Only self-deception can justify the continued sacrifice of our finest young men and women in uniform. Given the two presidents in command and their irreversible dispositions toward this war and each other, failure is virtually inevitable. For a lesson in how wartime allied presidents ought to struggle to work together for victory, consider the Franklin D. Roosevelt/Winston Churchill partnership.
What is not inevitable is the number of American (and allied) troops who must die before failure becomes undeniable.
Whether or not Muslims can become civilized is the question still unanswered to the satisfaction of most Americans. Those who suggest they cannot must be prepared to suggest policies.
#3
Here's one--split it up into smaller nations based on ethnicity. They might wind up fighting each other, but who cares. Our interest arises only when they export their problems.
#4
This is a moronic article. Blankley is a sharp guy, but this article is just idiotic. There's enough support in the Democratic party to keep a presence in Afghanistan until we kill off the Taliban 100 years later. We should not back off from this commitment, lest some other terrorist group or nation conclude that he can kill tens of thousands of Americans, and Uncle Sam will desist from trying to wipe him out after a couple of thousand KIA. This is a war we cannot possibly lose unless we choose to lose it by withdrawing. And the casualties have been and continue to be far lower (and the stakes far higher - given that failure to establish deterrence means an attack on the continental USA) than in Vietnam or Korea.
#5
the afgahan war was never about making them civilized, it was about not letting it be used as a base of operations for terror groups g(r)om
Posted by: chris ||
06/16/2010 13:26 Comments ||
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#6
iblis
I've been promoting this idea for several years.
Unsuccessfully.
Posted by: lord garth ||
06/16/2010 13:37 Comments ||
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#7
@#4ZF
writing checks with your keyboard your fanny can't cash. If you want to talk about staying for a century, feel free to go enlist and put YOUR ( probably out of shape) ass on the line.
#10
I think this just goes to show that the policy of "catch and release" doesn't work. The last outsider to control this area effectively was Genghis Khan. It is said that during his day, a woman could travel alone from Persia to China with a purse full of gold and not experience a bit of trouble.
What would Genghis do?
We could even start with some less drastic measures such as possibly not only killing the individuals who kill others, but maybe plowing their family plot with salt.
In other words ... if you act up, not only are YOU going to pay for it, but so is your family and ultimately your tribe.
#13
seems too me that they seem too have gotten stronger since they saw who was coming into office as the next president. Also the troops there now are kept under tighter ROE than they where before.
Posted by: chris ||
06/16/2010 18:16 Comments ||
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#14
until we kill off the Taliban 100 years later. ... This is a war we cannot possibly lose unless we choose to lose it by withdrawing.
Therein lies the problem. Not losing, means the Taliban/Pushtuns win, because there is no way in hell the West will maintain its committment for 100 years. Although I doubt the Pushtun/Taliban can be beaten in a 100 years, but thats irrelevant.
Otherwise, this drags on, because the 'bad' war in Iraq has been won and the country progresses as a democracy, and the Left hates the idea of the 'good' United Nations approved war in Afghanistan ending in failure and abject failure at that.
#15
writing checks with your keyboard your fanny can't cash. If you want to talk about staying for a century, feel free to go enlist and put YOUR ( probably out of shape) ass on the line.
I've been writing checks to the federal government for a couple of decades. In longhand. These are checks the Feds have never had any problems cashing. Any soldier* who doesn't want to be part of this can leave once his term of enlistment is up. In fact, the only part of the Federal government I want to fund is national defense.
* And if you really love the Taliban that much, you really ought to join them instead of defending them from the safety of your home. Their high casualty rates mean that they need a lot of fresh meat. Are you man enough?
#16
BS: You mean the way they supported the South Vietnamese, ZF?
What you're missing is that the NVA/Viet Cong never threatened to kill off the Democratic voter base. That was Al Qaeda's mistake (something that Michael Moore alluded to in one of his off-hand commentaries - al Qaeda attacked its natural supporters). 9/11 is like an open wound in the quad-state area of CT, NJ, NY and PA. They still like their welfare programs and silly ideas like gay marriage. I suspect Bloomberg would even champion the building of a gigantic mosque in place of the Twin Towers. But the al Qaeda and the Taliban will always be anathema. And their congressional delegations will vote accordingly.
#17
I think this just goes to show that the policy of "catch and release" doesn't work. The last outsider to control this area effectively was Genghis Khan. It is said that during his day, a woman could travel alone from Persia to China with a purse full of gold and not experience a bit of trouble.
What would Genghis do?
Genghis used to exterminate entire tribes and cities. He used to herd prisoners of war in front of his advancing halberdiers so that they could absorb the first flights of arrows from his adversaries. He would have slaughtered the Pashtuns to the last man, woman and child, as well as any tribe or nation that sheltered them. We can't do that. Those are the methods of a different era, and we closed the door on that a long time ago.
#18
Checks to the Feds as justification for a protracted war. Where do I begin? As for joining the Taliban. How about we airdrop you into enemy territory for the entire fiscal year your generous check is written for, since you equate military service as merely a monetary purchase. I'm sure you can tear your check up and whine to the embassy when you become captured to null and void your comitment. Our comitment for 100 years is fine as long as someone else is the one at risk. Your money and your life, all things being equal. People like you are why the draft needs to be reinstated---that way everyone contributes. BTW. Soldiers pay taxes too.
