Now I’m dreaming about politics
The other night I dreamt that I saw a poll reporting that only 8% of Americans care about the Benghazi coverup.
So now I’m having political nightmares. A first.
And it’s no surprise that the nightmare was about Benghazi, which seems to crystallize all that’s been going wrong lately. The incompetence. The callous disregard for what happened. The coverup. The blatant lies about the coverup. The collusion of much of the MSM. The indifference or ignorance of so many Americans. And the feeling of impotence on the part of those who are outraged by it all.
Not surprising. Benghazi is the stuff of nightmares. And it does seem that by and large most people don’t know or care when Cutter can claim that it’s only an issue because of Romney and Carney imagines that suggesting Biden meant only he, the president and the White House didn’t know about it is a good answer. How is that in any way reassuring or better? So if we have another big attack on American soil from terrorists, is that what we should expect? Sorry, the president simply didn’t know!??!
Have you ever walked into a strong wind, and found you couldn’t breathe? That’s the way the Benghazi thing makes me feel.
Yes it does feel like no one cares about what is going on; I recently had a Facebook exchange with a liberal about Big Bird, and this person shut me down after lamenting about hatred of Big Bird when I tried to make the point that it’s really about the money. BUT, this is what Obama and his allies are counting on, the perception of his inevitable re-election.
I believe we can fight this; we have to be strong. People DO care about jobs; the elderly care about Medicare; and I try whenever possible to point out the evil and ineffectiveness of this President’s foreign policy. If you know someone who is the least bit thoughtful, you can tell them about how Obama is killing US citizens without due process, and many innocent people, in his drone attacks. I am a committed Catholic and am considering making calls to Catholics in swing states for Romney.
Americans care about the Benghazi coverup.
Nice slant there, guilty until proven innocent?
Let’s see, hearings already, haven’t heard about refusal to testify,. Republicans that wanted funding cuts to support the security are blaming the administration.
And you yourself have come down on the news agencies reporting facts wrong early, yet, I’m sure you would have yelled coverup, had they said nothing for the last month trying to get the info straight.
If reporting a changing story is a coverup because you get different things clarified, don’t forget to include every remote story ever reported, military operations included.
Try harder not to show bias, or just start the topic with where’s the impeachment proceedings?
Please, please, please, in any discussion of Big Bird with friends and acquaintances, mention that the guy makes tens of millions of dollars a year. That seems to deflate a lot of leftist indignation. A second point that seems blunt all further argument is that Big Bird is a very valuable property, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and even without taxpayer funding, will still be on television because it makes lots of money.
Is it really fair to borrow money from China, saddling our children with future debt, to give to a multi-millionaire? As a hard-hitting Romney ad puts it, “Obama doesn’t just waste money. He borrows it, THEN wastes it.”
Nauseous,
So, Republicans voted to cut funds for security at embassies in places like Libya and Tunisia and Egypt? Now? Really?
It’s just so easy to get one talking point about spending cuts and have the issue be settled. Maybe the vote was to cut spending on the Volt transmitters. Those EVIL Rethuglicans and their spending cuts.
I remember, vividly, (because I was excited that it might actually happen) when Obama said in 2008 that he was going to go, “line by line down the budget and cut out things that were not making sense.” Can you name one thing that Obama cut in his four years? Besides Defense? I don’t seem to remember that promise happening.
Just like Ryan voted for two wars and Biden didn’t. What a misleading blowhard.
“Try harder not to show bias” Benausea
Only the willfully obtuse deny that where there’s smoke there’s fire.
A week or so ago I had a drink with a much admired friend, on the left but more open than most, largely because he’s bored by the uniformity of opinion among his lefty Brooklyn circle of friends. I brought up the Benghazi affair, expressed my outrage. He shrugged, refused to take it seriously. “Yeah,” he said. “Obama got it wrong, but he changed when he learned the real story.”
I said nothing. I’ve learned to bite my tongue, to save myself the angst and preserve friendships. But sitting there in silence, I honestly feared that I’d have a stroke.
I’ve never lived though anything like this in my life, and I’m 64.
Oops, as to the subject of this thread … people are less informed than they should be, true. For instance, whether it was a mob uprising or terrorist attack may be one of those distinctions without a difference as far as the public is concerned. It’s a giant mess either way. People are still suffering from war fatigue, and so are possibly wary of anything that might cause more military adventurism.
Having said that, some aspects of the situation do matter to the public, it seems to me. It matters that more security was requested and denied. It would matter if proven that Amb. Stevens was not being helped to the hospital, but dragged through the streets. It would matter if lies and a coverup by the Administration were proven.
