If you scanned the Google news headlines and looked at key phrases which appeared in the last 48 hours, you might see something which looked like this.
- Obama: Requiring health insurance is not a tax increase (CNN).
- Obama: Missile defense decision not about Russia (AP)
- Obama: I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money. (Politico).
- Obama: Afghanistan strategy is still a work in progress.
Individually the stories would ostensibly be about health care, missile defense, ACORN or Afghanistan. But taken collectively they are about Barack Obama. Reading the news by article provides a sense of the subject. Reading them by headline conveys an idea of the “emerging narrative”. Whether by accident or intent, the news meme is turning disparate subjects into one single subject: the President. It’s almost as if the whole thing were being orchestrated by Saul Alinsky, who famously wrote “Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Where do the narratives come from? Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point talks about “‘the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point’ … [when] sociological changes … ‘spread like viruses do’” In plain language, it’s the moment when a consensus begins to emerge on what is being observed, or perhaps more accurately what is not being observed. One theme is the idea that the President is living in another place. The following quotes from the articles above are highly suggestive of a disconnection.
“For us to say you have to take responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” Obama said in response to persistent questioning, later adding: “Nobody considers that a tax increase.” …
“My task here was not to negotiate with the Russians. The Russians don’t make determinations about what our defense posture is.”…
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Eight months after Inauguration Day, the Obama administration is still working out its strategy for continued U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, the president said in an interview that airs Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think that what we have to do is get the right strategy, and then I think we’ve got to have some clear benchmarks, [a] matrix of progress,” President Barack Obama told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King about the war torn country. …
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?
OBAMA: You know, if — frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.
The search to understand Barack Obama is the search for a vantage from which understand his policy actions. In what framework do they make sense? In fact, Obama is asking himself the same question with respect to Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal reports:
President Barack Obama on Sunday voiced skepticism that more troops would make a difference in Afghanistan, suggesting he might not rubber-stamp military officials’ expected request to send more forces to that country.
“I don’t want to put the resource question before the strategy question,” Mr. Obama told CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There is a natural inclination to say, ‘If I get more, then I can do more.’ But right now, the question is—the first question is—are we doing the right thing? Are we pursuing the right strategy?”
‘Why are we doing this?’ Yes, Mr. President, why are you doing this? After all, the commander in chief ought to know. If the military’s job is to carry out strategy, it is the political leadership’s job to set it.The more ignorant might ask ‘what is the wrong strategy which we are pursuing?’ It turns out to be a hard question to answer. The strategy in Afghanistan, like the process of ‘engagement’ with Iran, was always somewhat undefined. In the beginning the public was told that in Afghanistan the War on Terror would end where it began; that he would get Osama Bin Laden; that there would be a grand bargain among the powers of the region; that Afghanistan would be developed into a stable country. That there would be a czar to integrate all initiatives. That there were new rules of engagement to avoid civilian casualties. Things would be different now that a real intellect was in charge. Now it turns out that the equation contains a whole lot of undefined terms. But in a world where negotiations with the Russians are not about negotiating with the Russians, where mandates for health insurance aren’t taxes, where President Obama is surprised that ACORN is receiving government money, and where 8 months after inauguration he has to ask himself what an organization he heads is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan, I think it is reasonable to argue that we are not observing or perhaps not understanding the President’s rational model. Otherwise we’d understand what the terms of the problem were and evaluate the possible solutions. Joe Klein of Time Magazine is still trying to stretch his mind to understand what’s up.
It was generally believed that Obama was holding out the anti-missile system as a bargaining chip to be used in return for Russian cooperation on a more rigorous sanctions regime against the Iranian nuclear development program. And so the question is: what has the Administration gotten in return from the Russians for this concession? We don’t know yet….but I’ve been thinking … Again, this is just speculation on my part. But I do hope that this anti-missile move has a Russian concession attached to it, perhaps not publicly (just as the US agreement to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey was not make public during the Cuban Missile Crisis). The Obama Administration’s diplomatic strategy is, I believe, wise and comprehensive–but it needs to show more than public concessions over time. A few diplomatic victories wouldn’t hurt.
It depends on how you define victories, Mr. Klein and we are waiting to see what they look like. But they cannot be of a cloth so rare, so beautiful and esoteric that only one pair of eyes can perceive them. Reality is something ordinary people can partially agree on. Handsome is as handsome does.
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All Obama, all the time….
Can’t be long before the giant portraits begin appearing on the sides of buildings.
Increasingly, it seems to me that the Gordian knot we need to chop apart consists of two separate pieces: (1) the liberal progressive Left and their anti-American Marxist ideology, and (2) who / what is Barack Obama, what is he doing and who is he doing it for?
The Left (i.e., Nancy Pelosi, Sean Penn, Keith Olbermann) think they won the last election, have a majority in both houses and are in charge. However, millions of Tea Party participants beg to differ and Democrats haven’t been able to accomplish much after their initial ginormous bail-outs and take-over of Detroit. Much to their vocal fury and chagrin.
On the other hand, it’s not at all clear what Obama supports. Nor what his end goals are. He certainly doesn’t support a successful America, nor does he support middle-class taxpayers who make up what has been a successful America. He does support preachers and organizations and policies which want to take from the rich (anyone with a job) and give to the poor (historically unemployed and unemployable people who may or may not be citizens).
He also supports anyone else in the world who is anti-American and to prove it will apologize, bow and grovel to *any* world leader if it will get him a headline. And make America look weak. I’m not sure even the Progressive Left is behind him on this behavior any more, so it’s another sign of the disconnect between the people who elected Obama …. and the people who are running Obama.
The thought occurred to wonder what he will say to the United Nations when he addresses that august organization. The UN has been asking for control of America’s military for years now, coming at it again and again from different directions, promising peace and light and honied harmony if stingy old America will only give The World access to our toys and our soldiers. Anyone want to wager that the next step in Obama’s plan to degut the United States will be to give the United Nations what they’ve been asking for: control over American military efforts in Afghanistan or Iraq or Somalia or the West Bank?
He doesn’t have to defund our military resources. He just has to loan them out to Putin and China.
Before Obama was elected I was telling everyone I know (nearly all of whom voted for him!) that if elected, Obama would prove to be the worst president ever elected in US history. In a mere eight months he’s proven to me that he’s even worse than I ever suspected. His impeachment cannot happen soon enough.
80/20 Rule – aka Pareto Principle: ”roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes”.
Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen; so what is a messiah then, all three?
NahnCee, I think you hit one out of the park in your last paragraph.
With regards to a previous thread where Marie Claude was all about ending NATO and forming an independent EU “force” (paid for…how? by …who?), which would, of course, be (per the French idealogues behind that) manipulated and controlled by French nationalistic-mercantilistic ideas. How well would that Euro-unity last when all the other junior Euros realized they were being used as pawns of French policy? Or at least attempted to be so used.
Likewise, it will truly be political suicide if Obama decides to surrender soveriegn control of the US military to ……the UN? The same clique would like to manipulate the UN to its own ends. Such and idea will be quite popular with those self-same transnational elites, but will mortally offend most Americans. Vulgar, backward rubes that we all are.
Could it get much sillier?
I explained to a perennially underemployed friend who hates conservatives that to understand conservatives one had to consider that conservatives believe in liberty and in the opportunity to succeed. And as there is an opportunity to succeed, there too was an opportunity to fail, like good and evil. I used to work with a guy who made it big, we’re talking 10’s of millions before the big bust of the dot com revolution from which we walked unscathed. And there are certainly winners and losers the winners almost always make their own luck. The guy I knew was smarter and worked harder than anyone or I knew but I still had a tinge of jealousy. It is human nature and it springs forth un-summoned. If there was one thing that bothered republicans as myself the most, it was to see those who strove for nothing, did nothing, but demanded an equal seat at the feast. The idea that I have paid social security taxes for over 30 years and have been promised everything but seeing a penny of it, only those whose only risk was to break into a country that would not prosecute them for breaking its law, to witness a Cadillac parking in a handy-capped spot, so the overweight but otherwise fit welfare recipient with a big screen TV and a cell phone could live like a protected elite, brought a certain tinge of jealousy that someone could cheat so successfully. Liberals admire corruption in this vein. It was at last corruption that bothered the conservative the most. It is sticking it to the man, wealth redistribution, Robin hood. Those who’d break the rules would be favored for their perfidy. That’s what drives conservatives crazy.
We don’t need a new system. We need to fix the parts that are broken in the one we have and if we can achieve this, then we could afford a broader safety net of largesse for all. But as long as there is endemic abuse, we should stick to winnowing the remaining avenues of corruption before we can expect to progress.
I don’t think she got it.
2/Nahncee. I think that is your most astute comment yet. Thank you.
#6 – Annoy Mouse – “We don’t need a new system. We need to fix the parts that are broken in the one we have and if we can achieve this, then we could afford a broader safety net of largesse for all. But as long as there is endemic abuse, we should stick to winnowing the remaining avenues of corruption before we can expect to progress.”
I think you’re correct. The only problem is that fixing the current system means stripping away those layers upon layers of laws and regulations that only exist to fatten the Liberal Left’s cronies. They won’t willingly go down that road.
I have a good friend of many years whose health problems would nearly go away if he would only lose about 100-150 pounds. He knows it. I and others have preached to him for that past 20 years. All to no avail. I am now resigned to keeping a suit ready for his funeral.
I am slowly coming to the same conclusion about my beloved country.
Obama is a narcissist. Everything is about him. He needs to be center stage. He pulled all the power inside the White House and way from the Cabinet Secretaries (except defense), Thus all the Czars and special advisors. He can’t stand competing power centers. He stripped Hillary Clinton of any power at State. He seems to have unmanned Gates. Panetta is grasping to save his turf.
Now Obama training and indoctrination is a Marxist and Communist from his mother and later Frank Davis. He drifted deliberately to the radicals and communists in college. He married a radical and she is probably more ideological than him.
Obama does not believe or truly understand the market and how it is a process that balances demands and supplies. Capitalist systems operate without a central command, which may seem strange to an egotist.
Now all Presidents are egotists, they have to think they can provide something no one else has, to run and win. They believe they have special talents, vision or principles.
I have always thought Obama was not really serious about running as a Presidential candidate. But when he won Iowa, he ran for it since opportunity often comes once.
Obama from his education and experiences thought about social domestic issues so that is his focus. Foreign policy is more a kneejerk anti American reaction, like many Castro lovers, who think that way since they never really thought much about it.
So when the issues of the day all juxtapose they all point to Obama. So perhaps this is because he has a deep psychological need to be the center.
Personally Obama is so self centered he fails to see any other truth other than the one he is just uttering even if it contradicts the truth of the last sentence.
He gets upset when he is challenged and gets pugnacious He insists that people just did not listen right. The fault is always with the other person, not him. Very narcissistic behavior.
He is almost like a little kid who says because I say so the problem should be solved. Afghanistan is more intractable due to geography and history than most countries And Bush correctly determined that Iraq being the center of the Middle East was a better pace to make a strategic ally. All Afghanistan needed was to displace the Taliban which Rumsfeld did. It was NATO who let the Taliban back.
So perhaps people can’t figure out Obama because he is no more than a personality that has to be center stage, even to his detriment. He doesn’t care about the Balkans and Caucasus states. He is indoctrinated in the belief that communism was better than capitalism. He is not a person from the Cold War and believes that America should remain superior to the rest of the world, especially to oppression loving regimes.
He has shown a willingness to betray anything and anyone to his benefit. Yet he fails to identify himself as America, which a President is the symbol, so an insult to the President is an insult to America. He takes personal offense but not national offense.
I really think he has not evolved beyond thinking America is always the problem rather than the solution.
2. NahnCee,
Remarkable comment. I would make it required reading. Sadly, those who need it most , will not understand.
Let me get this straight: BHO can inject himself -without admittedly knowing all the facts- into an arrest in Cambridge, but isn’t “following closely” the crapstorm coming out of ACORN, a group he has represented, was involved with deeply, and (probably illegally, if not immorally) helped get him elected? Either BHO has learned something from the Professor Gates episode, (not every 2-bit arrest deserves Presidental comment), or he is just BSing George Stephanopoulos and the rest of us. My money is on the latter.
“George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country.”
The thing about ACORN is that we’ve been treating it as a bunch of uneducated laughable hicks who sooner or later would overdose and die, or end up back in jail and we’d be rid of them. Just ignore them and they’ll go away — that they’re vicious but ignorant so how dangerous can they really be?
However, if you were to make up a plan on how to dismantle America, one of the touchstones would be to dismantle the electoral process; to invalidate elections so that no one would bother to vote and if they did vote, no one would ever know what the outcome really was, leaving one candidate to declare 99% victory a la Saddam and/or Putin. It seems to me that this would require a two-pronged effort: massive voter registration which could then be thrown to said candidate, and voter intimidation to keep “unauthorized” voters away from the polls.
So if Obama *is* a Manchurian Candidate and his Presidency was purchased for him by overseas funding from, say, Russia, what would be the goal of such an exercise? There would be several goals, all aimed at stripping America of what makes it different and great: freedom of speech, socialism replacing capitalism, the right to bear arms, separation of church and state, and … democracy.
Funding and supporting ACORN would be aimed at demolishing the concept of democracy in America, using a vast under-used and under-paid unemployed and unemployable segment of American society. ACORN has been registering non-existant voters (possibly in the millions) and ACORN-affiliated Black Panthers pled guilty to voter intimidation so as to allow only approved voters into the polls (approved by whom?).
If allowed to continue, what would be the state of the election process in three more years if ACORN were to thrive and expand? Or, God forbid, 8 more years. Would we even still have rigged elections a la the sort that Chicago (and Putin and Saddam) are famous for?
