Okay... before bashing Kerry once again, let's just say that the basing agreement Obama signed with the Philippines actually sounds like a good move, which is something I don't think I've ever said about anything else Obama has done in the foreign policy realm - although, word of caution, Obama clearly values gestures over actions when it comes to foreign policy - even with something like Libya it was the gesture of leading from behind and how it related to 'responsibility to protect' delusions that mattered most - so, good move by Obama, but my guess is it'll likely just end up as another empty gesture.

But back to Kerry who in an interview on WSJ website that's behind a pay wall so I haven't actually seen it but if the description of what he says is accurate implies that he [and therefore Obama's entire security inner circle I assume] views Putin's actions as not being grounded in a much larger strategic puzzle and threat but rather simply an expression of something limited to just Putin himself, almost as if to say this is just a manifestation of a personality quirk of ol' Vlad's that may be troubling but not ultimately broadly significant - which is basically a repeat of what he said at the beginning of all this wherein he essentially dismissed Putin's actions as a misplaced attempt to spoil the enlightened protocols of the 21st century by behaving in a so awfully clumsy 19th century way.

I would call this the interpretation of events in order to suit a conclusion one is strongly motivated to prefer -  in other words, Putin's actions don't fit well with Obama's preferred worldview and therefore the problem can't possibly be with that worldview but rather must be about Putin's stubborn refusal to act in proper and civil accordance with it - so let's slap some sanctions on him until he smartens up and starts playing nice.

I of course believe what we're seeing are moves in a very significant strategic game with wide influence that implies threats and dangers of great import that move closer to an inevitability the more the Obama administration demonstrates an unwillingness or inability to understand or confront them. I'd contend that Russia being on the verge of signing a large energy deal with China and just this week I believe agreeing to ship the S-400 anti-air missile system to China [can Iran be far behind?] are clear indications that my take on things is closer to reality than Kerry's - which is a pretty disturbing thought.

The remarkable thing about Kerry's idiotic 'apartheid' statement is that there doesn't appear to be any recognition at all on his part or the people he's talking to of how making such an inflammatory characterization as that that utterly stigmatizes Israel as the unconscionable villain completely disincentivizes the Palestinians - ie, if by not making sacrifices now to get a deal they just sit back and wait for the world to thoroughly demonize Israel as the poster child of racist abuse and subjugation of an underclass until, like the reviled South African regime before, Israel is completely isolated and left with no choice but to capitulate, thus dooming them to the ravages of the truly intolerant Islamists, then why the hell make sacrifices for peace now or endure all the hardships and tough reckonings that would come once you no longer can just blame everything on Israel?

So again one is forced to ask: are Kerry et al really this stupid or has ideological hubris blinded them to such a degree that they just seem this stupid? Or - more worrying I think - is this a deliberate attempt to cater to anti-Zionist sentiments so as to back Israel into a no win situation?  

So, let me see… the payoff, the harvest reaped from Kerry's utterly foolish, ill-advised, astoundingly naïve attempt at peace in the Middle East, a peace that was never at all possible because it's pretty damn clear the Palestinians have no interest in agreeing to terms which Israel could possibly ever accept - the payoff for this effort by Kerry that any clear thinking person could see was not wise and fraught with the likelihood of making things worse is that in the end what we get is in a 'private' meeting Kerry labelling [and libelling for that matter] Israel as a nascent apartheid state, intimating and thus in essence condoning idea that Palestinians would probably now be justified in renewing violence over the failure of the talks and then suggesting that if we could only get rid of Netanyahu as leader of Israel peace indeed, at least as Kerry delusions it, just might have a chance - thereby confirming for all those Israel haters out there that yes it's true Israel is a very bad place and just you go right on hating it. What can one say? The man is an idiot - either that, or Obama truly believes that if he just pollutes the water enough in which Israel swims they'll eventually have no choice but to get out of the pool and make do with what the idiocy of hope and change has left them. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of Netanyahu's cabinet meetings - the room must be full of absolute contempt for the Obama administration - at the end of the meetings they must have to do a little yoga or something to calm themselves before facing the cameras lest someone say what they actually think.

Even if one doesn't buy into the idea of a loose alliance existing between Russia, China and Iran to take advantage of a weak US president and slowly put in motion events and structures that will unwind, diminish American power and quite possibly in a rather significant way - even if one doesn't buy into this theory and accepts that those three are just acting in service of their own interests and any overlap of technique and benefits is strictly coincidental - don't Putin's actions in Ukraine make an 'alliance' a de facto thing regardless of intentionality? Doesn't China now look at the benefit of Putin screwing up things in the Mideast and Europe for the US and see this as a huge net gain for them viz balance of power, especially if one believes in the sincerity of Obama's putative Asia pivot [which I don't, but whatever]? Likewise, doesn't Putin now see if he didn't before [and I certainly believe he did] that if things really do start to get nasty between Russia and the EU/US that having an energy hungry behemoth with a permanent seat on the Security Council in his corner is a rather nice bit of leverage? And it certainly doesn't take a genius to figure out that if those two see Iran as an important cog in these various machinations then Persia's ambitions get a significant boost. This may not have started out as an informal alliance between Russia, China and Iran but it's very hard to see how it doesn't now perforce become one.

