Fair warning – Don’t click through if you don’t want to read something political in nature.
I’m sensitive to those that don’t want to read that sort of thing, hence the fair warning. Nothing bad here, just a curiosity and I’m wondering if other people in the USA are doing the same thing, so testing it on WUWT’s wide readership will likely help answer it.
I have seen upside down US flags twice now in my town. The first time I just thought it was self commentary, now seeing it a second time in a different part of town, I stopped along E. 5th Avenue to get this shot. I wonder, how many people across the United States are doing the same thing after November 6th? In case you don’t know, flying the flag upside down is a sign of distress or emergency. Flying at half staff is respect for the fallen in service of our country. Combined it makes quite a commentary on the Benghazi incident, the fallen soldiers and ambassador, and the election. Checking the Internet I find there are others doing the same thing now, such as this fellow in South Bend, Indiana. Then there’s the story about an upside down half-staff flag at McDonald’s which has angered a lot of veterans even though it was claimed to be a mistake.
The U.S. Flag code says in section 8:
The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.
Some people consider it flag desecration such as is on par with burning it as political commentary.
I wonder though, if this sort of visual political commentary I’ve seen in my town is being quietly repeated elsewhere since many people now see the USA as being in distress?
The act of flying the flag upside down as a sign of as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property could not be more appropriate today as the country faces continued trillion dollar deficits, a president that is conducting a war on domestic energy and intends to increase its ferocity in his second term. We have an educational system that is run by teachers’ unions and is failing our children, we have an undeniable socialist president who is intent on continuing his policies of wealth redistribution, open borders, massive regulation and taxing of business and industry and he was just re-elected by what must be the most ill-informed electorate in history.
Flying the flag upsided down is an understatement of the peril we face.
In politics, the economy, foreign policy, and lately science, everything boils down to oil & gas. It matters who has it, controls it and will fight & win wars to get it. The climate change game is an attempt to slow consumer use and get ready for future market control when there is less of it. The really big players in both sides of the climate argument are one and the same.
Didn’t finish my point: Those flying the distress signal probably don’t understand the purpose of the wars being fought. It isn’t socialism, patriotism, or morality. It is trying to avoid a return to the 19th century.
At 9:24 PM on 9 November, self-confessed “liberal” (and therefore enemy of human rights) Bryan S. closes with:
…thus demonstrating in yet another specimen that to be a “Liberal” (in the modern American political sense) one must obliterate the reasoned examination of ideas.
Those very few American “Liberals” who claim to oppose the AGW fraud on the basis of what they claim to understand of “scientific research” and their appreciation “that climate change has been hopelessly politicized” fail abysmally to apply any similar skepticism to their consideration the role of government in civil society.
Those who dismiss “ideology” prove reliably to be neurotically fixated on avoiding the consideration of the ideas they unreasoningly – indeed, perniciously – espouse, and that’s quite obviously because they know that those beloved ideas are vicious in their purpose to violate the individual human rights of their neighbors.
You Americans attribute far too much importance to the flag. It’s a piece of cloth. Patriotism very easily becomes xenophobia and fundamentalist zealotry.
Placing the flag upside down disrespects a banner known in every corner of this globe; a banner under which the blood of patriots was shed not for conquest but for the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On this weekend especially, Veterans Day in the USA and Remembrance Day in Canada get that flag back the right way. Say a prayer for those who gave their lives for their country and save the politics for some other time.
@ur momisugly JudyW
pffft. It’s classic conquest.
Leave the spin to schools.
Anyone wanna bet Obama will start a war in Iran or Syria by the end of his second term?
DesertYote says:
November 9, 2012 at 9:59 am
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John says:
November 9, 2012 at 8:50 am
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The reason the GOP has problems is because Marxist have infiltrated every single institution in the US. Our elementery schools are designed to create democrats, our high-schools, socialists and our universities, Marxists. Our News media, distorts and lies to paint the image that they want, completely embedded within the Marxist world-view. Its been this way since the 50′s.
Its so bad, that most Republicans themselves are entrapped within a Marxist world-view and don’t even know it.
