Well, this story of how the progressive liberalism of the modern lefty fosters and encourages a kind of absurdist intolerance where the showing of an American flag in America for christ sake can legitimately be construed as a form of controlled speech properly forbidden under the law says nothing if not: as a country, we're doomed.

Think about it, forty, fifty years ago if a high school's 'Club for Communists' had decided to celebrate May Day and some kid had worn an American flag t-shirt to class in protest and the young Marxists had threatened the kid with violence few if any [excepting of course the teacher who'd almost certainly have been a socialist] would have sided with the Leninists against the expression of American patriotism - but as the dysfunctional idiocy of modern liberalism increasingly takes hold of the country and its institutions and its media it can now be rendered a proto crime to be a patriot because of course patriotism is just another form of racism, anyone can see that. How long before a Muslim group, by demonizing the American flag t-shirt wearers, gets a whole high school to participate in Ramadan activities because to not participate would be considered a form of hate speech and screw what the constitution might have to say about it?

This is why I tend to see two possible futures for Western democracies: this kind of absurdist liberalism starts to increasingly fall out of favor as more and more people come to see and reject the low growth dysfunction and cultural chaos it spawns and we get a much needed correction; or because of changing demographics and the intractable hold on media and gov't institutions by progressives you start to see the rise of extreme right wing parties because conservatives come to no longer believe the political process as is capable of serving their interests - and with that you'll start to see the insuperable bifurcation of the polity as liberals cling to their illusions and conservatives, full of existential dread, long for a something else - in fact we're already seeing the latter starting to foment in Europe with the rise of stridently right wing voices and, really, the way things are going, America probably is not far behind [I see the Tea Party more as principled in general than stridently doctrinaire - but extremist elements are definitely there]. I mean, a recent poll had Obama's approval rating at 48% - how in the fucking hell can nearly half of the country still somehow manage to convince themselves that this guy is doing a job worthy of approval?!! That's insane! How can a conservative not look at that number and sadly conclude 'guess room for my point of view in this country is a doomed thing'? Look at recent gay rights skirmish in Arizona - one didn't have to support the offending law to acknowledge that it was legitimately based on federal provisions designed to protect freedom of religion - and yet you couldn't have that argument, that debate because liberal outrage verging on hysteria, supported wholeheartedly by the media, immediately rose up and decreed dissent meaningless since anyone who agreed with the law must be evil and therefore did not deserve to be heard - this intolerance in the name of tolerance and for the sake of the putatively enlightened liberal ideal that has become so prevalent an aspect, a driving force for the left under Obama is virtually guaranteed to provoke a backlash from those who do not bow down before the dictates of the progressives creed and canon law.

[as intended - liberals clearly see right wing anger as serving their great cause which, given the good graces of media bias, it does in a myopic and limited way - what they get wrong is thinking that's any way to run a country as diverse and unwieldy and resistant to autocracy as America or blithely imagining that the scourge of identity politics which works by stigmatizing alternative viewpoints as being unacceptable because they exist outside of an arbitrarily established norm, which in turn results in the marginalizing of dissent and free speech and a closing down of the open marketplace of ideas and opinion and debate that is the lifeblood of democracy will regardless of all that reduction and abuse still leave you with a functioning democracy at the end of the day -  but then again, for the Imperial President and his acolytes, democracy is passe so who really cares, right? I mean, what was it I read in Harvard's student newspaper last week where one ambitious young liberal argued that conservatives should be banned from the university since the animating ethos of liberal ideology is that it's right and conservatism is wrong and so what was the point of letting conservatives within the gates? Why waste time tolerating the by definition wrong opinions of these untouchables? Has anybody so succinctly summed up the guiding principles of modern liberalism more efficiently than that perfect young scholar?]. 

