Far East Cynic

You know its pretty grim when even these types of companions start talking back:

According to Fucked Gaijin-this was ranked the worst Japanese movie of 2009.

Check out Millie’s new blog!

For the weekend. Posting may be non-existent.

There is probably no better time than the State of the Union to render forth my verdict on the first year of the Obama administration. Unlike what the folks in teabagger land think-it has not been the complete disaster they portray it to be-nor has it been as good as some might have thought it was or could have been.

If I had to give Obama a grade-it would be a C+, although my gut feeling errs to the lower grade.-straight C.

Part of the problem does not lie with the President at all-it lies with electorate he was selected to lead.  Joe Klein is right and Lex is horribly wrong-a large number of them ARE really stupid and are unable to comprehend the problems that are at hand. As Klein stated-they are too dumb to thrive. Just because there may be a large number of them who  may all feel the same way-and because they have the right to be stupid if they so choose-doesn’t make them any smarter. The collective ignorance however, does aggravate Obama’s problem which is primarily of communication. He has yet to communicate with them on terms that they can understand. Most of them anyway. The percentage of the population that operate on my overall level of intellectual brilliance was always small-and has gotten smaller over the last decade.

To paraphrase Rumsfeld-you govern with the people you have, not the people you wish you had.

And clearly Obama has been unable to communicate with them on why they need to pull their heads out of the sand and actually do something about their problems.

When I was a young man-people actually believed that government had a role to play in developing the whole of society-because the one thing that makes America different is that it wants to uplift all of its citizens. Not be like India or China who are perfectly comfortable writing off a third of their population to poverty to ensure life is good for the rest.  Even Nixon still stood for that in some of his proposals. Then along came the late 70′s which set the stage and then the Reagan and Clinton eras where Republicans were able to reverse the message: “Government is the source of your problems. Trust in the markets and all will be well.”

The problem was demonstrated clearly in the first decade of this century: Markets don’t fix things and a lot of good hard working  people get left behind. Markets are about a large number of losers and a small group of winners.  The evidence was there in the 80′s and again in the 90′s and if you weren’t paying attention then-the last nine years should have really driven the point home-the markets, left solely to themselves, have failed the average American.

And that is where Obama really failed. Because he never came up with a coherent, easy to understand, sound bitey, make the people feel good,  message about why there are some things that only government can or should do.  Because only it has the resources and more importantly the charter,  to float all the nations boats. Markets can be partners in that effort-but they can’t be left to do it on their own. They have to be incentivized to do the right thing.

Because otherwise, they won’t.

His opposition was able to come up with a message that resonated-because the majority of the American population was either unwilling or unable to listen to the factual evidence.  That by the way was Klein’s main point: “ The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people…especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far.”

Substitute “Health care” or “Why Iraq is hurting our long term national interests” or even “Why the Afghan people are hopeless” into that above statement-and it reads the same. The President has done a poor job of communicating the mess we need to extricate ourselves from. Or why the Bush administration deserves so much blame for steering the train off the tracks.

So in this “advanced placement” class of national problems, C’s don’t cut the mustard.

The President needs to be doing it better and harder because he’s only got a limited window of opportunity. More importantly he has yet to rid himself or at the least discipline his two biggest albatrosses: Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Those two people are the face of the Democratic party in America today. And to put it bluntly-as symbols of a party, they suck. More importantly, leaving the business of getting a bill designed and passed up to them has simply played into the hands of his opposition. If Obama hopes to accomplish anything-he’s got to beat the stuffing out of both of them and soon.

Very well, what has Obama done that was right?

Well first of all, he has the right idea about Iraq. That god-forsaken country is a loss leader that will bring us nothing but misery-no matter how hard we try to help them. Every day Americans spend there is wasted resources that could be put to better use. Our objectives in Iraq were accomplished five years ago-we are more than a little late in leaving.

