So, NY Times publishes article on Benghazi that wants to downplay or entirely debunk attack as result of a planned terrorist initiative and play up once again the whole notion the violence was a spontaneous reaction to some ludicrously inept putatively anti-Muslim video by some marginal wacko that had actually gone up on the web a few months before the aggrieved believers decided to defend their beliefs by screaming some curses, setting some fires and dragging some American corpses through the streets - and I guess what this means is that the dogged efforts of the left wing media to get Hillary elected president have officially kicked in regardless of any truths or realities that might negatively impact perceptions of whether she deserves the job or has what it takes to do it well or indeed, given her ideological predispositions, is at all a good fit for what the country needs at the moment. Nope, none of that matters - it made sense to these people in 2008 to make a black guy president of the most powerful country in the world simply because he was black and in 2016 it will make equal sense to them to make a woman president simply because she's a woman [well, a woman and fiercely liberal of course - just as in 2008 it wouldn't have sufficed for these people that Condi Rice become the first black president, so too in 2016 it will not at all do that the first female president is Nikki Haley or some such conservative abomination against the progressive light].

I consider this kind of media bias to be an existential threat to conservatism in America and is the reason why I see it as vital that the 2016 GOP nominee have the personality and other wherewithals to overcome or at least counteract this bias, which necessarily means also has the ability to inspire broad appeal - the dynamics behind the notion of 'Reagan democrats' needs to reemerge if the GOP is to survive as a national party. As well, if Hillary is indeed the nominee and the top of the conservative ticket isn't a woman, then the running mate must be a woman - if the nominee is Christie I wouldn't even bother vetting a man - just take the top five female prospects out there and choose the one who impresses most.

Amusing, the roil of Erdogan's problems in Turkey - and there are many salient things one could say about these problems - how it's more proof that Islamism [for that has always been Erdogan's desired end here] is nothing more than autocracy hiding behind a faux democracy and thus liable to all the issues of corruption and abuse that plague authoritarian regimes  - or how Erdogan's machinations are yet more reason to question the sanity of trusting Turkey under his rule with strategically sensitive info and technology - to wit, as said before, there's no way I'm letting Erdogan get his hands on any F-35s or advanced missile defense tech or any number of other sensitive things - Turkey under a man like him does not belong in NATO and should flat out not be trusted with anything of strategic import.

But to me the most amusing aspect of this dust up is how it further stains the already badly blemished facade of Obama the wise and thoughtful one - for coming into office Obama lavished much praise on Erdogan and made it clear he thought him a kindred spirit [which I guess is true if one thinks of them both as falsely enlightened autocrats carting about morbidly obese egos that leave them highly intolerant of dissent]. It's startling - far as I can tell, I don't believe there's a single thing Obama has gotten right in the foreign policy realm - true, some of his mistakes were deliberate in sense he didn't see them as mistakes: his ideological presumptions demand a demonizing and consequent emasculation of American power and that is what he's done - but a lot of what's gone on here is just a result of incompetence, ignorance, strategic muddle and naive pandering utterly unmoored from reality - his misbegotten love for Erdogan becomes one more sad feather in that unspeakably ugly cap.

[and let's not forget Obama/Kerry forcing Netanyahu into 'apologising' to Erdogan viz the Gaza flotilla debacle - at the time I suggested Bibi probably agreed to swallow that most bitter of pills because he figured eventually the truth about Erdogan would come out and at that point Obama would look the fool and Israel could dangle this misguided foolishness in the faces of Kerry et al when they tried to preach to Israel about how to proceed given the unhelpful proclivities of their enemies]