Even when people are not immersed in the details of foreign or economic policy, they DO expect public officials to do their job in a competent, creditable way. Pointing out again and again that the President went to bed after he heard news of the attack, that he partied the next day in Las Vegas, that he skipped numerous intel briefings in the period leading up the attack and then claimed he knew nothing about the deteriorating security situation in Libya — all of this is, I believe, effective in buttressing the emerging gestalt in the public mind that the current President is just not up the job for which he was hired. That he is, in fact, an empty chair.
What is getting lost in the Benghazi coverup is that this administration’s first reaction to a mob protest (i.e., the one in Egypt) was to denigrate American free speech.
Seems I’ve heard of this kind of thing before, somewhere. Of portents. And rumours. And signs …and such like.
Oh yeah.
Mark.
Or maybe Luke?
Signs, and rumours of signs.
It’s always this next one though, that leads me to think of the Chinese curse about “may you live in interesting times“.
Israel is 64 years old.
“…all these things“?
Interesting times?
Indeed.
A competing nightmare is that those who care are eager to jump to conclusions. It’s interesting that seeing Benghazi as a significant event has become a partisan test.
From what we think we think we know now, the Administration made a series of critical errors. Actually, not errors, but failures, to effectively perform a primary task of securing territory and personnel.
For many, this is confirmation bias. Obama is incompetent and hates America.
I am skeptical of such a simple explanation. The State Department is another giant, slow-moving bureaucracy full of mid-level functionaries whose primary concern is to cover their own butts.
Ira is closer to a substantial fact we can already be certain of. The Administration did speak against free speech in the near aftermath. I can entertain some plausible explanation for doing so, but that has to be reconciled with the Oath to uphold the Constitution.
And in the partisan sense, I have no doubt that a different Administration would have violated that Oath in one way or another.
foxmarks –
Aye, and it’s also interesting how certain people have a confirmation bias to see confirmation bias everywhere. It is nice to feel superior.
Isn’t it?
Everytime I read something along these lines I’m always reminded of the quote attributed to Trotsky, which goes something like this: ‘you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.’
Americans, mostly, are uninterested in war. In the long run, interest is irrelevant. So far, we’ve always had time to overcome our lack of preparation, but that time is coming to an end. I am not made confident by history in our ability to institutionalize a more effective response to this circumstance than other nations and civilizations, most of whom have failed.
kolnai +1
foxmarks, how is it that it took the FBI nearly a month to investigate the consulate? You’re kidding yourself if you think the reason behind their evasiveness and inaction is ‘…to effectively perform primary task of securing territory and personnel.’ That is hogwash.
Let’s see, hearings already, haven’t heard about refusal to testify,.
Oh, they’re having hearings?
OK then.
As usual, the cover up is far worse than the crime. I suppose I could forgive the State Dept. being caught with its pants down on security: Horse, barn, bad policies discovered too late. human fallibility and all that.
What drives me mad – and what insults my intelligence — is the “Look everyone!- it’s a disgusting video!” ploy.
And sticking with that for what. three weeks? Ambassador Rice was cock sure about her story line on all five major Sunday morning shows. Why did she sound so cock sure? What was her objective? What was Obama’s? Hillary’s? What was it about that You tube trailer that made it so compelling to them all? And why
The lack of security for the ambassador in Libya bespeaks of gross incompetence on the part of the executive branch. Someone at the highest level of responsibility needs to be held to account. However, I do not think BHO was in the least bit aware of the security issues in Libya. He finds the daily details of being POTUS uninteresting and beneath his attention. He’s too busy fund raising, playing golf, hobnobbing with celebrities, and vacationing.
Nonetheless the buck stops at Obama’s empty chair.
foxmarks says, “And in the partisan sense, I have no doubt that a different Administration would have violated that Oath in one way or another.”
Like you, I have found over the 6 decades of my life, that the head of the fish is to a certain degree rotten. Unlike you, I realize the stench of the regime of BHO far surpasses anything the republic has endured since its founding. There is no equivalency between the terrible corruption and incompetency of Obama and any other episode in our history. Wake up and smell the stench.
Man is a rotten fish so no wonder man at the helm has at least some stench.
The Republic claims perfection is unavailable and endures because it limits man.
Obama attempted to thwart this basic understanding, but one honest debate defeated that “thwartation.”
I have a feeling that Obama meddles in the decisions of cabinet members for political or ideological reasons, or both. I can imagine him giving directives to an agency that totally contradict the policy the agency is trying to pursue, which is why we have such incoherence. Richard Fernandez has a new post up discussing where this has gotten us with Turkey, and the Tatler reports on Obama’s real interest: settling the feud on American Idol. I pray that we get an adult in the WH because this guy is not serving as president. I hope that evil old Karl Rove has some good ads tucked away to use in the next few weeks.
