FOUSESQUAWK: Belgian Blog's View on the US Elections

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Belgian Blog's View on the US Elections

The Belgian blog, Brussels Journal, has weighed in on the American elections:

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4568

15 comments:

Siarlys Jenkins said...: Europeans know nothing about America. They never have. The Republicans, including Rush Limbaugh, were salivating at the chance to run against Hillary Clinton. There is nobody in a position to challenge our president in the primary. Hopefully he will be more original than Bill Clinton. His problem is that he didn't take the reins himself, but left things up to the tired old Democratic Party hacks, who could never have won in 2008 without him. He needs to get back to his roots.; November 4, 2010 at 6:50 PM
Miggie said...: This is one of those times when the view from a distance is better than one close in.

.; November 5, 2010 at 8:40 AM
Siarlys Jenkins said...: I've always thought there was something wrong with your eyesight Miggie, or at least your vision. Why don't you move to Europe if you can't see well in the USA?; November 5, 2010 at 12:29 PM
Miggie said...: Why don't you go back to working the polls where the other losers might agree with your pontifications?

You probably have been to Europe as many times as you have been to Lod so that is how you are able to be so cocksure on any European view of America. You just don't like this European view so, typical of the Left, you attack the person making the observation.

You are a case study of the views and strategies of the Left.

.; November 6, 2010 at 1:25 AM
Lance Christian Johnson said...: You are a case study of the views and strategies of the Left.

And Miggie continues to be a case study in the concept of psychological projection.; November 6, 2010 at 12:16 PM
Siarlys Jenkins said...: Miggie, my dear fellow American, the only thing you and I have in common is contempt for what passes for a "left" in this country. I have been to Europe one time more often than I have been to Lod.; November 7, 2010 at 5:11 PM
Miggie said...: Siarlys,
This last post of yours has to be in contention for one of the most puzzling of all the puzzling posts you make.

You write that you have as much contempt for what passes for a "left" in this country as I do. Perhaps you mean that they are not left ENOUGH for you. If so, it would make a lot more sense to just say that than to have your readers try to figure out your real meaning.

If not, I maintain that you consistently take the same positions and have the same views as run of the mill lefty fruitcakes in the country.

I know you like to equivocate about what you write and prefer to see direct quotations ... so here are a few of yours at random:

'...Barbara Boxer will generally vote the way I would prefer"

" ...I would, after all, be comfortable with Reid being re-elected. However often he puts his foot in his mouth, he will vote the way I approve of more often than Sharon Angle will. "

"Business has been one of the great enemies of freedom in the history of the United States."

"It is perfectly valid to say that but for the measures taken by the Obama administration and the leadership in congress, we WOULD be in a world wide Depression right now"

"President Obama was not speaking inaccurately when he said that the guys who drove our car into the ditch want us to give them the keys back again."

.; November 8, 2010 at 3:45 PM
Miggie said...: Another one that I have since erased was a view you had or quoted that averred that the reason the support for ObamaCare wasn't what it should be was that it didn't go far ENOUGH. I don't recall the exact context but the point I want to make is that the notion that some policy is a failure was because it wasn't big enough (like the tax and spend stimulus bills) rather than it is a stupid idea altogether is a standard Leftist response to explain disastrous consequences.

You can try to run away from that Lefty label by denying it but you have to contend with a record here that is dispositive.

So, we don't have that in common either. Your having been to Europe one time hardly qualifies you as knowing "Europeans know nothing about America." That is another Lefty characteristic ... the less qualified you are to state an opinion the more certain you are of it.

.; November 8, 2010 at 3:46 PM
Siarlys Jenkins said...: Miggie, I stand by each and every one of those citations, and I congratulate you on quoting me accurately.

When you assert that it is a "lefty" comment to assert that Europeans know nothing about America, you display an acute case of political amnesia. Don't you remember the "right wing" agitation against France, Belgium, and other European countries, circa 2001-2003? How about Dick Cheney's comments on "Old Europe" (of which Belgium was definitely a part). John Kerry was too French? And who could forget the statement attributed to George W. Bush, "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur"?

As to what passes for a "left" in this country, my contempt for them is certainly not IDENTICAL to yours (pardon the capitalized word everyone), but it is equally contemptuous. I wouldn't define my views in terms of being too far left or not enough left, but as having nothing to do with what it means to be "left."

You strike me as a resonably educated man, albeit blinded by your own passions at times. Surely you are aware that by origin, "left" meant those who are in opposition to the current government, "right" those who support the government. Further, you must be vaguely aware that in its later permutations, "left" referred to working class movements with a philosophical bent toward class struggle.

Have you noticed anything particularly proletarian about Nancy Pelosi? She isn't even in the arena. So let's try ACORN. Vaguely social democratic I suppose, but once they outgrew their Arkansas roots, more in the nature of poverty pimps than champions of the working class. Anti-war movements don't count, they are a comfortable middle class quasi-academic milieu. Gay marriage? What is the class content of gay marriage? Who cares? The Palestinian cause? Bourgeois to the core, at best, with the possible exception of people long dead, such as Dr. George Habash. (Yes, he left something to be desired too).