Interesting dynamic - the US needs to portray China as a threat in order to convince a wary public that the significant funds required to field a military capable of meeting that threat are necessary - large defense budgets must be validated by linked threats justifying those budgets - and, what's more, these threats must be easily graspable by the public, a public that is overwhelming made up of people who have never read anything having to do with military history or logistics, strategic thinking or the often confounding permutations of foreign policy impacting a superpower that also happens to be sole defender of the Western tradition, democratic freedoms and open markets. Sure, 9/11 and Islamic extremism kept the public interested for awhile in the intrinsic value of a powerful American military, but with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan being seen as 'failures', and the perception rising out of these failures being that Muslim polities are beyond fixing, a perception strongly reinforced by the [utterly predictable] negative turn the Arab Spring took culminating in the mega fuck up that is Syria - well, the public is increasingly less willing to accept the perils of Islam as justification for bloated defense budgets. Which leaves us with China - and yet still many want to talk about the 'peaceful rise of China' and wax rhapsodic on how there's no reason our relations with them need be adversarial - indeed, many in the liberal elite talk about China with a pronounced envy much as the enlightened elite of the 30's often talked about communist Russia and Nazi Germany as political systems not just on par with American democracy, but superior to it.

Needless to say, this paradox is not lost on China's inner sanctum of strategic wizards - for them, not just Obama himself as a uniquely weak and unqualified leader when it comes to foreign policy, but also the naive ideological presumptions of the intellectual milieu he is a product of and that seems in many regards to be ascendant in America, are golden opportunities crying out for abuse.  

Many are criticising Abe's visit to the Yasukuni shrine, with China of course being the most archly aggrieved - and this criticism is probably well founded, I guess - not sure, as offensive as the shrine may be in some respects to the 'victors' of WWII, I find myself thinking it's really none of our business telling Japan how to honor its dead - but regardless, let's not forget, as much of the criticism does, that the reason this visit happened is likely as compensation for Obama's lack of resolve viz China's air defense zone - you wanna keep Japan in check and forestall unnecessary provocations, reassure them through strength - otherwise, expect more brinkmanship and sabre rattling, not just from Japan, but South Korea, the Philippines, maybe even Taiwan.  

Well, Tobin essentially gets it right: Obama is upset about attempts by congress to toughen the sanctions threats against Iran because these threats treat the current 'negotiations' as real, as in intent on stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions - but they are not, they're an illusion, a smokescreen designed to cover the fact that Obama has no intentions of stopping Iran, decided a long time ago on some vague, irresolute notion of 'containment' and has been lying ever since. So 'hawks' in congress treating the negotiations as real puts Obama in a problematic position: at the end of the six months, when Iran has sufficiently demonstrated it has no intention of abandoning its ambitions, Obama will be expected to get tough in accordance with congress' demands, which is not something that fits at all well with the smokescreen plan; or, what else could happen here is Iran decides to make Obama's life really miserable by treating the sanctions actions by congress as a breach of trust and runs off in a pout, with China and Russia of course defending their pique all the way - which again puts Obama in a very tricky position of having to act as if he seriously intends to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Tobin is right: Obama is acting as if he is the player with the weaker hand - and that's because he is - you can't win at poker if the other people at the table know you're bluffing - everybody at this table knows Obama is and always has been bluffing. Actually, more accurate - you can't win at poker if your intention was never to win but only to bluff long enough so as to maybe with some credibility blame your loss on the other guy cheating. Yeah, that nails Obama's Iran policy, I think.

    

Will the sacking of the Duck Dynasty dude prove a watershed moment in the push back against the new age tyranny of political correctness? For free speech to mean anything it has to be about people having the right to say things that might offend someone else - otherwise free speech, as liberals are wont to imagine it, becomes nothing more than another form of censorship designed to let the state control what people are allowed to think - and then the open marketplace of ideas and opinions, which is the whole point and lifeblood of democracy, withers away and dies. I say watershed moment because Duck Dynasty is a very popular show [they're probably bound by contracts, but what happens if the rest of the family walks off the show in protest?] and because Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, home of the duck dudes, has come out with a strong statement defending the boys and making the cogent point that liberals seem fine with free speech just so long as the speech being spoken adheres to beliefs they expect you to believe whether you want to or not - so, a notion of free speech that Orwell would have found quite amusing.

