Obama's malpractice when it comes to foreign policy has convincingly re-established the belief that liberals, as they have seen, defined and conducted themselves since the days of McGovern and McCarthy, cannot be trusted with national security and the cold blooded demands of promoting and defending America's interests in a hostile and dangerously complex world - the left's completely detached from reality response to Israel's actions in Gaza, actions which were rational and certainly justifiable before the discovery of just how extensive and sophisticated the tunnel system Hamas has constructed was and which are now with that discovery rendered unequivocally necessary - the left's alarming inability to recognize and understand these facts supporting Israel's actions, facts which should be obvious to any clear thinking person with a modest capacity for objective analysis, pretty much confirms with a thunderous exclamation point the idea that liberals cannot be trusted with national security [which is of course not to forgive or ignore the many blunders conservatives have made - but there's a very, very big difference between a driver who gets in an accident because they made a mistake and a driver who gets in accident because they have no clue how to drive].

Now possibly there are some moderate realists on the left out there who see this growing problem and have plans or hopes of redressing the damage done by Obama and the seemingly increasing influence the far left code pinkers have on the way Democrats talk and think about foreign policy - but when you have Hillary, who's supposed to be one of these moderates, one these pragmatic 'hawks', saying that Hamas is firing from schools and hospitals and the like because Gaza is small and therefore their field of operations is limited - jesus, I mean, profoundly idiotic statements like that really don't fill one with optimism that the left is about to rediscover its inner Truman.

This depressing NY Times story about how Europe through weak kneed cowardice and shortsighted thinking that almost overwhelms one with its stupidity has allowed itself to become the chief financier of al Qaeda dovetails nicely I think with much of Europe's and much of the left's in general equally shortsighted take on Gaza - namely, the willingness of these people to appease the terrorists by rewarding their tactics in order to avoid the unpleasantness of what confronting that terror necessarily gives rise to - much easier to just demonize Israel and hope thereby to shame them into an ill-advised truce rather than confront the true threat head on. And just as with the paying of ransoms to al Qaeda's kidnappers the utterly predictable has happened, kidnappings have increased to the point where Europe is now the chief source of capital for terrorists who  would like nothing better than to turn Europe into a pile of ash, what the hell do these morons think is gonna be the consequence of appeasing Hamas who is throwing its own citizens in front of bombs in order to terrorize Obama and the EU into just such an appeasement? It's clear Hamas believes that eventually the redoubtable idiocy of the 'world community' is going to step in and stop Israel - and at that point Hamas wins. Which is why I say, if you're not supporting Israel 100% in this endeavor, you're serving the interests of rabid anti-West terror - you're paying the ransom.

As I was reading the Times story it also occurred to me, and I don't remember it being addressed in the article per se - but it occurred to me that European countries paying these ransoms aren't simply doing so to save their people - they're also doing it to keep Islamist extremism off the front pages - with a growing Muslim problem throughout Europe which is giving rise to reactionary right wing animus all over the place, countries like France really don't wanna see pictures of their citizens being beheaded popping up on TV screens - much simpler to just pay the ransom and pretend everything's fine - this very much in keeping with Obama's attempt to address Islamist extremism by ordering gov't agencies to simply stop talking about it - which may not seem as obviously a bad idea as paying a ransom to these people, but the consequences are pretty much the same - their interests are advanced, ours diminished.   

Well, it would appear that Obama and Kerry have finally figured out their misguided intentions for Gaza will be going no where until they start taking seriously the idea of demilitarizing it - but here now is the whole problem with Obama and his practice of foreign policy: no one trusts him to do what he might say he'll do or do it competently should he actually commit to giving it a try. Friends and enemies have gotten the message: he doesn't believe in the value and uses of American power and therefore has never spent much time thinking about its practice and so like most liberals has no realistic or thoughtful understanding of or appreciation for the concept and no practical and objective sense of what the world might look like absent its effect. Browse the syllabi of America’s liberal universities and you'll find there are many many many more courses on the history of feminism or the semantics of white privilege than there are on the history of war - such is the rose colored glass through which a progressive of Obama’s ilk sees the world.

Our friends and enemies have witnessed the show and drawn their conclusions: Obama is either dangerously naive, hopelessly idealistic or rendered disturbingly incompetent by ideological conceit when it comes to the practice of foreign policy and thus it is our friends have determined he cannot be trusted and our enemies have pondered deeply the question of just how far they can push things with a president such as this sitting in the White House.

One can also imagine that it might not be amiss to believe that both our enemies and friends have wondered about a possibility that many on the right are convinced is true - namely, that Obama is leading a country that he doesn't much like and may indeed hate. The actions he's taken and the general nature of the way he governs does lead one to the speculation that he doesn't much see himself as the president of the whole United States but rather just those who think like him - which one could interpret as being symptomatic of an ideology not interested in the idea of America that has held sway for so long but rather cares only for the America that will be once the quiet progressive coup that Obama has started usurps control - and that America, one let's say that a professor in gender studies at Harvard would finally feel proud to count themselves a member of, would most decidedly not be a thing that our enemies need fear nor our erstwhile friends need vainly to claim a trust in.