So, Putin's response so far has been fairly subdued, even giving impression he's willing to work with the EU to stabilize things and find a solution - does this mean people who thought a significant east versus west crisis was in the offing here were wrong and that Putin's fortunes indeed have been knocked down a few pegs and he really doesn't have a lot of good options? Or does this mean he's playing possum knowing that the new normal in the Ukraine is very unstable, that the economy is very vulnerable and would not react well to losing the east and therefore is hardly a golden prize waiting to be won if you're the EU, and that the possibility of extremists in the west coming to the fore and creating a security environment that Putin can exploit is very real? I'd still say it's the latter. Putin's rule is based on the perception of him as a strong leader slowly returning Russia to something resembling the putative greatness of it's past - losing the Ukraine does not at all fit that narrative - so I'm still expecting something 'big' - most are focusing on the Crimea being absorbed into Russia proper, but I tend to think that would just be the first move, a prelude to the fostering of a separatist movement maybe even the establishment of a sort of rump parliament if you will in the east.

Either that or Putin is indeed stuck with the illusions that undergird much of his maneuvering now having been exposed - the illusion being, once you get past the special interests who profit greatly from being close to Russia, for the average person on the street the West has more to offer than an irredentist  Moscow does - although, as said before, breaking ties with Russia will at first and for awhile bring much more hardship than gain to a Westernized Kiev - and that's the weak spot Putin will be striking at should he decide he has no choice but to play hardball.

[Putin orders large troop mobilization for 'exercises' on Ukraine border - doesn't fit Putin's profile that this would just be a show of strength - Putin is not Obama, indeed he seems to revel in that fact, it's become part of his public persona - I see invasion as highly unlikely, rather figure Putin sees a security situation arising, possibly because Moscow has manufactured it, that he can exploit towards some tangible 'gain' - Kerry has made strong statement warning Russia against violating Ukrainian sovereignty - this seems ill advised since no one really respects Obama's threats - of course you have to 'support' Ukrainian aspirations, but seems much wiser, especially if you've established a reputation for being weak as Obama has, to play it close to the vest until you get a clearer idea of what exactly Putin has in mind - after all, it's not like Ukraine is some wonderful prize waiting to be won here, double so if the Crimea and much of the east don't come with it - unlike with Soviets it's not vital that we push back against this limited Russian hegemony but it is vital that we do not come across as looking weak and ineffectual in relation to it because such an impression would be exactly the payoff Putin would be looking to exploit here - the only real gain Putin can attain here is one that appears to come at America's expense - his influence is directly proportional to the appearance of Obama's lacking thereof - therefore, if you're not a believer in American power, which Obama clearly isn't, it's then at the very least incumbent on you as president not to allow yourself to stumble into situations where 'enemies' can exploit that vulnerability - unfortunately, as we saw in Syria, as we're seeing I believe with 'negotiations' with Iran and as I think we're seeing increasingly in the China Sea, Obama is failing at that very least of things - in essence, Obama governs as president of America like a person who really doesn't want to be president of a country like America - I don't think he likes the place much - huge problem is he seems to see this as a virtue, not a glaring weakness - needless to say that's not how our enemies see it - analogy I've used before: it's as if by a series of twists of fate Obama has become CEO of company that sells a product he dislikes, doesn't approve of - seeing this, as a shareholder of this company you of course ask yourself how long can we stay profitable under this guy's leadership? not long - and on the contrary as a competitor of this company you say: thank you so very much]  

Agree with much of WR Mead's take on Ukraine - no way Moscow hadn't planned on possibility of something like this happening and therefore the response is no doubt in the pipeline - and there's a strong likelihood that Putin will see this as another opportunity to make Obama and the EU look weak and ineffectual - by answering a staged call for help from Yanukovich to undo an illegal coup [less likely I think] or by moving to partition the country while keeping the key ports in the south under Russian control [more likely I think] Putin can really force Obama and his merry band of incompetents into making some dire decisions the type of which they've already amply shown they don't have the stomach or strategic sense for. Next couple of weeks should prove interesting. 

Wait a bloody second - did I get the Ukraine question all wrong? What's this about a deal agreed to between the gov't and the opposition, brokered by the EU and for which Obama is taking credit because he claims his 'threat' motivated Yanukovich to compromise? And that Putin, in a conversation with Obama, has agreed that efforts must be made to make sure this agreement works?