Second, he has done a lot to restore an American image that was tarnished by his predecessor-although its not totally blemish free. Nonetheless, if he can convince the other nations of the world that the US is serious about coming to grips with the new realities of the multi-polar world, the better off we will all be. Much of the last year, I think, has been a temper tantrum by people who should have recognized that the world dominated by the USA is giving way to a new era-where it won’t be two nations in competition-it will be many nations in competition. And there is not a damn thing we can do about it. Obama seems to show that he recognizes it-even if he can’t say it aloud.

He’s not really changed anything from the Bush foreign policy-which he ought to be at least getting some credit for, but he’s not. There’s that communication thing again.

Domestically, he’s right, things could have and would have been,  a lot worse without acting to stop the downward slide. However, those masters of the markets, failed to recognize that they had a responsibility too-and as a result they have gotten a pass on really sleazy behavior. If had my way, there would be more than a couple of bankers in jail right now-or hanging from lamp posts. They were supposed to take the money they got and pump it into the markets-but they didn’t. They were more concerned with getting themselves able to pay obscene salaries to their executives.

But here again-that has not been highlighted.

“What we have here-is a failure to communicate”.

And that is why, on balance, the last year has been wasted. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, has it really fallen? It would appear not, because the other side has been doing all the talking. That either changes or the grade point average will decline.

Finally, someone says what I have been thinking ever since I read the news:

Am I the only one who would suggest that maybe David Duchovny and Tiger Woods aren’t the ones with a problem, and perhaps their respective wives are? Could it be that I’m the only person who has noticed the scarcity of single men entering “sex rehab?” The last time I checked, marital status wasn’t considered a symptom of anything other than poor judgement.

Tiger Woods is no more of a sex addict than I am an advocate of celibacy. This is just a way to put the yoke on him and have a reason to blame him-if he responds again to his natural instincts.

America’s treatment industry is built upon the need to control others and what they do with their lives-regardless of whether they show up for work on time or not.  Coercion into treatment-backed up by the threat of ruination -is what keeps the treatment industry alive and thriving. Its a self replicating kind of thing.

Coerced 12 step treatment has been successfully challenged in several court cases-yet companies like Nike still see it as the ultimate hammer to maintain control over their investment.

Tiger Woods is not a sex addict. He is a man-like so many men-who bought into a large set of lies about the so called joys of married life, and when actually having experienced its inevitable let down-sought a means of expressing his own independence.

Tiger me boy-you don’t have to take it lying down.

To bash some really stupid liberal ideas.

I am often accused of “going to the dark side”-and endorsing the whole Democratic agenda. Truth is-I have not. It is posts like this one, from Balloon Juice ( a blog I generally like) that keep me from going whole hog into the side of fruits and nuts.

I can’t quite get the logic of this:

Perhaps that will be true for health reform, though no one has any real clarity yet about what the path forward is. But for the larger progressive agenda, including initiatives like immigration reform, cap and trade, and LGBT issues, the aftershocks of Brown’s win may be far more detrimental. One Capitol Hill veteran I spoke with on Friday was particularly pessimistic, for instance, about the prospects that the White House will push for the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” this year. 

“I’m getting the sense they will try to ignore this as long as possible and then they will maybe trot out some commission to delay it another year if they are forced to do anything,” said the person. “It will be fascinating to see what the LGBT community does if they do this.”

Ahem. WTF?

So,  let me see if I get this straight. With health insurance reform on the ropes-simply because of the election of one Republican Senator- who likes posing nude in women’s magazines-now is the time to bring out a very contentious gay rights issue?

The President has a whole lot of people who think he is the incarnation of the devil himself-and NOW is the time you pick to bring up a very contentious, and incindentally not so popular social issue?

Not to mention that a large majority of the military population is still not comfortable with the dark skinned occupant of the Oval Office.

