Thomas Sowell gets what I've been saying about Christie for awhile now - I don't know whether the big guy would make a good president, I don't even know that much about his policy positions - and I'm not sure what to make of the 'traffic jam scandal', whether it ruins him, makes him stronger, ends up working to his advantage, or if maybe in the end it says something unflattering and disqualifying about the way he wields power and manages his people - I dunno - what I do know is that conservatives in general lack what he has and has in spades: the ability to talk in a clear and convincing and appealing and engaging way when the cameras are on and the ability accordingly to come across to a broad range of people as real, approachable, trustworthy and flat out damn likeable. In a political age defined by mass media and a popular culture that sees almost everything through that prism, and with that media inherently inclined towards a bias against conservative ideas and often openly corrupted by a politically motivated hostility to conservatism - to be a conservative and have the communication skills Christie has is like gold - and I firmly believe that if the GOP cannot find national candidates like this who have the ability to counteract and hopefully overcome the natural and often unnatural bias of the media, then the GOP is doomed to an increasing irrelevance.

And yet we see in the base's hatred of Christie and embrace of people like Cruz the incapacity or simple stubborn refusal to acknowledge this reality - the right wing base does not seem to grasp that what they see and hear when Cruz talks is not what most of the rest of the country will see and hear when Cruz talks should the GOP be foolish enough to make him their candidate. Now, I suppose you can make the argument that by the end of Obama's term the kind of liberalism he espouses will be so discredited that the country might be ready to tolerate a Cruz - possible, I guess - more likely though is that if what Obama represents is wholly discredited and the GOP puts forward someone like Cruz that will free up whomever the Democrats run to move convincingly to the center - which is why the GOP needs to run someone who can appeal to moderates and thus force Hillary et al to try and defend what Obama has wrought. 

One was expecting the orgy of scandal mongering that the liberal media let loose on Christie [although I do find myself regardless still somewhat taken aback by the brazen hypocrisy of it given the many and significantly less covered sins of Obama, sins of much more questionable veniality compared to those ascribed to the big guy] - can't say that I was expecting how badly some conservatives would want to join in on the fun, though. Seems the far right truly dislikes Christie, either that or so long for the coming of a hyper conservatism embodied in the likes of Cruz that they relish the opportunity to remove 'moderates' like Christie as obstacles to that great reckoning.

I find the fervid dreams of the far right to be quite delusional and oddly romantic in a disturbing sort of way - like finding the ramblings of a stalker romantic given their passion - but I must say that I increasingly am coming to view some of their criticism of Christie as vaguely legitimate - as in it's hard to believe that his underlings would engage in such foolish hardball behavior without Christie, either directly or by proxy, having indicated that he was fine with such hardball behavior regardless of whether or not he specifically signed off on this particular example of hardball behavior. That this stuff did happen may indeed say something negative about Christie and consequently that negative impression may be hard to shake given that so many on the left and less so on the right have a vested interest in seeing him not shake it.

That being said, I still say this episode says much more, in comparison, about the corruption of the Obama administration and the sympathetic submissive media that enables it than it says about the good and bad of Christie.  

Ah, I see that that jolly wise man of irrepressible good cheer, Ayatollah Khamenei, has called the way the US is negotiating with Iran over its nuclear doings an example of how America hates Muslims and Islam but that he's willing to tolerate the continuing discussions with Great Satan since such niceties are sometimes the best way to do Great Satan harm, or words to that effect - which is a rather interesting take on things, I'd say, certainly when measured against all the grand notions of comity and new hope that Obama and Kerry bring to the table.

Dear Leader's apologetic outreach to the children of Allah really isn't going too well, is it - although I guess his supporters would say that the failure of supine apology is a much better thing than the failure of war, which is all the evil Bush had to offer us - and on the superficial surface of things I suppose there's a kind of falsely comforting truth to that - unfortunately, at least for a cynic like me, that truth is very likely to amount to nothing more than a brief illusion wherein the seeds of a violence yet to come are sown.

There's another way of looking at the Christie dust up - I was a fan [?] of his because I believed he possessed in a unique way the qualities required to defeat or at least adequately push back against liberal media bias - he's now squarely in the rapacious maw of that bias - if he survives this feeding frenzy, and possibly even comes out looking in relative terms good because of his response to it [already many are contrasting his unequivocal taking of responsibility for this fuck up to Obama's refusal to take responsibility for anything that has gone wrong on his watch] then that will sort of prove my point: he's uniquely qualified to defeat or at least mitigate the pernicious effects of liberal media bias. Of course, this take will all depend on whether or not he can be directly tied to the scandal - if proof emerges that he signed off on this nonsense, he's toast - but I agree with some who are saying that the vehemence of his denials and the mammoth press conference he gave in his defense where he answered every question possible are strong indications that he truly wasn't a party to this nonsense or is at least quite confident there's no way it can be traced back to him. We'll see.