To state the obvious, it's not about defending what the man said but rather defending his right to say it - he's a devout christian, he has a right to be a devout christian, and as a devout christian it's pretty god damn likely that he's gonna hold some views that others including myself might find misguided - but you cannot order him to renounce those views simply because they offend you - that's a slippery slope - in relative terms it's reasonable for the man to hold these views just as in relative terms it's reasonable for a devout Muslim or devout Hindu to hold the view that women are inferior and can therefore be legitimately denied certain rights and privileges, never mind their opinions on homosexuality which would make duck dude's thoughts seem tame - yet the liberal jackals don't cry for blood over that - no, only white Christians, especially ones with a specific accent, get the politically correct juices flowing [I say white Christians... well, for obvious reasons having to do with the benighted enthusiasms and cherished conceits of liberaldom, but also because black Christians, quite possibly the most homophobic demographic in the country and the reason why Obama was so very slow in getting behind gay marriage, largely get a pass from the aggrieved left's thought police when it comes to these things, a nuance that fits nicely with the left's highly selective interpretation of free speech which, as I said, is not simply about controlling speech, but about controlling ideas and thereby serving specific political narratives and agendas - notice how there was never really a true debate in the country about the merits of gay marriage, rather what happened was that over time through the operations of the left's thought police it became illegitimate to question gay marriage and therefore to simply speak of ones problems with it came to be seen as offensive - and with that you're just a short step away from making it illegal to speak ones mind about gay marriage. Note the Briton who was put in jail for a day, had his rights thoroughly abused and his privacy wholly invaded, all because he wrote some innocuous joke about Mandela on a internet forum that offended some lefty dick brain in England who then reported his crime to the authorities - seems pretty atrocious, yes? And yet how easily it happened - and that's because England, birthplace of our modern notions of personal liberty, has surrendered away common sense and democratic principles that reach to the very heart of Western Civilization in order to accommodate the intemperate diktats of the left's thought police - slippery slope, people...

Actually, when you think about it, the most disturbing example of the left's desire to suppress free speech and thereby control political discourse and agendas, is the effort, now somewhat in abeyance, to portray criticism of Obama as implied racism - which is a short step away from labelling criticism of Obama hate speech - which is a short step away from making it illegal to criticise Obama - sounds absurd, yes, but that's the way these people think and you follow the things they say to their logical conclusion that's the dystopia you end up with - scratch a liberal and you'll find lurking not too deeply beneath the surface an autocrat longing to get out]

[but, you're not saying A&E has no right to reprimand duck dude are you? Of course not! They can do whatever the hell they want - cancel the show, fire the guy, climb a soapbox and scream outrage - whatever, that's their business - it's this mass manufacturing of outrage which leads to legitimizing offense taken as being actionable which leads then to the hobbling of free speech in order to protect the ever so easily offended which leads to political discourse being controlled and political outcomes corrupted - the point here is this outrage has a political objective and that objective is not about opening the political dynamics of the country but rather closing them down in order to serve the utterly paradoxical end of promoting the interests of liberalism - if I'm not free to offend someone by questioning what they say or believe or do then I'm not really free and the contracting freedoms I do retain will become increasingly subject to suppression - this is how a guy in England ends up getting thrown in jail for a day for writing an innocuous not very funny at all joke about Nelson bloody Mandela. Why do you think Muslim countries want the UN to legitimize offense taken by them over criticisms of their beliefs by making it a crime to criticise or even question those beliefs? Suppress speech and you control political discourse which allows you to manufacture political outcomes which ultimately ends with the abrogation of rights and freedoms - when you get right down to it the whole point of democracy is my right to offend you, but once your right to be offended is legitimized as something more important to defend than my right to offend you and thereby my rights to free speech are superseded by your right to be offended by that speech then of course what happens next is my right to offend is suppressed if not in fact abolished, and when you reach that point your democracy is essentially dead, hollowed out, gone bye bye and the people will have left themselves with no choice but to surrender their remaining liberties to the whims of those ruling over them. Freedom of speech is enshrined as the first amendment because democracy is absolutely impossible without it and therefore it is the right that must be protected above all else because all else is utterly dependent upon it. Does that mean there should be no limitations on speech? No, of course not - absolutes are against the whole point of democracy - but you have to be very, very careful about what you're limiting, the why of it and the how - allowing a simple offense taken as just cause to limit speech is not being careful, that's being reckless, that's being destructive to the very essence of democracy.