With Lil' Kim in the jolly old DPRK about set it seems to light off another test nuke, it's time again to ask: are we really just gonna continue on with the obviously failing diplomacy game until these wackos perfect the most lethal of technologies? What if the yield of this bomb is significantly greater than the last? What if it becomes clear that they are getting close to miniaturizing a warhead that'll fit on a ballistic missile? Are we really just gonna continue to let them test missile technology until they've got one that could reach the US? Since a missile test is sure to follow a bomb test, is it really so crazy to think about shooting the thing down - I mean, if we don't let them test it, how can they perfect it? Can we not get China to sign off on something like that, to even join in since the fear of taking out one of NK's missiles would be them going all bat shit crazy against Seoul? Is there really no way for us to pressure China into doing something constructive here since they're the ones essentially enabling this madness? I mean, if something truly awful happens they can't want to look like the enabler - or are they stuck between a fear of a destabilized NK and what that might mean and the political disaster of a seemingly unlikely but still possible reunification with the south? [or is it possible China figures NK with a viable nuke is a 'containable' least bad outcome here for them? There are some experts even speculating that China's helping NK's nuke program, even to the point of supplying tech on how to militarize a nuclear warhead - hard to believe, but again, they may see this as the least bad outcome for them - they definitely don't want to a see a unified democracy allied to the US crouching on their border]

A lot of difficult questions - and I think difficult questions have a tendency of making people vulnerable to embracing fallacies - the dangerous fallacy hanging over all this is that the status quo is fine, problematic but still workable - the thing is, it's always easier to picture the negative consequences of acting aggressively as compared to 'playing it safe' - but in no way is that proof of the safe route being best when it comes to real outcomes - just as surely as there's a time and place for well reasoned caution there's also a time and place for coming to terms with fact that caution is working against you. I think we're getting to that point with North Korea [well, actually, I think we got there a while back, but there ya go] - and, unfortunately, the way things are going and with a president in the White House who is clearly either not a fan of, big believer in or well suited to the use of American power, it won't be long before we're stuck asking the same questions viz Iran.

It seems liberals are busy constructing oppressive othodoxies everywhere, thought prisons where truth is dictated and anyone who denies that asserted orthodoxy is by denying it automatically persona non grata - the non debate over gay marriage is an example of this, where anyone opposing it was immediately cast as an intolerant homophobe - so to the attempt to do the same viz climate change where some liberals have come out and said with a straight face that anyone who denies the reality of climate change should be charged with a crime - the 'debate' over inequality is definitely moving in this direction, where again the rhetoric of the left attempts to construct an orthodoxy that says of course capitalism serves the evil rich at the expense of the poor and anyone who denies this truth must be in league with the evil rich - and then there's racism, the go to warden of the thought prison who can shut down any criticism of anything or anyone by a 'white' person [preferably a white hetero male who is or at least appears to be 'privileged' in some way which, conveniently, by just being a white etc etc is privilege enough according to prison rules] by simply saying 'only a racist would think that way' - shutting down debate with a charge of racism is truly the non plus ultra of liberal orthodoxy in the age of Obama.

As is obvious this agenda is all about suppressing dissent and quarantining liberal ideology against doubt - once again we see how progressives take naturally to autocracy - indeed, their ideas cannot survive outside of an enabling orthodoxy that allows, insists on them being imposed - they're not just by nature sympathetic to autocracy, they're in fact nothing without it.

"… I'm sorry to say but the sad fact is that the vast majority of us and our fellows are absolute fucking morons and much of what we say and do in the explicative mode is a rather pathetic and ultimately transparent attempt to pretend that isn't the case so as to fool ourselves into thinking that what we are actually matters…"

The much repudiated minority dissent by Sotomayor in the affirmative action case is interesting - in so much as her view of the proper role of government makes clear that should the liberal autocracy that threatens to overwhelm us ever actually come to be personal liberty, free speech and the rule of law as expressed by an independent judiciary will definitely be afterthoughts in the calculations of our progressive caretakers as they set about creating their utopia.

"… the mandarins of Beijing aren't idiots, Putin isn't an idiot, Persia's bearded potentates are not idiots… they're looking at America, they see what's happening, they've taken the measure of Obama and the dysfunction he rules over and have concluded that if a guy as misguided and as poorly suited to governing a superpower as him can twice get elected head of the erstwhile most important country in the world and whose depressing reign, adding insult to injury, may be succeeded by someone equally as ill suited for those chief executive duties but who'll be handed the job regardless by an ignorant electorate and sycophantic media simply for having been born a woman who ironically enough rose to prominence by marrying well… I mean, as said, these people ain't idiots, they see this mess and no doubt rightly conclude the world order that has existed since the end of WWII is coming to an end and they plan on positioning themselves well to pick up the pieces… the seemingly unbounded naive idiocy of Obama and Kerry may have been surprised and dumbfounded by how Ukraine went down and the players on the board moved about, but the game was not lost on ol' Vlad, nor China, nor Iran, nor many of America's increasingly disquieted allies..."