"... I wonder, since Obama seems fine with forcing on Israel a ceasefire that would undermine its interests and even in the long view threaten its survival while serving the interests of its enemies by leaving them intact and emboldened to carry on with the tactics of their terrorist ways... I wonder, does that mean Obama would have supported Palmerston's waylaid efforts to end Britain's stance of neutrality during the Civil War by embracing an armistice between the Union and the Confederacy which would have recognized the south as an independent country thereby ensuring the continuance of slavery?... seems like a rather odd position for a black president who likes to think of himself as Lincolnish to find himself in... if such a thing had come to pass, would it be Obama's contention that Lincoln would have been wise to accept peace on terms that would have dissolved the union and guaranteed renewed violence down the road under circumstances much less favorable to the north ...?"   

So let me try and understand this - about 85% of Israelis support the action in Gaza and oppose ending it before military objectives are complete - and both left and right political parties plus media outlets feel the same - so support in Israel for the Gaza action is pretty god damn solid and viewed by a strong majority as absolutely necessary - and yet Obama and Kerry are insisting on telling this country, to whom the US is its most vital, most essential ally and whose support is the only thing standing between the idiocy of 'world opinion' [a phrase which should only ever be used in the pejorative] and Israel's survival, that they're wrong and must stop - which means in essence that Obama is actively legitimizing the entrenched anti-Semitic idiocy of 'world opinion' and much of the tactics and rhetoric of Islamist terror while delegitimizing the rights and fundamental security needs of Israel, one of our key allies.

Wow. What can one say? It's almost impossible to believe that this is really happening - can it be true that they do not see that by encouraging Israel's enemies and with that essentially everything in the world we should be opposed to that that amounts to guaranteeing bad outcomes? That this will not ameliorate divisions and hatreds but embolden and encourage them? Do Kerry and Obama actually think that they can force Israel into what amounts to a virtual surrender and everything is just gonna be fine, peace will fall magically from the sky and Muslim polities will leap to embrace Israel's right to exist? This is insane - I mean if they were insisting on a truce while at the same time asserting without question the need for Gaza to be demilitarize there would be something to that - I'd probably still disagree with it because it'd be hard to trust Obama et al viz demilitarizing Gaza but at least there'd be a sense to it one could get hold of, but that's not what they're doing - and what's worse they're bringing Qatar and Turkey into the talks - I mean Qatar is a key Hamas financier and Erdogan has been saying the most incendiary and outrageous things against Israel the last few weeks, he should be allowed no where near these talks - Egypt should be the only interlocutor since they're the only Muslim country whose security needs align roughly with Israel's: they both want Hamas gone. It's almost unbelievable what's going on here -  calling Obama the worst president the country has ever had doesn't really capture the awfulness of this spectacle. 

There may be no better indication of how far outside the general norms of American foreign policy practice the Obama administration is than the standard bearer for left wing opinion in Israel, Haaretz, completely slamming Kerry for his indulgent reaching out to Hamas in order to secure a peace that would be fraudulent and illusory and serve only the interests of Islamist terror at the expense of Israel. The liberal elite in America can easily rationalize their ignoring of conservative opinion when it comes to Obama with cries of racism or warmongering or whatever - how do they explain away the criticisms of Israel's left? I mean, Livni herself, a notable figure of the Israeli left, said just a few days ago that talk of a truce was foolish - and yet Kerry actually thinks he knows better? Calling the actions of this administration farcical may be giving it too much credit - a farce at least manages to amuse. Ain't nothin' funny about this. 

With US embassy staff fleeing Libya flanked by an armed escort WR Mead pens a nicely focused piece of bitterly sarcastic anger regarding the grotesquery that is Obama's foreign policy and the further obscenity of the national media trying desperately to hide this farce from the American people.

But luckily for Team Obama, the mainstream press would rather die than subject liberal Democrats to the critiques it reserves for the GOP. So instead, as Libya writhes in agony, reputations and careers move on. The news is so bad, and the President’s foreign policy is collapsing on so many fronts, that it is impossible to keep the story off the front pages. “Smart diplomacy” has become a punch line, and the dream Team Obama had of making Democrats the go-to national security party is as dead as the passenger pigeon. But what the press can do for the White House it still, with some honorable exceptions, labors to accomplish: it will, when it must, report the dots. But it will try not to connect them, and it will do what it can to let all the people involved in the Libya debacle move on to the next and higher stage of their careers.

It's troubling enough to have an awful president who either may be one of the most incompetent leaders a great power has ever had - or, may be so delusional or arrogant that he actually believes that if not for those racist Republicans getting in his way everything would just be moving along swimmingly - or, most worrisome of all, may in fact in the manner of a truly committed left wing zealot be doing exactly what he set out to do to the country - all that's troubling enough, but that trouble will be magnified several times over in the coming years if because of a biased media that cannot or will not come to terms with how utterly misguided they were about Dear Leader the electorate never comes to fully appreciate that making a left wing ideologue like Obama chief executive of a country like America was a very, very bad idea that should never ever be repeated if you have any hopes of this great country remaining that city on a hill with the eyes of all upon us.

