I was happy to see a reputable publication like Foreign Affairs print an essay by a former Pentagon official making case for a military intervention against Iran's nuclear ambitions - happy [probably inappropriate adjective] because author used arguments similar to ones I've made in the past - namely, that people blanch at the thought of an armed intercession because the dire consequences of action are much easier to imagine than the equally dire consequences of inaction - it makes sense for people to fear the thing that seems more real even if an equally disturbing but different reality exists just off to the side - and if after reflection one concludes that the consequences of inaction could prove just as troubling as those following action, then how to decide which option is right - or, possibly more to the point, less wrong? One possible answer: if we are unwilling to stop a universally recognized and feared thing like nuclear proliferation when it comes to so obvious a threat in this regard as Iran, then how do we hope to ever put an end to this growing menace? In short, any notion of stopping proliferation would be reduced to empty theatrics if not farce if Iran is allowed to get the bomb.

Now, I'm not coming out in full support of military intervention - no, my point all along has been that those who have dismissed out of hand any talk of military intervention as preposterous have been engaged in a specious debate with themselves - we all understand the serious consequences of action - it'd be bad - but it would amount to a significant if not tragic dereliction of duty on the part of those responsible if they approach the Iran problem as if inaction is not fraught with very great danger too.

But, of course, I realize that this kind of interventionist reasoning lends itself to a justification of any number of ill-advised and ill-conceived misadventures - Iraq, for instance. Certainly, a simple look to Pakistan quickly starts one down the road of conjuring up doomsday scenarios that seem to veritably plead for intercession - so the trick becomes defining how and why Iran is different, coming to an understanding of how legitimate and viable that difference is, and then figuring out what to do about it - figuring out whether the difference is compelling enough to force upon one the adoption of a daunting imperative.

I've already alluded to one difference that I think addresses the problem - the countries that have gone nuclear have done so essentially for defensive purposes - but Iran's intentions seem decidedly offensive since the only existential threat they face is from internal dissent and upheaval - granted, institutionalized paranoia could cause them to extravagantly inflate threats that are marginal at best - still, it's hard to distinguish Iran's pursuit of the bomb from a regional strategic agenda that could prove quite destabilizing, to say the least. Sure, the US and the USSR eventually came to using their nuclear stockpiles for similar strategic purposes - but how on earth could that fact twist reality so completely as to become justification for us allowing Iran, an irrational, Messianic, Islamist, anti-Western state to replicate that volatile dynamic? In fact, our experiences should vehemently instruct us into doing the exact opposite, and quickly.

And of course it may be somewhat farfetched but it is not at all inconceivable that certain extremist elements resting atop the Iranian regime would see it as the ultimate gift to Allah if one of their nukes found its way into Tel Aviv or New York City.

So, a compelling difference viz Iran - if we allow a regime like that to go nuclear, where does it stop? Who do we say no to? If allowing Iran to go nuclear amounts to an admission of defeat in the battle against proliferation, are we really then saying that we're ok with the devils that will come rushing through the door we've left open? One thing for certain, it can't be that we've come to the point where we are forced to accept our hands being tied since the military option is still there and Israel has demonstrated in Iraq and Syria that it can indeed work - granted, on a much smaller and demonstrably less complex scale.

Odd - I was thinking just this morning "what ever happened to Petraeus?". Now of course I know he's heading the CIA - but after being a near daily presence in the conversation you don't hear squat from or about him anymore - and then I read that an authorized biography is coming out soon and in leaked excerpts it's revealed he seriously considered resigning when Obama set the deadline for [or maybe that was actually adhered to the deadline for] an 'early' withdrawal from Afghanistan. It reminded me of something I recently read in Small Wars Journal by another retired general who also had some unkind thoughts concerning Obama he felt compelled to share - and I remember thinking that I bet if you talked off the record with the top fifty officers in the US military that one would hear many unkind thoughts expressed - yet liberals like to think that foreign policy is the one unqualified success of Obama's first term. Odd indeed.

I've heard the refrain that the rise of the various not-Romneys etc etc is actually a good thing for Romney, that the competition will make him a better candidate and that it's usual for the eventual republican nominee to have survived some trials and tribulations - often the comparison is made to Obama vs Hillary and how that battle made Obama a better candidate. There's some truth to this - but missing is recognition that both Obama and Hillary were viable presidential candidates and so the battle between them could serve to burnish the image of each - Romney on the other hand is engaged with windmills, some of very shaky construction - none of his opponents are viable outside the prison walls of the republican primary - hard to see how he'll be ennobled by a drawn out battle with that lot. Let's also remember that the uber left was heavily invested in Obama - if Hillary had won they would have become disaffected and Hillary may have had to drift too far from the center in order to re-engage them - I fear the same dynamic working against Romney except of course viz a disaffected uber right.

Two enduring uber right delusional conceits I hear repeated over and over again concerning the presidential primary: one, the proclamation from some that they'd rather lose the election than nominate someone who isn't a hardcore conservative [and good luck getting them to define exactly what constitutes 'hardcore']; and two, the quixotic claim by some that it doesn't matter who is nominated since absolutely anybody would be better than Obama. The holders of the first delusion hunger for an absolutist zeal that is in essence undemocratic and specifically un-American seeing as how our system is so wedded to checks and balances designed to mitigate extremes and absolutist claims. These people are either lost to a type of madness, stupid or being highly disingenuous concerning their hopes for the country. Holders of the second delusion are either engaged in a superficial rationalization designed to excuse them from examining too closely the absurdities underlying the candidacies of fops like Paul and Cain et al, or they are with craven dishonesty preparing the ground for a begrudging acceptance of Romney - although it is possible that some are fatuous enough to actually believe that an 'anyone but Obama' rallying cry is both feasible and clever.

One should forget about Iowa, I'm told - they're outliers, they usually get it wrong, they vote for reasons that seem to have little or nothing to do with political practicalities - maybe the dubious renown of 'first in the nation' status has swamped their senses with delusions of grandeur - maybe God's to blame - but forget Iowa they say - unless of course Romney wins, and then... well, if these wacky outliers, people addled enough by whatever distemper afflicts them to actually entertain with seeming seriousness the utterly disturbing thought of Ron Paul as president, if such as these are willing to embrace [however awkwardly] a reasonable logic and choose instead Romney, well... sure, then that might mean something. Otherwise, forget Iowa.

But I'm not buying into that necessarily - Iowa may not be a reliable indicator of the eventual nominee, history suggests that's all true - but as a reliable indicator of ideological pathologies currently roiling the right? - different question altogether - especially when national polls or polls from primaries soon to be seem to corroborate what Iowans are thinking. One can be desperately put off by Paul's flirtation with the lead and still fairly easily dismiss it as an aberration [and also draw comfort from fact that polls seem to sugget that ol' Ronny of the nasty newsletters doesn't actually seem to be that popular with republicans - apparently it's end of days independents and mischievous democrats who are driving his numbers]. But aside from that this race seems notable for a very specific reason - ie, Romney is the only legitimate candidate - everyone else is either too deeply damaged and flawed [Gingrich, Cain, Paul and Perry] or too lacking in either substance, credentials, experience or an overall, broad base appeal [Bachman, Santorum and I guess Huntsman, although he by all rights deserves a category all his own] to be taken seriously as a respectable alternative to Obama or of having any chance in hell of beating him regardless - and yet with only one legitimate candidate to choose from huge swaths of the right have with great impetuosity and unabashed ignorance rushed to embrace anyone but that candidate while masking this irrationality in the most superficial and tawdry of rationalizations.

I don't see how one can pretend that doesn't suggest things are bit wrong in the land of the right - and if that's the case, who can tell what monstrosity might crawl out of the misty swamps of Iowa intent on laying waste to common sense everywhere.

People complaining about super PACs - I both understand and reject these complaints. Sure, if we had a perfect electoral system one would like to believe such ugliness would be unnecessary - but if you're going to admit that the average voter is 'informationally challenged' when it comes to seeing through to the reality of candidates and issues, and you're also going to admit that polls seem to suggest that most voters don't like it when one candidate appears to be attacking another, then you're gonna have to allow that some other means has to exist for the expressing of unpleasant 'facts'. Yeah, truth and decency gets abused to various degrees - but given the limited skills and attributes of any given electorate how else is the informational deficiency to be corrected? Gingrich is a perfect example of this [and this no doubt why he is now complaining bitterly about super PACs]: when the idiot Cain fell and Newt immediately rose this rise was based almost entirely on superficiality - namely, he argued with elitist, lefty moderators at the debates - the uber right liked that, so Newt became their man - most if not all were unaware of the freight car full of baggage the man was pulling after him - none were aware that almost every colleague of Newt's from the 90s, the people who knew him best, seemed literally unnerved by the prospect of this narcissistic nut job becoming president - etc etc - all they knew was that he seemed to have an attitude and that was good enough for them. So, without a super PAC, how do you get through to these people? Romney himself can't do it otherwise he''ll look mean spirited - if these people could be trusted to read thoughtful, in depth, unbiased journalism that might work - but of course these people have reflexively thrown their allegiance to Gingrich precisely because they don't have those reading habits. Enter the super PAC.