So, yeah, duck dude has a right to say what he wants and A&E has a right to then fire him for it if that's how they feel - but if you don't see it as a disturbing thing the speed with which liberals want to turn an offense taken into an actionable crime by legitimizing the offense as so hurtful a thing that the cause must be suppressed and that the whole point of this endeavor is to control political discourse so as to control political outcomes - if you don't see that, or see it but are not troubled by it, then, sorry, you're either naive, delusional or sympathetic to the cause, which I guess means both naive and delusional with a little bit of stupid thrown in for good measure]  

Wonderful article by Cooke over at National Review - the greatness of America is certainly under threat from the sickly ideological menace that Obama and his maenads are a near perfect manifestation of - but maybe what saves us is that these people are so incompetent, so enfeebled by the loose sands upon which their dream castles have been built, that the ruin they promise cannot possibly survive the insipid, weakly dysfunction of their words and actions thereof.  

"... I'd say that it's a strong indication of how utterly lost America is at the moment that there are no doubt more people, probably many more people, who are willing to take time out of their day to think it a very good thing that Obama is sending some openly gay delegates to the Sochi Olympics nonsense in a frivolous attempt to thumb nose at Putin's homophobic antics than think it a very bad thing that Obama, in response to China's recent aggressions in the China Seas, has essentially backed down from that challenge and for all intents and purposes signalled to the Middle Kingdom that, yes, indeed, when it comes to American power he's all about the talk and not at all about the walk... yes, a perfectly succinct summation defining the malady of the times that... times wherein the liberal media can easily find one unified outraged voice to decry the abomination of a Fox news reader declaring the obvious of Santa being white for christ sake and then drone on about this heinous offense against humanity for an insufferable week and yet when it comes to Obama openly lying to the American people about his health care law or his Iran policy or the IRS scandal or Benghazi or etc etc etc, well, when it comes to those outrages truth becomes a much more pliable thing... or shall we say that the best writing on the wall was done by David Brooks, the sole would be 'conservative' working for the New York Times, who obviously traumatized by his unrequited love for the Obama and his perfect hem and stung by the embarrassment thereof, decided to cleanse himself of this shame by burrowing deeper into vain rationalizations of Dear Leader's incompetence and misguided drivel than any Obamaphile has yet dared, coming to the conclusion that the cure to the awfulness that is Obama should be more Obama... yes, unable to square his idolatrous circle Brooks decides that to gain sanctuary from the scourge of doubt we should remove doubt altogether by simply making Obama's rule absolute... ah, the glorious repose of serfdom... forgive my cynicism and how it must insult and injure your sensitive genius, David, but does that not seem a bit like passengers in an out of control car hurtling towards an abyss consoling themselves by imagining that the answer to all their problems is to go faster...?"         

Possibly incendiary and ill advised, but wouldn't it be a good move, in response to Chinese aggression with its hegemonic air security zone, to start up the F-22 line again and sell it to Japan and South Korea and Australia? They want the plane and it would definitely send the message to China that escalation, no matter how they may hide it behind incremental actions and shallow legalisms, is maybe not such a good idea. Besides, America must keep its technological edge - but budget cuts threaten that imperative - an arms race in the South Pacific helps. Of course, encouraging an arms race in order to pump our military R&D is to play with fire - but I imagine that arms race is coming no matter what - look how South Korea, in response to a show of weakness by Obama [a show of weakness? The man is like a frickin' festival of enfeeblement] has taken upon itself to aggressively enlarge its own security zone - that's just the beginning, far as I'm concerned, which means three things happen here: we disincentivize China's predations with a show of strength; we don't and conflict becomes inevitable; we surrender. I choose the first option - start building those F-22s again. Of course, the F-35's a nice plane too... but much nicer I think when working in concert with Raptors, which is the way it was always meant to be.