Conservatives seem to be pleased to see Obama's approval rating drop to 39% - and I suppose the way these statistics play out in a democracy 39% makes sense in some statistically practical way - but personally I find it frightening that almost 40% of the population is so utterly detached from reality, so despairingly incapable of scratching two modestly coherent thoughts together that they still somehow can convince themselves that this is a good president doing a good job - that disturbs me greatly - makes me feel that when I'm walking down the street today no matter in which direction I may happen to look scattered throughout my view will be the torpid, bovine stares of complete fucking morons. Far as I'm concerned if reality held any sway in this increasingly lost land Obama's job approval rating would be at about 10% which would cover that segment of the population that is very close to being brain dead but can still on good days manage the complex operations of a TV remote.

And now it's becoming very clear that sometime in the next few months Obama is going to unilaterally, without any regard to the constitution he swore to uphold or the people he was ostensibly supposed to be the servant of, he's going to for all intents and purposes abrogate America's immigration laws, he's essentially singlehandedly gonna say that the country no longer has any borders - and apparently about 40% of the electorate is going to be fine with that. Sorry, I just don't know how not to be utterly disturbed by something like that - disturbed not by Obama's actions which are just par for the course for him - if you're surprised by any corruption of power or dereliction of duty he and his catamites involve themselves in at this point then you really haven't been paying attention - no, what I find so disturbing is that so many people either don't care about what's going on or simply have no problem with it - there's just no way to look at something like that and not fear for the survival of the democracy.

It's one thing to think Obama an awful president - it's another to contemplate the disturbing reality that this awfulness has been deliberately enabled by a very large chunk of the electorate and virtually all of the media - that's the thing that's truly frightening - because eventually he's not gonna be president anymore, but if the electoral processes of this country are so screwed up, so compromised by idiocy and blind ideology and so vulnerable to manipulation by savvy numbers people that progressives can somehow find a way to get an Obama part two like Elizabeth Warren elected president, then it's over for us - you might as well hang a sign on the door that says 'no longer in the superpower business - goodbye and have a nice day'.

Why is a country led by this Islamist lunatic still a member of NATO? Why the fuck hasn't NATO chastised the man for his extremist anti-West rantings [for in slandering Israel the way he does he is in essence slandering the West]? And why the fuck are we still planning on selling his guy F-35s? This is obviously a man who cannot be trusted to respect and protect the interests of Western civilization so why the hell would we give him F-35s?! I read military journals every single day and I've yet to see one person raise the issue of maybe it not being a good idea to trust this guy with highly sensitive tech - as far as I'm concerned you give this Islamist tyrant F-35s and you might as well hand them right over to Russia and China at the same time - I'm obviously missing something 'cause I just don't get this. Erdogan has clearly demonstrated that any country led by the likes of him should not be a part of NATO nor should it be trusted to protect access to highly sensitive military tech - and yet no one is saying anything about this quite obvious problem. Does the West truly intend to destroy itself through a mind numbing devotion to political correctness? Is this really the way our history ends, with a bunch of pantywaist liberals arguing about how not to offend anyone while the barbarians are storming the gates?   

Occurs to me point made in previous post about connecting Gaza to Obama's true intentions viz Iran's nuke program may be the most interesting thing no one's talking about when it comes to Gaza: if you indeed were serious about all options being on the table - I never believed that but could only infer that belief from somewhat vague and subjective sources - but if Obama indeed was serious then taking care of Hamas and its extensive tunnels system would be an absolutely necessary preparatory step to any military strike on Iran's nuke program - that Obama seems to want to stop Israel from degrading Hamas' capabilities in this way may not amount to solid proof that Obama is lying about all options being on the table but it does look like strong circumstantial evidence, certainly strong enough I'd say to convince both Israel and Iran that Obama cannot for the former be trusted or need not for the latter be feared when it comes to stopping Iran's nuke program.

Again, I've always believed this to be true and think Iran has acted throughout these 'negotiations' as if they as well believe it to be the case - I think Iran has acted all along as if they have the upper hand in these negotiations because they feel Obama needs a face saving agreement much more than they need fear retributions from refusing to sufficiently compromise - anyway, I've always suspected Obama to be lying about all options being on the table but when you start connecting the threat of Hamas to Iran's nuke program and realize that Obama and Kerry are not making that connection, then you no longer need to be a sorry mean spirited cynic like me to start suspecting Dear Leader of being a man for whom the truth is a very relative thing indeed.    