I think we need to quit laughing at ACORN and start thinking of it as being an integral factor in whatever is being planned for the near future of the United States of America. Thankfully, it appears that they have over-reached in their ignorance and illegality and so may be headed for oblivion and doom. But the mere fact that someone set it up and it got this far is scarifying … and what are we gonna do about that?
Let’s assume for a moment that it’s all true. BHO never knew ACORN was getting government money; doesn’t think the negotiations with Russia were about Russia; hasn’t really thought about what is happening in Afghanistan; thinks you can simply mandate a regulation that effectively transfers income and believe they are not in some economic sense, equivalent to taxes. Suppose this was all true. What happens to our rational actor model?
Consider for a moment the problem of dealing with Barack Obama from the point of view of a Martian who understands nothing about earthlings but believes in rationality. And he is tasked with dealing with Barack Obama. He constructs this model of interests and implicitly assumes that President Obama “cares” about certain things and rationally keeps himself informed on these matters. What are the Martian’s working assumptions regarding outcomes of a bilateral negotiation with Russia? Etc. They will assume BHO cares about getting the better of Russia or getting something for something. Then he observes Obama apparently give the Russians something for nothing.
Pretty soon the Martian, like Joe Klein, must resort to the “hidden victory” theory, in order to preserve the rational actor model. If the President gives the Russians something in exchange for nothing evident, if the rational actor theory is to survive, we have to assume, as Klein does, that “a secret deal” exists. Or we see that the country is incurring unsustainable debt, we have to believe that “the President has some trick up his sleeve so it will come out right in the end”. If we are told that he knows nothing about ACORN, his history notwithstanding, then in order to retain our sanity, we have to make special assumptions about his knowledge acquisition process. We keep looking for a viewpoint from which it all makes sense.
Suppose, as Nahncee observes, there is no single viewpoint, even a Leftist one, from which it adds up? What then? This is where it really gets dangerous, because we have to assume multiple actors in negotiation: that the President is a collective consciousness in ongoing debate which speaks in his apparent voice. He is almost like a man possessed, but possessed by whom? Or maybe a single actor who is not rationally consistent. This complicates the Martian’s problem of dealing with the President of the United States. What’s up doc?
Now all students of the hoary old science of deterrence knows that when a rational actor model cannot be assumed the variance of possible outcomes goes up rapidly. You are in a floating crap game. The problems are multiplied by the habit of appointing “czars” and (in the case of Carter) assigning racist values to criticisms. The entire policy debate becomes opaque. If nobody knows what the hell is going on, then a certain self-induced instability creeps into the system. Nobody wins that game. Not even the Martians.
“Likewise, it will truly be political suicide if Obama decides to surrender soveriegn control of the US military to ……the UN?”
I have been waiting for this to happen along with other “World Government” measures. I predicted it before he was elected. I hoped that I was wrong, but now we see that he is trying to get World Government regulations for the financial institutions- world wide, including of course the U.S.
As a side note on ACORN. They are not going to be put out of business, just driven more underground. They will flourish as long as Soros and others in (and out) of our government want them for their utility.
Papa Ray
West Texas
The world’s economic system damned near collapsed because who-ever was gaming the system underestimated the cascade effect of what they’d started in taking down some of Wall Street’s biggies.
Who-ever’s pulling Obama’s strings might also be underestimating what will happen if America goes down — or is drastically changed.
However, Option #3 for Wretchard’s observant Martian is that the President of the United States may just be nuttier than a fruitcake, and listening to lots and lots and lots of little inner Son of Sam / Charlie Manson-like voices.
Nixon had Alexander Haig to rein him in and make sure no red buttons got pushed. Is there anyone currently in the White House with the authority or the ability to rein in Obama if he goes over the edge bat-shit crazy?
So Joe Klein says:
Allow me to translate:
To backtrack on our allies is OK; being stupid is not.
Really? Wouldn’t you rather have someone with integrity over the “World’s Smartest Man”? You can hire smart people, but money can’t buy you integrity.
L3
All this stuff, war, economy, dissenters, it’s just all a pile of shit in the inbox, you just have to put up with it and go through the motions, it’s really all about the Power of being the President, where you can get some important stuff done, like free healthcare for everybody, reparations for Mother Gaia, ducking the guilt for evil America’s history. All the rest of these “issues” and “responsibilities” are just stuff you have to ignore while you change the world, take advantage of the power as ruler.
President Obama is our very own Akhenaten, destroyer of all outmoded religions and gods, installer of new religions and beliefs.
The New Pharoah, err, President, has his scribes touting his tremendous Change effect upon the world today, as the NYT article “Good Will, but Few Foreign Policy Benefits for Obama ” today describes today his wondrous, unprecedented “successes” so far:
European allies still refuse to send significantly more troops to Afghanistan. The Saudis basically ignored Mr. Obama’s request for concessions to Israel, while Israel rebuffed his demand to stop settlement expansion. North Korea defied him by testing a nuclear weapon. Japan elected a party less friendly to the United States. Cuba has done little to liberalize in response to modest relaxation of sanctions. India and China are resisting a climate change deal. And Russia rejected new sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program even as Mr. Obama heads into talks with Tehran.
But, if you think any of the above is “bad” then you just haven’t got the new religion yet, you dolt.
After President Obama laid out his “vision” of a nuclear-free world last April, he invited Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn and William Perry to the White House. According to former Secretary of State Shultz, the four “enthusiastically” support Obama’s new policy. “I don’t think anybody would accuse these four gentlemen of being dreamers,” said Obama. “They’re hard-headed, tough defenders of American interests and American security.”
Oh yes, of course. Kissinger’s diplomacy opened China, gave away Southeast Asia to the Communists, and provided a screen for Soviet nuclear superiority in the late 1970s. Shultz attempted to undermine President Reagan’s tough stand against the spread of Communism into Latin America. Sam Nunn was swindled by the post-Soviet promises of Russian nuclear disarmament. And William Perry was the architect of containing North Korea’s nuclear program in the 1990s.
The success or failure of statesmen cannot be judged amid the hype or fanfare of their declared intentions or self-proclaimed successes. What matters is the long-term outcome. Last April, speaking in Prague, President Obama said: “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.” But that is incorrect. Nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented. This has nothing to do with the Cold War. And besides, the Cold War never ended. It continues today, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Now the real danger begins. A dreamer is at the helm, and policy goes haywire.
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/2009/0529.html
Wretchard, I do not agree that Obama really does not follow the Acorn scandal. If anything the Van Jones incident showed that the White House follows the conservative Fox news and conservative blogs more than the liberal ones.
Obama missile decision follows his statements a while ago before his candidacy that he is against missile defense. Some on the left have the perverted sense that a robust defense provokes the enemy and better to lay supline and be the victim than have a defensive system.
After all the follows with the idea that it is worse to be armed for self defense than raped or murdered. That the worse thing can happen if one is armed rather than be disarmed. Now with CCW laws many have rejected that perverted thinking and are armed and willing to defend themselves.
Did anyone besides me *watch* the ABC interview this morning? Stephanopoulos asked him some moderately sharp questions about health care – and Obama could not present a coherent answer, not even a coherent sentence in most cases. Y’know, the no-teleprompter Obama was on grotesque display. I think even Stephanopoulos was dismayed, but mostly tried to hide it.
On the other hand, who says Obama, the president, the commander in chief, needs to have a personal and comprehensive view of things? Can’t he just be the community organizer (and rabble-rouser, and speechifier) in chief? Tony Robbins? Deepok Chopra? I think he may view himself like that. I’m not sure the guy can make change for a dollar, he seems that removed from any numbers issues related to healthcare, and *that’s* a problem. I think he wants it to be “about Obama”, but doesn’t think he *needs* to be the details wonk.
I always criticize the left for thinking that the president should be our God-King, the Prime Mover of the omnipotent government.
I suppose George W. Bush was not known as the greatest policy wonk in the world, though of course he was far better than the press made him out. Clinton was supposed to be the bigtime wonk, and what good did that do anybody?
But just to recapitulate, I thought Obama looked absolutely awful on the ABC interview this morning, and was waiting to see what the press reactions were. As if I didn’t know – they saw NOTHING.
Wretchard, I do not agree that Obama really does not follow the Acorn scandal.
Personally I think he followed it closely, whatever he told Stephanoupolos. But that’s my interpretation in despite of his explicit words. Here’s the thing: if you have to read between the lines too much then the text becomes more of a puzzle than a narrative and a President can’t be like an onion without creating problems. He sends a variety of signals to his supporters, to his enemies, to the ordinary citizens of the country. And every leader — even Stalin and Hitler to use extreme examples — had an implicit duty to be consistent. Consistently bad, maybe, but consistent. So supporters and enemies could know which end was up.
Suppose he were as Leftist as say … Bill Ayers. If he were consistently that you could calculate what he would do. You might not like what he would do, but you know what it would be. If you didn’t know you are in one of those Who-dunnit Agatha Christie rooms where nothing is known for sure until Inspector Poirot figures out the one angle from which all makes sense. I think Klein is truly perplexed. He doesn’t know what Obama did, so he’s guessing.
It’s like being confronted with an optimization program whose objective function is secret. It’s like being in front of a giant Krell machine and not knowing what it does. Maybe I’m making too much of it, and it is just my personal opinion, but I’ve always felt there was something that I wasn’t quite getting about the President. It’s there, just on the edge of vision. And then it’s gone. One day I’ll see it clearly, but it’s an elusive thing.
Like many, I had the requisite photo of Obama with the light saber saying “Take That, Mr. Putin”.
In the post I mentioned some of our erratic foreign policy moves.
I asked the Baron his opinion on the apparent incoherenence of White House foreign policy. He said it doesn’t rise to the level of incoherence. What they have is a series of poses, none of which signifies anything.
Surely anyone who “writes” –make that “publishes” because I doubt he wrote them — two autobiographies before he’s accomplished anything and yet has somehow erased the normal person’s paper trail thru life is…what? A narcissist constantly re-inventing himself?
This is a one-term prez.
Obama is deploying the academic’s default strategy for dealing with any difficulty – obfuscation, also know as ‘blowing smoke in your face’.
Sooner or later people will catch on that this is all he has.
# 19
“Now the real danger begins. A dreamer is at the helm, and policy goes haywire”
I read that link and it meshes with the gun control philosophy that it is better to be a victim and depend on the mercy of the enemy than to defend oneself and be armed.
After all the inner cities have gun bans in Chicago and only the police and bad guys have guns. They think if others have guns the dead may increase. It may indeed increase but it probably would be more bad guys than good people that are killed.
Most of the violence and victims are blacks in the inner cities preyed upon by their own children and neighbors. Remember that is why those in public housing were denied the right to have a gun at home. It was a bad idea if the decent folk shot back at the bad guys.
So it follows that Obama would advocate eliminating our own nuclear weapons.
It will not happen. There are institutional checks in our government and the elimination of our weapons would raise a hue and cry.
But it now makes sense the F 22 was cancelled. That jet was designed so parts were built in every Congressional district so it would not face the chopping block.
It is so advanced no other country could face it in battle. Of course as the most effective air force weapon capable of beating China and Russian fighters that Obama would cancell it.
It’s there, just on the edge of vision.
No, it’s not there. This is all internal, putting the government in charge of America. Outside America there is nothing worth caring about, because you can’t tax it. Lefties like Obama think America is Superman, invulnerable, as long as we don’t do anything wrong, nothing bad never happens. Now, back to the “Change.”
That’s all there is, there is no strategy beyond internal Power over America. All else will flow from that, or as Owlsley said while driving away from the acid test, “I’ll make up the road as I get to it.”
luddy barsen –
Excellent reference. It ends:
The success or failure of statesmen cannot be judged amid the hype or fanfare of their declared intentions or self-proclaimed successes. What matters is the long-term outcome. Last April, speaking in Prague, President Obama said: “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.” But that is incorrect. Nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented. This has nothing to do with the Cold War. And besides, the Cold War never ended. It continues today, whether we acknowledge it or not.
Now the real danger begins. A dreamer is at the helm, and policy goes haywire.
Speaking of paying attention to the goings on on the “right”: Does anyone have any good numbers on the March in Washington on Sept. 12? I saw pics of the crowds marching in the am at 14th and E Streets from the traffic cams and it was very impressive, but a number north of 1,000,000 seems pretty high too. Anyone seen any good overhead pics? A significant event whatever the actual number.
We had our own 400-500 turnout in Providence….
To these missed missives:
* Obama: Requiring health insurance is not a tax increase (CNN).
* Obama: Missile defense decision not about Russia (AP)
* Obama: I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money. (Politico).
* Obama: Afghanistan strategy is still a work in progress.
Add these unmined nuggets:
*Two million march in Washington DC against health care. (Now reads, “Olympia sells her self”. Alternates: “Snowe’s in Hell” and “I won”)
*Millions more still march against the Regime in Iran . (the one he wants to talk about “stuff” with alternate Headline, “They didn’t win, Ahmadinajad won”)
*SEIU Who? Change Foreign money to the campaign, (Alt A How’d that happen? Alternate B “I won!”"
*Russians will let us ship stuff to NATO’s troops. Sub headline, Hopes it doesn’t get lost in the Artic”
No weapons or ordinance mind you, but all the other stuff. Ambiguity in that president Obama hasn’t figured out what is there to win and it is slowly dawning on the Democrat muckitees that winning might mean interrupting a major source of Democrat funding, Acorn jobs, and Labor washed tax free union dollars.
Oh and the Iranians are still marching against the regime and the fact is the five shows had a distraction to allow them to ignore the total lack of cohesion in the Obama presidency. If you forget the fact that Obama was in all of their studios.
Only Carter could be more clueless. If Democrats want to be known as Paternalists, why’d they elect a kid?