Now, sure, I would prefer the primary process was mostly about debates - real, full throated, probing, sound bite free debates - between a limited pallet of candidates [three at most as far as I'm concerned - but I have no idea what means you'd use to winnow out the crack pots, ego maniacs and poseurs] - but for that to work you'd need an electorate that was engaged, willing to listen closely, willing to read and analyse after action commentary, willing to change its mind based more on considered opinion than feelings - and that's just not gonna happen - you couldn't hope for an electorate like that before the dawn of television and mass media, no way you're gonna get one now - let's face it: there's a lot of 25 year old college grads out there who voted for Obama in '08 simply because Jon Stewart told them the black guy was 'cool' and Hillary was 'old' - if you can't rely on the educated for thoughtful, coherent, informed, unbiased decision making... well, if I finish that sentence I'm gonna sound like a mean spirited elitist... where's my super PAC?

Apparently Ron Paul is now leading or on his way to leading in Iowa? The phrase laugh or cry comes to mind and then quickly you realize that neither condition is near weighty enough to stand against the astounding idiocy of such a thing. The court has indeed fallen to insanity.

This is the message the greatest democracy in the world wants to send - that in the first voting for the person we hope will replace Obama as president we choose Ron Paul? I thought the man a crack pot joke before I read this article in the Weekly Standard - now it's like, please someone stop this madness - has the uber right entirely taken leave of its senses?

Sadly this all fits with something I said a few weeks ago: the longer this primary drags on, the more compromised and damaged the republican brand will become - and even if Romney manages to win, the field is/has been so embarrassingly bad that I'm not sure he'll ever wash the stench of it from his hands. Continuing association with the mongrel pack may prove so toxic I'm tempted to suggest that he drop out now and immediately start running as an independent.

"... a long respite within which one imagines that serious contemplation upon the sad state of affairs afflicting the world will somehow lend itself to the writing of it all out and thereby purchase on the cheap absolution... but doesn't happen, you know, and oddly enough, one ends up not being surprised by that... and you drift... I get ol' Dodgson, for all his dodginess, and those Golden Afternoons... one does long for the peace of such a river and the delighted laughter of young girls... how else do you suggest we cure the court of its madness?..."

I hear that Bachman has accepted invitation to Trump debate and has done so because she's a fan [well, and desperately in need of the exposure] - if true I deny with extreme prejudice any claim I've made in the past about her possibly morphing into a legitimate contender - not that I was a supporter, understand, no - just thought I saw something there - but accepting the debate invitation is bad enough, doing so because you admire that farce of a man is mortal sin made manifest - sorry, go take your place beside Cain in the 'embarrassing reject' line. [having said all that now appears Bachman in fact hasn't yet agreed to participate - so my apologies - fact remains though that she is still open to participating but is 'worried' about how unbiased Trump can be given that he hasn't ruled out a run of his own and may have already decided on who he will endorse - so basically you're agreeing that a debate moderated by someone as unsavory as Trump would be a farce which, coming on the heels of the farce that was Cain, really doesn't do the reputation of the republican party any favors - and therefore, why not say no now? So Bachman still gets the thumbs down from me - as if it matters - because of time constraints, it starts to seem fairly certain that the uber right is firmly convinced, having bedded Bachman, Perry and Cain, that it is now madly in love with Gingrich no matter how sullied and unfit the bride may appear to be - I'm sure the marriage will be as pure and blessed and felicitous as all of Gingrich's other marriages].

But the Trump debate is interesting though - not as a legitimate venue, god no - rather in the sense maybe it ends up drawing with more clarity the battle lines I intimated at a while back between the conservative intellectual establishment and the increasingly it seems irrational republican base - because Trump is a perfectly clownish emanation of that irrationality - Paul, Huntsman and Romney have declined the invitation - right wing intellectuals have urged the others to do likewise arguing that empowering cartoonish, self-promoting stooges like Trump can do nothing but diminish the republican brand - if the others don't comply and thus, instead of disenfranchising the fool Trump with a majority opinion, end up enabling him and the bullshit populist line he will then peddle to the base about how Romney et al are typical of the out of touch establishment elite etc etc - well, like I said, the battle lines will be drawn - you will then have a very bad situation on your hands and the potentiality of the primary turning into a circus that sinks any republican hope for 2012 [but, on the positive side, dramatically improves the prospects of a successful third party run].

I wonder if this possible eventuality ever factored into Obama's thinking, especially given his increasingly leftist populist rhetoric [he even referenced the '99%' inanity of Occupy Wall Street yesterday in a speech - when a president of the United States is invoking that kind of socialist nonsense things have truly gotten bad] - but I wonder if Obama was clever enough to see that his leftist agenda could survive by enraging the right into such an idiot like state that it self destructs? Don't get me wrong, I consider Obama a horrible president who embodies an ideology that is entirely out of step with the times, out of step with the necessities and hard decisions the emerging  new world order forces on America, hell, forces on the West in general - but I always said, when it comes to his own political interests, he's a cunning bastard and smooth operator - gotta give him that.

Maybe I should welcome Gingrich's emergence as serious contender, and not for reasons previously expressed - no, because unlike with Cain who I considered an ignorant huckster fool and therefore a joke and embarrassent to any party, any nation for that matter willing to indulge his delusional bid for the presidency, Gingrich actually knows stuff and can engage in a somewhat substantive and modestly intelligent debate about that stuff - what's more, in order to divert attention from his many flaws he's going to have to be on the offensive so as to keep the base ever amused by his anger etc etc which apparently is all they seem to care about - which means Romney, who has clung to a desperate game of playing it safe for the very good reason that the uber right will not forgive him one single misstep, will now have to parry and attack and step up his game in response - which means it could get interesting, there could be some fine fireworks on display.

And in that regard I see that Gingrich has challenged Romney to a Lincoln/Douglas styled debate and Romney has turned it down - that won't work to my thinking - I understand why team Romney wants to avoid such a thing: the base is looking for any excuse to bury Romney therefore he would not only have to perform well in the debate, he'd have to actually palpably win it. But I don't think they can avoid this challenge - no doubt they're making the calculation that all those skeletons in Newt's closet are eventually gonna come tumbling out and scuttle his bid - and that's probably true - only problem is Newt may somehow cobble together enough discipline to keep that closet closed just long enough to get the nomination. It would be at that point a third party challenger emerges [since I see no way Gingrich beats Obama] and, as I said, would not surprise me at all if that challenger ends up being Romney [you don't think losing to Gingrich would tarnish Romney? Possibly, but he can cast the uber right as villain in that loss which will of course hurt him with some conservatives but will also increase his appeal with independents and disgruntled moderate democrats].

I'm getting the impression that the farce that was, is, always will be Herman Cain has caused some conservatives to take a step back and reconsider with growing alarm and concern the state of the republican party, the state of what it means, in the age of Obama, to be a republican - in short, I sense a growing anxiety that maybe the right is becoming dangerously indebted to and defined by outrage, anger, reactionary zeal at the expense of short changing  ideas, rationality, competence, meaningful experience, expertise - concern that it's not just the rank and file who are demanding their emotional needs be mollified and sated by some populist passion play but the entire cohort up on through the officer class also now increasingly it seems addicted to feeling rather than thinking as if the former were an entirely sufficient surrogate for the latter.

When a guy like Mitch Daniels, whose resume and executive track record seem to embody the needed tonic for what ails the nation, is marginalized early in the nominating process because he's not a shouter, not a fist pumper, not a shallow, grandstanding rhetorician and glib scourge of the left, when a solid and esteemed prospect like that is ignored while an utter clown like Cain or bombastic, ethically challenged narcissist like Gingrich are raised breathlessly on shoulders and rushed blindly towards the throne by the madding rabble -  well, a man not entirely bereft of common sense should be motivated to take a step back and wonder just what the hell is going on here.

[maybe I should hope for Gingrich to win the nomination - that would pretty much guarantee a third party entry, and maybe Romney himself as that third party entry - hell, maybe that's part of the plan: try your best to get the uber right to accept you, but if they're gonna insist on theatrics over substance, insist on some phony ideological purity test, then screw 'em and run as an independent. I mean, if ya think about it, an argument can be made that even if Romney survives the primary the fact that so many republicans are gonna have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the booth to vote for him may render him not viable as an effective Obama opponent anyway - certainly the Limbaughs et al are unlikely to play nice. We're sitting here wondering who could be that third party challenger - I don't know if anyone's mention Romney yet - but if Gingrich manages to pull it off for sure there's gonna be a lot of conservatives out there saying 'No, sorry, not gonna happen' - in fact, if one is of the opinion that an ugly nominating process and convention will damage Romney to an unsustainable degree, a surprise Gingrich win that sets a Romney third party run in motion could actually be the best thing to happen]

Islamists, including of the ultra-conservative Salafis variety, look to be winning and winning big in Egyptian 'elections' - and remarkably some seem surprised and consequently disquieted by this turn of events. As a moderately intelligent person - or, moderately not unintelligent person - I'm consistently amazed and intrigued by authentically bright people, people much smarter than me, getting tripped up by logical permutations that just seem so obvious - to wit avid Israel hater Thomas Friedman in Times today grudgingly having to admit that maybe Israel's highly cynical take on the putative Arab Spring has been right all along. Really? This is just occurring to you now? You know, I can forgive a person for coming to the wrong conclusion on something - what I find troubling and much less venial is the failure or complete inability of so many of our 'public intellectuals' to objectively consider the various potentialities any given event may give rise to before coming to their possibly flawed conclusions - that the chimerical Arab Spring could produce outcomes decidedly not in the best interests of the West was obvious to anyone willing just for moment to put aside their preferred point of view - yet so many, on both left and right, proved unable or unwilling do that simple thing. I find that troubling - although, given the nature of the beast, possibly not all that surprising.

