Right Wing Nut House

Iran has graciously consented to obey international law and allow inspectors into their recently revealed nuclear enrichment facility while also agreeing to allow Russia to complete the processing of a large part of their nuclear fuel.

This is an “I told you so” moment for the left…or is it? The Daily Beast:

Who knew this whole “diplomacy” idea might actually accomplish something? Mounting pressure on Iran over its nuclear program appears to be paying dividends as the U.S. engages in multilateral and direct negotiations with Iranian officials in Geneva this week. Already Iran has agreed to let U.N. inspectors into its recently revealed uranium enrichment plant and to send most of its uranium to Russia for enrichment, which would help reassure foreign powers that it is not on the path to produce nuclear weapons. The tentative arrangement could be enough to hold off a new round of sanctions on Iran, whose economy is suffering and whose government is still containing fallout from its dispute presidential election. Of course, the deal only works if Iran follows through on its word and some observers aren’t holding their breath. “This is only a start, and we shall need to see progress through some of the practical steps we have discussed today,” European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana told The Washington Post.

This “whole diplomacy thing” has accomplished nothing. Nada. Zipedee Doo Da. Iran had already assured the IAEA that they would allow access to the new site. And as for completing the processing of their LEU in Russia - that too, is not much of a concession. That would be the enriched uranium from the facility at Natanz - a place that the IAEA has been watching very closely so that Iran could never turn that enriched uranium from the 5% level to the bomb grade 90% level.

The fact is, that stockpile was never a problem It was too closely watched for Iran to carry out any funny business. The real problem is that we don’t know what other facilities Iran has built, nor do we know what other steps they have taken to build a bomb that we would never be able to determine. The fact that they were hiding an enrichment facility that was much too small to enrich uranium for commercial purposes, and could easily been used for military purposes, is the real problem with the Iranian nuclear program; it’s what we don’t know and what the Iranians refuse to tell us that makes this situation so dangerous.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk - an arms control advocate - lays out the logic of this argument:

For some time, a few of us - including Josh Pollack and Andreas Persbo - have been arguing (with little success) that the public debate is misguided in its singular focus on breakout scenarios at Natanz. Is Iran 18 months away? How much LEU does it have? These were interesting questions but, to my mind, distractions. Natanz is the most watched site in the world. If the Iranians build a bomb, they will do it someplace else. Like Qom.

Josh Pollack did a wonderful job of tackling these issues in his post, Why Iran’s Clock Keeps Resetting (August 19, 2009) and over at TotalWonkerr, where he noted “One of the shortcomings of breakout lit so far may be its emphasis on on a single site. A hidden site is also a possibility…”

The real risk was always that Iran would construct a covert site other than Natanz. As long as Iran remains under the current safeguards arrangements, I wrote to a colleague this summer, we have “no confidence that Iran is not simply trucking centrifuge components to another location, buried deep under some mountain.”

For example, we would never know (without human intelligence that would have penetrated their nuke program) whether or not the mullahs have been working on a design for a bomb. Computer modeling for such a design is impossible to detect. Nor do we know what progress the Iranians have made in warhead design so that a nuke could be married to one of their improving rockets - the Shahab II and III.

To spout nonsense about diplomacy “working” at this point is truly ignorant. Not even Obama has said anything except that this is a “constructive beginning.” And WaPo’s Glenn Kessler points out that this sudden “cooperation” by the mullahs is not unexpected:

The outcome, which President Obama in Washington called a “constructive beginning,” came after 7 1/2 hours of talks in an 18th-century villa on the outskirts of Geneva that included the highest-level bilateral meeting between the two countries since relations were severed three decades ago after the Iranian revolution. But the difficulties that lie ahead were illustrated when the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, held a triumphant news conference at which he denounced “media terrorism,” insisted that Iran has always fully met its international commitments, and refused even to acknowledge a question from an Israeli reporter.

The sudden show of cooperation by Tehran reduces for now the threat of additional sanctions, which has been made repeatedly by the United States and others over the past week after the revelation of a secret Iranian nuclear facility. The United States will need to keep the pressure on Iran to avoid being dragged into a process without end.

Anyone who followed the EU3 talks that were carried out during the Bush Administration knows full well that the Iranians are experts at dragging negotiating partners “into a process without end.”

Meanwhile, no one can say if at some still undiscovered location in Iran - and indeed the evidence points to this being more than a possibility - centrifuges aren’t whirring away creating HEU that could be used to construct a nuclear weapon. That’s the bottom line and any celebratory nonsense about diplomacy “working” is simple, partisan blather.

In case you haven’t noticed, public discourse in America has taken a decidedly loutish turn in recent years. Now there’s a fabulous English word, “lout” meaning “…an awkward, stupid person; clumsy, ill-mannered boor; oaf.” It apparently has Scandinavian or “Old Norse” origins - a Viking insult no doubt.

And it fits Alan Grayson to a “T”:

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) warned Americans that “Republicans want you to die quickly” during an after-hours House floor speech Tuesday night.

His remarks, which drew angry and immediate calls for an apology from Republicans, were highlighted by a sign reading “The Republican Health Care Plan: Die Quickly.”

Grayson won’t apologize and has taken the attitude, “In for a penny, in for a pound:”

This afternoon, Grayson came back to the House floor to say he had no intentions of backing down from his comments:

“I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven’t voted sooner to end this holocaust in America,” Grayson said.

He also referred to health care reform opponents as “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals” - almost the exact language I have used to describe some conservatives on the far right but I’m a blogger and he’s a Congressman and obviously, he should be held to a higher standard, right Speaker Pelosi?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says there’s no reason for Rep. Alan Grayson to apologize for his “Die quickly” remark, since Republicans have made statements just as outrageous as his.

“If anybody’s going apologize, everybody should apologize,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference. “We are holding Democrats to a higher standard than their own members.”

She deemed the flap over Grayson’s remarks a distraction from the healthcare debate.

“Typically, Republicans would like to use this as distraction because they have no plan,” Pelosi said.

Such courage should ordinarily be recognized; except that’s not exactly the attitude Pelosi had a few weeks ago:

A communique from the conscience of our nation, who was so troubled by Joe Wilson’s outburst that she not only made sure he was censured — after he apologized to Obama — but then proceeded to tear up publicly over the state of political discourse in America, just to let you know how much she cares.

[...]

I’d call her a hypocrite and a disgrace but, let’s face it, those ships sailed long ago. Meanwhile, here’s a snippet of Teacups on CNN last night, clearly relishing his new role as lunkheaded lightning rod. He’s all about working together, don’t you know, even though (a) according to Cantor, the GOP leadership hasn’t been invited to the White House to talk health care since May and (b) calling your opponents “neanderthals” is, at best, a mighty roundabout way of getting to the road to bipartisanship. Exit schadenfreude: As of today, his House seat’s been downgraded from “leans Democratic” to “toss up.” Keep talking, Grayson.