NahnCee and Rah,
Well done, this is what the BC does best.
Capitalist systems operate without a central command, which may seem strange to an egotist.
Who herds their man flock?
- Aeschylus The Persians
Democrats have a great advantage over Republicans because even when out of power they present themselves as a government in waiting. From their perches in a web of interlocking NGOs, projects, charities, think tanks, universities, publications and investment banks they are constantly planning, and more important announcing to the public that they are planning, what to do once the low brow Rethuglican intruders are shown the back gate. Republicans can not match that. When out of office they are not busy preparing policy papers on how to run the world. They have jobs, that is they used to until Obama scorched the earth, and they are to busy running parts to plan on running the whole. Besides they believe that if the parts are run right then the whole will run itself.
BHO’s admission that he was not only not ready on Day One but is not ready on Day 240 destroys the myth of the Democrats as the natural party of government. Eventually the units below him are going to rewire themselves to bypass the White House. This won’t be for ideological reasons but for practical ones. It would be bad enough to the bureaucrats if the White House and the Czars really were absorbing all power into the Neutron star of BHO’s center and then delivering a comprehensive, even if wrong headed, plan. Since the reality is that Obama and his collection of tax cheats and bullies have proven incapable of managing an enterprise the size of Knott’s Berry Farm the machinery of government will naturally find a way to isolate him.
Now that the system has taken its’ measure of him, as the rest of the world has, he will probably become like Jim Hacker. He will be lead into a never ending series of increasingly meaningless activities, cuddly farm displays, while the professionals get busy around him. Unfortunately that could only work in a benign foreign security and domestic economic climate. It would also necessitate the presence of a competent back stop to keep the wheels moving while the POTUS dithers. That is not a role that I see Joe Biden filling.
A year or so out of Columbia University the president was working as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago for what were essentially starvation wages. Did he have health insurance coverage? How did he afford it? And if he didn’t why was he so socially irresponible, especially given the fact that he was a smoker?
I realize the NY Times the allegedly greatest news gathering force in Chrisyendom couldn’t track either Barack’s birth certificate or college transcripts down but it wold be curious if they could at least get a reporter to ask the White House that question. I might even buy a copy of that inky rag if they did.
I have to admit that Barack Obama qua Barack Obama is an enigma to me. I’ve read all of the various theories – psychological and political – that attempt to explain his behavior. I’ve played close attention for months, and I can confidently say I have no idea what he truly believes in his heart. (Of course, that is true of most of us.)
However, President Obama is not mysterious in the least. He is a man who found himself thrust into the Presidency on the strength of his symbolic power and the electoral collapse of the opposing party. He has risen to the top of the political world, and now “in charge.” He has virtually no executive experience, and very little in his background would lead you to believe he would arrive at this job, at this time. So he is completely unprepared for the task.
And over his head. Way over his head.
I’ve seen this sort of thing before. People who, for any number of reasons, suddenly find themselves in the “top job” of an organization. (This is not uncommon in family businesses, when the dad dies prematurely.) Nothing can prepare you for the challenges of that job. The buck stops with you.
And because you haven’t really been tested, you don’t know your center. We are all in a process of self-discovery. Think of how many times here at the Belmont Club, we’ve read posters write something like “I used to be a student radical” (or “hippy” or “communist” or “leftist” etc.) and then go on to say they’re now a conservative or libertarian. And I’ve read posts on leftist blogs from people heading the other way.
Being the person with ultimate authority for an organization – especially a large one – forces you to decide what is truly important in your life, who you are, why you do what you do. And you must do this because, as W points about above, the organization needs someone to remove the inherent ambiguity of the environment, and that person is the President.
What we are witnessing in full view is Barack Obama completing his journey of self-discovery. It is decision-time, and he has begun to make a public profession of faith. And I think this is what he believes:
In other words, despite all of the rhetoric of outreach, reconciliation, listening, and the rejection of “false choices,” President Obama is a classic collectivist liberal. (For BCers, of course, this is no surprise, but until recently someone who was highly committed but principled could continue to delude themselves.)
However, the country remains center-right, and the bloom is starting to come off of the rose. Conservatives will benefit from this because it will create a real contrast. Here is what conservatives should say in response
The last 90 days have been President Obama’s coming-out. Today he was America’s Debutante President™. He made the rounds, and danced with all the popular boys (except, of course, those low-born social climbers at Fox).
As we remarked a few weeks ago here at BC, it was just a matter of time before the true Barack Obama went Full Monty. When he did, he had a choice between abandoning his agenda or undermining his Presidency. He has made his choice.
And now the turn is ours.
L3
If Democrats want to be known as Paternalists, why’d they elect a kid?
Dems are the Mommy party. They want everything to be fair. Competitiion and winning makes others feel bad. Everyone wins under Demmycare.
Dems don’t like the paternal “take responsibility for yourself”…too mean and cold-hearted.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/20/barack-obama-us-nuclear-weapons
“Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country’s arsenal, the Guardian can reveal.
Obama has rejected the Pentagon’s first draft of the “nuclear posture review” as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.
Those options include:
• Reconfiguring the US nuclear force to allow for an arsenal measured in hundreds rather than thousands of deployed strategic warheads.
• Redrafting nuclear doctrine to narrow the range of conditions under which the US would use nuclear weapons.
• Exploring ways of guaranteeing the future reliability of nuclear weapons without testing or producing a new generation of warheads.
The review is due to be completed by the end of this year, and European officials say the outcome is not yet clear. But one official said: “Obama is now driving this process. He is saying these are the president’s weapons, and he wants to look again at the doctrine and their role.”
(end quote from article)
Well, nevermind that nuclear weapons are the cheapest by far way to prevent world wars, or that cities and nations in the thousands have been completly destroyed by conventional weapons as far back as the sword and torch. No, these peacekeeping tools are evil in and of themselves, like voodoo dolls, and we must rid ourselves of them.
So, the Russians have spent 100 billion on civil defense since Putin arrived? So the Kremlin has a war-winning doctrine for nuclear war -as is, without Obama throwing away “the president’s weapons”? So, so what?
If you want to understand Obama’s view of the world and America’s place in it, go to:
http://thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=3961
as for why he is so divisive at home, well, dividing and creating conflict is what community organizers DO!
Right now, nothing can be resolved with Iran because know one knows who will be in charge in Tehran tomorrow. Yet the Obama Administration continues to attempt to work with the not only the Iranians but the Syrians, the Palestinians and supports the ambitions of the Venezuela.
Wow, what does that say to the Russian leadership about our president? This on top of unfunded domestic policy as represented by mainly unwritten and therefore unread legislation that the president has attempted to foist on the American people.
Of course there must be more to it, no one could be so dense…,
…Except for maybe at times of grasping for hope, or a rational explanation, me.
Leo Linbeck III,
He believes that wisdom is a function of knowledge and education
That one item on your list seems questionable. As the Satomayor nomination indicated Obama is a classic racist. I will take it as a given that he agrees with Satomayor unless it can be proven to the contrary. He believes that wisdom comes from experience and that experience can be inherited. Not only can wisdom and virtue be inherited by oppressed peoples but the corollary is that error and guilt are also attributable to groups. The categories that serve as the vessels for these qualities, both positive and negative, are arbitrarily determined and flow from the prior wisdom of the determiner. The process is similar to that of Apostolic Succession in which Obama, despite his being descended from the oppresing slavers rather than the enslaved, can act ex cathedra in determining who is wise or deserving of compensation. That enables him to assign guilt to the majority of Americans whose ancestors never owned slaves and who fled to the new world to escape persecution.
From Edward Lucas in the Telegraph:
“The man who has run nothing more demanding than the Harvard Law Review is beginning to look out of his depth in the world’s top job. His credibility is seeping away, and it will require concrete achievements rather than more soaring oratory to recover it.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6210152/President-Barack-Obama-is-beginning-to-look-out-of-his-depth.html
Now the real danger begins. A dreamer is at the helm, and policy goes haywire.
His dream– but every thinking person’s waking nightmare.
So if Obama *is* a Manchurian Candidate and his Presidency was purchased for him by overseas funding from, say, Russia, what would be the goal of such an exercise?
From what I can tell, the bulk of the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illegal sub $200 donations came from the Middle East. I assume most of it was laundered Hamas, Hezbollah, Syrian, and Saudi money.
There is an alternative model for the Martian: Obama is a perfectly rational liar. Hopefully, not a pathological liar. In that case, absent knowledge of Obama’s endgame, predicting his moves becomes difficult and subject to unforseen variance. The Martian must construct a model of Obama based not on Obama, because Obama has assiduously hidden all public and private records regarding himself, but on who Obama associates himself with and what is known about their beliefs and goals.
Bob Smith,
If some authority with subpoena power could be found then the records of the possible half a million to two million transactions that flowed from the Gazan phone banks could be retrieved. Once the onion begins to peel it should quickly fall apart.
My own take on most of the leftists I’ve known is that they make up their minds on issues in late adolescence and then become ego identified with these positions — positions and beliefs they think ennoble them in some way (being for Peace and a clean environment while everyone else is worrying about the latest fashions, for instance). The rest of their intellectual life, clear up through getting that PhD., is spent defending and justifying these positions. They may be mature and competent in their personal and professional lives — where they allow reality to modify behavior and do learn from experience — but they act like adolescents when their ideas about how best to run the world are challenged. The reason is simple: their minds are still stuck in adolescence.
Perhaps the United States is just being run the way a high school student council would run it when the nuclear freeze movement was big and the global warming buzz had just started buzzing and everyone worried about homelessness and one day formed a human chain to reach across America because somehow that would feed people (I even got drafted into that one). The main difference between the administration and said student council is that the students are more likely to learn from experience than the administration. The current crowd in the White House has years of practice not letting their ideas be effected by failure. Think “sophomoric government” with minds encased in concrete.
President Obama has called for deep cuts in the US nuclear arsenal, down to the level where nuclear war becomes thinkable. I think it fits with the above.
In this piece glen beck draws the connections between SEIU ACORN & the apollo alliance that helped write the health care bill
In this piece beck discusses the apollo alliance.
Why is Obama so keen on denuclearization?
One reason is probably the left wing pacifism that has roots going back to the German Anabaptists and the English Nonconformists. That is a strain within Socialism but it is not identical with that movement. There are other strands within the Left that are not quietist or pacifist in nature.
Another reason may be a more particular form of triumphalism. If nuclear weapons were a useful but arbitrary component of American strength, like the Winter wheat belt, then they would attract less attention. My theory is that Obama wants to see the nuclear systems dismantled because they are the legacy of an accumulated capital, both material and more importantly intellectual, that he wants to demolish. When he discards our strategic arsenal he will be consigning to the dustbin of history the life’s work of Edward Teller and Albert Wohlstetter and Herman Khan, all Jews incidentally, and countless others. He will be killing something that he could not create and which we will probably never be able to restore.
In this piece beck interviews scott baker from the breitbart report. The guy gives a very good geneology of the obama chicago connections from Valarie Jarrett to to Frank Marshall Davis.
Historically, when a corporation (a) is perceived to be under-valued; (b) is perceived to be badly managed and in danger of losing value because of that; or (c) is clearly in a declining state in relation to its competitors while still in possession of valuable assets, several dangers materialize from the surrounding environment.
The commonplace simile of pelagic predators alerted by the scent of blood in the water is commonplace exactly because it matches precisely the phenomenon of corporate raiders pouncing on the hapless wounded beastie.
The performance of the incumbent cipher has profoundly reduced our country’s ability to fend off all classes of threats that lurk nearby.
The people living in the US have not normally needed to be overly concerned about the monsters that have always slid through the murk beyond their myopic perceptions. For over two centuries we have been wonderfully protected by vast oceans.
As technologies have enabled the monsters to approach closer and more suddenly, we have built navies with weapons and brave sailors to patrol the seas, and air forces and air crews to patrol the skies.
With each generation, we have learned to provide more sophisticated weapons systems to our young soldiers.
They still have to place themselves in harm’s way, and they still are maimed, blinded and killed by our enemies.
All of that is being thrown away by the incompetent in the chief executive’s office.
O and his crowd of half-assed crooks are like small children preoccupied with intimidating and stifling their troublesome siblings, while utterly ignoring the wolves clawing their way into the cottage doors.
The counterfeit journalist Mr. Charles “I-never-heard-of-Acorn-before” Gibbs, despite his position as ANCHOR of one of the Nation’s three most prominent broadcast news organizations, says he didn’t know that Acorn was receiving any substantial federal funding.
This was his claim when questioned during an interview following a full week of stunning revelations of horrifying criminal facilitation by Acorn counselors in clandestinely taped meetings.
The sheer seething unlikelihood of Charles Gibbs not knowing of the unfolding revelations of Acorn’s criminality suggests either (a) he is a bald-faced liar or (b) the bumbling uselessness of the head people of our Mainstream alleged News Media beggars our worst estimates.
Which is worse?
Just days later, but still in the continuing news cycle during which embarrassing Acorn tapes continue to surface, Congress and the Senate have been so appalled that they voted overwhelmingly to cut off federal funds for Acorn.
Yet the teleprompter-in-chief claims that he did not even know that Acorn was receiving substantial federal funding.
Let’s remember that Buraq Hosayn brags in his two autobiographies that he worked in the Chicago ACORN groups as a community organizer, and later funneled federal moneys to Acorn while serving on several foundations, and sought and received campaign support from Acorn’s political arm for both his Senate and Presidential runs.
The counter-factuality of his claim of ignorance should be very easy to establish.
But if he’s telling the truth, and really doesn’t know that ACORN has been taking taxpayer money, that’s damning enough.
There are consequences to lying. More to the point, there are consequences to doing a half-assed job on the duties for which you campaigned, and for which you were elected.