VijayKumar Singh, from the India Bible Publishers and the Delhi Bible Fellowship, has launched an appeal to the Christians of India and the world to pray and express their support for Afghan Muslim converts to Christianity who were convicted on conversion charges and sentenced to death on 31 May. Speaking to AsiaNews, Sing said, We need Christians' help all over the world to stop the Afghan government from arresting Dari-speaking Afghan Christians and condemning them to death by public execution.'
Afghans consider their country to be 100 per cent Muslim. A local TV station, Noorin TV, recently broadcast a documentary showing photos and videos of secret Afghan Christian Converts', which revealed names and showed the faces of alleged Afghan Christian converts.
This was enough to spark riots and demonstrations throughout Afghanistan with protesters demanding strong action to enforce the Afghan constitution, based on Sharia, arrest the culprits, and execute anyone who renege his or her religion in favour of another.
A number of prominent public figures also spoke out on the matter, calling for immediate action. One lawmaker even said that killing a Muslim who converts to Christianity was not a crime'.
Waheed Omar, the spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, told reporters that the president was personally' taking an interest in this case, and had ordered his interior minister and the head of the country's spy agency to carry out a full investigation and take immediate and serious action to prevent this phenomenon.'
Reports from inside Afghanistan already tell of many arrests in recent days, as well as allegations of torture of those under arrest in an effort to extract forcibly the names of other Afghan Christian converts.
Singh also slams the perplexing media silence' and demands a strong stance from Christians around the world.
In a letter, Obaid S. Christ, a member of a small group of about 150 Afghan Christian refugees and asylum seekers in India, writes that he and other Afghan Christians are currently living in exile from their beloved homeland [. . .] forced to flee their country in order to save their life and the lives of their families, due to orders of execution issued against them by the Afghan government for choosing to convert to Christianity.'
Recently, he writes, The Afghan Home Minister and the Chairman of Afghan Intelligence told the Afghan Parliament that four Afghan Christians and one family had been arrested and that they were under investigation,' and that 13 NGOs are recognized and suspended,' and that the names of Afghan Christians are listed and the Afghan Intelligence agency wants to arrest them.' He adds, Our houses are checked by police and intelligence people in Afghanistan, our families and parents (even though they are Muslim) are under investigation and even arrested, and all Afghan believers are missing'.
For this reason, the Afghan Christian community is calling on every Christian not to be silent or close his or her eyes whilst thousands of fellow believers are persecuted'.
Afghan Christians are asking their fellow Christians to pray for them, make their voice heard and get the international community to put pressure on the Afghan government to stop killing, persecuting and executing Afghan Christians,' and give us instead freedom of religion as well as respect and accept us as Afghan Christians.'
#1
This should be easy. The coalition should simply remind the Afghan government that many soldiers from other countries are fighting and dieing for their right to govern and not be beheaded by the Taliban, who are Islamists, also. So stop hanging our fellow believers. Deal?
From The Economist. There's a good map at the link too. Watch the CCP spies go off in the comments section there also. Always a good window on the culture.
THE term "Shangri-La Dialogue" has a heady, Utopian ring to it. But the debate at an annual Asian-security summit held between June 4th and 6th in the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore had a sobering undertone. The sinking in March of a South Korean naval ship has focused minds on a bellicose, nuclear-armed North Korea, though it denies responsibility for the attack. Tensions are also rising over sovereignty and navigation rights in the contested South China Sea. Armies in the region need to talk more and avoid misunderstandings. Defence chiefs at the forum, organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think-tank, could agree on that much. But they found it tricky to agree on much else.
The forum saw a public display of the chill in China-America military ties. America remains the dominant military power in the Pacific as it has been ever since the second world war. But China, which has the world's largest standing army, is beefing up its naval and air capability, unnerving America and its allies in the region.
Inevitably, this causes friction. America's defence secretary, Robert Gates, had expected to visit China before the Singapore summit, but his invitation from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) never came. The apparent reason was Chinese pique over American weapons sales to Taiwan. But that, Mr Gates complained, is "old news", and a silly reason to break off ties between the two armed forces.
But a perfectly good excuse. That's the difference between problem-solvers and politicians.
This prompted a rebuttal from a PLA delegate in the audience. General Zhu Chenghu, a hawkish strategist at the National Defence University in Beijing, growled that the sale of arms to Taiwan suggested Americans were "taking the Chinese as the enemy."
And what is the current Chinese posture toward Taiwan, dear general? Have you given the Taiwanese reason to feel that you see yourselves as their enemy?
As for the uproar over the sunken South Korean ship, the Cheonan, General Zhu asked why America was not seeking a full international investigation into Israel's assault this month on a Turkish aid flotilla to Gaza. Mr Gates replied evenly that a stealth torpedo attack was quite different from enforcing a coastal blockade.
Perhaps Mr. Gates could explain that to his boss...
