I'm sure I'm the only one...in fact I must be because I haven't heard these two news stories linked together anywhere yet..so basically my crazy insane side is rearing its ugly head, but if you would, please just stay with me a minute.
News Story #1 - North Korea says in not so many words that they will attempt a nuclear strike against the United States if they are attacked.
News Story #2 - The US Navy is trailing a North Korean cargo ship known for smuggling illegal weapons, and according to recent UN sanctions can board the vessel at any time.
Is this scary to any one else? If that isn't scary enough, try adding this...
News Story #3 - North Korea has stepped up testing on rockets and nukes for the last 8 months.
So, here's the vision that keeps flashing in that nutty side of my brain. Does anyone else have a feeling that the weapons smuggling ship being caught and trailed at this time is more than a coincidence? If the US stopped and boarded that ship, do you think the North Koreans would just shrug it off, or would they consider it an attack? Do you see where I'm going here?
I can't help but think that North Korea has put together a rocket that they are confident in, and they have an itchy trigger finger. And I know what you're thinking. Carl, you say dismissively, if they did that it would be suicide because we would retaliate and North Korea would be reduced to a big hole in the ground where Communists used to live.
But would it? Is our new Messiah-in-Chief going to give the order to eliminate North Korea and kill millions in a nuclear strike? Get real.
First, he's the peace President, and he has been on a USA apology tour for the first 4 months of his presidency. He is dominated by his image and his perception, and the people who got him elected would be very eager to blame the US for any disasters that befall it. A retaliation against North Korea would run in opposition to everything Obama is and where he came from.
If those factors aren't enough, this would be a chance for China to flex its muscles and maybe emerge as a 2nd superpower. What if after a North Korean strike China says that it won't stand for any retaliation. China is on the UN Security Council and nothing goes through without their approval. Would Obama show the Chinese why we are the only remaining superpower, or would he cower? I see nothing in him, his rhetoric, or his past to suggest that he would stand up.
Lastly, but I would wager not entirely out of the realm of his thinking, what kind of environmental costs would be paid in a strike on North Korea? The environmental movement in the form of the Green Party supports the Obama administration steadfastly, and in true "one issue party" form would encourage the administration to show restaint so as not to compound the envirnmental damage of nuclear war.
Long story short, I have no confidence that the Obama administration has what it takes to handle this situation, and I think Kim Jong Il is banking on that. Since I have been playing too much online poker lately, let me put it this way: the North Koreans are about to go all in, and I don't think Obama has what it takes to call, let alone raise.
But then again, maybe I'm nuts. What do you think?
Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Two Minutes' Hate
I've been following this ridiculous Nancy Pelosi deal, and I did manage not to vomit when she again blamed the big, bad Bush Administration for her own supposed ignorance. I mean, Democrats have been in control of Congress since 2006. How long are we going to have to hear about George Bush.
Then it hit me. The democrats need George Bush. That's why they are constantly eluding to him in there speeches and making off-handed comments about how terrible the last eight years were. The democrats need George Bush, and more importantly "Bush Derangement System", in order to function.
The problem goes to the root of the Democratic Party. What exactly is it? Right now the Democratic Party is a loosely assembled group of one-issue political movements. You've got the the radical environmentalists, the radical feminists, the radical anti-war people, etc.... Basically if you are a radical, you can find representation in the Democratic Party. Granted, most Democrats are not radicals. However, these normal Democrats are supporting a party being run by far-left radicals who are promoting a far-left agenda. So what does that make those normal people? Uninformed at best, I would say.
Anyway, so you have this heterogeneous mish-mash of interest groups that make up the Democrat Party, and when you are one-issue interest group, it's hard to find common ground with any other groups. This lack of unity in the party was shown in a resurgence of the Green Party and other one-issue left-wing parties in in the early 2000's. So how do you bring disparate groups with diferent interests and goals together? You need a point of unification that overrides all others, and that point was the hatred of George W. Bush. Environmentalists might not care about abortion, and anti-war activists may not care about gay rights, but they ALL could hate George Bush. With the help of the media, the left turned George bush into the antithesis of every far-left interest group, all at the same time. The was everything and he was nothing. He was both a criminal mastermind and bumbling baffoon. He was ligh and dark. He was yin and yang. Maybe that was a little too dramatic....