"… you understand, the president's fondness for saying the debate about whatever is over, as he's done twice in the last week regarding Obamacare, is just the logical extension of his expansive view of executive privilege into the realm of god-like omnipotence… really, it makes perfect sense when seen in that gospel of John context, the ideological void, as it were, being given true form by the Word that is God... I mean, that great man Al Sharpton, whose keen intellect no non-racist can doubt, recently compared Obama to the risen Christ so can we really fault him for embracing the role of deity with enthusiasm when so many clever people seem in such desperate need of his salvation?… no, it'd be petty and small minded of us to deny an absurdity that so many clearly want to believe… there is that comforting certainty to liberalism, that sense that if one just embraces foolishness with enough conviction to render all dissent blasphemous, then nothing bad can happen..."

I always believed the Iran nuke negotiations were fraudulent, a diversionary ruse meant to manufacture a way for Obama to back down with honor from his claim to never let Iran go nuclear - but I never expected them to admit to this - yet, there ya go, Kerry says right out loud that it seems the whole point of the negotiations is to push Iran's breakout capability from two months to six months - well, that should deter them - sort of like telling the person who's broken into your house that if they don't behave instead of waiting ten minutes to call the police you're only gonna wait five, and then do it with a really angry voice. I mean, c'mon. Kerry's rationalization seems to be that the longer breakout time [which there's no reason to believe would even be legitimate] would allow time for Obama to respond to any breakout effort by Iran [again assuming we would even know something like that for sure] in a very forceful way. Does anyone believe that would mean anything other than an attempt to reconstitute the sanctions regime? And isn't everything Iran is doing based on that calculation and its belief that it would be hard if not impossible to bring back the sanctions and make them stick? Ya just wanna hang your head and cry.

Ah, yes, immigration [legal or not], the thing that made America, is the thing that will destroy it - God is an ironical bastard, no?

Pew has found that 55 percent of Hispanics have a negative view of capitalism, the highest of any group surveyed — higher even than self-identified supporters of Occupy Wall Street (47 percent). Let me repeat: Occupy Wall Street supporters like capitalism more than Hispanics do.

I do submit, though, that yes the numbers do indeed seem quite bad - and yet the GOP should look to Canada where Asians I believe in the majority vote conservative and ask themselves: why are Asian immigrants to America so very bloody liberal and yet in Canada they lean to the right? What the christ is going on there? Again, is this the baleful result of media bias? The 'if you're a conservative you're a racist' meme just doesn't play as convincingly in Canada as it does in the US even though the media in Canada is just as left wing as it is south of the border - but of course there was never institutionalized slavery in Canada nor Jim Crow racism - indeed, Canada, up until quite recently, was a very WASPy place and therefore opportunities for explicit racism were not plentiful - aside from the French/English conflict which is/was cultural, not racial [even though all racial conflicts are essentially cultural] there's just no significant history of a racist narrative in Canada and therefore the left wing media in Canada can not endlessly play that card the way they do in the US - there is no abiding caricature of the racist white capitalist in Canada for the left to exploit the way there is in America.

So I think the Asian vote in America is not a lost cause for conservatives - you just need candidates who have the ability to knock down the 'racist' caricature liberals have so convincingly sketched out. I'm not so sanguine about the Hispanic vote, though - as with blacks, I think there are strong cultural currents pushing Latinos to the left - much of it has to do with the role of the Catholic church in Latin America and it's pronounced socialist tendencies [the current Pope is a perfect expression of that dynamic] - and then there's the indelible stain of corruption running through all of the Latin American ruling class which is a cultural memory that most Latinos simply cannot rise above.

One thing for sure, immigration under the 'melting pot' paradigm that built America without benefit of a welfare state and immigration under a 'multicultural' paradigm that serves in many ways to cast that melting pot America as something of an evil thing and where the welfare state grabs onto the poor early and is reluctant to let them go are fundamentally incompatible - the America you get with the former [the America that became quite possibly the greatest country ever] will inevitably not have much in common with the America you'll get with the latter - liberals amuse their egos by thinking that's a good thing - I tend to doubt very much that they're right about that.