An international investigation into the Cheonan incident blamed North Korea, but conspiracy theorists still come up with other culprits. China, meanwhile, has itself suffered at the hands of its erratic neighbour. This week it made a formal complaint to North Korea after three Chinese citizens were shot dead near the border that divides the two countries.
In his speech, General Ma Xiaotian, the head of the PLA delegation, insisted that it is America, not China, that puts obstacles in the way of improved military ties. He shook hands with Mr Gates but there were no bilateral powwows, as in past years.
The broader message behind this point-scoring may have been that the West needs China's help in calming North Korea and in other trouble spots (such as Myanmar),
You mean the trouble spots China created?
and that such help comes at a price, even where it appears to be in China's own self-interest. Chinese diplomats have become more assertive since the West fell prey to financial crisis.
In which case, the best thing we could do to improve our position vis a vis China is to reduce our national debt post haste, removing the leverage China believes itself to have. Or is that too sensible?
Phillip Saunders, of the National Defence University in Washington, says the same goes for PLA strategists, who reckon they now have greater power to unsettle America. So the ice over military ties may not thaw as easily as in previous cold snaps. The risk is that an unexpected incident could escalate as the hot line goes unanswered.
Both Mr Gates and General Ma referred to the South China Sea, a vital shipping lane and home to the Paracel and Spratly Islands, which several littoral countries claim as their own and which are believed to sit atop sizeable oil and gas deposits. China's rapid naval build-up has stirred fears among neighbours of a future territorial grab. For its part, China resents American spy planes and ships that operate near its coastline, including between Taiwan and Japan. China's officials have begun describing the South China Sea as one of its "core interests", on a par with Taiwan and Tibet. It has stepped up military exercises from its naval base on Hainan.
That is worrying for Vietnam, which has sparred with China over undersea drilling by Western oil companies. In 2008 China reportedly browbeat ExxonMobil and BP into stopping exploration in Vietnamese waters. In a dig at China, Mr Gates said American firms should not be blocked from "legitimate economic activity".
Vietnam would like the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations, whose rotating chairmanship it holds, to stick together on the South China Sea issue, lest China pick off the weaker members. Vietnam's defence chief told the forum that he hoped that maritime disputes could be resolved with "good-neighbourliness, friendship, co-operation and brotherhood". But as in regional security co-operation as a whole, there is little sign of such homilies translating into genuinely constructive dialogue. And what do you think China will be like when it has aircraft carriers? String of Pearls anyone?
#2
Once again, ala WMF [paraph] > CHINA = how would the USA like it iff Chin sold arms to Radicalist or MIlitant, Ideo or Ethnic Separatist Indivisuals + Groups in HAWAII + OTHER US SOVEREIGN JURISDICTIONS/TERRITORIES???
* Also from WMF > JAPAN FEARS THE LR MISSLE, NUCLEAR THREAT FROM ROGUE-STATE NORTH KOREA THAN CHINA OR RUSSIA. US MILBASES ON OKINAWA-JAPAN MAY BECOME A PERMANENT BARRIER AGZ NORTH KOREA.
Via InstaPundit
Every nation has a right to defend itself and to spend as it sees fit for that purpose, but a gap as wide as what seems to be forming between China's stated intent and its military programs leaves me more than curious about the end result,' said Admiral Mike Mullen this Wednesday. Indeed, I have moved from being curious to being genuinely concerned.'
It's about time the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in public, expressed disquiet about the Chinese military buildup. For decades, American flag officers, many of them from the Navy, have remained optimistic about America's military relations with China. And after every Chinese hostile act even those constituting direct attacks on the United States, such as the March 2009 attempt to interfere with the Impeccable in the South China Sea American admirals have either remained silent or said they were perplexed' or befuddled' by Beijing's intentions.
Why the befuddlement? The assumption in Washington has been that America was so powerful that we could integrate hardline Chinese leaders into a liberal international system they had no hand in creating. To this end, successive administrations sought, among other things, to foster ties between the American and Chinese militaries.
The Pentagon, therefore, pushed for port calls, reciprocal visits of officers, a hot line, and an incidents-at-sea agreement, with varying degrees of success. Admiral Timothy Keating even went so far as to offer to help China build aircraft carriers.
Keating's offer, made in May 2007 when he was commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, may have been extended with the knowledge the Chinese would reject it, but the apparent generosity was nonetheless in keeping with the general approach of the Navy during the Bush administration, an approach that President Obama has also adopted. So if there is any significance to Mullen's recent comment, it is that the American military, at the highest levels, is beginning to voice in open forums its doubts about Beijing's ultimate intentions. At this point, however, the expressions of genuine concern' remain muted.
Senior Chinese officers, on the other hand, have no trouble telling us how they really feel.
In February, Colonel Meng Xianging promised a hand-to-hand fight with the U.S.' sometime within the next 10 years when we're strong enough.' We must make them hurt,' said Major-General Yang Yi this year, referring to the United States. What you buy and where you buy from matters.
Posted by: ed ||
06/16/2010 07:23 ||
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#1
We are all genuinely concerned about China.
