Wait a second - a blink already? US orders its air carriers to obey China's air defense zone rules? This puts Japan and South Korea, who have given opposite instructions, in difficult position, no? Is this classic Obama foreign policy again at work: a token show of strength [the B-52s] that covers up the inevitable embrace of weakness and resignation and retreat? They say they're doing it for the sake of clarity - clarity of what? China gets what it wants? And if clarity is their goal, does that mean no more US military flights through disputed zone without first complying with China's rules? I'm not liking the sounds of this at all. Soon Japan is gonna start to know what it feels like to be Israel when Obama's looking out for your interests. As Mark Steyn wrote in his column today:

Some years ago, I heard that great scholar of Islam, Bernard Lewis, caution that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. The Obama administration seems to have raised the thought to the level of doctrine.

"... it does often seem that for the average liberal it's not the case that the Obama presidency has been a near perfect manifestation of imperfection, of gross incompetence being guided by abject foolishness and the sentimental arrogance of a hollow and misplaced idealism... but rather it is that the brilliance of the man has been undone by the irrational constraints of democracy and consensual representation that have kept him from doing what he thought right regardless of what the lowly represented might think of his intentions... you almost start to admire the prodigious and unshakeable reach of their denial, the self sustaining ignorance of their delusion... I do swear that if you were to give these people a choice between democracy as the Founders imagined it and a monarchy with Obama as regent many would choose the latter, some without even having to think about it... but hell, who knows, maybe in a sense they're right... after all, pretty damn hard to defend an institution that gave us Bush and then, adding insult to injury, the empty and enfeebling grandeur of Dear Leader's court..."  

"... the selfie is the perfect artistic expression of the modern age... absolute in its superficiality and yet in its self obsession somehow proud of that shallowness, as if it were testament to an inherent, incontestable good... brave new world indeed..."

"... everything I needed to know about the decline of America I witnessed in a binge viewing of The Shield... urban decay... economic corruption... cultural dissolution... the diseased dysfunction of identity politics feeding off the carcass of an ignorant, indolent citizenry... government agencies incapable of managing, for a variety of reasons, many self imposed, the wave of shit washing over them and often left with nothing to do but feebly add their lot of garbage to the filthy stream... yeah, it's all there... almost as if the point of the show was to say the end is coming and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it... entertaining television, though..."  

Some are going a bit silly in praising Obama for sending two B-52s out to take a giant shit on China's new air security zone - sorry, he did the right thing, sure,  but this was a no brainer - you had to do this, hanging Japan out to dry by not doing it would have been utterly inexcusable and would have risked inviting the rapid incubation of some pretty lethal toxins. This could still very easily go wobbly but, yes, Obama got this one right - but it's pretty gratuitous to congratulate someone for doing the obvious, where the only other choice was a complete dereliction of duty - a person gets up in the  morning and brushes their teeth ya don't give 'em a standing ovation.

The curious thing here is that a while ago I speculated that Obama having established himself as a weak foreign policy president who either distrusts, is wary of, or outright dislikes the conventional aspects of American power, I speculated that China might view this weakness as an opportunity to be exploited and thereby be tempted into doing something ill advised - I wonder if that's what we're seeing here - because China now risks looking weak and foolish themselves - they only have two options seems to me: back down, with various equivocations etc etc; or attempt to goad Japan into doing something intemperate that turns up the heat and will require from Obama a much, much more difficult and perilous decision which he then possibly mishandles. You know China will be loathe to back down [their version of Twitter is already full of contempt for the cowardly politburo's refusal to I guess take on a couple of B-52s] - so... like I said, this thing could still go quite wobbly.

[or do we assume that China would certainly realize that US had no choice but to push back on this provocation and that therefore this is just the first move in a series of gambits? The B-52s were the right play by Dear Leader - but you can't stop there. The point needs to be driven home because otherwise China will play the long game of prodding and plying until resistance falls and they assume the thing they want, daring you to deny them it - I'd fly daily patrols through the disputed zone from now until whenever - hell, I'd establish a little Marine base on the Senkakus - but then I'm a bit crazy that way] 

People do love to jump to conclusions and embrace broad assumptions in defense of their preferred ideological sympathies - and so it seems the debate over the Iran deal tends to break down into neocons attacking naive give peace a chance liberals and vice versa - but I don't care for either of that lot. I don't agree that Obama is naive, at least not in terms of narrow and immediate outcomes [long term, all idealists are naive since that is the only way to maintain a faith in the delusional illogic of their claims] - misguided, yes, but I don't see naive [although I don't completely rule it out] - he wants America's military profile reduced, constrained, he doesn't want it viewed as a mighty and necessary force for good because that implies the fighting of wars, which liberals like him regard as something intrinsically evil, a legacy of white hegemony across the globe, and because it's damn near impossible to both fund a bloated welfare state and maintain the most dominant military force that has ever existed - therefore the Iran deal works for Obama regardless of whether or not it actually works - in other words it works if it keeps both Israel and the US military on the sidelines; all other considerations are ignored, glossed over, marginalized, rationalized away or rose color glassed into obscurity. As for the necons [a term which some liberals loosely use to describe anyone who doesn't gag at the mere thought of an engaged military] - well, I don't have much use for them either.

