in the city to be able vote in municipal elections.

DeStefano said on Tuesday that the proposal would build a more engaged community and follows the lead of other cities, the New Haven Independent reports.

The Independent reports that New Haven has about 10,000 non-citizen immigrants.

Immigrants who are in the U.S. legally or illegally and cannot vote now would still be unable to vote in state or federal elections.

DeStefano, a Democrat, said illegal immigrants pay taxes indirectly through rent and send their kids to New Haven schools and should be able to vote.

Krakatoa quips "Hmm. I have a house I rent out. I had no idea that if I didn't have tenants, I wouldn't have to pay taxes on that property."

Only the Good Lord knows how anybody manages to pay their property taxes without the assistance of all that sweet, sweet cash that illegal immigrants are constantly dropping on us like manna from heaven.

'Spanish-speaking deficit-slayers,' is our colloquialism for these heavy tippers.

When illegal immigrants move into your town en masse, in a thrice your municipal and state treasuries will be choked and overflowing with foreign gold!

Happens everywhere it has been tried. I won't provide any cites. Just trust me.

DeStefano's request is being recognized locally as a disgusting power-grab, of course.

Thanks to Krakatoa.

Posted by: LauraW at 04:29 PM | Comments (68)
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By the way, when we say "losing client money" in this particular story, we don't mean that Corzine put money into investments that failed to pay off.

He did do that. But that's not even what we mean when we talk about "losing the money."

We mean he... lost the money. He doesn't know where it is.

Oops.

I know I left that one point two billion dollars around here somewhere...

Lots of phone calls between Corzine and his buddies at the Fed, even as he was putting out statements that failed to disclose the problem.

This article is worth reading at least to the 3/4s point, but I can't excerpt that much. Here's a good taste.

Yet MF Global documents and telephone and email records obtained by Fox News show that on the morning of Oct. 26 -- not even a full day after the optimistic statement he released -- Corzine was contacting top officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, including New York Fed President William C. Dudley. The records, supplied to congressional investigators by the New York Fed, show that over the next five days -- at which point MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection -- Corzine and Dudley spoke at least 10 times, and exchanged emails twice. There were still other contacts between Corzine, MF Global CFO Henri Steenkamp, and other New York Fed officials in the same time frame.

Jack Gutt, a spokesman for Dudley, said the New York Fed had no comment. But sources with knowledge of the substance of these conversations told Fox News that Corzine already knew MF Global's collapse was imminent, and had reached out to Dudley for two reasons: first, to see if the Fed could help find a buyer for MF Global; and second, to assist the Fed in its efforts to minimize the fallout from what both men now realized was shaping up as a Wall Street catastrophe, the eighth largest bankruptcy in American history.

Speaking of phone calls... The RNC has a great ad about phone calls!
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:13 PM | Comments (248)
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If you're "brave and principled" on never voting for an appropriation bill, but also shelter yourself from any political consequence of this stance by making sure your constituents get all the sweet, sweet Federal Gold their hearts desire, are you really brave or principled?

Ron Paul's never really passed any legislation, and hardly ever joins any. For all the claims about him being a fighter and a champion, he never seems to advance the ball.

But he does have a rich legislative history, of federal taxpayer-gifted goodies for his voters.

No legislation, no actual furtherance of conservative positions, but lots and lots of sweet sweet pork for the boys in Galveston and Corpus Christi.

He did once again suggest that a dedicated foreign enemy -- Iran -- is actually a victim of US aggression, and if they sink a ship and try to shut down oil shipments through the Persian Gulf, why, that's them just feeling powerless against Obama's relentless bullying.

Do you believe that Obama is guilty of relentless bullying against Iran? Because I don't.

What Paul seems to be referring to is calls for sanctions and such.

Even that much, he thinks, is enough to justify an act of war by Iran, such that we must understand we had it coming, and should just accept it.

Posted by: Ace at 02:03 PM | Comments (99)
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And check out the picture at post's end-- remember when whistleblowers were cool?

No more. Now we're rounding them up and marching them to prison.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (262)
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People are complaining that the last thread is too contentious. I think at some point the Ron Paul Problem can no longer be ignored, but I do understand: You want a new thread.

So here's a palate cleanser: The Coming Yorkie-Baby War. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (127)
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The kindly old goblin just wants a return to the America of his youth.