As I pointed out to the herd over there:

If you think the health care message got distorted-wait till tea baggers get their hands on this. They will have a field day with it-and the reason health care is in trouble to begin with is : 1) People don’t understand it and 2) what they think they understand is often wrong. But the Republicans were able to dominate the discussion because they were able to come up with a coherent theme. It was wrong but it stuck. “ Health Care Reform equals Socialized medicine and it will jack up your taxes.”

This will get quickly morphed into a national security discusssion of ” Obama does not care about the troops”.

What the hell are you guys smoking? Because I want to experience that high. Going full bore gay-has to be about the stupidest thing you can ever do.  

It sounds good on paper-but in reality it doesn’t fly. I’m a Republican who voted for Obama because I had had it with Iraq, GTMO,  and the economy. There are a lot of people like me who can put our RINO caps on and go back to voting Republican. Obama won on a coalition of independents who switched sides. If Massachusetts proves one thing it is that coalition is a fragile one.

But hey, knock your self out screaming for gay issues at a time when Obama’s numbers are sinking. Let me know how that works out.

New Orleans vs Indianapolis. 

And the Steelers will be drinking beer and watching the Super Bowl on TV. AS Frank DeFord would point out-socialism appears to have worked.

But don’t ask a Jets fan that:

I almost don’t have the heart to write this, but I can’t help noticing a striking and appalling similarity between the New York Jets and the Democratic Party—perennial losers both, despite frequent sparks of promise, whose most memorable talent is finding creative ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. For instance, if someone had told me a year ago today, as we were celebrating Barack Obama’s inauguration, that the president’s signature first-year effort, health care reform, would be on life support 365 days later because Teddy Kennedy’s Senate seat had been won by a right-wing former Cosmo model, I would have said that’s as probable as a team hiring and then losing the best coach in football in less than 24 hours, or losing a key game on a fake spike, or… Jets fans with better memories than mine can, I’m sure, come up with dozens more aptly ludicrous examples. Ludicrous: like taking power after the other party has spent the previous eight years running the country into a ditch and a year later finding yourself in disarray and retreat while the party of demonstrated failure regains the upper hand. Or winning the popular vote in a disputed presidential election but then somehow ceding both the tactical and moral high ground. Or, after years in the wilderness, finally electing a popular, effective president who squanders nearly his entire second term for a couple of blowjobs.

Same Old Jets. Same Old Dems.

Today, of course, “Gang Green” is riding high, confident of a coming victory in Indianapolis. Cocky, even. Good luck with that, Jets fans. Sadly, I’m actually a 49er fan, which these days, to extend the political-football metaphor, is like being a Whig.

I’d say that paragraph is pretty accurate. Go Colts!

I have been following with interest the flurry of activity-both for and against-the supposed “defection” of Charles Johnson from the ranks of the really all American true blue red blooded patriots, wise thinkers, and only knowledgable personages in the blogosphere. Two articles have tried to capture the debate here and here.

I find the controversy interesting because its an interesting commentary,  in macro, on what has happened to political blogging and bloggers at all levels over the last few years and the last year in particular.

Charles Johnson, for those who don’t know-founded one of the first mega-Blogs Little Green Footballs. (LGF for short).  He was one of the first persons who made the connection to Osama Bin Laden when 9-11 happened and was known for being very much on the side of a hawkish, conservative few of the world and politics.

From the Times article:

But enemies themselves are a kind of currency on the Internet, and for every attack L.G.F. provoked as a place that permitted and even fostered bigotry against Muslims in particular, new allies rose up to link themselves to Johnson and his causes. Those links were both spiritual and literal; allowing (or preventing) less-successful sites to post a link to yours, and maybe offering them a link on your own site in return, turns you into a kind of taste maker, a locus of tangible power. L.G.F. was, by 2007 or so, at the heart of a vast, amorphous grid of right-wing sites of every description, an interdependence that Johnson himself had become, in a way, too popular to control.

Until this last year. Now the sycophantsreaders of Michelle Malkin don’t have enough bad things to say about him. Why? Because he broke from them in a very public way. Since then he has been called a variety of things-most of them not good- by those who used to count him as a kindred spirit.

