"... in a democracy the reasonable are constantly under threat from the caprices of the foolish and increasingly each election feels like a roll of the dice where you're just praying the right numbers come up... the West is in the midst of an economic correction and it's painful and worrisome and no one really knows how it's gonna end... but it's the political correction still to come that possibly worries me even more since I'm thinking it's like to leave us longing for these difficult days as if they were nothing but sunshine and good cheer..."

Secretary of State's dog eats her homework - Hillary can't testify on Benghazi because she fell and suffered a concussion? Seriously? As I've said many times, these people are utterly shameless - there's absolutely no line of bullshit they will not cross - and now that Obama has shed tears on TV over the horrible murders in Connecticut, let's face it, he's untouchable, wouldn't be shocked to see his job approval numbers jump by 10, 15 points - might as well just give him more or less what he wants, let the next four years happen and if we somehow manage to survive [I'm not in love with our odds] just try and pick up the pieces then and attempt a moving on.

She can't testify because of a concussion - my god, that's too ridiculous to even laugh at, a simple guffaw indicating contempt and scorn is beyond me here - it's just sad, pathetic.

This reminds one of the de Tocqueville musing that suggested the American democratic experiment would be undone when elected representatives figured out they could use the public's money to buy the public's favor.

I dunno - am I crazy to believe that we should have shot down the North Korean missile? How else do we stop them from perfecting this technology? Shouldn't that be our goal? Cause this tech is just gonna end up in Iran - hell, they no doubt funded this thing - so we just allowed Iran to add another component to its emerging nuclear threat. And China's motives here are murky to say the least - they say they oppose the launch, but then they do nothing when N Korea ignores them - sounds to me like they're ok with it for reasons which are not entirely clear, although one assumes they see the implied threat as being useful to them - whatever, I gotta think China is encouraging it, either directly or through acts of omission, because I have a hard time believing they'd be tolerating this slight otherwise.

The point is, by not shooting it down we're enabling a lot of disturbing dynamics to percolate and god knows what's gonna come of that. Now I'm sure some game theory tree can explain why my contention is not 'optimal' - but I can't play game theory - I know the consequences of shooting it down could prove quite bad but that doesn't then imply that the consequences of not shooting it down will perforce be better.

I mean, what if the 'caution' exhibited here is perceived as weakness, a reluctance to engage, a signal of an American retreat, relatively speaking, from the region at some not too distant date - what does that lead to? How do the intentions, motivations, perceptions of the various players change under the influence of such? China just buzzed Japanese airspace the other day over the disputed island chain with a 'government' [not military] plane and Japan in response scrambled eight, eight F-15s - how long before the PLA ups the ante by using a military plane to push the envelope? Japan shoots down a Chinese plane and all hell will break loose. If Japan perceives America as no longer being a reliable partner in the region, don't they change their whole military posture which right now is constitutionally quite restricted?

Now of course I'm not saying you can draw a straight line from a failure to bring down N Korea's missile to an outbreak of hostilities between Japan and China - never mind what it portends viz Iran - what I am saying is that it seems absolutely foolish to act as if a line of some sort, possibly quite convoluted, can't exist simply because we might prefer to believe in the primacy of more amenable scenarios that only in a putative or highly conditional sense seem more reasonable.

"... simplistic posturing and pontification upon race and racism by left wing elites has become the new opiate of that elite and their indentured masses under the ironically post racial rule of Mr Obama... it's a little like victim porn for the dimly enlightened who long for the sentimental proxy of a shared but safe pain... tease some cliched narrative, express a bit of shallow outrage, then everybody goes to sleep... ah, populism, cheap date of the delusional and simple minded..."

Yes, this is very good. It has always struck me as confounding, galling even, that Obama is referred to as a 'realist' when it comes to foreign policy, a pragmatist - and especially galling when his foreign policy successes are characterized accordingly. Jesus, what successes? None that I can see. As referenced article points out, it's all incoherent chaos that sycophantic confederates choose to spin as realism as a means of either continuing to prop up Obama by forever pushing down on Bush - or simply as a ruse to avoid the loathed 'idealist' label - but to me that's exactly what Obama is, a confused, incoherent idealist. His whole approach to Israel succinctly makes the case - it was/is pure idealist fantasy, right out of the uber liberal play book on how to 'fix' the Mideast.

Think about it - the media [and the president for that matter, which may be a redundancy] presents it as an equivalency, republicans give on taxing the rich [very broadly defined so as to include those who really aren't rich at all] and democrats give on modest [no doubt very modest] entitlement cuts - but there's no legitimate economist or budget savant out there who thinks the rich paying more in taxes comes anywhere even remotely close to dealing with our prodigious problems compared to significant curbs on spending - in other words, as opposed to serious spending cuts, punitive taxes on the rich are constructive only from the view point of ideological pandering - as a practical matter viz benefitting economic performance and addressing fiscal realities they're virtually useless and indeed almost certainly counterproductive - and yet the media treats a possible 'compromise' of this sort as a fair trade. And apparently a majority of the the electorate is either dumb enough or lost enough in a socialist fog to think that makes sense.

And I'm supposed to sit here and pretend we aren't utterly fucked? Can't see it.

I too agree with this sentiment - in many ways when you look at the modern West this is the decay one sees - the productive dynamic of sacrifice for a future good is gone - everything's about the degenerative now - we're all sad charlatans sitting about dining on our tails, convincing ourselves of how wonderfully enjoyable and oh so special it all is and then drunkenly posting a picture of the self immolation on Facebook as if that amounted to a meaningful affirmation of something worth a damn.