My, the whole Mandela funeral spectacle has become a giant ideological orgy for the left, hasn't it? The death of a famous African communist has given them license to vent all the things liberals hate about the West - oh, sure, they love their Shakespeare and Beethoven and Da Vinci and nice stuff like that - they'll even tolerate Newton and his ilk - but capitalism and all that nasty business? No, no.

We truly are fucked, aren't we? Success has turned the West into a refugium for morons and sentimentalists. No wonder the Chinese think they can push us around.

I wasn't anxious for proof that my take on Iran is right - to me it's simply obvious what Obama is up to here and I find it a little startling that so many are and have been in denial about it, especially supposed professional analysts treating or thinking of Russia and China as honest brokers in these negotiations, which is absurdly naive - but Rubin at Commentary draws attention to story that does indeed seem to prove what I've been saying all along.

I can't explain the foolishness of people when it comes to judging Obama's foreign policy - are they so invested in the dream that they can't bring themselves to contemplate the truth? Or have they convinced themselves it's okay to lie and spin false narratives in the name of the great cause? Or is it simply that they're idiots? I don't have an answer - to me what Obama is about, not just viz Iran but as regards his entire foreign policy posture as well, is obvious - the short version, he does not believe in American power and indeed, as far as his private conscience goes, may be utterly hostile to it - that would not be a surprising thing since such is the default perspective of the intellectual milieu that gave him life - regardless, once you understand that about Obama it becomes a rather straight forward matter seeing the truth behind his foreign policy words and actions - consequently, the Iran 'negotiations' become a charade designed to save face for Obama viz the use of force and to hopefully keep Israel on the sidelines - or, to use nicer language, it's now all about containment, as Jen Rubin points out in blog today.

The logic of this has been obvious for awhile far as I'm concerned. Why ostensibly smart people have not been able to see that or have refused to see it, I don't know. Interesting question becomes: do I feel more comfortable thinking of Obama/Kerry as naive fools or as misguided liars? Not sure it matters, since I reckon the consequences will prove unfortunate either way.

Safe to say that until Iran does what it intends to do viz the putative deal dangled before it by a desperate Obama administration we simply won't be able to say for sure who was right and who was wrong and who got led down the garden path - still, I do notice that those inclined to defend the negotiations routinely tend to ignore two known unknowns that are provisionally knowable that once known [provisionally] render the negotiations in a none too favorable light - namely, that Russia and China's intentions and goals here are antithetical to America's and therefore should [when inevitably] Iran choose[s] to play the part of devil in the details they will be most willing advocates of the theocracy's interests thereof - and that Obama has no intention and never had any intention of embracing the military option and that consideration alone, regardless of all else, should thoroughly subvert optimism since it bequeaths to Iran all leverage, ie Obama needs 'a deal' or at least drawn out negotiations as much if not indeed more than they do.

Once you accept these two provisional realities [provisional in sense that time has yet to prove them as real as they assuredly are] it becomes virtually impossible to view the Obama/Kerry tack viz Iran as being anything but naively misguided or cynically disingenuous.