Sorry, that does't add up - that flat out doesn't add up. Putin is not giving up the Ukraine, and allowing a EU sponsored deal to move forward would be giving up the Ukraine - I don't know what the hell Yanukovich is up to here, but there's no way Putin just gave him 10 billion so he can sidle on over to the EU. Something's going on here. This is a divided country where the somewhat smaller western half sees itself as European, the somewhat larger eastern half as Russian - I believe Russian is the spoken language in about 50% of households and that's why Yanukovich won the election, an election that by all accounts was apparently legitimate [although who really knows]. No way Putin is just gonna allow the EU and Obama to stroll in and win the day.

I'm very curious to see what happens once these silly Olympics are finished with because there's no way this story ends like this. No way.

[but what if Yanukovich, either out of fear or 'cunning' has actually betrayed Putin? Boy, hard to believe - but, like I said, if true that won't be the end of the story - it's this ostensibly civil and cooperative conversation between Obama and Putin that's got me convinced schemes are unfolding because there's no way Putin just spent 50 billion on the Olympics to aggrandize himself and Russia plus the billions he handed over to Yanukovich only to have the EU and Obama now ride gloriously in as saviors of the Ukraine - no way - the next week should prove interesting]

[now I'm reading reports that seem to suggest the gov't has left Kiev, the police are not guarding buildings, the military is nowhere to be seen - am I really supposed to believe western Ukraine has just magically seceded from eastern Ukraine and now let's all just go about our business? C'mon - something's afoot - this would be like if during China's Olympics a civil war-like crisis had broken out in Taiwan between forces wanting unification with the mainland and those leaning to America and Bush had stepped in and resolved the issue in America's favor and China in response simply said 'okay, thanks' - something's gotta be coming - is this Putin setting up situation where he says 'I know the protesters will overreact, become unruly, invite chaos - and then I'll have my pretext to move in'? Or is this an indication that Ukranian security forces have sided with the opposition? Or, with Kiev stuck way up north and landlocked, is this Putin saying 'I control the key ports of Odessa and Sevastapol so good luck surviving without access to the Black Sea'?]

[it's now clear police and military made unequivocal decision not to get involved, which amounts to a de facto siding with the opposition - it also appears that Ukrainian parliament has voted to impeach Yanukovich with 325 for and I guess 125 against - pretty strong repudiation of Russian backed president - and Tymoshenko has been released from prison - is it actually possible that Putin has lost Ukraine? Kind of sounding that way - although I'm still saying many pages yet to be turned in this story - to me Putin still has the trump cards: control of natural gas, on which Ukraine is dependent; control of access to the Black Sea; bulk of Ukrainian economic output comes from Russophile east - all Kiev and west have is hope the EU will save them from the hardships Putin could bring to bear should the country split up - not an enviable position - I mean, what good is Ukraine to the EU if the Crimea and Sevastopol don't come with it?]

[it should also be noted that just because 325 voted to oust Yanukovich it doesn't mean they all support moving towards EU and away from Russia - how many simply thought getting rid of him was the best way to quickly bring the crisis to a halt before things really started to go downhill? What if for many of the 325 this is just about buying time? But then why release Tymoshenko? Russophiles don't see her as a real threat and the 'goodwill' gesture distracts attention from real purpose? I dunno - like I said, several pages yet to be turned here]

[have not seen Tymoshenko speech, have read live tweets of excerpts - girl does have a messianic knack for spinning a crowd - but question remains: how broad is this appeal across Ukraine? One imagines answer to that question will determine much of how this plays out - but my impression is people are failing to realise just how important Ukraine is to Putin's plans - no way he can simply let it go, especially with half the country sympathetic to remaining loyal to Russia] 

Obama makes a rather unimpressive and less than forceful threat against Ukrainian leaders regarding a violent put down of protests - now, I'm not really sure what the proper response should be here viz upheaval in Ukraine other than to say that the West's naive failure to realise that Putin always intended to play hardball when it came to the Ukraine and an association with the EU means Western leaders are at least partially to blame for this mess - but aside from that, I'm curious: with Obama having drawn a proto red line as he's fond of doing and which no one really expects him to honor, will Putin, when the Olympics soon close, attempt to embarrass him once again and paint him as weak by ordering his puppets in Kiev to bring down the hammer? I'd almost be shocked if he doesn't - he's already gotta be pretty pissed about the Russian hockey team getting beat by the Yanks and then run from his pretty little tournament early.   

