Puzzlement of POTUS on the Left is well-advised.
Chris Matthews, above, in a stylized burst of promotion for his new book, the four millionth devoted to the legend of Jack Kennedy, now dwarfing every character but Robin Hood and Santa Claus, decides to score against POTUS Obama by mentioning that POTUS does not much act like a leader of men and women. The original 2007-8 bargain was, elect a rock star, and you get a rock star. Matthews complains that POTUS has not told us what he will do with a second term. An important detail. Am told by GOP ops that this concern for what Obama Unbound looks like for the second term is a major weapon for fundraising and vote-rallying. POTUS Obama may in fact be incapable of saying what he will do. POTUS got to his elevated status by letting everyone project their dreams and to-do lists and resentments on to him, as if he were a blank wall for the church social movie night. I think of the fabulous Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels of 1941, when our heroic super-goofball comedy director, Joel McCrea, goes in search of the real America and discovers hard times and cruelty in the still-despairing economy of the 1930s. This is before the war boom lifted GNP and employed 12 million men for the military, the ultimate in stimulus. The revelation scene in the story is what Joel McCrea's character, Sullivan, discovers in a church in Louisiana, filled with the poor and afflicted, who laugh at a Looney Tunes projected on the church wall one night. The discovery is that laughter is a philosophical triumph, and that making people laugh is genius. POTUS Obama is that church wall today. Candidate Obama understood that his party and the Independents were able to project joy onto his blankness. Matthews understands that it doesn't work this time. The fact of the Obama blankness is an ordinary, dogmatic, uninspiring, progressive Democrat who employs expedience and blame-shifting just like the next guy on the Hill. Not a leader. Instead, a class-warrior from the very old school, except when he is an elitist from the very old school; and in four years of travels here and worldwide, POTUS Obama has not learned what Preston Sturges opines, that the joy of laughter is the best cure for the country; that the pious, pretentious, preaching scold of Obama is the wrong direction with the wrong tone. This is not about helping Obama the rock star on the road selling one million more records for another platinum on the wall, which is the sad remains of what Obama has always been, a promoter for Obama. This is about our missing joy.
We interrupt this silliness about Matthews' idolatry of Obama (who the f cares?), OWS, Rockefeller, et al., for an important announcement from WR Mead's blog:
The Asian Surge Continues
Bases in Australia, opening to Myanmar, uranium deals between Australia and India: the hurricane of China-balancing activity in Asia last week was one of the rare sets of events that can truly be called historic.
And now, as it turns out, it isn’t over. Not only did all but two of the Asian nations present at the latest summit join the US (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/world/asia/wen-jiabao-chinese-leader-shows-flexibility-after-meeting-obama.html?_r=2) in calling on China to negotiate its South China Sea claims in a multilateral forum, but Singapore is apparently about to agree to host the US Navy as well. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/navys-next-stop-in-asia-will-set-china-on-edge/2011/11/18/gIQAzY7wYN_blog.html?tid=wp_ipad
Rarely has diplomacy moved so fast and so far. The world will now wait for China’s response.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled diversions . . .
Thank Hillary for the Spectacular Asia/Oz/G20 triumph.
Singapore is majority Chinese, that is quite surprising to hear. PRC is a loose canon.
Syria will likely fall between now and election day. Iran and Russia will try to prop it up and keep NATO out of Iran's and Russia's BackYard.
Corlyss D:
You and Walter Russell Mead are quite right to focus on these Asian developments as the really important news right now. However, it is, as usual in politics, bad news as well as good news. The good news is that even Barack Obama appears ready to try to contain Chinese expansion, especially in the critical South China Sea, by basing the Marines and the US Navy in that area. The bad news is that both are about to be savagely cut budget-wise, with the Navy reduced to 1916 ship levels, thanks to the failure of the so-called Supercommittee of Congress to come to some deficit-cutting agreement.
