Why did Obama create a red line on Syria viz WMDs if he had no intention of heeding the red line? He did the same thing with Iran when in Israel, saying he will not let them go nuclear and then stating they'll have the ability to go nuclear within a year, which is basically the same as creating a red line in time on Iran - and yet I don't believe for a second he has any intention of interceding. So why is he doing this? Sometimes I think they feel that their ability to control the media narrative is so great that they can get away with saying just about anything - and there's plenty of justification for feeling that way - but this is too important, this is too dangerous - if you're America it is absolute, unmitigated strategic folly to establish red lines and then not follow up on them - so what are they doing here? They're not idiots, they know this is unacceptable behaviour, right? I don't get it.

Maybe I've misjudged them, maybe they are planning to intervene - that'd shock the hell outta me, but who knows. I will say that Obama's idiot actions in Libya forced this conundrum on him to no small amount - you intervene in a country that is not of strategic import to us because of a humanitarian crisis that was only threatened and then because of your asinine leading from behind leave behind an Islamist shit hole that actually now is a strategic concern for us - but then when it comes to Syria where there is an actual humanitarian crisis happening in a country of palpable strategic import to us you do next to nothing - I mean he walked right into this one.

Now, don't get me wrong - to me Syria is a classic damned if you do, damned if you don't problem - there are no good answers here, it's all just degrees of bad - still, just because all the choices are bad doesn't take away the burden from the US of choosing best - but best for Obama seems to amount to nothing more than sending a message of weakness and confusion and strategic naivety that leaves many with the distinct impression that outside of lofty rhetoric, timid gestures and drones his idea of American power is quite limited indeed - it's as if his only plan here, his sole guiding motive is to remove America from the grip of being an illusory [to him] empire, to render it no longer the necessary country. Reverend Wright must feel great pride.

[I want to clarify something here - it's not impossible that Obama's approach to the Syria problem may indeed have been more or less right, I dunno - all the predicable outcomes that can be applied to given various scenarios were, are bad and it's just a question of figuring out the least bad - and so it's possible the way Obama has approached it is indeed the least bad - I dunno, and I'm not sure if anyone not privy to classified intelligence can ever really know when it comes to a problem like Syria - many conservatives believed that the only way to stop radical Islamists from coming to power should Assad fall was by getting in early, but I read several backgrounders on it that made the case that, without American troops on the ground, cherry picking a 'winner' was impossible and that there was probably no way to stop radicals from eventually gaining the upper hand - others wanted to argue that toppling Assad would be a blow to Iran and therefore we should be involved, which is true, but by doing so you would also have risked the possibility of drawing in Iraqi Shia to defend their brothers and then you've got a nasty chain of events set in motion - like I said, there are valid arguments to be made on all sides of this question so you cannot simply state outright that doing nothing was QED obviously wrong - the disaster for Obama is that a red line doesn't at all fit well with such a cautious stratagem and when you compare Syria to Libya, even if one allows that his hands off approach was per se more or less 'the right move' viz Syria, what you end up with is America looking weak and confused and misguided - and that's not a good thing. There were many reasons why Libya was a very foolish, naive venture - in some ways worse than Iraq, which is of course to stretch a point, sure, but at least Iraq actually mattered strategically to us and at least Bush, when it became clear he had made mistakes, tried to fix things - Obama just walked away from Libya as if everything was cool, nothing to see here, and the lap dog press played along - but now it has come back to haunt him - I'm guessing that's why they felt compelled to establish a red line on WMDs that they probably never had any intention to defend - after Libya doing nothing was no longer an option and they gambled Assad would never go there - well, he called your bluff and possibly he did so because he looked at Libya, not to mention Afghanistan, and concluded Obama has no stomach for a fight, he does not believe in American power - and now wha' d'ya gonna do? You get involved militarily in Syria and a regional war crests on the horizon - you can drag Iraq into this as sectarian violence starts to swell there - Hezbollah can drag in Lebanon and maybe Israel - Iran can drag in Turkey and Saudi Arabia - and god only knows what card ol' Vlad in Russia will play - but the really depressing part is, get involved or don't, it may be too late to matter either way - the worst case scenarios may already be in the pipeline - radical Islamists coming to power in Syria... Assad surviving and Iran treating this as a huge strategic victory for them, which it will be... or just a good ol' regional war that spirals into who knows what bloody direction - seems to me Obama has made some serious miscalculations here regarding what it means to be America in a very dangerous world - it's almost as if he actually believed that just being the celebrity black president was enough - ya show up, give a nice speech, the media fawns and everything falls into place - hell, I suggested several years ago that this might indeed be how the man would approach the presidency - to turn a phrase, for liberals of Obama's ilk it's almost as if they want very much to believe that the Gettysburg address won the Civil War and not the application of a brutal and relentless power... Spielberg's 'Lincoln' certainly is inclined that way... Pericles' funeral oration did not make him a great and enlightened leader, he carried that weight before rising to speak...]