Is Joe Wilson calling Obama a “Liar” and Grayson calling his opponents “Neanderthals” the same thing?

Why no. No its not. That’s because Wilson called Obama a liar and Grayson called his opponents Neanderthals.

Is it the same as GOP members accusing Obamacare of eventually killing people?

Why no. No its not. Grayson called his opponents Neanderthals while the GOP said Obamacare would end up killing people.

I am on the cusp of an enormously important truth here. Trying to weight loutish behavior and language is stupid. No, not just run of the mill, dunce cap type stupid. I mean cosmically clueless. I mean stupendously simpleminded. Mindlessly moronic. Idiotically insensate.

Either you’re an ill mannered boor or, you’re not. Trying to draw equivalency, or even more imbecilically, actually believe you can place two different oafish utterances side by side and judge which is worse is gobsmackingly moronic.

There is no “special context” that one can weigh the relative lunacy of a Wilson or a Grayson insult. Whether directed at a president or the guy who swabs the floors of the washroom, it is equally wrong. The calumny is not due to what was said, or who it was directed towards, but rather the wholesale violation of one of our most precious, and important societal strictures; the empathetic give and take represented by simple, common manners.

Manners are a convention invented by civilized society to make discourse pleasant, and smooth the rough spots that naturally occur when strangers meet for the first time. Violate the convention and whether King or commoner, you are marked as a boor.

Is one ethnic or racial slur worse than another? Of course not. And trying to parse the kind of idiocy uttered by Grayson, Wilson, and any other politician from either party reveals a pathological devotion to small minded sophistry (not to mention partisan gamesmanship).

Why must everything one side says or does find some counterpart on the other? We all play the game but it is really starting to bug me. Reminds me of the lady at the candy store in my youth who used to take 10 minutes to dole out a quarter pound of jawbreakers because she would put one piece of candy on the scale at a time, trying to get the balance indicator to rest precisely in the middle, thus exactly countering the quarter pound weight she had on the other side. It was maddening. I wanted to scream “Gimme the goddamn candy and be done with it, lady!”

I’m getting to be that way over these tete a tetes which attempt to one up the other side by triumphantly proclaiming, “Your lout is more loutish than our lout, SO THERE!” Yeah, I’m guilty as charged on occasion but Jesus people, I halfway agree with Pelosi; this is a distraction. Haven’t we got anything better to do?

I’ll probably play this game again next week but right now, it sickens me. I am really going to try to be cognizant of the bottom line in these things from now on, although living in the blogosphere, it is probably unavoidable to some degree.

In the meantime, let’s agree that anyone who violates strictures against public discourse should be called out, regardless of party. This is such a simple thing, and it might improve the national conversation a little.

My latest at PJ Media is up and it deals with our slowly evolving policy toward Iran, begun during the Bush administration and carried on by Obama’s team, that the US has rejected the military option entirely (or nearly so) and is working toward containment and deterrence.

A sample:

The number one unpleasant truth the UN refuses to face is that the Iranians are not going to stop their drive for developing the capability to build a nuclear weapon unless someone physically restrains them from doing so. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made this perfectly plain and there should be no reason to doubt him. He has tied the Iranian nuclear program to the issue of Iranian sovereignty and demands the same rights any other nation has to a nuclear program granted under international law.

The “P-5 + 1? talks (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) in Geneva will simply confirm what everyone already knows: no sanctions regime will prevent Iran from continuing their nuclear work. There are no enticements, no blandishments that the Iranians will accept in exchange for abandoning what they clearly see is a matter of national pride and international prestige. To think otherwise is not logical.

There have been all manner of grandiose proposals for a “grand bargain” that would establish a multinational enrichment facility on Iranian soil, or a vastly increased inspection regime by the IAEA, in exchange for inducements to Iran that consist of sponsoring Iranian membership in the WTO to increased trade with the West.

But when Iran refuses, what then? And here is where I think it fairly obvious that the United States, the West, and the rest of the world have already accepted the idea that Iran is going to eventually develop the capability to construct a nuclear bomb.

It’s easy to declare that bombing Iran will get them to see reason (how this is so is never quite revealed). But taking a hard headed look at the military option necessarily means trying to ascertain what you would gain by a strike versus what you would lose. And I think in the fall of October, 2006, the Bush administration finally reached a consensus that the military option would cause far more problems than it would solve.

The recent revelation about a previously unknown Iranian enrichment facility drives that point home. For any military action to be successful, we would have to identify the the targets that would have to be destroyed in order to set back the Iranian program several years (the relentless logic of zero sum benefits/consequences demands that we don’t have to go back and do the same thing in a matter of months). But it is likely now that Iran has been surreptitiously adding to their capability by building facilities of which we are totally unaware.

You can’t bomb what you don’t know about. And given the ruinous consequences of military action to American interests, you damn well better be sure that any such strike took out enough of the Iranian program that they could not threaten anyone for at least a couple of years. (I am not even going to address invasion and regime change. Such notions are silly.)

And what of the consequences to the innocent? No one has ever - repeat ever - deliberately bombed a nuclear enrichment facility (the Israeli strike on the Osirak reactor never hit the reactor itself, targeting the vast infrastructure that supported it). But by definition, a strike on Nantanz or the vast complex we would be hitting centrifuges and reactors full of enriched uranium:

The Persian Gulf nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and Iran have more than half the world’s known oil reserves. The 1981 study by Fetter and Tsipis in Scientific American on “Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity” estimated that bombing a nuclear reactor would cause 8600 square miles around the reactor to be uninhabitable, depending on which way the wind blows. Bombing the Bushehr reactor will mean half of the world’s oil is instantly inaccessible. Bombing Iran means that Americans will not be driving cars any where, any more, for a long, long time. The American Way of Life will be finished. An economic collapse unimagined by Americans will follow. Mechanized farming and food transport will be finished. Famine is a possibility. Food riots are a certainty, in the land of plenty, with the fuel gauge on empty.

By the way - we’d probably end up killing some Russians if we bombed Bushehr as they are assisting the Iranians in construction.

And Israel? Richard Clark sums up the Israeli dilemma on bombing Iran:

Well, put yourself in Israel’s shoes. The President of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He’s repeatedly denied that the Holocaust ever took place. He talks in mystical terms about the invisible Imam and the return of the expected one, the Madi, all of which sounds like an Islamic version of the fundamentalist Christians talking about rapture and final days and if this person had the authority to throw nuclear weapons around, would he perhaps throw them at Israel without further provocation because he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth? From the Israeli perspective, two or three nuclear weapons going off in their country is the end of their country. This is an existential issue for Israel. So, we, as Israel’s ally, have to take that into account. This is not just a question of another country getting a nuclear weapon like, say, Pakistan or India. It’s a question of a country that has actively supported terrorism, has had complete disregard for international law and talks openly about destroying Israel. So, this is a serious question for the United States and for Israel. But it doesn’t mean that because it’s a serious question that the answer is necessarily a military option.