Some [many, most] who oppose Israel's Gaza move seem to think those who support it are suffering under the delusion that it offers a long term solution to the problems that trouble the region - certainly not the case with me - I don't think a long term solution to etc etc is possible since the main issue for the region needing to be resolved is the dysfunctional, retrograde nature of Islamist governance and culture - until those negatives are addressed the problems plaguing the region will persist. No, the reason I support Israel's Gaza move is that given the bad options to choose from it was the least bad with the most potential upside viz Israel's security needs and since no 'long term' fix is possible all that really matters from Israel's point of view is their short to midterm security needs - invasion was the logical choice given the options.

Now, I do believe it's a bit more long termish than that - yes, I think Israel's main goal is to degrade Hamas' capabilities and infrastructure as much as possible since with Sisi in Egypt shutting down the smuggling Hamas will be hit hard and for a long time by this action - but I also think a secondary goal is hoped for, namely to send a clear message to the idiots calling the shots in the White House and the EU that if they don't get serious about disarming Hamas and addressing in a practical and realistic way the actual problems plaguing the region [which have nothing to do with Israel] then what is happening now will happen again and next time we're re-occupying Gaza -  and I think there also may be a message in this to Obama about Iran, which Hamas is a proxy of, ie we're serious about not letting them become a nuclear power and if you're not gonna take care of it we will. Remember, if Israel is actually serious about stepping in to take out Iran's nuke program should Obama fail to do so, Iran will retaliate through Hamas [and of course Hezbollah which is a much harder target for Israel to get at] - that's what all those tunnels Israel is digging up in Gaza are about, waiting for the order from Tehran to attack - and so you see degrading significantly Hamas' capabilities would be an absolutely necessary preparatory step if one plans on going after Iran's nukes - and interestingly enough this would still be the case even if America is the one doing the shooting, which makes Obama/Kerry's reluctance to let Israel finish the job look like they are indeed lying when they say they will not let Iran become a nuclear power and all options are on the table - clearly all options are not on the table if you don't see the logic of letting Israel finish Hamas off.   

Hey, good news - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has come up with a plan to staunch the troubles roiling Gaza - destroy Israel. Of course that does tend to be his stock answer to any question regarding what's wrong with the world - destroy Israel, destroy America - for sure one can't call it brilliant thinking on his part but he does have a knack for getting to his point with gusto. Why on earth would anyone be skeptical about us being able to hammer out a workable nuke deal with such enlightened creatures as these?

One can't help but wonder if it even enters into Kerry's mind that in trying to force Israel into a ceasefire before the completion of its military goals you're essentially allowing yourself to be played by Hamas, a terrorist organization that wouldn't think twice about exterminating the Jewish people had they the opportunity, at the expense of Israel's security needs - you're rewarding the mindset and tactics of Islamist terror and penalizing, helping to delegitimize the fundamental security needs of a democracy and key ally - I mean, it confounds common sense to imagine that the thought doesn't occur to him - and yet he carries on all the same. Clinical psychologists should come up with a name for this kind of pathology - or we can just keep calling it liberalism. 

Jen Rubin posts nice little laundry list concerning the awfulness of Obama's foreign policy [and re Russia links to Hillary's 60 Minutes interview I'd forgotten about that's just devastating given recent events and should be an integral feature of any GOP advertising campaign in 2016 should she choose to run] - but it occurred to me that Obama has effectively soundly re-established the given that liberals are very bad, and in Obama's case abysmally bad when it comes to national security, foreign policy and defense issues and that this opens up an opportunity in 2016 for any GOP candidate who is very good at talking about such. Conventional wisdom holds that foreign policy doesn't play well in presidential elections because despite its importance it's too esoteric a subject, too removed from the average voter's daily concerns - but the potential certainly exists that Obama's foreign policy record could amount to such an excruciatingly awful thing that it plays big in 2016 - and that's a boon to any GOP candidate who excels at talking about foreign policy - which, from what I've heard, means Marco Rubio. All things being equal I'd prefer a governor for the GOP offering - I'm a big believer in executive experience - but governors, given their busy schedules and local concerns, are generally not very convincing when discussing foreign policy - of everybody out there considering a run for Republican presidential candidate only Rubio, and possibly Ryan, sounds credible on the foreign policy issue - everyone else just sounds like they're spouting bromides. Yes, people mention Cruz, and he certainly likes to sound tough on foreign policy in order to separate himself from Paul, but I don't see Cruz as a viable candidate - he's a guy who can never appeal to moderates and therefore he has no chance of winning a presidential election.     

Curious, reading this account of Muslim response in European countries to Israeli action in Gaza - curious, if one believes in the clash of civilizations dynamic, which I generally do, and therefore believes that the West's relations with the Muslim world will continue to be problematic, what does it mean that the Muslim population in these Western democracies is growing and yet a significant proportion of this demographic still thinks and acts reflexively in predominantly Islamist terms which are antithetical to Western traditions and interests? That can't be good, no? And what happens when Muslim populations in Europe reach such a point that getting elected without their support is difficult and yet in order to get that support you have to embrace policy positions that are not at all in keeping with Western traditions and interests? Not good.