Should the GOP walk away from ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations - more and more seem to be considering this seemingly crazy notion.

The logic behind it would arise from recognition of a reality about Obama that I think even at this late date some people just can’t seem to fully accept - ie, that he’s a completely viscous player when it comes to his own political fortunes - there’s no lie he won’t tell, no line he won’t cross, no manipulative gesture he won’t essay - and whether that Machiavellian glee is just the expression of a prodigious ego or a prodigous hatred for traditional [don't you dare say white ruling class!] American values - or whether it’s simply him identifying entirely a victory by him personally as equalling in toto a victory for the movement in general doesn’t really matter - fact remains he plays to win at any cost, including romps over fiscal cliffs.

So, given that, the logic here would be that Obama’s only intention viz negotiations is to weaken the GOP so he can wipe them out in 2014 leaving him with two years where he’s free to turn America into whatever socialist abomination the left has in mind - to that end, either get them to capitulate and agree roughly to his desires on revenues and cuts which will split the GOP and cause uproar in Tea Party - or draw them out in bogus talks that in the end will be crafted to make it look like he tried oh so sincerely for an honest deal but alas evil, unreasonable [don’t forget racist] republicans, serving the 1% at the expense of the 99%, refused to play nice - and then off the cliff we go - but remember he’ll have the press more or less on his side, he’ll have the oval office, he can go out and give class warfare speeches across the country etc etc - and so even though the economy will likely tip back into recession with a cliff jump he’ll figure he can blame it all on the GOP and, again, they’ll be toast in 2014. After all, exit polls showed a majority were quite willing to blame Bush rather than Obama for current economic malaise - why on earth would one think he can’t mouth the same incantations over the next two years to conjure forth the same delusional magic?

If you believe the above scenario is true [and I think it probably is] the reason you’d walk away now becomes obvious: any negotiations you engage in are just a trap. Obama has put a ludicrously insufficient, one might say shamelessly disingenuous offer on the table - walking away extracts you from the trap and forces Obama to defend it.

But of course you can’t simply just walk away, refusing to sign anything - Obama probably wins that gambit just as surely as if you’d walked into his trap to begin with. No - acknowledging the lurking danger of the fiscal cliff you’d have to name what exactly you would be willing to sign in order to avoid it even while still refusing to engage in bogus negotiations with the Obama - and to do that you’re gonna have to convincingly explain to the people the rationale behind walking away which will necessarily mean saying some very nasty things about the president’s true intentions - no walk in the park that - which, again, is why you’d have to name exactly what it is you would sign - and there are only two choices here the way I see it: without any negotiations, agree to the offer Obama has put on the table, thereby making the democrats entirely responsible for the economic consequences that follow; or right now agree to sit down and sign the only bipartisan settlement out there and the only truly bipartisan agreement that will probably ever see the light of day given current dynamics - Simpson/Bowles. Now, SB is hardly a 'great deal' if you're a conservative, but then that's the point because probably even more so it's not a great deal if you're Obama but he can't simply dismiss it if the GOP is willing to swallow hard and take it - so that's a win, or at least not a glaring loss.

One can see how this risky move might appeal to disenchanted, cynical types like me who see Obama for the ruthless schemer, shameless political manipulator he is, don't think you can beat him by dancing around the edges [especially with the press running cover for him, which is really the secret behind everything Obama does] and believe that if you’re backed into a corner only a bold and cunning move is gonna save your ass and the only cleverly cunning bold move I can think of is the studied walk away - can't look merely petulant - regardless, I hold out very little hope for the success of such a venture, if only for one simple reason: for the game to work you’d need a very, very compelling spokesperson out front selling the whys and wherefores of it - and who would that be? Ryan? I dunno - possibly - and then the entire house GOP would have to be onboard with it - and so again if one wants to engage in the probable fantasy of this gambit the thing you absolutely without question are gonna need to produce is a smooth talker who can make the sale - cause without that, it's most likely a suicide run.

You’d think with the way things are going in Egypt and with the Arab pseudo spring in general that Israeli scepticism regarding the intentions of Islam viz Israel specifically and the West in general and the realistic capacity for Palestinians and their sclerotic, disingenuous leadership to accept anything even remotely approximating legitimate conditions for a peace agreement, you'd think this sceptical acuity would be given more credit, be treated with a more honest objectivity by progressives, those naive fools who unlike the Israeli realists they scorn got the putative Arab spring entirely wrong.

But nope, not gonna happen, as the Palestinian proto state UN vote makes clear - and then when Israel responds to this provocation by announcing the building of a few more condos in Jerusalem the progressives are very quick to label them extreme as if the Palestinian maneuver was entirely reasonable and sincere - Obama, who can’t bring himself to criticise what’s going on in Egypt, has absolutely no problem acting as if once again Israel has subverted a real opening for peace through unreasonable aggression. Obama et al got the Arab Spring wrong, Israel got it right, and yet still liberals in the West act as if Israel is the misguided party here.

You’ve almost got to admire these progressives, the plucky way they blindly carry on as if they know exactly where they’re going when they quite clearly don't have a clue. Well, admiration’s wrong, can’t admire something like this - envy - maybe I envy them, ignorance being bliss and all.