As I point out in the PJM piece, Israel is apparently taking a wait and see attitude - at least until the end of the year. At that point, unless the world applies “crippling” (word used by the Israeli ambassador to the US) sanctions on Iran, all bets are off and the clock may strike midnight.

Israel is in a horrible position - but so are we if they strike. Iran will simply blame us anyway and the same consequences that would accrue if we ourselves bombed the Iranians would probably be visited on us anyway. Logically, this would mean that we may threaten Israel with a cutoff or a substantial reduction in aid if they choose the military option towards Iran. My guess is, they’ve already been told that which has probably delayed a strike on Tehran to this point.

If the rest of the world has already accepted the fact of Iranian nukes, this means that Israel is probably alone in their desire to start a war over the issue. Would that stay their hand in attacking? Obama would not stand still for an Israeli strike on Iran where America was blamed so in addition to all the other consequences that the Jewish state must calculate, there is the very real possibility of an actively hostile America to consider. If that becomes part of the calculation, it is very possible that Israel would not bomb Iran and would work with us to develop missile defense and other countermeasures short of war.

I fully realize that many supporters of Israel would like to see either the US or the Jewish state bomb Iran. Sometimes, a military response is necessary regardless of the consequences. But in this case, where the gain in bombing is so uncertain while the consequences of military action are stark and predictable, responsible policy makers here, and in Israel, I believe, will eventually come to the conclusion (if they haven’t already) that the second option - unsatisfying as it is - of not taking military action while working to protect our friends and deter the Iranians otherwise, is probably the wisest course.

Apropos of my piece from yesterday about calling out lunacy on the right being necessary, John L. Perry of Newsmax, with exquisite timing, makes me look like a combination genius and soothsayer:

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it.

Ah, the old “civilized coup” in America trick. I guess that’s where the Joint Chiefs are invited to lunch at the White House by the president and they all sit down to a hearty meal of Chateaubriand and scallops with a tasty Cabernet Sauvignon to put just the right edge on what would almost certainly be the most fascinating conversation in American history.

Of course, right wing military coup’s are nothing new - in American literature anyway. I pointed out in a post that commented on a potential coup on the show 24 that there never seems to be any good movies or books about left wing coups. Why?

And while we’re on the subject, can you think of one movie or TV show that ever showed a left wing plot to take over the government? Of course not. That too would never happen in a million years. The plotters would be too busy sitting around arguing about the make up of the post-coup government and could never come to an agreement. Besides, liberals talk too much. All those angst-ridden soliloquies about what they were about to do would put the audience to sleep in about 15 minutes. There would probably be more action in a movie detailing the mating habits of Three Toed Sloths than in a left wing coup film.

On the other hand, the granddaddy of all right wing military coup films, Seven Days in May, based on the bestselling book by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, had plenty of action and suspense:

The equally engrossing movie starred some of Hollywood’s most prominent liberals at the time; Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Frederic March. Lancaster played an Air Force General James Matoon Scott who, angry with the President (played by March) for signing a nuclear arms treaty with the Russians, plots to take over the government with the backing of a shady conservative Senator as well as some other generals. The hero of the movie, Jiggs Casey (Douglas), senior aide to the general, discovers the plot and brings it to the attention of the President who then must counter General Scott, trusting only his Secret Service protection and a drunken Senator marvelously underplayed by Edmond O’Brien.

Complicating matters was General Scott’s mistress, the lovely Ellie Holbrooke, played by the ravishing Ava Gardner. She has in her possession some love letters from Scott that Jiggs is tasked to steal so that the counter-plotters have some ammunition.

Of course, being liberals, they are much too principled to use the damning letters and in the end, the President does what he should have done 5 minutes into the movie; fire General Scott and save the republic. Jiggs, who also thought the President was a loon for trusting the Russkies, ends up getting Ava Gardner in the end so sometimes I guess it pays to be the conservative hero in a liberal movie.

According to Perry, the left doesn’t need the military to take over the government and destroy the Constitution. They get themselves elected:

So, view the following through military eyes:

# Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”

# Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.

# They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.

# They can see that the economy — ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation — is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.

# They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.

# They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America’s troop strength is allowed to sag.

# They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.

# They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.

The “scenario” fisks itself. Any comments I would make addressing specific portions of this idiocy would only distract from the totality of ignorance, the aggregation of asinine, puerile imbecility demonstrated by the writer.

Perry’s description of America under Obama sounds eerily like the details in the plot of Allen Drury’s overwrought but hugely entertaining Come Niniveh Come Tyre where a Carter-like President faces mounting challenges and incursions from the old Soviet Union. Each time he backs down, he’s cheered on by liberals and the MSM as a man of peace and “vision.” Finally, realizing he’s destroyed Americas position in the world (and after a clumsy effort to remove him by the Joint Chiefs) the Russians come calling. The President commits suicide and the reins are handed over to his Vice President, a Soviet agent.

Joe Biden: Moscow stooge? You might note that Perry never mentions the vice president in his little coup scenario. Such inconveniences never seem to disrupt the ravings of lunatics when they’re on a roll.

Here’s the topper:

Anyone who imagines that those thoughts are not weighing heavily on the intellect and conscience of America’s military leadership is lost in a fool’s fog.

Okay, lemme get this straight: I’m the one “lost in a fool’s fog” because I think the notion that anyone - responsible or irresponsible - in our military who has even had this idea cross their idle minds - say, when sitting on the toilet with the latest edition of Guns and Ammo - is batsh*t crazy with a capital “C”?

Here’s why this fellow should be put in a straitjacket, and locked up in a nice padded room with plenty of stuffed animals so he he can work off his misplaced aggression against President Obama by tearing off their heads with his teeth:

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”

Ok - I just shrugged my shoulders and said “We can always worry about that later.” Seems to me the republic is still here. Oh sure, Obama is a pifflehead and he wants to nationalize health care but really now, shouldn’t there be like a, you know, good reason to just toss the election results from last year out the window and put General Fiddle Faddle or Colonel Tootie Frootie in charge? No domestic unrest because of this action? What to do with all those very angry liberals and Democrats? It might be emotionally satisfying for some to see our opponents marched off to those detention camps Haliburton built in Utah and Nevada, but gawd, we’d never hear the end of it.

Perry is an old man - served in the Johnson Administration and his bio says he was one of the first journalists allowed into Russia following the death of Stalin. He has got to be in his mid 80’s. He talks of the military performing what amounts to a “family intervention” to remove the duly elected, constitutionally legitimate, president of the United States.

I think his own family should heed that advice and retire this fellow before he hears the laughter directed his way for being such a monumental ass.

I have taken a lot of grief over the years because on several occasions, I have used this website not to attack the left (something I do with great regularity and enjoyment) but because I also highlight some of the lunacy on the right we regularly get from talk show hosts, activists, and other prominent conservatives.