Moving on, and now the Democrats find themselves in power, riding a wave of hatred right into the White House. Now the liberal chickens are coming home to roost. All these disparate groups who were promised that everything would be puppydogs and ice cream once George Bush was gone and Barack Obama, The Most Merciful, was enthroned on high are looking for results, and right now they are finding few.
So how do you keep all these groups from turning on each other? How do you keep the far-left unified? You don't let the point of unification go. You keep to there. You go back to George Bush, saying, "Well, we may still be at war, but this is George Bush's war." "We may be spending away our grandkid's futures, but George Bush started it, so it's really his policy"
In short, the left needs a Two Minutes' Hate, only instead of Goldstein's face, it will be George Bush's.
Then it hit me. The democrats need George Bush. That's why they are constantly eluding to him in there speeches and making off-handed comments about how terrible the last eight years were. The democrats need George Bush, and more importantly "Bush Derangement System", in order to function.
The problem goes to the root of the Democratic Party. What exactly is it? Right now the Democratic Party is a loosely assembled group of one-issue political movements. You've got the the radical environmentalists, the radical feminists, the radical anti-war people, etc.... Basically if you are a radical, you can find representation in the Democratic Party. Granted, most Democrats are not radicals. However, these normal Democrats are supporting a party being run by far-left radicals who are promoting a far-left agenda. So what does that make those normal people? Uninformed at best, I would say.
Anyway, so you have this heterogeneous mish-mash of interest groups that make up the Democrat Party, and when you are one-issue interest group, it's hard to find common ground with any other groups. This lack of unity in the party was shown in a resurgence of the Green Party and other one-issue left-wing parties in in the early 2000's. So how do you bring disparate groups with diferent interests and goals together? You need a point of unification that overrides all others, and that point was the hatred of George W. Bush. Environmentalists might not care about abortion, and anti-war activists may not care about gay rights, but they ALL could hate George Bush. With the help of the media, the left turned George bush into the antithesis of every far-left interest group, all at the same time. The was everything and he was nothing. He was both a criminal mastermind and bumbling baffoon. He was ligh and dark. He was yin and yang. Maybe that was a little too dramatic....
Moving on, and now the Democrats find themselves in power, riding a wave of hatred right into the White House. Now the liberal chickens are coming home to roost. All these disparate groups who were promised that everything would be puppydogs and ice cream once George Bush was gone and Barack Obama, The Most Merciful, was enthroned on high are looking for results, and right now they are finding few.
So how do you keep all these groups from turning on each other? How do you keep the far-left unified? You don't let the point of unification go. You keep to there. You go back to George Bush, saying, "Well, we may still be at war, but this is George Bush's war." "We may be spending away our grandkid's futures, but George Bush started it, so it's really his policy"
In short, the left needs a Two Minutes' Hate, only instead of Goldstein's face, it will be George Bush's.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Obama and the Missile
As I'm sure everyone who's taking the time to read this post knows, over the weekend North Korea fired it's much bally-hooed ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan. Success or failure aside, although I think it's silly to argue that this was somehow a failure for North Korea, I'm wondering why the United States didn't shoot this missile down.
As our illustrious Vice President told us during the campaign, President Obama, like any new President, is going to be tested in the first six months of office. This was a test, and our new President failed miserably. Now before you say, "Oh you just hate Obama because he's a democrat and you're racist and blah blah blah blah...." I want Obama to succeed in the foreign policy arena, as I think every American does. Foreign policy failures carry a great cost in both world standing and wealth, and I don't think any American is rooting for that. Having said that and being a free market, freedom loving, anti-government conservative, I hope that every one of his domestic policies fails miserably. I mean, "explodes in a ball of flames" type failure. But that is neither here nor there....
Wanting Obama to succeed overseas, I can't see this as anything but a failure. Shooting down the missile would have established Obama as a no-nonsense guardian of the free world, a President who is willing to negotiate but who refuses to be taken advantage of. That action would have sent a message to everyone in the world who is thinking of fingering their noses at the United States. Instead now the world sees that the United States will allow itself to be handcuffed by the UN, and that the most stern response you can expect from the Obama administration is a strongly worded letter.
