Obama: the clingers on the right, revisited
I neither watched nor listened to Obama’s speech last night. Fortunately I was out with friends, so I didn’t even have to ponder whether or not to subject myself to it.
I did read about it (and the transcript) when I returned, and it was as expected: fragmented, sloppily conceptualized. My summary of Obama’s remarks would be, “I’m going to attack Syria, but I’m not. And I trust Putin, except I don’t. So maybe let’s have a diplomatic solution instead. And suddenly I believe in American exceptionalism—at least regarding military affairs limited to targeted strikes.”
The speech contained an interesting section with telling and contrasting appeals to left and right that Ace characterizes thusly:
…Obama chose to drop this little insult:
And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just.
To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor, for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough.
Note that Obama’s “friends on the left” believe in freedom and dignity in all people. People on the right don’t, apparently…
Even when he’s supposedly “reaching out to us,” this Master Diplomat and Coolly Brilliant Poet-Warrior steadfastly refuses to pay the right the slightest degree of respect…
Hey wingers, get behind this war. It’s got the three things you Bitter Clingers can’t get enough of– Guns, Spooky Religious Nonsense, and Killing Foreign People.
Now, Friends on the Left, you can get behind it for the true moral purposes which flow from reason and higher functions of the brain.
But Friends on the Right, we’ll appeal to your Lizard Brains and Blow Up Some Shit because you folks seem to like that sort of thing.
Obama could hardly have been more clear about his concept of the interests of people on the right and left, and his political calculations on how to reach out to each side. I cannot recall a president in my lifetime, right or left, who was so gratuitously and continually insulting to the opposition. It is especially ironic that Obama is given credit by the MSM for reaching out to that same opposition as he simultaneously trashes them.
But come to think of it, although Obama’s contempt for the right is obvious, he also expresses a certain amount of contempt for the left. It’s just a somewhat more covertly-expressed contempt. Each are simplistic appeals: let’s have those big guns for the bitter clingers of the right, and the little suffering children for the bleeding hearts of the left; the cold warlike aggressors versus the warm touchy-feelers. Meanwhile the great thinker, Obama, plots his brilliant course in Syria, playing four-dimensional chess with Putin.
I forget. Which part of four-dimensional chess is it where Lucy Van Putin pulls the football away just as Charlie ‘Bama is about to kick it?
I think Napoleon once said it is only a step from the sublime to the absurd. Obama may have a hard time living down his recent missteps.
Thanks for that analysis. I think coming from the left you know how to peel the onion on Obama, and more elegantly than most.
He’s no all that good at winning friends and influencing people, is he? Maybe he ought to take another look at a Dale Carnegie course, or something.
48 years of careful U.S. diplomacy in the Mid East completely trashed in 48 hours. I don’t take credit for that observation. I read it somewhere. Damn it, Putin knows his man. Regret that I have to say, “Well played, Mr. Putin.” Remember when serious intellects would call Obama a ‘fop”?
At a certain remove, Barry is OBLIVIOUS to his own insults; just as fish don’t have a name for water.
Correction: you don’t play chess with your Control; you get your memes — and move “Forward!” — for the children.
But, of course.
putin will pile on.
why?
because they are expets at unconventional warfare
and since obama has been using this against his own people, he has no people for his fight with people who were never his friends (any more than they were oginga odinga’s or others)
here:
The general objective of unconventional warfare is to instill a belief that peace and security are not possible without compromise or concession. Specific objectives include inducement of war weariness, curtailment of civilian standards of living and civil liberties associated with greater security demands, economic hardship linked to the costs of war; hopelessness to defend against assaults, fear, depression, and disintegration of morale.
The ultimate goal of this type of warfare is to motivate an enemy to stop attacking or resisting even if it has the ability to continue.