I certainly don't long for war or myopically believe an armed adventure against Iran would be simple or straightforward or unstained by ugly entanglements and disturbing consequences - but let's look at the cold logic of the situation: if you want to stop proliferation, especially amongst roguish nations, and most especially amongst roguish nations who when nuked up have the potential to set all kinds of disquieting dynamics in motion, then the only way to do that is to apply pressure through economic penalties and the credible, utterly believable threat of a military option should those penalties fail to convince. You do not negotiate an end to proliferation against a foe committed to acquiring a nuclear capability because there are no reasonable trade offs to be negotiated - you have to force the end you want. It's like getting armed assailants to leave your home - you don't say to them they can stay under certain circumstances or they can stand around on your front yard waving guns about under certain circumstances or they can come back next week under certain circumstances - no, you want them gone and gone for good and the only way to do that is if they're struck by a light from heaven and magically decide to give up all the armed assailing - or you force them out with the understanding that if they return they're dead. I suppose you can negotiate the means by which you intend to force them out - but they're not going to give up something they really want because of you offering them something of less value as far as they're concerned - unless of course they have to.

This is why a negotiated nuke deal with North Korea was impossible - hard to make economic penalties bite against a dictatorship where the people it oppresses have few freedoms and are used to privation - but more importantly, there could never be any serious military pressure applied because of China's vehement opposition and probably as well reluctance by South Korea to open that box of snakes. And then consider also that as bad as a nuked up N Korea is, still its military is contained, not going anywhere - there's no regional impact to the threat, it does not have armed tentacles spreading out and stirring up trouble and it does not have any amenable allies that can be used to threaten our interests. I do think it is a mistake that we are not shooting down their attempts to perfect ballistic missile technology - I do think we should make it clear to China that the next attempt by Lil' Kim to launch something long and dark will be Aegised all to hell - but, neither Bush nor Obama thought that a good idea so there ya go.

Iran is different, though, isn't it. Their activities are not contained, they threaten American interests and allies, nuked up they threaten putting in motion chains of events that could prove quite destabilizing and full of peril - on the positive side though, compared to North Korea, their population is vulnerable to manipulation viz sanctions and not only is Iran not protected by an ally that makes the military option undoable, several of their neighbors have made it very clear they'd be more than fine if it came to that. Just one problem: any clear thinking person has known all along, and more importantly Iran has probably know all along that Obama had no intention of pursuing the military option if it became necessary and that meant that eventually in order to extricate himself from a tricky mess and to keep Israel on a leash he'd have no choice but to enter into flawed negotiations. I think you can look at everything Obama has said and done foreign policy wise and come quite naturally to that conclusion - but for instance just look at the way he resisted adopting tough sanctions: if you're committed to the military option then you want to embrace sanctions as soon as possible because you want to give them as much time as possible to work since you know if they don't work you gotta pull the trigger and no sane person looks forward to pulling that trigger - Obama wasn't in a hurry because he never had any intention of pulling that trigger. Other than saying the military option was on the table Obama did absolutely nothing to convince anyone that that was true.

And now we're supposed to believe if the Iranians abuse the deal [actually, this abuse has already started] that Obama can manage the wherewithal to reinstitute the sanctions regime in order to bring them back in line? C'mon, people - that would be hard to do in the best of circumstances, especially if Iran plays the game with great cunning, which of course they will - but remember, Russia and China were part of this deal and liked it because they knew it was a sham and knew when that sham started to fall apart America would look weak and its relationships with key allies would be corrupted - a weakened America and not a nuke free Iran is the vested interest here of Russia and China and that is why all the bravado from Kerry and Obama about the sanctions relief being reversible is pure bull shit.

I could be wrong - doubt very much I am.

Obama essentially admits that he was lying when he promised he would not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and that all options were on the table to prevent such a thing - and in doing so also admits what any objective observer already fully knows, that he is not fit to be president of the United States:

"We cannot commit ourselves to an endless cycle of violence, and tough talk and bluster may be the easy thing to do politically, but it's not the right thing for our security," Obama said in San Francisco. "We cannot rule out peaceful solutions to the world's problems".

No one has ever said, no sane person anyway, that we long for war - but there was never any hope of stopping Iran's nuclear intentions, or any other nation who now takes up that mantle, without the credible threat of violence - that's what it means to be America - and you are not fit to lead America if you are ideologically or as a matter of personality predisposed to deny or dread or live in fear of that bitter reality - at the very least you should give the voters a choice on whether or not they wish to have such a person leading them and not wholly dissemble through two elections about who you are and what you intend.

The truly absurd thing about this statement is that it totally undermines the deal he is trying to defend - what now is the motivation for Iran to adhere to the agreement if it is indeed their goal to become a nuclear power? I mean, clear thinking people already understood this - but Obama has now announced it for all to hear and done so in defence of the thing he has rendered null and void by defending it. Absurd. 