Krauthammer makes witty and quite accurate point regarding Hillary's 'success' as Secretary of State being entirely an invention of the media - she was at best useless at State, at worst a disaster [Benghazi] - but the media of course will have none of it because, well, they managed to get Obama elected despite a resume utterly lacking in substance so lying about Hillary's qualifications is no big challenge - but Krauthammer makes the clever point that Hillary was so bad as Secretary of State that she even managed, regarding Keystone, to piss off Canada, the nicest country in the world and without much question America's closest and most reliable ally. That's a good one - the GOP nominee should use it - it's short, sweet, gets a laugh and is bang on as a criticism.

All humor aside though, as I've said before, this abject denial by the left wing media and would be intelligentsia about the harsh reality of Obama's foreign policy, this constant reaching for the glasses rose colored in order to protect and preserve their favored candidates and ideological pretensions, is a deeply troubling thing - and if it carries over to Hillary, which it already has viz her record as Secretary of State, that's gotta lead to something bad - the dynamics of foreign policy are not kind to those living in denial of the dangers and threats swirling round them - these chickens have got to come home to roost and I'm really dreading that the day they do is gonna be an unpleasant day indeed.

[although, we're calling it denial on the part of the left - but more accurate to say agreement? I've been saying all along that Obama's deliberate foreign policy intentions are to significantly reduce the strategic profile of America and reel in the Pentagon's budget - there's a deliberate goal here of shrinking American power - it's hid behind superficial paens to multilateralism and cooperation etc etc, but the real goal is to emasculate American power and turn the money saved towards the welfare state - and in that sense it's less denial on the part of the left when it comes to Obama's foreign policy and more I think agreement - a grotesquely naive and delusional agreement, sure, but not just simply politically motivated denial - this is actually the misguided nonsense they believe in]

You'd think that the far right mind would at least be capable of understanding or bare minimum simply recognizing that the fervor with which liberal pols and their adjuncts in the media have pursued the ruin of Christie's presidential ambitions over 'bridgegate' is pretty conclusive proof of just how much the left fears him and that this fear is not just about his ability to defeat Hillary regardless of media bias but also more importantly I think because his personality and the way which it may strongly appeal to a broad swath of American voters proffers up the promise of changing the rather unflattering way conservatives are viewed and often caricatured in the country - you'd think that Christie representing such a ominous threat to the left would deserve or earn some respect from the far right - but nope, not really happening. The far right almost dumps on Christie as much as the left does - they can't seem to shake the vainglorious notion that going to war against liberalism [and all the optics and heated rhetoric of outrage that goes with that war] in a welfare state that is increasingly liberal in its tendencies and where the media and press are overwhelmingly liberal in their sympathies is a viable approach - it isn't, it's stupid, it's maladapted - you wanna mitigate, roll back the threat liberals like Obama present [and I don't at all deny that threat] you gotta out message them, out smart them and then out govern the wretched little pricks.

But is all this moot - is Christie in fact toast? I don't think so, barring of course no evidence surfacing indicating he's lying about his role in the bridge nonsense. He gave a speech recently in Chicago that demonstrated clearly why he shines: it was a pointed and aggressive attack on the Democrats and Obama that did not bore, was full of personality and a 'man of the people' charm and appealed in a way that should please rational, reasonable conservatives while at same time attracting the enthusiasm of independents and moderate Democrats looking back at America under Obama with great dismay.

This is why I like Christie and hope he's still viable - it's not just because he may be the only conservative out there with the media savvy to beat down the beast that is Hillary - it's also because he has the ability to change the way people think about conservatives and conservatism, which is in many ways a caricature manufactured by a biased media - unfortunately the far right, with their strong dislike of Christie, demonstrate why that caricature is so easily applied.

With CBO predictions of Obamacare suppressing employment and now with those august number crunchers projecting that the liberal deep yearning for enforced egalitarianism through a puffed up minimum wage would also be a job killer - and as well of course considering all the other dreary artifacts and manifestations of decline and enervation we've been privileged to witness with the ascension of liberalism's chosen one - maybe it's time to do a thought experiment - imagine alternate futures where a Reagan is allowed over a generation to do whatever he wants in accordance with his conservative principles and an Obama likewise according to his liberal sympathies is given a generation to do as he sees fit - in short in these imagined timelines the two can act as unfettered representatives of their ideological givens - in which future after some twenty-five years of guidance under these ideological wherewithals would America still exist as a prosperous and powerful nation? I think we all know the answer to that. For the modern liberal, the most important part of belief is denial.