This “Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” was hardly the first time one of Paul’s publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled “What To Expect for the 1990s,” predicted that “Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities” because “mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white ‘haves.’” Two months later, a newsletter warned of “The Coming Race War,” and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, “If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it.” In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.” “This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s,” the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter’s author--presumably Paul--wrote, “I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.”

...

The newsletters were particularly obsessed with AIDS, “a politically protected disease thanks to payola and the influence of the homosexual lobby,” and used it as a rhetorical club to beat gay people in general. In 1990, one newsletter approvingly quoted “a well-known Libertarian editor” as saying, “The ACT-UP slogan, on stickers plastered all over Manhattan, is ‘Silence = Death.’ But shouldn’t it be ‘Sodomy = Death’?” Readers were warned to avoid blood transfusions because gays were trying to “poison the blood supply.” “Am I the only one sick of hearing about the ‘rights’ of AIDS carriers?” a newsletter asked in 1990. That same year, citing a Christian-right fringe publication, an item suggested that “the AIDS patient” should not be allowed to eat in restaurants and that “AIDS can be transmitted by saliva,” which is false. Paul’s newsletters advertised a book, Surviving the AIDS Plague — also based upon the casual-transmission thesis--and defended “parents who worry about sending their healthy kids to school with AIDS victims.” Commenting on a rise in AIDS infections, one newsletter said that “gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense,” adding: “[T]hese men don’t really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners.” Also, “they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”

Ron Paul claims he didn't write this stuff, which I can believe, mostly.

But he also claims he wasn't aware what the newsletters published in his name, supposedly written by him, were saying.

There are a lot of people who find it implausible that Barack Hussein Obama didn't know the basic tenor of the Reverent Wright's sermons of hatred. It is unlikely in the extreme, they reason, that Obama could have missed each one of Wright's hateful, anti-semitic seethings -- these statements were too pervasive to believe he just happened to miss every single one of them.

Well, the old-line racist/neoconfederate ravings in Paul's newsletters (for which he was paid; people paid for this, and he profited) were more pervasive.

Furthermore, these missives were written with a specific goal in mind: creating a "paleoconservative alliance" between libertarians and old-time neoconfederates and former Klanners.

Does Doctor Paul seriously expect us to believe he wasn't even aware of the basic ideological line his newsletters were peddling? He claims he didn't even have that minimum level of editorial knowledge?

A line here or a line there, I could understand. But we are talking here about the basic thrust of his newsletters, which were paranoid, survivalist, racist, anti-semitic, and homophobic. All that's missing is some anti-Catholic agitation and he's got the full Klanner set covered.

"The Coming Race War"?

Was it just the newsletters? No, of course not. It was not just the newsletters.

Paul is closely con­nected to the Lud­wig Von Mises Insti­tute, founded by the lib­er­tar­ian con­ser­v­a­tive Mur­ray Roth­bard and cur­rently run by Lew Rock­well. Rock­well was for­merly Paul’s chief of staff.

...

For Roth­bard, free­dom was best when it wore pants: he blamed the “ori­gins of the Wel­fare State” on “the legion of Yan­kee women, in par­tic­u­lar those of mid­dle– or upper-class back­ground, and espe­cially spin­sters whose busy­body incli­na­tions were not fet­tered by the respon­si­bil­i­ties of home and hearth.” He regret­ted the Con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment that had “imposed” women’s suf­frage on the nation.

In 1963, for exam­ple, at the height of the Civil Right move­ment, Roth­bard warned about “the negro cri­sis as a rev­o­lu­tion.” “Demon­strat­ing Negroes,” he said, “have taken to a favorite chant: ‘What do we want? Free­dom! When do we want it? Now!’” One might expect a lib­er­tar­ian to like such a chant, but Roth­bard found the idea of free­dom for negroes alarm­ing: they did not under­stand it prop­erly. Free­dom was a “hope­lessly ambigu­ous word as used by the Negro move­ment,” and “the very fuzzi­ness of the goal per­mits the Negroes to accel­er­ate and increase their own demands with­out limit… it is the very sweep and vague­ness of the demands that make the move­ment insatiable.”