Just when I think I can handle another spasm of self-mutilating stupidity on the morrow, o finds a way to do something even stupider than ever before.
This can NOT be leading anyplace nice. As the old saying goes, “It’s going to get a lot worse before it starts getting better.”
I keep reading how brainy and smart Obama is. What indicates this? What metric is being used? We have never seen his grades at any school have, we? He doesn’t appear to be a policy “wonk”, as the Clintons were/are. Without a teleprompter, he is a not impressive. What does his transcripts at Columbia look like? Does he play a good game of poker? Where is the statement that he is brainy coming from? Wishful thinking? Did he ever play a sport well? Did he really write his autobiographies? Does anyone care?
LOTM,
That one item on your list seems questionable.
My point here is that he believes in education and “book smarts” as the primary filter to apply when selecting leaders. If you believe that he wants to select leaders with wisdom, then how does he pick them?
This trait is very common in the well-educated. School has been a source of self-validation for them, and they therefore put disproportionate weight on educational attainment.
It’s not that intelligence isn’t important for leadership, but as you know academic metrics are not reliable indicators of judgment.
The left uses academic achievement in the way that certain industries use the “old boy network” – it is a screening device that assures them that the person in question will conform with their rules.
While it may look like race might play a role, I think the more important screen is education. Sotomayor is a Yale Law grad. As is Van Jones.
BTW – this screen has been tried before. In the early 20th Century, virtually all of the leaders of Great Britain came from a handful of elite public schools. Many have argued that the resulting groupthink led to the disastrous trench warfare strategy of WWI.
Cheers,
L3
wretchard – well the good news is that George Soros definitely is a rational actor and his shtick is pretty clear. He makes lots of money beggaring 2nd world countries through currency speculation and plans to make the ultimate score when he brings the US dollar down. He is well on his way to winning that bet the only question – is BHO a witting or unwitting partner.
Obama: Requiring health insurance is not a tax increase (CNN). Linked above.
If it is not a tax, Congress has no power to enact it.
“Mandatory Insurance Is Unconstitutional:
Why an individual mandate could be struck down by the courts.”
By David B. Rivkin Jr. And Lee A. Casey
The Wall Street Journal
September 18, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574416623109362480.html
Leo Linbeck III,
The problem is displaced to the second order. Obama, Jones, Satomayor and Holder all possess the validating certificates from elite educational institutions but their tickets into those institutions were punched on account of their racial groups. Under the strictures of affirmative action once admitted it is very hard to fail if one is a minority. That then creates pressure to lower standards so that matriculants who are not minorities do not fail at a greater rate. Over time that degrades the quality of the graduates and the stature of the institution. That however is paid for in the future and in socialist accounting the future is like the past, Another Country.
We are both right.
NahnCee,
Good posting but any attempt to turn US military control over to NATO or anyone else would be a bridge too far. I predict there would be widespread retirements, resigned commissions and unauthorized absences (AWOL)in the military community- remember how they squelched Clinton’s “open gay soldier” policy?. Do you think our military believes any UN command gives a tinkers damn about them coming home alive? I didn’t serve 23 years just to die in some hell hole under some UN idiot’s appeasement party. A betrayal of that magnitude would beg for impeachment- And I am certain it would receive it. Then the question would be what do we do with Biden?
JH/51; well, Soros’ money and direction is large in the Apollo Group, which “wrote the bills” that “no one reads”. The future-killing dollar-ruining America-busting bills.
So that’s a clue on the ‘witting vs unwitting’ question.
48 Mad Fiddler
Do you mean Charlie Gibson? Gibbs is the last name of the hapless Robert, the current WH press secretary.
Dear Joe Hill, about your post #51…
“He makes lots of money beggaring 2nd world countries through currency speculation…”
Did you possibly mean “buggering?”
PA Cat, you are right— in haste I made and let slip several sloppy errors in my post No. 48.
Though they were only tangential to the central argument, I apologize for not maintaining the high standards other posters so faithfully manage.
(The audacity of Opie in the W.H. keeps me hollering at the TV. It’s darned distracting.)
58 Mad Fiddler
No problem. It’s hard to tell one gibbering fool from another, especially when Himself is surrounded by so many of them.
Thank you LeoIII (#33) for what I believe is the best explanation so far for Obama’s puzzling behavior. The man is simply overwhelmed and incapable.
But even a sleep-deprived loon must draw from something when making decisions. Hdgreene (#43) has a pretty good theory on BHO’s derangement. Good stuff! One of my favorite human mysteries to explore & discuss is the core of the leftist mind.
I think Leo’s analysis is probably right. President Obama is a more constrained figure than Barack Obama. And as a President, he has made certain choices which bind him. What I’m about to suggest is less probable, and perhaps nonsensical, but it stems from an intuition that there’s an doppelganger in there somewhere. Here goes nothing.
If you look at charismatic leaders throughout history who rose on the shoulders of a “movement”, many come to a fork in their road, deciding whether they or the movement are the real drivers of events. They are always in conflict with two sets of enemies: the enemy of their movement and their movement itself, whose authority they seek to escape or at least transcend. That’s why every “cult” always threatens to become a “cult of personality”. Whether Peron, or Franco, Kim Jong Il, Stalin or to a much lesser extent, Roosevelt or Huey Long you find this tension between the big leader and what he leads.
I think part of the reason Barack Obama is blurred is because there are two versions of him: the version that was “sent” and he himself, who ultimately desires to escape the strictures of those who “sent” him. The rival of Barack Obama, man of the Left is Barack Obama, the man of destiny. When the health care debate was going badly, there was a point at which he seemed prepared to ditch the public option. Then Howard Dean and rest gathered to remind the President who “sent” him. For a moment you glimpsed a politician prepared to run to the center, like Clinton, for reasons of personal expediency. And then you saw something else; a person who has decided, for the moment, that the time to strike out on his own has not yet come. And it’s a natural feeling. A lot of people think they own a politician or have a claim on him. And to some extent they do. But it would be unnatural if the politician didn’t resent this in some way, and didn’t try to escape the clutches that kept him from his “true path”.
The career of every authoritarian, or at least charismatic figure is divided into two aspects: rising on the backs of a coalition and freeing himself from any obligation to them. A charismatic wants to finally be accountable only to himself.
I realize that I am treading on wholly subjective ground here, but this accounts for the almost fantastic quality of his policy initiatives, activities that involve sums which are inconceivable, eliminating nuclear weapons, striking great bargains. Almost every major charismatic figure through history has had something of this strange delusion; this compulsion to intimate paradise. I’ll stop there now. You can take these observations as entertainment. It is certainly only speculation.
LOTM,
If you line up the “players” in the Obama Administration, education seems to have more explanatory force than race: Clinton (Yale), Geithner (Dartmouth), Holder (Columbia), Locke (Yale), Orszag (Princeton), Jarrett (Stanford), and Michelle (Princeton, Harvard).
The exceptions that stand out are Gates (Republican hold-over who attended William and Mary, and will probably leave once the President finishes figuring out how to reject the military’s request for more troops in Afghanistan), Emanuel (PhD from the Luca Brasi Maritime Academy), and Joe Biden (graduate of the Delaware Institute of Oral Surgery and Podiatry).
The country’s in the best of hands.
Cheers,
L3
Emanuel (PhD from the Luca Brasi Maritime Academy)
Rahm also has credentials from the Chicago Opera Ballet (distinguished by the white sox worn with the usual tights and ballet shoes).
–makes sense that Gates is from William and Mary, seeing as how his big game is between William and Mary (with scouts from Volga River Crushers crowding sideline).
gotta hand it to the Big Oh –timing was great on the disarmament initiative –so soon after the Prague Sproing it will drive allies even further out of our orbit and into the other –on the cheap, even before any implementation. Now if only he’d start wearing a hammer & sickle lapel pin, we could really get the skedaddle started.
Building further on W’s thoughts:
No organization can long tolerate autonomous power. Power is built through alliances, and the acquisition of power necessarily leads to a loss of autonomy. You find out, once in power, that you really cannot do whatever you want to do. Even the most “powerful” dictators like Stalin and Kim Jung Il can’t do just what they want. (I suspect that KJI would love to spend a couple of weeks at the Moonlite BunnyRanch, but that ain’t gonna happen.)
Those who have never been in power do not understand this fact of life. They look from the “outside” and it looks like power means you can do what you want. But you can’t. And you don’t find this out until you are in power.
Funny thing is, however, that once you’re there you don’t want to give up the illusion of being in control, of having autonomy. It’s too much of your identity; you’re too committed to your vision. So rather than come clean and say, “Hey, I really want to close Gitmo, but there are too many reasons why we have to keep it open and so I’m going to keep it open – I don’t have a choice” – instead, we get a kind of Kabuki performance in which an announcement is made that Gitmo is closed, and everyone hopes it will just fall off the radar screen while it continues to operate just off-stage.
This is the kind of decision that every President faces: Do I admit I have no autonomy and appear foolish or deceitful to my core supporters, the ones who wanted Change™, or do I do whatever I damn well please and see the power drain away as the scales fall from my moderate supporters’ eyes?
The intriguing part of the President’s current situation is that the country is still center-right. So he really is in a lose-lose situation: if he turns away his moderate supporters, he will lose in 2012; if he turns away his core supporters, he will lose in 2012. In other words, he is going to lose power either way.
So this decision is a rare situation where he has true autonomy, where he can really follow what he believes in his gut. He had the option to go either way, so for the first time in a long time we got a look into his true beliefs.
Bottom line: he chose to line up with the extreme left and stay on the path to a nationalized healthcare system.
I believe this is what he believes is best. He is, at heart, an unreformed liberal. Which should come as a surprise to no one.
Except to his moderate supporters (aka the marks).
L3
Leo, how many of those “players” have real power? Hillary, for one, has been totally de-looped. Biden’s awfully quiet these days, too. It’s difficult to tell, really, who the power brokers in the White House are these days, since there’s so much flip-flopping going on. But I’m pretty sure that an Ivy League education isn’t the deciding factor on which shots are called.
This evening I received the following in an updating e-mail from Rich Galen, who is a DC observer: “…people involved in the defense and intelligence business in Washington were abuzz yesterday on the rumor that someone had leaked the report and recommendations (assumedly for more troops) by the commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, to Washington Post über-investigative reporter, Bob Woodward. If that is true, and if the Post runs with the story, that will overwhelm whatever Obama has planned for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, or the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh this week.”
Gee, you don’t suppose Obama *wants* his UN speech to be overshadowed now, do you?
l(b)uddy,
The timing thing to me simply smacks of incompetence. You’d never pick that time if you were competent, even if you had nefarious motives.
Or, rather, especially if you have nefarious motives.
Dr. Ockham votes for incompetence.
Cheers,
L3
PS – when do we get the old name back? Is this one of those kind of principled Alec-Baldwin-style protests, but instead of moving to Canada you’ve decided to change your identity? Or did buddy really move to Canada, and you’re some dude in an Indian call center to whom provision of the “real” buddy larson’s wit and wisdom has somehow been outsourced? I have to admit, however, that “luddy” kinda takes me back to the good ol’ days of 19th Century Britain…
Wretchard — I will have a post up soon. But basically EVERYTHING Obama does, as President, can be explained as how he sees himself: NOT as President of the United States (which is chock full of his enemies, be they of class, race, or region), but rather as the Vizier of America to America’s enemies.
No matter how hard Left he was, could you imagine a Hugo Chavez, a Daniel Ortega, a Raul or Fidel Castro bowing before a Saudi Monarch? Or even a Joseph Stalin?
Obama is supremely uninterested in being President. He wants to be Vizier of America, for Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Once you assume this, ALL his actions are make perfect sense within his goals.
Leo Linbeck III,
Well argued. Are the players divided into two classes? There might be the Useful Idiots (Clinton, Geithner, Orszag, Locke and Gates) who may also be considered the Expendables, and the Inner Idiots (Holder, Jarrette, Michelle la Belle) who are the Crew.
Emanuel I see as an honorary Brother and inner crew member. He is like the Mouth of Sauron in that his betrayals have placed him beyond the reach of the community he ostensibly comes from. Remember that he spent the last two days confessing his sins to God and being reminded that the injury he has caused to other humans, both jew and gentile, can only be absolved by the injured parties. Then again it still may turn out that Obama is only the Mouth of Emanuel. I see them as the real heart of this administration, more so even than Michelle is. MO though she frightens me at least as much as Hillary ever did.
Biden is a nobody. He is not even a Useful Idiot. He fills the Spiro Agnew role of being so manifestly unsuited to the Presidency that he functions as an insurance policy against any scenario that could lead to Obama’s removal.
My argument was not with your perceiving that the Establishment, like all establishments, relies on credentials. The value of the credentials is being debased just as the value of the currency is being debased. My point is that Obama’s paradigm is basically racist and he uses that template in picking winners as his policies unfold.
Nahncee,
how many of those “players” have real power?
Good question. I’d never underestimate Hillary’s ability to cultivate the alliances needed for real power. And is she delooped at the President’s request? Or is she laying low? If, as theorized, the POTUS is over his head, she will know this by now. Not saying that’s what is really happening, just saying it’s plausible.
I suspect that the players with the real power remain those who are in his inner circle: Jarrett, Emanuel, Podesta, and Michelle.
And WRT Afghan strategy, this just hit the NYT (top-left of their website):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/world/asia/21afghan.html?_r=1&hp
Let the inter-agency warfare begin! Cheers,
L3
LOTM,
That’s probably the right taxonomy. (Or is it taxidermy? I can never remember
Anyhoo, I’m not really seeing Obama as a racist. Race is certainly an aspect of his identity, but it’s not his deep core (see Wright, Reverend). To me, it is more plausible to see him as an elitist. I think he views himself as a modern intellectual/writer, which is why he defended Prof. Gates and threw Kayne West under the bus.
