A Postscript to Spitzer.
Herein the best definition of socialism ever written:
The Emperor Penguins: marching to oblivion.
…-
“Spitzer: born-again Leninist
It would have been interesting to have had Bill Buckley’s reaction to the implosion of Eliot Spitzer, prosecutorial bully, patronizer of expensive prostitutes, and former governor of New York. We suspect that he would have agreed with a recent article on the website TechCentralStation by the economist Arnold Kling. “It is a shame,” observed Mr. Kling, “that we only laugh at a Spitzer when his secret sex life is revealed to us. Instead of mocking Spitzers for their private foibles, we should be contemptuous of their public pronouncements. Whether it is ‘cleaning up Wall Street’ or ‘giving everyone health care,’ the Spitzers are making extravagant promises that only result in expanded government power.”
Short of dire national emergency, Bill Buckley knew, “expanded government power” is nearly always synonymous with “diminished individual liberty.” Elevated into a consistent policy, it is allied to the kind of collectivism that underwrote the tyranny of Communism. At the center of the totalitarian impulse is the belief that, at bottom, freedom belongs only to the state, that the individual should not be treated as a free actor but rather, as Lenin put it, as “‘a cog and a screw’ of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism.” The Spitzers of the world are, as someone said about the critic Philip Rahv, born-again Leninists. “What socialism implies above all,” said Lenin, “is keeping account of everything.” That is the goal, so prevalent among our most ambitious politicians these days, that requires checking. Keeping track of your health care, disposing of your money, regulating your food and drink and ration of tobacco: there they all are, ready, able, and willing to run your life for you.
The spectacle of Eliot Spitzer’s fall has provided a good deal of tawdry tabloid entertainment. But really, what matters about Spitzer were his actions as a public figure. He recklessly employed the power of the state partly to aggrandize himself, but more dangerously to insinuate state power into areas where it has no business intruding. Probably, few politicians are paid-up members of The Emperors’ Club. But how many patronize that other, more amorphous club of emperors, the one staffed by democratic despots whose overwhelming imperative is to relieve individuals of responsibility for themselves, transforming them from free citizens into clients of an increasingly bureaucratized, and increasingly insatiable, state apparatus?” …- http://newcriterion.com:81/archives/26/04/spitzer-born-again-leninist/
“The Universal Spitzer
“The former New York attorney general never believed normal rules applied to him, and his view was validated time and again by an adoring press.”
–Kimberly A. Strassel
The term “Spitzer” belongs in the dictionary, and its definition should be “any politician.”” http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031408A
Melanie Phillips, A Britain Without Honour or Shame
At a Civitas lunchtime seminar today Nazir Afzal, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service for West London, spoke forcefully about the appalling persecution of Muslim women in Britain through forced marriages and honour-based violence… He said:
The greatest fear of Muslim women [in Britain] is not of Islamophobia or being arrested by the police — it is of being attacked in their own homes.
Disraelia
Today is April Fools’ Day, and no day could be more auspicious for an exercise in counterfactual history. In that spirit, MESH is pleased to offer a new paper by MESH member Walter Laqueur, entitled Disraelia: A Counterfactual History, 1848-2008. Laqueur, whose many books include an acclaimed history of Zionism, has put together an anthology of would-be documents, predicated on the counterfactual premise that large-scale Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine began in 1848. In Laqueur’s controlled speculation, Disraeli occupies the place of Herzl…
“the majority just sat back and let it* all happen.”
“It*” = National Socialism”, aka socialism.
…-
“A German’s point of view on Islam.
Email from American Congress for Truth
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis ‘he said,’ but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'” http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1995105/posts
During this whole Brenda Martin fiasco, several have asked if she has continued to file a tax return as a canadian citizen.
I wonder when she filed her final return as a resident of Canada, and if she has ever filled in the bottom of page 1 of T1 General-
IF YOU BECAME OR CEASED TO BE A RESIDENT OF CANADA IN (PUT IN YEAR) GIVE THE DATE.
That question has been on the form for many years.
