The State of Things Now and What Could Come

Random Selections from Facing facts
at Pajamas Media, Belmont Club
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/07/20/facing-facts

RANDOMLY ARRANGED

[excerpts]

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by Richard Fernandez:

HONDURAS
. . . The situation in the Honduras is another one of those cases where it’s important to tread carefully. One is naturally suspicious of Third World military action against a civilian President. So why not yell "Free Zelaya"? Because there’s some reason to think that President Zelaya himself might be part of the problem. The Wall Street Journal writes, "why would Hugo Chavez expect Obama to help him" restore Zelaya? And Slashdot reports that Honduran authorities have found 45 computers with pre-tallied results for an election that never happened. "Authorities have seized 45 computers containing certified election results for a constitutional election that never happened. The election had been scheduled for June 28, but on that day the president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted. The ‘certified’ and detailed electronic records of the non-existent election show Zelaya’s side having won overwhelmingly." So its important to look closer precisely because we may not know everything.


COMMENTS

HONDURAS
6. Tio Joaquin:
Let us heed well events in Honduras. Think back on our last presidential election, with all its still unexplained questions about the eventual winner, including the millions in unaccounted for and possibly illegal campaign donations, ACORN. I think it is quite possible that in the aborted Honduran election and Hugo Chavez’s grab for power in Venezuela we can see the template for the next presidential election in the USA. FDR’s multiple presidencies were limited only by his death. Why not President For Life Obama? It would only requre control of Congress, the MSM, the SCOTUS, the election through ACORN, martial law to pass a constitutional amendment a la Zelaya. Seems to me we may be well down that road already.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
10. NullificationNow:
One favorite reality that is up in smoke, affirmative action in education. BHO and the wise Latina do not exactly offer exceptional intellect to the pool of scholars. Can you imagine the cadre of affirmative action doctors coming into the National Service of Government sponsored health care, yes we can.

HONDURAS
1. starling:
"And Slashdot reports that Honduran authorities have found 45 computers with pre-tallied results for an election that never happened. "

The anti-Castro blog "Babalu" has been on the case too– perhaps the first to report this story.
The post title is "A page out of the Chavez (leftist, in other words) Playbook"
http://babalublog.com/2009/07/a-page-out-of-the-chavez-leftist-in-other-words-playbook/

And you have to love the title of the blog itself–"an island on the net without a bearded dictator"
　
REALITY, THE USSR, AND THE U.S.
15. anton:
The USSR tried telling themselves that everything was always OK. They also tried killing the millions that saw that it really wasn’t. Controlling the narrative only goes so far, people will notice the Naked Emperor sooner or later.

Reality won, it always wins, the real questions is how much destruction happens before people see it for what it is. In USSR’s case it was six decades of economic ruin and tens of millions of senseless deaths.

What we need to ask ourselves is how much ruin and collapse will accompany the “Yes We Can” and “We Won” mindset before the correction sets in.

19. Mark:
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An ongoing question over the past seven months, and even during the election cycle, has been why Obama continues to be effective/credible in spite of espousing policies that are not in the interest of individuals and families. Even non-tax payers, one supposes, would like the economy to provide jobs and not merely crumbs from the government table.

Recently I re-read David Ehrenstein L.A. Times article “Obama the ‘Magic Negro.’”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ehrenstein19mar19,0,5335087.story

White guilt is a powerful, subtle phenomenon. While fewer and fewer people are going to accept the outrageous redistributionist projects of the President, they will be very careful in how they distance themselves from him.

How can the media ignore the allegation that Zelaya pre-arranged the outcome of the Honduran referendum? Even if it’s not true, how can days go by without any MSM story? The answer seems to be for the MSM nothing is true, facts are not facts, if they might not fit into what the MSM thinks is the narrative of Obama’s presidency. Obama does not have to create a Ministry of Truth. The Ministry has created itself and currently operates with the fine-tuning of a school of fish.

Facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said. But here we are, looking at the facts about national debt. etc., as in the prior post, and Americans are unaware of their significance. Maybe Americans are victims of their own basic good will and traditional confidence. They probably can not imagine that voting machinations of the Chavezian, Khomenist, Putinist, kind could happen here, even though they saw ACORN implementing a version of the strategy in this country. (At least the Huffington Post has bucked the trend in one instance and kept reporting on Iranians’ misery, but posters don’t criticize Obama.)

If Obama had been willing to cook the body-politic frog a little more slowly, I think he might have achieved remarkable successs, measured in usual historical terms. But Obama has wanted socialist transformation and redemption and . . . lots of stuff of the “stick it to the conservative/white man/gun-totin’ first and second amendment crackers” kind . . . and has over-reached. The frog might still leap out.
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17. Peter Boston:
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Reality has all the time in the world is way too close to in the long run we’re all dead to provide any comfort.

My recent favorite is Newsweek’s Why Fears Of A Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong. Your history, way of life, culture, and expectations for the future of your children get flushed down the multicultural toilet and it’s OK?

14. jerryofva:
Fantasy can triumph over reality in the political arena almost forever in system where elections are infrequent events. Lincoln was wrong when he said “you can fool some of the people all of the time; and all of the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” You only need to fool a majority of the people on election day to be successful.

CRIME RATES AND THE DENIAL OF ETHNIC GROUP CONNECTION TO THEM
18. mac:
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. . . Here’s one example: we’ve tolerated and effectively denied the origin of high crime rates for years because certain favored ethnic groups were the ones responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of the crime.

When I was asked about this once by a Singaporean engineer, I told him that America put up with a lot of self-destructive behavior because we could afford to absorb the losses. His response was to say that Singapore would never be that rich, and consequently would never be so lenient to any group.

We’re now effectively bankrupt as a nation, have a government that approximately 50% or more of us absolutely despise, and have drastic and extraordinarily difficult change bearing down on us like a bullet train.I suspect there is going to be a lot of tightening up of standards in the next few years, and a lot less tolerance for the crap we’ve been enduring since the 1960’s. We just can’t afford it anymore.

The alternative is civil war, and with every day that things get worse, that alternative grows closer.
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From http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/07/20/facing-facts
This "Facing Facts" piece deals with reality, anti-knowledge and such:
Richard Fernandez writes:
. . . "reality always won" in the face of a determined disinformation campaign. . . . . because the spin doctor’s tools have become so great (think for example of Photoshop) it is easy to believe that an imposture can be maintained indefinitely. However, I recently became aware that certain managers internally monitored their error rates for signs that things were going too perfectly; the idea being that the absence of mistakes constituted a worrying indicator that — maybe — they were losing touch with reality. etc., etc., etc.