Best wishes to all our Merry Band for their holiday and travels. See everyone on the other side.
Archives for 2010
Garfinkle’s ‘Obama As Innocent Abroad’ — American Foreign Policy As Rorschach Test
We first met Adam Garfinkle 30 years ago or so when he was starting out at FPRI. We’re under no illusions about his ideological prisms. His re-printed piece in “The American Interest”, ‘An Innocent Abroad: The Obama Foreign Policy’ easily could come from Hudson or the usual suspects. Yet he correctly observes:
Indeed, the fuzzy indeterminacy that characterizes the Obama foreign policy holds true even at the highest echelon of strategy. The United States is the world’s pre-eminent if not hegemonic power. Since World War II it has set the normative standards and both formed and guarded the security and economic structures of the world. In that capacity it has provided for a relatively secure and prosperous global commons, a mission nicely convergent with the maturing American self-image as an exceptionalist nation. To do this, however, the United States has had to maintain a global military presence as a token of its commitment to the mission and as a means of reassurance to those far and wide with a stake in it. This has required a global network of alliances and bases, the cost of which is not small and the maintenance of which, in both diplomatic and other terms, is a full-time job.*
On Your Mark, Set . . . START!
Silvio Berlusconi In Historical Perspective . . .
The scandals that buzz ever more insistently around Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are hardly the first that old Rome has ever seen. Julius Caesar, in addition to being a good deal more intelligent and better looking than his contemporary counterpart (although similarly challenged when it came to the amount of hair on his head), was also a far more charismatic lover—and unlike Berlusconi, who recently declared “It’s better to be passionate about pretty girls than gay,” Caesar happily bedded both men and women. Hordes of prostitutes flocked in their time to the imperial residence on the Palatine Hill, as many, perhaps, as have ever gathered chez Berlusconi for sing-alongs, gelati, and “bunga-bunga” (a word and orgiastic practice the prime minister allegedly learned from his good friend Muammar Qaddafi).
Douglas E. Schoen and Patrick H. Caddell, Super Geniuses
This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.
To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.
Because the Movement totally respects unilateral capitulation to build ‘compromise.’ How is it that Schoen and Caddell live comfortably and get laurels for this nonsense? Instead of say facing unemployment, foreclosure, struggling with rapacious medical bill collectors like so many millions of Americans? Life indeed is not fair.
Let’s face it: ‘serious’ Democrats are now debating only precisely how much of the New Deal to give up to Jim DeMint. Harsh? Consider Kevin Drum’s insightful breakdown of what’s really in the so-called chairman’s mark of the Deficit Reduction Commission. When examined carefully, as seen in Drum’s chart below, the draft’s Norquistian roots are unmistakable. Drum’s blog linked above is a solid analysis. So far, Drum’s clarity does not seem widely shared among Democrats.
Perhaps the Democrats’ destiny is to be the feeble catalyst for the Movement’s tearing asunder the American social fabric. We share readers’ comments here that returning the current Democrats to majorities in 2012 offers little hope. Even with a primary challenge.
Still, one thing is clear. Urging a lame(r) duck Boy King administration is unbelievably idiotic. It’s like these people are chugging ‘Four Loko of Stupid’ six packs.
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