Failing this, a secondary objective can be to debilitate the enemy before a conventional attack.
all they have done as move the war away from the public slaves as it was too costly to have the serfs involved and the thinking of it caused them to not focus on production. so, the cold war ended by them reorganizing their state, splitting it up so that one country gets 16 votes thorugh others, and the US would, in the absense of a mirror, become what it was opposing. [especially with their help]
a lot of whats going on was laid out by a defector in the 70s…. VERY SCARY TO READ…
His advice:
It would be worthwhile for the West to study the scenario and techniques of the Czechoslovak experiment [of 1968]–so as not to be taken in again. The scenario could well be repeated in essence, although with local variations…The staging of the ‘quiet revolution’ and its reversal served a wide variety of strategic and tactical objectives.
here are thos astroturfs
“The creation of a false, controlled opposition movement like the dissident movement serves the internal and external strategic purposes.
that the idea of the fall of communism was planned
and that now, your seeing the end game
“We stand for organized terror,” declared Felix Dzerzhinsky
We reported in 1999, for instance, on Putin’s ominously revealing speech for Security Organs Day, celebrating the accomplishments of Dzerzhinsky and the Cheka
We reported in 2002 on Putin’s restoration of important communist symbols:
– the Red Star, as Russia’s official military emblem;
– the Red Banner, as Russia’s military flag;
– the music of the old Soviet anthem, albeit with new words;
– and his attempt, along with Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, to restore the giant statue of Dzerzhinsky to its former place of honor in Moscow’s Lubyanka Square. [the public stopped this at the time]
According to Golitsyn, in 1960 the Communist Party Central Committee of the Soviet Union, with implementing help from the KGB, secretly set in motion a long-range plan that is still playing out today. A key feature of this plan would be a whole series of controlled “splits” within the communist movement and between communist countries that the Kremlin strategists would use to manipulate Western policies. This was initiated at the 1960 Moscow Congress of 81 communist parties from around the world. All genuine factions, splits, and power struggles within the communist bloc were completely ended at that meeting. From that point forward, any such infighting between communists, or any popular resistance against communism, would be artificial and under the full control of the extensive secret-police networks permeating societies under communist rule.
and poor Khordokovsky, look what happened to him…
some from
Monday, 22 January 2007 10:15
Putin’s Russia
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia
Neo, someone beat you to it…
Vladimir Lenin’s – Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder
right now, i see all the Obama ppl gathred around a modified staples button, with the word they thought was reset… but says something else, desperately pressing it, while clicking heels, crossing fingers, and ringing bells just in case tinkerbell can help.
Obama and his left are sovietphiles..
they thought that they would be accepted and be friends once they prove themselves…
but funny thing.. people who benefit from traitors, never actually accept them… just read what happened to benedict arnold at the end of his days…
sad… (given how he would have been remembered otherwise)
but… again, they had them pegged from way back
Third, the “Left” Communists have a great deal to say in praise of us Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise us less and to try to get a better knowledge of the Bolsheviks’ tactics. Lenin
ie. western socialism is a novelty not real.
[Cargo cult version]
ie. its easy to prove your part by being contemptous of your adversaries in parliment, but this solves NOTHING, and can do nothing. [ergo, obama has the chops for the novelty, but not the substance.]
Incidentally, apart from a number of other causes, that is why it is more difficult for Western Europe to start a socialist revolution than it was for us. To attempt to “circumvent” this difficulty by “skipping” the arduous job of utilising reactionary parliaments for revolutionary purposes is absolutely childish. You want to create a new society, yet you fear the difficulties involved in forming a good parliamentary group made up of convinced, devoted and heroic Communists, in a reactionary parliament! Is that not childish? lenin
its not like they dont know
its like we dont know
but we dont know…
we have forgotten
even if we ever knew
It’s really weird that Obam is trying to save himself by repeating what was done in Iraq:
Limited strike–Get Saddam out of Kuwait
Negotiate–We got a ceasefire stipulating that WMD were to be given up
UN enforcement–Inspectors find Saddam uncooperative and get kicked out of the country
Protect the innocent–Saddam shoots at our no-fly-zone planes
Feed the starving–Oil for food money goes in part to bribe UN officials, French and Russian thugs
Cooperate with HR organizations–They send out countless stories about how US (not UN) sanctions are hurting Iraqis
Tell me that Assad and Putin haven’t been studying this playbook. Obama didn’t notice.
Ace is also linking to an article by Megan McArdle on the muddled thinking in O’s speech. Lucky, not brilliant.
Usually when the president says something stupid like this, he’s speaking to a Democratic audience and he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that everything he says will find its way out on these interwebs.