But, hey, I’m no shrink. I really wish the guy well – he is President of the greatest nation on Earth, after all. I just hope he doesn’t screw things up too much before his unplanned retirement in 2012.
Cheers,
L3
L3, BC refuses my old self –but i’m not a ghost in the (somewhat imperious) machine. It’s really really me (sallie field giggle). Anyhoo, you could never ‘pass’ the way I do, what with the alliterative initials –and you may have discrimination ‘grounds’ there, check your copy of the Federal Register –lets Cloward Piven Herr Holder!
***
(addendum) –i too wish the office of the president well –but jeez, Obama the person just told too many whoppers in the election for me personally to ever feel anything but dislike. I mean, what right to these New Democrats have to lie on such a scale –it’s crazee-making –
I came across this interesting interview of a Russian military analyst on major changes that will soon take place in the Russian Army. It was in the English language version of the Russian newspaper, RIA Novosti.
http://en.rian.ru/valdai_op/20090914/156124823.html
I think BCers will find it very interesting. It indicates that the Russian Army is moving away from the old mass mobilization concept towards an American-style professional fighting force.
Contrarian, here’s one back atcha, along the same line:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6283130.ece
Who is Obama and what does he want
Where is he going and why
Is it fourth down, is he going to punt
Or will he just sit down and cry
We don’t know the answer to what he is for
Or what he is firmly against
We do know he’s practically given the store
To people who should be defensed
Is giving up missiles protecting our land
A step in direction we like
And what about once or twice taking a stand
And not shrink from what comes down the pike
He says forced insurance is not a new tax
And kneeling to Putin is out
He says as for Acorn I don’t know the facts
But somehow I’m starting to doubt
With deficits soaring, inflation ahead
We might have to think about barter
And after just eight months I think could be said
We’ve elected a worse Jimmy Carter
Speak kind words to me
all whilst I savage you
for to the cause inspired
obedience is the view
Question not your betters
truth must have no name
mute submission is the key
or you we shall defame
Gaze not at olden images
that demonstrate our hate
we live in new society
it’s we decide your fate
Speak not of taboo subjects
of which we disapprove
be silent and respectful
and don’t disrupt our groove
And always please remember
that when the day is done
there’s nothing can be done for it
’cause after all we won
68/Whiskey, do you think part of the root of the whole vizier thing is then he is not ultimately responsible if the action is a failure? Sort of a “Dad told me to do it so it’s all Dad’s fault”? That would fit into quite a few of the psychological patterns put forth here recently. And if that’s so, whether it’s his self-perception or he is actually a vizier doesn’t matter unless/until push comes to shove and Dad sends down a bolt of lightning (or ICBM) to punish the failed vizier.
75/Walt. DH gave me a high five after I read your poem aloud. Much laughter here. We thoroughly enjoy your verse [and it wouldn't be nearly as much fun to read aloud if it didn't rhyme and have meter!].
The Obama mystery is this: why such a non-serious person would seek out such a serious job.
The childish component to his personality is large. He has never really worked. Never sweated out sales targets. Never known the shame of missing his targets so that you even avoid the eyes of the gum chewing office receptionist. Or even working at the sawmill I remember our crew developing a “Band of Brothers” feeling as we worked double shifts for 10 or 12 days to get our targets on time. Obama has never known anything like this. Never pushed a broom, never driven a long haul truck. Never worked a season harvesting in under a hot sun. Never loaded a container. Never had a foreman scream over factory noise, ‘get your ass in gear!’
Obama is a scholarship kid. His accomplishments in life have to do with books and papers and professors but even then we can’t identify any area of real learning passion or expertise. Mostly, I suspect he just got by.
Then we come to community organizing. To live by the poor in America you must, in a sense, create the world of the poor. I don’t mean to diminish real poverty; of course it exists and to suffer its limits and humiliations is the worst. But the Harvard Law graduate Obama did not return to Chicago to run a soup kitchen. To work among the poor of America, the politicized poor, is a kind of imaginative collaboration. You have to pretend that business America is out to get the poor (rather than generate tremendous wealth, spreading scholarship money far and wide). You have to imagine that the poor try with everything in them to overcome their poverty (“please sah, just a small crust of bread”) but, for Harvard graduates coming back around, they just won’t make it in America. In other words, you must believe the productive, wealth generating class an oppressor and the poor helpless but for yourself.
Meanwhile you have a career and family to develop. How to get ahold of tangilbles like a nice house and car and status while performing in an such imaginary world?
Politics. (to be continued…)
- Ah, now, I am about… E tu, Obama?
- I won! Ha!
(Do palindromes count as poetry?)
L3
Y’all is poets
but you don’t know it
but yo feets show it
they’s Longfellows!
One can’t really judge 0bama by his words. You have to watch is actions. He has been against the war from the start. He idolizes terrorists like Bill Ayers and coddles other terrorists like Ahmadinejad and Chavez. He disrespects the Troops. He will lose the War at his leisure then simply explain that they are incompetent and out of control.
More despicable are 0bama’s blatant falsehoods. 0bama is joined at the hip with ACORN. 0bama has used ACORN as a shake-down racket for years. 0bama knows ACORN’s finances like the back of his hand. 0bama has used ACORN to win elections and manipulate public opinion – and sometimes in a violent fashion.
The only people who consider 0bama halfway believable are those who receive money from him or his various organizations. The rest are net-taxpayers who don’t believe a word he says.
Here is a classic example of 0bama spewing falsehoods to the American Public via national TV.
“STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?”
“OBAMA: You know, if — frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.”
Quite to the contrary, 0bama has followed and been involved in funding ACORN and SEIU. 0bama is dirty as a hog rolling in filth – the filth of corruption.
The Caily Kos Asylum, one commenter actually listed the ACORN front operations at just one location – here’s the list, verbatim:
“ACORN subsidiaries all located in 1024 Elysian Fields Ave, New Orleans 385 Palmetto Street Housing Fund Corp.
4415 San Jacinto Street Corp.
ACORN
Acorn 2004 Housing Development Fund Corp.
Acorn 2005 Housing Development Fund Corp.
ACORN Associates
ACORN Benefi cial Association
ACORN BeverlyY LLC
ACORN Campaign Services
ACORN Campaign To Raise The Minimum Wage
ACORN Center for Housing, Inc.
ACORN Children’s Benefi cial Association
ACORN Community Land Association
ACORN Community Land Association of IL.
ACORN Community Land Association of LA
ACORN Community Land Association of PA
ACORN Community Labor Organizing Center
ACORN Cultural Trust
ACORNDumont-SnedikerHousingDevelopment
Fund Corp.
ACORN Fair Housing
ACORN Fund
ACORN Housing Corp.
ACORN Housing Corp. of IL
ACORN Housing Corp. of MO
ACORN Housing Corp. of PA
ACORN Institute
ACORN Law For Education, Representation,
And Training
ACORN Management Corp.
ACORN National Broadcasting Network
ACORN Services
ACORN Television In Action For Communities
ACORN Tenant Union Training And Organizing
Project
ACORN Tenants Union
Affiliated Media Foundation Movement
Agape Broadcasting Foundation Inc
Among ACORN’s many affiliates and subsidiaries are:
American Environmental Justice Project Inc
American Home Childcare Providers Association
American Institute for Social Justice
Arizona ACORN Housing Corp.
Arkansas Broadcasting Foundation
Association for the Rights of Citizens Inc.
Associated Regional Maintenance Systems
Austin Organizing and Support Center
Baltimore Organizing and Support Center
Boston Organizing and Support Center
Broad Street Corp.
California Community Network
Chicago Organizing and Support Center
Chief Organizer Fund
Child Care Providers for Action Franklin
Citizens Action Research Project
Citizens Campaign for Work, Living Wage &
Labor Peace
Citizens Consulting, Inc.
Citizens Campaign for Finance Reform
Citizens for Future Progress
Colorado ACORN Housing Corp.
Crescent City Broadcasting Corp.
Desert Rose Homes LLC
Dumont Avenue Housing Development Fund
Elysian Fields Corp., Inc
Elysian Fields Partnership
Fifteenth Street Corp.
Floridians For All PAC
Franklin ACORN Housing
Greenville Community Charter School Inc.
Greenwell Springs Corp.
Hospitality Hotel and Restaurant Organizing
Council (HOTROC)
Houston Organizing And Support Center
KABF Radio
KNON Radio
Labor Neighbor Research and Training Center Inc.
Living Wage Resource Center
Louisiana ACORN Fair Housing
Massachusetts ACORN Housing Corp.
Metro Technical Institute
Missouri Tax Justice Research Project
Montana Radio Network
Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp.
Mutual Housing Association of New York Inc.
National Center for Jobs & Justice
New Mexico Organizing and Support Center
New Orleans Community Housing Organization
New York ACORN Housing Company Inc.
New York Agency for Community Affairs Inc.
New York Organizing and Support Center
Organizers Forum
Pennsylvania Institute for Community Affairs
People’s Equipment Resource Corp.
Phoenix Organizing And Support Center
Project Vote
SEIU Local 100
SEIU Local 880
Service Workers Action Team
Shreveport Community Television
Site Fighters
Sixth Avenue Corp.
Social Policy
Southern Training Center
St. Louis Organizing And Support Center
St. Louis Tax Reform Group
Student Minimum Wage Action Campaign
Texas ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
Wal-Mart Workers Association
Wal-Mart Association for Reform Now
Working Families Association”
See Post: On September 16th, 2009 at 7:18 am, purplepeep
http://tinyurl.com/mwqcf4
0bama, you sir are a dirty liar!
It’s difficult to tell, really, who the power brokers in the White House are these days, since there’s so much flip-flopping going on.
I’m more worried that the power brokers aren’t in the White House at all.
My post is up. Basically, Obama views himself as providentially sent to punish wicked White America (and America, one and the same) with a good dose of defeat, declare himself Big Man dictator, and rule over the ruins as the Viceroy of whoever defeats America. Bin Laden, Iran, Pakistan, it does not matter. As long as he can find someone, anyone, to nuke the US and allow him to declare defeat and dictatorship, offering “more punishment for wicked White folks” and so on to the victors.
This is why he gutted Missile Defense and nukes at the same time, to prevent America from fighting back. It is why he wants the civilian defense force as well armed and well funded as the Military. It is why he bows to the Saudi King. It is why he wants defeat in Afghanistan. It is why he has cut the military. It is why he wants a state-run Media.
Now I’m not one to post and run.. Well, yes, I am.. But that goes against the great image I have of myself…
To make a point about Wretchard’s post – All about Obama – All of the Time.
Goldman and JP Morgan are about to make major plays in the Media?
“both companies knew too well that sooner or later they would end up with full equity control over essentially the most coveted industry: thousands of TV stations, radio channels, newspaper and magazines. If you thought the media propaganda was unbearable now, just wait. Nonetheless, one doubts that much will be made by the FCC of JP Morgan’s or Goldman Sachs’ stealthily encroaching control of the entire media world. After all, they already pretty much already control the airwaves. This way their domination of the 4th estate and the idiot tube will soon be complete.” – ZeroHedge
Current investors see the recovery promised.. And then….
Ok, last post and now I have to go to work…
You will recall that the media “reform” package has been talking about relaxing the ownership rules. Maybe the newspaper bailout package is a head fake. Perhaps what is really wanted is a change in the media rules to allow the concentration of ownership in a few hands.
Enigma
The project of an EU army wasn’t a fiction, it already was in the first union agreement in the early years, but an economical union was privilegied, and an army supposed that there also are political institutions.
The idea was raised in the last decade again, by the French, the Brits, the Germans.
Though most of the EU small nations preferred to stay under Nato, cause of the averred economical advantage of the situation, also cuz that would have ment for them to pay double for the contribution to an EU army.
Now even Sarkozy resigned, also for evident economical arguments, though the main EU countries managed that Nato became an European lead organisation for the european countries, and that they will have their word to say on their deployments, they will not follow american stances each time they would be requierred to, ie the acceptance of the new eastern countries such as Georgia, Ukraine, and now Ramussen being ready to examine a russian participation.
Though don’t get fooled by your opinionists, there are already common trainings with the UK, the Germans, the Poles (yes) as a matter of a Nato EU army.
Also a regiment of Germans took their stationnement in an Alsace casern
So, what was a sacrilège for certains american politicians, is now becoming a reality, we are getting more autonome.
And don’t put that on France, we are may-be the only fair and courageous that are saying openly the things.
Government owned media, wouldn’t that be a Government funded non profit non government organ?
GFNPNGO! Gunsundtight!
A review of Russian military transitions and such was done by the Hudson Institute. Included on the panel was SSI’s Dr. Blank and works presented by other.
Also of interest is an Op ed entitled NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY REFORM:
REBALANCING THE PRESIDENT’S AGENDA
by Robert H. “Robin” Dorff, Ph.D. is a “get on with it or get off the pot”, piece directed at the WH.
The culmination of the two lines of inquiry being that our defense is out at sea with no guidance. Why do I have visions of the Exxon Valdez in my head.
I don’t want to start a big argument about medical insurance in this thread, but a mandate that everyone must buy medical insurance is not a tax. Such a mandate is similar to a tax in that it is a payment compelled by the government. Such a mandate differs from a tax, however, in that the money does not go to the government.
A law that every driver must buy automobilie insurance is not considered to be a “tax” by most people.
Yes, I do understand that that the public option eventually will lead to the goverment take-over of all medical insurance and then eventually all the money will go to the government and then it will be essentially a tax.
Right now, though, Obama is correct that the proposed mandate is different than a tax.