Cut CBC/pravda entirely. Stuff CBC down the memory hole. Say goodnight to Ricky, Peter, et al.
…-
CBC-TV to drop Royal Canadian Air Farce (G-M)
CBC to dismantle 70-year-old radio orchestra
(G-M)
Richard Miniter
Has some background on New York Times contributor from Iraq Qais Mizher…..
“….Would the Times have hired former Nazi officers to cover the three-year insurgency against the American presence in Germany in the late 1940s? Even if they spoke the language, knew the countryside well and said they “never really believed” in that evil ideology?…”
Well the answer plainly is YES … if it had the same sort of management it has today!
There are grievances, and then there are special grievances
I’ve received some interesting feedback on my last blog entry, describing Richard Warman’s new job as a “Director of Special Grievances — Enquiries and Investigations” at the Department of National Defence. Some feedback was posted directly to my comments section, and some has come to my e-mail. I expect a more, now that CF chat sites like Army.ca have taken note.’
“I want to know more about “Special Grievances” — the sort that Richard Warman spends his time on.
“Because amongst the list of potential issues are a few that seem to call out his name, from “harassment” to “discrimination”. Even “Canadian Human Rights Commission” is listed. I’m sure that even Warman couldn’t turn a dispute over pension benefits into an opportunity for “maximum disruption”. But I’m equally sure that the Special Grievances Directorate doesn’t waste its time on such matters.
So keep your e-mails coming. I want to know just how special a Special Grievance has to be before it’s given to Warman for his special treatment.
If Warman is indeed using his “maximum disruption” approach, the cases I’m looking for are likely going to come from soldiers who have been drummed out of the Canadian Forces, or marginalized within it. Send those stories over in confidence.” …- http://ezralevant.com/2008/04/there-are-grievances-and-then.html
Min of Indian Affairs, Chuck S., live on Duffy: We will not be sitting down at the table with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations’ if David Ahenakew is at the table.
Did the National Newswatch out themselves this morning?
The website which has never revealed who it is run by ran an April Fool’s gag claiming Ken Dryden had resigned from Parliament to take on the GM job for the Toronto Maple Leafs. http://www.ctv.nationalnewswatch.com/CTVNews_0201829810_TopStories_.htm
Is CTV behind the site?
BKG
Is it the sub-prime mortgage fiasco that caused the economic downturn, or is it the sucking sound of hackers from their secure servers behind the safety of Russia*s borders?
* * These cases bring to 20 the number of complaints in which the FTC has charged companies with security deficiencies in protecting sensitive consumer information, * * FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said in a release.
TJX said last March that at least 45.7 MILLION cards were exposed to possible fraud in a breach of its computer systems. Court filings by banks that sued TJX estimated the number of cards affected at more than 100 million.
In the other case, personal information about hundreds of thousands of people held by Netherlands-based Reed Elsevier’s LexisNexis unit may have been accessed in 2005 by unauthorized individuals using stolen passwords and IDs to access Seisint databases.
Sherry Lang, TJX’s senior vice president for investor and public relations, said the company disagreed with the FTC’s allegations, but agreed to the settlement * * which is consistent with the agreements between the FTC and other retailers that have been victimized by cyber crime. * *
The Framingham, Mass.-based company’s 2,500 stores include the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains.
money.aol.com/news/articles/qp/ap/_a/federal-trade-commission-settles-with/rfid86198530
==================================== Money.Aol.com
= TG
I just watched Robert Fife on Ctv Newsnet . Someone has to be able to capture this,I can’t. Anyways ,he has said that the Americans,yes,those wicked Yankees, have agreed to supply 1,000 combat troops to support our guys. Yeah,USA. He also said that the yanks prefer to work alongside our boys rather than the french because quite frankly they don’t like the french.Excellent.
A Postscript to Spitzer.
Herein the best definition of socialism ever written:
The Emperor Penguins: marching to oblivion.