And then there's the issue of Jews fleeing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, which history shows is bad news for the countries from which they're fleeing and good news for the countries they're fleeing to - but aside from that, if many of these people end up in Israel and you are of the type to think Israel's security preferences are far too conservative now [which I don't - for all the problems it gives rise to, I'm 100% behind Netanyahu's move into Gaza and think anyone who can't see the logic of it is blinded by a prejudicial ideology] then wait till this new reverse diaspora hunkers down and starts setting the rules. 

So, why did Putin just not admit that pro-Russian militants accidentally shot down the Malaysian jet? Since the US military has done the exact same thing in the past that gives you some cover - you don’t have to admit to supplying the rebels with the SA-11 launcher if indeed you did since there’s strong evidence they captured one on their own a few weeks ago and had managed to make it operational - so why not just admit to the awful mistake and move on from there?

Well - could be they may know that evidence will emerge tying Russia directly to the SA-11 unit and therefore lying about it would only make a bad situation worse - still, we all know Russia is supplying the rebels with heavy arms so why continue to deny the complicity and that a tragic mistake was made?

Two reasons I suspect - an admission of responsibility would necessarily entail an expression of remorse and Putin no doubt feels that would threaten the perception of him as a strong leader - an expression of remorse would lead him down a ‘sentimental’ path that does not fit well with his plans for the Ukraine in particular and the idea of a resurgent Russia in general. In other words, he has no intention of retreating viz Ukraine and since a large part of his goals amount to showing the EU and Obama as weak, irresolute things, hollow powers that cannot be trusted as allies so as to, along with China and Iran, subvert the American dominated world order, by denying complicity and putting out this seemingly absurd theory that Ukraine brought the plane down Putin is essentially calling the West’s bluff - he’s betting, even with 300 innocent lives lost, that the EU and Obama will still fall far short of the threats they're intimating and that will feed the perception of an America dominated West in decline.

Now, it could just be that Putin believes that the EU has no business involving itself in Ukraine and therefore they're ultimately responsible for this mess and so why should he apologize for that - that’s possible - but I'm guessing it’s rather that since his whole plan here all along was to not only regain some control over Ukraine but to also make the EU and Obama look weak in the process, if indeed those now expressing outrage and issuing threats against Russia do not follow through on those threats, then that’s the exact outcome he will have achieved. Notice how quiet China’s being - that’s because they see clearly how damaging all this could be to American and EU credibility if things play out this way and that serves their interests perfectly.

I truly don't understand those arguing that Israel is in a no win situation with its invasion of Gaza and therefore should in essence surrender to the status quo which does nothing but serve the interests of Hamas and would mean agreeing to a cease fire that Obama and his merry band of foreign policy morons are now pushing hard for - not that I don't agree that Israel has nothing but bad choices here, but given that you still must choose and therefore you logically choose the option that offers the most potential upside no matter how tentative or tenuous that upside might be - and given the circumstances the only rational choice was to invade Gaza regardless of how problematic a thing that is.

The complicating factor isn't the decision to invade which far as I'm concerned was the only decision Israel could make given the intransigence of Hamas and the existential threat which it is a baleful manifestation of - the complicating factor is the inability of the Obama administration to see the logic of this and consequently to speak and act in ways that do nothing but serve the interests of Hamas [and by inference all Islamist entities that think and act as they do] while undercutting the interests of Israel. This dynamic was clearly on display on Sunday with Kerry's off mic comments on Fox News where his putative support of Israel's right to defend itself was completely undone by his expression of near contempt for Israel's practicing of the right - these comments by Kerry clearly indicate that either he and Obama are lying when they say they support Israel's right to defend itself or are operating under a complete delusion regarding what that defense could or should entail.

The question is: why do Obama and his people act so foolishly? Can't be because they're stupid, these aren't stupid people - and it can't be mere incompetence, the impression of incompetence that so overwhelms when considering Obama et al is rather I think the reflection of a something else - and that something else I would say is ideological arrogance which precludes them from forming or developing a coherent understanding of the real threats operating in the real world because seeing the world in those terms would undermine the sympathies they're predisposed to cling to - in order to preserve these illusions they concoct fanciful notions and vain theories that rationalize away the need to act in ways which they find to varying degrees repugnant - they fail to understand the value and uses of military power because they are ideologically predisposed to scorn such things and this naive prejudice is the thing that ends up looking like incompetence.

A nice little article over at The Daily Caller by an anonymous Pentagon official makes roughly the same point - he does so in reference to the foreign policy inanities of Rand Paul and why the man should therefore be allowed nowhere near the Oval Office, but the argument made applies in equal measure to Obama and his sycophants. I'm guessing there are a whole lot of people inside the Pentagon and scattered throughout the officer class of the US military who are deeply, deeply worried about what's going on in American foreign policy right now, both in practice and theory.