You only need to look at the culture that is coming out of the place to be worried.
On the Economist website, CCP spies snow the comments page if there is any unfavourable story about China say or the Dalai Llama is featured.
It's very rah rah Chinese Government is GREAT, US just trying to keep us down etc
It is sooooo Liebensraum (sp?) in flavour...
we need to expand and you're not letting us. The sense of entitlement is scary.
Or in Australia... when the Falun Gong wanted a protest rally, the Chinese Embassy allowed its CCP goons to organise a threatening counter rally and basically shut it down.
Freedom of speech was crushed in Australia that day - by a foreign power.
They locked up Stern Hu because they didn't like Rio Tinto negotiating hard for good iron ore contracts.
They have probed the northern coastline of Australia
All they need is a couple of aircraft carriers and their naval might will supercede America's in the next 2 years.
When they are militarily more powerful than the US, which is stretched and can barely keep the peace in two tinpot middle eastern disaster spots (afghanistan and iraq) then how do you think these two will go with each other?
China *wants* to flex its muscles.
No wonder the response from the US has been muted. They would be afraid to provoke a confrontation and rightly so. That is the fear of an intelligent, rational state.
Nobody wants to see a war between the US and China because it would be a world war and nukes would have to be used to win. And china has those, too.
#2
Of course no one will examine the internal contradictions that China must face to keep the game going. It's one thing to 'expel the foreigner' as the rallying cry to keep unity within a society, but it becomes difficult when the foreigner is someone your growing and productive middle class seek to emulate and model themselves upon.
#3
Anon1, my hope is that America will start addressing this in January, 2013.
In the meantime, Australia would be wise to get its ducks in a row.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/16/2010 9:37 Comments ||
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#4
No country would want a nuclear shooting match with us or any other nuke state. The winner of such would be unrecognizable from the loser. I think we are giving China a lot more credit than they warrant here, 2 years to surpass us with carriers, they are still a 2nd world country and limited by their military culture; a few loud Generals and a million dumbass privates.
#5
The Chinese could certainly build or buy a couple of carriers. But then they'd learn that driving them around the ocean is the easiest part -- using them as actual warfighting platforms is another matter.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
06/16/2010 12:18 Comments ||
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#6
China is making the same bet the Russian strategists did, that is, we wouldn't be the first to use nukes. So if they cripple our communications with trojans hidden in the cheap electonics we buy from them and via their very experienced hackers, they can score some serious victories from the initial (surprise) attack using conventional means. They assume that we would be too crippled to fight back effectively with conventional forces and wouldn't resort to nukes as long as they don't threaten to occupy US territory. Initially they'll settle for kicking us out of Asia.
#7
I remember a War College paper on the 2020 war with China, starting with a naval confrontation over the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea, and their winning. The lead up storyline has been playing out with amazing coherence, and the breakneck pace at which we are going bankrupt means that the military cuts looming will be enormous. In this poker game they seem to have the chips and are getting the cards nto go all in over their emerging Imperial aspirations. We ignore their fairly overt policy pressures and massive spying/technology theft/infrastructure preparations at our peril! They are methodically laying the groundwork for war, or more likely, a winning confrontation with Obumble in 2012?
#8
IMO many in Beijing = CPC [ fomrer CCCC] want RISING + ANY GLOBAL SUPERPOWER CHINA to be like the COLD WAR USA andor USSR-Soviet Union, which they feel is being hamstrung by international posturing in setting up OWG-NWO, + espec pro0-OWG US plans to deploy LIKELY US-DOMINATED GMD-TMD around the World, including in thier own Asian backyard.
1990's "GLOBALISM" = OWG-NWO = indics or infers the END OF TRADITIONAL/CLASSIC STATE-SPECIFIC NATIONALISM + SOVEREIGNTY, IN FAVOR OF "GLOBAL/UNIVERSAL", ANTI-NATIONALIST DIVERSITY + PLURALISM, ETC.
As per OWG "GLOBAL COMMIE-SOCIALIST ORDER" > iff the USA gives up its NATIONALISM + SOVEREIGNTY + IDENTITY, ETC. SO ALSO MUST RISING CHINA + EVERY OHTER ESTABLISHED WORLD POWER OR 'GREAT STATE" WANNABE[ at least at the National Govt. level + Higher].
IOW, "GLOBALISM" > is denying what the CHIN GOVT-PLA see as CHIN's "GREAT POWER" CURR + FUTURIST RIGHT TO TEMPOR OR PERMANENTLY INTIMIDATE, BULLY, INVADE + OCCUPY + WITHDRAW, TRADE OR BOMB, OTHER WORLD SOVEREIGN STATES AT BEIJING'S WILL [force projection = theater denial].
GLOBALISM > CHINA = USA, etal > ARE A OWG GLOBAL-SPACE SUPERPOWER, LIKE THE US, etal.; OR IT ISN'T, ALSO LIKE THE US, etal.
CHINA = UNCLEAR OR NO "MANIFEST DESTINY", + NO WOMEN FOR ITS GENERATIONS OF AGGRESSIVE YOUNG MALES GROWING UP WID NO BRIDES/WOMEN TO MARRY [one-child policy].