W,
Perhaps what is really wanted is a change in the media rules to allow the concentration of ownership in a few hands.
Perhaps. But the real question is: How they will prevent the proliferation of alternative media outlets? Monopolies are inherently unstable in free markets, and require government support to maintain their market control.
The network, confronted with a bottleneck, will simply route around it. Will they shut down Facebook? YouTube? Twitter? Email? SMS? Google? How?
That thar horse is out of the barn. Concentrating media ownership will simply concentrate the losses to come. Which might be just fine…
Cheers,
L3
Yep, Mike/89 –it’s like the relationship between a refrigerator and a toilet –just different points along the same line.
Wade/88; the Valdez –or the Maine?
“Bama is a leftist child no matter who sent him, who owns him, or who he hires. They talk an airy cloud like agenda and destroy everything they touch. The adults need to be back in power.
I have a very good friend that talks to Bob Gates weekly on a personal level. When asked about why Gates is staying at Defense in spite of his differences with the administration the reply is that he can have more influence by working to slow the disarmament down from inside than by resigning and going to a think tank or back to some university.
I simply hope there is something left by this time next fall. Does devine intervention work at this level or is “the one” above even that?
Wretchard, here’s another headline that could have been included in your list. From the Toledo Blade, http://bit.ly/4J0FH, not The Onion.
Newspaper journalism gets words of praise Print media’s role vital, Obama says
Saying he is a “big newspaper junkie,” President Obama expressed hope on Friday that newspapers can find their way through the financial crisis most are now mired in.
In an Oval Office interview with editors from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Blade, the President talked about the vital role journalism and newspapers play in American society.
“Journalistic integrity, you know, fact-based reporting, serious investigative reporting, how to retain those ethics in all these different new media and how to make sure that it’s paid for, is really a challenge,” Mr. Obama said. “But it’s something that I think is absolutely critical to the health of our democracy.”
[snip]
Mr. Obama said he noted the trend. “I am concerned that if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding,” the President said.
“What I hope is that people start understanding if you’re getting your newspaper over the Internet, that’s not free and there’s got to be a way to find a business model that supports that.”
Several bills have been introduced in Congress to aid the newspaper industry, including a Senate measure that would allow newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks. The President was noncommittal about the legislation but said: “I haven’t seen detailed proposals yet, but I’ll be happy to look at them.”
starling –be sure & look at danm/84′s link –it’s already pretty far along –debt/equity swapping with lenders Goldman and JPMorgan settling overleveraged media companies –taking ownership positions –all along the east coast. GS + JPM = Treasury + Fed –is the thinking.
The newsworthy scandal is that the FCC is apparently allowing ‘home rule’ exceptions –some of the swapping entities are GS and JPM offshore –’foreign’ by definition –hedge funds.
I believe that Obama is simply the latest and most visible example of the Left’s greatest caution: They dare not say what they actually believe. If they said it aloud they would be lynched by sundown. If they even infer it by their actions too clearly then the goose that lays the golden eggs will stop working
The Republicans (note that I did not say Conservatives or the Right) have a similar problem, but it is much simpler. They dare not say that they believe that because of what the Left believes they should all be exported to some remote desert where they can put those beliefs into action and thus exterminate themselves.
We have derive Obama’s beliefs not by his words – which are meaningless (as Dr. Thomas Soul has said, lying eliminates eloquence) – but by his actions. It is like determining the existence of a planet in a distant solar system by its effects on the parent star.
RWE said” …the Left’s greatest caution: They dare not say what they actually believe. If they said it aloud they would be lynched by sundown.”
I’m inclined to agree on this point. Simply stated, the American Left, Obama included, would like to see the US transformed into a European-style social democracy. They can never say this aloud. If they did, they’d face an electoral lynching. The American voting public doesn’t want that. Even though many centrists and independents voted for Obama, they did not really know that this was what he meant when he said on October 30, 2008 at the University of Missouri…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqN4NIEtOY
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”
A large number of Obama voters are now starting to realize what he meant by those words. No one on this site is surprised. We’ve already moved on to the next step which is figuring out why he’s stumbling so badly. I’ll offer one opinion.
Obama campaigned on the implicit promise of doing for America what the crew of Extreme Makeover Home Edition does, i.e. build some lucky (and often very needy) family a brand new house in a week, for free. The sponsors (corporations) pick up most of the tab and volunteers provide a lot of the labor.
In a very analogous manner, Obama wants to use someone else’s money and the sweat of someone else’s brow to build a new house in 7-8 days for the American people. He tells us it’s gonna be free and he’s even willing to throw in free health care for the whole family.
The problem is that there is no place for the American public to go on vacation for a week while he takes a wrecking ball to the place. Second problem is that the public is actually going to have to foot the bill through higher taxes and lower wages. The public can not be told this. Thus, it is necessary to accomplish the goal by stealth, in the dark of night, on weekends and when the neighbors are out of town or preoccupied. But you can’t muffle all the noise and you can’t hide all the heavy equipment. Neighbors sitting at kitchen tables over cups of tea are beginning to pay attention.
To switch metaphors, pulling such a task off is a dive with a higher degree of difficulty. Even though the goal is clear, Obama and his team don’t know how to pull this dive off. I am not sure they ever practiced it, let alone ever nailed it. Hence, we see lots of belly flops and big splashes of the unintended variety.
Instead they have the difficult task of changing the US
So then we don’t have to pay the tax then?? Or the IRS will do what?
Given the quality of this group, I hesitate to throw my (obvious) two cents in, but…
Obama is behaving exactly as I’d expect one of the university faculty I worked with for 20 years to behave if they became President — plans are made and actions are taken on lofty ideals, and without regard to consequences, because in the end, one has tenure and one will live an economically comfortable life as long as one isn’t caught in bed with a dead boy or girl.
You do not need to worry about proving your worth. Taxpayers will always pay — notice how government hiring continues to rise even now? Money might get tight, but you’ll never lose your job. You’re in cotton candy for life.
There is a complete disconnect between actions and consequences. You only have to feel good about what you are saying and doing. And you always blame failures on Republicans and conservatives; who on campus will argue with that?
Obama, especially as a clean, articulate black man with an international background, has been fed and coddled and fetted by academia more than most of even this bright group can believe. He is the American Buddha child. And he believes this.
The Democrat’s race market had for decades been losing customers rapidly –what else but to run a radical anti-american terrorist symp communist –as a “credit to his race”?
Dunno if they can rescue their market, but they’ve damn sure got it back into the news. Some “progressives”.
Starling #98:
Yes, but I think a key point is that Obama was selling a “systems approach.”
It is like you order a new plug-in hybrid that gets 100 MPG, needs no fuel at all for short trips and runs on natural gas, and that means you can fuel it at home. With this new hybrid, you can save so much you can quit your job in the city, end that long commute, move to the beach, and open a business selling the new hybrids and their home support systems. The USA will no longer need to import foreign oil and with our need for foreign entanglements reduced we can cut way back on our military. People will then see us as being much more friendly and become less hostile. With the savings we can pay for free healthcare for everyone.
So you eagerly await your new car. And then you get a phone call. The Bluetooth option is being discontinued. Okay, no problem since you won’t be commuting very much. Then the built in DVD player is dropped. No problem, but then the satellite radio goes and then the hifi stereo disappears. And then you find out that the natural gas tank is so large and weighs 250 pounds and so that option goes too. And the gas mileage drops off and the plug in option requires a special high voltage system in your house.
And then the car is delivered and you discover you just paid $50K for a 1976 Plymouth Volare with vinyl seats, a scratchy AM radio, and an 8 track tape deck. It gets up to 100 mpg if you are talking about the amount of oil it consumes. It’s a plug in hybrid only because you have to hook a battery charger to it overnight if you want to start it the next morning.
So you got took. And by the way, the whole rest of the system you built around this marvelous car won’t work either. When do you admit it? And then what do you do?
RWE, you never admit it –you just throw a couple cases of vodka in the back seat and start driving.
So we have various hypotheses floated.
1) stupid, incompetent, and adolescent
2) Radical American leftist in disguise
3) agent of Soros
4) agent of foreign governments
There are probably more.
Let each advocate make a prediction of Obama future behavior and decisions that can serve as a test over time.
What would an agent of Soros do that a mere incompetent NOT do?
We need some reasonable predictions of his behavior if we are to prepare for and counter his moves. The end state won’t be the same in all cases.
Luddy Barsen said “RWE, you never admit it –you just throw a couple cases of vodka in the back seat and start driving.” That adds a new wrinkle to the discussion of “Tipping points”
RWE said: “…Obama was selling a systems approach.” To which I would add, and he’s still selling it, emphasis on the “selling.” Trouble is, the consumer could have just bought a moped to begin with. They’d have the 100 mpg with a lot less horsepower. But they wouldn’t have had such high expectations either.
Bolton’s take is close to Whiskey’s take.
John Bolton Calls Obama a “Post-American President” Who Sees Himself “Above all that Patriotism Stuff” – Video 9/21/09
It looks like Obama’s appearance on TV spreading like viruses this week. He is all over the place.
Whitehall, you forgot crazy as an option.
I think if Obama does go after the military (as well as his recently announced reduction in nuclear weapons and missile programs) then I just cannot see why Soros would care about that since I think Soros is in it for the money only, and doesn’t give diddly-squat about things that go boom.
If / when Obama goes after the military to totally de-fang us, then that says “Vladimir” and/or China to me.
Poor mistah soros.
He dinnit have too many prospex to chews from, look like. He stuck with the one, whether the one really dumb or jus play-acting.
Anyone remember what Soros is famous for? Has to do with currency.. Come on.. You know…
What a global thinker… You HAVE to admit the guy is either brilliant or a mad-man… I know what I think, but that could be labeled a racist comment as I disagree with the current President. Can’t have that now, can we?
I worry that we all may be overthinking Obama. Just because we are analytical and reflective does not mean that Obama and his ilk are. I think David Horowitz is right when he says about Obama, “These people do not think five minutes in the future about their policies. It is all and ever about power with them.” Think back to those night time stadium cheering crowds at Obama campaign events last summer? Obama is very much our own creation. There isn’t much there. So many liberal Americans were desperate for racial absolution and Obama was their pontiff.
Obama and his group can’t handle criticism. In Chicago you crushed critics you didn’t keep them around. How about David Axelrod a week ago saying on national TV about the Teapartiers, “They’re wrong.” Another way of saying this is that Obama has no sense of humor. That is very strange to me. Remember how good it felt to laugh last year during Sara Palin’s acceptance speech? She was funny! There is no kind of higher laughter like that among Obama and the self-serious left.
I think #100 Salt Lick has it right: Obama is very much an academic. You’ve got the wind at your back economically and blame republicans. His ideas of governance and the world haven’t moved much beyond marxist graduate student bull sessions.
Because of the way he handles opposition, Obama seems vey lost to me; I don’t think he even wants to be president anymore. #104 Whitehall: My prediction: I think continued opposition will unhinge Obama. He cannot stand opposition and doesn’t know how to handle it. He has been protected from it his whole life. Unless he cuts loose from his nutty left base he will have some kind of mental crisis.
SaltLick, I think you are right on the mark- that is exactly how I saw it. He does not care about fallout because he only has to be elected once to get permanent clout (and financial safety). He learned that lesson from Capital Hill- which is why we need to DEMAND reform on that policy. How could any of them, in a time when our troops are deploying annually, balk at restructuring their retirement in the fashion of the military? 20 years gets you 1/2 of your highest annual salary and anything less gets you a T-shirt and a hand shake. Any criminal behavior and you lose your pension. I can dream.
NahnCee said:
“If / when Obama goes after the military to totally de-fang us, then that says “Vladimir” and/or China to me.”
A moonbat President would do the same thing because his ideology would be anti-military.
Whitehall’s implied question still stands concerning whether or not the four hypotheses are testable. It’s not clear that these hypotheses are testable. Obama could bring the nation to ruin and the people behind each hypothesis would claim that their view was correct.
For what it’s worth, I think Obama is an extreme leftist who is incompetent as a leader (his ideology is not practical). There maybe a method behind his madness but it does not matter because he can not actually implement anything planned due to incompetence. Obama’s policy is essentially a random walk (no rational analysis is possible).
NahnCee
I think Soros is in it for the money only, and doesn’t give diddly-squat about things that go boom.
That is an assumption. Soros has many motives and links. The ties to ideological movements and shady global actors may be an indulgence and a cost of doing business that follow from his commercial interests. They may also be the motivation behind his financial activities. Postulate the worst case that Soros is a planted agent of influence recruited by the KGB who spotted him following his ambivalent performance as a jew who collaborated with the nazis. It would fit the pattern for such agents that he became self funding and then used his influence to weaken America. That is not to say that I am endorsing that theory. It merely means that whatever view we take of a person like Mr Soros must be based on what we can learn of his past and what we see as the consequences of his activities.
The title “What’s up doc?” suggests that Obama is the wrascally wabbit.
I think that Daffy Duck is a better analogy.
(and rather than ask who sent him – lets ask what season it is)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euC6FvprxTA
Langley,
Thank you, we are being lead by the national Fudd.
Our resident Company man Habu seems to have gone on hiatus.
Following on to my earlier post. If Obama is an agent who raised money as a Capitalist to further the cause of collectivism then he could be a bookend with Maurice Strong, the Canadian investor behind much of the environmental movement, who now operates from Beijing.
Two books I have just finished, offer some light on who O is. The first is “It’s our turn to EAT.” Which is the story, not of Chicago, but of the government in Kenya, and a whistle-blower. This man was able to get close to the leadership, and taped damning conversations. Yet nothing was done.
His description of the president is interesting, as someone who reflected your expectations. Yet who turns out to be at the center of corruption. Sound familiar?
