#2
"Obama decided to force the Marine Corps legend out early because he rubbed civilian officials the wrong way, and forced them to answer tough questions regarding Iran."
That is the problem, he dug into some thin egos in Washington. My second good belly laugh this a.m. over the Mattis' quotes. I love this guy. Wish we had more like him and someone like him in the WH.
#4
General Mattis is a Marine's Marine. And the Marines are aggressive warriors. They are the T-cells with attitude that protect this country from her ever present enemies. You will always need warriors for protection. That is just the way of the world.
O and Co resent the Marines because the Marines are everything that he is not. Therefore the Marines are perceived as a threat to him. So he will try to destroy that threat by hobbling the Marines (and other branches of the military too) with silly actions and directives. It is a very dangerous thing to compromise your own immune system.
Tell me, O and Co---is there anything that you would stand up to and defend to the death? Look in the mirror and ask yourself that question. The Marines you so disparage know what they would do without question.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
11/16/2014 15:24 Comments ||
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#5
“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”
Best speech ever.
In addition to the cultural divide that Alaska Paul points out, one thing this admin doesn't get is this: “No war is over until the enemy says it’s over." You can't run a war with the same project schedule you use to build a playground at a housing project with scheduled milestones and an end-date. Winning *is* the exit strategy.
#3
'Affirmative Action' has over time, become a social imperative. The First and Second Confiscation Acts and Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 would never be enough. Free labor is very, very expensive. We'll never see this mortgage paid in our life times, I assure you.
Foreign Policy's David Rothkopf has an idea. "In short, it may well be that two of the biggest threats facing the United States America -- the decay of nuclear Pakistan and the rise of the Tea Party movement here at home -- suggest a grand solution fraught with opportunity (and delicious ironies)." He suggests, "The tea-baggers want a country? Let's give them one: send them to Pakistan. ... Think of the ways the Tea-bagger worldview makes Pakistan a much more natural place for them to live than America." He describes U.S. Tea Parties and Pakistanis as "two seemingly different but actually remarkably similar groups."
#5
Zhang Fei - I think I'll pass on David Rothkopf.
From Wik: Rothkopf was managing director of Kissinger Associates, the international advisory firm founded and chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger. Immediately prior to joining Kissinger Associates, Rothkopf served as Acting U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade.
#8
"In over his head." Those who have been paying attention have known this for a long time. In view of the 2014 midterm election results, there must be more and more people who are paying attention. Now the problem, is how to minimize the damage from this turkey during the next 2 years. Hope the Pubs are up to it.
#11
This is the best summary of Obama's policies I've ever read:
[Obama's]... flaws are compounded by a system that lets him pick and empower those around him. So, if he chooses to surround himself with a small team of "true believers" who won't challenge him as all leaders need to be challenged, if he picks campaign staffers that maintain campaign mode, if he over-empowers political advisors at the expense of those with national-security experience, that takes his weaknesses and multiplies them.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
11/16/2014 12:15 Comments ||
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#12
The Obama administration has done a number of good things overseas—far too many to list here. ..In short, Barack Obama doesn't get a zero on foreign policy by any means. He gets a C or a low C.
No Mr. Historian, President Obama doesn’t deserve a passing grade. The US global standing currently fluctuates between diminished and irrelevant depending on which area of foreign policy that is examined. The Obama Administration has carried out an incoherent worldview with colossal ineptitude. The President himself continues, time and again, to lack any leadership qualities and fixates on the politics of the personal. He’s predictably indecisive and ill-tempered. His only persuasion is to the gullible and shallow thinkers of like mind. Obama’s ease of mistruth reveals a moral deficiency that prevents commitment at any level. Bottom line - US allies don’t trust her; adversaries have no respect and her enemies have little to fear. An honest assessment of the Obama foreign policy is failure at any measure.
#15
David Rothkopf: IF the Tea Party decided to take over and transform Pakistan (though I doubt we would - the whole country isn't worth a bucket of warm spit), we'd turn it into a functioning republic toot sweet. And probably wouldn't have to kill too many of them, either.
Eat your heart out, you worthless b@stard.
Posted by: Barbara ||
11/16/2014 21:30 Comments ||
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#16
Note that Rothkopf thinks Obama is doing better than both Reagan and GWB.
[Jpost]This is not an article for those of weak stomach. It is not for those who wish to be reassured that, in the end, things will be "okay." It offers no glimmer of optimism, nor any comforting prospect of some happy ending.
Indeed, if the Jews are to preserve their political sovereignty, all it bodes for the foreseeable future is one of Churchillian "blood, toil, tears and sweat."
Across every border Israel shares with its Arab neighbors, within its own borders, and far removed from them, a formidable range of threats -- from damaging economic sanctions and international isolation, through murderous terrorist attacks, jihadi insurgency and domestic insurrection, to the specter of weapons of mass destruction and a nuclear Iran -- is coalescing with disturbing speed into a multi-faceted menace that jeopardizes the survival of the Jewish nation-state to a degree arguably unprecedented since its inception.
Successive governments have consistently misread the battlefield, and misled by the seductive deception of political correctness, they have embraced misguided policy principles, wildly at odds with the dictates of political realities.