[of course there are those who see this as a deliberate attempt to rework the strategic map of the Mideast in a profound way - I have a great deal of trouble buying that. I don't deny that the Obama admin may be attempting an embrace of such a notion and it may be 'deliberate' in that sense, but if true I'd see it as less deliberative and more desperate or just simply gullible - this type of thinking is of the naive kind that thought it obvious that the Ukraine would side with the EU and not Russia - these people look at Iran and see a moderate intellectual elite buried beneath all the religious fervor and antipathy and think 'well, we can work with them' - removing religion from the equation and asking if Nixon could go to China why can't Obama go to Iran would be unwise. Plus, there's many other problems here - turning your back on Israel and the Saudis, climbing into bed with the bloody regime in Syria and the best organized terrorist outfit in the world, Hezbollah - I mean, how the hell would that work? And then there's the consideration of how much such a move would piss off Sunni extremists who already hate the West - there's gonna be some awfully dangerous radicals wandering back to Europe from Syria already plenty motivated to do ill - a deal with Iran that enables Assad and Hezbollah is hardly gonna sit well with them.  Then there's Russia and China who see this as an opportunity to weaken America and have things lined up right now to do that - so why would they play nice here? So to me this 'strategy' makes no sense, or makes sense only in the abstract - which is no doubt why those who talk about it in a serious way all tend to be liberals. As Ukraine has reminded us, and China's recent aggressive actions in the China Sea too, when it comes to foreign policy liberals tend to view the world not as it is but as they fancy it should be - this leads to the making of some very dangerous assumptions designed to prop up that view for as long as possible regardless of reality's ceaseless efforts to drag it down]     

I suppose it officially makes me a horrible person that my only thoughts on the passing of Nelson Mandela are to wonder how liberals in America will spin it as an offense to the man's memory to criticize Obamacare. I'm guessing that already someone at MSNBC has attempted the magical rhetorical feat and that Dear Leader's dutiful speech writers are hard at work figuring ingenious ways to insinuate this message without looking crass. Yeah, I'm a damn awful person - but, hey, let's admit it, my cynical take is probably bang on. Worst part is, there's no doubt many a lefty out there who would consider the linking of the two things entirely legitimate - hell, would consider it gospel truth to imagine Obama as nothing less than an extension of Mandela's noble cause - this is why you'll often hear liberals talking about the Obama presidency as if his performance in the job is beside the point.

Well, you make a left wing academic president of a superpower and I guess one shouldn't be surprised that you end up with a foreign policy that's all about weakness dressed up as enlightened forward thinking. Obama administration now essentially saying to China viz its security zone: we don't agree with it but will accept it so long as you improve the optics of the thing a little bit - in other words, we can accept your imperial overreach that shits on our regional allies just so long as you do it with a smile. This is exactly what China wanted and no doubt expected - that in the name of 'calm' Obama would blink and essentially legitimize China's regional claims while at same time embarrassing Japan and fracturing our relationship with them - just as with Iran and Israel, we put an ally in an untenable position in order to make concessions to an enemy all in the name of the illusion of peace and comity that serves the interests of the aggressor.

Oh, my. Worst president ever. As I've said before, I don't know how the person who follows him is going to be able to clean up the prodigious mess this man will leave behind - and the most dispiriting thing is the liberal media is still desperately trying to come up with ways to present this mess in a positive light - it's almost farcical - I think the country will have to be reduced to a smouldering pile of rubble before we'll hear them finally admit "ahhh... ya know what, maybe after all Obama wasn't the best choice for CEO... but at least amends were made for all that slavery stuff and we liberals can pat ourselves on the back for that... although, sure, a little bit sorry that the change part of hope ended up being inevitable decline..."

[Obama apologists will try to promote idea that this is a clever move by Dear Leader that encourages a Chinese aggression that drives the other players in the region further into our arms - that sounds like fantasy to me, sweet nothings from catamites - simply by announcing the zone the other players were sufficiently motivated to cling to us and the proper move would be to cement that bond by clearly rejecting China's claims - instead, the only clear messages sent here are that incremental hegemony by China will be rewarded and that US allies should doubt the resolve, true intentions and fealty of the Obama administration - these people have witnessed Obama's foreign policy - the naivety of the Russian reset, half measures in Afghanistan, leading from behind in Libya, embrace of the noxious Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, equivocation and retreat in Syria, concessions to Iran at Israel's expense - and are legitimately reaching the conclusion that Obama is not about defending the traditional aspects of American power - indeed, a cynic might well conclude that he is all about unwinding that power as much as possible] 

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.