AG Holder's ludicrous claim the other day suggesting that amnesty for illegal immigrants was a civil right owed them presents a clear example of why immigration reform is and will continue to be a problem for conservatives. On the one hand a significant cadre of post nation state extremists on the left actually believes that borders are an anachronism of an evil past standing in the way of the coming great harmonious peace of a universal socialism - any clear thinking creature right of Michael Moore finds this mode of thought idiotic, conservatives of course find it repulsive, practically beneath disdain - arch conservatives find it deeply threatening. Which brings us to the other problem wedged into Holder's inane whimsy, ie odds are he doesn't mean it, he's just saying it because he knows it will piss off Republicans, which possibly scuttles immigration reform comity, which serves Obama's political interests.

So, there ya go - a simple [so simple] sentiment for a liberal, a big problem for a conservative - for even the most moderate of conservatives would find the 'idea' behind the sentiment utterly unacceptable - but even if one gets past the besotted naivety of the fringe left you're still faced with the bitter reality that you cannot trust Democrats at all to do anything but play politics with this issue - and with media bias running cover for them, how do you defend your principles against something like that?

Wow. Just wow. It boggles. No doubt the explanations, the excuses will pour forth now - Kerry was just trying to say something nice, heartfelt, and a few thoughts got jumbled in his head - but I think it more likely this is an accidental expression of truth - this is how these people actually see the Mideast: the Israeli right and the IDF are the true terrorists, the true causes of discord, and all that's required is to rein them in, do a bit of touchy feely outreach with Muslims and universal peace and sunshine will fall from the sky. These people are idiots, delusional idiots. The Obama foreign policy record at this point is an embarrassment of empty gestures, wretchedly misguided thinking, strategic naivety, prevarications, shallow sentimentality dressed up with idealistic gibberish - hope and change - the slogan is a like a testament to the profound idiocy of the left.

"Kepler 62’s newfound worlds are not quite small enough to be considered strict replicas of Earth, but the results have strengthened the already strong conviction among astronomers that the galaxy is littered with billions of Earth-size planets, perhaps as many as one per star, and that astronomers will soon find Earth 2.0, as they call it — our lost twin bathing in the rays of an alien sun." NY Times

Strange, isn't it? So much that is awful in this world emanates from a past that is rapidly fading away - yet still people cling to it - because what else do they have, right? At this point it's a virtual statistical certainty that there's life elsewhere in the galaxy, never mind the almost inconceivably vast universe, which pretty much renders all earthly notions of a God illusory, dreams of a restless sleep - yet who believes that we as a people have it in us the strength and wisdom necessary to deal with the future that is madly rushing towards us?

Bring on the apologists of Islam - to the great dismay of much of the liberal intellectual elite the Boston bombers were not the spawn of the Tea Party - so let the rationalizations ring out! Look, all religions are cults to one degree or another and therefore all have the capacity for annoying the hell out of a person like me [or maybe that should read annoy the hell into a person like me - I dunno] - but aside from my dyspeptic grumpiness fact remains that all exclusionary ideologies tend towards extremism and a closed state - they have to in order to protect fragile beliefs and tenets - moral and epistemological absolutism becomes an existential imperative - and all religions are more or less exclusionary and extreme.