It is not an urge to purge that drives me to expose these clowns, charlatans, mountebanks, and just plain goofs. It is rather an effort, in my own very small and insignificant way, to stand up for what I know is right; that employing reason and rationality to fight Obama and the liberals is far superior to the utter stupidity found in the baseless, exaggerated, hyperbolic and ignorant critiques of the left and Obama that is passed off as “conservative” thought by those who haven’t a clue what conservatism means.

Yes, I usually find myself being almost as unhinged in my criticism of these kooks as they are in criticizing Obama. So be it. Trying to argue rationally with someone who believes Obama is a Nazi, or a Communist is akin to arguing with a stone wall. And at least the wall is smart enough not to keep opening its mouth and further proving how irrational it is.

I reject arguments that one shouldn’t criticize one’s own side and “do the left’s dirty work for them” (the silly and simple minded argument that I am somehow “jealous” of a talk show host’s or a pundit’s success are so laughable that I never bother to respond). I believe that one of conservatism’s major problems these last few years has been a failure of self-examination - and I include myself in committing that sin. Unless one constantly challenges one’s beliefs by examining the underlying assumptions of what we truly believe, testing them against what is happening in the real world, and using the logic and reason granted us by our humanity to determine if they still pass muster and are consistent with our principles, we fall into the trap of being inconsistent in the application of our philosophy.

You don’t have to be an “intellectual” to accomplish this. All it takes is to read and listen to opposing viewpoints once and a while. To close one’s mind to alternative points of view is, by definition, unconservative. And to take the position automatically that liberals have nothing of interest you want to hear is beyond illogical - it is ignorant.

And yet, this is the de facto position of most of my many detractors - that somehow, my mind has been polluted because I quote some liberal every once and a while or I agree with something a liberal says about conservatives. This is nuts. And if anyone would take 10 seconds to think about it, most rational people would agree.

Where does this close mindedness get us?

In the past weeks you’ve heard me talk about the How to Take Back America Conference being held in St. Louis this Friday, Sept. 25, and Saturday, Sept. 26, with speakers like: Gov. Mike Huckabee, “Joe the Plumber,” U.S. Reps. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Steve King, R-Iowa, Tom McClintock, R-Calif., Dr. Tom Price, R-Ga., and Three-Star Gen. Jerry Boykin. But someone who’ll be there that you didn’t hear about is Kitty Werthmann. Kitty was 12 years old when Adolf Hitler took over Austria.

She is 83 with a “vivid memory” of what happened in her homeland next. She witnessed the government take over the banks and the auto industry. Sound familiar? In the last nine months, Obama and the Democrats in Congress have successfully orchestrated the government takeover of Chrysler and General Motors along with countless banks.

She witnessed the “compulsory youth” service and indoctrination. That sounds a little like Obama’s call for “mandatory volunteerism” for America’s youth.

The government takeover of the schools immediately replaced crucifixes with pictures of Hitler and Nazi flags. “All religious instruction was replaced with physical education,” said Werthmann. No prayer was allowed. That all happened here decades ago. It is interesting, however, that Obama’s speech to the captive audience in the government schools – complete with the essay assignment about how students could help him achieve his political goals – was replaced once the American people got wind of it. And speaking of government control of education, if the Senate agrees, all student loans will be government issued, according to a bill that passed the House last week.

Before commenting on the substance of what the author actually believes is solid evidence that Obama wants to set up a Fourth Reich, I want you to look at that list of Republicans who will be giving their imprimatur to a conference that features such idiocy. Those are not “fringe” players. They are all considered “mainstream” conservatives. Should they be taken to task for attending a conference that features such off the wall lunacy?

If it was the only such session that featured, they might be given a pass. But here are a few other sessions that many would see as extreme and many more would see as batsh*t crazy:

HOW TO DEFEAT ATTACKS ON SOVEREIGNTY BY U.N. TREATIES AND NORTH AMERICAN UNION (Just tell me where those black helicopters are)

HOW TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM OF SUPREMACIST JUDGES (um…elect more Republicans?)

HOW TO DEFEND AMERICA VS. MISSILE ATTACK

I would urge you to click on some of the links to other, more sedate sounding seminars like “How to Counter the Homosexual Extremist Movement” or “How to Understand Islam” to understand why I condemn any so-called “mainstream conservatives” who participated in this nuthouse of a conference.

A description of Mrs. Werthmann’s “seminar:”

At the How To Take Back America Conference last weekend, conservative speaker Kitty Werthmann led a workshop called “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists.” Announcing the panel in a column preceding the conference, talk show host Janet Porter gushed how Werthmann’s description of Austria in the 1930s is a “mirror to America” today — noting “They had Joseph Goebbels; we have Mark Lloyd, the diversity czar.” The room was packed over capacity to hear Werthmann, who grew up as a Christian in Austria and serves as Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum South Dakota President.

During her session, Werthmann went through a litany of examples of how President Obama is like Adolf Hitler. She noted that Hitler, who acted “like an American politician,” was “elected in a 100% Christian nation.” Although she failed to once mention Antisemitism or militarism, Werthmann explained how universal healthcare, an Equal Rights Amendment, and increased taxes were telltale signs of Nazism. Werthmann also warned the audience:

If we had our guns, we would have fought a bloody battle. So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition. [...] Take back America. Don’t let them take the country into Socialism. And I refer again, Hitler’s party was National Socialism.

[...]

And that’s what we are having here right now, which is bordering on Marxism.

Is there any way to logically address Mrs. Werthmann’s points? The answer is no. And the reason is because she is living in a different reality than the rest of us. To 95% of the world, what Obama and the Democrats are doing you can agree or disagree with, but it is being done by the all-American way of Congress proposing, and the president disposing. Even Obama’s executive grabs like taking over private business finds precedent in American history among presidents. Obama is dead wrong. But he is not a Marxist, or Nazi, or even a socialist. He is a far left American liberal which, by the way, puts him considerably to the right of the Euro-left.

To casually toss about the terms “Marxist” and “Nazi” shows that those who do so are wildly exaggerating what the liberals are doing. Mrs. Werthmann may be a witness to history but her analogies are childlike in their logic. Exaggeration is not argument. It is emotionalism run rampant. And at its base is simple, unreasoning fear. Fear of change, fear that the powerlessness conservatives feel right now is a permanent feature of American politics, and, I am sorry to say, fear of Obama because he is a black man.

The emotional state of conservatism now coupled with the hyper partisan atmosphere in the country (and the already excessive ideological nature of the opposition to Obama) is a combination that afflicts the reason centers of the mind and is proving to be a block to thinking logically. What is there to “fear” about Obama and the Democrats? They are proposing the same liberal crap that the left has been promoting for more than 30 years. We have fought them before using reason and logic. What is so different now?