Whats crazy about these comments is that Republicans were part of the target audience. At least when the speech was written, Obama needed their support. So we can only assume that the president and the dozen or so people who prepared his speech really believe that Republicans love to blow up third world countries just for the hell of it.
“Meanwhile the great thinker, Obama, plots his brilliant course in Syria, playing four-dimensional chess with Putin.”
And losing in a fool’s mate.
I watched the speech. (Would rather have root canal work, but I’m tough. :-))
I got two impressions:
1. He was not as arrogant in his delivery as he usually is. He really, really wanted people to buy his sales pitch. Very earnest, he was.
2. He tried really hard to not be overeager about the idea of negotiations instead of attacking Syria. Yet, I got the feeling he was really happy he had that to fall back on.
His remarks to his friends and opponents were sterling examples of his stereotypical thinking. You’re a Republican, eh? You must belong in the guns and bitter clingers box. And my democrat friends – you’re in the caring, compassionate, peace-loving box over here. A first class intellect? Not seeing it.
The only appeal that chess has for Barry is that black moves second — and, perhaps, it’s what the big kids play.
He never got any further than sacrificing pawns. That’s the limit of his game.
About that four-dimensional chess game:
A big difference between Putin and Obama just occurred to me — Putin is a man who is very much of his country and loves it, while Obama, well … there are doubts.
So, in addition to being quite skilled in skullduggery, Putin’s got that edge going for him in this mess.
“For My Friends on the Right”… sure I’ve bullied you with the IRS, spied on you with the NSA… but you like slaughtering innocents right?
“For My Friends on the Left” Lets bomb the children… it’s “for the children”
Do you know what bugged me about that right jab Neo?
The idiot in chief is making an international foreign policy speech laced with a jab at the domestic right….
Or does he believe these labels hold across the borders?
This is the most idiotic of idiot idiots I’ve ever seen!
Do you know what bugged me about that right jab Neo?
The –in chief is making an international foreign policy speech laced with a jab at the domestic right….
Or does he believe these labels hold across the borders?
This is the most idiotic of presidents I’ve ever seen!
oops. sorry.
Yes, it seems he had enough disdain to spread around for just about everyone in that little speech.
However, the speech was pointless from the beginning.
“I ask for your support and your vote for this strike” (all while insulting the people he’s asking for help) “but – I don’t want you to actually vote on this yet.”
Huh? So, you’re here taking up network TV time for what?
with regard to those who claim Obama is playing n-dimensional chess:
The solution is simple—play checkers against your opponent.
In chess you can only permanently restrict your opponent’s king (which is precisely what Putin is doing to Obama). In checkers, you get to make kings.
with regard to those who claim Obama is playing n-dimensional chess:
The solution is simple change the game. Play checkers against your opponent, but Obama is just not that smart.
In chess you’re limited to permanently restricting your opponent’s king (which is precisely what Putin is doing to Obama). In checkers, you get to make kings.
He’s always been about tribalism.
To my friends on the left, I ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor
Like the black babies Obama commanded to be absolutely post birth aborted and rendered into bio parts?
Okay, I’m reconciling it, hold on while I activate my imagination…
Remember way back during the 2008 debates when Obama was accused of flipping Hillary off?
How about when he was in critical negotiations with congress on the budget, invited Paul Ryan to attend his speech, sat him in the front row, and began to trash him?
There are hundreds of similar examples – unforced snubs and put downs by Obama. He literally can’t help himself with this kind of petty insult stuff, which is what is so scary. If he can’t control these things, why do we think he can control Syria? Or Russia? Or even a simple military strike?
Congressional DEMOCRATS, behind closed doors, hate this guy. Literally, personally, can’t stand him. Think for a minute – who are his friends in congress? Who does he get together with, swap a beer, play a round of golf? What foreign leaders is he chummy with?
Bush, for his many many faults, was a chummy guy. Maybe too chummy (remember “Pootie-Poot?), but there was a method to the madness.
Governing a democracy is all about relationships. It involves trust and compromise and confidence and some degree of mutual respect. Any wonder Obama fails the test over and over again?
I did not watch the speech, I haven’t watched an Obama speech since 2009. As I’ve discovered that my stomach is not that tough.