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Exactly. Even at my age I have to re-examine/correct ideas that were instilled by the neo-marxist education system, and that was the 60s-70s when it wasn’t nearly as suffocating.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/craigsteiner/2011/08/22/the_clinton_surplus_myth/page/full/
Incidentally this information is incomplete. I have newspaper clippings from 2000 and Clinton with Congress holding his feet to the fire did pay down debt for the first time in 70 years It was big news in the financial papers; it hadn’t been done since Hoover had done it in 1930. Clinton boasted that the debt would be paid off by 2013. The debt in 2000 was 5.7 trillion, oil was trading at a 9 year high of 34.37, and the Canadian dollar was worth 68.63 cents to the US dollar. Lately the 2 currencies have been close to par.
for 10 bonus points, who was it said:
‘we will barry you’
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joeldshore says:
November 9, 2012 at 8:30 pm
The problem with the ideologues on your side of the political spectrum is that you have abandoned all connection with reality, facts, and science.
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Hilarious. Project much?
John Says:
“But if we want to get a different result, the Rs have to appeal to a broader swath of people. That is the issue. What the Rs tried didn’t work — so how do they change it?”
Alex de Tocqueville (1835):
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”
In order to appeal to a larger swath of people, Republicans will have to promise more benefits from the public treasury, which they have done at times, making them virtually indistinguishable from Democrats. Those that might actually save the Republic, like Ron Paul, are easily marginalized in the reality of Tocqueville’s insight.
The reality is that the American people have been increasingly voting themselves the public treasury since FDR. Not only their treasury, but the treasury of their children and grand children, in a gross display of selfishness and stupidity.
The fate of this country has always been in the hands of the people, and the people are driving it rapidly to its doom. As soon as our lenders realize what is happening, they will brace themselves for the collapse and refuse to cover any more of our debt. The US will be bankrupt. There will be now way to pay for social security, medicaid, food stamps or any other welfare program. Civil unrest will explode. Martial law will be enacted, the Constitution will be suspended (even more than it already is) and we will transition to a dictatorship. The dictator will demonize those who refuse to cover our debt as the reason for the collapse and we will likely go to war; because military might is the only thing the US will have left.
It will not be the end of the world, just the world as we know it.
If there is a John Galt out there, he better move quickly. This could happen at any time. 2015 is my best guess, but no later than 2022.
Oh…and this is not a prophecy, it is simply pattern recognition; the lost art of the atmospheric sciences.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Bryan S. says:
November 9, 2012 at 9:24 pm
… but what the heck does people desecrating the American flag in a fit of post election woe-is-me boo-hooery have to do with climate science?
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Those flying the flag upside down and at half staff are not desecrating the flag but expressing their disgust at what has happened to the principles of the nation that flag stands for.
This is desecrating the flag. This was done at a Florida county’s Democrat HQ.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/14/us-flag-depicting-president-obama-removed-from-floridas-lake-county-democratic/
Very interesting discussion. Good points from pretty much everyone.
To simplify the discussion, it seems that “takers” refers to people who want to be housed and fed by the state, while producing nothing.
There are those who work hard and earn what they have, which is gratifying and fulfilling despite being very difficult at times.
I could never sit on my duff and wait for my government check to arrive. I was not raised this way. It does not fulfill me. I enjoy earning my money and “producing” something. In Canada, I have the opportunity to not get up in the morning and get after it.
America, correction, all the world has get up in the morning and get after it, ESPECIALLY if they don’t have to.
And I thought my wife started all of this. Our flag is upside down and half mast here in San Clemente, CA. I am surrounded by an endless sea of blue here in Southern California but even my Democratic neighbors thought flying my flag upside down was quite humorous.
gnomish says:November 10, 2012 at 6:43 am
for 10 bonus points, who was it said:‘we will barry you’
That was ole Nikki K. on a UN podium…
If the main stream media suddenly starts focusing on the Benghazi consulate attack, now that the David Petraeus affair is out, it might be wise to watch what the “other hand” is doing while the misdirection diversion is in full play.
The timing is just a bit too perfect for this story to break just now, right after the election to push coverage of Sandy recovery chaos off the front page, and to also occur just prior to the CIA director appearing before Congress. This administration has repeatedly put up smoke screens by throwing a sop to the media while they are scurrying around in the shadows doing something they don’t want the general public to notice.