I think this is an apt, nail on the head little piece from Peter Wehner that zeroes in on the ugly, disturbing reality that is Obama and keys in on the thing that truly troubles me here and has all along: the media and press as indentured supplicants under Dear Leader. That Obama is a lying left wing ideologue willing to say and do anything no matter how dishonest it is in order to promote his agenda is not the problem - you're gonna get people like that in a democracy, people guided not by a rational pragmatism, the quality that most defined the Founding Fathers, but rather led astray by an excessive belief in the dubious merits of a chauvinistic ideology, or an excessive, megalomaniacal fondness for the sound of their own voice - or both - Ted Cruz is one far as I'm concerned - no, the real problem here is that if the press and media are captive participants in this charade and have willingly surrendered their objective critical voice in order to serve a specific agenda which is a bad thing in and of itself but grievously bad, tragically bad when that agenda happens to also be horribly misguided and riddled with lies and falsehoods then you've got to a point where the first amendment has essentially been undone and you no longer live in a proper democracy. That is where we are right now under Obama - and if you don't see how troubling a thing that is then, sorry, your intelligence has been sacrificed in the name of ideological comfort. 

Here's my suggestion  on what to do about immigration reform and more specifically amnesty - propose to do substantial reform now [because let's face it the system is broken regardless of one's views on the over represented Latino influx] but leave amnesty as something to be taken up after the 2016 election. Two reasons for this, and I'd just come right out and state these reasons: one, don't trust Obama, hell, can't trust Dear Leader - the disaster that is Obamacare allows you to make this charge legitimately, ie make it without immediately being called a racist by the New York Times; and two, assuming the GOP does not succumb to a suicidal urge and nominate someone like Cruz or Paul in 2016 but rather intelligently goes with a broad appeal candidate that may also be a minority and possibly even a woman [I'm thinking of Martinez, Haley and Jindal here] who says all the right things on possible ways forward viz amnesty - having done that, let's see how Latinos vote in the election - if after having put forth a near perfect candidate Hispanics still overwhelmingly vote left, then that will be it, that will tell us that the doom sayers viz amnesty granting etc etc are right - that granting amnesty would forever move the country left and essentially ruin us.

That seems reasonable to me - if conservatives [mainly the business community seeking cheap, reliable labor] who support amnesty do so because they believe the GOP can appeal to Latinos with the right candidate, then let's put that belief to the test in 2016 before we agree to something that could radically change this country and not for the better.

Of course, two problems here: getting that perfect candidate unsullied through the Republican primary is going to be difficult, especially if Cruz is in the race throwing ideologically intemperate bombs everywhere [which is why I suggest taking the man on now and not waiting till the primary season is upon us]; and then the other vexing problem is an irreversible push of the country left is not the only issue with amnesty - there are a lot of studies out there showing the deleterious effect all this cheap labor is having on upward mobility in this country - and also, possibly related, studies showing that Latinos do not embrace higher education or education period as a way to improve one's lot in life the same way as Asians and other cultures do - so amnesty could prove a huge problem in a country that no longer has the industrial and manufacturing jobs available to support a low skill middle class.

In the end, hard to see any sane reason why a conservative - aside from the businessman searching for cheap, reliable labor for his gadget factory - would want to rush ahead with amnesty. Instead, let's state the problems associated with it openly and clearly and then propose a reasonable way forward. Again, the disaster that is Obamacare has created a rhetorical opening for the GOP despite Cruz's best efforts to ruin it - it'd sure be nice if conservatives could put that opening to good use.

Lowry and Ponnuru note the obvious that so many on the right seem incapable of acknowledging or simply refuse to acknowledge: 

The tendency arises from legitimate frustrations. The federal government seems constantly to expand even as — and sometimes because — it proves itself incompetent. Republicans have done precious little to reverse or even halt the trend. Obamacare is a disastrous and unpopular law; but if the Republican party has a strategy for bringing about its eventual end, it has been kept well-hidden.