Charles Johnson biggest crime as far as they are concerned? Not just merely calling them on their lies-but then having the unadultered gall to deny them a place to insult him. Primarily because-using his computer savvy-he has locked a fair number of his former compatriots out of his site.

Hmm. Maybe he’s not quite as patient with being called “pathetic” and “bitter” as I am.

Whatever the reason, its definitely gotten the sheep stirred up. He’s been well and dutifully attacked and the opposition has even resorted to bringing out the “gay card“. ( Funny, where I have seen that done before?).

Everyone has their explanation-but no seems able to accept the most obvious, the Charles Johnson truly changed his mind. That,  it seems,  is a cardinal sin on both the extreme sides of the aisle.  Johnson explained that clearly when he made his post in November:   “The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.  I won’t be going over the cliff with them.”

That by the way is a perfectly reasonable sentiment. And it doesn’t, unlike what some of my own commenters have alledged, make you automatically a liberal looney toon.  Just like with the Republican party and middle of the road folks such as myself-it was the right wing blogosphere that walked away from Johnson-not the other way around.

Why am I so interested in it? Because this drama has been repeated over and over again with smaller and less hit worthy blogs-and the attacks have been the same. Watching it play out the macro level-provides fascinating insight into the direction of the blogosphere-and the attitudes of its less than reasonable inhabitants.

And besides-every loves to watch a good cat fight. Hell hath no fury like stupidity scorned.

The other shoe drops:

As the Navy’s unprecedented response to Haiti’s post-earthquake humanitarian crisis entered its third week, the sudden spike in operational tempo showed no sign of slowing. More warships, Military Sealift Command and Maritime Administration vessels were on station or en route to help answer a desperate call for supplies and medical help.

The large fleet presence raised two big questions that Navy officials said they could not publicly address as the Haiti mission unfolded:

How will it affect deployments? And what will it cost?

As Navy Times went to press Jan. 22, the U.S. had committed some 30 Navy, Coast Guard, MSC and MarAd ships to its Haitian task force, serving as lily pads for helicopters, helping to restore Port-au-Prince’s shattered harbor or evacuating Americans. Some of the vessels were called up from a reserve status, as with the hospital ship Comfort, so the duration of their missions would not have much effect for other units.

But each day a Navy warship spent off Haiti was a day another ship had to take its place elsewhere in the world, or a day it couldn’t prepare for its previously scheduled Navy tasking.

I’m not saying the effort is not necessary-but if the Navy had more ships than flag officers-instead of the other way around-this could be more easily accommodated.

But it seems to have become reality. Except its in Japan, not JFK and the leading protaganist is Chinese not from a former Soviet Republic:

Japan Probe explains:

It has now been about 80 days since a Chinese human rights activist has started living inside Narita Airport- stuck because his country doesn’t want him back:

The translation can be found here.

And that’s what we need right now:

Its been an interesting week-albeit a disappointing one in many ways. Some short notes on the week that American political see saw began its ride back down.

Issue  #1:

I have read in three different forums now-disgruntled tea party fans who are quite upset at being called the term “tea bagger”. Since the term has a sexual connotation they are quite bent out of shape that someone might want to use that term as one of disdain for them and their movement. A specific quote disparaging use of the term pointed out: “We are supposed to be intellectuals not gutter mouths who can’t find acceptable English to replace vulgar overtures.”

It might fall on more receptive ears were it not for one thing:  these people are disinclined to return the favor.  The same people who are begging for civility on the one hand, are more than willing to go out on a Saturday with a several hundred of their compatriots and call the folks who disagree with them any assortment of names that are guaranteed to make non aficionados of  right wing politics angry.  In the past year I have been called, in no particular order: Nazi, Socialist, Statist ( whatever the hell that term means), liberal, communist, and unpatriotic. Not to mention the real irony of saying “let’s play nice” while carrying around any number of signs portraying opposition politicians as Hitler, The Joker, The Devil, and the other lesser nice things bordering on real racism.