…-
“Spitzer: born-again Leninist
It would have been interesting to have had Bill Buckley’s reaction to the implosion of Eliot Spitzer, prosecutorial bully, patronizer of expensive prostitutes, and former governor of New York. We suspect that he would have agreed with a recent article on the website TechCentralStation by the economist Arnold Kling. “It is a shame,” observed Mr. Kling, “that we only laugh at a Spitzer when his secret sex life is revealed to us. Instead of mocking Spitzers for their private foibles, we should be contemptuous of their public pronouncements. Whether it is ‘cleaning up Wall Street’ or ‘giving everyone health care,’ the Spitzers are making extravagant promises that only result in expanded government power.”
Short of dire national emergency, Bill Buckley knew, “expanded government power” is nearly always synonymous with “diminished individual liberty.” Elevated into a consistent policy, it is allied to the kind of collectivism that underwrote the tyranny of Communism. At the center of the totalitarian impulse is the belief that, at bottom, freedom belongs only to the state, that the individual should not be treated as a free actor but rather, as Lenin put it, as “‘a cog and a screw’ of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism.” The Spitzers of the world are, as someone said about the critic Philip Rahv, born-again Leninists. “What socialism implies above all,” said Lenin, “is keeping account of everything.” That is the goal, so prevalent among our most ambitious politicians these days, that requires checking. Keeping track of your health care, disposing of your money, regulating your food and drink and ration of tobacco: there they all are, ready, able, and willing to run your life for you.
The spectacle of Eliot Spitzer’s fall has provided a good deal of tawdry tabloid entertainment. But really, what matters about Spitzer were his actions as a public figure. He recklessly employed the power of the state partly to aggrandize himself, but more dangerously to insinuate state power into areas where it has no business intruding. Probably, few politicians are paid-up members of The Emperors’ Club. But how many patronize that other, more amorphous club of emperors, the one staffed by democratic despots whose overwhelming imperative is to relieve individuals of responsibility for themselves, transforming them from free citizens into clients of an increasingly bureaucratized, and increasingly insatiable, state apparatus?” …-
http://newcriterion.com:81/archives/26/04/spitzer-born-again-leninist/
“The Universal Spitzer
“The former New York attorney general never believed normal rules applied to him, and his view was validated time and again by an adoring press.”
–Kimberly A. Strassel
The term “Spitzer” belongs in the dictionary, and its definition should be “any politician.””
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=031408A
Melanie Phillips, A Britain Without Honour or Shame
At a Civitas lunchtime seminar today Nazir Afzal, the head of the Crown Prosecution Service for West London, spoke forcefully about the appalling persecution of Muslim women in Britain through forced marriages and honour-based violence… He said:
Disraelia
Today is April Fools’ Day, and no day could be more auspicious for an exercise in counterfactual history. In that spirit, MESH is pleased to offer a new paper by MESH member Walter Laqueur, entitled Disraelia: A Counterfactual History, 1848-2008. Laqueur, whose many books include an acclaimed history of Zionism, has put together an anthology of would-be documents, predicated on the counterfactual premise that large-scale Jewish immigration to Ottoman Palestine began in 1848. In Laqueur’s controlled speculation, Disraeli occupies the place of Herzl…
“the majority just sat back and let it* all happen.”
“It*” = National Socialism”, aka socialism.
…-
“A German’s point of view on Islam.
Email from American Congress for Truth
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.
‘Very few people were true Nazis ‘he said,’ but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1995105/posts
During this whole Brenda Martin fiasco, several have asked if she has continued to file a tax return as a canadian citizen.
I wonder when she filed her final return as a resident of Canada, and if she has ever filled in the bottom of page 1 of T1 General-
IF YOU BECAME OR CEASED TO BE A RESIDENT OF CANADA IN (PUT IN YEAR) GIVE THE DATE.
That question has been on the form for many years.
Cut CBC/pravda entirely. Stuff CBC down the memory hole. Say goodnight to Ricky, Peter, et al.
…-
CBC-TV to drop Royal Canadian Air Farce (G-M)
CBC to dismantle 70-year-old radio orchestra
(G-M)
Richard Miniter
Has some background on New York Times contributor from Iraq Qais Mizher…..