“And so to my friends on the right, I ask you to reconcile your commitment to America’s military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just.’
Obama is declaring that the American military should “when the cause is so plainly just” (his assumptive premise) be used as the world’s policemen.
Obama is asserting that it is hypocritical to support the military and fail to use the military as policemen.
I live in Boston, one of the most politically liberal towns in the nation; the town that brought you JFK, Teddy K., John Forbes Kerry, Michael Dukakis, and the list goes on ad infinitum.
We love our baseball, and especially our Red Sox.
When we gather at Fenway Park, we all sing Sweet Caroline together and stand in unison and ovation for the members of our armed services that is watching the game as the guest of the team.
We sing God Bless America when offered, ogle at the flyover of either F-15’s or A10’s on special occasions (God help us if its ever the C-5’s from the western part of the state – the sky will go dark).
In other words, we have political differences that do not impact our fundamental love of country.
I can forgive my neighbor for wishing on a star that Barry Soetoro was a reasonable reaction to what they perceive as the excesses of GWB. They were wrong, oh so very wrong, but forgiven just the same.
BHO is not one of “us”. By his upbringing, he does not have the common experience that Americans have – be it Drive-In Theatres if you’re in your 50’s and 60’s or Disco if you’re of the 70’s and so on and so on.
He is of the teat of Frank Marshall Davis, of Jeremiah Wright, of William Ayers.
Which would be fine if he did not hold elective office – after all we all enjoy free will, the right of free speech, of association, etc.
But by swearing allegience to the Constitution of the United States when he is fundamentally opposed to it and acting day in and day out against the word and spirit of the document he is committing treason.
Treason is a crime that is described in the Constitution and in law.
Barry Soetoro is a risk to this Republic that has never existed in our history – he is a barbarian within our gates. He holds the reigns of power and utilizes them to his own nefarious ends.
Barry is not stupid, he is not incompetent, he is not misguided.
He is an evil SOB who has the singular goal of destroying our Republic.
Osama bin Laden only managed to knock down a couple of tall buildings, a corner of the Pentagon and kill 3,000 of us.
Obama and Biden have the potential to destroy us all and will work day and night to accomplish their goal unless we stop them.
I read Ace’s post early this morning. It was excellent.
By the way, he’s now linked this post over there, Neo. A Different Take From Neo-Neocon: Actually Obama Insulted Everybody
I saw a great comment at Ace’s first post:
I saw a comment at Ace’s the other day: “Putin is playing 3D chess, while Obama is playing Candyland.”
More like being cornered into a zugzwang position. Because every available move he can make, though he doesn’t see it, loses.
I swear Owebama couldn’t play a decent game of Stratego without cheating.
Oh, and I always laughed at that 3-D chess description of Owebama’s logic and brilliance. I actually had a 3-D chess set as a pre-teen. (Mr. Spock and Star Trek, what can I say?) I was a better than average regular chess player, even winning a 2nd place chess trophy in high school (I beat the winner so we both had 7-1 records, but he had more points [the Swiss System]). But I could never ever play 3-D chess, it was so damn complicated. So I knew all that Owebama hype was the worst form of fawning BS from people who have no clue, much less ever played the game.
Barry Soetoro is a risk to this Republic that has never existed in our history — he is a barbarian within our gates. He holds the reigns of power and utilizes them to his own nefarious ends.
Benedict Arnold? Judas?
Barack isn’t that special in human history.
Barry is not stupid, he is not incompetent, he is not misguided.
He is an evil SOB who has the singular goal of destroying our Republic.
Absolutely correct, in my view of course. Just evil isn’t unique to Obama. The Entire Leftist Alliance is full of em.
I’ve actually lost a tournament match because of a fool’s mate. So being compared to Obama’s fool mate moves is incredibly disappointing.
After all, I didn’t “intentionally” lose.
Obama has as much reason to be contemptuous of Republicans who sit motionlessly obeying the stuck signal of a broken stoplight, as Putin has reason to be contemptuous of Obama and his fraudulently inflated credentials and hollow achievements.
Imagine what Obama himself must think of those who quail at bringing a use of force resolution to a vote because they fear a defeat will hurt the credibility of an office held by a man who has no credibility. This, on the theory that no outsider can see beyond the title of “President” to the mannequin behind it .