Of course, this is the direct result of the boneheaded deal Dumb and Dumber -- aka., Mitch McConnell and John Boehner -- made to raise the debt ceiling last August. Imagining that an or-else threat to slash the Pentagon budget would pressure the Democrats into a deficit reduction arrangement is like the IQ-challenged terrorist who tries to hijack an airliner by pointing a gun at his own head and threatening to shoot. Typically stupid and gullible Republicans! And being outmaneuvered by Patty Murray, one of the Senate's most egregious potted plants, besides? Gimme a break!
As for The Bamster, he is now behaving like a typical Democrat, namely, by piling additional commitments on our armed forces while simultaneously cutting their funding and resources. It's great that Singapore and even hard-left PM Julia Gillard's Australia are offering us bases, but what happens when they find out that we have little or nothing left to send there? In addition, the Chinese are still our bankers-in-chief while our economy continues to stagger and our deficit balloon, a disadvantageous situation Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Patty Murray seem determined to exacerbate. So here's some historically typical Democrat stupidity redux -- hollow out the armed forces to redirect funding to domestic giveaways while simultaneously making significant new overseas commitments that only deceive our friends and provoke our most powerful enemies. That's why Democrat presidents who always cry "peace, peace" instead deliver wars that we lose or almost lose and that their Republican successors have to fight. On balance, Corlyss, I'd say that, in the South China Sea region, the bad news is currently winning.
Sapientia:
In Obama's czar-ridden universe, it's often hard to tell exactly what policies Hillary Clinton has actually developed and/or honchoed. So, if we're supposed to give Hillary credit for the essentially positive Asia/Oz/G20 developments shouldn't we also "credit" her for the essentially negative impacts of the "Arab Spring," our counterproductive a**-kissing "engagement" policies towards hostile Iran and its Syrian poodle, our disgusting back-stabbing of Israel, and all the rest of our steadily unfolding Middle East policy debacle? And if not, why not?
"The bad news is that both are about to be savagely cut budget-wise, with the Navy reduced to 1916 ship levels, thanks to the failure of the so-called Supercommittee of Congress to come to some deficit-cutting agreement."
I believed this until about 10 days ago. Then I remember a factoid about all these trigger devices Congress constructs to control its spending: there's always a loophole. That's what makes them kabuki instead of kamikaze. They look good to the rubes back home, but they are utterly meaningless.
BTW, that's why the concept of a balanced budget amendment is so much meaningless babble. People who advocate one are either naive or duplicitous. Congress is King. It can do or undo whatever it damn well pleases. I see no realistic solution for this fact.
Speaking of The One's visit to Oz, apparently he can't tell one Anglosphere ally from another. Some Aussies are mildly annoyed that he got the greeting so totally wrong. Aussies don't say "Cheers!" That's a British greeting. Aussies say, "G'day, mate!"
From my Aussie friend:
In Australia, beside the two I mentioned ["Hi!" or "Hello!"], it is mostly "G'day Mate" (pronounced Mite). Especially in the military you would not hear Cheers in Australia, in fact, I have never in my whole life been greeted by "cheers". Obama sounded like an ass trying to imitate the Australian way of speaking.
Well, let me be the first here to say that I'm absolutely delighted that the DR Committee failed to reach an agreement. The sequestering cuts in 2013 sound just fine to me, although I have to raise an eyebrow at all the handwringing I see both here and on the liberal front - (I think they're still two different places, just barely) - the cuts are really fairly nominal. I find it very hard to believe that all these terrible holes are going to open up in our national defense if the cuts go into effect. Really, the people who bemoan these defense cuts are starting to sound like teachers who have to contribute a bit more towards their pensions and say, "But it's the CHILDREN who will suffer the most from this ..." in a whiny falsetto.
"Congress is King. It can do or undo whatever it damn well pleases."
I believe the military budget cuts aren't supposed to start until 2013. Hopefully, by then we'll have a new POTUS, a Republican Congress and a reprieve of the budget cuts.