I agree with the left to a certain extent that the right - especially on the internet - has become something of an echo chamber (it’s true on the left too but their crazies have already been marginalized). This has resulted in what might be termed a “negative feedback loop” where the more exaggerated claims about dastardly Democrats go around and around, becoming ever more outrageous and illogical, until we get overflowing crowds at a seminar where the most fantastically stretched and mangled analogies to Nazis and Communists are taken seriously.

I don’t know how to say it any other way; those conservatives who don’t see a problem with this, or don’t think it “representative” of a significant portion of the conservative movement, or who don’t believe this sort of thing should be taken out, examined, and criticized as forcefully as possible are fooling themselves into believing this kind of thinking doesn’t matter. It is poison coursing through the body of conservatism and we either use reason and logic as an antidote or it will end up killing us.

To my mind, there is no alternative. Ignore it and it only gets bigger and more outrageously out of touch with reality. This is why I write about it. This is why you should join me in condemning and marginalizing these crazies, inoculating conservatism against contracting this plague on rational thought.

President Obama has decided to personally attend the International Olympic Committee meeting in Copenhagen this week in order to make a presentation in support of Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 summer games.

Mark Silva:

President Barack Obama, who initially planned to let First Lady Michelle Obama represent the United States in Copenhagen this week, when the International Olympic Committee chooses a site for the 2016 summer games, plans to travel there too.

The White House, which earlier had announced that an advance team was headed to Copenhagen to prepare for a possible presidential trip to Copenhagen, confirmed this morning that Obama will travel Thursday night. The IOC meets Friday.

A senior administration official told the Tribune Washington Bureau this morning that Obama will travel to Copenhagen Thursday night, and return following the Friday meeting. The first lady plans to travel Tuesday, and meet with individual members of the IOC on Wednesday and Thursday to make Chicago’s case for the games. The president will join her at the full committee meeting on Friday.

What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?

It’s not like the president doesn’t have anything to do, nothing important on his plate at the moment, right?

* An economy that, despite administration claims, is not recovering in any meaningful way and is in severe danger of slipping back into crisis.

* An ongoing, vital review of our policy in Afghanistan with the commanding general threatening to resign unless he gets a massive infusion of troops. The president has asked General McChrystal to “wait” - now we know why.

* The very day he leaves for Copenhagen, a representative of the United States government will sit down for talks with Iran about the future peace of the world and Iran’s ambitions with regard to building a nuclear weapon - a supposed centerpiece to his policy of engagement.

* His continuing problems with his own party in trying to get health care reform passed.

Why was his wife’s importunings to the IOC not good enough? What could possibly have possessed the president to put some of these other, demonstrably more important activities on the back burner and go to Copenhagen and personally lobby the super-annuated, corrupt, and cynical IOC members to bring the Olympics to Chicago and create a bonanza of “pay to play” and other schemes to enrich Daley cronies and perpetrate the obscenity that is the Democratic political machine in Illinios?

In a word, payback.

All through December of 2007, Obama and Daley danced around each other’s political ambitions, each wanting the other’s endorsement - neither wanting to pay too high a price. They met several times at City Hall, feeling each other out about both the efficacy of such endorsements as well as the timing.

For Obama’s part, any endorsement of the corrupt Daley would tarnish his “reform” credentials - a crucial element of his eventual “hope and change” mantra. Obama trotted out these “outside the machine” bona fides whenever it suited him politically. The real Chicago reformers never trusted him - with good cause. He had been known to back machine candidates in the past, stiffing his “friends” in the reform movement.

But Obama was trying to preempt Daley from staying “neutral” which would have helped Hillary Clinton who at the time was a prohibitive favorite to win. The Daley family had very close ties to the Clintons with the Mayor’s brother Bill having served in the Clinton administration as Commerce Secretary and also run Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. Bill Daley’s rolodex of heavy hitter contributors was the stuff of legend among Democratic politicians.

But Daley was playing coy. He had never endorsed a presidential candidate in a primary before and just because Obama had close ties to the city, didn’t mean he would abandon that tradition. But Daley was also in a spot of political trouble. Hizzoner’s biggest fear was that the reformers would find an attractive minority candidate to run against him in the Democratic primary.

Now Daley prided himself on his cultivation of the large and politically active Hispanic community in Chicago, as well as his stroking of the South Side black community. But a re-election endorsement from the most prominent African American politician in the state would pretty much seal the deal and assure him of another term in office.

Arguably, Daley would be doing the relative unknown Obama much the bigger favor. Hence, the dance for mutual endorsements ended when Daley gave the nod to what appeared to be the hopelessly outclassed Obama within hours of his announcement that he was seeking the presidency. This followed Obama’s own endorsement of Daley that occurred three weeks previously that dripped with a cynicism worthy of any hard bitten machine pol. Obama actually congratulated Daley for his efforts to clean up the city - less than 6 months after two of Hizzoner’s closest aides were convicted in a patronage scheme.

The rest is history. At the time, Daley was probably the best known national Democratic figure to support Obama’s candidacy. And the fact that Bill Daley, with his trusty Rolodex, was installed as one of Obama’s most important advisors was equally significant.

So now it’s payback time as the president travels to Copenhagen to try and get the biggest payoff for the Chicago machine in its long and sorry history. The several hundred million dollars that gravitated to the city and state in stimulus money will be seen in retrospect as a pittance compared to the opportunities for Cook County, Chicago, and Illinois politicians to garner a potential several billion dollar windfall. The opportunities for graft, featherbedding, pay to play, kickbacks, and other business as usual practices of the machine that reward friends, punish enemies, keep the mob happy, and keep the machine’s loyalists in power will be beyond counting.

The machine will benefit through spending to construct the Olympic village, run concessions, realize a fortune in extra taxes imposed on hotels and motels, restaurants, bars, and other travel industry businesses, and generally prosper from the hundreds of thousands of visitors expected in the city during the course of the games.

For starters, as Crain’s reports, let’s take the construction of the Olympic Village:

Chicago and the Obama administration are exploring ways the federal government can bolster the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympic Games with financial support for the $1-billion Olympic Village.

Crain’s has learned that senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and Lori Healey, president of the Chicago 2016 committee, met this month with top officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to discuss financing options for the village, the single biggest project — and question mark — in the city’s bid.

The main hurdle facing Chicago is coming up with a long-range plan for an Olympic Village that is commercially viable while meeting objectives of existing HUD programs that could be tapped for funds, such as low-income housing tax credits and grants or loan guarantees for community development, affordable housing or housing for seniors.

“I think it’s premature to talk about what the funding might be,” says Ms. Jarrett, a former co-chair of Chicago 2016 and city planning commissioner who now heads White House efforts to help Chicago’s bid. “A proposal has not been made to the federal government, but the administration is not closing the door” on anything, she adds. The administation “obviously (is) willing to meet and listen.”

