Roger Bissell

6 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Trump was starting to make peace with establishment Republicans. This means they would have had a seat at the table once he was elected. But they never had any intention of helping him make a success of his presidency. On the contrary, I think they were in it to betray him in the end and make way for their boys.

Now, this close to the election, they are being flushed out. With the grandstanding I've just seen, the chances of them backtracking this late are slim. So there are low odds--low, low, low odds--they will participate in a Trump administration.

 

I think that's exactly correct.  

REB

On 9/26/2016 at 11:39 PM, BaalChatzaf said:

On 9/26/2016 at 9:44 PM, Roger Bissell said:

I'd date it back to at least 1913. Think Federal Income Tax and Anti-Trust. 93 years and counting.

But FDR's New Deal was just a ramping up of all the statist stuff done half-heartedly by Herbert Hoover, who walked to the abyss of outright statism and then recoiled in horror. FDR campaigned - believe it or not - as the laissez-faire candidate, then did a total 180 once in office. He was basically the American Bismark, who gave the socialists half a loaf (way less than they were demanding) with the world's first social security program.

REB

 

Even before.  You can back into Teddy Roosevelt's administration.   Also Woodrow Wilson was a Statist from Hell. 

 

Yup. Andrew Napolitano wrote an interesting/appalling book called "Teddy and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom." Here's a link to Reason TV's interview with him: 

And Trump sounded like he either had a cold/allergy or some aftereffects of a cocaine hit...

20 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

Her smiling is killing her.

She must have been on some sort of happy drugs. Totally fake smile pasted on.

REB

6 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Socialism has been creeping in since 1932.  That is 84 years by my reckoning.  

I'd date it back to at least 1913. Think Federal Income Tax and Anti-Trust. 93 years and counting.

But FDR's New Deal was just a ramping up of all the statist stuff done half-heartedly by Herbert Hoover, who walked to the abyss of outright statism and then recoiled in horror. FDR campaigned - believe it or not - as the laissez-faire candidate, then did a total 180 once in office. He was basically the American Bismark, who gave the socialists half a loaf (way less than they were demanding) with the world's first social security program.

REB

9 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

We survived the election of 1803 and the Civil War and the terms of Warren Harding and of Jimmy Carter.  We will survive this election too.  

 

 

What was the election of 1803??

On 9/20/2016 at 5:49 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Get a load of this:

CONFIRMED: GEORGE H.W. BUSH IS VOTING FOR HILLARY CLINTON

Read it. It seems to be true.

It's on a Drudge site (not his main one) and I think he's floating it to see what the pushback is (and further corroboration is) before going mainstream.

Michael

 

Dayammmm - yet another vote robbed from Gary Johnson!

REB

2 hours ago, Jonathan said:

19 hours ago, Roger Bissell said:

Earlier today, I saw some comments on Michelle Marder Kamhi's blog that were posted by a rather ill-tempered feller named Jonathan Smith. Any relation to our semi-anonymous chum? (I mean "chum" in the sense pertaining to fishing bait.)

REB

 

Where, Roger? Provide a link, please!

 

You can find it yourself, unless you've been barred from accessing Michelle's blog. In the late June discussion of Rothko, two sizeable posts by you remain UNcensored, in all their glory. Michelle may not be the last word or final authority on visual art, but she recognizes a nihilistic take-over artist when she sees one. Even then, she allows your non-redundant rude remarks to remain. Rather magnanimous, considering.

REB

Earlier today, I saw some comments on Michelle Marder Kamhi's blog that were posted by a rather ill-tempered feller named Jonathan Smith. Any relation to our semi-anonymous chum? (I mean "chum" in the sense pertaining to fishing bait.)

REB

On 6/21/2016 at 2:29 PM, PDS said:

On 2/5/2016 at 2:41 PM, George H. Smith said:

Immanuel Kant and Nazism

Was Kant somehow responsible for the rise of Nazism? Smith explores two points of view on this issue. This essay discusses the views of Ayn Rand and Leonard Peikoff on Kant.