I've heard some people saying that new report claiming that Obama administration has been negotiating a deal since before Rouhani came on the scene is not a concern - ah, sorry, but that's very wrong - the whole reason we're supposed to buy into this agreement is because a putative 'liberal' is now president of Iran, it's because of that that this is labeled a great opportunity that cannot be squandered - if negotiations have been going on since before Rouhani came along then that proves my point: this has nothing to do with denying Iran the bomb and everything to do with getting Obama out from under the burden of the military option. There was only one way short of a military intercession to keep Iran from getting the bomb: tough sanctions combined with a committed, believable threat to use force if the sanctions didn't work - as soon as you enter into 'negotiations' about an alternative to force the Iranians know right away that force is no longer on the table - I mean, I think you can infer that from the get go given everything Obama has said and done foreign policy-wise since becoming president - but a desperate turn to negotiations that do not imply the ending of Iran's nuclear operations combined with Obama's behaviour in Syria means that Iran has known for quite some time they have Obama over a barrel and the only problem now was keeping Israel on the sidelines.

Think about it - if Obama never intended to use the military option then once you get to a certain point in development of nuke fuel cycle you only have two options - sit on the sanctions until which time Israel acts or Iran tests a device - both bad if you're Obama - or enter into an agreement that everyone knows is an illusion but at least constrains Israel and allows Obama to say when Iran tests a device "well, I negotiated a good deal in good faith and they betrayed that trust - don't blame me for their dishonesty" - I've essentially always believed that to be the truth of what's going on here but news that they were in talks before Rouhani came on the scene now confirms it for me.

[John Bolton agrees with me that this agreement is all about saving face for Obama viz the use of force and keeping Israel in a box - and he raises the big question now on the table - faced with the now unavoidable reality that Obama has stabbed them in the back and decided Iran with the bomb is better than all the options available to him to stop such a thing, what now does Israel do? Bolton thinks the logic of the situation drives them towards acting if they feel their actions could make a difference - that has always been the big question impossible to answer from the outside looking in: does Israel see a way it can tolerate a nuked up Iran, and if not how confident are they that by themselves they can manage a successful military strike? Another question also arises given recent unconfirmed reports: are the Saudis worried enough about a nuked up Iran and pissed off enough at Obama to actually contemplate helping the hated Zionists? If true, how would such a fragile and tentative alliance impact Israel's calculations, not just on the military feasibility side, but just as importantly as regards the deep and unpredictable political fallout from an attack by them?]

[another curiosity to consider: recently Netanyahu has stated unequivocally that he will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear capability - now, clearly Obama has no problem making America look weak by announcing red lines and then refusing to honor them - but looking weak is not an option for Israel - not an option for America either really, unless of course you're liberal and then it's almost an imperative - so, since it's hard to believe Bibi would draw a red line and then back away from it thereby looking weak, what does one make of his claim? That Israel has already decided in the affirmative viz military strikes? Or how 'bout that indeed rumors of an alliance with the Saudis are true and plans have already been drawn up on how to confront Iran?] 

So, Putin calls the deal a win for everyone - interesting thing to say since if the deal is actually any good from a West/Israel point of view Iran could only see it as a win if it is indeed their goal to reach a detente with America by abandoning its nuke program - which pretty sharply conflicts with Rouhani hailing the deal as the international community acknowledging Iran's right to enrich and develop nuclear technology - so, clear as mud all that. Obama and Kerry call it an historic deal that rolls back Iran's nuke ambitions - which again goes against what Iran is saying about the deal - and Netanyahu chimes in by calling it an historic deal alright, historically bad. So he's not impressed.

Obviously it's gonna take a few days of people going through it and nailing down to the nitty gritty before one can say something definitive about it - from what I've read on surface does seem a bit tougher than what I was expecting but still not tough enough to convince me this is anything other than a charade designed to hem in Israel and take the military option off the table - if Iran was serious about abandoning its nuclear ambitions America would have been able to ask for concessions that clearly establish that seriousness - I don't see that here - what I'm seeing at the moment is the only power in the world capable of stopping roguish nations from developing nuclear weapons declaring to all interested parties they're no longer in that business, so have at it - but, let's be fair and wait for the details to get fully hashed out.

With a nuke deal with Iran now seemingly imminent and uber skeptics like myself viewing these antics like Plato's cave dweller gazing at shadows - what would incline me towards a more favorable take on these charades? Like Israel, I'd want to see work on the Plutonium reactor shutdown and all enrichment stopped - and although Israel wants the destruction of centrifuges to begin immediately I'm not sure I need to see that step just yet since to be reasonable Iran would have to hold something back viz further negotiations. If I see these things, I might be moved to give the deal a reluctant benefit of the doubt for a brief period of let's say six months - guess much would also depend on what kind of verification protocols were put in place, especially with reports floating about regarding secret processing facilities - verification is one of those tough things to consider for a person on the outside looking in because you just can't know how good or reliable US or Israeli intelligence is concerning what's actually going on in Iran. That being said, pretty sure a complete end to enrichment and the plutonium reactor going bye bye would be my minimum requirements for treating the deal as something possibly legitimate - maybe also the handing over of the 20% enriched uranium they now have.