Hat Tip: John Ruberry

Lastly - and this is pure speculation with a little partisan twist thrown in - my observing Obama these many years has convinced me that there are few politicians who have such an inflated opinion of their own worth. Obama presiding over the Olympics in 2016 - his last few months in office if he wins reelection - would be his own crowning achievement (and Daley’s ticket to immortality as well as the signature achievement of his family’s 50 year domination of Chicago politics). I think there is a significant element of narcissism in all of this which makes his abandonment of Washington at this crucial time appear even more of a selfish act.

I don’t see much in the way of questioning whether this trip is necessary from too many people - press or pundits. Then again, what would you expect?

UPDATE

Byron York and I are on the same wavelength today.

Michelle Malkin has two additions to the Culture of Corrpution - Olympics Edition.

Malkin also had a piece last week that Ed Lasky pointed me to that has Valerie Jarrett standing to make millions on selling some rat infested apartments.

Hey - not a bad impersonation of a Think Progress headline, don’t you think? And as I always say…”If you ‘Think Progress,’ Think Idiocy!”

What set me off was this head shaking headline:

Uninsured 22-Year-Old Boehner Constituent Dies From Swine Flu

The copy is predictably bloodcurdling:

A 22-year-old woman from Oxford, Ohio, died from swine flu on Wednesday. Kimberly Young graduated from Miami University in December and continued to live in Oxford, Ohio, within Minority Leader John Boehner’s congressional distrct. Reports now indicate that after initially getting sick, Young put off treatment because she was uninsured…

Oh my GOD! Is this true? Did someone really DIE in a Republican Congressman’s DISTRICT!

Liberals were right when they warned us that Republicans opposed health insurance reforms because they want you to die. That poor young girl should have listened. If she had only had the courage to go against the wishes of her Congressman and buy health insurance, she would be alive today. But Boehner is a sneaky one. He used all of his wiles, all of his GOP MoJo Magic to make that poor girl decide that at age 22, she was indestructible and didn’t need health insurance - a waste of money, that.

After all, no other 22 year olds in the entire United States have made similar decisions, right? Only in GOP congressional districts are 22 year olds under the spell of evil GOPers and are mesmerized into believing they don’t need insurance and that getting it would be a waste. They’d rather spend their limited income on luxuries like housing and food.

Oh, wait…:

There are plenty of reasons people go without health insurance, but no group has more cause than 20-somethings. These young adults are less likely to be offered employer-based coverage, earn less money to buy insurance on their own, are generally healthy and spend little time worrying about the worst-case scenarios that could befall them.

No wonder, then, that this age group has the highest uninsured rate of any cohort in the U.S. population: some 13 million Americans ages 19 to 29 - or 1 in 3 - lack coverage. That’s a scary number, and not just because any of them could end up needing serious medical care for an unforeseen illness or accident. The willingness of young people to forgo insurance, it turns out, is a major problem for the entire health-care system, which needs them on the rolls to help spread out risk and keep older Americans’ premiums from going even higher. Young adults, after all, are less likely than older generations to need health care, meaning insurance companies can charge them low premiums and, in most cases, sit back and collect without much risk of paying out for health-care services.

What a dick, this Victor Zapanta, fellow is. Identified as a “researcher” for CAP, Zapanta is a blooded political activist having worked for both Clinton and Obama in 2008. Someone should teach this kid what it is a “researcher” does. What they don’t do is smear people based on the most outrageous number of degrees of separation - except in the hyper-partisan world of Think Progress where every raindrop that falls in New York is responsible for a flood in California. That’s actually a more realistic connection to reality than Zapanta’s wretched attempt at guilt by non-existent association.

Let’s take Mr. Zapanta’s technique and apply it in another direction shall we?

467 Chicagoans Murdered in 2006 While Obama Was Senator

While Barack Obama sat in the senate supporting gun control, 467 Chicagoans were murdered needlessly because they couldn’t defend themselves. These poor victims were denied their constitutional right of self defense because they were represented by a senator who hates the constitution and wants to keep guns out of their hands that almost certainly would have saved their lives.

Another 442 Chicagoans were murdered in 2007…

It needs a little work. I don’t quite have the accusatory tone down right, don’t you think?

The idea that Boehner’s opposition to health care reform - or that anything Boehner has ever said or done - is in any way responsible for this young girl’s death is unbelievably calumnious and so off base as to be beyond the pale of rationality, of reason, and logic. The notion that Think Progress is connected in any way to an organization - The Center for American Progress - that is supposed to be a serious place for the study and promotion of public policy is a disgrace to intellectual honesty, a blot on our public discourse, and an affront to the decency of our democracy.

If you were to peruse the archives of this uber-partisan rag, you would find literally hundreds of similar off the wall headlines that are not meant to inform, or even to attack based on facts, but rather to simply smear in the most vile and distorted manner. It is the worst of politics, and given their connection to a supposedly august think tank, beneath contempt.

I don’t want to hear that the right does it. I will turn around the argument I make to conservatives and say, “So you want to ape the worst tactics of your opponent? How idiotic is that?” Indeed, if there is one thing about both right and left extremist partisans that is becoming more and more clear, they are interchangeable in their ignorance and stupidity.

I know I’m pissing in the wind here but God help us if blogs like Think Progress and their righty counterparts ever achieve more influence than they currently enjoy. Rational discourse, so polluted now with bilious rants and wildly exaggerated and distorted attacks, would disappear entirely and all that would be left would be two sides hurling rocks at each other across a great chasm of hate and distrust.

I don’t know about you but I sure am glad this recession has “bottomed out” and we’re beginning to see the “green shoots” of recovery - “just around the corner,” or “coming into focus,” or - my favorite - “the light at the end of the tunnel.”

Of course, even the administration admits this doesn’t mean squat if you’ve been laid off and can’t find a job. This will be another one of those “jobless recoveries” which is perhaps the most confusing term ever invented by political economists. How can there be “recovery” if the unemployment rate comes down slower than a three toed sloth making its way to the ground looking for breakfast? (Check it out: The cute little bugger takes a full minute to climb down about 15 feet. Anyway, I LIKE the analogy.)

I guess they mean that if you’re lucky enough to have a little cash, bargain basement stocks and other investment products are great buys and people can start “recovering” all that money they lost during the recession - except if you own a home.

No jobs but the rich get richer. Some recovery.

Speaking of homes, have I got good news for all you Cassandras out there. There are a staggering number of people who are about to lose their homes over the next year or two. Tim Cavanaugh of Hit and Run has enough bad news to keep our gloom and doom punditocracy busy for weeks:

• A record 7.58 percent of U.S. homeowners with mortgages were at least 30 days late on payments in August, says Equifax, up from 7.32 percent in July. Delinquencies are not only rising from month to month, but rising at a faster pace. More than 41 percent of subprime mortgages are delinquent. (That’s quite an increase from 2007, when I took heart from the fact that only 10 percent of subprime mortgages were in default. But, well, at least the glass is still more than half full, right?)