"... the largest economy in the world is [was?] the EU's - yet this rise to supreme power was not accompanied by a military buildup - in fact in many ways the exact opposite. Why? Because they're protected by America and as like nations with ideological, social and cultural affinities with America they have no reason to fear it. Ask yourself a question: If China was a democracy, an open society with a fully free press and people etc etc, would they be building up their military to the degree they are now? Would they be threatening war over Taiwan? Would they be actively enabling the nuclear insanities of N Korea and Iran? It's the differences that matter - not the thousand things we can point to that seem innocuous - it's the differences. There are always very good reasons why countries shouldn't go to war - but they do anyway. The Second World War shouldn't have happened - but it did anyway. Now, I'm not gonna compare China to Nazi Germany [although there are correspondences: a wounded sense of national pride, the gnawing impatience of a feeling of fettered cultural/historical superiority, a socialist ethos resting upon a state driven capitalism] but the 30s were full of ostensibly intelligent people who praised to heaven Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia and imagined the barbarism of The Great War a thing of the past and counselled America to learn the lessons the upstart nations had to teach and accordingly adapt and acquiesce to the 'new' order. Didn't quite work out that way. Predictions of peace always fall short for the very simple reason that they are predicated on a view of the species governed by wishes and not facts. Anyone who believes conflict between America and China is not inevitable needs to go back and read their Hobbes, their Machiavelli - their Thucydides..."

Bill Clinton calls Gingrich a thoughtful politician - I take it this means it's not lost on liberals that Gingrich would amount to electoral suicide by republicans and therefore they hardily endorse his nomination? Or maybe thoughtful is argot Bill uses when discussing fellow serial adulterers. Then again, if Gingrich becomes the nominee, Bill will have to endure constant regurgitations of how hypocrite Newt was busy getting busy while at same time  preaching gospel of purity to ol' Billy boy for being so busy with the getting busy - a nasty business, that - so possibly Clinton praises in order to bury. Nasty business for sure.

"... why is Russia sending some warships to Syria?... I assume the Russians understand what the Western media seems incapable of grasping - there can be no peaceful or anything even remotely resembling peaceful resolution here... the Syrian military is an Alawite body - if they lose control [they're not gonna surrender it] the country will become Iraq 2005, except probably worse... since there is no exogenous military power that will or can step in to adjudicate the violence to come, the eventual 'endstate' here is highly open to influence... Russia knows China's ambitions stretch through Iran and Iran's ambitions stretch though Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean - if it wants to be a player in this game their 'influence' must lean Alawite... as to whether this strategy is anti-NATO per se, well... only in the sense that Putin's dream of a resurrected Soviet Russia is not served by allowing China to go unchallenged as the dominant regional player... there's just no road through NATO that gets Putin to where he wants to go..."

What about a return up the polls by Bachman? Something tells me the Gingrich bubble will soon want for air and the zealots may go looking for the only somewhat qualified true conservative in the race - and she has been the victim of several unsavory attacks from the 'liberal media' which of course automatically makes her cause noble and just in the eyes of the aggrieved. I had said at the outset that one should keep their eyes on her - she seems reasonably smart and gives the impression of being tough as nails - I had thought that once she learned the game, once she figured out how to most effectively sell herself, that she could become a threat. Still an unlikely run I'd think - but not impossible. Which is not to suggest I'm looking forward to a Bachman presidency... no, just saying...

And what about Bloomberg? His pointed [and justifiable] criticism of Obama viz the super committee failure certainly sounded like a man positioning himself for something - the race is still ripe for a third party entry and Bloomberg has many of the necessary qualities for such a thing: he has executive experience, he's a successful businessman, he's rich, he can appeal to moderates on both sides of the aisle. He does come up short in the charisma side of things - but after a president who was more celebrity than leader, the people may be less needy in that regard.

One positive at least from the 'debate' was a questioner, Fred Kagan I believe, raisiing the issue of deteriorating US strategic relationship with Pakistan since the OBL killing and a query put to the candidates about whether the killing was worth it given this deterioration. I had come to the conclusion that the entire supposed national security intelligensia of the US had utterly missed this crucial element of the story so it was nice to see maybe not [although possibly this 'interest' merely response to recent memo from Pakistani diplomat to Joint Chief Mullen concerning dangerous instability afoot in Pakistan between the military and the gov't since the killing with looming threat of a coup - I mean this was the first thought through my head the morning after the kill so maybe then not so promising a thing that putative intelligentsia now only addressing the negative fallout from this highly questionable strategic 'victory']. But of course none of the candidates were willing to question the killing of Osama and all accordingly reached deep into their populist bag of jingoistic jargon for something satisfyingly better-dead-than-alive-like in its simplicity.

Complexity and an electorate do not fit well together - indeed, democracy demands such a thing because how would a plurality ever be able to agree on anything if faced with issues confounding in their difficulty? Problems arise when leaders see or embrace the simplicity inherent in what they covet as an end in and of itself. This is why, paradoxically enough, leadership is so important in a democracy - the leader is constantly in a position of having to bridge the gap between the simple framework an electorate is necessarily forced to operate from and the obdurate complexity of the real world outside that framework. This is why ideologically rigid leaders do not fare well in a democracy - freedom requires the phenomena of Reagan Democrats, Clinton Republicans, its nature demands such a thing - there will never be any 'Obama republicans' and that's why his presidency was doomed from the start - I know he and his followers thought themselves so cunning and his story so alluring that they could easily pull enough wool over enough eyes to make it work, but it never works - the system is geared to reject absolutist arrogance of that sort [or at least one hopes it is - the West continues its decline and who knows what doors will open - which is why I fear the dawning of an 'anybody,anybody would be better than Obama' moment in this election cycle - I mean, how else explain the popularity of such flawed candidates as Cain and Gingrich? When a democracy reaches a point of desperation that enables an 'anybody but the current body' kind of delusion, that's not good - in such a case the notion of thoughtful, informed choice is lost, the very idea of individual conscience itself starts to fade - and who knows what creatures may emerge from those shadows].

Odd but not really how my interest in the debates wanes in inverse proportion to the impact they seem to be having on the GOP race - canned answers, programmed responses, thinly veiled pandering to the base, policy proposals that even a cursory appeal to sound reasoning would render either misguided, undoable or outright stupid, grandstanding - and no actual debating. Much of the idiocy of these exhibitions is summed up in the Gingrich ostensible mistake of last night ie proposing amnesty for illegals. Now, I don't like Gingrich - I think there's a good chance he's not entirely sane - he's certainly a pretentious and arrogant blowhard blessed with a seemingly indefatigable ability to believe wholly and without shame in the intrinsic value of everything he says, even when he's lying - but, regardless, his response on illegal immigration was actually quite reasonable but of course also quite at odds with the base - therefore it was considered a 'mistake' - consequently Romney quickly jumped on this 'mistake' to claim amnesty 'wrong' even though I don't believe for a second Romney actually thinks that's true - he merely knows that it's exactly what the base wants to hear - silliness - and then I'm guessing this silliness will be doubled down on when the base, hating the idea of thinking Romney right on something, will probably flirt with the idea of forgiving Gingrich his apostasy - even though this just the tip of an iceberg of vulnerabilities and flaws the portly Gingrich is forever running up against, something the base would surely notice it wasn't so busy hating Romney. Silliness.

"... Syria... I would tend to see the Arab league as a tool of Sunni aspirations - if they've moved against Syria it's because the Saudis have decided time is right to hope for a Sunni uprising in Syria that thwarts Iran's regional ambitions... of course a Sunni insurgency in Syria equals bloodbath which is why the Alawites will not be swayed by sanctions or any other pleas of peace... they realize there is no peace at the end of this road: it's either continued Shia repression or a bloodbath... and then of course a Sunni/Shia bloodbath will necessarily draw Iraq and Iran into things - which is why I have trouble seeing Turkey committing to a military option in any significant way... a regional war is in the offing here and even though Erdogan's behavior over the last year indicates he has a grand vision for Turkey as leader of the Muslim world, I gotta believe fear of a wider war would cause him to be cautious about getting too deeply involved in Syria... regardless, if Obama is thinking of a Lead From Behind, Part II he's nuts - Part I was a travesty as far as I'm concerned as the beginnings of a civil war are already percolating to the surface... stable democracy is nowhere in Libya's future, count on it... but there'll be no leading from behind option in Syria... of course that doesn't rule out the delusional from imagining one into existence.... maybe Bernard-Henri Levy is is hunkered down in the Cafe des Artistes right now scribbling another love letter to Susan Power... and hey, let's not forget the Russians, they'll have something to say about all this... oh, and China... build a naval base in Australia will ya.... well, suck on this... and let's not forget, Iran's regional ambitions are also China's in that they see their America-countering sphere of influence stretching from Pakistan, Afghanistan etc etc right on through to the Mediterranean... for my part I listen to the Israelis when it comes to perspective here because of course whatever happens will impact them in an immediate and dramatic and probably very dangerous way... and they've made it clear that for all the reasons they might have to wish for Assad to go bye bye, they fear even more an enraptured Sunni uprising in Syria lead by the Muslim Brotherhood... all along Israel has seen the Arab Spring for exactly what it is - the lifting of a lid from a jar full of devils..."