[what are odds you see something like this? Slim to none - as I've said before, way I see it Obama needs an agreement that will hold regardless of whether or not it does what it intends so he's not forced into an embrace of the military option or left enduring the humiliation of backing away from his promises thereof - and the only way that happens is if Iran is actually serious about abandoning its nuclear ambitions in order to achieve a detente with America, which I judge highly unlikely - or if there's enough wiggle room and ambiguity in the agreement that Iran feels they're gonna get to have their cake and eat it too - understand, if both Obama and Iran's goal here is to keep Israel in check until, as with North Korea, it's too late to do anything about what Iran's real intentions are, then any deal that doesn't securely slam the door on enrichment will be 'bad' from Israel's point of view]

When a conservative news source like Fox does a story about the 'knockout game', also known as 'polar bearing', and feels compelled out of political correctness to not mention the pronounced racial component to the game - ie random and brutal black violence against whites and Asians - well, that's a pretty strong indicator that problems and dysfunction plaguing black culture will be impossible to remedy because an open and honest 'conversation' about those problems is impossible to have. One of course gets why liberal media doesn't go there - liberals believe that racism is strictly a function of white privilege and that therefore to say anything negative about any other culture other than that evil WASPy culture is racist and consequently wrong - as well, to blame dysfunction in black culture on anything other than white racism would be to admit that the grand illusion of social engineering that was Johnson's Great Society was to say the least misguided in many of its presumptions - in short, for liberals to not blame everything bad in the world on white privilege [aka open markets, capitalism, greed, colonialism - essentially anything in the rise of Western Civilization that had anything to do with the acquisition of wealth and war] for liberals not to lay all blame on these great white evils would mean to throw into doubt the weak assumptions undergirding the entirety of their delusional idealism. So one gets liberal media not wanting to touch the 'knockout game' and other manifestations of dysfunction in black culture - but Fox News? That says a lot about how intractable these problems will remain - which means, far as I'm concerned, this will all end badly. I remember reading an essay by Thomas Sowell, a conservative black academic, where he sadly conceded that he was glad he was old because that meant he probably wouldn't be around when the great race war, which he already saw to be in its beginning stages, arrived to rip the country apart. I thought that was a bit extreme in its apocalyptic dread. Not so sure anymore - after all, the destructive pathology of liberal delusion has certainly been evinced in all its deformed ugliness by the Obama presidency and the media's besotted reaction to it.

Cementing further the notion that under Obama Democrats and the media/press catamites that serve them are devolving into a proto-fascist party that looks fondly with warm eyes to the day when an absolutist liberal oligarchy will rule the land, Harry Reid does away with Senate filibuster rules. Pernicious acts like this completely undermine the empirically driven skepticism and distrust of power betokened by phrase 'checks and balances' that was the principle informing everything the Founding Fathers believed in - a democracy that is simply about the rule of the majority is not a democracy - the whole point of democracy is for opposing forces to debate with each other, contend for influence in the open marketplace of ideas and thereby reach a workable consensus, a reasonable compromise that preserves freedoms and retards abuse of power - undoing the filibuster rules was a pernicious thing when the GOP tried it in 2005 but is much more so an evil endeavor under Obama - if the GOP had gotten away with it in 2005 they still would have been constrained and constantly countered by a hostile media and press - Obama will not be restricted by such limitations and that is why the impulse towards autocracy under a misguided ideologue like him is a much, much more frightening and dangerous thing.

If Republicans cannot gain control of the Senate in 2014 and thereby hopefully mitigate the damage being done by this administration, what's this country going to look like come 2016? Just how deep will the shit be? Will the country even be governable? If the person who takes over in 2016 is not a truly gifted leader who understands not just that Obama was an awful president but also that a reactionary, ideologically driven counter punch to that awfulness that merely feeds the flames of hyper partisanship will not be helpful in the long term no matter how good it may fleetingly feel [which means pretty much that the next president cannot be both a liberal and well suited to undo the damage done], then I gotta believe things could get pretty god damn ugly out there.

If the GOP is smart they start running national ads right away that make the point: the last time the Obamaphiles had absolute control they burdened the country with a trillion dollar stimulus that didn't stimulate and the clusterfuck that is Obamacare - now they're cynically scheming for that kind of control again - fear this intemperance and the harm it can do.   