There are reports that Obama plans to address the nation about Benghazi during his next appearance on The View.
Hopefully, our nightmare ends Jan 20, 2013. Or we will begin living in our own version of Venezuela. In just this last week the White House “forgot” to include Fox News in on a press phone conference. Remember the campaign awhile back to label them as not a real news network?
Neo, I had my first political dream a couple of weeks ago. Fortunately, mine wasn’t a nightmare. But it was definitely a strange feeling to wake up knowing that the Obama era is having such a profound effect. That it is so troubling and worrying to some of us that it is even effecting our dreams. Thankfully haven’t had any more and old enough I can’t remember what it was about – voting I think.
I think people get distracted by the security failure. Granted, it’s important, but it just gives the Obama administration the chance to make pious noises about never allowing it to happen again, etc., and to divert attention away from
what’s really shocking, which is the “disgusting video causing a mob action out of which the attack developed” invention, and Susan Rice’s amazing appearances on all the talk shows, promulgating a deliberate lie, and the poor creepy video guy being thrown in jail.
I’ve gotten used to double-talk and stalling and equivocations about how “we don’t know all the facts yet”. I would have expected a response like this. But what the White House attempted was a deliberate alteration of the historical record. It doesn’t help that it was so transparent; it just shows that they’re operating at the level of fantasy, and expecting the media to cover for them. It makes me feel sick that this could happen in our country.
N-Neocon: AMEN…AMEN…AMEN..!!
The best sleep I’ve had in months was after the Romney-Obama Debate. Again slept good after the Ryan-Crazy Uncle in the Attic Debate. We’re in western North Carolina for 10-days and seeing alot of support for Romney-Ryan. Thank you, God.
Nauseous(12:02pm)….Must be a happy, happy vaporworld you inhabit. Barry: Amen.
A “series of errors?” No, no, a series of errors leads to my checkbook balance being off by 59 cents. A “series of errors” does NOT lead to the death and degradation of the corpse of a United States ambassador. That’s an effing major league failure, that’s what that is.
And that anyone could calmly say “Obama got it wrong, but he changed when he learned the real story.” makes my own blood boil. The president had no clue, spoke from ignorance, and then changed his story once he had the facts? And that’s OKAY with people? Our bar is that low for presidential responsibility? Is that a tacit admission that liberal presidents are assumed to be generally incompetent, or just Obama?
Oh brave new world that has such oblivious morons in it…
Our lives will be empty without Obama. I hope he is re-elected.
effess +1.
RandomTs…But, the Anointed One doesn’t need those daily intell briefings, dont’cha know. ‘The View’s’ his venue, dont’cha know. He briefly and randomly occupies the Oval Office. And, then, the Perpetual Campaign, Ya know, the one that began on January 21, 2009. Golf, Fund Raisers, Supporter Nit-Wit blatherfests, on & on & on.
What he HASN’T been is Adult, Fully Engaged or anything other than the feckless moral midget of our daily nightmares.
BLESSED, are we not??
LAG (3:29 pm),
If war is conducted as a hopeless, fruitless array of play-nice rules of engagement and nation-building fantasies, as it was right after 9/11, then who can blame people for not being interested? The nature of this war has been wholly misunderstood, and is still so by many.
The Marxists have been on the other side ever since they embraced Islamic imperialism as the replacement for the deceased U.S.S.R. The neoconservatives bungled everything with their idea of “winning hearts and minds” in the midst of the Islamic world (“Iraq the model” and all that stuff). The paleoconservatives, while they have recognized the failure of the neocon strategy, are in denial of the imperialistic nature of Islam–they actually think the enmity of the Muslims for the U.S.A. stems from material causes, from the sort of things the Marxists blame America for (drones, support for Israel, troops in Saudi Arabia et cetera).
There is so far in America no major political stream where both neocon fantasies and paleocon denialism are rejected as policy. The stream of thought that views the problem as one of invader-immigrants, settler-colonists, to be solved by mass deportation, does exist in Israel and the Western European nation-states but is prevented from assuming real power in those states by the Left and its disinformation arm (a.k.a. the MSM).