Ghs

 

 

These essays are wonderful for all of the obvious reasons, and one perhaps more subtle as well:  GHS is an outstanding writer.   When discussing complicated issues, the presence of outstanding, crystal-clear writing has a multiplier effect in helping others to understand those issues.

Thank you George.

 

 

Yes, I second that. And he's been doing this - crystal-clear writing about complicated issues - for over forty years! Amazing.

REB

On 6/19/2016 at 10:07 PM, KorbenDallas said:

Evita (..where are you Selene?..) to launch $41M in attack ads against Trump this summer:

 

It's going to be HOT this summer. How hot? This hot...

George, I'll bet you've commented on just about everything that a libertarian or Objectivist might want to know about Immanuel Kant.

Wait! What about his sense of humor? (Huh? Kant had a sense of humor? Yup. And his explanation of humor was surprisingly similar to that of Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation, 1964.)

REB

21 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

On 6/10/2016 at 4:00 PM, Jonathan said:

Cross-posting from the Microcosm thread::

Objectively identify the "artist's meaning" of the artwork, and demonstrate how to objectively measure and rate the architect's technical skills/merits in conveying his meaning through his art.

J

 

Sterile and banal.  I would not want to live in that...

 

I agree with Bob. Looks like it could be a scaled-down version of The State Science Institute.

REB

11 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

On 6/16/2016 at 9:23 PM, Roger Bissell said:

Bob, I like both of these profiles. They sound dead-on to me. Please feel free to do more of this sort of thing! (One on Hillary would be interesting and insightful, I'm sure.)

REB

 

I find Hillary to be rather uninteresting.  She is about 1/16 of an inch deep. There is not enough there  for me to be even annoyed about.

To paraphrase Wolfgang Pauli --  she is not even wrong...

 

Thanks, Bob - you've done it again! Exactly what I had in mind.

REB

31 minutes ago, Mark said:

Robert Kolker lecturing us on good manners is like Rodney King saying “Can’t we all just get along.”

Note that Kolker removed his dirty tagline (in Hebrew) before becoming a goody-goody.

 

Better late than never!

REB

5 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Outward Good Manners is an external manifestation of  basic respect for the persona, time and property of other people.  Given a choice between high falutin' ethics and Good Manners  I will chose Good Manners each and every time.   I consider it a plus if a person does not humiliate other folks in public for no sufficient reason. Ditto for not insulting people in public. If one has an issue with another person can can be expressed without insult.

Trump is a master of verbal bullying.  He reminds me of the bullies I had to put up with while growing up.  Fortunately I grew thick enough skin to cope with that crap.  

If one of my children behaved  liked The Donald  I would see to it that the child was properly chastised.  I consider  him shit with an external resemblance to human form.  The man is ugly inside and not too pretty outside.  In my estimation,  Trump is a mud-person.

 

5 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

Good Manners (in may case) is not a pose or a gesture.  It is a manifestation of my concern for the persona, property, and time of others.  I wish to go through my life without inflicting unjust or unnecessary pain on others.  If I am forced to defend myself or my family I will inflict as much pain and damage is is required to do the task.  But other than that  I have not desire to inflict  physical, verbal or psychological pain on other people.  I don't like it when others do that to me, so I generally do not do it to others.

While I am at it  a word about or Prince  Barak.  I do not like him particularly.  My dislike is not based on his manners,  but the attitude he appears to exhibit. I do not think he likes the United States.  He is the spiritual offspring of (Old) Mayor Daley of Chicago and that  hateful hater Saul Alinsky.  Now I happen to like this country.  Not just because I live here.  I like the physical  thing America  is, its geography and scenery.  More important I find its people generally a decent lot.  I feel at ease with Americans (generally, although some I can do without).  I can relate to my countrymen.   I do not like an attitude which holds them in contempt.  I think Prince  Barak and many of his liberal progressive buddies  do hold America cheap and unworthy and I don't like that one bit.  But I do not find Obama's outward behavior offensive.  His offensiveness is much more subtle.  I sense he finds people like me unworthy and of no importance. Well, if so, then fuck him. 

