Perhaps Ted Cruz isn’t really the devil, but that’s what he made me think of when I saw him on the debate last night. What a slimy, evasive, nasty human being!
Yes, this is about that “debate.”
I don’t need to give you three guesses to figure out who’s the buffoon. I almost wrote baboon, but the great apes are much his superior. Donald Trump. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in action. He knows nothing; says nothing except insults and outrages, but will always do everything better than anybody else, obviously, because he can always call on “the best people.” He knows them. What’s most amazing about him is his absolute conviction that he’s a genius, everyone else is retarded and he can just say whatever he wants to say—usually driven by the polls.
He was given $40 million by his father. He turned it into $2 to 5 billions. If he had invested it in index funds, he would have made maybe $6 billions; in other words, he’s no genius, even at making money!
What to say about the rest of the debate crowd: Carly Fiorina is the female version of Ted Cruz, but with no knowledge of government, little of politics and a failed career as a CEO.
Marco Rubio is slick, well-spoken, attractive, but he had major problems with finances (his own), doesn’t quite know what to do about immigration, as a first generation Cuban-American, but seems to be enthusiastic about surveillance over everyone. Big Brother, here we come!
Jeb Bush: sounds like a policy wonk, is about as awkward, but made a few substantive points: bashing Muslims would be a boon for ISIL’s recruiting. His new, improved scenario for Syria/Iraq is to get Arab boots on the ground. He didn’t acknowledge that Obama’s already working on that, but Sunni Arabs are hard to come by to fight ISIL, since both the Assad regime and the Abadi regime (a slightly softened Maliki regime) have brutally discriminated against the Sunnis needed to fight against ISIL in the Sunni majority areas outside of Kurdistan. Thank you, George W for the wonderful regime change.
No one in this crowd seems to think Obama’s done anything, except bend over and offer his skinny ass. Oh, and Hillary seems never to have left the administration from the way Jeb and all the others hyphenate Obama-Hillary.
But their collective foreign policy is as scary as their domestic surveillance aspirations. Bomb them: All! Women and children? Yes.
That’s really what they mean when they say over and over that the bane of America is “political correctness.” As in abiding by international law, not targeting civilians abroad, or minorities at home. Bad. Bomb the hell out of them. And at home: target the “likely perps,” meaning blacks and Hispanics (illegals, all), and now, Middle Easterners. And surveil, surveil, surveil!
I know Rand Paul is a closet racist: to him, civil rights law is government overreach. But he did make some sense against surveillance and on foreign policy: don’t intervene: Arabs have to do it themselves, maybe with a little help. His policy position was so far out of the GOP right-wing mainstream, that his physical position, way over on the right-hand end understated how much of an outlier he is.
The opposite of outlier is Kasich: he and Bush played grown-ups.
And then there was Chris Christie, Bridge Blocker, looking like he wished he’d done it his burly self. He would shoot down Russian planes! That’s how tough he is!
Gee, we all want WWIII, the first two were so much fun!
Oh, and what was that going on in Paris? People just obsessed with the climate: don’t worry about it; they’ll go away and we’ll get back to “our oil” and now, “our internet” and bomb ISIL—and anyone near it—to smithereens. That’s how we’ll be SAFE.
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
War with DAESH/ISIS?
Are these the times when even the NYT promotes war?
Yesterday, 12/7/15, in ‘Obama Says of Terrorist Threat: 'We Will Overcome It,’ the NYT reported on Obama’s oval office speech.
You’d think the “paper of record” would cover significant points put forward in the President’s address, but you’d be wrong. There was much about what Obama had done and was doing about Daesh*, aka Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL militarily, but no mention of his major, multilateral initiative with Russia, Iran, China, France and Saudi Arabia (number 4 of his points), in which tentative agreements have already been reached on a process to establish a cease-fire between ‘moderate’ opposition forces and the Syrian Government, with the further tentative agreement that the initial result would be an interim government. Without an agreement, no progress against Daesh is possible. Why? Arab Sunnis rebelling against both Iraqi and Syrian Shiite/Alawite dominated governments are not going to fight against Daesh, which is also Sunni Arab, though extremist thugs, until the conflict between the rest of the (Sunni) opposition is at least tentatively resolved.
Russia’s initial solution—backing Assad—won’t bring Sunnis to its side; it can drive them into the arms of Daesh.
American Republicans call for war with Daesh, inching towards US troops on the ground, but that’s precisely what Daesh wants. It would empower it to portray itself as Islam attacked by Infidels, which would make its current successful worldwide recruiting look pale by comparison.
Yes, it would lose on the battlefield, but we’ve been down that road too many times: The US lost no battles in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, but it effectively lost all three wars. Attacking Daesh directly would have the same result, but it could be global; the West, even Russia and China, could be under constant attack of the kind demonstrated in San Bernardino. We might call it Terror by Example, or Inspirational Terror, instead of a Terror Network.
Further, to demonize and alienate Muslims, as Trump and his ditto-heads advocate, would be counter-productive: it would prime Muslims all over the world, including those in the US (relatively well integrated and prosperous up until now) to be even more receptive to Daesh than its small thuggish fringe has been already.
*Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, but it sounds like the Arabic words for one who crushes something underfoot, or one who sows discord, hence it is intensely disliked by Daesh adherents. IS is not appropriate, since it is not a true state, only a conquest gang or a global mafia.
You’d think the “paper of record” would cover significant points put forward in the President’s address, but you’d be wrong. There was much about what Obama had done and was doing about Daesh*, aka Islamic State/ISIS/ISIL militarily, but no mention of his major, multilateral initiative with Russia, Iran, China, France and Saudi Arabia (number 4 of his points), in which tentative agreements have already been reached on a process to establish a cease-fire between ‘moderate’ opposition forces and the Syrian Government, with the further tentative agreement that the initial result would be an interim government. Without an agreement, no progress against Daesh is possible. Why? Arab Sunnis rebelling against both Iraqi and Syrian Shiite/Alawite dominated governments are not going to fight against Daesh, which is also Sunni Arab, though extremist thugs, until the conflict between the rest of the (Sunni) opposition is at least tentatively resolved.
Russia’s initial solution—backing Assad—won’t bring Sunnis to its side; it can drive them into the arms of Daesh.
American Republicans call for war with Daesh, inching towards US troops on the ground, but that’s precisely what Daesh wants. It would empower it to portray itself as Islam attacked by Infidels, which would make its current successful worldwide recruiting look pale by comparison.
Yes, it would lose on the battlefield, but we’ve been down that road too many times: The US lost no battles in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, but it effectively lost all three wars. Attacking Daesh directly would have the same result, but it could be global; the West, even Russia and China, could be under constant attack of the kind demonstrated in San Bernardino. We might call it Terror by Example, or Inspirational Terror, instead of a Terror Network.
Further, to demonize and alienate Muslims, as Trump and his ditto-heads advocate, would be counter-productive: it would prime Muslims all over the world, including those in the US (relatively well integrated and prosperous up until now) to be even more receptive to Daesh than its small thuggish fringe has been already.
*Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in Syria and the Levant, but it sounds like the Arabic words for one who crushes something underfoot, or one who sows discord, hence it is intensely disliked by Daesh adherents. IS is not appropriate, since it is not a true state, only a conquest gang or a global mafia.
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