In the wake of the 50th anniversary of the French evacuation of Algeria, the cautionary note is more relevant than ever: It is one thing to decide that occupying another nation’s land (if you believe it’s really another nation’s land) is not worth the blood and treasury expended, but quite another to continue the policies of colonial occupation on your own soil. 50 years after, French politicos discuss how to “better integrate” and “make it more comfortable for” the Muslims–in the French mainland! Trying to “win the hearts and minds” not of the natives in foreign lands, but of settler-colonists in their own! The insanity knows no bounds. What does this have to do with Benghazi, you ask? The issue is that the eyes of the Western nation-states have concentrated far too much on Benghazi, as on Afghanistan and Iraq, to pay attention to the setting up of Islamic jihad bases on their own soil (Londonistan, Dearbornistan et cetera). The problem with foreign policy, it appears, is its very existence.
the Anointed One doesn’t need those daily intell briefings
Maybe we should get his caddy to brief him.
Col. David Hunt was on the Howie Carr show several times this week. The take away is that when an event like the Benghazi attack occurs there are a dozen watch centers, at the CIA, Pentagon, White House, State Dept. etc. that monitor the event in real time and exchange information. The National Security Council and National Security Adviser are informed in real time.
The attack on the consulate went on for six hours.
So the President, Vice President and Secretary of State and a couple of hundred other people knew from the beginning that the consulate was being attacked. The question is why did the President and Vice President lie about this?
There are US military bases, ships, planes and other assets all over the region. Why weren’t fighters dispatched to strafe and bomb the Jihadis?
In this appalling scandal we don’t have to ask what did they know and when did they know it. They knew everything from the very beginning.
http://audio.wrko.com/a/64574661/islamabad-gate-with-col-hunt.htm
http://audio.wrko.com/a/64625569/col-david-hunt-on-the-lies-lies-and-more-lies-on-libya.htm
http://audio.wrko.com/a/64657882/col-hunt-on-the-newest-libyan-revelations.htm
Another take away from the Col. David Hunt interviews on Howie Carr is that when an embassy requests more security it automatically goes to the National Security Adviser and Council and appears on the Presidents daily National Security Briefing. So again the question is why did the President lie?
I agree, ziontruth. I try to tell people that the war has been going on for nearly 1400 years. The Dar-al-Islam vs. the Dar-al Harb. This war has gone through hot and cold spells, but it’s the same war. Many in the West are in denial about it, but the Muslims aren’t.
For a couple hundred years from the 18th to the mid 20th centuries, the West had the upper hand. Right now I’d say that Islam is calling the shots. I identify two main causes for this reversal: the vast amount of oil money that has poured into the Arab world since WWII, and the rise of Leftism that has caused many Westerners to question the legitimacy of our own civilization.
We must defeat the Left and regain our confidence in the superiority of Western civilization before we will have any hope of defeating Islam.
davisbr +1
effess +1.
rickl,
“…the vast amount of oil money that has poured into the Arab world since WWII,…”
This is why the current administration’s policies against oil exploitation and nuclear power are not mere oversights, they’re effectively treason.
“…and the rise of Leftism that has caused many Westerners to question the legitimacy of our own civilization. We must defeat the Left…”
Exactomundo. This is a requirement and a precondition. No chance of defeating an external attacker when the immune system is out of action. It can’t be stated enough: Marxism is AIDS on the national-political level.
I wish to add also about the slight problem with Pamela Geller’s “Savage” ads. Not that they’re untruthful, but that thinking of the enemy as a bunch of savages could easily lead to the erroneous idea of being able to civilize them–back to the neocon nation-building fantasies and the European nation-states’ multicultural appeasement, in other words.
The main difference between the Muslims and the Goths who invaded the Roman Empire was that the latter had no pretensions as to cultural advancement (19th-century German romanticism notwithstanding). They invaded the Romans mainly because the Huns and other peoples of the steppes were pressing hard upon them; though the Roman Empire ended as a political entity, the Germanic tribes became the keepers of the flame of Roman culture once they embraced Christianity, the religion they viewed as the ticket to being Roman. Later the same pattern was repeated for bringing the Scandinavians (Norsemen) and Magyars (Hungarians) into the Western European fold, and the Slavs by Byzantium in the east.
But the Muslims actually believe–no matter how flabbergasting you might find it–that they are a civilization and that it is the non-Muslims, those who are not under shariah law, that are the savages. Yes, this sounds unbelievable to any normal outside observer, but it doesn’t matter, that’s what you have to deal with. Neither the Saracens of old nor their modern heirs want any part of your culture, which they look down upon with utter contempt; on the contrary, they think everyone else should assimilate to theirs, and that it is the “Muslim Man’s Burden” to bring all the “savage” lands the “gift” of “superior Islamic civilization.” Consequently, all policies centered around winning their hearts and mind are doomed to fail, whether these policies be the neocons’ nation-building misadventures or the paleocons’ appeasement doctrines.