About that downed Malaysian jet - a couple of points. That Russia would enable increased firepower for the rebels if Kiev refused to compromise and instead took the fight to Putin's operatives was entirely predictable from the beginning of this adventure, and yet people have acted as if that wasn't the case - as I said even before he went into Crimea [something that Obama et al also failed to see coming] Putin would not have made these moves without factoring in and accepting the possibility of things getting messy - and yet the EU, Obama etc etc have all acted as if the way this has played out is 'surprising' - commercial jets continuing to fly over a war zone where the use of sophisticated anti-air weapons had already been demonstrated is clear evidence of the sense of unreality clouding peoples perceptions viz Ukraine - thinking that Putin was just going to back away from what he'd started, a perception that the EU and Obama have fostered through their words and actions, was flat out foolish.

Which is not to absolve Russia of sin here - but Ukraine for all intents and purposes has been a war zone since Putin made it clear losing it was not something he could tolerate and yet the EU and Obama have done their best to act as if that wasn't the case - and the sad fact is, in a war zone mistakes get made and innocent people die - expressing moral outrage over it is understandable but ultimately beside the point, especially when the US in 1988 made the same unfortunate mistake with less excuse since the operators who brought down the Iranian jet then were no doubt better trained and equipped than whoever it was that mistakenly targeted the Malaysian jet.

The question now is, what next? I reiterate, imagining that Putin is now going to back away is as far as I'm concerned wishful thinking and therefore if the EU and Obama are going to ramp up the rhetoric and belligerence based on notions that Putin has no choice now but to retreat they better have a plan for what they're going to do if he doesn’t ‘cause I don't think he will - he might, but if you're just going to assume it and act accordingly don't be crying foul when Putin backs you once again into a very uncomfortable corner. His whole purpose here has been to force a political compromise on Kiev that he can exploit over time to his advantage and I just don't see that changing. Sure, the EU was clearly not thrilled about imposing tough sanctions on Russia and now may be forced to and that could hurt - but Putin still has strong cards to play: an unspoken alliance with China; the ability to really throw a monkey wrench into whatever the hell Obama thinks he’s negotiating with Iran viz its nukes; and most important of all, a virtual stranglehold on Europe’s energy needs - with remarkable short sightedness the EU has left itself utterly dependent on the 'good intentions' of Putin to keep their economies going - in strategic terms that gets you a what they fuck were you thinking?

Does Israel actually want a ceasefire with Hamas? Safe to assume Egypt, who is brokering the would-be deal, doesn't actually want it to happen - they'd be quite content to let Israel decimate Hamas even though for public consumption amongst Muslims they have to pretend to be outraged etc etc - but what about Israel? Of course they have to sound willing since the benighted world will continue to hold them responsible for everything awful in the Mideast and Obama will insinuate as much as well because he clearly is one with the blame Israel first crowd - so they have to sound like they want ‘peace’ but I can't believe that’s true unless the original objective to seriously degrade Hamas’ abilities has been met and I don't see that - damage has been done, sure, but Hamas wanted damage to be done since their whole purpose and method is to portray themselves as brave Muslim martyrs taking the good fight to the sin against Allah that is Israel - therefore stopping the ‘war’ now makes little sense.

Which raises the interesting question: without the unconditional support of America, which is absolutely required to push back against the inevitable anti-Jewish idiocy world opinion will spew forth, can Israel fight the battles it needs to fight in the way they need to fight them? In other words, without the unconditional support of America, is any ‘war’ Israel is forced to fight lost before it even begins regardless of the actual outcome? And if so, in the end do they really have any other choice but to fight them all the same since the alternative to war is a peace that is false and seeks to ruin them?

I’d say Hamas believes it has the upper hand because it’s convinced Israel will continue to resist coming to that final conclusion even if it has accepted the truth of it - and in keeping with Hamas, Obama believes this too which is why he has acted all along as if he can force Israel into accepting a ‘peace’ with people they know cannot be trusted.

Israel needs the appearance of America’s unconditional support [appearance since logically no support can be absolutely unconditional] and it does not have that from Obama and they know it and Hamas knows it - so what happens now?

[what happens now apparently is that Hamas rejects ceasefire and Israel resumes offensive - again, I'd say this is because Hamas feels Israel will not fully unleash the dogs of war because of perception they cannot win regardless of winning - and the reason Hamas feels this way far as I'm concerned is because Obama has given every indication that he is not a wholehearted supporter of Israel and this leaves Israel vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the miasma of idiocy that is 'world opinion' - and so the question becomes does Israel unleash the dogs regardless - I think the logic implied by dynamics suggests they have no choice but to do just that - reports that Netanyahu has issued ultimatum to Hamas to capitulate or face annihilation indicates I'm right] 

They ask increasingly, what’s up with Obama? It’s almost as if he’s bored with the job and has checked out. Is this just a consequence of things not having gone the way his ideological naivete convinced him they would go and he’s lost interest in trying to be in any objective sense a ‘good’ president? Is this simply what you get when you make a guy with no executive experience and no natural leadership skills leader of a country like America and therefore the man is lost, the job has completely out stripped his limited abilities? I mean, if you believe his only qualification for being president was that he was a charming black guy the media adored and would willingly prostrate themselves before and he therefore imagined his job as chief executive would simply be about standing in front of a teleprompter, spewing a bunch of pleasant sounding gibberish and then letting the press spin approving narratives slavishly propping up that gibberish, then the inevitable intrusion of harsh reality into all this deluded pleasantness would likely seem very much like the brick wall he has apparently run into.