To understand this rather harsh condemnation, it is first necessary to realize that, in principle, there exist two archetypal and antithetical contexts of conflict -- in the first of which a policy of compromise and concession may well be appropriate, and another, in which such a course is disastrously inappropriate.
In the first of such contexts, one's adversary interprets any concession as a genuine conciliatory initiative, and feels obliged to respond with a counter-concession. In this context, the process will move toward some amicable resolution of the conflict by a series of concessions and counter-concessions.
In the alternate conflictual context, however, one's adversary does not interpret concessionary initiatives as conciliatory gestures, made in good faith, but as an indication of vulnerability and weakness, made under duress, portending defeat.
Such initiatives will not elicit any reciprocal conciliatory gesture, but rather demands for further concessions.
If one concedes to the demands, instead of enjoying a convergent process that leads toward peaceable resolution of differences, a divergent process will lead either to capitulation or to large-scale violence. In other words, once one side realizes that its adversary is acting in bad faith and can only be restrained by force; or the other side realizes it has extracted all the concessions it can by non-coercive means – meaning that further gains could only be won by force – problems worsen for the party seeking bilateral satisfaction.
'if you will not fight when victory is sure'
If one happens to be in a situation that approximates the second context, but adopts a policy suited for the first, disaster is inevitable.
Sadly, for more than two decades, this is precisely what Israeli governments – with varying degrees of myopic zeal and/or reluctant resignation – have done. Unless robust and resolute remedial measures are undertaken without delay, such disaster is inevitable.
There can be little doubt that the Arab-Israeli conflict resembles the second context far more closely than the first. After all, every gut-wrenching concession Israel has made since the early 1990s has failed to produce any conciliatory response from its Arab adversaries. All it finds is greater intransigence and more obdurate insistence on further appeasement.
[Ynet] Silent majority of the Arab community prefers Israel to any other country, and we would do well to give them a voice instead of their agitator MKs.
Most Israeli Arabs are loyal citizens â and when I say most, I mean the vast majority. Within a population of around 1.25 million people (excluding East Jerusalem) there are not only hundreds of hooligans, but thousands, who are likely to have the support of an additional percentage or two.
Troubled times see the gunnies flourish. On the backdrop of Islamic Movement leader Raed Salah's ongoing incitement, it would only take one incident to set the sector ablaze. The majority don't attend the demonstrations. But hundreds of youths do. Maybe even thousands. The impression created stains the entire Arab minority.
Continued on Page 49
[Ynet] Evil spirit is winning, and it has an army of supporters in West. Not just radical Islamists, but also intellectuals, professors, 'rights activists' and rest of members of anti-Israel campaign.
In Canada, there were two terror attacks within two days. The first was a run-over attack, and the second was an attack on the parliament in the capital city of Ottawa.
In New York, coppers were assaulted with an axe. In London, a cell of four members planned to murder Queen Elizabeth last week, armed with knives. A few months ago, La Belle France foiled a plot to blow up the Eifel Tower.
Continued on Page 49
Much of the Islamic State's success at holding Sunni areas comes from its deft manipulation of tribal dynamics. Portraying itself as a defender of Sunnis who for years have been abused by Iraq's Shiite-majority government, the Islamic State has offered cash and arms to tribal leaders and fighters, often allowing them local autonomy as long as they remain loyal.
At the same time, as it has expanded into new towns, the Islamic State has immediately identified potential government supporters for death. Residents of areas overrun by the Islamic State say its fighters often carry names of soldiers and police officers. If those people have already fled, the jihadists blow up their homes to make sure they do not return. At checkpoints, its men sometimes run names through computerized databases, dragging off those who have worked for the government.
Amazon and Hachette announced a settlement this week in their long festering contractual dispute. I'm glad it's over. As I discussed in a NINC interview last month, the dispute evoked a lot of unnecessary ugliness in certain quarters of the indie author community.
At the heart of the dispute was the Agency pricing model for ebooks, which meant it was a battle was over pricing and margin. According to most press accounts, Hachette wanted the freedom to set consumer prices and earn 70% list for its ebooks, and Amazon wanted to pay Hachette lower margins so it could fund deeper discounting. I covered the dispute back in May here at the Smashwords blog.
According to carefully worded statements this week by Amazon and Hachette - neither of which boasted of victory - Hachette will retain Agency pricing control yet conceded to certain unnamed Amazon demands that will incentivize lower pricing from Hachette.
It's not easy to pick winners and losers. As with most wars, even winners can be losers.
Here's my attempt to examine the winners and losers of this episode, along with speculation on long term implications. More at the link in the title...
#4
g(r)omgoru, Hachette wanted to price ebooks using high prices. They wanted this to save their hardcopy book revenues from being cannibalized by ebook sales.
Amazon's position was that ebooks have no inventory and other expenses built into hardcopy book prices and the prices should be very low.
Personally I think Hachette was in the wrong in this one.
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.
Amazon and Hachette announced a settlement this week in their long festering contractual dispute. I'm glad it's over. As I discussed in a NINC interview last month, the dispute evoked a lot of unnecessary ugliness in certain quarters of the indie author community.