To continue the beating of my point into the ground, the 'feud' between the NY Times and Netanyahu is revealing -  because of the thing that is never mentioned. The Times is mad at Bibi because they feel his strident and public criticisms of the would be pending deal with Iran are ruining the chance of an historic agreement being made [even though to imagine something historic in the offing here is nothing but pure conjecture - there's absolutely nothing in the public domain to suggest Iran is doing anything here other than playing games - which is not to say a real deal is impossible, but only to point out that there's much, much more reason to doubt the possibility of such an outcome than to vainly believe in its proto inevitability]. What I find interesting in this 'debate' is how the elephant in the room cannot be spoken of - by the Times because they cannot see or simply refuse to see the truth standing right in front of them, and by Netanyahu because to point at the elephant would be diplomatically uncouth and ill advised - namely, that if you believe that Obama, contrary to his stated claims, has no intention of using force to stop Iran's nuclear program and has never had any intention to venture down that road, then what Netanyahu is saying and doing makes perfect sense whereas the illusions The Times insists on clinging to look like gross naivety or lies told in service of their master. 

Now Sam Power is out talking about Iran in terms similar to Kerry - that is, terms which sound like equivocations drawing flimsy, unsound conclusions - as in: Iran walking away from deal last week is solid proof that it was good deal for the West and Israel. Well, sorry, but all the optics etc etc suggest Iran was ready to take the deal until France torpedoed it with a public shaming of how bad the deal was - if true, Iran walked away because they would have realized they have all the leverage here - Obama needs a deal, that's the only way he can escape his red line without being humiliated - he doesn't mind the US looking weak - he does mind if he's the one looks like a stooge - if Iran gets the bomb he needs to be able to blame it on them breaking the deal - if Iran walked away when France shit on the deal America was pushing it's because they feel they have all the leverage and can afford to play coy while America turns the screws on France. I could be way off base, but what I'm seeing and hearing is Iran acting like a party that feels they have the upper hand because Obama needs a way out from his promise of using force to deny Iran the bomb - to turn Power's illogic around on her: the fact the French rejected a deal as too weak that America was pushing would seem to indicate that's exactly what's going on here - the fact America would be willing to relax sanctions without requiring Iran to do much of anything other than supposedly suspending enrichment [tons of wiggle room there] is just sauce for the goose far as Iran is concerned - which is exactly the point Israel is making. Look, Netanyahu et al are not fools - they see what's going on here, that if Obama was serious about using force he'd be playing hardball in negotiations, not softball which sends the opposite message to Iran - so when Bibi goes public with his complaints and warnings, I don't think they're addressed to Kerry, because Israel's inner sanctum must see the writing on the wall here - no, when Bibi goes public, he's addressing the US Congress and the American people - that's his best leverage.

The only possible consideration that could mitigate the negative effects and consequences one sees trailing in the wake of Obama's foreign policy inclinations and disturbingly on display in the Iran negotiations dance - that being Obama clearly seeing American power as something that needs to be reduced and consequent to that the role that it has held since WWII as the 'necessary force' guarding democratic principles emasculated to a significant degree - the only possible consideration that could mitigate these foreboding realities relative to the Iran crisis is if the theocracy is indeed interested in forging an alliance of sorts with the US and is willing to step back from its nuclear ambitions in order to achieve that. Some people have made this point, saying if such isn't the goal with these negotiations, it should be - the idea being, as we forged diplomatic ties with our 'enemy' communist China in order to  contain the USSR, so we should forge diplomatic relations with our 'enemy' Shia Iran in order to contain the real threat to America, Sunni extremism. I don't buy that - there were powerful reasons for China to want relations with the US so Nixon's gestures made sense - what does Iran gain from an 'alliance' with us if they already believe that they can unwind the sanctions without giving up their nuclear ambitions and that Obama will not intercede militarily? Aside from that, with China and Russia on their side, why would they need US security guarantees against the Sunni,  especially with Egypt having deep sixed the Muslim Brotherhood and Assad looking like he'll survive in Syria? And then, how does an Islamic theocracy defend its abuse of individual rights and freedoms without the evils of a 'Great Satan' to use as a justification for that autocratic abuse? And finally, how exactly would embracing the Shia dynamic in the region shield the US from Sunni extremism? Is the thinking here that whatever 'pact' is agreed to with Iran would necessarily include Hezbollah, which would mean they would have to make peace with Israel and then Sunni forces, feeling isolated, would necessarily then need to fall in line? To me that's a little like throwing a bunch of puzzle pieces on a table and having them all fall perfectly into place. Defies credibility.  

I've said it's very hard to believe that the Obama administration is foolish or naive enough to get suckered in by Iran on negotiations - negotiations that are designed as far as vile anti hope and change skeptics like myself are concerned to either forestall action by Israel while work towards a bomb continues in the shadows or begin an unstoppable process of slowly unwinding the sanctions - or both - and that therefore the reason that Kerry is pursuing these 'bogus' negotiations without Iran giving up much of anything must be because Obama has decided Iran with the bomb is better than the other options available to him - to do that, he can't just let Iran develop a bomb because he's sworn several times he won't let that happen and would look damn weak and foolish if they go ahead and test something - no, he needs to enter into a phony agreement so that when Iran breaks it, although he'll still certainly look bad, he won't look as bad - his main goal here is to avoid the military option and a phony agreement that also ties Israel's hand is pretty much the only way he can to do that. It's basically his red line in Syria all over again - a bogus agreement that gets him out of using the US military - America comes away looking weak and its allies are left harbouring grave concerns - but as Syria has shown us, indeed Obama's entire foreign policy has shown us,  he doesn't care about those things, those conventional terms defining American might - he wants a weakened America, he wants a constrained if not hobbled US military that can no longer play the role of the 'necessary power' - this is what all uber liberal ideologues want and have so for a very long time, and this is what he's giving them - doesn't matter if it makes him look weak in those terms - he doesn't believe in those terms, they mean nothing to him - and besides, you cannot pay for the welfare state liberals need in order to govern if you're also paying for a military that makes a difference - just look at Europe.