I had said, in a poison picking scenario, that if republicans, in a mad frenzy of ideological blindness, run their ship aground upon the idiot rocks of populist delusion by turning Cain and Gingrich into serious contenders, I had said that in that sad case I'd have to, if one of them was destined to beat out Romney, hope it was Gingrich who prevailed. Having had a chance the last few days to read some not so fond remembrances and reanalysis of Newt and his 25 years of bloviating self-aggrandizement, pseudo-intellectual posturing, neo-liberal flights of fancy, hypocrisy both moral and political and abject incompetence when it came to the art of governing, I've changed my mind - given a choice of Calamity Cain or Newt the nattering narcissist, I'm gonna probably have to stick with the devil known, Obama - yes, he's been a disaster as far as I'm concerned, but if he gets reelected I'm assuming he'll be boxed in by a house and senate controlled by republicans - bad for the country, sure, since it'll probably mean four more years of ideological stunts and stare downs, but I'm guessing still better than having one of those other two wackos in charge. Jeez - I know Romney has his flaws and I understand why some conservatives would be reluctant to embrace him - but all the not-Romneys are just so objectionable and unelectable, in some cases to a degree that verges on pathetic, if Romney can't nail the nomination down early and this circus carries on for months, I gotta believe the republican brand is gonna be seriously damaged. The best thing that can happen for republicans is that Romney does ok in Iowa [can't see any way that he actually wins there] and then quickly takes New Hampshire, South Carolina and then I think Florida - and then this farce is over.

I have to believe that when all those quality candidates decided not to run they did so thinking that Romney would win and they were fine with that [indeed Christie quickly endorsed Romney after definitely closing the door on speculation of his own run for the nomination] - in other words, they didn't see their absence from the race as a great negative that might impact the fortunes of the country in a worrisome way. Wouldn't surprise me if they're all feeling a bit uneasy about those decisions as they watch Gingrich and Cain rise in the polls.

[although it's reasonable to think that the 'others' may have suffered from same ill winds arrayed against Romney - I mean Daniels was essentially chased from the race for having the temerity to suggest a truce in the culture war, a totally sensible suggestion since democracy is fundamentally about the mitigation of extremes and the tyranny of absolutism through various compromises and accommodations; yes, Christie is loved by the tea party types but also has many 'moderate' positions that would not go down well with the zealots - certainly, I can not imagine Christie grovelling in the sand to appease the Limbaughs et al, in fact I get the feeling he'd relish in pissing them off; a lot of Ryan's work would certainly appeal to the uber right, but he's quite cerebral and I don't think he would have been a comfortable fit with the revolutionary zeal the base seems to be craving]

[and one has to wonder how much of the anti-Romney sentiment is driven by talk radio and how much of that 'talk' is motivated not by a fear that Mitt is the wrong man but rather by a fear that he is indeed the right man and therefore in a position to significantly delegitmize the hyper partisan rhetoric of outrage that is the life blood of talk radio. Certainly there's a palpable segment of right wing animus that is heavily invested in demonizing the Romneys of the world and therefore one imagines that at least some of the anti-Romney fervor is entirely self serving - I mean, how else explain the absurdity of pumping up Gingrich who shares many of the same shortcomings the uber right sees or imagines seeing in Romney plus many, many more on top - I mean he was a paid lobbyist for Fanny and Freddie which means he was essentially a manifestation of everything the uber right supposedly hates about Washington - and yet a poll today on National Review website indicates a majority don't think that's a problem - that's simply insane, it's not rational - and it's usually fear that drives people towards such nuttiness]

"... apologies for being the cynic but I'd guess any noise Obama makes regarding a long term military strategy encompassing a realistic maritime policy that actually addresses the threat will be done in the name of politics, not action. Two reasons for this: one, they're assuming Romney is going to be the opponent in 2012 and ol' Mitt is already staking out this territory for purposes of mounting an attack on Obama and the chosen one's unique interpretation of American vital interests... so the administration needs to look like it's engaged if it hopes to avoid envelopment of its foreign policy flank... look engaged you understand, not actually be so... and two, you cannot fashion a coherent naval strategy while at same time keeping the left wing base happy as concerns military expenditures and Obama cannot win in 2012 without his base... therefore my guess is you'll hear some talking of the talk but little walking of the walk on this issue... expect more leading from behind and theatrics, as in recent announcement of establishing American naval base in Australia ... nothing wrong with this per se, it's just that it looks to me like a typical Obama feint... do enough to give the appearance of something substantial, but then don't follow up on it with the numerous ancillary moves needed to keep the substance from devolving into mere tokenism... not unlike his approach to Afghanistan..."

Hopefully this will mark the end of Cain and I can now move on to something else - as in how lemming-like the migration from Cain to Gingrich will be - and accordingly I look at National Review's website and I see a picture of Newt and declaration that his rise in the polls stems from his fearless abuse of the press at the debates - fearless you understand - yep, without even taking a pause to consider Gingrich's many, many, many flaws already the lemmings are being wrangled towards the next cliff - quite a spectacle. The annoying thing is I'm stuck here having to defend Romney against these morons and I'm not even a Romney guy - I'm just acknowledging the obvious - it's either Mitt or a second term for Obama - or someone gives Mitch Daniels a billion dollars so he can run as an independent. That's it - all the not-Romneys are too flawed and otherwise compromised to imagine them beating Obama - but even if they could beat him, they're too flawed and otherwise compromised to imagine being any better than Obama - in fact there's a couple in there I could see as being decidedly worse.

Looks like I pretty much nailed it awhile back when I called Cain a sideshow charlatan - see this via Jen Rubin. Dangerous man - but just as dangerous if not more so as far as I'm concerned is how many conservatives are so willing to ignore obvious problems with the man in order to keep afloat a narrative that is so tenuous, simplistic and otherwise deeply flawed that it borders on delusional to remain attached to it. Although, since Cain is willing to compare himself to Moses, literally compare himself to Moses, I guess it's not surprising that delusion and his supporters would seem such a comfortable fit.

Polls [again with the polls - they're like barometers of idiocy] appear to show that Gingrich has now surged passed Cain into second behind Romney and in some cases a virtual tie with Romney. So does this mean all the hand wringing by types like me viz Cain was misguided or over stated? Possibly - but a shift to Gingrich could also show that the right is definitely in the grips of a fanatical obsession with a vague yet strongly felt ideological urge that may have entirely detached itself from coherent thought altogether and consequently has little to do with the actuality of candidates themselves - except when it comes to Romney and I guess Huntsman whose caricatures, as fashioned by the uber right, seem to represent the forces of the anti-urge [demi-urge you say?]. I mean, when it comes to ideological purity Gingrich probably carries as much if not more baggage than Romney - plus he has significant character issues - so how explain a swing to Gingrich? Easy - he's not Romney and in all the debates he argues with, scolds in fact the moderators who are all generally members of a press so reviled by the ideologues - with this dyspeptic role now assigned to him regardless of any objective reality [as at various times it has been given to Bachman, Perry, Cain] Gingrich satisfies the uber right's need to be purged of its fear and loathing through an angry mimesis - very Aristotelian I guess, other than it's complete divorce from logic.

And so it was in this sense that Cain disturbed, still disturbs actually since his poll numbers remain high enough to cause worry - it may be unlikely, but I still see a real potential here for a great Obama-like wave of fatuous emotion sweeping some inept, ill-suited for the job cretin [although Gingrich nor Obama for that matter are cretinish in the sense of being 'dumb' - Cain, on the other hand...] into the White House - well, actually, it's hard to see any of the not-Romneys beating Obama - I mean, Newt's closet is just bursting with skeletons and he has a very well earned reputation for putting foot in mouth - and Cain - still a year removed from the election! - has already spilled enough toxic waste to make a serious nurturing of a presidential bid seem highly dubious at best.

I will say though, if forced to pick my poison, and it would be poison of a sort, if Obama's ineptitude actually ends up enraging people so much that the doors open for the likes of a Cain or a Gingrich - I guess I gotta hope it's Newt. It almost makes one wish Sarah would jump into the race - and wouldn't surprise if she's thinking the very same thing - after all, if the base is so agitated that it's actually willing to consider the absurdity of Gingrich, then imagine how they'd respond if she came in - she'd shoot to the lead by ten percentage points [not that I'd necessarily consider that a good thing understand - but what circus isn't improved by a pretty girl on a tightrope?]