There’s no solution but to “think globally, act locally” here. Each nation to itself must deal with the issue as best it can.
Islam deception flows as far as its stream.
Mizpants, I feel very much the same way: A lie is bad. A blatant lie is either insulting, or frightening. A historical example comes to mind, the show trials and weird, contrived confessions of everyone in Moscow, “anti-soviet agitation, agent of a foreign power, anti-tractor activities”. The terrifying part was that people knew that most of this could not be true, so whatever the NKVD did to bring forth such confessions must be truly terrible. Blatant obvious lies say, “We don’t have to tell you the truth. Wanna make something of it?”
Oh, another example: The “Birth Certificate” we all saw on line and could tell, instantly, that it was a crayon fake. I really do not know whether Barry was born in Kenya, as he said, or in Hawaii, as he also said. But that Birth Certificate, that was really scary.
Now, telling us that their intelligence said that the attack grew out of a mob scene, and the professionals go to Congress and testify under oath that they never told them any such thing, then the politicians repeating the lies they had already told, that is very, very disturbing.
Even notice how it takes a few years for the lessons of a historic period to sink in? Truman was not seen as a good President until years after his administration ended, WWI general Haig was not recognized as a fool until long after the war ended and so on. The electorate of 2008 will be held in contempt by those who read history, as it should be. Benghazi may have speeded history up a bit as regards Obama unique qualifications.
BTW off subject, why this concern about Islam? Islamic culture is a morally and intellectually moribund society. They can kill crudely and inefficiently but nothing else. To quote T.E. Lawrence the Arab mentality is “imaginative without being creative”.
And because I have no one nearby to share my bitterness I just read where some Arab legal society gave an award to the family a suicide bomber in Jenin. The bomber blew up a restaurant in Haifa killing dozens of people including a man who worked at the same place I had in Tel-Aviv and his two children. I guess there is this recompense, immoral bigoted societies cannot grow. Middle eastern Islam will suffocate in its own bile.
Early in Obama’s reign I actually DID have a political dream. I dreamt that hard evidence had been unearthed proving that Obama was born in another country, and that the FBI was closing in on him to haul him away, the way OJ was hunted down at his mother’s house. It was a great dream, and a real bummer to wake up from.
I hate to sound so mercilessly cynical, but when I contemplate the legacy of our incompetent narcissist-in-chief over the last four years, the lesson I draw is this: Never underestimate the capacity of politically correct white liberals to wildly overpraise mediocre Black people.
Benausea:
Nice try but this is about deliberate lies on the part of the President of the United States. I don’t watch ANY of the news stations, and with little effort knew full well it was terrorism within 24 hours of the event. Yet here was the president- what – 8 days later offering the same pathetic video narative not merely to the American people but to the United Nations. Now if you buy that, there’s no point in any discussion here, but otherwise your protest is absurd.
It hasn’t been that hard to get it straight. Or are you suggesting that news organizations have an easier time of it than a White House with inside information from the state department. THe ridiculous video story- is that your idea of getting it straight? If Barack Obama really had any interest in getting it straight, he would have had a story more resembling the truth before he reached the steps of the UN building. The fact is it didn’t fit the the narative he wants the public to swallow and the a factual account wouldn’t help him get elected. AND if hearings weren’t held in congress to get to the truth you can bet your a**, the official story if it ever saw light of day would have been released for public consumption well on the other side of November the 3rd. As the song goes, “Go find your self another fool!
Michael Adams: Yes, frightening. Exactly. And if they’re capable of this, what else are might they try to pull?
I always considered speculation about how this regime might not give up power after an election to be disreputable and of the fringe. But now, for the first time in my life I wonder whether the peaceful transfer of power will happen.
What I find fascinating is none of the State Dept mud hit Hillary. White House, Biden, Baraq knew nothing, were not told, if these worms are to be believed. But the Hill heads State. Nobody anywhere is saying anything about Hillary’s and Huma Abadin’s failure.
Only quote from Hillary I’ve seen is to the effect of “We’re still waiting for ALL (emphasis added) the evidence”. Yup, that might take a while, but what happened to the 3AM call, Hillary?
And who so very quickly found the totally obscure video on which this was so rapidly blamed by so many??
Carter and Obama:
— Embassy attacks
— High gas prices
— Chrysler bailouts
— Antipathy toward Israel
Michael Adams Says:
October 13th, 2012 at 9:51 pm
That PDF birth certificate was an obvious forgery on a par with the 2004 Texas Air National Guard memos. Several people dissected it online.
I have some experience with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and while I’m by no means an expert, even I know enough to flatten the file before saving it as a PDF. In other words, I myself could have made a more convincing forgery.