And so it is the rationalization that the fanaticism of the Boston bombers is not representative of Muslims in general is meaningless to me regardless of it being obviously true. When it comes to extreme idelogies the power does not belong to the people, it belongs to the people who control the people - that is why it's utterly meaningless if most Muslims do not hate the West, do not hate America - I'm sure most Chinese weren't thrilled by Maoism and most Russians were not head over heels sold on the putative glories of Soviet styled socialism - didn't matter one little bit - without an exogenous force working to moderate Islam the way democracy, free speech, intellectual latitude and open markets came to moderate Christian sects [and remember that Christianity, in sharp distinction from Islam, was from its beginning always conceived of as being separate from the state, of being private and personal, and therefore was much less prone to a suffocating absolutism - there is no equivlent in Islam to Christ's call to 'render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's' - this is an extremely important distinction - Islam was always dependent on state practices and orientation, Christianity wasn't] - without the advance of a moderating influence or power that opens Muslim polities Islam will continue to pose a threat to the West because the openness of the West will continue to pose a threat to the people who control the people in the Muslim world. We don't have to be at war with them, but it's likely we will be regardless to one degree or another and so ongoing wariness, vigilance and caution are called for - anything else would be to indulge a naive foolishness.

Why are we not hearing more criticism viz how absurd it is to shut down one of America's great cities in order to catch a 19 year old fugitive? He's dangerous? Ah... I'm guessing you can go into the inner city of any American metropolis and find a whole shit load of dangerous people. Sure, there could be a lot of undisclosed info here that justifies shutting down a great American city which will cost how many of millions of dollars - but on the surface of it this seems absurd. And what kind of message does it send to Islamist wackos? I'm not getting this.

Let's make the debate about immigration reform, by which we mean it seems mainly 'amnesty' for illegals, let's make it clear what the problem is here for any conservative or any moderate who looks at the immigration policy status quo in the US and says to themselves "ah... this all seems kind of fucked up..." - let's make it clear that the problem here is that no objective observer trusts the Democrats to work against their own interests - everyone understands that the way things are now works to the political benefit of the Democrats - why should anyone believe they're actually gonna work against their own interests and enforce border security, enforce stringent paths to citizenship? You'd have to be a fool to trust these people when it comes to immigration reform. And that's the problem. I'm sure Rubio's intentions are good and his plan deserves a hearing - and I'm certainly willing to entertain notion that some sort of amnesty is the only reasonable way to go here - but I have zero confidence in the Democrats playing nice and serving any interests other than their own on this issue and therefore have a hard time believing it sensible to make any promises whatsoever on what a future amnesty might look like before the border is secured and immigration policy as a whole is depoliticized. Now, sure, you can make the argument that you can't get those two things without first convincing more Hispanics to climb out of the left wing gutter and vote right and that to get there you need to sign off on some kind of amnesty - problem is, I don't buy that argument because I see very little in the mindset of the Hispanic voter that suggests an immanent sympathy for a conservative view of governance and world affairs - yes, I don't see them being as monolithically locked in as African-Americans to nanny state liberalism, but I do see them looking a lot like the Jewish voter in America who, unlike the Jewish voter in Israel, has a pronounced cultural affinity for a left wing view of things [well, of course, generally only when it comes to foreign policy and all things military does the Israeli voter tend right - tends a bit differently when it comes to economic policy].

This a very nice article by V Hanson on what Obama has wrought, how it was managed and the dysfunctional, delusional, republic dividing malaise it portends. It puts me in mind of a startling reality governing the whole Obama thing expressed both in the idolatrous press and media or simply in the inchoate thoughts of the average stupefied Obamaphile - that being that it's almost as if it doesn't matter to these people whether or not the Chosen One is good at his job or if in objective terms has been good for the country - him just being him is enough for them. This is quite disturbing stuff - for these people consideration of Obama's performance as president just gets in the way of the ideal they seek, they crave, of the illusion they long for - and so they pile on excuses and rationalizations and obfuscations or just out right denial in order to keep reality at bay. It's all very disturbing. Certainly is no way to run a super power, at least, not if it's your goal to stay a super power - and I guess that thought probably captures the essence of what's going on here - it reminds me of certain liberal types who talk glowingly about the rise of China but when you listen closely it's not the rise per se of China that excites but rather the tantalizing notion of that rise coming at the expense of America. These people really hate the America that was - I'm not sure exactly what they think they're gonna replace it with - but I'm pretty god damn confident that whatever it is it won't work and will prove bad in oh so many ways.