Or is it that his only goal all along has been to push the country as far left as possible by whatever means possible and that agenda has nothing to do with good governance nor, now that he no longer has to worry about being re-elected, being popular? The various scandals and abuses are a manifestation of this - his foreign policy seems to definitely be a manifestation of this in that his scorn for American power and lack of interest in the traditional aspects of US security and influence make Carter seem like a hawk in comparison - but just look no further than  his response to current border crisis in Texas, which even some democrats are criticizing as insufficient - but it’s only insufficient and misguided if you care about good governance in ‘objective’ terms - whereas if all you care about is making the country as Spanish as possible because in the long run that means larding the electorate with more people blindly sympathetic to the goals of progressivism and if while doing this you can also manage to piss off conservatives enough that they strike out in ways that your co-religionists in the press can easily portray as racist, then this ain’t a crisis at all - it’s the Obama doctrine working exactly as intended.

Why is Obama inserting himself in a most inappropriate and offensive way into Israel's strategic concerns by publishing an article spewing sophomoric platitudes about peace in lefty paper Haaretz the day after Israel begins campaign against Hamas terrorism? Why is he doing this? And why now after Israel has just initiated its military operation and not last week when Hamas was obviously attempting to incite violence and so now if a 'war' breaks out it will appear as if Obama considers Israel to be the aggressor? With this article what Obama is essentially saying is that if only intransigent Israel had listened to my pleas to embrace peace none of this would be happening - and this the very day after Israel begins its entirely justifiable defense operations in response to provocations from avowed terrorists! This goes beyond inappropriate behavior by him - it's utterly unacceptable - in fact it's so wrong I don't think you can call this incompetence: it seems rather a deliberate effort to back Israel into an uncomfortable corner, which is especially galling since the recent misbegotten peace effort also seemed like a disturbingly misguided effort by Obama and Kerry to back Israel into an uncomfortable corner and can with legitimacy be blamed for giving rise to this violence. The guy is an unmitigated disaster of a president - I'd love to be in a position to overhear the debate going on in Netanyahu's cabinet room right now because they must absolutely despise this man.

[yes I understand Haaretz is sponsoring some insipid 'peace' jabber fest and the Obama op-ed was aligned with that and no doubt agreed upon weeks ago - but once the three Israeli teens were kidnapped and killed and the deteriorating situation with Hamas in Gaza became obvious, and especially once it became clear Israel was preparing a major offensive in response to the provocations, Obama could easily have withdrawn the op-ed, which is what any American president who wasn't channeling the anti- Israeli chauvinism of Jimmy Carter would have done in order to avoid making it look like you were sympathetic to the extremists cause - but of course Obama didn't even object with any particular conviction to Fatah hooking up with Hamas and so I guess none of this is surprising - worst president ever]

But about this Elizabeth Warren challenging Hillary stuff and the idea that Obama may if only by inference back the challenge - many are calling it absurd, especially the Obama backing Warren part, and arguing that if anything Warren is just putting things in place in the event Hillary, no doubt for health reasons, doesn't run.

Possibly - but depending on how much of an extreme or at least committed left wing ideologue you think Obama is, there is a way for the Warren rumor to make sense. If you believe the goal of Obama and his maenads is to by hook or by crook push the country so far left that it cannot swing back and so just remains stuck out there in lefty land, sustained by a democracy killing bureaucratic architecture and the co-opted and supine electorate that pathetically depends on it until an inevitable ruin swallows us up - then eight years really isn't enough time to put that in place regardless of how willing an abuser of executive privilege Obama is - you'd really need at least another eight years of Obama-like antics to pull such a 'quiet' revolution off - and that is how you could defend the Warren rumors as not being as crazy as you might think since she is in many ways a clone of Dear Leader who could, under his tutelage and with the help of the reality distorting machine he has built that can so effectively wrest narratives from the hands of truth and common sense, learn how to turn the grotesque into electoral gold by mastering the alchemy of identity politics.

It ain't necessarily crazy -  believing in the possibility of it is really just a matter of asking yourself how radical of a lefty you think Obama is - judging by his foreign policy, the failings of which most blame on incompetence or a lack of relevant experience but which could easily instead be seen as the perfect manifestation of an uber left worldview that by default considers American power and the US military to be evil things whose exits from the stage the 'global community' would be well served by - viewed from that perspective Obama definitely starts to look like a radical lefty ideologue. With that as your reference point, imagine what a Warren presidency would say or betoken to the world and America's enemies as opposed to a somewhat hawkish Hillary sitting in the White House - if you think the message Obama is putting out now is one of weakness and decline and retreat, a Warren presidency would be the equivalent of hanging a 'going out of the superpower business' sign on the door. And so if that's your reference point and you therefore believe that Obama is indeed an extreme or at least committed left wing ideologue then it would make complete sense for him to not only prefer Warren over Hillary but to actively, although possibly covertly, agitate for such a thing to happen.  