An insa­tiable desire for free­dom usu­ally stands in lib­er­tar­ian accounts as the most praise-worthy of human attrib­utes, but Roth­bard found the African Amer­i­can free­dom strug­gle alarm­ing. Roth­bard wor­ried not just about “insa­tiable” negroes, but also about King and his non-violent protests against “pri­vate cit­i­zens as store-keepers or own­ers of golf courses; their rights are already invaded, in a “non-violent” man­ner, by the estab­lished Negro ‘Cen­ter’.” Roth­bard explored ways to stop “the negro rev­o­lu­tion:” his words are worth quot­ing in full.

There are two ways by which it might be crip­pled and defeated. First, the retal­ia­tory cre­ation of a white counter-revolutionary mass move­ment, equally deter­mined and mil­i­tant. In short, by the re-creation of the kind of Ku Klux Klan that smashed Recon­struc­tion and the Negro move­ment in the late 19th cen­tury. Since whites are in the major­ity, they have the capac­ity to do this if they have the will. But the will, in my opin­ion, is gone; this is not the 19th cen­tury, nor even the 1920’s. White opin­ion, as we have seen, has dras­ti­cally shifted from racism to egal­i­tar­i­an­ism; even the South­ern whites, par­tic­u­larly the edu­cated lead­er­ship, con­cede the broad merit of the Negro cause; and, finally, mob action no longer has respectabil­ity in our soci­ety. There have been attempts, to be sure, at mass counter-revolutionary white action: the Ku Klux leader in Geor­gia told a rally that “we must fight poi­son with poi­son,” armed con­flict between white and Negro mobs has bro­ken out in Cam­bridge, Mary­land, and white hood­lums have repeat­edly assaulted Negro pick­ets in the Bronx. But all this is a fee­ble replica of the kind of white action that would be nec­es­sary to defeat the rev­o­lu­tion; and it seems almost impos­si­ble for action to be gen­er­ated on the required scale.

...

Not sur­pris­ingly, the Von Mises Insti­tute he founded and ran is allied with the “League of the South,” which views the Civil War as a cri­sis over state’s rights and calls for an inde­pen­dent south­ern repub­lic and wants, yes, “to return to a sound cur­rency” based in gold.3 The League of the South laments the fact that “aliens” now gov­ern the for­mer Con­fed­er­acy. It wants to return rule to the heirs of the “Anglo-Celtic tra­di­tion.” Roth­bard and the Von Mises Insti­tute sim­i­larly describe the Civil War as an unjust inter­ven­tion, and claim slav­ery would have van­ished on its own. The North, they argue, cre­ated racism in what had been a benign nat­ural hier­ar­chy

Among the many things I don't believe, I don't believe that Ron Paul is actually "just advising neutrality" on Israel, though he casts it that way. Racists tend to cast their views as "just staying out of squabbles," when in fact they're partisans on one racial team. Likewise Paul, who claims he simply wants to stay out of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, can't help himself from claiming the Israelis are maintaining "concentration camps" and slaughtering Palestinians without provocation.

It just so happens his political positions dovetail with the animosities of his old newsletters (which he had nothing to do with, apart from putting his name on the masthead, collecting subscription fees, and signing lots of articles as "Ron Paul," using the pronoun "I" (as in "I, Ron Paul") as the speaker in most missives, etc.).

Another thing I don't believe is that Ron Paul's thick-as-thieves relationship with fringe lunatic crank and Truther Alex Jones is just some kind of coincidence, given that Paul can't seem to stay away from the ghastly paranoid Here's Alex Jones following around Michele Malkin, shouting at her for being a "neocon" (he has referred to her as a "monster" and "Marxist"). One of his little goon squad there shouts "Kill Michelle Malkin!"

When I say Alex Jones is Truther, I don't mean he flirts with it. I mean he says the United States government loaded the buildings with explosives and detonated them.

And that's not even the craziest thing he believes. He happens to believe that this is just one of many attacks on citizens by the global cabal that runs the world.

The global cabal has a plan, you see. His video "Endgame: The Blueprint for Global Enslavement," explains this plan, which is that the Illuminati/Bildersbergers/Whatever We're Calling Them This Cycle of Paranoia literally intends to kill 80% of the world's population and enslave the remaining 20%.

This is why he calls his show "Prison Planet." He literally preaches that the Global Cabal intends earth to be an actual prison planet, 80% of the population eradicated, 20% working in slave camps for the small cadre of Illuminati Masters.

Don't believe me? Watch.