Krauthammer for all intents and purposes in latest article disqualifies Perry and Cain as serious [or prudent] presidential nominees and essentially endorses Romney. This is last paragraph of piece concerning what the electorate will be looking for in 2012:

This is no disoriented, easily led citizenry. On the contrary. It is thoughtful and discriminating. For Republicans, this means there is no coasting to victory, 9 percent unemployment or not. They need substance. They need an articulate candidate with an agenda and command of the issues who is light on slogans and lighter still on baggage.

Now, I would have trouble delineating any given electorate as thoughtful and discriminating - but people do have instincts and those instincts can be as right as anything else when it comes to understanding a problem of the type electorates are usually asked to adjudicate.

Unfortunately, Krauthammer is hardly a kingmaker - in fact very likely the exact opposite of such given that when he in similar fashion a year or so ago advised running the Palin bandwagon off the road the base excoriated him as a typical example of the out of touch elitism of Washington smarty pants - so I'm not taking this back door endorsement as a sign that Cain the Idiot is done for and the path is now clear for Romney [and I suppose I shouldn't rule out possibility that Charlie in a roundabout way has a third party challenger in mind here - can't be he's talking about Gingrich, can it? No, no - Newt's virtually a personification of baggage]

It does sort of set up an interesting dynamic though, ie should Cain, through the sheer stupefied will of his supporters, manage to survive his many shortcomings and continue to pose a serious threat to Romney, one could foresee a damaging bifurcation of republican sympathies on the horizon - because my take is a large proportion of conservative intellectuals have come to the same conclusion I have, that Cain would be a disaster and Romney is clearly the only logical choice here given the options - but the base seems to be thinking, rather, feeling something entirely different. If Cain becomes a serious threat you could definitely see a destructive fracturing on the right.

The debate... I dunno... one is tempted to say that if this is the best the greatest democracy on earth can do then, well... not good. Romney again is obviously the only guy up there that strikes one as presidential material, Perry's painful gaffe making that fact even more demonstrably clear - but Obama has the uber right so riled up with anger and fear and Romney is so not the guy to toss them the red meat they hunger for that I still think Cain, as frighteningly shallow and damaged and unprepared as he is, could surprise [again last night Cain showed he is basically incapable of speaking in depth on anything including his own policy proposals without resorting to the mindless incantation of empty slogans and catch phrases - and yet I read this morning supposed serious pundits claiming he 'performed well' - that it was indeed a performance I can agree with - that he did well in the sense of proving he was anything other than a character playing a role designed to appease and pander to the outraged angst of the uber right, then no, definitely not].

Of course the format by default encourages nonsense - moderators feel compelled to ask too many questions and that problem is aggravated further by there being too many candidates who are provided virtually no opportunity to interact and so a real and substantive debate becomes impossible thus forcing participants to consequently focus entirely on two things: don't make a mistake [sorry, Perry, you're toast] and efforts to squeeze out some little sound bite or applause line, no matter how utterly superficial it may be, that hopefully gets played on the morning news and causes the average clueless voter to go "Hey, that kinda makes sense... I guess... I dunno... seems like a nice guy anyway..." It's really rather pathetic.

It would almost be disappointing for me if Cain's campaign is sidetracked by a sex scandal since there are more, much more substantive reasons to repudiate the man's highly questionable run for the highest office in the land that are now just going to be ignored or lost in the noise, to wit: he doesn't seem particularly bright; he either doesn't understand his own policy prescriptions or entirely lacks the ability to explain them in a way that would lead one to believe he understands them or even allow one to just simply give him the benefit of some doubt that he understands them - it's as if he hired someone to come up with some ideas for him and then hired someone else to write out 'talking points' on those ideas and then he memorized, sort of, the talking points; his popularity seems to completely be held together by two largely superficial attributes, ie people apparently like him personally [and he does come across as an affable gladhander] and as a former motivational speaker and talk show host he knows how to shovel appropriate rhetorical  fodder to the gathered cattle; he has no governing experience, which of course his 'fans' see as a shining virtue but then that's because they're idiots [not that I have great love for politicians but just as you'd never hire someone without business experience to run your business, never let someone who'd never worked on a farm run your farm, never let your blind neighbor cut your hair or let his ten year old son borrow your car for the weekend, so to only the willfully stupid would waste time imagining that governing a super power does not require at least some applicable experience in the field of, ya know, governing - sure, there can always be exceptions - Ike for one I guess - but then Ike had been Allied Supreme Commander during WWII, the fate of the free world had rested on his shoulders - wee bit different from being CEO of a crappy chain of pizza stores]; and worst of all, as far as I'm concerned, not just his alarming paucity of knowledge concerning foreign policy but possibly even more disturbing the inference one draws from that sorry lacking, ie that either he has no interest in foreign policy, none at all, or is intellectually lazy - and given that the IAEA will be releasing a report tomorrow that may set in motion a chain of events that will result in the next occupant of the White House having to order a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities and thereby unleashing God only knows what dire consequences - that republicans would even be playing with the idea of nominating a guy like Cain is just... I dunno... shocking? Am I shocked? I know that if I were trapped for five minutes in a room with the extremes of either party that it'd be a struggle to keep from vomiting - so maybe not shocked - still...

"... an electorate is an unstable amalgam of loose sentiment, emotional noise, inchoate cultural signifiers and untold half baked ideas to begin with... throw astringents like fear, anger and resentment into the mad jumble and you have a recipe for complications that can easily escalate towards the worrisome and unleash forces that any sane person would view with great circumspection... Obama is an example of this... Hillary was obviously the superior candidate but she was overrun by a wave of sentimentality, a dream of a wish of a desire, that carried Obama forward... expertly guided by him of course... and lent to the illusion of the man the pretense of a truth that people wanted very much to believe in... Cain is cut from similar cloth, although in this instance colored red and not so cleverly woven... even though my dislike of Obama is plain, he at least looked and sounded presidential... his game was quite polished and I understood how people could be seduced by what he was selling... Cain on the other hand comes across as a congenial yet still foppish huckster, a sideshow charlatan, a guy whose unabashed arrogance has landed him on a playing field that looks to easily overwhelm his limited skills... all the more reason I guess to be deeply troubled that so many seem so willing to be so easily fooled..."

Hmm... well.... from farcical embarrassment to... words cannot possibly express one's dismay? I dunno. Cain, in trying to talk the talk and walk the walk on foreign policy, even though evidence shows and he himself grudgingly admits that he's capable of neither - Cain says he's worried about China because they may be trying to become a nuclear power some 40 odd years after they already did. Republicans are supposed to be the national party that can be trusted on security and foreign policy issues, that they take this stuff seriously - and this is the guy they wanna nominate, a person who appears to have not spent one day of his life considering these problems? To say the least, Cain supporters are decidedly not exhibiting rational behavior - like the uber lefties that recklessly clamored for Obama, they are drunk on an emotion masquerading as an 'idea' that is utterly detached from a coherent understanding of and appreciation for reality.

Ok, it's now gone from 'are you kidding me?' to embarrassing farce - Herman Cain compares his lack of knowledge viz foreign policy etc to his lack of insight into how pizza dough is made when he became CEO of Godfather's Pizza. This is embarrassing, sad and pathetic - the Chinese politburo will read that quote aloud over tea this morning and be smiling from ear to ear. An absolute farcical embarrassment. Putin, taking a pause between the wrestling of bears and the hunting of Siberian tigers, will throw back a shot of vodka and laugh with mocking contempt.

The frightening thing though is that, browsing through some conservative websites this morning, I see that support for Cain is actually up - now, this has more to do with the accusations of sexual impropriety made against him in the past and the ideological pack mules of right wing populism being all up in arms about a left wing media witch hunt [even though it's much more likely a republican as fearful of a Cain candidacy as I am leaked the info - if you were a liberal and wanted to smear the man you'd wait til he was actually the nominee] - and certainly this story is interesting for me anyway [as opposed to the caterwauling ideologues] insomuch as one, Cain is obviously lying when he says he was unaware of a settlement being paid to the accusers, and two, the mishandling of the scandal [Politico, the publisher of the story, gave him two weeks to respond before going public and he had nothing] seems to smell of incompetence - but no, sorry, the ostensibly 'manufactured' sex scandal may feed the current right wing mania of putting everything into some emotionally driven ideological context so as to avoid I guess at all costs the application of logic ie, logic in the sense that if the guy you want as president compares the art and study of foreign policy to pizza dough there's probably a good chance he's not a good fit for the job - yes, I see why the trolls fixate on the sex scandal stuff cause a liberal conspiracy gives them a perfect pretext for rationalizing their native idiocy - but sorry, there's no possibility of talking your way around a pizza dough foreign policy - that analogy is the real news here and has me thinking it may be a good day to crawl back into bed with a bottle of scotch and throw on my new Deadwood blu-ray.