With talk continuing to bubble up of Warren challenging Hillary for the Dem slot in 2016, with even some rumors swirling about that Obama might explicitly or by implication back Warren as a true progressive made in his image over Hillary - which god I hope happens, Bubba would just go nuts with that, it would be seriously on between the Obama and Clinton camps and be such a delight to watch - but regardless, either way it seems pretty clear a woman will top the donkey ticket in 2016 which means the identity politics game plan honed to perfection by Obama will be in full rut, a devil spawning coupling that will of course be endorsed, sanctified wholeheartedly by the media - indeed, the rut, as with Obama, will be entirely dependent on the enabling of the media - in essence, when it comes to identity politics and the left, biased media plays roughly the same role for the political process as alcohol does at a frat party.

Which is why again I wonder why I do not hear Nikki Haley's name mentioned more often as the GOP candidate in 2016 - or Susana Martinez for that matter. All through Western style democracies conservatives are swimming against the same current - a media sympathetic to the left that doesn't want the right to win even if in objective terms their ideas have demonstrable merits - it's all about ideological purity for the left. Increasingly the electoral cudgel of choice for liberals is to leverage this huge media advantage through the shameless pandering of identity politics - Obama has shown how to exploit this strategy to its fullest effect. To me this skewed playing field deliberately distorted by a media corrupted by bias is a growing menace to the 'legitimacy' of democracies everywhere. I'd say there are three ways to push back and maybe even neutralize the threat. The easiest way is if you're lucky enough to have a parliamentary system where the left wing vote is split between moderate left and uber lefty parties as conservatives you can come to power by slipping between the two despite media bias working against you - this is how it works in Canada and the UK amongst others - Canada has had conservatives in power for several years now but the main reason for that is the left wing vote is split between four parties whereas there is only one right wing party [if there was only one left wing party you'd probably never see conservatives holding power in Ottawa] - but of course this flanking move is not an option for conservatives in America. For the GOP you really only have two options for defeating the media advantage of the left: nominate candidates who are so good in front of the camera that they are completely comfortable going into enemy territory and managing to not only survive, but win; or nominate an 'identity' candidate yourself and thereby kill the media narrative off at its proximate source.

So again I ask why we're not hearing more about women like Haley being the candidate in 2016 - matching identity candidate for identity candidate sounds like a silly way to run a superpower because it is - but it's also the only sure way to mitigate the noxious and corrupting effects of a media bias that is already gearing up to install Hillary as president in 2016 simply because it's time for a female chief executive. Yes of course the liberal press will still carp on idiotically about how only a left leaning woman can truly represent the interests of women etc etc - but that will be a win for conservatives because it will force Hillary [or Warren] to embrace the left - if you run a woman against Hillary or Warren you will take away their ability to masquerade as moderates the way Obama did so successfully.

To me the logic of this is obvious so I'm not understanding why talk of a female candidate is not getting more play amongst the chattering class.

Wth way things are going in Ukraine, where it sounds like the 'rebel' forces are falling back and falling apart consequent to a push by the Ukrainian military - looks like my opinion on how things would play out will be put to the test. I believed Putin was always first and foremost trying to force a political solution that favored him long term - but that if he failed to get that, if Kiev refused to compromise and pushed things to a head, he'd have no choice but to respond militarily since much of the point of what he was doing was rhetorical, was about creating the impression of a strong and influential Russia under his masterful leadership - Kiev being allowed to crush the pro-Russian separatists doesn't fit that narrative at all. The logic of events said to me that Putin must have understood from the beginning that if things did not go as planned he'd have to be prepared to okay a more pronounced involvement by the Russian military - or suffer the political consequences of looking like a weak failure. Putin doesn't strike me as a man much interested in looking weak nor does Russian culture and its political system seem particularly tolerant of such either.

Now, he still has cards to play here, namely fact that Ukraine is a fairly dysfunctional and corrupt place utterly dependent of Russian natural gas - and fact that the EU is also dependent on that gas and has made it very clear it has little appetite for waging an economic war of sanctions on Putin because it might end up hurting them as much as it hurts Russia - and so I don't expect an outright invasion of eastern Ukraine - but it does seem we're getting to the point where Putin is going to have to seriously ramp up the pressure, raise the stakes as it were, or back away from the table and accept the consequences of that. There's nothing about Putin that suggests he'll opt for the latter [although if he does back away it would mean, aside from accurately predicting Putin's move into Crimea, that I got most of the Ukraine calculus wrong].