It is suggested to me, quite seriously, that the fact that Ron Paul just can't quit Alex Jones is merely another coincidence, just another "guilt by association" trick, and that it just must be that both are big fans of the gold standard.

And sure, he won't ask Stormfront (the Neo-Nazi group) to stop fundraising for him, or including his link on their web-pages, and he won't return that sweet sweet Nazi gold either.

Just a coincidence. He's just that principled. Or something. He, like, steals from the Nazis. Like Clint Eastwood in Kelly's Heroes.

Because I believe in being fair, I will include some positive information about Ron Paul.

He recently picked up a key endorsement, a bellwether of true conservative thought:

Noted conservative thought-leader Andrew Sullivan has endorsed him. Again.

Of capital importance to Andrew Sullivan is that Ron Paul doesn't have Obama Derangement Syndrome, as other conservatives do.

And I see in Paul none of the resentment that burns in Gingrich or the fakeness that defines Romney or the fascistic strains in PerryÂ’s buffoonery. He has yet to show the Obama-derangement of his peers, even though he differs with him. He has now gone through two primary elections without compromising an inch of his character or his philosophy.

And no one seems to care about this, but as Ben Domench was noting yesterday on Twitter, Ron Paul's posture as a "small government conservative" is a lie. While he makes sure he votes against every appropriations bill, he nonetheless inserts billions in earmarks for his home district, and calls himself principled for doing so.

In other words, while he talks a good game about limiting federal spending, he has immunized himself from the political consequences of taking a hardline stance on the federal government's sugar-daddyism, by making sure all of his local special interests get paid.

Including in areas of obvious federal concern, like connecting bike trails in the greater Galveston metropolitan area.

Hey, Jefferson rode a Huffy. It's in The Constitution, man.

The party can nominate Ron Paul if it chooses. At which point it's none of my concern, as I'm officially out of a party that chooses to wed itself to a neoconfederate, Bircher crank with a long history of dabbling in racial paranoia about "The Coming Race War" and courting fringe luantics.

Oh: And of course Ron Paul does not want a border fence.

Why not?

Because the US Government will use that fence to keep us Americans from fleeing.

But he's a true conservative.

Posted by: Ace at 11:22 AM | Comments (393)
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No ticker-tape parade, huh?

We're just going to treat these guys as embarrassing relatives simply because some people disagreed with the war?

They say they oppose the policy, but they support the troops.

Okay. Where is the support?

Where is the national expression of gratitude for a long, hard job well done?

There were speeches paying tribute to the fallen, promising that America would not abandon Iraq and warning of challenges ahead. A brass band played, and the flag that had flown over the headquarters of the U.S. mission here was lowered for the last time.

And that was it. No pronouncements of victory, no cheers or jubilation — only a profound sense that the war’s real reckoning is yet to come even as America’s part in it draws to a close.

Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, the sixth and last of the U.S. generals to command U.S. forces in Iraq, addressed the uncertainties when he spoke of the “progress” made and the “opportunities” created for Iraqis to live freely and prosper, without sounding at all sure that they will.

Thanks to the sacrifices of U.S. troops, “the Iraqi people have unprecedented opportunities,” he told the small gathering of American soldiers and dignitaries. “They have the opportunity to make their voices heard through a democratically elected government, the opportunity to live in a peaceful environment.”

I understand the need for a restraint in a commemoration held in Baghdad. One must always be cognizant of Excitable Muslim Syndrome.

But in the US...?

Men fought and died for a goal. Whether or not you agree with that goal, you cannot dispute the heroism these men demonstrated in pursuing that goal.

And yet some do.

Is there no city in America with a mayor who will volunteer a parade and national expression of thanks?

There are a few Republican mayors -- San Diego has one, I think We should begin a movement to pressure them to do what our, ahem, Leader From Behind will not.

If I Have This Right... Occupy layabouts can squat in cities for four months, defecating, raping, and stabbing, but our troops can't occupy a canyon of heroes from 10am to 2 pm?

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 AM | Comments (242)
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He didn't seem to be very interested in military and foreign affairs as a candidate, but says he'd be the one to build the military the right way. I suppose his organizational experience would make him semi-qualified for that.

Still, I wonder if it's just so he can unveil his new plan:

Nine Armies! Nine Fleets! Nine Strategic Air Wings!

I should mention "Nine Expeditionary Forces" but that's four nines so I can't.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (85)
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