Two Territorials of London Rifle Brigade with Saxon troops of the 104th and 106th Regiments in No Man’s Land near Ploegsteert Wood during the unofficial Christmas Truce of 1914.
From the invaluable First World War.com
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Saturday Open Thread45 comments to Saturday Open Thread |
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If Republicans & Democrats got you down you can always vote for the Changed. Not Hope and Change, just the Changed.
It’s not the end of the world. It’s just zombies, and “zombies have rights, just like the rest of us.”
Ah, yes. I remember seeing a documentary on that Truce, and how the higher ups put a stop to it ’cause no one was getting killed…
There’s a special poignancy here, because (as I see it, and I’ve noticed that others agree), World War I was THE watershed in modern history. The world before WWI and the world after it were entirely different worlds, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. WWI was the point where Europe lost its faith, both in God and in itself. Everything since can be seen as a protracted death struggle. The people who ran that war have much blood on their hands.
Weren’t the generals using tactics from the Napoleonic Wars? If so, that would mean their tacitcs were 100 years old.
The perfect storm of the Industrial Revolution, old-school aristocracy, new school bureaucracy and positivism…
Yeah,Kit,in 1917 the British commander Douglas Haig still thought that men on horseback could win the war.
Reminds me of the Polish cavalry grabbing their lances and attacking the Panzers.
Horses against tanks and/or entrenched enemy troops with machine guns, barbed wire, and landmines. Sounds about as smart as . . . Okay, you really can’t top or equal that in the stupidy department.
There was a movie made about the Christmas Truce recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6rfHMEAna0
It features Diane Kruger, I do not know why. (Other than the fact that she is a Nordic beauty)
Have not seen it yet, but I have heard Hymne des Fraternises, the song used in the movie and it is beautiful.
So Nelson caved, not surprising. The provisions that these asshats are discussing are going to break us. I’m trying to find a copy of it.
This is entertaining. Chris Dodd (who brought you the collapse of the housing market) said “now everyone can have health insurance, not just the fortunate few”. Soooo 94% of the country is a few???
You have no idea how much listening to them sit here and lie openly is pissing me off.
Well, at least the Republican Congressional candidates will have a monster issue to beat their opponents about the head, with.
What Rep. or Sen. got elected by attacking the existence of an “entitlement?” Politicians get elected by saying they can manage them better than the other guy, but as far as I know, no one won office because they were going to do away with Social Security, Food Stamps, Medicare, etc.
Reagan did attack the existence of departments and saying he wanted to do away with them. I believe one was he went after was the Dept. of Energy. Nothing came of it. Nothing. And besides he wasn’t attacking a “entitlement.”
Now some might go back to the Gingrich “revolution” and the battle to “end Welfare as we know it.” The key phrase is not “end Welfare.” It is “as we know it.” Republicans got elected because the electorate was convinced that party could manage things better than Democrats. Welfare spending is higher today than it was in the 90s. Heritage did a paper on this. Under Gingrich it only flattened, never went down, at about $500B. Today it sits somewhere around $700B.
No one wins elections by saying they are going to take food from the children, throw the poor out on the street, and make grandma suffer with her disease … which is exactly how any Democrat would spin any campaign to END an existing so-called entitlement.
Look at Europe. People are playing up the fact that conservative candidates are winning elections. They are winning, not because they are going to reverse the Euro-welfare state. They are winning because they are convincing voters that conservatives can better manage Big Government.
Now that might change come 2010, given recent polls showing the people approving the Tea Party movement over both Dems & Republicans. The GOP elite, however, is ignoring this and getting behind liberals like Crist & Fiorina.
They are winning, not because they are going to reverse the Euro-welfare state. They are winning because they are convincing voters that conservatives can better manage Big Government.
Big deal. The GOP has been running on that platform for decades. Their problems started when it became obvious that they were incapable of doing so, and those Euro-Doles will find that out the hard way, too.
Veruckt, this is tyranny. This is what it’s like to live in a soft tyranny. I’m not surprised that Nelson caved. I had no hopes in any of the RINOs or so-called moderate Democrats to resist the money and pressure coming their way.
So let’s all sing to that annoying John Lennon tune “So This is Christmas” the new lyrics, “So this is tyranny/and what have they done?/The left and the Marxists/Bring the pork home…”
Watching the news last night, the broadcasters were pointing out negatively how the Republicans were using stall tactics by making provisions to be read out loud, and in the same sentence noting no one knows what is in the bill, except those behind closed doors. The didn’t see the irony.
Soon it will be more cost-effective living on the public dole than by going to work.
Change they thought they could believe in.
And yet the bunch that used to beat Bush about the head and shoulders with the Constitution, still refuse to see the error of their own ways in that regard!
So, when does “The American Revolution 2: Jefferson’s Revenge” begin?
So, I guess this means we’re %$#@ed?
So at what point do conservatives figure out that the so-called Blue Dogs are not and will never be their friends? That when forced to make a decision, the Blue Lapdogs will always, ALWAYS, vote as the far-Left Dem leadership tells them. This standing up “on principle” and then backing down in return for special favors for your home state is just unseemly haggling over their whore’s price and just makes them even more craven.
Also, the Tea Parties need to take up the simple slogan, “Repeal It!”.
We need to get it through to the Left that their victories are never secure by actually punishing them when they overreach. If we could pass the 21st Amendment less than 15 years after Prohibition started, then why can’t we repeal simple legislation?
Put up a candidate arguing the repeal of Social Security or Medicaid, and see what that gets you.