Was this evidence of incompetence on the part of the people who promulgated the online birth certificate? No. They meant for it to be discovered. It was a giant middle finger erected at the American people.
Lag, Here is my favorite Trotsky quote said with regard to the media and official statements:
“To approximate the truth compare the lies.”
As long as we’re quoting communists I’ll throw in a great line from Mao: “I like dealing with rightists. They tell you what they really think unlike the leftists who say one thing and mean another”.
Harold: I also heard Colonel Hunt on the radio, trying desperately to penetrate the miasma of indifference and convey the monstrousness of the regime’s lies, their dereliction of duty, their REFUSAL to act.
They heard/watched the attack unfold in realtime, at the highest levels, including the White House Situation Room! and then LIED about the WHOLE THING and are STILL lying.
And Ziontruth: that’s the heart of this. We are up against a satanic cult, the most successful in history, one that worships death and brags about wading in blood, and no one wants to face or deal with it.
Here in New York, over the last two or three years, I’ve noticed that nearly ALL the vending carts are now run by Moslems, all saying they are “Halal” on their signs. I saw one in Times Square last week that had an electric “zipper” sign that blazed, “9-11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB,” while the moslem vendor sold halal meat from his grill to idiot New Yorkers who lined up to buy from him.
Where did they come from? What happened to the cart vendors we had before Sept. 11? What is their plan?
My brother in law, an old 68er and knee-jerk lefty, snapped that the 9-11 murderers “weren’t taxi drivers,” but some of them were, IIRC.
The time for talk is over. Long over. Plan and execute said plans. Lock and load while you still can. Our rights as individuals and abilities as a nation continue to diminish. At the end of the day, a looter is a looter, and a moocher is a moocher. Those who I would consider enemies continue to strengthen. We won two wars on our ability to out-manufacture others, making weapons of war when necessary. That has been gutted. Hell, we don’t even train enough machinists in this nation to build consumer goods anymore.
Yep. There was a time when thoughts like that running through my mind made me think perhaps I was paranoid.
@ziontruth You said: “Consequently, all policies centered around winning their hearts and mind are doomed to fail, whether these policies be the neocons’ nation-building misadventures or the paleocons’ appeasement doctrines.” In the context of the Bengazi incident would you include Obama’s ‘duty to protect’ and support of the ‘Arab Spring’ ?To me the Obama policies just seem to be a variant of neoconservative nation building. I think all brands of this failure to see the Muslim world are well described by Richard Landes’ term ‘cognitive egocentrism’. That is, the tendency to think Muslims in general and Arabs in particular are – au fond – just like us. Another word for that all too human tendency is ‘projection’ something psychologists think of as a defense mechanism. 😉 I think Obama’s apparently contradictory treatment of Ajad, Mubarak, or Khadafi and the Benghazi attack all stem from the same cognitive egocentrism. He thinks he can negotiate with Iran, he thinks Mubarak is overthrowable so he gives him a push because it will help the democratizing forces, he gets involved in the Libyan civil war because he thinks he has a duty to protect what he sees as the democratic against Khadafi. The blasphemous video meme is likewise a defense mechanism. If the cause of the attack is something we did, then we are in control!!
H/T: Patterico:
“Saved or created” was always a smokescreen by progressives to mask a huge loss of Americans working and paying into the system.
Imagine a football coach after a huge loss touting his teams superior punting yardage and time of possession. Same ridiculous thing.
“We’re still waiting for ALL (emphasis added) the evidence”.
Someone who has all the evidence before rendering judgments is called “a historian.”
Occam’s Beard: a revisionist historian 🙂
Lorenz Gude,
“In the context of the Bengazi incident would you include Obama’s ‘duty to protect’ and support of the ‘Arab Spring’ ?To me the Obama policies just seem to be a variant of neoconservative nation building.”
It’s possible to view it that way, but the fact that Obama is a Marxist means I usually assume malicious intent behind his actions rather than naivete. He said (in his ghostwritten book) he’d stand with the Muslims, so he naturally supports the rise of Islamic supremacists to power. What Bush did out of ignorance, Obama does intentfully.
“That is, the tendency to think Muslims in general and Arabs in particular are — au fond — just like us.”
Humanism, the view that all human beings are basically the same in thoughts, feelings and values. What’s odd here is that Leftists are the first to call for the recognition of human diversity, yet the last to extend that recognition to the differing values among human groups.