“….Would the Times have hired former Nazi officers to cover the three-year insurgency against the American presence in Germany in the late 1940s? Even if they spoke the language, knew the countryside well and said they “never really believed” in that evil ideology?…”
Well the answer plainly is YES … if it had the same sort of management it has today!
There are grievances, and then there are special grievances
I’ve received some interesting feedback on my last blog entry, describing Richard Warman’s new job as a “Director of Special Grievances — Enquiries and Investigations” at the Department of National Defence. Some feedback was posted directly to my comments section, and some has come to my e-mail. I expect a more, now that CF chat sites like Army.ca have taken note.’
“I want to know more about “Special Grievances” — the sort that Richard Warman spends his time on.
“Because amongst the list of potential issues are a few that seem to call out his name, from “harassment” to “discrimination”. Even “Canadian Human Rights Commission” is listed. I’m sure that even Warman couldn’t turn a dispute over pension benefits into an opportunity for “maximum disruption”. But I’m equally sure that the Special Grievances Directorate doesn’t waste its time on such matters.
So keep your e-mails coming. I want to know just how special a Special Grievance has to be before it’s given to Warman for his special treatment.
If Warman is indeed using his “maximum disruption” approach, the cases I’m looking for are likely going to come from soldiers who have been drummed out of the Canadian Forces, or marginalized within it. Send those stories over in confidence.” …-
http://ezralevant.com/2008/04/there-are-grievances-and-then.html
Min of Indian Affairs, Chuck S., live on Duffy: We will not be sitting down at the table with the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations’ if David Ahenakew is at the table.
Did the National Newswatch out themselves this morning?
The website which has never revealed who it is run by ran an April Fool’s gag claiming Ken Dryden had resigned from Parliament to take on the GM job for the Toronto Maple Leafs.
http://www.ctv.nationalnewswatch.com/CTVNews_0201829810_TopStories_.htm
Is CTV behind the site?
BKG
Some good news
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080401.wdeserter0410/BNStory/National/home
THIS IS FUNNY!!Three pages is too much. Kinsella never worked in the PMO when Chretien was PM. Why was that again, Eddie?
Slogans:
“I have to get my wife to drive when I am awake!”
I only target evangelicals, they’re safe to hate!”
“Fighting dirty: Kicking in the back and defaming names”
Is it the sub-prime mortgage fiasco that caused the economic downturn, or is it the sucking sound of hackers from their secure servers behind the safety of Russia*s borders?
* * These cases bring to 20 the number of complaints in which the FTC has charged companies with security deficiencies in protecting sensitive consumer information, * * FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said in a release.
TJX said last March that at least 45.7 MILLION cards were exposed to possible fraud in a breach of its computer systems. Court filings by banks that sued TJX estimated the number of cards affected at more than 100 million.
In the other case, personal information about hundreds of thousands of people held by Netherlands-based Reed Elsevier’s LexisNexis unit may have been accessed in 2005 by unauthorized individuals using stolen passwords and IDs to access Seisint databases.
Sherry Lang, TJX’s senior vice president for investor and public relations, said the company disagreed with the FTC’s allegations, but agreed to the settlement * * which is consistent with the agreements between the FTC and other retailers that have been victimized by cyber crime. * *
The Framingham, Mass.-based company’s 2,500 stores include the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains.
money.aol.com/news/articles/qp/ap/_a/federal-trade-commission-settles-with/rfid86198530
==================================== Money.Aol.com
= TG
It seems like the guy is talking to a child when he interviews Harry Reid…
http://www.freeliberal.com/blog/archives/003277.php
I just watched Robert Fife on Ctv Newsnet . Someone has to be able to capture this,I can’t. Anyways ,he has said that the Americans,yes,those wicked Yankees, have agreed to supply 1,000 combat troops to support our guys. Yeah,USA. He also said that the yanks prefer to work alongside our boys rather than the french because quite frankly they don’t like the french.Excellent.