Of course, I like the Singapore and Australia bases. But as I've said here before I think Barry's foreign policy/military cuts will ultimately be more harmful to the US than his failed domestic/ economic policies.
The bad news is that I'm starting to hear some rumblings again about Hosebag Hillary for POTUS in 2012. Ruh-ro!! That's one vampire that just won't die .... where are James Woods and Dan Baldwin when you need them?
If Obama sounded like an ass then he problably had the Australian accent down just right.
John, can you post a link to where I can buy some of that 0.7 pepper spray? There are a couple of dogs that always snarl at me when I walk by, plus a couple of my wife's friends, I wouldn't mind using it on.
Lou I got my pepper spray at Cabela's. Buy 2 and give one to the wife. It wouldn't shock me to find it on the shelf in the 7-11 next to the 5 hour energy.
Knowing how funny people are about dogs, I'm guessing no one cares if you hose down your wife's friends, but it's mandatory hard time for using it on a dog. I recommend spraying the dog's owner instead. I justify that position by noting that in all my time delivering newspapers and pizza, I never met a nice dog who had a mean owner.
"John, can you post a link to where I can buy some of that 0.7 pepper spray?"
LOL, Lou. Why don't you ask him if he owns a gun too while you're at it?
BTW, you can't own pepper spray in any amounts to do you any good in Ca or NY. DC won't allow it, period, without police approval. Of course criminals can get it without restrictions if they were of a mind to use something so declasse.
http://reviews.ebay.com/States-With-Pepper-Spray-Restrictions?ugid=10000000032578507 The guide was updated in July 11, so it should still be current.
You also can't own marijuana, cocaine or LSD, or drive in excess of the speed limit, or cheat on your taxes, or drive without seatbelts, or text while you're driving, or not have a CO detector in your house, or .....
ZZZZZZZZZZ
What he said.
Bingo; spot on.
Who listens to current POTUS and gets inspired AT ALL?
Puzzlement of POTUS on the Left is well-advised.
Chris Matthews, above, in a stylized burst of promotion for his new book, the four millionth devoted to the legend of Jack Kennedy, now dwarfing every character but Robin Hood and Santa Claus, decides to score against POTUS Obama by mentioning that POTUS does not much act like a leader of men and women. The original 2007-8 bargain was, elect a rock star, and you get a rock star. Matthews complains that POTUS has not told us what he will do with a second term. An important detail. Am told by GOP ops that this concern for what Obama Unbound looks like for the second term is a major weapon for fundraising and vote-rallying. POTUS Obama may in fact be incapable of saying what he will do. POTUS got to his elevated status by letting everyone project their dreams and to-do lists and resentments on to him, as if he were a blank wall for the church social movie night. I think of the fabulous Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels of 1941, when our heroic super-goofball comedy director, Joel McCrea, goes in search of the real America and discovers hard times and cruelty in the still-despairing economy of the 1930s. This is before the war boom lifted GNP and employed 12 million men for the military, the ultimate in stimulus. The revelation scene in the story is what Joel McCrea's character, Sullivan, discovers in a church in Louisiana, filled with the poor and afflicted, who laugh at a Looney Tunes projected on the church wall one night. The discovery is that laughter is a philosophical triumph, and that making people laugh is genius. POTUS Obama is that church wall today. Candidate Obama understood that his party and the Independents were able to project joy onto his blankness. Matthews understands that it doesn't work this time. The fact of the Obama blankness is an ordinary, dogmatic, uninspiring, progressive Democrat who employs expedience and blame-shifting just like the next guy on the Hill. Not a leader. Instead, a class-warrior from the very old school, except when he is an elitist from the very old school; and in four years of travels here and worldwide, POTUS Obama has not learned what Preston Sturges opines, that the joy of laughter is the best cure for the country; that the pious, pretentious, preaching scold of Obama is the wrong direction with the wrong tone. This is not about helping Obama the rock star on the road selling one million more records for another platinum on the wall, which is the sad remains of what Obama has always been, a promoter for Obama. This is about our missing joy.