'Tis gener a GOOD THING that MANY CHINESE FAMILIES + OLDER ADULTS are repor WILLING TO DISOBEY THE GOVT + HIDE THEIR NEWBORN BABY GIRLS, BOTH MORALLY + POLITICALLY.
Anti-Islamists and neocons, including Liz Cheney, daughter of Darth Cheney, himself, all of whom are pro-Israel agitators. Classic agitprop -- check out the adjectives.
#1
Wow! Those shadowy, world-dominating conspiracies think of everything!
Posted by: Mike ||
06/16/2010 7:28 Comments ||
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#2
There is an overriding agreement on the right for strong fiscal austerity, and this will help bind them together. And Wilder's party will likely push for austerity at the expense of the Muslims. This should fly as "welfare reform". His party will also likely demand that the 'Fitna show trial' be canned.
But it all depends on personalities at this point. They could pull it off if they can stand each other, but if they get in each other's hair it will be problematic. Fingers crossed that they can make a strong coalition.
Keith Olbermann was critical of President Obama's Oval Office oil spill speech Tuesday night, and some of his viewers were disheartened by his criticism of the President. In response to their Tweets, Olbermann sent a nine-part response over Twitter. . . . His full response, compiled from his various tweets:
This is easily the smartest political leader I have ever seen, as good a political public speaker as I've heard, + last October I was privileged along with 11 other newspeople to spend 2 hours with him as he showed extemporaneous mastery of every one of two dozen topics fired at him by us in random order. I left the room wondering if we had ever before actually elected a president who was one of the 1,000 smartest people in the country (or maybe 100, or 10) as we had now.
Barack Hussein Obama has an IQ of 125, it says on the internet. I imagine Mr. Olberman believes that makes Mr. Obama one of the smartest people in the U.S.... although in fairness to Mr. Olberman, from where he's sitting, an IQ of 125 is much closer to the 5th standard deviation from the mean than it is to him.
I believe in him and in his presidency and he has frequently achieved success (in health care reform, particularly) by doing that for which I criticized him. I hope that is again the case now because the Gulf Speech was not up to his standards nor did it express his mastery of policy. And if you will stop watching because I said this, I'll be very sorry, but you will have been watching for the wrong reason. I am not, have not been, and will not be, any politician's, nor any president's, spokesman.
He forgot to demand Obama's resignation.
Some of the Huffasnuffaluffagus Post commenters are nearly as entertaining:
Personally, I don't care what Keith Olbermann had to say. I'm an adult with a brain. I watched the speech, thought it was a thoughtful speech and TURNED THE CHANNEL. I don't need a bunch of overpaid television entertainers to tell me what I just heard, how I was supposed to interpret it and what my opinion should be. I did see a part of the Olbermann/Matthews screed and wondered what speech that they had been listening to . . . then I watched some real entertainment television.
Someone of unremarkable intelligence like Olbermann Ouch!
is really not in a good position to assess the intelligence of those much brighter than he is, Ouch!
so it's not surprising that he fawns over Obama as one of the most intelligent 1,000 (or even fewer) people in the country. In fact, while Obama is certainly bright, he's nothing like THAT bright; Double ouch!
however, he works hard at keeping abreast of the issues and is also extremely slick (and better at pulling it off convincingly even than Bill Clinton was) in spinning them, so the combination makes for an image of extreme competence....
An image? Triple ouch!
To see what Obama truly is, you have to look at what he DOES and ignore what he SAYS, beguiling as the latter may be. What he DOES is serve corporate America. Sure, he's happy to give a nod to social conscience as long as the corporations benefit (as happened with health-care 'reform' and seems about to happen with carbon trading), but when a conflict arises the people come last (e.g., 18 months with no notable financial reform)....
The speech had to be simplified and dumbed down for the idol viewing masses. Can't you all see that?
Ahhhhhhh Keith. The Pontificating-est member of the All-White MSNBC crew.
I have NEVER trusted Keith. Ever since he delivered his fallacious and shameful "special comment" denouncing Hillary Clinton during the primaries, I realized that he is basically a sniveling, hysterical Sean Hannity wannabe, who wants to be for the left what Sean Hannity is for the right. He is basically hungry for ratings, and will go whichever way to get ratings. During the primaries when momentum was shifting from Clinton to Obama, he got on the Obama bandwagon. And, now, when criticism of Obama is mounting, he is jumping on that bandwagon as well. He has no principles beyond sticking his finger in the air to find out which way the wind is blowing. If you really want to see intelligent commentary, skip Keith and wait for Rachel Maddow at 9.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/16/2010 16:13 ||
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Awww, lost that tingly feeling going up your leg Keith?
Well, all boys grow up and go through the 'change' some day. No more walking through the hallways of MSNBC holding your books in front of your lap, so that should be a relief.
I think he may need hormone replacement therapy to cope with all these new 'changes' he's going through.
Gov. Charlie Crist checks a Florida beach for signs of oil
For all his reputation as the nation's Top Talker, Barack Obama took his sweet time giving a maiden Oval Office address to the country. And waiting another nearly 60 days to speak nationally about the oil spill that's become the worst environmental disaster in the nation's history.