I don't understand - if the conventional wisdom on North Korea is that they act crazy in order to scare you into giving them something that they need but are not so crazy as to believe they could actually win a war with whomever or avoid total annihilation if they crossed a certain line in provoking the US - if this is the conventional wisdom, ie they won't cross those lines that lead to assured destruction, then where's the rationale in continuing to give them what they want and thereby enabling them to arrive at the brink of producing a deliverable nuclear weapon? If we're saying the crazy boasts are hollow, then where's the logic in conceding to the boast? Likewise, if the proffered rationale of this inaction is that we can't know for sure that they aren't that crazy, then explain to me how it can possibly make sense to allow a country that may indeed be that crazy to develop deliverable nuclear weapons?

Our policy doesn't make any sense as far as I'm concerned, aside from the fact it offers up the comforting illusion that by pursuing it we're avoiding a something worse. But as a practical matter probably the only way to avoid the coming of those worst case scenarios - war or in lieu of war the North becoming a nuclear power [and consequently Iran becoming a nuclear power] - is if China steps in and either convinces the regime to change or forces the regime to change - but they will only do that if they believe we intend to or can be swayed by circumstances into forcing a regime change - yet our policy works entirely against establishing that kind of leverage. And so China sits on its hands, watching and taking notes towards the time when it decides to test America's resolve in the Pacific.

What happens, I wonder, what happens if republicans give in on immigration, or more accurately, amnesty - and by give in one means to sign off on a deal that is far from perfect but they feel they have no choice but to agree to because the optics of walking away and the glee with which Obama et al will run that grist through their racial mill are judged to be worse - what happens if republicans cave on immigration and gain nothing or close to nothing at the polls because of it? Seems to me you'd probably be forced to conclude that the latino voter was quickly acquiring the monolithic ideological tendencies of the African-American voter - love big gov't initiatives, Obamacare, taxing the evil rich, empty touchy feely or stridently aggressive rhetoric about the putative glories of multiculturalism as if by simply not being of white Anglo-Saxon origin a cultural artifact became necessarily good - etc etc - in short one would probably have to conclude that Hispanics like blacks were irredeemably lost to the left - and if it starts to look like that indeed is the case, then it seems to me America will have arrived at a pretty perilous crossroads - it will mean that the first black president has so successfully fused left wing academia's obsession with cancerous identity politics into the electoral zeitgeist of the democrats that the country is on the verge of being subsumed by a state of permanent disunion along racial and class warfare lines - call me a wretched cynic, but that kind of sounds like a bad thing to me.

I mean, what if on the heels of an abysmally bad Obama presidency [I think any objective observer would describe the Obama reign right now as decidedly bad so abysmally bad I'd say is fairly within reach] - what if on the heels of that ostensibly disqualifying reality Hillary in 2016 still manages to beat a very popular and highly qualified Chris Christie [who I pray is the nominee as things stand now] because she takes by virtual default 90% of the black vote, 75% of the latino vote, 65% of the female vote? I don't see how a person with a clear, unbiased view of things would not be troubled by such a sight.

Now, sure, Hillary could surprise and prove a much better president than she was Secretary of State - and, sure, under Bill's wise counsel she could wake up the morning after being elected with the full understanding that Obama did much harm to the country and it's now her job to try and heal it - that could happen, but I doubt it, and that's because, when it comes to domestic policy at least, I think she's just as liberal as Obama and believes just as surely as he that the country needs to be forced left. And here's the key: Obama has given democrats the roadmap for doing this and until it's proven flawed or misguided I don't expect any left wing politician to shun it - briefly the map being: shamelessly exploit your media advantage to manipulate voters and dominate narratives, ruthlessly ply identity politics and class warfare rhetoric to split the country and maximize benefits of changing demographics, and then tie it all together with an aggressive ground game driven by highly sophisticated statistical analysis that has very little to do with the promoting of wise policy and almost everything to do with demonizing the opposition. Unless Obama's presidency over the next three years falls to a ruin so egregious even the NY Times can't ignore it, expect Hillary to follow this map to victory.