Fresh on the heels of in a provocatively unilateral fashion expanding its air security zone, an aggressive move that the US kindly in essence acquiesced to, China now has in the same manner expanded its claims in the South China Sea and in accordance with this decree is 'ordering' foreign fishing vessels to announce themselves and submit to possible boarding before entering into what China now views as its territorial waters. Nice.

People are of course fretting that this aggressive behavior could easily escalate into a confrontation - but think about it, it's becoming increasingly hard to believe that a confrontation isn't exactly what China wants - as this article points out, it looks like China wants to reap the spoils of a military victory without having to actually fight a war - ie they expect that if there is a confrontation their opponents will back down and they will in effect have gained control of the disputed territories. It's also getting very hard not to believe that this brinkmanship is a direct result of Obama's weak and submissive foreign policy - I predicted this might happen, that fearing the reprise of a strong Reagan replacing a weak Carter dynamic in 2016 China might conclude that now is the time to act while Obama's still in the White House - increasingly difficult not to see the shadow of that threat in what's going on here.

That article in The Diplomat also raises two other interesting points: without actual military victories, China can have no proud military tradition with which to rouse its people with; and without any real world experience in the practice of modern warfare, China cannot possibly master the means thereof - which amounts to a huge advantage for the US over China, a deficit which no doubt troubles the PLA to no end and again may lead to some decisions being made that will not bode well for any still holding out hope for China's peaceful rise. 

So, Christie lands in some PR trouble which conflicts enough with the image he's crafted of a no nonsense politician that it could prove a problem - by which I mean of course that because he's not a charming black guy beloved by the liberal elite the leftist media is going to like ravenous dogs feed off this screw up until nothing remains of the big guy's 2016 ambitions. Yep, Obama uses the IRS to suppress voter turnout, an impeachable offense, and the media just sort of yawns and turns away - but Christie, possibly the only conservative out there who can stop Hillary, makes a misstep [albeit a very stupid and petty one] and the media swarms to the feeding frenzy - they'll be chewing on the carcass of this 'scandal' for weeks now. No, forget that Gates' just released book has revealed that Obama apparently fought a war for no other reason than to protect his political interests - forget that, let's see how quickly we can kill off the GOP's savior in waiting.

Funny thing is, this is the whole reason I was a Christie supporter - I thought he was the only prospect out there that possessed the necessary attributes to counteract the utterly pernicious effects of media bias in this country - and now maybe he's toast, thanks to media bias. Kind of funny, I guess.

[which is not to suggest Christie doesn't bear responsibility - if he did indeed sign off on what was done, then that was a pretty foolish thing to do for a pretty petty reason]

Former SecDef Gates writes a book, slams Obama - but most importantly for me confirms what I have been saying for some five years now: Obama's embrace of the 'good war' in Afghanistan was nothing but a political calculation that he had no intention of following through on - his main, indeed possibly only concerns were beating Hillary in the primary by looking presidential with tough talk on Afghanistan and then, when he finally became president, of how to look like he was honoring that tough talk without actually entangling himself too deeply in a war he wanted no part of. I was saying this [and being ignored or pilloried for it] in 2008 - and again in 2009 when Obama was involved in his interminable discussions on how to proceed in Afghanistan and I labelled these deliberations as nothing but political theatre designed to make it look like he was serious about Afghanistan when all he was really serious about was constraining and then significantly hollowing out traditional notions of American power and foreign policy obligations and concerns - and of course getting re-elected, which would of course involve the spinning of narratives about how he had ended wars and was turning America into a kinder, gentler, more humbled UN friendly thing full of cooperation and goodwill for all.