[of course it isn't all about media bias - another key difference between Canada and US when it comes to attracting certain ethnic groups towards certain political ideologies is that unlike America the True North is in general pretty liberal in its sympathies, which means if you're a conservative you have to be careful about sounding too extreme to have any shot at political office - therefore you rarely hear a conservative wade with too much enthusiasm into the minefield of social issues - that's obviously not the case in America - in short, if there are Rick Santorums in Canada they don't run for office and they very definitely do not run for leadership of a party - conservatives in Canada would love a guy like Christie - in the US, the far right can't stand him - there is no recognizable far right in Canada - it's there, you just don't see it. Now, I'm not suggesting that American conservatives imitate Canadian conservatives - Canadian conservatives have several advantages that make their lot in life simpler than it is for American conservatives: one, the liberal vote in Canada is split between four parties, whereas there's only one conservative party - huge advantage; two, foreign policy and military spending are not issues - if they were, conservatives in Canada would definitely face more headwinds; and finally, there are not millions of illegals flooding across the Canadian border and bringing with them all the cultural and demographic complications they do - indeed, if the US could lock down its southern border and implement an immigration policy as reasonable and rational as Canada's, focusing as it does on skills and education and ethnic diversity, this demographic time bomb waiting to blow American conservatism away might be disarmed. So, although imitation isn't possible, I still think the GOP could learn something from looking at the way Canadian conservatives navigate their waters, at least when it comes to the Asian vote]

With Obama now rolling out another bogus campaign concerning equal pay for men and women, a campaign based on lies and phony statistics, we recognise that it doesn't matter that the campaign is identity politics spam because the media will by and large legitimize the intent of the campaign and because the demographic it's aimed at doesn't really care if it's true because believing in it regardless of truth is so comforting - yes, my life sucks because evil rich white men [aka Republicans] are screwing me over.

But in thinking about how the Obama presidency, and basically his entire political career, is so utterly defined by these bogus arguments and identity politics bullshit that works because the media endorses it regardless of truth, you start to see a huge problem with the American political system as compared to the parliamentary system - meaning, when you factor in media bias, how the parliamentary system offers mitigating opportunities over the American system because, one, you have a leader of the opposition and therefore a unified message which has the ability to be much more clearly heard over the noise, and two, the leader of the ruling party has to go before the parliament and face direct criticism from the opposition, actually has to answer questions and endure pointed challenges to those answers - in other words, if you're Obama, you can't simply hide behind the protective phalanx of a sympathetic media, which when you think about is the whole key to Obama's approach to politics, an approach which Hillary will no doubt attempt to replicate in 2016 - media decided we were gonna have the first black president in 2008 regardless of whether or not he was worthy of the job or qualified to do it and a pox on anyone who dared to suggest otherwise, so to it will be for the first female president in 2016 [as long of course as she's a liberal - if it's Nikki Haley or some such conservative abomination, no, that won't do - progressives will find some way to explain why it is all women weren't in the end created equal].

Now of course there is a significant downside of the parliamentary system, namely if you win a majority you can essentially rule as you please until the next election - power like that in the hands of someone like Obama [meaning someone who the media refused to criticise for his entire first term] would be a truly frightening thing. Still, you get the point: if one views media bias, especially as it plays within a poorly informed and educated electorate, as the most serious threat to conservatism in America, then you see how the US system really works to the Democrat's advantage - which is why I supported Christie, I thought for a Republican he was uniquely suited to overcome this huge media disadvantage - and no doubt that's why liberals were so anxious to ruin his career over the 'bridge-gate' scandal.

This study raises a disturbing question: if for various reasons - primarily the dysfunction of distorted demographics that almost entirely favor the left and the fact of much of the opinion generating media apparatus in Western democracies being irrevocably in the hands of the liberal elite - if because of these forces a conservative view of government and governance is dead or dying yet the ascendent liberal view of such is manifestly ruinous [the presidency of Obama and the EU are towering examples of how true that is] then what's to become of us? A fracturing of Western polities as frustrated conservative elements try to throw off the enervating yoke of liberalism by splitting from it? But if that, then why not an all out collapse of the West? It's very hard to imagine anything but dark days lying in wait down the road - the rise of far right wing parties in Europe are no doubt a foreboding of what may be in store - and if the destabilizing effects of ill conceived, unreasonable and when it comes to illegals utterly unhinged from reality demographic changes truly have the ability to turn Texas into a swing state by 2020, then America as we know it is essentially doomed - it will either in actuality or for all intents and purposes break apart, with conservatives concluding that there's simply no point participating in a hopelessly compromised political process - if we get to the point where this study seems to suggest we are unavoidably heading towards of the only choices available for who sits in the White House being between the very liberal candidate and the not quite so liberal as that candidate, then, sorry, that's got dysfunction, chaos and decline written all over it.

[now of course progressives will charge that such a pessimistic view is motivated by racism - but if the Obama years have taught us anything it's that when liberals cry racism that's their way of insulating themselves and their constituency from the truth - as George Will said recently, when facts and logic are not on your side, hammer on the table and bewail some grievous offense]

[I've always maintained that great powers cannot be governed from the left and remain powerful. Sidebar: how much of this factors into Putin's thinking? I'm suggesting that unabated liberal governance will break apart the US, maybe Putin already sees that happening in Europe - maybe he's positioning himself to pick up the pieces - other disturbing question: the US has underwritten European security for a long time now, freeing them to dump money down the welfare state toilet - but if demographics etc etc turn America into Europe, who will underwrite our security? When Putin, China, Iran et al look at us, is that the opportunity they see opening up? I mean, it seems pretty clear that Obama does not view American power as a valuable thing worth preserving - the KGB always believed that the liberal elite in America would eventually sap it of real power leaving it vulnerable - is this the beginning of that proving true?] 