With Obama having once again dipped the imperial hand into his precious ACA to with the corrupt majesty of a true regent tear at it as he sees fit to serve his interests and screw all the little people crying about democratic principles and constitutional order, the ungrateful cretins, they should be forever adoring of the honor he does them by deigning to abuse them so - having done this, why on earth would Republicans even for a second consider some kind of move on immigration reform before the midterms? With the utterly inept rollout of Obamacare and Dear Leader's increasing reliance on the diktats of an imperial presidency to keep his ruinous agenda afloat, Democrats have handed the GOP the perfect tool for putting off until after November the damaging internal fight over immigration reform while blaming it with great legitimacy all on Obama and drawing a withering attention to just how awful a president he is to boot. All the GOP should be doing is hammering the points home over and over again: the mess that is Obamacare is proof liberals are incompetent managers of complex legislation; but regardless, even if a sensible deal on immigration could be struck, Obama's serial abuse of executive privilege makes it impossible for conservatives to trust that he won't in essence simply rewrite the law to suit his own ideological whims and fancies once it's a reality. The midterms should be about nothing more than liberal legislative incompetence glaringly evinced in the ACA and Obama's abuse of power and his sundry executive shortcomings in general, you know stuff like Benghazi etc etc and his entire foreign policy far as I'm concerned. The GOP does not have to go anywhere near immigration reform right now and they're crazy if they do.

This blog post from Max Boot about the trouble with China, which doesn't add anything new to the conversation, and is really just written as something of an aside, but interests me for its last sentence: what happened to the Asia pivot?

The question fits nicely with my thoughts concerning Obama's political machinations being enabled by an idolatrous media and press that he manipulates with great skill for the purposes of making lies sound believable, smoke screens seem like patches of clear blue sky, and speeches filled with sophistry and naive panderings to some sickly, puffed up notion of lofty sound like Dear Leader is channeling Cicero or Seneca - because when the pivot was announced I immediately said: that's bullshit, will never happen. I remember getting into an argument with a fairly well known writer on defense issues about it, saying to him: what has Obama ever said or done that would make you think this is serious? To be serious about an Asia pivot one would have to be open to increasing the military budget and also be a firm believer in the inherent value of American power - where do you see anything like that in Obama's resume? Not only is the man clearly not a devout believer in American power, I actually think he may secretly be quite hostile to it, and not just because of the price tag.

It's amusing how reluctant people can be to think ill of their leaders - people do seem to have a strong desire to believe that the august who rule over them are actually in some way august and not utterly full of shit - authority is a strange drug - but it was always clear to me that the Asia pivot was about nothing more than creating a talking point to counter Romney with in the debates and also as a ruse to make it look like the disengagement from the Mideast was not about 'retreat' but rather a nod to 'thoughtful strategic realignment'. It was never about an actual pivot, merely only the intimations of such - and I don't know how anyone looking with an unclouded eye at Obama's words and actions, not to mention the leftist intellectual swamp out of which he crawled, could ever think otherwise.

This article in Mosaic interesting because it draws same conclusion I drew a long time ago - Obama's true foreign policy intentions are hidden behind obfuscation and outright lies because they are alarmingly dangerous and disruptive of the status quo in their beliefs and sympathies - this clearly on display with Iran negotiations - the writer posits hypothesis that I've been touting as the truth of what's actually going on here for quite awhile now - namely, the writer asks, if Obama had never intended to stop Iran and had long ago settled on a policy of containment wouldn't he be shrouding that truth by doing exactly what he's doing now? In short, talk tough but secretly push everything towards negotiations that have no hope of being successful but do accomplish two things: keep Israel in check and endlessly delay a need for US action behind 'giving peace a chance' gibberish.