Anyway, I've said this approach must be deliberate and not just a consequence of naive idiocy - but Kerry gave an interview to MSNBC today that makes we wonder if maybe they are after all just that stupid - I mean, I still believe the scenario above is correct - but Kerry said some outrageously dumb stuff in this interview, stuff that just made no sense, so you got to wonder if maybe indeed they are just idiots - or hopelessly naive. He tried to make point that if we don't soften sanctions now in order to get them to the table they won't come to the table and will continue towards a bomb - he in fact came very close to admitting that the military option is nothing but an empty threat and all that's left are the negotiations - but obviously if Iran is willing to walk away from negotiations because they're being asked to make real cuts to show they're serious, that means they already believe Obama has no intention of using force - they know as I do that Obama, as with Syria, is looking for a way out and therefore token gestures are enough - Iran and Obama have the same goal here: keep Israel in check until it's simply too late for them to do anything about what's happening via a military strike.

There has been talk that Iran and Kerry have been in secret negotiations for a while now and that a 'deal' of some sort has already been struck and would have been enacted last week but for the inscrutable French. You start peeling back the near incoherent verbiage Kerry is throwing about viz these negotiations, combined with what past behaviour by Obama when it comes to foreign policy tells about what to expect from him - and this all does seem like a staged bit of nonsense.

Obama needs an agreement to get out of his red line commitment - the Iranians need negotiations of some sort to continue in order to keep Israel at bay - therefore, if the US senate refuses to relent on sanctions as Kerry wants, then if I'm right Iran and Kerry will find some other way to keep them at the table, even if only marginally - Iran may not believe Obama would use force, but no one really knows what to expect from Israel. If I'm right and Obama has already agreed to something of this sort or Iran has simply come to the natural conclusion that this how things will play out given Obama's clear predilections, then essentially the US has no leverage - they need these negotiations more than the Iranians do - Iran has options if the talks fail - Obama doesn't, other than of course the military one - and as I've said before I've never believed he had any intention whatsoever of going down that road.

Hidden camera conservative gadfly operative O'Keefe has a new video out about Obamacare and its ground game implementation involving evil liberal cadres dutifully doing the nascent oligarchy's wretched democracy killing business of turning the country forever and irrevocably to the left using any trick or scam or scheme they can conjure up. The video doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know - that Obamacare was never about improving health services or saving money or any of that crap but was rather always about creating a highly politicized bureaucratic cudgel that can be used to beat conservatism in America to death by instituting a insurmountable liberal base of poor minorities, young single women etc etc who will be powerfully motivated every four years to go out and vote for a president who will keep safe their 'free' healthcare - so the video doesn't break any news in that regard - but seeing this monster in all its garish, profoundly ignorant ugliness is really quite a disturbing thing.

[one criticism though - the hidden video stuff is compelling - O'Keefe's 'theatrics' around that video are embarrasing - are conservatives entirely incapable of being clever and funny when it comes to new media? Do they not get show business at all? This wanting is really an achilles heel for the GOP - messaging sucks - which essentially is almost the sole reason why Christie fascinates me]

In interesting [interesting as in gosh, that seems kind of stupid] interview with Israeli TV Kerry, aside from suggesting that if this round of peace talks with Palestinians fails they will be justified in resorting to violence, thereby implying the fault will lie with Israel, which is a startlingly foolish thing to be saying - but aside from that bit of idiocy Kerry made point about upcoming [so it now clearly seems] agreement with Iran that it's better to be talking with them than to not be talking with them - to which the obvious rebuttal is: unless of course that's their exact intention, to draw out negotiations so as to buy time, which would very clearly not be a better thing. But got me to thinking, especially since Kerry reiterated Obama pledge that the US would absolutely not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons - got me wondering, if the talk about the coming agreement is accurate, that Iran will get a break on sanctions in return for putting a hold on uranium enrichment for six months while negotiations continue, and skeptics like myself are right in believing that Iran is just playing Kerry and his merry band for suckers - if in the six month interregnum Iran finishes work on a testable device [several reports have stated that's a real possibility], will they break the peace and test it? Or would they wait for a more opportune time, as in after some event or action that they can construe as provocation? What I'm thinking is, testing a device during 'negotiations' after Obama has essentially guaranteed he wouldn't allow such a thing to happen would amount to... well, would amount to a gigantic fuck you to America and huge embarrassment for Obama. So, question is, would Iran see an advantage to something like that? I dunno - of course there'd be outrage at first, but after the dust settled the situation would become... fluid, to say the least, and no doubt fraught with potentialities not at all favorable to American prestige and influence.