Obama speaks again with Putin by phone - why? What the hell is this guy thinking? Putin is not the editorial board of the NY Times anxious to nod his head in supplicant awe of your wonderfulness, he's not some addle brained bit of Hollywood fluff who thinks the doors to Nirvana have swung open because you've deigned to chat with him - Putin has an agenda - you're not gonna talk him out of it - in fact, the appearance of you talking him out of it would be about the worst possible thing that could happen to him. Is Obama actually an idiot or simply an example of how arrogance can turn intelligence into seeming idiocy? I dunno - but there's gonna be nothing left of American credibility by the time his second term is done. Him talking to Putin reminds me of the end of There Will Be Blood and the pathetic preacher begging for mercy from the Day-Lewis character - that did not end well for the preacher - Vlad wants your milkshake, Barack, and not only will a phone chat not keep him from it, it's like to whet his appetite - I keep imaging Vlad and his boys stifling sarcastic guffaws and giggles every time Obama tries to get tough or wax philosophic.

As the Ukraine situation moves along as anyone with an objectively nuanced clue not hobbled by narrow ideological prejudices predicted it would, let's revisit the question of significance here - how bad is it that the entire leadership of Western democracies so badly misjudged Putin and the security situation in general - and how utterly disturbing is it that the decision makers in Obama's White House as regards foreign policy and security issues seemed to [and quite possibly still do] not grasp the import of Putin's actions, ridiculing him as a small time regional malcontent acting all 19th century which is just so not in keeping with the way precious progressivism has decided the world should be? Well...it's bad and it's disturbing - hell, it's really bad and disturbing. Even if one cuts them some slack over failing to predict how Putin would respond to what was going on in Ukraine and to the EU push east in general since many people, including conservatives, made that mistake - you've still got the wholly disquieting problem of Obama et al seemingly being unable to grasp the design, contours and import of Putin's larger strategic imperatives - which, putting them simply as they appear to me, amount to making the West and America in particular [since it's obviously the security lynch pin] look weak and in decline and then moving onto isolating America and undermining its relations with key allies by working with an alliance that includes Iran and its client states, China and possibly some South American n'er do wells and thereby completely upending the current global power structure to the detriment of the US and its democratic allies - Russia will obviously control the European sphere, Iran the Mideast and China just about everything else that's left to be controlled, co-opted or manipulated, most importantly of course the China Sea and environs - in a nutshell, that is what I think we're seeing here - it's not Putin wandering around all lost to a 19th century delusion, nor is it him trying to per se reconstitute the USSR [although it may indeed look that way in many respects] - it's about the furthering of a loose alliance the goal of which is to sink or seriously constrain America as a global power -  it's a real, daunting, disturbing threat - and that Obama et al don't see it and indeed are playing right into the hands of it - well, like I said, that ain't good.

"… there's always been that wholly disturbing thing about devout liberals, one feels it like a cloying presence whenever talking with them… it's that off-putting impression that their sense of identity is irrevocably, inseparably tied not to simply being right, but to believing absolutely that they're right and thus anyone or anything that might suggest otherwise is justifiably scorned and ridiculed… which, by the way, is why the mocking scorn and ridicule that characterizes so much of liberal talk is seen as legitimate colloquy by them… to me, thinking one is right denotes a very different existential starting point than an absolute belief in the truth of one's claims... the former implies debate and argument and the possibility of being wrong… but the latter is the assumption of a perfection and thus the necessary denial of all who fall outside of that perfection for fear they may introduce doubt… idealist systems are not big fans of doubt..."

Always trying to nail down what makes a liberal a liberal, what motivates, contours their view of things which to an uber sceptic like myself seems so misbegotten and divorced from reality - I think Golderbeg [and the author he's referencing] in this fine essay concisely locks it down:

… Bottum argues that today’s liberal elites are the same liberal elites that we’ve always had. They come from the ranks of mainline Protestants that have run this country for generations (with some fellow-travelling Jews and Catholics, to be sure). But there’s a hitch. They champion a "... social gospel, without the gospel. For all of them, the sole proof of redemption is the holding of a proper sense of social ills. The only available confidence about their salvation, as something superadded to experience, is the self-esteem that comes with feeling they oppose the social evils of bigotry and power and the groupthink of the mob..."

This strikes me as pretty close to exactly right. They’re still elitist moralizers but without the religious doctrine. In place of religious experience, they take their spiritual sustenance from self-satisfaction, often smug self-satisfaction.

 He then says this:

There’s a second problem with political religions, though. When reality stops cooperating with the faith, someone must get the blame, and it can never be the faith itself. And this is where the hunt for heretics within and without begins.