The question Americans need to ask is: how is it an idiot blogger like me managed to figure this out about Dear Leader a full five years ago while the mainstream media missed it entirely? I think we all know the answer to that - in the crap shoot that democracy often devolves into you're gonna get bad presidents, unfortunately sometimes more bad ones than good ones - which is why I tend to think the real threat to this country is not the misguided incompetence of someone like Obama but rather the media bias that made it possible and indeed encouraged it and possibly has the means to make such misguided and fundamentally undemocratic rule a permanent feature of our politics. It's vital that Republicans find a way to counteract this threat - allowing the right wing base to control the debate with the hyperbole and sense of holy outrage it is wont to ply is not the way to go - the GOP desperately needs to put forward leaders who exude confidence and competence and can make the counter argument in a broadly appealing way - otherwise, I expect things will become increasingly messy until we get to the point where the country is lost to the enfeeblement and eventual ruin imposed by an unstoppable media enabled liberal oligarchy - or things just simply start falling apart, possibly violently so.

[I should note that my problem isn't about Obama not fighting to win in Afghanistan - I think one can make a convincing argument that for various reasons 'winning' was not an option in that war - my problem is that to me it was obvious that Obama was lying about his intentions viz Afghanistan both in the primary against Hillary and once he'd become president and the media, blinded by love for the man, either couldn't see this or saw it and decided to keep it hidden - I think it was mostly the former but disturbing either way - and of course like any clear thinking sane person I'm deeply troubled by fact Obama seemingly chose to fake fight a war he didn't believe in resulting in the deaths of many people and more damage being done to American foreign policy credibility for no other reason than to serve his political interests - that's repugnant - I don't fault the man for thinking the war unwinnable, if indeed that's what he believed - I fault him deeply for what he did about that belief]

Just curious - but how would Israel respond to a problem like Snowden? Israel has a well earned reputation for being somewhat ruthless when it comes to defending its security concerns - Israelis live in a dangerous part of the world, much of which is hostile to them, so they can't really afford sentimental posturing and abstract reasoning and lackadaisical equivocation when it comes to these life and death issues - so how would they have handled the Snowden problem? Being dramatic, one is tempted to think Mossad would have already brought the threat to a suitable conclusion with cold efficiency - but we must assume Snowden has protected himself against premature demise by disseminating his booty to various operatives - my guess is he would never have gotten out of Hong Kong, not in one piece anyways - and that raises the question that remains unanswered and indeed barely even asked: what the hell was the Obama administration doing in that week or so Snowden was stewing in Hong Kong to address the threat and contain the damage? I mean, jesus, they didn't even think to rescind his passport which I assume would have made his trip to Russia impossible - so what exactly were they doing?

I dunno, maybe I'm an idiot - but I keep hearing 'experts' talk about how to go about making a deal with Iran on its nuke ambitions, and to me this is absurd talk - Iran will only be amenable to a deal if they see a way forward for themselves given their proclivities that does not necessarily involve nuking up - but if on the other hand they feel it is essential given what they want and expect to nuke up then the only way to stop that from happening is to force it - it's that simple. All these people talking about 'avenues towards a settlement' are talking gibberish unless they can demonstrate evidence of Iran being open to a future that is not necessarily nuked up - I don't see any evidence of such out there and so to me the choice is clear: force Iran to give up its ambitions, or accept the inevitable of a nuked up Persia. And as I've said before, I believe Obama a long time ago accepted [out of cowardice or a pronounced antipathy towards American power] the latter and everything now 'negotiation wise' is just bull shit window dressing. 

Preacher at de Blasio inauguration litters his blandishments and rhetoric with references to slavery and plantations as if New York city, one of the most liberal and multi-racial places in America, is a hot bed of white supremacist fervor treading under foot the beleaguered unWASPy types crying out for freedom. These people are pathetic, and apparently quite shameless in their patheticness - you'd think the awfulness that is Obama would have knocked down this kind of lefty idiocy a notch or two - but, no, the moronic rantings of the enlightened still find plenty of purchase in the fetid ideological bile of the de Blasios et al making clear that charges of racism will continue to be the fulcrum the New Left uses to foist socialism upon the republic. One wonders where this all ends - is it to continue as a permanent feature of American political discourse no matter how much the ideas and sentiments under girding it are discredited and no matter how thoroughly this idiotic rhetoric is revealed to be the hollow demagoguery it is? That's a depressing thought. I guess one can sit and hope that de Blasio's term as mayor ends as badly as Dinkin's did - but that probably still doesn't kill the beast - hell, de Blasio could turn New York into a Detroit-like wasteland and these savants would still find some excuse that explains it all away - they're like spoiled rich kids living in daddy's pool house: ensconced and buried deep in a nurturing fantasy there's no reality they need answer to and therefore they can always manage to conjure up something or someone to blame for their ineffectuality and failings.