Then there's the other question which obtrudes here: since idea that Iran is playing Kerry et al for suckers seems pretty obvious, it confounds credibility to think that the US is not aware of this potentiality and acting accordingly - so why is it then they continue to talk and act as if they're not aware of this threat? Sure, they could indeed be that naive and foolish, it's not impossible, hard to believe, but not impossible - or they could have gotten behind the scenes something from Iran legitimate enough to pursue that strongly suggests they are in fact ready to make a deal - I find that highly unlikely but again, certainly possible. But what if it's that Obama has decided the best case scenario is after all Iran getting the bomb [or breakout capability] and he's more than happy to lie in order to keep Israel in check? Obama has clearly shown he has no problem telling big lies if he feels the end result is an America more in keeping with his liberal sympathies - and he has also shown he shares the uber left intellectual elite conceit that the way to deal with Israel is to force a solution on them - and finally, he has clearly demonstrated he prefers almost any outcome over one that involves the large scale use of American force - so, when you think about it, the most credible scenario here is the last one, no? That Obama is lying and fully intends to let Iran nuke up? Actually, all three scenarios are hard to believe - but fact is I think one of them has to be true - either that or Obama is actually serious about using force to deny Iran the bomb which, sorry, I've never believed, not for one second.

I may have missed it, but I'm a little shocked that no one far as I've noticed, either on the right or left, has pointed out the obvious: Obama lied about his health care act because he believed media bias would allow him to get away with it, just as it has allowed him to get away with so much other garbage spewing ever since his days as a community organizer - and that this deception was always part of the strategy. Indeed, as I've said before, I believe the central idea or given guiding Obama's politics is his faith in the media and the liberal elite to do and say whatever the hell he wants them to do or say - I think this corruption is key to everything he does. Which is why I say Obama isn't the real problem here - you're going to get bad and incompetent leaders in a democracy as a matter of course - no, the real problem here is that the fail safe, the backstop to this inevitable bad leadership has to be the media, the press fully and with objective credibility exercising their first amendment rights and holding the powers that be accountable. That's the whole point of the first amendment: free speech mitigates the abuse of power. Under Obama, the media and press have essentially abandoned their first amendment rights and that necessarily leads to corruption because it enables, it encourages bad ideas, bad governance, bad behavior. Obama didn't wake up one morning and magically decide to lie in order to push an agenda forward - he learned to do this a long time ago because no doubt fairly early on in his political rise he figured out he could get the media and the liberal elite to do whatever the hell he wanted them to do - which is why I've always maintained that Obama is less skilled politician, more superb con man - story I've often told is how after watching his acclaimed speech at the 2004 convention first thing I did was turn to friends and say 'that is the best liar I have ever heard'. If you're only figuring out now that the real truth about the man is the excellence of the lies he tells, then you really haven't been paying attention.

Now, of course, voter ignorance or lassitude has long been a feature of and putative threat to democracy - and indeed autocrats who have predicted the demise of democracy have done so largely from a jaundiced, often mocking consideration of those vulnerabilities afflicting electorates - hell, the Founding Fathers themselves fretted over this issue at length. What worries though and leaves one doubting that past can be prologue here is that although in the past, sure, you had voter ignorance etc etc - still, those votes, however uniformed they might have been, were in general guided by fundamental principles and values that were at the end of the day a plus for the country - you know, things like strong work ethic, love of God and country, belief in family and marriage so on and so forth - you can't say that about the low info voter of today - I mean, a poll just published the other day made the absolutely startling claim that 34% of Americans never want to have a job - a hundred years ago you couldn't have found 34% of the population, hell, 3% of the population who had ever even just considered whether such an absurdity was possible. So that's disturbing.

But it's when you take the altered values of the low info voter and how this change inclines them towards outcomes that are relative to the past not so easily construed into looking like overall positives for the country and combine this with the simplistic seductive propaganda powers of new media that is biased towards a specific agenda that is by nature strongly motivated to encourage rather than question those negative outcomes - well, then you really start to run into problems I think as far as the health of your democracy goes.

Doom is not necessary - one can argue that the true genius of democracy is its ability to drive change and innovation and the way it empowers its citizens to effectively adapt to and accept those changes in what amounts to a constantly evolving process - and given that you can then argue that even though the system may seem somewhat broken right now, it will self correct - indeed, the disaster that is Obamacare and how it is changing peoples perception of Dear Leader and the progressivism he touts, may turn out to be the first instance of that self correction. Or it may not - you can look at the decline of Rome and see that a significant part of the problem was an abysmal failure to come up with kind of quality leadership required to meet the challenges it faced - sounds a whole lot like the America of today. For all the self propelling dynamism of democracy, much still depends on quality of leadership - and for us, where's that leadership gonna come from if the GOP commits ritual suicide and Hillary, blinded by ideological hubris, decides to govern as if Obama wasn't the worst president ever who left behind a mess in dire need of cleaning up? 