That's pretty close to something I said not long ago about liberalism's problematic relationship with reality and how if facts don't comport with the things they so badly want to believe, the facts get marched in front of a firing squad. The progressives need to see themselves in a particular way, as oh so enlightened and open minded and washed pure of the imagined evils of conservatism, paradoxically encourages a closed system of ideological confirmation where enlightenment necessarily becomes imposed orthodoxy and toleration an intolerant grace granted only to those who accept and bow down before that orthodoxy.

Of course, the whole problem with the urge towards enlightened autocracy that motivates much of America's left,  a yearning for something akin to the bureaucratic leviathan that is the European Parliament, the problem is that in order to pull it off and bind the constituent parts of the polity together in service of the end you'll need the acquiescence of the military and the constabulary to enforce the agenda - and that ain't ever gonna happen in the United States of America - give the military a choice between an Obama and a Bush and that would be one election I can guarantee Obama would have absolutely no chance of winning no matter how many lying, manipulative rabbits he pulled from his hat. Sure, the EU, against much opposition, managed to pull the 'coup' off and the hollowed out militaries of Europe certainly helped [oh how Obama must envy that] - but for how long does it last? The thing is quite fragile, it depends utterly on America for it's ultimate security, and the abuse of freedom and the stifling of opinion that such a huge bureaucracy by necessity resorts to has given rise to far right political movements sprouting up all over the place - without a military force to suppress dissent, dissent will rise - which brings us back to America's liberal elite: you may have convinced yourselves that media bias and artificially weighted demographic changes etc etc will bring you the autocracy you dream of - but how the hell do you expect to defend it once you've got it? 'Cause I know a few Marines, and if you're hoping to enlist them to serve the greater glory of you, I'd suggest you may wanna rethink that one.

"… the conservative view of free speech is that it protects personal liberty and thereby the cause of freedom overall… more and more the liberal view of free speech seems to be one of a utility that enables or legitimizes government activism and the enlightened autocracy it seeks… thus for good reason the two ideological presets seem to be increasingly at odds with each other, as if the American democratic arrangement as it has existed for over two hundred years is no longer pliable or flexible or dynamic enough to accommodate the two… like a couple debating what troubles their marriage, one can argue the cause of this dysfunction and whether it's like to prove temporary or permanent… but irreconcilable differences loom and even if it doesn't end in actual divorce, a trial separation can't be ruled out… in fact, we may already be there..."

Nicely put by Cooke over at NRO:

Still, as the more cynical among us have observed for a while now, the Left’s hierarchy of victims is a complex and contradictory thing, liable to yield all sorts of peculiar outcomes. Certainly, Ali has tended to side with a favored group — women — against a favored foe — religion. But in the process she has made the mistake of criticizing another favored group — Islam — and, Islam being customarily given a break because its adherents are generally poor and dark-skinned, that just won’t do.

"… that's the whole problem with fancifully idealist notions like socialism, communism… on paper it all seems perfect and sets the progressives' hive mind aflutter so that they hunger to impose it on reality… but when reality pushes back saying your words are pretty but I don't give a shit, that's not how I operate, the progressive cries out in bitter denial it can't possibly be me that's wrong, it just can't… it must be reality that's screwed up, there's the illusion... so let's change it… enter the firing squads and gulags and thought police… but of course you can't have your way with reality as if it were beholden to you... ya may be able to suppress it for awhile but it will push back… and when it does, a lot of stuff is gonna get broken… expect the reality denying arrogance of the Obama years to produce a whole lot of broken stuff..."

Is there anything liberals wouldn't support if it served the purpose of demonizing the right in America? I see Hirsi Ali has been shit upon by uber lefty university Brandeis for having the gall to 'criticize Islam' - how in a democracy built upon the principles of free speech and open debate can it be wrong to criticize something, anything? And how on earth do liberals, who have made criticizing and lampooning and caricaturing in all sorts of negative ways the Christian right a fundamental part of their progressive creed, summon up the shameless hypocrisy to turn their backs on a Muslim woman criticizing Islam? What are they thinking? What wafer thin plank of rationalization is justification for this closed minded inanity built upon? Is Brandeis just cowering and caving because of complaints from Muslim groups? They certainly wouldn't show the same deference to Christian groups who might complain about a pro abortion zealot being honored in a similar way. I'm thinking that for the left indulgence of the quite obvious problems associated with Islam becomes a proxy from focusing contempt and outrage on those things in America that liberals hate and so phoney rhetoric about the implied racism of Islamaphobia is of much more value to them than having an actual debate on the real problems of Islam - they can't stand the America that was, they don't particularly like the America that is, what they long for is the America that will be once they impose their will on those who disagree with them - and so again I ask, is there anything liberals wouldn't support if it served the purpose of demonizing conservatism? They've already made it clear they're fine with getting rid of the first and second amendments; they clearly don't mind an imperial president who thumbs his nose at congress and the constitution, which I take it to mean they see democratic values as more of a nuisance and a hindrance than things worth respecting never mind guaranteeing, just so long of course as liberals are the ones calling [dictating] the shots; and it seems obvious they think it's all good that the IRS and the DOJ have been turned into political operatives for the White House. Anything else?