• About 1.2 million loans out there are in limbo: The borrower is in serious default yet the bank has not started the foreclosure process. Another 1.5 million are in early stages of the foreclosure process but the bank hasn’t yet taken possession of the home. Counting these and loans that are highly likely to end up in default, one analyst estimates three million to four million foreclosed homes will come on the market over the next few years. And don’t believe the freshwater economists when they tell you there’s no such thing as a free lunch: Some 217,000 Americans have not made a mortgage payment in one full calendar year, but their lenders have yet to begin the foreclosure process.

• Option ARM recasts (not resets, as Calculated Risk explains) are as much of a time bomb as ever, with nearly all borrowers in this class making only minimum payments and negatively amortizing their mortgages.

• Something called the National Consumer Law Center criticizes state mortgage-mediation schemes as well as the Obama Administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program, which at last count had managed to prevent 235,247 homes from coming onto the market. However, data from the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency indicate that even when these programs succeed, about half of all the renegotiated loans end up back in default soon afterward.

The subprime loan mess is still with us. If anything, it’s worse. Those balloon payments attached to Adjustable Rate Mortgages will continue to wreak havoc on borrowers caught holding on to a house they can’t sell or borrow against. And Obama’s home mortgage program is worse than a dud - it is actually going to contribute to Meltdown II in a big way.

By the way, did it really cost $75 billion to bail out 235,000 consumers? I’ve got no head for math but that seems to be a huge amount of money to help such a relative few - especially since by my very rough calculations it works out to about $32,000 per consumer bailout. (If that’s wrong, I will use as an excuse that I slept through Sister Mary Conception’s class where we learned long division.) Speaking for myself, that would be equivalent to about 3 years worth of my mortgage payments. I’m sure it’s just because I’m an economic dunce and can’t figure it out but my impression was that the program was supposed to help borrowers who were in serious arrears with their loan to get their head back above water.

And what’s with this 50% failure rate? Somebody please convince me that we didn’t just pour $75 billion down a black hole?

Another thing apparent from those numbers is that some banks are in a really, really precarious position. Many of them may already have too many repossessed properties that have been foreclosed - else why the long delay in starting foreclosure proceedings? Unless we believe that bankers have developed a conscience and a soul to go along with it (just kidding Larry), this could indicate that for some banks at least, the bad paper is becoming very worrisome and rather than take another almost worthless property, they are allowing homeowners to slide in their mortgage payments.

Community focused banks may indeed be bending over backward with their customers, taking partial payments from borrowers until they get back on their feet. But I find it incredible that more than 200,000 people haven’t paid a dime on their mortgage in a year and still have a home. Eventually, I will bet you dollars to donuts that we, the taxpayer, end up bailing them out anyway.

Cavanaugh explains why Obama’s consumer mortgage program had it all wrong to begin with:

[T]he renegotiation has made things worse for everybody. The lender ends up with lower payments in the short term and then has to foreclose on a less-valuable property at some point in the future. The borrower gets no financial upside and (though he or she gets the use of a subsidized domicile for some period of time) is encouraged to stay in a losing situation when immediate foreclosure would have been a more merciful option. Prospective buyers get locked out as dumb lenders, deadbeat borrowers and the government all collude to keep the price of the house artificially inflated. And taxpayers have to spend $75 billion (the budget of HUD’s Making Home Affordable program) for the privilege of making it all happen. The best option for all concerned would be to get the deadbeat out of the house as quickly as possible, but nobody is doing that.

What precipitated the first crisis was an avalanche of foreclosures that caused the bottom to fall out of the new and resale home market. This made the mortgage backed securities and other instruments like derivatives held by the big banks and firms like AIG lose an enormous amount of value. Could history be repeating itself.

Cavanaugh concludes:

Put it all together, and throw in mainstream media outlets that as recently as June were calling for mortgage haircuts specifically to allow people to keep borrowing against their houses, and you’ve got the mother of all perfect storms mixed with the crack cocaine of third rails on steroids. The foreclosure wave may seem all tired and 2008, but it’s hotter than ever.

I’m no economist but it seems to me a possibility that another hair on fire, full blown crisis could come again. Home values are so depressed today that it would be a stretch to think their value could plummet much farther. But that many foreclosures might cause a lot of trouble for smaller banks, regional banks, and perhaps even Fannie Mae (FHA is already in trouble and may need a taxpayer bailout).

But then there is the 800 lb gorilla in the room; the commercial real estate market. The Wall Street Journal had an article back in December that predicted from 10-26% of all retail businesses going bankrupt. That’s an awful lot of empty store fronts, and malls. And the market is incredibly depressed for new office and industrial properties (see this video to get an idea of the problem).

I guess the point I’m trying to make is we are not out of the woods - not by a long shot.

UPDATE: LIKE I SAID - NO HEAD FOR MATH

John in the comments very gently points out that my math on how much each of the 235,000 consumers taking part in Obama’s home mortgage bailout received from the $75 billion program was not $32,000. I was only off by a factor of 10.

The correct number is $320,000.

Now will someone explain that to me? I know there’s a rational explanation - maybe the program is still ongoing and they haven’t given out that much money. Couldn’t find that info at the HUD website so if anyone has a clue, let me in on it.

Does the world love us any more with Obama as president?

I’m sure they do - except in places it really, really, really matters like Moscow, Tehran, Damascus, Beijing, and Caracas. The leaders in those capitols probably don’t love Obama anymore than they loved George Bush. The question of whether they respect the US and our power is a whole other question.

It’s easy to get our allies to love us. First, the fact that Obama is not George Bush is no doubt a huge plus. Secondly, anything George Bush did, just do the opposite. Third, acknowledge their superior wisdom with regard to foreign affairs - especially those issues that affect them directly. Fourth, subsume American interests to those of other nations who, after all, are smarter and know what’s best for us. Fifth, confess the error of our ways and promise that we won’t do anything ever to get anyone mad at us.

There’s more: Promise to unilaterally disarm. Acknowledge America’s moral failings for the last 60 years. Deny America is any better or worse than any other nation. Finally, pretend that the United Nations is a place for serious people and that everyone - including the thug nations of the world - should be able to dictate what America should do.

Yes, there are a few exaggerations there. Yes, I had a little fun with our president by trying to highlight what I consider is his completely wrong headed approach to foreign affairs. But within that sneering sophistry is more than a kernel of truth. The question is, what has the president accomplished with his new “smart” foreign policy.

Our allies like Obama. As politicians, they are perfectly aware of his popularity among the majority of their citizens and love to have their picture taken with him, hoping some of his radiance will rub off on them.

But when push comes to shove and Obama has wanted to lead, where has he taken them? Or, have our allies around the world simply gone their own way anyway, despite his eloquent importunings?

No help for our troops in Afghanistan. Failure to convince the Europeans to overstimulate their economies. Bad reactions to Obama’s stances on the war in Georgia, increased NATO membership, Turkey’s bid for EU membership, additional sanctions on Iran, and the clown show that the release of al-Megrahi turned out to be. No go on carbon caps, economic development for Africa, third world debt relief…

Well, you get the picture. It’s great that our allies love us but where has that gotten us? What tangible benefit has accrued to our interests so far that would prove Obama’s approach to foreign policy is superior to anyone’s, much less that of George Bush?