If it comes to that I'm guessing the key will be the Asian vote - if 2016 transpires as described above but Asians move to the right so that that demographic looks to be evening out, that would be a sign of hope - I'd still say the country was in bad shape and facing some damn tough challenges - I'd still say eight years of Obama had generated a deadly toxin in the body politik that could take generations to expel - but not all hope was lost. Close, though - hell, a best case scenario [Christie] could prove highly troubling and problematic for the GOP - but what if they scorn Christie and go with another loser utterly lacking in the ability to bridge those dangerous gaps and divides now fracturing the electorate into a hopelessly bifurcated mash of ignorance and petty grievances? Well... fat ladies singing everywhere... corpulent choirs of doom.

It always tended to be my belief that one of the reasons liberal elites go on so about gun control is that it gives them a convenient way out of talking about inner city violence in America, especially among blacks, in terms that might connect this violence to an actual reality, ie the idea that this violence amounts to a graphic manifestation of how liberal policy, guided as it is by naivety and simplistic, ideologically driven rationalisations, has so abjectly, so utterly failed - Johnsons's great society, ah... not so great after all... kind of a gigantic fuck up, actually. Liberals can't go there of course - hell, that would involve questioning the whole point of the Obama revolution, for christ sake - so they blame the NRA et al, which is a proxy for blaming white people, which is a not so subtle way of saying that if black culture in places like Chicago is a god damn dysfunctional mess then that's the fault of... racism, of course. And accordingly on Morning Joe this morning David Axelrod blamed the social breakdown in Chicago's black community, the appalling violence, the flash mobs [a story which the liberal press is still managing to avoid somehow], the whole sad mess, Axelrod managed essentially to blame all this on the NRA - if only those evil white racists [I'm paraphrasing the between the lines stuff] would allow background checks on guns... ah, what miracles couldn't be wrought if America were only a little less white and little more brown - this is the way these people think, it's astounding - Obama's whole raison d'être can be summed up as: if you're a successful white guy and you don't feel guilty about that, there's something wrong with you. Pontification and misleading, guileful rhetoric upon race has become the avant-garde of the new socialism - one expects it will end as badly as the old socialism - worse, actually, since it's taking America with it this time.

It could take a generation to undo the amount of damage Obama has done - more - and that's assuming we get a competent, appealing republican in the White House in 2016, which quite frankly doesn't seem likely - so... I guess we're doomed.

I find it hard to believe republicans are as stupid as they sometimes seem - I won't sell them short, many do indeed deserve the title of idiot - but are all drowning in stupidity? Because polls have turned in favor of them viz gun control they seem to want to mock Obama's demagoguing of the subject - do they really not understand that it costs Obama nothing to plead gun control in sentimental, highly emotional terms but that if another disturbingly violent display happens in the run up to the midterms that plays perfectly with his wrought pleas that he will reap huge electoral gains from it? It's a disgustingly cynical way to look at it, sure - but this is what he's doing - are they really so stupid they can't see it? Maybe they do and simply realize they can't accuse him of something so vile - maybe that's it - does nothing to put my mind at ease. When the West was way ahead of the rest, democracy as we practice it seemed fine, flawed but fine - now though? As mismanagement and the welfare state and rising competition from China et al have set us back on our heels, suddenly the inherent inefficiencies of democracy don't seem so harmless. This toxic mix of highly seductive mass media that is incorrigibly left wing and an electorate that is ignorant, unwise, ill informed and increasingly dependent on a nurturing bureaucracy is causing me to seriously wonder if we have what it takes to survive.

Meanwhile, as America wastes its time arguing gay marriage and amnesty for illegals and gun control - argues these trivial and or pernicious and or misguided things not because the country will be well served by the initiatives - indeed, any objective notion of what might be best for the country doesn't obtrude at all - no, argues these things because the left smells wedge issues that can further swell the ranks of left leaning voters and republicans are scared shitless - meanwhile as this pathetic silliness persists China, bit by bit, takes actions that they hope will eventually render us an after thought in the most powerful nation in world sweepstakes.