The second book is “Evil Genes”, by Barbara Oakley, this one is more chilling. It suggests men like Mao, Stalin, Fastow, etc. are Machiavellian Psychopaths able to charm, but with no ideology, only attraction to power. She points out how charming Stalin was in person. How Mao was. How men like these are able to worm their way into power.
While she has nothing to say about the O. it explains much. (The book was written in 2007). Read it if you can find it. I would be interested in our host’s take.
Das said:
I worry about this. I didnt watch the Joint Session the other night. But somebody (CRS) wrote about the anger that underlaid it, citing the references to falsity and lies and bad motives of the opposition. He is a very unhappy person. I did see the discussion with Steffie on Sunday when he went thru the mandate is not a tax argument. He wasn’t happy then. As his popularity declines, his ability to get anybody to do what he wants will decline as well. If the Permanent Bureaucracy starts bypassing him how will he cope? As noted above, he has no experience with frustrated ambition.
Mike Sylvester, above, to the contrary, if the Govt says I have to spend money on it, its a tax. They may take the govt out of the transaction, but its a tax nonetheless.
Das and Herb,
Regarding the role that Obama sees himself in and his stability under pressure. The President that mostly closely resembles BHO IMHO is Woody Wilson. WW came close to being kicked upstairs to President of the World and only failed when Henry Cabot Lodge balked at the Treaty of Versailles. That precipitated his collapse and a period in which the administration was effectively in the hands of his wife Edith and his physician Grayson. In his private nightmares Obama might blame Ted Kennedy for dying before the Health Care bill came to a vote as a similar frustration. If he does collapse under the pressures of the job I pray that we will be spared government by Michelle.
I fear that Habu has been picked up by the Black Helicopters for a prolonged rectal probe.
My theory follows from compelling evidence that the current administration only sees the world through the walls of its own collective large intestine.
Come to think of it, this is a gymnastic feat that should qualify them for the Chinese Olympic team.
Should mean some sort of actual income, if they can refrain from late night keggers.
My own take is that O’s team is trying to set up a crony capitalist state along the model of what you’ll see south of the border. ie nothing but nothing gets done even on small scale enterprise but without bureaucratic approval(and bribes). the dems would control the bureaucracy.
I have seen no sign that O anything but a company man. he does not do hail mary’s.
Obama says:
* Obama: Requiring health insurance is not a tax increase (CNN).
* Obama: Missile defense decision not about Russia (AP)
* Obama: I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money. (Politico).
* Obama: Afghanistan strategy is still a work in progress.
You have to give Obama some credit. Each of these statements is technically true, or might be true. For example, Obama doesn’t say he didn’t know that ACORN was receiving money. He was saying that he didn’t know it was getting a “whole lot” of money. And ACORN was not receiving, by any federal measure, a “whole lot” of money. A fine, by definition, is not a tax. Etc.
Was Wilson right that “You lie!”? Yes and no. Technically speaking, Wilson lied that Obama lied
Conservatives look like Elmer Fudd right compared to the clever rabbit (What’s up doc?), but that might change.
When you run into a slick lawyer, hold onto your wallet. The liberals have a pretty slick talker who finely slices what he says, especially if its a teleprompter address. Obama is getting into trouble because people increasingly don’t believe what he says any more, even though the language is as finely crafted and as virtually true as ever.
Mike, A car is an inherently dangerous tool. Some folks choose not to drive because they cant afford the insurance….or the car.
When you set out to climb to the top of the mountain its a good idea to have a game plan as to what you’re going to do after you get there. It can be very cold at the top.
It seems to me that Obama’s life has centered around winning popularity contests, and after winning he goes on to the next and bigger contest. Now there’s no place else to go.
Most candidates claim that they are running because of some issue(s) or policy that they want to implement. I think with Obama it was purely the contest that mattered. No real policies drive him. The closest thing he has to them are the vague leftist cliches that he has soaked up by osmosis, and he has not a clue about how to realistically turn those cliches into any semblance of reality.
He is not the anti-Christ. The anti-thought is closer to the mark.
My comment @89 was wrong. The mandate imposes what the proposed law itself calls an “excise tax.”
See http://themoderatevoice.com/46989/did-barack-obama-read-the-baucus-bill/
Langley said:
“The title “What’s up doc?” suggests that Obama is the wrascally wabbit.
I think that Daffy Duck is a better analogy.”
Same thought crossed my mind. By the way, equating the Chosen One with a little black duck is racist,
.
herb said:
“As his [Obama's] popularity declines, his ability to get anybody to do what he wants will decline as well. If the Permanent Bureaucracy starts bypassing him how will he cope? As noted above, he has no experience with frustrated ambition.”
Obama will then be a Lame Daffy Duck. George W. Bush effectively became a Lame Duck after his collapse in the popularity polls and that phoney National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) came out claiming that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. George W. lost his “mandate from heaven” after it was clear that the opposition controlled the national security infrastructure and there was nothing that he could do about it. I predict that after the Sucker’s Rally ends and the stock market collapses, what’s left of Obama’s popularity will collapse with the stock market. Then all that will remain is some event like the NIE thing and it will become clear that Obama is irrelevant. Obama could then find himself in a situation like Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968 where it became clear that there was no point in running for re-election. One can only hope.
Just good comments here.
Lots of food for thoughts.
In the MSM not so much.
“”"”" Rahm also has credentials from the Chicago Opera Ballet (distinguished by the white sox worn with the usual tights and ballet shoes). “”"”"”
Hence the nickname: “Twinkletoes McQueen.”
Following up my own comments @89 and @126.
The mandate to buy medical insurance is different than a tax, because the money does not go to the government.
However, the penalty for not buying medical insurance is, according to the proposed law, called an excise tax. and that money certainly does go to the government.
So, we (in particular, Obama) are splitting hairs here. On the fine point of whether the mandate itself should be called a tax in the current situation, I would say again that Obama is correct that it is different than a tax.
(As I said before, eventually the public option will lead to a government takeover, and then all medical treatment will be paid essentially by direct taxes.)
Tcobb: I think you have it exactly right. Obama didn’t have any policy or issue, he just wanted to make history. Now that he’s done so, he doesn’t have a clue what to do now.
While it’s above my pay grade to parse all the variants on “who is Obama?” I would certainly contend the academic Leftist/professional Leftist side of him is a large part of it. Maybe those of you in the American part of America haven’t been as exposed to pure, hardcore Lefty talk as I’ve been in the Heart of the Beast in New York. But if you’ve ever listened to Pacifica Radio or read The Village Voice or such things, you could recognize Obama instantly as the same type I’ve been hearing for thirty years.
They are Angry. Endlessly angry. The world is nothing but injustice. All of this injustice is caused by white males, particularly White American Males. The US is the font of all evil. All peoples of color are innocent victims. Crime is a product of white oppression. All whites are racist, except for professed Leftist “Progressive” whites, who nevertheless must always exhibit redemptive white guilt. War is caused by preparing for war. Guns cause violence. The media is a right-wing corporate conspiracy. Any violence or crime done by non-whites is excuseable. The police cause crime. Oil is evil. Borders are racist. The English language is racist. The literary “canon” is a racist, sexist, homophobic force for evil (take that, Shakespeare). Anything written by non-whites is fine literature. And on and on and on…
They really are that demented, but it’s hard to believe it unless you sit and listen to these people talk amongst themselves with dead seriousness. Obama is just a slicker version of Amy Goodman, if you know who I mean. Obama is nothing new under the sun. Only his elevation to President is.
“”"”"” A law that every driver must buy automobilie insurance is not considered to be a “tax” by most people. “”"”"”
#89 MS:
Laws requiring auto insurance are not national, but voted in state by state, as they see fit. Obama is talking about a national requirement for health insurance.
peterike said:
“Maybe those of you in the American part of America haven’t been as exposed to pure, hardcore Lefty talk as I’ve been in the Heart of the Beast in New York. But if you’ve ever listened to Pacifica Radio or read The Village Voice or such things, you could recognize Obama instantly as the same type I’ve been hearing for thirty years.”
I graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1976. I immediately recognized Obama for another one of those dudes in Sproul Plaza wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and ranting a leftist monologue. It was an amazing achievement of the MSM that they were able to sucker the American Sheeple into making the Messiah our new President.
If Obama is crazy or just wildly incompetent, then predictions of his behavior become very difficult except ot say failure after failure. But we can only predict that his failures will come from what he attempts. Surprise failures from left field must also be expected.
If he is a dedicated leftist, he will continue to push leftist programs, laws, and programs.
If he is a “liberal fascist” he will push to increase his power.
If a vassal of a foreign power or powers, some foreigh power will benefit.
If just an empty suit egotist, then frustrations will mount and we might see deparation to bolster his sagging ego.
Perhaps we can look at what cards he’s flopped? What does he have in play at the moment?
1) UN security council meeting
2) nuclear disarmament
3) health care grab
4) cap-and-trade taxation
5) bailouts to newspapers
6) Afghan strategy rethinking
Sometimes he seems like a football coach who has his first 25 plays cast in concrete.
I am glad that Wretchard mercifully ended the thread on missile defense in Poland/Russia at comment 235, it was turning into a slugfest with the usual French bashing from certain commenters. Still, one thing that caught my eye at the bottom of the thread was a link to an article about former Carter Admin National Security Advisor Z. Bzrezinski quoting him as saying that the U.S. should be ready to shoot down Israeli jets on their way to strike Iran. Whether B. meant over Iraqi or Saudi airspace, I do not know.
Perhaps the person who posted it however is waking up to the fact that Z.B. is not always putting U.S. interests first, especially when it comes to his lifelong loathing of Russia. I can understand how growing up in Poland in the 20s and 30s one would learn to hate both the Germans and Russians, but that is no basis for U.S. policy now.
Agree with the other commenters who said we’re overthinking Obama. He is a product of the Chicago machine who has never thought seriously about American foreign policy beyond the usual tropes.
89. Mike Sylwester
If you do not drive a car because you either rely on public transport or walk, you are not required to buy automobile insurance. Will Obama agree that those who are already covered by some other health arrangement or those who reject medical care altogether on religious grounds, such as Christian Scientists, would not be required to by medical insurance? I doubt it. Therefore it would be a de facto tax.
In my own work experience, I have run across a few people who were playing well beyond their natural level of competency. Once someone is who is way over his head is ultimately discovered and exposed, the usual emotions are 1) “Wow, I had no idea how much damage this guy did.” and 2) “Why didn’t we change this guy out sooner?”
Peterike: you hit the nail on the head. Go over to any of the many Indymedia sites and that’s all you see. Anger. Paranoia. Anti-white. Conspiracies. Corporate power. Police brutality. Oppression.
It’s endless. I work in San Francisco which has to be just as much in the belly of the beast as NYC.
“Postulate the worst case that Soros is a planted agent of influence recruited by the KGB who spotted him following his ambivalent performance as a jew who collaborated with the nazis. It would fit the pattern for such agents that he became self funding and then used his influence to weaken America.” This is hilarious as a conspiracy theory from Life of the Mind since Soros’ fingerprints can be found on funding for many do-gooder NGOs founded during the glasnost/perestroika era to reach the USSR/Russia in early Nineties all the way up to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (go to the Wikipedia page for Russian Internet and you’ll see an entry mentioning that Soros funded the first Internet link between the U.S. and USSR back in 1984).
In other words, there are people in Russia who have good reason to think that Soros is merely a U.S-government backed oligarch and his billion dollar bets against the pound and other currencies were made with insider information, just like the oligarchs who bought up Russia’s Soviet inheritance for barely kopeks on the dollar with their kryshas during the Nineties. I am not saying that Russia needs a dolschosstelegend about the collapse of the USSR like Germany held in the 1920s or that it such is based in reality. But I do think Putin and others around him are aware that foreign investors, even the Harvard boys, whether wittingly or unwittingly helped to create the oligarchs who looted Russia and basically asset stripped and took as much money offshore as they possibly could until the 2000s. It was NOT a coincidence that Russia’s ruble and banking system collapsed in 1998 when oil hit $10 a barrel. Whether Khodorkovsky was part of that by selling crude at below world market prices to his foreign partners, I leave to your judgement.
Has the possibility occured to anyone here that Soros despises any country with the will to act unilaterally if necessary (save perhaps for the Chinese, who seem immune from his influence and more ruthless about stamping out NGOs while the Russians endured all the whining when they finally cracked down on NGOers being used as fronts for espionage and money laundering)? That Soros wants to see both the U.S. and Russia weak and broken up? I wish conservatives would finally wake up and stop believing the Sorosian propaganda they are spoonfed about Russia from the WSJ, National Review, Weekly Standard etc.
wretchard@23: “… but I’ve always felt there was something that I wasn’t quite getting about the President. It’s there, just on the edge of vision. And then it’s gone. One day I’ll see it clearly, but it’s an elusive thing.”
I assume that Obama has made himself a mystery because he works very hard to mask his background, his inner thoughts, and the nature of the cabal that he brought to power. I assume, for starters, that everything that Obama says in public is scripted. That nothing – not a single word that he speaks – can be taken as face value.
Presented with a mystery of this nature, we are at risk of entrapping ourselves by drawing premature and erroneous views based on insufficient data, much of which is deliberately distorted. An analytical formalism, which I have found useful in the past is to maintain several active theories or scenarios with which to test new data as we receive it.
For Obama, I currently am considering four scenarios: (1) “Manchurian candidate” – where ‘Manchuria’ may be or include a domestic cabal, (2) “Narcissist loner” – an ego-driven outsider, (3) “Peters Principle personified” – a genius at campaigning without a clue about governing, and (4) “Barry goes to Washington” – another liberal in, for example, the Jimmy Carter mold.