Don't know why it has taken so long for commentators to figure this out about Obama - maybe because I'm such a wretched cynic I'm used to always thinking the worst of people, which is why very early on I came to the conclusion that Obama was a highly skilled liar who with shameless cunning used his favoured status with the press and media to hide his extremism behind a facade of reasonableness - his whole approach to politics I believe is based on this dynamic and it worked so long as he was was nothing more than a community organizer or state legislator or senator, where he could get away with covering himself in pretty, high sounding rhetoric and never be held responsible for producing something real that actually works - when you're president, you've got to produce and he hasn't and therefore the lying and misdirection used to push an agenda forward becomes harder and harder to pull off regardless of your media allies willingness to help you out - this most infamously on display with Obamacare, where he told bald faced lies to push it through but no amount of gauze thrown over the monstrosity by biased midwives eager to serve the great cause like the NY Times editorial page can hide the fact from the curious that it's a very ugly baby indeed.

But as bad as Obamacare and the economy in general are, all domestic issues for that matter - this behaviour has produced a foreign policy that is just as bad, just as misguided, and the consequences of that may prove much worse in the long run. Even the Mosaic writer I think, although he sees the disturbing common strains binding the Obama foreign policy together, fails to ascribe this pattern to an overall deliberate agenda designed to shrink the American strategic profile in a significant way and bring it in keeping with the far left's view of the US Military and what America's place in the world should be - i.e. that the military is a fundamentally evil tool serving the interests of the racist anglo saxon capitalist elite that siphons off much needed funds that could be better used in fostering the academy's dream of a new American brand of progressive socialism that will have a much more cooperative relationship with the wide world because, hell, who would object to a socialist version of America? This is the default position of the academic left that nurtured Obama's world view - and as far as I'm concerned everything Obama has done foreign policy wise, once you dig beneath the lies and obscuring rhetoric and misdirection, can be seen as being roughly in keeping with it. If successful, this agenda would dramatically distort and undermine the strategic geometry tentatively holding the world together and throw the West into a precarious position that may be quite difficult to crawl back from - what really scares me is that the bad players in the world - Iran, Muslim extremists in general, China and Putin - are all looking at the White House and no doubt seeing what I'm seeing and are consequently asking themselves: we've got three more years of this guy - how far do we go in exploiting the opportunity?

"... sure, of course it's probably an exaggeration to say that the end of Western civilization is upon us, I suppose that'd be a bit hysterical… but then one can't help but wonder what's up when the dominant political party in the US has decided its signature law, Obamacare, is a good thing precisely because as the CBO points out it dramatically encourages people to avoid work, or gainful employment as an antique generation may have quaintly yclept it in a bygone day... for liberals it seems this glorious achievement is an ennobling liberation of the human spirit, a proud invocation to a new age… no longer must the much put upon modern man endure hardship and sacrifice and apply himself towards some practical end that benefits his family and the society as a whole... no, freed from such dreary expectations and responsibilities, he is now at liberty to sit at home and be subsidized by a loving government in the endless diddling of his XBox or whatever other triviality fills his perpetually infantilized fancy… and yes of course every four years if it's not too much bother rouse himself from a stupor in order to stumble out and throw a vote at the idiot who promises to maintain this glorious new status quo ad infinitum… but hell, even there the good news is that given the wonders of the internet the great imposition of rousing oneself and stumbling out may soon not even be a required prerequisite for the continuation of this most splendid enlightenment… just push a button and fall back asleep… it's almost as if the coming legalization of pot is a preparatory step designed to acclimate us to the new stupefied normal… embrace the suck… fill your lungs with the great liberal dream of inert contentment and the smiling idiocy of progressive lassitude and just simply sit back and chill, dude… it's all good..."

Wow. Kerry responds to question about attacks on him and his intentions from certain Israeli pols and commentators viz his quixotic [to be kind] 'peace' quest by saying that's fine, he's endured attacks from people shooting real bullets - ahhh... idiot? Fool? Simpleton? What do we call someone who says stuff this insulting and moronic and detached from reality while on duty as the top diplomat for a superpower? Or is that it - detached from reality - ie naively liberal and this verbal slip is a manifestation of how America's left views the Mideast as essentially a problem created by Israel's jingoistic conservatives and the fabled Jewish Lobby reviled by left wing intellectuals and thus the tendency to marginalize their concerns as immature and unevolved?