Then there’s also the bifurcation fallacy when they say, “Leave off these ideas of global conquest and worldwide shariah law–they want the same things in life as you do, the pursuit of happiness, material plenty, raising kids and everything you dream of.” What they fail to see is that this is no either/or: A person may dream both kinds of dream–both world domination and the good life. More: A person may believe that the one dream can be achieved only by fulfilling the other. That’s the way imperialism has always appealed to the masses. In Islam, the afterlife reward (a selfish goal) is only the icing on the cake, the final clincher; it’s the idea of material supremacy for fellow Muslims worldwide (a selfless goal) that energizes the jihad, much as it did for the ordinary Germans, the ones who weren’t ideological firebrands, in the previous century.
Occam’s Beard: a revisionist historian
Yup.
Once in a grad student seminar the speaker bleated that he didn’t have all the facts.
My thesis advisor (a Nobel Laureate, a real one), who was famous for his short fuse, half rose from his seat (which was a few feet from the speaker), pointed his finger in the hapless student’s face, and roared, “Anyone can figure something out when he’s got all the facts! The trick is to do it when you’ve only got partial information, and half of that is wrong!”
That profound observation resonates with me to this day.
Occam, of course it is not necessarily the facts that are wrong but the interpretation of them.
Mainstream conservatives (most of y’all) have to decide if Obama is meddling in low-level cabinet decisions or if he’s spending most of his time playing golf.
I’m inclined toward golf. A lazy President with a hostile Congress sounds pretty good.
Never forget the spinmeisters in the Administration have a decisive advantage over everyone who jumps to conclusions. Obama’s team knows what actually happened. They have exclusive access to the knowledge that will be revised into the “official history”.
They only have to keep it tamped down for three more weeks. Or immanentize some other event which sweeps what is ultimately a minor cover-up out of the news cycle.
beverly & Harold:
I am inclined toward concern over the inflitration–and outright welcoming–of non-American cultures. My town has been home to Islamic terrorists, grown and recruited here, who have gone back overseas to blow up the good guys.
rickl:
I don’t think leftism can be defeated. It must fail on its own. It’s a hydra, and attacking a head or two just spreads the problem. Let the body die of its own impossibilities, then salt the ground where we bury it.
Occam’s Beard, thanks for the great quote: “Anyone can figure something out when he’s got all the facts! The trick is to do it when you’ve only got partial information, and half of that is wrong!”
I’ve tried many times to tell people that history (as written) is a construct. That quote says it all.
foxmarks writes, “Mainstream conservatives (most of y’all) have to decide if Obama is meddling in low-level cabinet decisions or if he’s spending most of his time playing golf.”
Why? IMHO there’s plenty of time to do both. That’s because Obama delgates a lot of things (like the details of Obamacare, for example). My guess is that, for a president, he has a lot of free time to play golf, and also plenty of time to meddle with whatever low-level Cabinet decisions he happens to want to meddle with—which certainly wouldn’t be all of them. He has some pet projects and some pet concerns which he could easily be more involved with, and then he could back off on lots of other things, and still have time to get his golf in.
To neo’s point, recall that Jimmy Carter famously resolved a dispute about use of the White House tennis courts by his flunkies by drawing up a schedule for them.
Time management, I believe it’s called.
Semi-OT: I just learned that the Dunhams sent Stan to Mercer Island High School when the chairman of the school board, John Stenhouse, had admitted five years earlier to the HUAC to being a Communist. (He’d claimed he’d quit, but those who’ve read Witness will recall that the Party, seeing trouble ahead, had told the comrades to renounce formal membership against precisely this eventuality.)
Mercer Island High School
Text of Stenhouse’s HUAC testimony
Useful summary: Barack Obama: Red Diaper Baby
Good God, how many Communists does this clown have in his life? Coinky-dink? Sure.
this wasnt a dream:
Longtime GOP Senate moderate Arlen Specter dies
Good God, how many Communists does this clown have in his life?
everyone near him, so that when he got to where he was, he was a true believer, which is not necessarily the same as a true communist leader..
the difference is in belief and motive
the communist leader feigns believe to rule over believers which is the motive.
the true believer believes truely, and so is the most convincing, and they believe what they offer is utopian good and thats their motive.
so a small cadre of sociopathic leaders with a tiny army of fanatically good people warped backwards, lead the rest of the left side of the IQ graph, whom they call genius, and know would beat up those with higher iq that would dare question or point it out and deny them some social excuse (like the argument of how everyone who is successful cheated them – proven by the math for jews in germany, feminists in the US, minorities in the US,etc)
i should point out that regular people follow the fanatacal believers, as they try to use the belief as a measure of validity.. more belief, must be more valid.
the cargo cult version of seeing someone “having convictions”
re: meddling. I suspect that is an area where Valerie Jarrett has a big role. She probably keeps her eyes and ears open for areas requiring presidential action.
neo: The “both” hypothesis can be scheduled, as you illustrate. But it seems quite a stretch to believe an ego the size of Barry’s would lower himself down some hallway in some anonymous office building just to direct some invisible bureaucrat to alter some trivial detail of some plan nobody will ever hear about.
