Far East Cynic

Odds and ends.

Another week down-still not sure how many to go. I’m more than a little stir crazy at this point, but hey what’s a fellow to do? Have spent the morning, sleeping, eating, paying bills, and catching up on paperwork and expense reports. Another pretty nice day and not to hot here in “the Paris of eastern Europe” (Ummm…I don’t think so).  Have been purusing all the news I missed last week so here, in no particular order are some random thoughts.

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Jeffery Goldberg (Not to be confused with Jonah Goldberg-the idiot who wrote Liberal Fascism and continues to write stupid posts over at NRO) has a new article in the September edition of the Atlantic magazine.

 What is more likely, then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It’s so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)

In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.

Such an event would no doubt be hailed by “William the Bloody” Kristol and his other dimwit followers as a great event-but Goldberg lays out very precisely in this scenario that there is no free lunch-for either Israel or the US. The roof will most assuredly cave in -presenting the country with hideous consequences.

…..they stand a good chance of changing the Middle East forever; of sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel’s only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel’s conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.

Which was exactly the point Fox Fallon was making back in 2008 before being eased aside to make room for “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” -and a whole lot of other wiser folks have made since then, but that does not seem to have dampened the appetite of some people for war with out end.

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In Bucharest the word “sidewalk” is synonymous with “parking lot”.

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How stupid can your average American be? Pretty stupid, evidently. Consider this latest poll result:

 Roughly one in five Americans wrongly says President Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to two new US opinion polls out Thursday amid a furor over a planned mosque near New York’s “Ground Zero.”

And about 30 percent of Americans say followers of Islam should be barred from running for president or serving on the US Supreme Court, according to one of the surveys, published in Time magazine and available on Time.com.

That last little tidbit is pretty interesting, since it is in defiance of the Constitution, a document that the people who rant such idiocies pretend to hold dear.

Take it away Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Extremist Makeover – Homeland Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

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Meanwhile, over here in Bucharest, I am waiting for the teabaggers to be out in full force in Revelutionary square any minute:

The government has approved the first budget rectification this year, cutting the budgets of several ministries and offering more funds in particular for the payment of pensions, of unemployment benefits and of other social benefits in order to avoid “the eruption of social conflicts.”

Romania has budget problems that make ours look small in comparison. However you don’t see folks out on the street holding stupid signs. What’s up with that?

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Sarah Palin and Dr. Laura get a civics lesson:

[T]he First Amendment doesn’t guarantee that speaking your mind will have no economic consequences. Proclaiming that those without thick skins probably shouldn’t marry outside their race is always going to be, let us say, commercially risky if you’re aiming for a broad audience — or if your sponsors are. General Motors and Motel 6 both reportedly pulled their sponsorship over the flap, prior to Schlessinger’s decision to leave her show. But whether that’s the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, it doesn’t implicate the government; it implicates the profit motive.

In fact, the organization of a boycott is itself the exercise of First Amendment rights — GLAAD, or the American Family Association, or Sarah Palin, or Laura Schlessinger, anyone can publicly advocate for an end to the economic support of someone else’s speech. If you want, you can boycott them back — “Okay, if GLAAD is boycotting Laura Schlessinger, then I’m boycotting anybody who donates to GLAAD.” It becomes reductive and unhelpful at some point, and it may or may not be justified, and one side or the other may be substantively right or wrong — but all of it, from every angle and every political position, is consistent with the idea of free expression.

Because the “free” in that concept means “free from government interference,” not “free from consequences.” 

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And finally on a lighter note.

H/T to Spike!

Have a good weekend!

  1. Just how EXACTLY do you know he isn’t a muslim? Got some proof have you? Willing to share?

    There! Was that sufficiently conspiratorial for yas?

  2. Yas got proof about anything about the thing?

    Yale, Harvard, any other college he attended or is alleged to have attended?

    Probably ought to run paternity tests on the girls.

    Remind me again what jobs he held after graduating as the newspaper editor at Yale without ever writing one single solitary article of his own?

    and yeah cynic, I actually know where he is alleged to have gone to law school and graduated but I never saw any sign of a record. He’s a liar who lies about everything. Produce a transcript or two.