Obama, the first modern president to pass his first full year in office without addressing the country from his historic desk, had the setting right. Just back from a day-and-a-half on the gulf coast listening, reassuring, talking tourism, eating seafood. He wore the proper suit, had the requisite flags and family photos in the background.
For 18 minutes he delivered the words crisply and forthrightly, though too often distracting anxious viewers with his fidgeting hands like the lecturing professor he once was. Or wait! Was Mr. Cool nervous? (See video below.)
Obama had the firmness down OK: Make no mistake etc. We will hold BP accountable etc. He....
...had the God references. The talk of real live shrimpers devastated. An American way of life threatened. And though he likened the spill more to an epidemic, he also brought in the requisite battle metaphors. And, in case anyone hasn't heard by now, Obama noted has another Nobel Prize winner in his cabinet, Stephen Chu, who hasn't been able to stop the oil leak either.
But there was something wrong. The first two-thirds of the president's remarks read just fine (Full text over here on The Ticket as usual). By golly, we'll get the money, we'll clean it up, no matter how long it takes.
But watching the president and hearing him was a little creepy; that early portion of the address was robotic, lacked real energy, enthusiasm. And worst of all specifics. He was virtually detail-less.
After almost two months of waiting through continuously contradictory reports, an anxious American public wanted to know, HOW are you going to accomplish all this?
Even Obama's cheerleaders over at MSNBC were complaining. "Where was the How in this speech?" demanded Keith Olbermann. Seriously.
#1
The bliners are coming off even the most ardent kool-aid drinkers. Rush actually played one of Carter's energy speeches and it's amazing how similar the theme was to Oblowhard's speech last night, now how much of this asshat's damage can we reverse, control, undo, in the remaining 2.5 years?
#2
MSM-NET > This 2010 GULF OIL GUSH may prove to be UNCONTROLLABLE?, + is occurring near the rough benchmark of Year 2013 where NASA's Boyz say the SUN COULD SEND TECH-DESTROYING MASSIVE SOLAR FLARES/STORM(S) TOWARDS EARTH.
NOT counting that whole Pert-alleged US-DEBT-AT-US$19.5TRILYUHN-BY-2015-VS- US-GDP-AT US14.0TRILYUHN thingy, the $$$ kind that the MSM-Net also repor may affect how Earth in future time effec responds to any nominal or de facto threat from COMET APOPHIS' FLYBY 2029-2036.
Correct me iff I'm wrong, but AFAIK PRE-OWG EARTH PERTS DON'T CURR POSSESS THE TECHS TO RELIABLE MEASURE, LET ALONE STOP, WHAT NASA SAYS MAY OCCUR CIRCA 2013.
WHAT IFF THE OIL PERTS ARE WRONG, AS PER THE DEPTH + BREADTH, SIZE + MAGNITUDE, OF GULF OIL GUSH IN RELATION TO REGION + EARTH'S CURRENT, FUTURE RESERVES.
Iff we let the GoM oil gush out for the MONTHS, YEARS, OR DECADES that is being described on the MSM-NET, we lose not only the GAS for our Autos + POVS, but we also lose the OIL-DERIVED INDUSTRIAL = ADVANCED MATERIALS NEEDED FOR OUR WAY OF LIFE + the EXPLORATION, COLONIZATION OF DEEP SPACE.
Whats that you say - US + BP-London + World will NEVER EVAR LET THAT HAPPEN? Wehell now, DATS WHY GOD + MADONNA, GUAM TAOTAMONAS + NOSTRADAMUS, ETC. CREATED IRANIAN + NORTH KOREAN + MILITANT THREATS, VARIOUS GEOPOL CRISES, ETC. didn't He??
One of the greatest time-sponges on the Internet is the "Television Tropes and Idioms" wiki, known affectionately as "TV Tropes." As the home page explains:
This wiki is a catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction....Tropes are devices and conventions that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations....
The wiki is called "TV Tropes" because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They exist in life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere....
There is a trope (and a TV Tropes page) called "Informed Ability" which I think is extremely relevant to current events.
A character's skill and abilities are frequently mentioned by the cast, but are nonexistent in practice.
More or less anything can be an informed ability, from personality traits to combat prowess; either the skill is talked about but never demonstrated, or the reverse is demonstrated instead; a character widely commented on as a superb wit tells crude, unfunny jokes, the master gunfighter's only sign of mastery is that he hasn't been to the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, the great detective struggles to solve a mystery the entire audience worked out the minute it was introduced....
It's a common occurance with creative abilities such as painting, writing, choreography, and especially musical composition. When a "creative" character is introduced and said to be talented and their work later shown, it frequently can't live up to the hype -- but we are still supposed to treat it as if it has. This is more likely the more talented the person is supposed to be; reaching the point of outright hubris on the part of the screenwriter if the character is supposed to be the greatest in the world in their field. It should be noted that this can be evaded by showing evidence that the person is successful and well-regarded or has skills their profession would give them without showing their work directly; it's only an informed ability if there is no meaningful evidence they have it at all (or clear evidence they do not),... Sound like anyone we know? Say, a prominent political figure who is supposed to be a master orator, whose power to inspire or persuade is unmatched by mere mortals--or so everyone was sayingbefore the election, at least.