That’s adding an epicycle to the process just to keep both stereotypes alive. Occam’s razor (not Beard) says Barry is one or the other.
I’m with OB, Barry is a delegater, not a meddler. As counter-evidence to the golfer hypothesis, do we have any stories from bureaucrats, perhaps used as campaign material, that Obama was deeply involved in any departmental decisions? It would paint him as engaged and “hands-on”. Seems like that would be great to use in response to Romney’s é¼ber-manager credential.
foxmarks, Obama famously told Sarah Brady “we are working on gun control under the radar.” I am sure there are many examples of him meddling through subordinates to push policies and appointments that serve his base (eg, NLRB).
Occam’s Razor necessitates plumping for the explanation with fewer assumptions, as between competing hypotheses that both explain the same data. Put another way, it frowns on unnecessary assumptions. It does not require absolute simplicity.
My point was rather the opposite, namely, that despite the pressures of the job, past (failed) Presidents did find time to bother with trivial matters.
If you think about it, neo’s point makes perfect sense if one makes one assumption: the man is wildly over his head in this job. Then delegating or ducking the big parts of his job (e.g., Obamacare), while dipping his oar into more mundane matters that are more within his ken is pretty much what you’d expect, because he could then feel he was doing his job. Think of it as singing the doo-wops.
}}} Occam’s Beard: a revisionist historian
Only if he’s a liberal twit historian. Guys like Victor Davis Hanson aren’t revisionists.
2012: The year we hope to change “The One” to “The Last One”…
}}}} of seeing someone “having convictions”
I think there are a lot of people in the Obama Admin who should have convictions, but most of them manage somehow to avoid that, largely thanks to the Holder-run JD.
Occam’s Beard -“Guys like Victor Davis Hanson aren’t revisionists.”
Actually, he earned his spurs by presenting a revised view of Greek warfare based partly on his personal experiences as a grape farmer, something not many other academics could list in their resumes, though lack of experience never kept any academic from spinning a good story.
It’s a bit obscure, but accurate as far as his early writing is concerned to call him a revisionist. See Warfare and Agriculture in Classical Greece.
All right, Neo, now look what you did. I read your post last night, went to bed and dreamed that Barack Obama was in my living room. He came in with an armful of books and marched around putting them down here and there, opened and lying spine-up on their pages (the way the librarian always told me never to leave books.) It was some kind of practical joke that he thought was pretty funny. One of the books was one of his, which he was careful to point out. He was dismayingly charming but would NOT leave my living room. That’s my first-ever political dream, and I blame you.
I have the same feeling about this as I do about Fast and Furious and the 9 other gun walking operations. The media went nuts over Watergate where no one died; in F&F and Benghazi people died and Obama lied.
Victor Davis Hanson, a Revisionist??? Whew! Wonder if they know that at The Hoover Institution,’Yo.
}}}} Our lives will be empty without Obama. I hope he is re-elected.
2012 … The Year We Hope we will Change “The One” to “The Last One”
NeoConScum, as those in the business can tell you, revision cuts two ways.
Depends on who’s being revised.
It’s funny how dependence on buzz words to do the thinking can lead someone off course.
Well, today was nice because I was able to ignore politics for awhile and follow the heroic exploits of Felix Baumgartner, who set an altitude record for a manned balloon flight, the highest parachute jump, and the fastest free-falling speed. And the previous record holder, Joseph Kittinger, was his advisor and capcom. They sat side by side at the post-flight press conference.
Thanks to modern communications technology, I was able to watch it all live on the internet.
As it will with me to the rest of my days. Words to live by. Thanks.
…that was as Heinleinesque a quote from not actually being from Bob as I can recall.
…yes that was a compliment. If you’re a Heinlein fan, at least lol.
I can understand having this political dream, though I’m surprised it’s the first you’ve had. The whole Benghazi mess is the most disturbing thing yet to actually happen. Although ushering in the Muslim Brotherhood… Iran getting so close to a bomb, not supporting the Green Revolution, it goes on and on. Drawing down our military so dramatically in a time of increasing peril… Just when you think it can’t get any weirder or worse, it does. This tops it all though with Americans dead, and in a horrible way more likely than not. Obviously there is some kind of coverup, or negligence. Or?