But Social Security and Medicaid are already enacted. I doubt people would be seeing any “benefits” from this legislation by the time elections roll around.
Beside a possible crash, that would dwarf fall 2008, could happen around election time – and you could say you were for repealing any gov’t related and you’d get elected – because people wouldn’t be getting anything from these programs anyway. (Thus sayeth Glenn Back.)
Of course the Dems are gonna use the scare tactics. It’s all they’ve got, and all they’ve really ever had. They sure can’t run on the idea that they can run things better or do a better job. But they are great at running against their strawmen.
But it’s getting to the point that the all the Dems have got left is to hope that their agitprop organs have gotten people to ignore past Dem failures and corruption and incompetence and to believe they’ll really do it right this time. And considering their decades of success using that formula, as you point out, that’s almost certainly going to work again.
I think the Dems aren’t going to be able to do what they’ve done in the past. I’ve never seen the right so mobilized – add to this the polling is showing a continuing slide against the Dems and the fact Obama isn’t running in this election cycle and you’ve got the perfect storm to drop a lot of these Bozos into the unemployment line.
The Democrats use three tactics to keep entitlements entrenched:
1. Necessity – “The poor NEED this program…”
2. Dependency – “If they cut this program, women and children will starve…”
3. Urgency – “We need this NOW or women and children will be in the streets starving by next week…”
“1″ and “3″ are not being expressed by the public. Here are various poll numbers with in the last six months: 85% are satisfied with their current health insurance. 76% favor the free market (up from 53% in ‘08) 61% don’t want a new healthcare system. 49% want to opt out of Medicare. And we’ve all seen the numbers of how a clear majority oppose this legislation, with even its supporters souring on it. Moreover, this doesn’t kick in till 2014, but the taxes hit sooner.
Here’s what should be said on the campaign trail, “This plan is going to wreck healthcare and the Democrats did it to you. We need to stop it before it kicks in.” And again, I reference my own tax credit scheme for getting people off of Medicare and Medicaid. Typical tactics don’t work against it, because it has a credible answer to every challenge.
Well, it will be interesting because I am literally running on a platform of promising nothing except to at the state level fight federal legislation that extends beyond their Constitutional powers (this would be on of those cases). Also I am fighting to reverse destructive and draining state entitlement programs. I’m sure I will be called an anarchist, nazi, and god knows what else.
Thing is, Veruckt – now people are going to be more receptive, than ever, to a message of economic responsibility. The Dems already know, the economy is their Katrina. The good thing for conservatives is that the Dems are ideologically locked into a pattern that makes economic recovery impossible. Of course, this is also bad news for the country.
Veruckt,
Arre you running for Congress?
Veruckt,tell the folks about Tenncare,the program that almost bankrupted Tennessee…..no,Kit,he’s running for a seat in the Tennessee House.
So, there’s a possibility that Webb might break and Lieberman is still absent from Washington.
Not one word has been spoken of Lieberman being gone……..It wouldn’t surprise that Webb would break. He doesn’t like being told what to do by anyone.
Liebermann could be abstaining. They made him a deal and he is staying out. Not voting for or against.
Not be the first time something like this has happened in Washington.
Except Reid needs 60 to break a fillibuster
I can’t figure out why no news sources have said anything. If he doesn’t show up its done. Reid needs him.
Veruckt,
Good luck. I hope us fine folks at Threedonia do not hold you back.
Question.
When is the vote for the Healthcare bill?
1 AM Monday.
Can it be stopped?
No, nut if a single Senator breaks, Reid doesn’t have sixty. And there’s still the conference between the House and Senate after that. And there’s the fact it doesn’t kick in till 2014, but the taxes start immediately.
There are some shaky votes, but Webb is the one to watch right now, as per the article I linked to. The House-Senate conference is going to be a bitch, as Stupak has apparently joined forces with the GOP in the House to kill the bill over the abortion compromise language.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss also just said the bill sets up a constitutional challenge with the abortion funding. Our situation is dire, but everyone on our side is fighting with everything they’ve got.
Keep praying for the “fog” to clear so we can beat back “the buldge.”
I find it fascinating that Lieberman has disappeared, If he just turns into a ghost Reid is screwed.
TN Care was our states effort to “reform” medicaid and provide coverage to all Tennesseans by allowing them to buy a state policy. It focused on expanding coverage to children not unlike the Federal SCHIP program. The initial estimates were it would cover Tennessee’s 500,000 uninsured, within 2 years it was covering 1.4 million at nearly 10 times the original estimated cost and now occupies more than 25% of our state’s annual budget and has led to an endless battle in the house to give us a state income tax (on top of the nation’s third largest sale’s tax). It ended up with such a large number of enrollees because people discovered they could get TennCare cheaper than employer coverage.
Like all entitlements in spite of a massive failing it is near impossible to get rid of. Our Democratic Governor sent letters to Obama using it as an example of what would happen.
The effect that doesn’t make the papers is that it pays physicians less than even Medicare does so most private physicians will not accept it. Those who accepted it could not afford to keep their doors open and either consolidated with another practice or simply went to work for a hospital. Those who wouldn’t accept TennCare left areas with high numbers of enrollees (poorer areas) leaving impoverished areas with even less access to medical services then they had before and causing our ERs to become congested in metro Nashville. As such if you ever come to TN you will notice most of your wealthier areas are loaded with doctors and your metro areas have only hospitals. TennCare altered the market dynamic.
Great analysis,Veruckt.As you point out,it was our Democrat governor,Phil Bredesen(who made his fortune in the health care industry)who put the skids on Tenn Care after years of inaction by our Republican guv,Don Sundquist.