But somehow, I am the bad guy for calling them a word play on the  name of their movement.

Kind of makes it hard to accept that they are really serious about that term “civility”, don’t you think?

I hold the tea party movement in contempt for three reasons:

1) Its intellectually dishonest. Tea partiers state over and over again that they are “just plain folks who want  to continue the American Dream of pursuing Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” And people who want health insurance reform because they are tired of getting the same raw deal don’t want  to pursue the American dream? Give me a break.

Furthermore-their continued harping on the founding fathers-and their claim to a tie to the American Revolution is a real stretch. Especially when you read what the founding fathers actually said, vs what the tea party talking points tell them. It insults my intelligence. Especially when you see them “quoting” the Constitution and constitutional case law- but ignoring the parts that don’t fit their narrative or the context of the judicial opinions they cite.

2) As was pointed out earlier, their claims about being disgusted with both parties sound more than a little hollow. Where were the demonstrators in 2002 when the Congress was rolling back taxes at the same time it was ramping up spending?  Where were the folks who claim it is their heartfelt desire for “a smaller federal government, fiscal conservatism, more states rights and greater individual liberties, ” when the same federal government was trampling on them through the auspices of the Patriot Act, the expanded wiretap authorities of the various anti-terrorism laws, a war started for no good reason via means outside of the designated constitutional path-a declaration of war-and has cost over 5000 good and true Americans their lives in a cause that accomplishes nothing for the nation? The simple truth is-they were not there and could not have been bothered to be there. It was only on January 20, 2009 that their anger was somehow kindled. And if its about more freedom-then why are these people somehow so hung up on what people do in their bedroom and with whom they do it with?

3) The real thing I don’t like about the teabaggers and their movement is that it is not a movement at all. It is a carefully planned and aggressive misuse of a genuine sentiment-real concern about the end effects of planned legislation ( like insurance reform)-for very narrow political purposes, namely to get friends of Dick Armey and their friends into the positions he wants for them.  As was also pointed out by folks wiser than me, “ When your money floweth from the teat of the insurance industry, you are perhaps little more than a tool of corporate interests, either wittingly, or worse, not.”

The people behind the curtain think they can keep the wild eyed crazies within the movement in control-as I recall that’s what a lot of Communist Russians said in 1917 or Germans in 1932. Look how well those “movements” turned out. Not so well.

The anger these people are stoking is just right for a demagogue to jump into and ride on to a path to a real dictatorship if they are not careful. And these folks, many of whom are nice enough if you keep them away from Fox News and Glenn Beck long enough-have no idea of the anger they are stoking with their signs and slogans.  The demagogues are out there-witness Sarah Palin-but they just haven’t hit on quite the right one yet. Trust me however-he’s out there, just waiting his chance. He’ll ( and it will be a he) be charming, well spoken, well groomed, well educated and will ride a wave of popular resentment.- Just like the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania avenue did. Or worse yet-more reasonable people will be so afraid of the emotional violence the tea partiers have set in motion that they themselves will do unreasonable things. The liberals they disparage so much have already had that happen to them-and watched some of the things they championed slide down into the pit of unreasonable being. The same thing will most probably be the fate of the tea partiers after a few more elections. I’ve already read of people who say there should be a “purity test’ to be a Republican.  What’s up with that?

For the same reason the teabaggers do-fear and anger.

These people have no idea of the terrible forces they are playing with. Nor do I believe at this point-do they care.

And that is why- I cannot take their whining about the term: teabagger, very seriously.

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, [A Tea Party member]  is not the least bit interested in solving it. [They are] interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about [government run healthcare, rationing, taxes,] and American values and character. And wave an photo of the President [looking like Hilter ]and you scream about patriotism and you tell them, [liberals] are  to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call them [socialists].

Be who you are and say how you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

And most of you teabaggers aren’t going to like how it ends.

Sorry-its the ultimate insider joke.