Larry
Those who think Obama’s re-election represents a dark day in U.S. history aren’t seeing the big picture. Our once great nation has long passed the tipping point and has been in a death spiral since long before Obama’s election.
Doug says:
November 9, 2012 at 8:45 am
“It is very common here among those who hate democracy, particularly when it does not give them the answer THEY wanted.”
Don’t know where you are but the USA is not a democracy, or was at least not intended to be one. It is a constitutional republic which has, unfortunately, over the years learned to ignore its constitution to a great extent. Democracies are basically mob rule and do not last very long before the mob, seeking free stuff, destroys the economy. See History for the proof of this fact.
Unfortunately, george.e.smith’s intemperate response to my comment, illustrates a lot about what is wrong with modern Republicanism. I didn’t say I was “proud to be British”, though I might if Britain had stayed out of the war in Iraq, which was quite unnecessary and destabilising.
Moreover, the war in Iraq (which is certainly not ‘won’ by any reasonable definition) effectively meant that the war in Afghanistan became un-winnable, except by the hideous Taleban!
Sadly, so many of the Middle Eastern problems have been created by previous US meddling. For example, the Shah of Iran was backed by the US (as, of course was Saddam Hussein for many years!), and effectively created the hatred of the West that we now see in that country. Romney would probably support an attack on Iran to get rid of its nuclear potential, but again that would create even more visceral hatred of the West – possibly ending up in still worse terrorism.
Fighting ‘climate change’ is an absurdity, and if the GOP had spent more time demolishing that myth, it might have been in power now
Mr gnomish, is English your first language? I can’t make head nor tails of what you are saying.
Dave says: “Election is over. Get over it. Move on. Learn to make lemonade.”
………….
That remark comes across as akin to, “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”
My reply is, Think so? You have much to learn.
thanks Dave for saying what I thought.!!!!!
@Bryan S. who says: It distresses me to see this place become overtly political This is one blog/obervation from Anthony whereby he warned those not to come here if they didn’t want to talk politics. Why are you here?
I was going to expound on the comments on democracy–but then Sailorcurt spoke for me. Thank you for the great insigts put so succiently, “Democracy is nothing more than mob rule and means that if 51 percent of the population decides that the other 49 percent should be enslaved…so be it.
Democracy is not something to be desired, emulated or held in esteem.”
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.” –Benjamin Franklin
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Sun Spot says: “You…are going to have to work together in some sort of social tolerant manner.” You mean “Producers….are going to have to work for recipients in some sort of social tolerant manner.”
There, fixed.
Don’t forget the European meddling in the Middle East that set up the current situation.
The Germans encouraged revival of radical Islam (1898 German Kaiser declared he was the protector of the worlds Muslims and endorsed Pan-Islamism in the hope it would encourage revolts against the British by the Islamic populations of the Middle East, during the period leading up to WWI)
The British and French colonization of the region and the subsequent arbitrary country boundaries that did not reflect natural historical divides, creating Countries that were per-destined to be at each others throats for a hundred plus years. The European Crusades laid the ground work for the 1000+ year war between the Muslims and non-Muslim world.
It is a bit hypocritical for Europe to conveniently ignore the blood on their own hands in the middle east while pointing at the U.S. and claiming it is our fault and of recent origin.
Larry
Not really. Here’s a good example of people who divorced themselves from the facts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahsiPdvpEJM&feature=share
Only one side denied the reality of polls showing their candidate not doing so well. Only side has denied the conclusions of just about every major scientific body on the planet in favor of “science” supported by the Heartland Institute. I can go on and on.
But, hey, if you want to continue living in your own epistomological bubble, by all means don’t let me stop you!
Dave Dodd says:
Nonsense. The only time that Romney looked like he might be able to win was after the second debate when he tacked sharply to the center, claiming that he certainly did not want to lower the amount that the rich pay in taxes. Judging from the exit polling, that was the correct side of the issue for him to be on from the point of view of the electorate: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83429.html
The ironic thing here is that all the cerebral stuff, the arguments, messages, intensive coaching for the debates and endless dissection of arguments and positions, counted for nothing.
This was a census, not an election.
Obama won because the number of afrocarribeans + hispanics + unemployed + low-wage + other immigrants was more than the rest.