 

Bob, I like both of these profiles. They sound dead-on to me. Please feel free to do more of this sort of thing! (One on Hillary would be interesting and insightful, I'm sure.)

REB

9 hours ago, Jules Troy said:

That was the most annoying post I never read.  Dumb F#%k.

 

1. Spell and grammar check: F#%k is only capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

2. Thank God and Greyhound for the Block function. <swoosh>

REB

The latest national poll (Reuters/Ipsos) results: http://www.aol.com/article/2016/06/11/poll-clinton-leads-trump-by-11-points-in-white-house-race/21393418/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl1|sec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D-825802372_htmlws-main-bb

2 hours ago, BaalChatzaf said:

On 5/31/2016 at 1:11 PM, Roger Bissell said:

It will be in November or December after she's elected, and BHO will issue a pardon, and we'll move on into the 5th term of George W. Bush (or the 3rd of BHO, if you see it that way).

REB

 

 

How about the third term of Bill?

 

 

We could only hope (against hope) that it would be that non-bad. 

REB

Kant seems so reasonable on so many issues (including this one). It's hard to integrate that with the idea that he is "the most evil man in history."  

REB

50 minutes ago, Guyau said:

Why I'm Running for President

Stephen, that didn't look a bit like you - but you have my vote, anyway!  

Seriously, his rapid-fire litany of bad stuff about Trump and Hillary was pretty effective. I don't know how many conservatives he will win over - or how many disaffected freedom-oriented liberals - but when you have both the Objectivists and the anarcho-purist libertarians pissed off at you, you must be doing something right!  

REB

One hot summer day, when I was about 12, I helped Dad clear out a stretch several hundred feet long of hemp plants, taller than either of us, in a ditch north of our farmstead. (This was on orders from the Iowa Department of Agriculture.) I still have wistful thoughts of the fortune we could have made by making...um...agricultural commodity use of the plants instead of just hacking them down and leaving them to wither away.

Gary Johnson for President! 12% and rising! A chicken in every pot - and pot in every chicken!  

REB

1 hour ago, anthony said:

I think Kant shows he had little understanding of art and the creating of art - by an individual's consciousness

Do you really want to stand by this claim?

Since you apparently have not read my essay, which is the impetus for this thread, I'll just quote a couple of points from it, to show how both Aristotle and Kant were very close to Rand's way of viewing art, contrary to your quoted remark above:

Butcher ([1894] 1951), citing Aristotle’s On the Soul (1952c; 3.428a5–16; 3.427b17–20; 10.433a10), notes that the human creative power spontaneously “fuses together the things of thought and sense and forms a new world of its own, recombining and transmuting the materials of experience” (126–27; emphasis added). The imitative artist, Butcher continues, “carries forward . . . the general movement of organic life . . . to a more perfect conclusion” by the use of a “mimic world” (152; emphasis added).

Kant (1790, 528), echoing this philosophy, said: “The imagination (as a productive faculty of cognition) is a powerful agent for creating, as it were, a second nature out of the material supplied to it by actual nature” (emphasis added).

Your uninformed Kant-bashing should be a good qualification for employment at the Ayn Rand Institute. Let me know how the job interview turns out.

REB

58 minutes ago, anthony said:

As is lacking mostly in Kant's writing (and yours) is reference to man's consciousness, especially that it too has identity.

Kant acknowledges that consciousness has identity. He goes to great lengths to discuss what he thinks it is. Rand's point is that Kant thinks that the identity of consciousness disqualifies it from knowing reality as it really is. (This is discussed in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.)

REB