So again I ask why? I mean one could say that Obama is trying to get away from the "Cowboy Diplomacy" of the Bush years, but I don't think that fits. I mean, it's not like North Korea is a member in good standing of the world community. Nobody likes what they're doing, and I don't think anyone except Kim Jong Il would have objected if we had blown the missile out of the sky.
Some would say that we couldn't have hit it, but I don't buy that either. I'm not saying that it was a slam dunk, but Admiral Keating of the US Navy was confident that we could take it out. I know Defense Secretary Gates tried to put that genie back in the bottle, but I am a bit skeptical of his statements as they had time to be processed by the White House spin machine. And in the end would we have been that much worse off had we missed? At least we would have tried to do something.
Although I'm not going to do it here, there are still some other reasons for not shooting it down that could be considered. I'm not going to do it because I think there is only one that makes sense. Obama could let our missile defense shield succeed. Think about it, what is the first commandment of the modern democrat party? "Everything George Bush did was stupid and wrong." This missile shield was pushed by George Bush and made viable under GW. One of Obama's campaign promises was to stop spending money on unproven missile defense technologies, even though they weren't unproven at all. In fact, they had been proven to be remarkably successful. Obama remarked during the campaign that the missile defense shield was a relic of the Cold War, and that a ballistic missile attack was no longer a threat to the US. This entire incident proves this to be untrue.
So let's say that North Korea launches and we shoot it down. After a success of that visibility and magnitude, how easy would it be to dismantle the missile shield? Impossible, or maybe even slightly harder. Obama is going to destroy that missile shield, and so he couldn't shoot down the missile.
At least that's what I think. What about you?
As our illustrious Vice President told us during the campaign, President Obama, like any new President, is going to be tested in the first six months of office. This was a test, and our new President failed miserably. Now before you say, "Oh you just hate Obama because he's a democrat and you're racist and blah blah blah blah...." I want Obama to succeed in the foreign policy arena, as I think every American does. Foreign policy failures carry a great cost in both world standing and wealth, and I don't think any American is rooting for that. Having said that and being a free market, freedom loving, anti-government conservative, I hope that every one of his domestic policies fails miserably. I mean, "explodes in a ball of flames" type failure. But that is neither here nor there....
Wanting Obama to succeed overseas, I can't see this as anything but a failure. Shooting down the missile would have established Obama as a no-nonsense guardian of the free world, a President who is willing to negotiate but who refuses to be taken advantage of. That action would have sent a message to everyone in the world who is thinking of fingering their noses at the United States. Instead now the world sees that the United States will allow itself to be handcuffed by the UN, and that the most stern response you can expect from the Obama administration is a strongly worded letter.
So again I ask why? I mean one could say that Obama is trying to get away from the "Cowboy Diplomacy" of the Bush years, but I don't think that fits. I mean, it's not like North Korea is a member in good standing of the world community. Nobody likes what they're doing, and I don't think anyone except Kim Jong Il would have objected if we had blown the missile out of the sky.
Some would say that we couldn't have hit it, but I don't buy that either. I'm not saying that it was a slam dunk, but Admiral Keating of the US Navy was confident that we could take it out. I know Defense Secretary Gates tried to put that genie back in the bottle, but I am a bit skeptical of his statements as they had time to be processed by the White House spin machine. And in the end would we have been that much worse off had we missed? At least we would have tried to do something.
Although I'm not going to do it here, there are still some other reasons for not shooting it down that could be considered. I'm not going to do it because I think there is only one that makes sense. Obama could let our missile defense shield succeed. Think about it, what is the first commandment of the modern democrat party? "Everything George Bush did was stupid and wrong." This missile shield was pushed by George Bush and made viable under GW. One of Obama's campaign promises was to stop spending money on unproven missile defense technologies, even though they weren't unproven at all. In fact, they had been proven to be remarkably successful. Obama remarked during the campaign that the missile defense shield was a relic of the Cold War, and that a ballistic missile attack was no longer a threat to the US. This entire incident proves this to be untrue.
So let's say that North Korea launches and we shoot it down. After a success of that visibility and magnitude, how easy would it be to dismantle the missile shield? Impossible, or maybe even slightly harder. Obama is going to destroy that missile shield, and so he couldn't shoot down the missile.
At least that's what I think. What about you?
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