"... I was watching Ron Paul being interviewed on some news show, and he was talking his usual gibberish... I mean, my lord that man spouts an awful lot of nonsense... but Charles Krauthammer was one of the people prodding the esteemed candidate with questions and Charlie, with roguish devilry, accordingly asked Paul to try and make sense of his opinion expressed in last debate concerning how fences built to keep out illegals would eventually be turned against honest citizens for the purposes of imprisoning them, as it were, in the country apparently against their will... an outright bizarre statement so detached from reality as to suggest the onset of dementia in the speaker... and Krauthammer, obviously not a fan of Paul's inveterate nonsense, was enjoying watching the esteemed candidate flop about incoherently on the hook of this absurdity... I mean he was reduced to just spitting out chains of words regardless of any recognizable meaning being attached to them... and it occurred to me that here was this foppish curmudgeon, of entirely marginal significance who, even if favored with ideas that had any chance of being implemented was simply too old to ever be a serious candidate for president, and yet there he was being treated as a serious candidate for president by people who, at least certainly in Krauthammer's case, didn't consider him a serious candidate for president... and one realized that this race wasn't a dire battle between the best and brightest of our society for the right to contend against the evil Obama for the most important job in the world... it was rather a sideshow where the vain, the arrogant, the naive, the delusional, the pompously misguided and the self righteously preening were invited, through some dark twist of fate, to step forward on a stage and speak as if the void were not opening up beneath them..."

To continue with the Cain bashing [although since I think the criticism is entirely deserved the connotations of 'bashing' may miss the mark] in reference to the man's apparent absolute dearth of both knowledge of or interest in foreign policy and foreign affairs [when you hear him talk about these things it's not hard at all to imagine that the highest, most involved level of exposure he's had to these subjects comes from an associate's second hand retelling of a Rush Limbaugh rant] and in regards to the upcoming debate devoted to related issues - I've read some expressing hope that Cain is taking his shortcomings in this area seriously and consequently sitting down with a few good books to study up in earnest preparation for the event - because of course the important thing here is not that he actually know what the hell he's talking about but rather that he knows enough so as to effectively pretend that he knows what the hell he's talking about. There's no way not to be disturbed by this - not just by the naive arrogance of Cain himself, but possibly even more so by his supporters who actually seem to have convinced themselves that any of this makes any sense whatsoever.

This is not a skill set one simply acquires over a fortnight of book browsing - knowledge of and a keen sense for historical tendencies, military affairs and macro strategy, foreign policy and 'great game' politicking are not things one simply adopts one day as sort of an unwilling concession in pursuit of a something else - these abilities and insights are developed over time, through practice and dialectic, by people who actually care about the subjects and understand the dire import of them - to imagine it is somehow otherwise as a convenience in service of rationalizing a dubious political agenda is flat out nuts, crazy, utterly delusional.

It's the exact mistake people made with Obama - and now republicans think it sane to repeat the error viz Cain? Has the country lost its freaking god damn mind?!

The vulnerabilities and limitations of democracy seem to be becoming increasingly exposed - maybe we're just going through a bad patch - but if a polity loses, either through its own flaws or from a lack of meaningful choice, the ability to elect leaders who, because of their applicable knowledge, skills and experience, actually have the capacity to serve the interests of the country well, then how is survival possible? It isn't I'd think - unless through some indeterminate metamorphosis - an evolutionary step, possibly - but every change brings with it winners and losers and there's no guarantee we'd belong to the former.

It's not a good thing for the supposed greatest nation on earth that a year removed from the election it's already clear that the only tolerable option for next occupant of the White House is Mitt Romney, a guy who wins - a guy who, if he wins, does so simply because he's the least bad of the lot. Not a good thing at all.

Peter Wehner says what I've been thinking for awhile now - one, Romney is clearly the only credible choice left in the republican field, it's not even open to questioning, but that so many on the right seem entirely unable to accept that reality is disturbing - I mean, really, how is Herman Cain a legitimate contender? The man is a fucking moron - he exudes the facile charms of a snake oil salesman - he's like Obama except not as bright, less qualified and more transparently false in his posturings. Wehner then draws attention to the other disturbing thing - this is lining up to be possibly one of the most important elections in America's history - that so many quality candidates decided not to run  given the circumstances leaves one despairing over the country's ability to meet the challenges ahead. It's going to be an election that anyone with a clear idea of things will find impossible to take comfort in no matter the outcome - a year out and clearly Romney must be the next president and yet there were at least five guys I wanted to get into the race and would have easily taken over him - but here we are, it's Romney by default, fine - it's not like the man's a light weight without resume - but he may not even end up as the nominee for Christ sake! And if not? Four more years of the Obama travesty? Herman Cain? How can a thoughtful person not be subsumed by despair.

Jennifer Rubin has written a very nice little blog post on Cain that anyone even remotely imagining the man as a legitimate presidential candidate should read. As I've said before, if it's Cain vs Obama in 2012 we are in deep, deep trouble - it will be clear evidence that there's something seriously wrong with our political system, or, if not with the system itself, then with a culture that seems incapable or unwilling to bring sound, unbiased and well reasoned judgement to bear on the question of leadership. I mean, ok, I get why people wanted to believe in the story of Obama - I thought it was sad that so many could so easily embrace mindless delusion and then with a straight face try and pass it off as intelligent insight - but, whatever, I get the whole Obama thing. But Herman Cain? Really? This is what we've come to?

Commentary joins in on the slamming of Cain. It's more than a little bit frightening that a guy like this can be viewed as a legitimate presidential candidate, even if that view ends up having a short shelf life. Sure, Obama was lacking in vital experiences and knowledge relevant to the job, and that deficiency has shown up in his performance - but at least he could fake it [although I guess that ability makes Obama a much more dangerous incompetent than Cain] - Cain can't even offer up the pretense of understanding concerning some of the most pressing and profound issues the country's chief executive will face. We're not talking about managing a chain of restaurants here - this is a freaking empire! What the hell is going on!? I'm really starting to worry that my prediction is going to come true: that Obama would be so bad a president and rouse through this awfulness such distemper and partisan ill will in the electorate that he'd end up preparing the way for the coming of something even worse.

This Iranian assassination story is odd, as in doesn't appear to make any sense - what would the Iranian Republican Guard have to gain by killing a Saudi diplomat on American soil? To compromise Ahmadinejad, possibly - but the serious fallout invited seems to make the prize not worth the risk. Possibly all just an elaborate setup to trick the US into making a false accusation - that's intriguing, but if true seems to me the Iranians would already be leaking info in support of that gambit, and not seeing that. Could I guess just be some rogue operative or lose canon who took it upon himself to start a war between Iran and Saudi Arabia - but if that were the case I would guess US authorities would be aware of the 'off the reservation' nature of the scheme and therefore have kept it quiet in order to stave off the tensions now on the rise. Couldn't possibly be Obama inflating things for some dubious political gain, could it? Hard to believe that since it'd be a really stupid thing to do.

But if not any of those things, one's left believing the attempt was serious, that the Iranians, or more accurately the Guard's Quds Force, had some strategy in mind here that actually made sense to them - which would mean Iran just bumped itself up a few notches on the 'things that really worry the shit outta me' chart.

It occurs to me - hardly brilliant in any way that it does - but still it occurs to me that 'polls' have become a fixture of news reporting and political media in general - and yet polls are stupid - and it never becomes a topic of discussion just how stupid they are - the status quo has become to just accept them as somehow a reflection of something substantial - polls ostensibly defining what people 'think' about a particular policy especially annoy because even a cursory scan of the average democratic polity reveals that the average voter knows very little and understands less - a poll defining what people feel about a certain thing tells me nothing other than  that people tend to be very mutable and fragile emanations of a largely unknowable darkness - what am I supposed to do with that information? - but political polls also frustrate with their insistence on being taken seriously - evidence strongly suggest that only those polls taken near an actual time of decision manage to capture a semblance of truth because it's clear people really only start paying attention [a term used loosely] when they feel they have no other choice but to pay attention - and yet here we are months removed from any meaningful elections and polls germinate with abandon on a near daily basis - to tell us what though? - for instance the Wall Street Journal poll this morning showing Cain as leading the republican presidential race - what that tells me is that there's a significant portion of right wing voters who are 'angry' and will throw their support behind anybody, anybody who seems to give voice to this anger - these people are idiots, possibly well meaning idiots and possibly idiots angry for just cause, but idiots all the same - because Romney is quite obviously the only credible candidate left but if a year from now we're watching a presidential election between Obama and Herman Cain well, this country is finished, raise the white flag, we're done - that's what that poll tells me - and yet the Journal publishes it and other news sources report on it as it were saying something different and not at all implying that the country may indeed be fucking doomed.

Well, my brilliant strategy for Christie's ascension to presidential contender turned out to not be Christie's brilliant strategy which is disappointing for several reasons, not the the least of which is I thought my plan was indeed quite clever, but now it can't be since it isn't.

So the default candidate now becomes Romney - there's much to like there, since 2008 he's certainly matured into a much more palatable option - if one can forget he's a Mormon - and there's your problem since the values voters on the uber right are not particularily disposed to forget such things - in fact some 'preacher' spoke out yesterday about Romney not being suitable for the presidency because of his belonging to a cult - so the inglorious game is on and once again we get to witness the disheartening spectacle of democracy eating its tail.