Key poll takeaways from Christie victory last night: in a state where only 39% of voters have a favorable view of the GOP, his favorables are at 64%; he won the women vote, not by much, but for a Republican just to win the female vote in a blue state is a big deal, especially when you're running against a woman;  and the biggest number of all - he won Latinos - again, for a Republican to do that in a blue state is a big deal - not necessarily an encouraging harbinger that reassures that the country is not with cold certainty doomed by demographics to be driven into ruin by a never ending liberal autocracy, but nice to see all the same - especially when compared to blacks who again demonstrated nothing can convince them to vote GOP. If I'm a Republican I don't even bother trying to appeal to the black vote - I mean, if they're not gonna come out for a guy like Christie, you can pretty much just write the black vote off - hell, I get the feeling most blacks would vote for an Islamist candidate before they'd go GOP. 

Ramesh Ponnuru makes a great point when comparing the electoral fates of Christie and Cuccinelli: it's not social conservatism per se that will kill you in current political/cultural environment - it's perception that you are obsessed with social conservative values, a perception which telegraphs to voters that you're an unyielding extremist, that's what will get you in trouble and cost you the trust of independents and moderates and minorities and women and make you the hapless punchline of the media. Funny thing is, understanding this should come naturally to Republicans since a distrust of extremes and a belief in the moderating effects of democracy against those extremes is fundamentally a conservative principle and indicative of a truly conservative view of how the world works - which is why so called 'true conservatives' who hate Christie for his 'moderation' are in reality cannibalizing true conservatism in order to feed their righteous anger. I get the anger - the enervating brand of liberalism espoused by Obama and his maenads is dangerous, debilitating stuff - but if we've gotten to the point where the extremes of anger and outrage are the only viable responses and effective countermeasures left to conservatives then, sorry, the game is already over, liberals will have us exactly where they want us as far as narrative spinning goes and the media enabled welfare state will have won - and if that's the case, might as well move on to a serious discussion of our plan B.

Does the New York mayoral race tell us something key about the state of the American voter? What I mean is, New York was driven very close to Detroit-like ruin by uber left wing politics only to be miraculously saved by conservative mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg - and yet Big Apple is all set in a seeming landslide to put another uber liberal back in power as if none of that recent history happened - why? Sure, New York is a liberal place and I guess it's possible that so much time has passed since the bad old days that people have simply forgotten - but I have trouble buying that - I think rather what we're witnessing once again is the death grip the cancer of identity politics has on the liberal mind these days - I think for many left wing voters in New York the fact that de Blasio is a white guy married to a black woman [and a poet no less - Jesus] and that they have a couple of charming biracial children is plenty reason enough to cast a vote for the guy. If true, it behooves us to ask the attending question: how can a democracy survive when its voters are that stupid, guided by notions that are so utterly detached from common sense and blindly committed to an ethos that seems to have no qualms whatsoever about playing down to that bestial ignorance in order to gain power?

Must say find all this talk from liberal foreign policy types about how Iran is ready to negotiate etc etc ludicrous stuff and deeply troubling if they actually believe what they're saying. Understand, I'm not maintaining Iran isn't open to making a real deal here - my point is if Iran believes its goals are dependent on a nuclear capability then that is all that matters no matter what they may say - they will say and do anything to reach that goal if they view it as necessary. So that's the key - coming to understanding of whether or not Iran sees its strategic goals as being dependent on acquiring nukes. Only those in direct contact with Iran or with access to deep intel on Iran can know the answer to that question - someone on the outside looking in is just making an educated guess, and that guess, if not addled by delusion, would at the moment strongly suggest Iran definitely sees its future as being dependent on nuking up - which is why I say it's absurd for liberal foreign policy types who do not have access to the inside info to talk as if optimism viz negotiations is a reasonable position. It's not - it's wishful thinking.

Do you think at this point that the liberal media even has the ability, the capacity to acknowledge or even just simply see that the reason Obama lied about his health care law is because he felt pretty damn confident he could get away with it, felt pretty damn confident that his media cohorts would be there for him and dutifully enable any narrative he might choose to spin - and that the only reason this scheme hasn't worked out is because they so badly botched the roll out of the website that the Jon Stewarts et al felt they had no choice but to actually god forbid speak the truth or else risk being made to look utterly ridiculous? What objective observer doesn't believe that if that website were running at merely let's say a measly 25% efficiency that that would have been judged good enough for most of the liberal media and that they accordingly would have obediently backed up Obama's lies in much the same way the NY Times, which apparently has abandoned notions of shame altogether, just did, claiming in an op-ed that Dear Leader didn't lie but merely misspoke - sort of like saying Peter didn't deny Christ, just was having a bad day and misspoke a few times about knowing that Jesus fella.