So it is entirely reasonable to search for new ways to tame the welfare state rather than keep doing what has been done before. The Republican consultant class has often seemed to suffer from an almost clinical deficit of imagination. And the Republican party’s leadership could certainly use the occasional poke with a cattle prod. If the conservatives behind the defunding crusade now turn back to fighting the Senate’s immigration bill with the same passion and commitment, they will again be denounced by Democrats, the press, and some Republicans as a mindless wrecking crew. It shouldn’t stop them.

The key premise that has been guiding these conservatives, however, is mistaken. That premise is that the main reason conservatives have won so few elections and policy victories, especially recently, is a lack of ideological commitment and will among Republican politicians. A bigger problem than the insufficient conservatism of our leaders is the insufficient number of our followers. There aren’t enough conservative voters to elect enough officials to enact a conservative agenda in Washington, D.C. — or to sustain them in that project even if they were elected. The challenge, fundamentally, isn’t a redoubling of ideological commitment, but more success at persuasion and at winning elections.

It's natural for extremists to have a Manichean view of the world - in fact it's no doubt necessary for them since strict dualism serves best the unreasonable argument detached from coarse reality - and the extremes of the left are just as bad as the extremes of the right in this regard. But as above points out, similarities of cause and effect end there for two very good reasons that put the GOP at a distinct disadvantage and that conservatives need to come to terms with if they hope to survive as a political force: one, the culture increasingly leans to or is openly tolerant of the left in its sympathies; and two, this lean left is especially true of the media and press and that particular bias is never going to go away. It's not that the extreme right is wrong in perceiving liberalism as a threat since untempered by conservative pragmatism and realism it definitely is a threat - what they get wrong is belief that the shallow comforts of outrage that translate into ideological rigidity are an intelligent or even simply a viable way to combat the threat. If we get to the point where such extremism is our only way forward against the predations of the welfare state, then the country will already be lost since such extremism is fundamentally undemocratic in nature.

No, the smart way forward is to nominate people who know how to get elected given the current environment and just as importantly know how to effectively govern given the current environment  - look no further than Reagan and Obama as telling examples: they both we're pros when it came to knowing how to get elected, but only one of them knew how to govern - and that's the difference between a country living up to its great potential and a country in seeming decline on all fronts.

[I will say this though, if it's Christie vs Hillary in 2016 and Christie unlike Romney runs a great campaign that any objective observer would wholly agree was the superior campaign relative to Hillary's and yet she still wins because the media, as with Obama, refuses to acknowledge her flaws and weaknesses - well then, all bets are off - we'll be entering dangerous terra incognita at that point where one half of the country will start to see us as having fallen to a liberal coup enabled by the media - and I have no idea what happens then]

I must say that I find it offensive, galling in the extreme that Jon Stewart is winning kudos for his attack on the Obamacare rollout - reasonable people unstained by ideological bias have known all along that this thing was trouble for many reasons [ie not just implementation], so why is Stewart being credited for being either too stupid or too blinded by bias to have figured this out long ago? But more than that, let's remember it's because of the shameless cheerleading of Obama in the 2008 primary over Hillary by people like Stewart that we're stuck with this mess in the first place - I think naive fools like Stewart, who acted as if by simply electing the black guy president we'd be ushered into a golden age of absolute wonderfulness, should be held accountable in some way for the damage they've wrought, which at the very least should amount to not lauding the misguided idiot for finally having the good sense to curse the shit he so went out of his way to step in.

Furthermore, let's look at what he said in his little monologue: he bewailed the great misfortune of this botched rollout denying us a perpetual left wing domination of our politics, which aside from making the curious and rather incoherent point that somehow it's a bad thing that liberal incompetence has denied us a future of never ending tyranny under liberal incompetence, reveals two significant truths viz the liberal elite: screw the poor and downtrodden, they consider the real value of government controlled health care to be the vast political benefit it rings up for liberals; and that come the end of the day they'd really prefer it if the country were ruled by a one party oligarchy instead of a democracy where you're forced to actually do horrible democratic things like engage with and tolerate people who don't happen to agree with you. The instincts of liberal idealism are fundamentally autocratic in nature, that's what Stewart's belated bellyaching reaffirmed to moi.