If anything, Israel was, by origin the child of a socialist experiement. So, the whole notion of "left" is so badly fragmented that one can't even speak of being "more left."

I must add that there is nothing "left" or "socialist" about Barbara Boxer, Harry Reid, or Barack Obama. That leaves "Business has been one of the great enemies of freedom in the United States. Yes, that statement was inspired by a class-conscious viewpoint, which might have been considered "left" one hundred years ago, but is certainly not embraced by any of the politicians you have been excoriating. On the other hand, a good part of the Tea Party movement, at the mass level, was inspired by hatred of the financial industry. What is the left side of a mobius strip anyway?; November 8, 2010 at 8:39 PM
Miggie said...: Siarlys,
You are wandering off point again... Concentrate!
You were the one who asserted the Europeans know nothing about America. You didn't like this particular article about the American election so you sniffed that Europeans know nothing of America. That is a typical Lefty technique of shifting to ad homonym attacks. All the rest you wrote is off point.

I use "Left" and "Lefty" in the common usage... statist, Socialist... etc. and not whatever you say was the original usage. I've given you direct quotes of yours that favor big government tax and spend legislators, hostility to business and capitalism, etc. That favoritism to the Left side brands you.

Your condensending "you must be vaguely aware ..." smells like an angry underachiever who thinks he is just as smart as people who really are educated and is humiliated by his lack of actual credentials. You are like the belligerent little guy in the bar who tries to pick fights with regular sized people.

Pelosi "proletarian" ? ... sounds like you don't know the meaning of the word just as the rest of your ramblings. You are a quibbler and a caviller and miss the substance of any point. You go out of your way to make obscure points that are next to incomprehensible in an attempt to impress when actually all you do is bring to mind one word .... PATHETIC.

.; November 8, 2010 at 9:58 PM
Siarlys Jenkins said...: Miggie, the word "pathetic" has its root in "pathos" -- which, being such a big tall intellectual (I'm taking your word for it) you probably know is a term related to emotion. You keep throwing around words like "cavil" (a typical evasive technique of aging southern California quasi-Jewish intellectual right-wingers) because you are so emotionally wrapped up in your own fantastic world view (root word: fantasy), that any facts offered by way of rebuttal appear to you entirely irrelevant and off topic. Now that is PATHETIC! You obviously don't read what I say in response to your attempts at argument (sometimes you are almost coherent and it seems worth trying); you simply repeat whatever you said before, with a few gratuitous derogatory remarks thrown in for seasoning.; November 9, 2010 at 3:20 PM
Miggie said...: Siarlys,
Since you are a stickler (comes from "stick", like in up yours) for precise quotes, cite where I wrote I was a "tall intellectual."

Not any rebuttals are irrelevant and off topic just yours. Your posts are like reading a chain of musings that wander from etymology to DNC talking points back to pathological rage over your educational shortcomings. ( I take that from the "lessons" you always wedge in somehow, supposedly to impress, but serving only to annoy.)

In the end, what you write is so obtuse as to be nearly incomprehensible. The only thing that is always recognizable is the Left Wing take on everything.

And then you even try to deny that for some reason.
.; November 9, 2010 at 6:31 PM
Siarlys Jenkins said...: you were hallucinating about a short guy at a bar Miggie... I assumed you meant to imply that you were not the short guy... there is no point trying to debate someone living in their own dream world. How do I know I'm not the one who is hallucinating? Well, if everyone responds to me the same way you do, I'd have to consider that maybe I'm crazy. Since you are the ONLY one who finds such interesting perceptions of what I say, and everyone else seems to understand what I thought I meant to say, I have to infer that you are the one who has a problem. Not to mention the multiple commenters here who have repeatedly found your diatribes reprehensible at best, and occasionally outright mendacious.; November 13, 2010 at 12:06 PM
Gary Fouse said...: "Not to mention the multiple commenters here who have repeatedly found your diatribes reprehensible at best, and occasionally outright mendacious."

Who-you and Lance???

"Since you are the ONLY one who finds such interesting perceptions of what I say, and everyone else seems to understand what I thought I meant to say, I have to infer that you are the one who has a problem."

Siarlys, Count me among those who get lost in your "interesting perceptions". When you start bringing Hammurabi and Lod into arguments not even remotely connected, to the topic, the term "apples and oranges" doesn't even apply anymore. It's like apples and enchiladas.; November 13, 2010 at 12:40 PM
Miggie said...: Siarlys,
Frankly, it is not worth the time and certainly not worth the effort to try to figure out what you are writing about. You started out with your flat assertion that "Europeans know nothing about America. They never have." and in order to defend that stupid comment you have twisted yourself into an incomprehensible logistical pretzel, ending with some kind of "Oh yeah, so are you." comment.

Welcome to my IGNORE list. Say "hi" to Lance who has been there for a while. You two guys entertain each other.

.; November 13, 2010 at 10:25 PM