It’s like being held hostage to one’s concern for the fate of people who are held hostage to their own stupidity.
That contemptible Rawlsian paradigm, that unconditional “commitment to a shared fate” garbage really has the Republicans by the short hairs. What the hell do they think that they are trying to preserve? Maybe Obama’s ability to act once he supposedly sees the light and ceases undermining the republic from within?
I think half the people in this country must be sublimating a sexual perversion known as masochism through their political acts.
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.-you know who
Have we put down our divisions yet? Have we come out of our “Isolation” yet? Are we out of our comfort zones yet?
Are we engaged in slaughtering children and brown people yet?
By not listening to the speech Neo you missed the fact that when Barry’s hands hit the podium the mic picked up the sound.
How could that detail get missed? Must have been the same guy who translated the word “reset” into Russian
We are embarrassed by these amateurs.
Actually Obama and Kerry were playing Numberwang. Just shout out something until the announcer says they are correct. That’s why they got into the situation to begin with and stumbled onto a solution(?).
No surprise that he would insult his supporters. Obama holds everybody in contempt, except maybe his own family (Michelle is the boss, there, and I think he really does love the daughters). He uses those who agree with him as a weapon to deal with those who disagree, so he can do what he wants to do—but he does not like or respect them.
Hell, look at how he treats the press or Democratic congressmen…. his best, most lapdog-loyal supporters, he just cr*ps all over them whenever the mood moves him to do so.
The asssshole in the WH learned how to be defeated by instuctors who threw Vietnam. They have no understanding or ability to project might or power. They are defeated before they begin. They do not understand military honor, for instance, we do not leave our soldiers behind and we most certainly do not lead from behind. The motto of the Army infantry is “follow me.” When you follow the person in the back, that’s retreat. Isn’t that what the WH asshole is doing?
Postmodernism is their mantra and that mantra is the US is always wrong. This basic and fundamental belief presents an obvious contradiction when one of their own might use military power. We are seeing the attempt to square the circle. It will not happen. More likely, if and when power is consolidated, they will quickly realize they are not the US and therefore entitled to all uses of power without any restraint.
That’s their position of the future. Soft despostism? I don’t believe in it. That’s a lie meant to coddle the cowardly who are too afraid to die fighting for liberty.
Maybe we can look at the entire Obama experience as just a little test to see how resilient this 224-year old experiment in constitutional democracy really and truly is.
sahrpie,
“. . . we most certainly do not lead from behind.”
That stupid mantra “lead from behind” (aka cowardice) always reminded me of the Three Stooges when Moe would say “I’ll lead the way . . . you guys go first!”
That the administration never seemed to catch on to this relationship is a real testimony to the low level of intelligence/awareness in this administration, a supposition reaffirmed by Obama’s speech on Tuesday.
As for Obama knowing more about foreign policy than his advisors do, well that’s easy if all you do is hire idiots and set a low bar. I happen know more about allergies and asthma than many laymen do—that doesn’t qualify me as a physician.
G Joubert,
Actually, that’s precisely how I see it.
I truly believe that Obama’s policies are bad for our nation, therefore Obama’s failures are actually a positive thing in that they limit his damaging our republic. I am optimistic about our future (as Kolnai can attest) and although I don’t relish the damage done to America’s credibility and global influence, I do believe that such damage is temporary and superficial.
I actually think it’s a good thing that someone is finally bringing Obama to task. As I’ve written before on this blog;
Putin = alpha male, KGB officer
Obama = beta male, community organizer
I know where the smart money is!
I also am hoping that as Obama continues to implode, that he is inadvertantly setting the stage for a non-Hillary presidency. The electorate has a history of electing presidents who are the antithesis of their predecessor. Think of the lineage from Nixon to Carter, Carter to Reagan, G W Bush to Obama. Could it be possible that the electorate will shy away from the first female president after the current beta male has made such a mess of things?
Granted this is a stereotype, and a woman like Margaret Thatcher disproves the stereotype, but Hillary ain’t no Thatcher and I think this electorate knows that.
Thatcher wasn’t that corrupt and weak a woman riding the coat tails of Democrat males.