I've stated before that if forced to choose I'd take the excesses of a conservative agenda over the excesses of a liberal one because the liberal one leads to enfeeblement - I think it's much easier to step back from the problems arising from the exercise of strength than to pull oneself out of the mud of an encroaching weakness. I always believed history would come to judge Obama a worse president than Bush - but even I'm shocked at how quickly Obama is demonstrating the truth behind my hypothetical choice. A rise in debt and attending rise in taxes that will rationalize an ideologically driven redistribution of wealth that is entirely un-American, a phony arms control agreement with Russia that does nothing at all but serve Russia's interests at America's expense, a completely idiotic, delusional and astoundingly arrogant approach to Israel that is sowing the seeds for chaos down the road, and an almost incomprehensible lassitude when it comes to Iran that suggests that Obama is either completely uninterested in complex foreign policy issues, is incapable of understanding why Iran getting the bomb will almost certainly lead to bad things, or is so confounded by his governing ideology that that forest will not admit to its trees, if I may be allowed the beggaring an an old adage.
update: so of course Obama heads to Afghanistan. Should have seen that one coming - maybe just too obvious for comment: move the country way to the left and then go visit the troops and give meaningless speech as if that makes up for it. No doubt there are a lot of voters out there who fall for shit like this - his poll numbers are still mediocre but just jumped up 5% - I mean, who the fuck are these people? - is this the ADD demographic? Jesus. Sure, politicians are in the business of selling crap to gullible consumers - but I don't think someone using the presidency as if it's just another political sell job does anyone any favours - and that's all I get from Obama, he's in a constant self promotion mode for reasons which are all about his ego or his ideology, and often there's no light between those things - hell, the hagiography demonstrates that - possibly I'm just spewing bile from my own little ideologically jaundiced cloud - but I look at Obama's first year and all I see is failure on all the big issues - I don't understand what people are looking at who see something else - but of course according to Frank Rich at the Times that's because I'm a racist - and maybe that's what it's about, that such profound idiocy roused in defense of Obama is just so galling it's hard to not feel an abject cynicism - or maybe it's the thought that there's enough voters out there that will be so unwilling to think negative thoughts about the first black president that he's gonna get away with some real bad shit - and I don't know how anyone looks at that health care reform bills and doesn't see disaster - hell, Warren Buffet, who signed on at the beginning with Obama as an informal financial adviser said a month ago that we should scrap the bill, start over, make reasonable, incremental changes because the economy is just too weak to be fucking around with another sprawling, entirely unpredictable entitlement - but I guess Warren Buffet's a racist, right? That's gotta be it.