    Why EXACTLY is that so hard? Harder than finding a document he went all the way to the Supreme Court to refuse to present. I’m not a birther. Supposedly his mother was American which makes him American. I just despise the kind of “American” that goes all the way to the Supreme Court in order to offer simple things.

  3. That you are a birther is indeed a sad event. IT DOESN’T F*CKING MATTER! You may believe all the stupid lies you may do, but the question is not about that. Do you agree with him, and his positions on things. The obvious solution is to not worry about it.

    I don’t care about the birth certificate, I don’t care about him being in Indonesia for a while-if anything that is a plus, because that means he understands the world better than most Americans. Since most Americans are stupid, they don’t get that point-as your coment indicates.

    There is enough to argue about Obama without getting into this stupid deal about birth certificates.

  4. Yeah Skippy,

    You don’t care. I don’t care. He cared enough that he fought all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States to refuse to show his document.

    You understand, I don’t care at all about the document that this man went all the way to the Supreme Court to refuse to lay before the electorate, my issue is simply that he fought every single inch of the way to fight against showing a simple document.

    Of course. typical liberal democrat.

  5. You need to get your facts straight. Obama did not go to the Supreme Court-These lawsuits were filed by his political opponents sought to disqualify Obama from standing or being confirmed as President, or to obtain additional proof that he is qualified. Three were filed with and dismissed by the Supreme Court of the United States. None of the cases have prevailed in lower courts. Although Obama was confirmed as president-elect by Congress on January 8, 2009, and sworn in as President on January 20.

    The Obama campaign released a 2007 certified copy of his birth certificate (in this instance referred to as a “Certification of Live Birth”) that states Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. Frequent arguments of those questioning Obama’s eligibility are that he has not released a photocopy of his “original” birth certificate, and that the use of the term “certification of live birth” on the document means it is not equivalent to one’s “birth certificate”. These arguments have been debunked numerous times by media investigations, every judicial forum that has addressed the matter, and Hawaiian government officials—a consensus of whom have concluded that the certificate released by the Obama campaign is indeed his official birth certificate. Asked about this, Hawaiian Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo stated that Hawaii “does not have a short-form or long-form certificate”. Moreover, the director of her Department has confirmed that the state “has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures

    That is why it does not matter. Because people who insist on this issue are wrong.

  6. Ah but that skippy san is where you stray again. don’t care about the actual cert. American born abroad to american parents and so I have 3 certs plus the original gebertsekunde however one spells that. I just argue that a man who fails repeatedly to show faith with the people and fights at the Supreme Court for his right to refuse to show faith is not really a good man. Ditto all the other corresponding documentation which I notice you’ve never once showed a link to. There is NOTHING THERE.

    Funny how the left swooned in joy when handed the fake “but accurate” crap documents that Dan Rather ruined himself with about Bush and the TANG but never noticed that there weren’t even any documents for the WON. Kind of a pathetic standard but as usual kept in the mud by leftists who never seem to question the man’s background beyond saying that some state official like Bloggo has “validated” the issue for you you scum and be satisfied that he has declared his satisfaction with the evidence and you biters that want to see the actual documents just like you get to see them at the National Archive are a bunch of ‘birthers’.

    What I despise the most about the left is how totally utterly predictably hypocritical they are.

  7. skippy,

    Your silence on the matter raises an issue. You trust without proof. You attack without proof. You believe without any evidence at all.

    I’d ask you to pause and consider. No proof, no evidence, no upstanding professional friends to stand up for and validate the guy, just some political hacks. No job history that has been validated. No record of actual employment and fact of the matter is that I’d be ashamed to call him a friend.

    Dick Cheney had a track record you could take to the bank. You may hate him for it but you knew who you were getting.

  8. It is simple. I believe that Barak Obama is a US citizen. To suggest otherwise pre-supposes a massive conspiracy that is simply to fantastic to be realistic.

    Dick Cheney does have a record-a record of being consistently wrong. There is plenty of proof-on the birth certificate and on other issues, you simply refuse not to believe it.

    And as for being unemployed-there are plenty of hacks like Sarah Palin who are unemployed too, but plenty of stupid Americans support her for President.

  9. So skippy,

    just show me the proofs. Documents. Transcripts. Stuff like that. Lay the documents out before me? You can no more do that then the global warming “scientists” can lay out their data and evidence and algorithms.

    kind of silly how some remain as trusting as a child.