No doubt this self immolation accounts for much of Herman Cain's rise, a protesting expression from the uber righties who choke on Romney's relative moderateness - at least I hope it's a token protest - if it morphs into something real then my doom sayer prediction viz Obama could sadly be realized, ie that Obama's leftist agenda would lead to such enraged partisanship that it'd end up empowering yet another presidential candidate entirely ill-suited to the job - Cain would certainly be that - I mean when speaking he challenges Sarah for confused gibberish - and apparently he knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy - yeah, Cain would prove an Obama coda that might just put an end to the republic - it would be hard to survive three horrible presidents in a row.

So Christie gave his highly anticipated speech at Reagan library and once again made non-denial denials of his intentions to seek the presidency - regardless of which the speech was very well received and hailed as presidential - and so all are trying to figure out what exactly his intentions really are etc etc - I still feel that my original interpretations of Christie were right - he wants to be dragged into the contest and will only enter if he feels a significant number of  conservative power brokers have bought into his candidacy as a necessary thing and are therefore in essence co-opted into the effort to make it successful - that has now happened. I believe this has been his strategy all along and the advantages of it are obvious: that a significant proportion of conservative leadership in the country now have a vested interest in seeing him win - well, don't need to be a genius to see how that's a good thing; he's avoided much of the early primary crap - the idiotic debates, the straw polls, the endless pandering; the weaknesses of his opponents have now been exposed and he can play off them in ways they will be unable to reciprocate; most importantly though is that he has established himself as a true leader, ie he looks like the anti-Obama in so much as Obama now looks like the egotist who sought out the presidency when he really wasn't ready for the job whereas Christie in all humility resisted the call and only sought it out when the need and his duty to serve became undeniable - to me this narrative of the humble man of the people stepping up to do his duty for God and country will play like gold against the Obama narrative of arrogant egotist in search of personal glory.

And of course should he run and lose that he was drawn into the race by pleas from the powerful will serve him the way it served Reagan in 1976 - the loss will not impoverish his political prospects going forward - he can walk away as undamaged goods. It's a brilliant strategy - although unfortunately could also be entirely a figment of my imagination - completely plausible he has milked the notion of him running for the same reasons Sarah did - it's good for business. I don't really get that vibe from him, but entirely plausible.

A recent study [very technical, but if you wanna read it it's here] suggests we've underestimated, possibly by a great deal, the damage done to us by mass loss of manufacturing to China. I've read a few experts who sort of agree with the study but still claim the authors over do it and end up affirming status quo, ie more good than bad to be found in excretions of Chimerica monster. But to me raises interesting points regardless: what will it say about us as a culture if we've completely miscalculated the dynamics of our economic relationship with China? If the turn is for the worse, how bad can it get and what happens if it's too late to turn back? What if China knows we've got it wrong and have been quietly exploiting our stupidity all along? One can already make convincing case that when it comes to military questions we've made significant miscalculations regarding how Middle Kingdom's post-Mao rut with capitalism would supposedly beget changes in China that would reduce their threat profile - but jesus, if we got the economics wrong as well, which of course will in turn worsen security concerns, shit... could lead to some major upheaval in not too distant future.

What if the break up of the European Union [which I'm assuming is inevitable in some way ie it will not be the post nation state bureaucratic marvel imagined by its creators] is the first corpse to bob to the surface of this fetid pool? That's to wax a bit excessive - but what I mean is, what if the cultural mindset of the West since the end of WWII has been in some fundamental way wrong, misguided, delusional - but the sheer weight of our economic might just pushed these flaws and vulnerabilities out of sight - but look out, there they are, staring us in the face, like spoiled, insufferable children we've indulged into a kind of madness who have returned home to torture and accuse with pouty scowls and peevish, grunting irony? They've grown up, they're useless and you can't go back now and raise them up right. I tend to think that's exactly how the nouveau mandarins of China see us and they feel no pity whatsoever, which of course is fair - but what if it's actually true? Hard to believe a whole lotta bad wouldn't be the result - turmoil, chaos, possibly a revolutionary chaos - after all, how would one fix such a problem short of demanding epochal change? What if the current partisan dysfunction in Washington is a foreboding wisp of the chaotic winds to come? Sure, the idiot child Obama thinks he's the true agent of change, bright scion of the gods of promise - but in fact he's a throw back, a manifestation of the delusional thinking that brought us here [if here indeed is where we are] - no, the change I'm talking about would be a much more frightening thing - not a gift, not a promise - no sweetness and light - rather a bitter trial on a dark and difficult road.

[well, that has a mushy, end of days feel to it - what I'm thinking of here is I was reading, viz European Union troubles, recollections of when the Union was verging on birth and the minority nay sayers [realists] were being ridiculed by the enlightened majority yeah sayers [progressives] as xenophobic, backwards, intolerant etc etc for having the temerity to suggest the concept was naive, simple-minded, hopelessly idealistic and doomed to fail - and of course the realists have now been proven right - and what struck me was the disdainful, dismissive arrogance of the progressives was very much like the scorn Obamaphiles expressed towards those benighted enough to question the obvious brilliance of Dear Leader - I mean I couldn't get into a conversation about Obama in 2008 without it eventually being implied or explicitly stated that if I couldn't see how magnificent the man was or grasp the pure beauty of his message it must be because I was an abject fool or a racist - and of course now my skepticism has been vindicated - point being, this evinced inability for our culture to effectively differentiate fantasy from reality may be symptomatic of a degenerative or enervating contentment afflicting advanced cultures that renders them incapable of putting hard truths ahead of comforting lies. I mean, the idea of a European Union has been around for awhile but reality always beat it back - why not this time? I would say the comforting illusion of a Pax Americana going on forever and giving 'Europe' the sense that it would remain secure without ever having to actually pay for that security and the general good will and prosperity that followed in the wake of the Berlin Wall going bye bye - suddenly progressives were freed just enough from cold reality to imagine their fanciful post-modern musings to be rationally grounded in actual truths]

Priceless... a day after black actor Morgan Freeman makes news with very public, adamant and heavily reported statement declaring racism the reason Obama is doing so badly, that the extremist intolerance of small minded Tea Party elements and their racist machinations are behind the chosen one's fall from grace, the very next day these vile extremists make African American Herman Cain winner of the Florida republican straw poll. Priceless. Straw polls of course are infamous for being platforms for ideological agitation on the extremes of each party. Is there any chance this idiocy stops? Jesus, this was already tiresome in 2008 when moronic Obamaphiles were accusing Hillary of being a racist for saying bad things about Dear Leader - now it's just absurd. And yet these idiots go on - and worse, they're actually convinced of what they're saying, are convinced that their opinions are the fruit of reasonable, considered thought and keen analysis. It's very annoying.

News flash - racism exists, it's a very common human response to cultural frictions - all cultures, not just white males of western European decent hating on others who look different. All cultures dislike and distrust and fear all other cultures they come in contact with to some degree - this is fundamental human behavior - hell, it's pretty much fundamental behavior for anything alive and processing oxygen in order to stay so - of course there are those who deny the chosen one because of his somewhat dark pigmentation and the culture they may associate with it - but mostly the repudiation is a response to the man being very liberal and apparently incompetent - possibly 'Tea Party' activists should be happy he's incompetent - maybe he's incompetent because of his left wingedness, possibly the two go hand in hand - whatever - point is for anyone of a moderate or conservative bent there are very, very good reasons to dislike Obama that have absolutely nothing to do with race - I've not been a fan since his breakthrough speech in 2004 and I'm pretty sure I'm not a racist - like a lot of conservatives there was a time when I would have gladly entertained the idea of Condi Rice or Colin Powell being president - there's a very good chance that in the not too distant future both Nikki Haley [of Indian decent] and Marco Rubio [Hispanic] will run for president and like most conservatives I'll probably be open to supporting them if they prove capable - and you see, that's the key - prove capable - it's about performance and skills and beliefs, not skin color - in fact the only way race in any credible way factors into discussions about Obama is when we start wondering about what it means, what it says about the continuing viability of democracy when a guy can be elected leader of the most powerful nation on earth simply because he's black - and that's pretty much the only context within which Obama's race can be seen as an issue worth discussing.

But I'm wondering - would Mr Freeman be happy if a man demonstrably ill suited to running the country were to be reelected simply because voters were sensitive to charges of looking like racists if they didn't comply? Cause the only way his opinions make sense is if he's a complete and utter fool or he actually does think it a good idea to shame people into reelecting an incompetent - but, hell, ya know what, given the way liberals think, they probably wouldn't have a problem with incompetence just so long as it meant well.

God, we are screwed, aren't we.

It always strikes me as interesting that when talk comes up of resolving problem of huge US deficits the left invariably says there must, must be a balance between budget cuts and tax hikes on the 'rich' [in essence defined loosely as anyone who just seems to have too much money] - and yet I never hear any convincing reason as to why there must be this balance - the right at least tries to explain belief that taxes and the big gov't they inspire are counter productive - but what usually happens on the left is that defense of tax increases comes down to vague imputations of 'fairness' but never is fairness explained in any coherent way nor is it made clear how some watery exhortation of balance does anything to enhance the economy - often the magic word is spoken and people react as if the meaning and value of it is perfectly clear - and I guess for the left it is clear: successful people need to be punished because obviously their success happens at the expense of the less successful; that the only true measure of a society is not how much opportunity it offers and how this opportunity in turn translates into an appropriate distribution of potential power but rather how an extant power, demonized by the rubric wealth, can be redeemed by a beneficent and enlightened state redistributing it to those it was ostensibly stolen from.