American journalist, author and radio host, Aaron Klein, along with historian and researcher, Brenda J. Elliott, blow the lid off the dome of silence surrounding the Obama administration as they boldly unmask the nation's 44th president in their latest chilling monograph, The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists.' Providing close to 900 footnotes and countless pages of documentation, they reveal surreptitious ties to radical leftists of all stripes. If the title of this book sounds at all familiar, it is because it is a takeoff on the 1959 political thriller novel by Robert Condon called The Manchurian Candidate' in which the son of a prominent US political family has been brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist party.
While Klein does not infer that President Obama is part of a Communist sleeper cell, he does present an exhaustive investigation into President Obama's background and his ties to pivotal figures in the Communist movement, both inside the White House and out, who also happen to be major players in crafting legislation. This weighty tome weaves a complex spider's web narrative that is replete with a plethora of names and organizations of radical leftists, hitherto unknown by the public, who helped shape Obama's ideology and career.
Posted by: ed ||
06/16/2010 07:53 ||
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#1
really and truly. That is your president and he looks like he's doing an OK job
Your real enemy is China, followed by Russia, North Korea, Iran and extremist Muslims.
Posted by: Jefferson ||
06/16/2010 13:29 Comments ||
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Your real enemy is China, followed by Russia, North Korea, Iran and extremist Muslims.
They're all bad enough but I resent the hell out of people in our own government like Obama who are betraying us, selling us out to our enemies and bowing down to them. It's like the war is all over before it started and we lost.
On Tuesday night, we saw the debut of a new oratorical exercise, one that may, in the short termthough, mercifully, without Nancy Pelosi seated in the backgroundcome to rival the State of the Union (SOTU) address. Let us call it the State of the Oil Spill, or SOTOS.
Listening to the inaugural SOTOS, as brimming with bromides as the Gulf of Mexico is brimming with crude oil, one was struck by how passionless the president is. Don't get me wrong, passion is no substitute for action; and on its own, passion is empty theater. But one was struck by how Barack Obama continues to place peculiarly stubborn trust in his actuarial sideyou know, the side that was once described as cerebral,' but which is now capable of little better than a litany of facts and figures....
Obama has a plan: BP will pay.' Of course it will: It is legally obliged to. Did we need a president to tell us so, at prime time? But Obama has a civilizational point to make. In the opening of his address, right after al Qaeda, he spoke of the oil spill assaulting' our shores. In language redolent of the neocon fighting words of yore, directed against Islamist terrorism, he intoned that We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes,' to make sure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.' On the edge of my seat, I was waiting for the punch line: You're either against this oil spill, or with it. It never came.
Instead, we got the rinky-dink green tub-thump against America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels'; and the rinky-dink chest-puff that asserted that The time to enhance a clean-energy future is now.' And don't forget those energy-efficient windows' that Obama talked about in reverent tones, windows the president would like all of us to have...lest we defenestrate ourselves in a state of oil-crazed madness. That is, unless we seize the moment' and rally together and act as one nation.' Whee!
Posted by: Mike ||
06/16/2010 07:40 ||
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I could not bring myself to listen to Obumble's speech. I heard that it was Jimmah Carter's "malaise" speech all over again.
Obama is going to care for a 20 billion dollare "escrow" fund? Are they kidding? Obama cannot watch money, but he can overspend other people's money in a hurry.
Jonah Goldberg, National Review Commenting on the obsession with "green energy":
...This is infuriating and dangerous nonsense, as Matt Ridley demonstrates in his mesmerizing new book, The Rational Optimist. Let's start with biofuels. Ethanol production steals precious land to produce inefficient fuel inefficiently (making food more scarce and expensive for the poor). If all of our transport fuel came from biofuel, we would need 30 percent more land than all of the existing food-growing farmland we have today.
In Brazil and Malaysia, biofuels are more economically viable (thanks in part to really cheap labor), but at the insane price of losing rainforest while failing to reduce the CO2 emissions that allegedly justify ethanol in the first place. According to Ridley, the Nature Conservancy's Joseph Fargione estimates rainforest clear-cutting for biofuels releases 17 to 420 times more CO2 than it offsets by displacing petroleum or coal.
As for wind and solar, even if such technologies were wildly more successful than they have been, so what? You could quintuple and then quintuple again the output of wind and solar and it wouldn't reduce our dependence on oil. Why? Because we use oil for transportation, not for electricity. We would offset coal, but again at an enormous price. If we tried to meet the average amount of energy typically used in America, we would need wind farms the size of Kazakhstan or solar panels the size of Spain.
If you remove the argument over climate change from the equation (as even European governments are starting to do), one thing becomes incandescently clear: Fossil fuels have been one of the great boons both to humanity and the environment, allowing forests to regrow (now that we don't use wood for heating fuel or grow fuel for horses anymore) and liberating billions from backbreaking toil. The great and permanent shortage is usable surface land and fresh water. The more land we use to produce energy, the less we have for vulnerable species, watersheds, agriculture, recreation, etc.