Gotta break a few eggs, right, to get that magic omelette - the thing about Orwell, though, when he took to speaking truth about the problems of communism, is that he was a man of the left so when he spoke it hit home - is there an American Orwell willing to speak truth to his fellow lefties about what idiots they've become and how wrong they were about Obama? Not that I can see - criticism coming from the right is pointless, indeed just fuels their zealotry - the tough words will have to come from the left, but who will speak them? And with uber liberals busy sowing erstwhile fields of free speech with the salt of self-righteousness, will they even get a chance?

I think many miss the point in trying to blame Putin's 'aggression' on Obama's evidenced weakness, his demonstrated lack of enthusiasm for the uses and value of American power - yes, the malaise of left wing ideology that is Obama's foreign policy certainly sent a message to Putin and contributed to a perception of permissiveness that invited aggression both strategic and actual - and not just from Russia, we see this dynamic manifested in Iran's and China's thinking and actions too - but regardless of that I'd guess Putin probably goes into Crimea even with a president in the White House not by nature at best ambivalent, at worst antagonistic towards American power - and that's because the root cause of Putin's move was a relentless EU/NATO push eastward without anyone it seems in the West stopping to consider the ramifications of that and coming up with a plan of what to do should Russia push back - and also because apparently there are no leaders in the West with much skill at judging character, in this case Putin's, a problem which I largely ascribe to the naive arrogance of the liberal world view [although, to be fair, Bush also fucked up big time in this regard - but that had much less to do with ideology and much more to do with him not being the savviest bastard in the room when it came to calculations of that nature - in a democracy, flaws of ideology tend to be much more dangerous things than those of character I think - although the two do often feed off each other].

No, the real problem with the manifest weakness of Obama's foreign policy is that, post facto, it takes away options since any attempt to show strength now will not be taken seriously by Putin [and the world for that matter] and might indeed prove escalatory precisely because Putin would likely see it as more of a provocation to be tempted by than a threat to be worried about - worse than that, it has the destabilizing effect of playing right into Putin's long term strategy of scoring points off of perceptions of Western weakness, which consequently amplifies message to our allies that we cannot be relied upon and to our enemies that we can be manipulated [weakness always opens that door] and out maneuvered.

In short, Obama's evinced weakness did not explicitly cause Putin's aggression - it does however make the negative consequences and troubling dynamics that spill from that aggression prohibitively worse. With the embarrassment of Kerry's utterly predictable failures in negotiating 'peace' between Syria and its belligerents and Israel and theirs - and with the nuke 'negotiations' with Iran about to go nowhere fast as far as I'm concerned [although fully expect the rhetoric coming out of the 'negotiations' to say otherwise], America's standing in the world and overall strategic posture are decidedly in decline and about to get worse - which means the entire West in this regard is in decline - and since Obama gives every impression of being a guy who is ideologically predisposed to see this decline as not necessarily being a bad thing and maybe even well deserved, expect things to get rather interesting over the next few years or even months - as Victor Hanson says in nice little recap of the awfulness that is Obama's foreign policy, if you dislike, resent or feel threatened by a world order defined by American power now may be the time to strike while a president sits in the White House who seems to scorn that power as much as you do:

The world is confused. Is the U.S. just inept, and therefore our friends and enemies for a while longer are putting decisions on hold, assuming that wiser heads in the Democratic party, or the voters in 2014 and 2016, will correct the aberration? Or is the new anti-strategy a deliberate effort to diminish U.S. influence and outsource regional problems to local hegemonies, on the theory that Iran, Russia, and China have more legitimate influences in their own neighborhoods?

Who knows? But most people abroad fear that we have entered a very dangerous period. It is becoming clear that the United States cannot continue on its present course and still be the United States, and without the United States in the lead, the world cannot remain the world as we have known it since 1945. But, unless a return to sanity arrives before then, the next two and a half years are a window of opportunity for lots of bad people to cash in their chips and take their winnings to the bank.

Must read stuff from Williamson over at NRO concerning the growing extremism of the new left under Obama - proto fascism does not seem a misplaced description [I especially like the person he quotes who said 'dictators don't make fascism, fascist tendencies make the dictator' - and those tendencies are definitely increasingly on display amongst liberal ideologues roiling about in the aggrieved ether of their discontent].

It's as if the coming of Obama has opened a sluice gate in their addled minds convincing them that all that they disapprove of, all those impertinences that distemper their perfect dreams, can now be swept away in their righteous flood, leaving behind only the ideal state, with them to run it, and we the ignorant rabble to blindly obey them in service of that glorious end. 

So, it's come to this - the Muslim Brotherhood, now headquartered it seems in London [may wanna look into your immigration policy there] and being investigated for ties to terrorism by British security services as prelude to being rendered illegal in England, has threatened that if the review isn't stopped they may be forced to resort to terrorism - thus as far as I'm concerned bringing to a close this absurd dance of lunacy by the West of twisting itself into ever more delusional incoherence in hopes of appeasing the regressive forces of Islam. Can we stop the madness now, or are progressives just gonna naively plow on as they tend to do as if reality can be placated by ignoring it?