Now, it's not that I'm against tax increases per se as a matter of some reflexive disgust - I believe tax reform that exalts efficiency and encourages growth is what's necessary but will not therefore automatically tune out talk of tax increases of some sort - no, what I find confounding, galling is wrapping the idea of tax increases in phony ideological populism that seems to have nothing to do with a plan for enhancing the economy - the only real objectives here should be cutting budget deficits while improving productivity, in fact dramatically improving productivity given rising threats from emerging economies - if you can only manage one of those, it has to be the latter because at least increased growth will mitigate damage of former - you definitely cannot do the former at the expense of the latter cause that gets you nowhere - and you very definitely cannot fail to do either - and what all of this very, very definitely should not be about is what oh let's say two tenured, left leaning professors of sociology, sipping tea in a Harvard faculty lounge might, in an existential sense, consider fair.

But, unfortunately, the left will argue that gov't expenditures do increase productivity and that the hard working middle class cannot bear the burden of debt reduction while the wealthy [whose greed of course caused this mess] loll about lazily in golden fields of excess - and so I guess it will end up coming down to ideological palaver and pandering regardless, which inevitably leads to tawdry populist appeals - Obama has already made it very clear this is the path he intends to go down. Are we doomed here? Maybe we're doomed.

This is shocking, as in definitely didn't see it coming - reports this morning that Erdogan has given a speech in Cairo encouraging Egyptian lawmakers to make any new constitution secular in nature - Muslim Brotherhood apparently not thrilled by this - this surprises me, shocks actually - Erdogan is moving Turkey away from Ataturk styled secularism - he's spent the last two weeks ratcheting up heated rhetoric with Israel over Gaza flotilla raid that is quite obviously about making him look like the de facto leader of Mideast Muslims - so for him to raise the 'S' word like this in Cairo, with Libya up for grabs, with the Palestinian UN vote round the corner etc etc, flat out surprises me - I don't get what he's up to here - to me it's obviously a feint of some sort but won't pretend to see the endgame [a guess is that he understands that 'fake' democracy with 'secular' trappings provides good cover for what is ultimately an Islamist agenda] - be curious to see how those much smarter than me interpret it. [possibly the mistake I'm making here is that I assume he sides with the Muslim Brotherhood when in fact could be he favors the vestigial Mubarak factions in the military][that the Egyptian military establishment may be true object of Erdogan's affections possibly confirmed by recent deal agreeing to increased level of military cooperation between the two countries - so mentioning 'secularism' would be to draw MB's true intentions out into the open and therefore compromise a broadening of their appeal? or make the increasingly marginalized 'democrats' in the protest movement less resistant to continuing influence by the military in governance? If so imagine Egyptian military has offered Erdogan something he likes]

Obama's 'jobs plan' speech turned out to be the political calculation I figured it would be - but the interesting thing I think is that it was so blatantly political, cynical almost given the obviousness of its intent - I mean he says in the speech it's paid for and then announces a few days later what he means by paid for is that he wants to raise taxes to pay for it which means the thing's still born, everybody knows that - that's pretty cynical - but so cynical that I'm gonna turn out to be right here? - by that I mean that the man has no desire to serve another term as president, especially if the congress [as it will be] is controlled by republicans - he can't just simply lose though, rather he has to lose on terms that allow him to leave office bruised but still a hero to the left wing and therefore still a viable voice that can tour the world making lots and lots of money giving pretty speeches. That would certainly be a horrible way for a leader to behave so it's kind of hard to imagine I'm right here - still, even hardcore democrats are looking at his jobs bill and saying 'how the hell does this make any sense?'. More than likely he and his people realize there's only two ways to have any chance of winning reelection: dramatically change his ideological stripes [which will not happen for reasons stated above ie, he'd destroy his brand]. or two, make republicans look like intemperate obstructionists. The problem with the latter is, he'd still be stuck with a republican congress - and if he's not gonna alter his ideological assumptions and preferences I find it very hard to believe he'd want to serve another term under those circumstances - needless to say, the country would not be well served by such an outcome - as I've said many times, Clinton could move to the center cause that's where he came from and he owed nothing to the DailyKos/Jon Stewart types - the impression of Obama the rational moderate is merely a political prop and always has been - I think people still under estimate just how utterly political Obama is - it's all about manipulation of perceptions for him - every time he gives a speech you both hear and see it [you can tell he's practiced a lot in front of a mirror - which is fine if you're an actor - not sure about the utility of such if you're president of the United States] - it's all a cynical calculation designed to either promote himself, promote an agenda, or promote an agenda in order to promote himself.

"... the new Europe... increasingly a whole equal to less than the sum of its parts... and this depreciation, this fundamental imbalance seems to be accelerating to the point where even the European knack for ignoring a problem by making it less earnestly real through more eloquent abstraction seems overwhelmed... I suspect eventually the various discrete components of it will be absorbed as a protectorate under the guidance of some German/Chinese partnership because both of them after all, no matter how dysfunctional the union itself becomes, are well served by its continuance... and I'm thinking if Putin manages to reconstitute some semblance of Soviet Russia, which I'm reasonably convinced is his long term goal, then might as well give him a seat at the table too... although, Russia and China sitting peaceably at the same table?... likely one looking to pull the chair out from under the other would be my guess... still, the thought of Putin posing bare chested, grinning mischievously, gracing a new Euro note... definitely amuses..."

I haven't had anything to say about Libya since the 'fall' of Tripoli - I almost, in a state of dispirited disbelief, was moved to drag from noxious bile an opinion after reading some absurdity from EJ Dionne at the Washington Post - EJ is in love with Obama - I mean literally in love I think - Dionne is of that ilk of uber lefties who, on first hearing Obama speak, fell trembling before him like Moses before the burning bush - a mere day after the rebels rabbled their way into Tripoli Dionne was writing how this was a brilliant victory, that the Obama doctrine had now been completely and utterly vindicated and that since Obama's genius had now been irrefutably demonstrated only a heretical ignorance of a most vile, pernicious and cancerous aspect could possibly explain those still refusing to believe in the truth before them - or words to that effect. I was so galled by this astoundingly obtuse hagiography that I did feel an instinctive urge to spit something up - but didn't.

I didn't because it seemed irrelevant - I had said all along that getting rid of Qaddafi was meaningless vis a vis the larger questions - Qaddafi was weak, he had deliberately kept his military weak so as to forestall coup attempts - a Marine Expeditionary Force could have finished him off in a fraction of the time it took a NATO sans America to do it [and if your real concern was humanitarian that is what should have logically been done cause god knows how many have died in the six months it's taken France and England to get it done] - Saddam's army was much, much more powerful - if Dionne is gonna praise Obama for this victory he should tenfold be praising Bush for his against Saddam - but of course he can't because of the disaster that befell Iraq after Saddam was gone - which is why praising Obama a mere day after rebels took Tripoli bespeaks of an idiocy of such astounding heft it takes ones breath away. Getting rid of Qaddafi was not the issue per se defining this idiotic war [and wasn't even part of the UN resolution if anyone cares to remember - but of course Obama gets to wage an illegal war because... well, no one can explain that one, although I can make a pretty good guess] - the troubling aftermath of the inevitable dethroning was the issue; the disaster of a civil war almost surely now to come was the issue; the now revealed utter weakness of a NATO sans America and how an 'America alone' scenario, which we now have, that will destabilize long term security arrangements was the issue [if you've always believed in an 'America alone scenario this isn't huge - if, like Obama, you believe America isn't the essential country when it comes to security, well then, you've just been proven grossly wrong]; the extremely dangerous and confusing precedent set for a war raised upon a very shaky, vague and highly selective humanitarian pretext was the issue, the emergence of an Islamist state possibly linked to Iran, a newly belligerent Turkey and then to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and all lined up against Israel was the issue - the mere fact of getting rid of Qaddafi [and he still isn't quite gone remember] pales in significance when compared to the highly, highly toxic detritus trailing in his departing wake - and we set all this in motion to defend what vital interest of the US? None that I can think of.  

And so I didn't comment on Libya - until now - and I'm doing so now because the one tentative exception I made to my generally complete repudiation of Obama's Libyan adventure was that I might support something if it served a long term interest viz China's influence in the region - if one could factor in China then suddenly Libya does start to move into 'vital American interest' territory - and so word coming out this week that possibly China all through this war has been trying to supply arms to Qaddafi, that gets my attention - I have no comment other than that at the moment - I still think this war was utterly idiotic, misguided, ill conceived - but if some damage spills over onto China's reputation in the region, well... that's something. Not sure what. Could indeed set some troubling dynamics in motion, ie if China feels embarrassed or marginalized by perfidious or otherwise disreputable behavior they may be motivated to compensate in ways not comforting to the general weal.