Yes, but at least they’re not marching in protest when the American president comes for a visit. They’re not saying nasty things in newspapers.

Oh…wait:

Simply put, Barack Obama is loved at the UN because he largely fails to advance real American leadership. This is a dangerous strategy of decline that will weaken US power and make her far more vulnerable to attack.

As we saw last week with his shameful surrender to Moscow over missile defence, the president is perfectly happy to undermine America’s allies and gut its strategic defences while currying favour with enemies and strategic competitors. The missile defence debacle is rightly viewed as a betrayal by the Poles and the Czechs, and Washington has clearly give the impression that it cares little about those who have bravely stood shoulder to shoulder with their US allies in Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider war on terror.

The Obama administration is now overseeing and implementing the biggest decline in American global power since Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately it may well take another generation for the United States to recover.

The author of this piece, Nile Gardiner, is a lonely voice these days. And he’s missing the point. At the moment, we have foreign policy by gesture in the US. If there is a coherence to it, I haven’t spotted it yet. But it sure is dramatic and that’s what’s important to liberals who have been itching for 40 years to give it a try.

It has been and still is the contention of the left that we are the to blame for many of the problems in the world and the way to make progress in dealing with these thorny issues is for America to act humbly, subscribe to international solutions offered by the UN and other supra-national bodies, make friends of our enemies, prove our goodwill by subsuming our national interests when they conflict with another’s, and generally agreeing with the rest of the world about what kind of nation we are.

Obama seems to have decided that this foreign policy by gesture is just the ticket. What have some of those gestures gotten us?

We had the gesture of letters to the closed minded, American hating rulers of Iran (who promptly spit in his face). We had the gesture of his European tour where the president lectured the old world like a hectoring school marm about anti-Americanism (incorrectly attributing it to our actions rather than the simple fact that being a huge country, our interest are very broad and that protecting those interests, by necessity means we step on a lot of toes). We have the gesture of his Cairo speech to Muslims, telling them their religion is wrong to hate infidels. We had the gesture of Hillary’s “reset button” that didn’t work out so well with the Russians. We had the gesture of more outreach to the Iranians that again, was promptly thrown back in our face.

We had the gesture of the grip and grin with Hugo Chavez who just recently asked the Russians to help him develop his nuclear industry. We had the depressing gesture of the president refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Iranian protests as a sop to terrorist supporting thugs who gunned down their own citizens in the streets. And we had the despicable gesture of the US refusing to support the legitimate, constitutional government of Honduras who replaced a clear stooge of Chavez to protect themselves after the stooge illegally tried to hold a referendum that would have made him president for life.

All of these little unilateral gestures and more have been the modus operandi of the Obama foreign policy. Have they made us safer. Are American interests more or less at risk? Are our adversaries more or less likely to advance their own interests at the expense of ours? Just what has Obamalove gotten us?

Is there a pronounced difference in whether the rest of the world is following our lead than when Bush or anyone else was president? Does Obama even want to lead? He seems to want to lead in the Israeli-Palestinian nutcracker but he has alienated 95% of the Israeli population in doing so while picking up precious few brownie points with the Palestinians.

What’s the plan? Where’s the payoff?

Yeah…but it sure is nice to be loved again.

A darn good question from Stacy McCain that deserves an answer from at least one of us who never tires of trying to promote rationalism (if not pragmatism) among conservatives, and trashes Beck and many other talk show hosts who represent the dark underbelly of conservative paranoia.

I think there is something to the notion that, while on specific issues, this is something of a conservative country, the culture and history of America is that of a liberal (classic) democracy. We have created a society with a huge impetus to improve ourselves both as a country and individually. De Tocqueville recognized this and marveled at it.

The overriding key that drives American history has been the desire for human liberty. The second has been “change.” The United States stands still for no one, no group, no ideology. No country has experimented more with government . No nation has absorbed and assimilated more immigrants, enthusiastically adopting what pleases us from the newcomers while sloughing off the rest. No country has reinvented itself so many times.

For about 150 years, there was no “conservative movement” in America. Instead, there were reactionaries who stood athwart social progress toward ending slavery, granting women’s rights, ending child labor, allowing workers to organize, and the like. Identified more as “traditionalists” or “capitalists,” or Buckley’s “individualists,” it must be said that for a variety of reasons, our ideological ancestors did not cover themselves in glory. But they still served a vital purpose; they usually kept the pace of change from overwhelming the traditions and institutions that make America “America,” allowing change to take place gradually and within the context of a treasured past.

I bring this up because by any yardstick you want to use, America is in the process of changing. Demographically, we are getting younger, browner, more educated, and most importantly, less wedded to traditional institutions. Our economy is changing - has been changing - for 30 years, from an industrial, to a service economy, to now a tech economy with global competition. It is my belief, and the belief of a few others, that once again, conservatism must rise to the occasion by “standing athwart history yelling stop.” Be it in government, out of government, or as the government, we have a sacred trust to fulfill to guide this change down traditional paths without losing the essence of who and what we are.

Obama and the liberals don’t like who and what we are and wish to go too far in “remaking” America. On this we all agree. But is Glenn Beck “standing athwart” history or is he simply screaming nonsense into the void, pandering to the basest instincts of conservatives, rejecting rationality in favor of paranoid conspiracy mongering that doesn’t advance the cause one iota but garners him plenty of ratings and money?

To say that “the left does it too” is perhaps the most irrational statement of all. Aping the absolute worst in your political opponent is insane. Did their radical, screaming base help or hinder them in 2008? Note that, like some crazy uncle, Democrats marginalized their crazies just long enough for the voters to think they were a moderate party. GOP corruption didn’t help nor did the utter futility of the McCain campaign. The tactics that some on the right want to emulate or think isn’t harmful to the cause ignores the lessons of 2008.

Perceptions matter. A hard truth that everytime I say it I am accused of cowering in fear of the left. It’s not fear, but the simple political reality that has been true in American politics since the beginning; giving your opponent the golden opportunity to define conservatives for the voters in such a way that makes us look like mindless, ranting, fearful paranoids who believe in cockamamie conspiracy theories and celebrate and lionize people like Glenn Beck will not win us any elections. Period. The 30% of you who don’t believe this or reject it because you think it doesn’t matter are kidding yourselves. And you’re dragging conservatism down with your blindness.

Is Glenn Beck “the enemy?” He is the enemy of anyone who believes in reason, in logic, and in rational thought. In that sense, he can take down a hundred Van Jones and ACORNS and still be a blot on the political landscape. It doesn’t matter if he is a conservative or not. Conservatives have adopted this scheming, manipulative fakir and it will redound to our sorrow in the end.