It's this simple, people - despite the role they play in bringing order to primitive or developing cultures, all religions are dangerous - their need to protect beliefs which by necessity must be held up as inviolable leads to a narrowness of thinking, intemperance and ultimately if left unchallenged extremism - this is especially true of religions which have not been tempered by historical facts, as Christianity has and Islam hasn't, and religions which are inherently political by nature, as Christianity is not but Islam most decidedly is. That is the reality and it will not be wished away by pretending it isn't there.

I sometimes think all leaders of Western democracies should be forced to take an intensive course in what exactly made Western Civilization great so they can return to the business of securing that greatness rather than hollowing it out from the inside with idiotic thinking as currently seems to be their wont - although, sadly ironic, if this course was taught at Harvard by some lefty bobble head that would probably lead to a doubling down on the madness rather than a staunching of it.

... he had the temerity to express an opinion on the absurdity of gay marriage and was promptly disappeared...

"… I never said I was opposed to gay marriage… I said it made no sense to equate traditional notions of marriage with gay marriage unless one is willing to also admit or accept that by forcibly superimposing the one over the other you're officially saying that marriage is no longer about the making of babies… the making of babies understand, not simply just the having of families, two states suggesting entirely different existential implications regardless of their similarities… and what I said is if we are as a society ready to admit that the meaning of marriage has indeed substantially changed to one defined much more by love and much less by the making of babies then we should continue this bout of honesty and move onto the next logical conclusion to be drawn from that, to wit, if marriage is now mainly about an expression of love, then why the hell should the government be involved in it?… but of course we're not having that conversation and probably never will because the whole point of gay marriage activism was always political and if you take away the political component gay marriage becomes a meaningless thing, a utility robbed of value for the ever over wrought left… and so you see gay marriage no matter how one frames it within current parameters, assuming of course one is being unbiasedly honest and not twisted by zealotry into jargon or sophistry or outright lying, is an absurdity masquerading as enlightenment because liberal ideologues are desperate to keep alive the belief that they have seen the future and it's them and y'all better get in line because alternative opinions will not be tolerated since such might jeopardize a future perfection that, for the righteous left, has already been determined..."

Ah, yes, of course - we saw a glimpse of this highly disquieting perspective in Gates' book where he describes Obama as never being more interested in the affairs of the military than when it came to the repeal of DADT - now word comes down that Obama threatened, for all intents and purposes, the entire General Staff with excommunication if you will if they did not get onboard with that agenda, the shining bauble in every infantile, ideologically addled liberal mind. Wow. I mean… wow. So, let me see if I get this straight: in order to serve the dubious needs of the approximately 1% of the armed forces that is gay and further a liberal agenda that has nothing to do, except in a negative sense, with the defence of the country, the Commander in Chief was willing to alienate, lose the trust of, embitter, divide, disenfranchise and possibly utterly upend the executive leadership of the military in a time of war? Really? Wow. Words fail one. I'm sorry, but if by now you still do not realize just what an awful president this guy is then you are flat out delusional.

A small thing, but curious all the same - I've heard a few news reports talking about recent shooting at Fort Hood, second in five years, and the reporters remarking how people cannot believe this has happened again - in other words, equating the two events as inexplicable acts of violence - whereas of course the first shooting was explicitly an act of terrorism in the name of jihad - the boundless idiocy of the Obama administration of course insists the first be referred to as workplace violence - interesting, although I guess not at all surprising, how the media and many civilians for that matter are willing to accept that delusion as legitimate. A people who cannot talk honestly about the threats against them will never be able to protect themselves against those threats. It's as simple as that.

I'm a little, I guess, shocked that Netanyahu seems to be seriously considering the releasing of many more Palestinian prisoners and a promise to continue on with the dubiously named 'peace process' in exchange for the release of Pollard - why would they be considering this? How does it makes sense? I suppose one could imagine it making marginal sense if there were reasonable grounds to believe a peace agreement was possible - but it's clear, no, that that ain't the case? The Palestinians have in their own inimitable way let it be known that they're only interested in two things here: freeing as many prisoners as possible and then turning the inevitable collapse of the negotiations into bad press for Israel - aided and abetted of course by either the naive idiocy or loathsome complicity of Kerry/Obama. I just don't see why Netanyahu would seriously be considering this deal - I thought at first it was a trick, that they knew Pollard would never agree to being released under such dishonorable conditions and therefore Israel could score a win/win - ie, by agreeing look like they were willing to go to desperate ends in search of a peace deal and then when Pollard refused that would draw attention to the awful hand Obama is trying to force Israel to play - this deal makes so little sense that I felt for sure such was the case - but it's really sounding like Netanyahu is seriously considering it - and that I don't get. We'll see.