Now, of course, each of these theories, “rich scenarios” for those who follow the jargon of system analysis, is just a construct against which information can be tested and evaluated. In this formalism, any continuing current assessment – ‘working hypothesis’ – is held separate from the scenarios, although it may draw from one or more of them.
My current working hypothesis is that Obama, while a mystery himself, provides the public face of a larger ‘creature’, a yet to be defined cabal which provides the greater mystery. And, quite likely, the greater danger.
In 2016 when Obama leaves office, people will still be asking “Who was he?”.
Perhaps “Who was that masked man? And where was his silver bullet?”
“My current working hypothesis is that Obama, while a mystery himself, provides the public face of a larger ‘creature’, a yet to be defined cabal which provides the greater mystery. And, quite likely, the greater danger.”
Yes. And I’m pretty sure they’re not Martians.
Now, do we want to focus just on the enigma that is Obama, or do we also need to be looking sternly at the Progressive Left and what *they* want us to do (and not do)?
Withjout getting off into even the short weeds, SJN, it happens to be the U.S. Dollar that Soros is on record as stating that his lifetime ambition is to end as the global reserve currency status.
And he is certainly not managing the St. Petersburg Boys in the Kremlin while shorting Russia, as he is managing the Democrat’s braintrust while shorting USA.
And, if carrying out Kremlin policy, what would he do be doing differently?
Note his self-involvement in Georgia has been followed by war and the Kremlin occupation of the two Georgian provinces distinguished –as a bridgehead over the mountains and a Black Sea port –by their strategic military value pointing toward the pipelines, Baku, and the middle east proper.
It will be interesting to see how the tension between the office of the US President vs the Kremlin plays out –now with a Soros man in that office. The US office i mean.
Or are we seeing it already?
I agree with Wretchard that BO is insane(doesn’t meet the rational actor model)and reality impaired. How do we get rid of him.
I’m thinking that a pretty good bell-weather to watch will be the actions of Bill and Hillary. They are both pragmatists, both pretty smart and well-educated, and should have their mutual fingers firmly on the pulse of what’s going on in the White House (and the Pentagon and the Senate).
If I were either Bill or Hillary, I’m not sure I’d stick around to go down with the Titanic, but surely by watching what they *do* do (and when, and how), we can get an indication of how big the iceberg is. And where it’s looming up from.
Whitehall @ 135, that was a brilliant post:
So we have various hypotheses floated.
1) stupid, incompetent, and adolescent
2) Radical American leftist in disguise
3) agent of Soros
4) agent of foreign governments
There are probably more.
Let each advocate make a prediction of Obama future behavior and decisions that can serve as a test over time…We need some reasonable predictions of his behavior if we are to prepare for and counter his moves. The end state won’t be the same in all cases.
Yes. We do need to determine the differential diagnosis, so to speak. Some current problems with discerning which of the above, however, are:
a) what if he’s bought, but he won’t stay bought?
b) what if he’s an unwitting actor for others and the others have made an error in their own prediction from him?
Another problem is that #1, #2, and perhaps #3 have all been #4s. The Communists used everyone they could, and did so with much aplomb. They also killed their most faithful off in waves, so that doesn’t even tell you which side someone was on.
Byron York posted at the Corner (http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTkyOTFlODQxOTNmZGY3NWU2M2Y1MGU3ZGI4OTEwYzg=) a bit from the NYT magazine that was a glimpse into how this all began, with Obama and his wife and Axelrod and a few others all in a room together.
“It was Michelle, Axelrod remembers, who stopped the show. “You need to ask yourself, Why do you want to do this?” she said directly. “What are hoping to uniquely accomplish, Barack?”
Obama sat quietly for a moment, and everyone waited. “This I know: When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently,” he said. “And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently.”
It’s all about him. He’s done what he set out to do. When people suggest he has “no idea what to do now”, what if he never CARED what to do as president at all? His unique accomplishment was to get elected. He left that up to the rest of his Leftist friends. They can amass power, fine by him. He likes to be liked, and he likes to be the One, and the Radical Left is his fallback position. But perhaps he’s angry because he’d rather not be working or asked to work so hard, and he’d rather just talk about Axelrod and Ayers’ vision and leave whomever to do the work.
I wonder too if just as The Chicago Way, he sold himself to everyone. So maybe all of the hypotheses are true, and everyone is finding out now that he didn’t really care to fulfill the contract with any of them at all. They must now figure out how to get him to complete his half of the bargain for them. But what if they are all in competition?
Lubba er luddy@ Valdez or Maine?
I would wish it to be the Valdez, because I do not want Obama to have purposefully done the nation so dirty. But I know he is smarter (and so I am told) than that, so I with great reluctance and under extreme protest conclude that Maine is the answer. Nothing else make sense given the permutations. Drunk on power assumes a sober state for which there is evidence enough but it is not the overwhelming dead reckoning ah-ha moment type of illumination. Lunatic does not justify nor Carter like account for enough of it. Naive doesn’t express the folly of it. Alas, what answer is left? Lobachevsky? He is not. Bozhe moi!
I know what you mean –that old Sherlock Holmes axiom ‘once the impossibles are eliminated, whatever is left, however improbable, is likely’. “Folly” is a great concept –pejorative, but not so much that it isn’t often claimed by someone guilty of much worse. remember Jimmy Carter when USSR jumped off on Afghanistan? He was angry because “they lied to me” –and responded with a monumental act of abject pathos, the Moscow Olympics boycott.
anyhoo, this is well worth a read, re the ‘marginalization of enmity’.
(a snip, referring to a then recent –the column is from January –Senator Diane Feinstein speech):
The first “relevant question” should not be “which weapon threatens mankind.” The first relevant question should be “who are our enemies?” If our enemies have nuclear weapons, if our enemies cheat on arms control agreements, we’d better not propose a disarmament treaty. And yet, that is the strategic “thinking” of a United States Senator and a host of illustrious “others.” The victory of emotion over intellect is now complete. Fear of nuclear weapons has overtaken fear of the enemy.
“Seeking new weapons and maintaining massive arsenals makes no sense,” writes Senator Feinstein. The solution, of course, is for the United States to “lead the way” in nuclear disarmament. The Bush administration’s push for replacing obsolete U.S. warheads is dismissed as “threatening.” Nothing is said about Russia’s ICBM deployments or China’s nuclear buildup. In Feinstein’s view, nuclear weapons are evil. “Today,” writes Feinstein, “there are enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world hundreds of times.” This statement is sadly misinformed. Today’s U.S. arsenal cannot even guarantee the destruction of the main military targets in Russia. Incredibly, the senator is engaged in a “moral crusade” against a weapon that has preserved her life, and her country’s life. What she proposes, I believe, is her own elimination – though she doesn’t know it. From her point of view, the leaders in Moscow and Beijing are not the problem. Our enemy is not some foreign power. Our enemy is a weapon. “We must recognize nuclear weapons for what they are – not a deterrent, but a grave and gathering threat to humanity.”
The year 2009 will mark the end of failed policies and false assumptions. In all probability, there will be new policies based on new false assumptions.
(close quote)
Who sent him is being developed back to Frank Marshall Davis, communist from Chicago and their friends. Very direct connections through jarrett and ayers.
They can be stopped nov 2010 but he and they must be totally discredited nov 2012 or they will take the billions they are stealing and he can run again and do more complete damage.
Obama, hayden, ayers, jefff jones, van jones and soros all need a room at club fed. good luck with that.
Obama is a temp but the others and Soros will need to be marginalized by nov 2012.
Van Jones with Podesta at the Soros/Sandlers created and funded Center for American Progress – dangerous.
What is it with national leaders so ignorant of history and human nature that they seem to have no idea of the actual conditions at either end of the national security risk/reward and cost/benefit ratios?
Do they not have large intelligent well-paid staffs charged with gathering the pertinent information to inform their positions?
What’s going on with these people? Is somebody putting some kind of chemical upstream the Potomac?
***
dwall, if the Sandlers/Golden West/Wachovia/Soros story was well known (including the ‘insider’ at Wachovia executing the favored Soros tactic of buying insider help then calling it his ‘psychological genius’) –Americans would revolt, the next morning.
Greifer — ooooohhhhh, I like it. That does, indeed, strike a cord. That his sole and only goal was to be the first black man elected President of the United States – his claim to fame forever in the history books. That he had absolutely no plan whatsoever beyond that, but to try to be and remain beloved by not making enemies and buying off everyone in sight at the taxpayer’s expense. I will try to remember this as a hypothesis since it is more palatable than the Manchurian Candidate one … even though both versions of Obama put the United States in deep and grave danger.
Greifer, I’ll second NahnCee’s opinion and agree that your theory strikes a cord, i.e. Obama merely wanted to be the first black guy elected as President and didn’t give a hoot whether he was qualified for the job or not. What makes the theory even more intriguing is the MSM probably backed Obama because they recognized it would be entertaining to watch a black guy get elected as President and consequently boost their sagging ratings.
No evil Soros in the background weaving Byzantine plots, merely inadequate people being stupid and incompetent.
re: MacGregor, Its got nice Rumsfeldian architecture, I like the sleek and efficient design and other us(ful)stuf. As difficult as it will be to modernize DoD, imagine the feathers molting and flying at DoS as their structure is put through a similar grinder. Lots of tough old birds to pluck elsewhere too.
It needs to be done, they are too big and too clumsy for our good. Otherwise it will not be reset, just…
Folly ho, bluddy
Folly ho
“No evil Soros in the background weaving Byzantine plots, merely inadequate people being stupid and incompetent.”
And selfish.
Wade, ah, the Rummy Remodel –such a vast nigh impenetrable subject. Kibitzers such as myself have to just ‘feel’ whether or not we trust the one side or the other. Lately that hasn’t really been all that hard to do, it seems –but that ‘it seems’ ain’t airtight by any long shot. I always liked Rummy –even way back when, when he was in there keeping an eye on the various advancing states of psychological decay in the executive branches & agencies.
Did you see this? Appears someone anyway appreciated the Rummy model.
http://en.rian.ru/valdai_op/20090914/156124823.html
Note–no more ‘mobilization phase’ will be needed to go into action, and that tacticl nukes will take the place of massed armor formations. Am i wrong that small battlefield nukes are now part of Russian Doctrine –but not USA’s ?
Oh, right –they’ll never used. Except for they are being used right now –Russia’s taking the Arctic –with the threat of ‘em. Maybe.
Greifer wrote: “But perhaps he’s angry because he’d rather not be working or asked to work so hard, and he’d rather just talk about Axelrod and Ayers’ vision and leave whomever to do the work.”
I think you nailed it. I’ve observed that Obama NEVER seems to be at the White House working. He is ALWAYS out of the office giving speeches, doing Leno/Letterman, talk shows, G8/G20 meetings, UN speeches (he’s staying at the NY Waldorf-Astoria today), trips to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Turkey, Trinidad, multiple vacations, upcoming will be Copenhagen (only if he knows for sure Chicago will get the Olympic bid for 2016), etc. Its almost as if he has a pathological aversion to work. He’s been like that ever since he got into the Senate (maybe even before). I think this observation falls into your hypothesis category of “1) stupid, incompetent, and adolescent”.
Missile defense is so provocative and it is unfashionable to boot.
News flash
Occam said:
“I’ve observed that Obama NEVER seems to be at the White House working. He is ALWAYS out of the office giving speeches, doing Leno/Letterman, talk shows, G8/G20 meetings, UN speeches (he’s staying at the NY Waldorf-Astoria today), trips to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Turkey, Trinidad, multiple vacations, upcoming will be Copenhagen (only if he knows for sure Chicago will get the Olympic bid for 2016), etc. Its almost as if he has a pathological aversion to work. He’s been like that ever since he got into the Senate (maybe even before).”
Where this analysis falls down is in the assumption that Obama actually exercises real power. Obama maybe just some empty headed fluffy giving speeches and interacting with the MSM while some Machiavelli is operating quietly in background doing the real work. I appreciate that this sort of conclusion is facile and along the lines of Moonbat political analysis concerning G. W. Rush and Karl Rove. However there is evidence supporting the belief that Obama is lazy and avoids real work. That was never the case with G. W. Bush (quite the opposite).
We should be happy when Obama is traveling and not “working,” since “working” for him is generally violating the Constitution and promoting an anti-American agenda.
LotM/159; “And now, in response to overwhelming viewer interest, we will feature across the media spectrum THIRTY DAYS of SPECIAL REPORTING on “America –Bulky or Cuddly?’”
Meanwhile, back where rubber meets road, due to a collapsing Dollar, both oil and gold close today up 2 or 3 percent (annualize THAT!) as the president of the USA addresses the world from the podium at the UN on –climate catastrophe.
Good Grief.
TN devices delivered by heavy UAVs?
They just have to figure out how to fly them in a swarm. Winged by red bull, Bears swarm in air on Fulda gap.
heh –that’s some pic a short scroll down –the matchstick plane –
i can’t see the TN being used –but i can watch old movies and see that the guy holding the pistol on the others kinda makes them stand still with their hands up in the air, waiting on orders. cuz nobody ever knows if he’ll shoot –but they do know what will happen if he has a brain fart and just does. Soooo, they humor him, serve him, smile at him, agree with him, do what he says.
here’s a real helpful eye-opener on what else is up, doc, in Threatworld. It’s Art Laffer in the WSJ, on the Great Depression.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574402822202944230.html
This is really good –it needs to spread around –esp since no one would be sure, should we fall into another great depression, that given these ABCs of what not to do, why this admin went ahead and did ‘em anyway.
It’s like using 1984 as a how-to manual.
One more apropos link –Mark Helprin puts the missile defense technologicals into prose –a very good essay, fills holes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574426880110463194.html