EU's foreign affairs mucky muck Ashton suggests we extend negotiations with Iran another six months even though the originally intended six month negotiations period hasn't even begun yet - in other words Ashton, a big sitter at the big table of Western representatives involved in this farce, has declared defeat before the start of actions ostensibly designed to take defeat off the table have even made an appearance. Seems to me this incoherent idiocy makes clear what has actually been obvious for awhile: that these negotiations are a charade intended to keep Israel on a leash in event they're actually serious about acting unilaterally to stop Iran and as well to protect the reputations of Western leaders who are looking quite hopelessly lost and ineffectual at the moment; or that these Western leaders have somehow against all sense and reason managed to convince themselves that they are indeed involved in substantive debate with rational players who respect the West's intentions here and do not at all view these leaders as hopelessly lost and ineffectual buffoons mired in a besotted weakness of their own pathetically misguided making.

I've always believed this farce to be more about the first interpretation than the second - but Ashton's willingness to make such a foolish statement without any apparent sense of just how awfully foolish it was does seem to open up possibly that this is just a case of these people being remarkably misguided idiots. 

Did Kerry really say, or strongly intimate to put it more accurately, that if Israel doesn't use current negotiations to reach a deal with the Palestinians, that the boycotting of Israel as a pariah state will be the result - in essence, then, has Kerry legitimized the whole atrociously misguided and ruinously short sighted boycott movement? Is this man an idiot? How much worse when it comes to foreign policy can this wretched administration get? Three more years of these besotted fools and the US is going to be at war in the China Sea and the Mideast. Jesus.

I was reading something in the WSJ about how businesses are experiencing good profits but are still refusing to invest the money - is it because they, focused as they are on the bottom line, clearly see just how awful the Obama presidency is, how everything is trending badly, how the road we're on is leading to a very unfortunate place and they're keeping their powder dry in full expectation of the inevitability of it?

It's as if Obama has no plan B - ya know, as many of us predicted years ago, he came to the White House a fully committed left wing ideologue who felt he could use his favored [idolatrous] standing with the press and media and the power of his oratory combined with the utterly shallow and simple minded glorification of his persona as the first black [sort of black] president to push through a hyper liberal agenda disguised as being all perfectly reasonable etc etc and if the GOP said otherwise well that's because they're all a bunch of racists etc etc - but now that that grand illusion of an idea has gone all to shit he has no clue what to do, he has no plan B - Clinton had a plan B, even Bush had a plan B - but Obama is just stuck out there driving the car towards a cliff as if under the delusion that somehow everything is gonna be fine just so long as he keeps driving. Or maybe he is indeed such a committed Alinskyite ideologue that he feels driving over the cliff is an acceptable price to pay - just so long as the cliff is to the left.

Or is it that they are just all grotesquely incompetent fools without the slightest sense of how to go about governing a country like America and are thusly left with nothing to do but stumble about in their little echo chamber utterly detached from reality? Can't rule it out.

[some saying in defense of Kerry that he was just stating the truth, including Israel's Lapid - but of course we know that, we understand that the boycott is a real threat and very likely will ramp up if present negotiations fail which is why it is so important to say nothing that may seem to lend legitimacy to this idiocy, especially when every reasonable, objective view of these Kerry led negotiations has said all along there's virtually no chance of them being successful which is why there is so much dislike of Kerry behind the scenes coming from Israel - a few weeks ago he seemed to lend legitimacy to idea that if negotiations fail violence from Palestinians would make sense, and now he's done the same thing with the boycott movement - doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all if this wasn't what he meant to do - it is the effect of what he's done and so criticism of him is entirely justified especially since these negotiations are happening only because the Obama administration insisted - and I'm not at all sure it wasn't what he meant to do: Obama has acted since the beginning of his presidency as if his celebrity granted him some 'magical' ability to force unpalatable concessions on Israel and also as if the Palestinians were not motivated by a politics wholly at odds with acceptance of the Jewish state  - that's delusional and naive thinking but entirely of a piece with the far left's grossly misguided views of Israel and the Mideast in general]