"If you like wilderness, as I do," Ridley writes, "the last thing you want is to go back to the medieval habit of using the landscape surrounding us to make power."...
Posted by: Mike ||
06/16/2010 09:45 ||
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Professor Gary Becker will say that it would be up to individual governments to set a price, adding that a charge of $50,000 (£34,000) per immigrant could generate $50bn a year in the US.
The same sum could generate about £17bn a year in Britain, based on Office for National Statistics data which showed 503,000 immigrants arrived between October 2008 and September 2009.
"What the government would do is set a price, and the price would be determined by how many people they would like to admit, and then they would allow everyone to come in who could pay that price, aside from obvious exceptions like terrorists," he told The Daily Telegraph before delivering the 19th Institute of Economic Affairs Annual Hayek Memorial Lecture in London.
The American economist said that as well as being a revenue raiser for governments at a time of record deficits, the policy would ensure that only the most productive and committed immigrants were attracted, at a time when the present system was not working in countries including the UK and the US.
"If you were just coming temporarily it wouldn't be worth paying the price, so you'd get people committed to becoming British, or an American, or whatever it may be."
Professor Becker, who teaches at the University of Chicago and won the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science in 1992, said the most skilled immigrants would still be attracted, because they would be able to generate the highest returns from their investment in the entry fee.
He said the programme would also reduce opposition to immigration, by eliminating the sense that immigrants were getting "a free ride". He will argue that a government loan system should be introduced to ensure that young, ambitious people could borrow the entry fee and pay it back over time.
"Usually governments are encouraged to make more radical changes when they decide that things are pretty bad and the present solutions aren't working. That's the situation the UK is finding itself in, the US is finding itself in, and Germany, Scandinavia, and other countries," Mr Becker said.
#1
Doesn't Canada have a system like that? Somehow they've got a lot of dual-citizenship Lebanese who expect to be rescued when their country has a bit of a civil war while they're over there for summer vacation... and how did the Pakistanis and Somalis get in?
#2
Enforce the damn laws already on the books against illegal aliens, Mr Becker, and then maybe your idea might have merit. But until that day arrives, you can cram that brilliant plan where the sun don't shine.
President Obama doesn't like the fact that the Gulf oil spill reminds people of Hurricane Katrina, since the public response to that catastrophe hastened the decline of his predecessor's standing. He'd prefer that the American people be reminded of something else -- something that rallied people around their president. And so he told Politico over the weekend that the oil spill has "echoes of 9/11."...
It is worth considering the meaning of this profoundly wrongheaded analogy tonight when the president delivers his first Oval Office address -- his latest attempt to minimize the political damage the oil spill is wreaking on his reputation.
The first thing that needs to be said is this: The only thing the oil spill and 9/11 have in common is nothing.
Yes, 9/11 was very important and so is the spill. But many terrible things happen, are important -- and are unalike.... Just as in those cases, what's most notable about 9/11 and the oil spill is how essentially different they are. One was a brilliantly conceived and diabolical act of war; the other a horrific accident that was the last thing anybody wanted to happen. One was designed to decapitate the US government and deliver a mortal blow to the world's financial system; the other wasn't designed at all.
One was purposeful destruction intended to harm. The other is a purposeless catastrophe that was in no way intentional at all but will do great harm. One was an attack on the United States. The other was an accident.
So what on earth could the president have been thinking?
The first possibility is that there is some kind of perverse wish being expressed in these words. They have a wistful quality, as though the president wished he had a different crisis, a more popular crisis, on his hands.
Of course the fact that 9/11 would prove to be a net political benefit for George W. Bush was not the result of happenstance. It was due to the way he responded. After a few days of discomfiting uncertainty, Bush found his voice and his purpose, delivering a series of powerful speeches that suggested a seriousness of purpose in regard to his presidential responsibilities that no one had actually expected of him. Whatever happened afterward to shake that perspective on him in the minds of so many, the fact was that Bush had to meet the moment to secure the political advantage.
Obama has had no such moment in relation to the oil spill, because he couldn't have. BP didn't mean to do it and has been laboring desperately to fix what got broken. It is liable for what it did, it does not deny its own culpability, and it may itself be capsized as a result.
What the deployment of the 9/11 analogy suggests is that Obama would like to treat BP as though it were al Qaeda, at least rhetorically -- a villain for him to confront on behalf of the wounded American people. That may seem politically shrewd to Obama and his team, but it will have parlous consequences. The analogy muddies and obfuscates.
By comparing an unwanted disaster to a conscious act of war, Obama is adding an improper moral dimension to the effort to clean up the Gulf -- a moral reckoning that will make it harder rather than easier to focus on the task of actually plugging the damn hole....
Posted by: Mike ||
06/16/2010 07:33 ||
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The analogy muddies and obfuscates.
Well, of course, that's the way his brain twists,
Instead of all for one and one for all, his philosophy says
"All for one, and I'm the one".
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
06/16/2010 13:01 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
