In Egypt the state has a virtual monopoly on data, which effectively stops public debate about government decisions
Interesting piece in The Guardian that illustrates how well Mubarek has implemented the traditional thug's agenda to remain in power pretty much forever.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2010 11:16 ||
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In a few days, Americans could carve out a monument to the Tea Party's power -- or etch out the movement's political tombstone.
The outcome of the midterm elections will either validate the Tea Party as a national force or cause both Democrats and Republicans to second-guess the movement's impact. But dead or alive after Election Day, the Tea Party has earned a place in history.
If the Tea Party is able to elect its candidates, it will likely hold even more sway over the Republican Party, threaten the Democratic Party, wield even more influence over the electorate and possibly play king- or queen-maker for the 2012 presidential election.
But outgoing Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter senses danger in the Tea Party.
Especially since the Tea Party folks helped run him out of the Senate, for which I say 'thank you!'
"I think it is really problem-some for democracy when the fringes of the parties gain control," Specter told CNN.
Yet he had no problem joining up with the Democrats who went hard-left. Notice that it's only when the Republicans move ever so slightly to the right that Snarlin' Arlin has a problem.
"And to have a Republican Party go so far to the right is a real problem. I think the only answer is for Middle America to take some greater interest in the political process so that you have the real will of the people as opposed to the people on the extremes."
The good Tea Party folks would reply that they ARE Middle America ...
If Tea Party-backed candidates mostly fail on Election Day, the only success the Tea Party may be able to count is, simply, splitting the Republican Party in two -- between moderates and conservatives.
Or, the various factions of the Republican party would recognize the wisdom of focusing on things you can fix, like our economy, and saving the divisive social issues for later.
Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin recently told CNN, "You know, I don't think that it will, because I think more of the machine within the GOP is going to understand that this 'We the people' message is rising, and it's resonating throughout with the Independents, with hardcore conservatives, with moderates, because it's just so full of common sense and time-tested truths that can put the economy on the right track."
Then Palin warned, "Heaven forbid that the GOP machine strays from this message. If so, the GOP is through."
#1
So sick of this meme....lefty msm trying to frame avg Americans as whackos.
The Tea Party is made up of avg folks who are sick of the crap in DC. They want a return to fiscal sanity and constitutional govt. Pretty reasonable stuff...BTW - this is Middle America talking.
#3
Specter does have a point - it is problemsome when the fringes of the parties gain control; that's been true for the Dems for a while and will likely cost the Pubs several House and especially Senate seats next week. Each party fights to identify and capture the one middle voter, so we alternate between one 'extreme' (relative to that middle voter) and the other.
#5
I can't decide who is more frightened of Tea Partiers: career Dem incumbents who realized too late that the TPers had broad, centrist, middle-class appeal, career GOP incumbents who discovered - too late! - that the TP was not their pet pony to ride to the comeback, the political operators of both stripes who see their carefully constructed designs being smashed, or the MSM, who try one unsuccessful narrative after another; They're a flash in the pan, they're poor uneducated racist slobbovians, they don't have any defined plan!
Alas, the only political tombstone that will be etched is that for the political status quo as it existed prior to about mid 2009.
I can really see November from my house. Quite clearly now.
#6
I think the majority of the people have awakened to the dangers of career politicians who say "screw the will of the people." I think they realize the need to keep after the scoundrels and replace them frequently and often.
#7
will likely cost the Pubs several House and especially Senate seats next week.
Oh really? Which GOP seats is being "TEA party" going to cost them?
I think you are drinking the MSM koolaide to hang any lost House and Senate seats next week. It looks like incumbents even in heavily Democrat areas like Djou in Hawaii and Cao in Louisiana will hold, not lose, their seats.
Look at the TEA Party bringing out much larger numbers of voters in a midterm, which makes the GOP competitive in places where it should not be, and blowing away opposition where it should normally be close.
For example see Florida and Rubio running away with the race in the face of a mainstream moderate Crist, and West Virginia where the Senate race went from Dem blow out to a narrow GOP lead. Look at Chet Edwards here in Texas, multi-term incumbent being beaten by a TEA Party backed candidate.
Posted by: No I am The Other Beldar ||
10/27/2010 19:07 Comments ||
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#8
If the Tea Party wins big I suspect we'll see a number of term limits propositions on ballots in 2012 as well as some talk about a balanced budget amendment (or at least a pledge to support that sort of thing) in 2012.
Long piece at The Atlantic that makes the case that most Islamicist terrorists aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, and why that's a good thing.
But their leaders tend to be doctors and engineers -- people trained to deal with bodies and buildings, but not people in countries where the knowledge base is more important than bedside manner or optimizing the experience for the user.
Good help is so hard to find these days ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/27/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
The real troubles begin when professionals -- state intelligence agencies -- use these ne'er-do-wells for operations. The nitwits are simply incapable of producing mayhem on a large scale.
It suits politico-bureaucratic purposes to frame terrorist incidents as the work of lone gunmen or small bands of extremists. (Nineteen guys with knives... and nobody else? Really?) But it's the state-backed professionals who are the problem, not the cannon fodder.
#2
Yes they recruit nitwits because the educated would never strap a bomb on and light it off. But you point the right nitwit at the right target and it can be devastating.
#4
The author seems to complacent because some Islamic terrorists have been inept (underwear bomber, Times Square bomber, etc.). Far too many terrorists have been successful in their quest for death and destruction.
If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, theyve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up by Predator drones and other battlefield cameras challenges that ideasometimes rather graphically. One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two Talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Talib fighter gratifying himself with a cow.
Pentagon officials and intelligence analysts concede privately that our foes also have a voracious appetite for pornographyhardly shocking behavior for young men, but hard to square with an image of piety. Many laptops seized from the Taliban and al-Qaeda are loaded with smut. U.S. intelligence analysts have devoted considerable time to poring over the terrorists favored Web sites, searching for hidden militant messages. We have terabytes of this stuff, said one Department of Defense al-Qaeda analyst, speaking on the condition of anonymity. It isnt possible that they are encrypting messages in all of this stuff. Some of these guys are just perverts.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
