"The anti-Americanism of Jackie Chan."

"He is passionately political, a staunch defender of the Chinese Communist Party and harsh critic of anyone he sees as opposing Beijing. Today, that includes the United States."

Does "exceptionalism" = "swagger" in the mind of the Washington Post?

"Obama, Romney differ on need for U.S. 'swagger.'" That's the headline on the WaPo front page now, linking to a story with the headline "Obama, Romney differ on U.S. exceptionalism."

The word put in quotes is "swagger," and that ought to mean somebody said that. The word appears once in the article. After a few sentences on Romney's "far tougher approach to the world" and Obama's emphasis on "diplomacy and partnerships, and American assistance where wanted without heavy-handed demands from the top," we get:

“It’s very clear in reading and hearing what the two candidates have to say that, at least rhetorically, there would be a significant change under President Romney,” said Karl F. Inderfurth, an assistant secretary of state in the Bill Clinton administration who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Inderfurth, who is not working with either campaign, said some of the “swagger” of the George W. Bush administration would return to U.S. foreign policy under Romney.

“Obama has tried to tone that down, and he has faced pushback for doing so,” he said.

So, apparently Inderfurth used the word "swagger," perhaps only to characterize the feeling some people got from George Bush (that cowboy), but Romney has never — as far as I can see — said we need "swagger," and Romney's manner seems wholly different from George Bush's. It seems modest and mannerly. The word "swagger" seems more applicable to Obama, who's been killing enemies with drones and likes to point out that he killed bin Laden.

It's rather annoying to see WaPo quote a supposed expert telling us what's "very clear" in the rhetoric and then slap the label "swagger" on it. Show us the rhetoric, and let us judge. I'm displaying your rhetoric, so my readers can judge.

Until now, the campaign has been concerned mostly with the economy, and foreign policy has been viewed largely as a strength for the president, who was behind the killing of Osama bin Laden.

But the recent unrest in the Muslim world — revealed in the attack in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans — has exposed Obama politically and been seized upon by Romney as a product of what he calls the president’s weak engagement of the world.

So, I suspect, you're putting out this article, with that front-page headline, in an effort to help shore up the fortunes of your favored candidate. Let's find a way to scare voters... equate Romney with Bush!

The conflicting philosophies Obama and Romney outlined this week are consistent in large part with their life experiences.

Those backgrounds have given each a different vantage on the world — a former chief executive’s broad-strokes view of how it should work and a former community organizer’s details-matter assessment — and different opinions about the best way to promote U.S. interests at a time of fiscal constraint at home and rapid change abroad.

What?! You're just going to make generalizations about the 2 men based on what they did in the parts of their careers when they were not politicians, and Romney's long career as a business executive is translated into a "broad-strokes view of how it should work" and Obama's short bit of time performing the little-examined role of "community organizer" shows he's a details guy! And the suggestion is that Obama actually got things done while Romney floated above it all with ideas about what "should work." Businessfolk can just believe in big dreams? Is there any evidence at all the Romney didn't have to pay attention to the facts on the ground as he went about these business enterprises, that he didn't get tested over and over by whether things actually did work?


If we keep going and click over to page 2 and scroll halfway down (which I think very few readers will do), we get to more contrasts between Obama and Bush, with Obama the "realist, free of the 'freedom agenda' ideology." Obama doesn't talk freedom ideology?

Obama’s choice of force... is the drone strike, which he has expanded greatly from the Bush years on similarly contested legal ground.

So he is like Bush. Even more than Bush.

[Obama's] realism has often felt arid to those trying to understand it, too calculating and lacking in passion for U.S. values and power. This is the vein Romney has sought to tap.

Lest you think Romney might have an advantage here, please picture him draining blood from one of Obama's veins. (The normal metaphor using "vein" has to do with mineral deposits, and the verb should be "mine" not "tap.")

"If everybody could love Alfred Hitchcock, I think it would be a better world."

Odd intro, by Cat Stevens (in 1976), to "Peace Train."

Yesterday, we were talking about Sun Myung Moon's idea for peace: marriage across national and cultural boundaries.

I ran into the Cat Stevens peace suggestion just now, by chance and unrelated to Sun Myung Moon (even by marriage). I was over on YouTube, clicking on the next song after "Longer Boats," a song we were talking about and trying to fathom:

Mary dropped her pants by the sand
And let a parson come and take her hand
But the soul of nobody knows
Where the parson goes, where does the parson go?

Please spare me the usual Cat Stevens hating. That's been talked to death. (Here's an elaborate Wikipedia page on your favorite Cat Stevens topic.) The subjects of this post are: 1. odd suggestions for world peace and 2. what is the song "Longer Boats" about? 

I'll start you off on the right track:

Topic #1: In 1969, right after they married, Yoko Ono and John Lennon sat in bed together for world peace. And — take note! — John Lennon and Yoko Ono had married across national and cultural boundaries.

Topic #2: The suggestion from Stevens is that he was imagining aliens in spaceships coming to earth and bringing us a better world, apparently free of the inferior traditional religions of human beings. In that view, there's no parson molesting Mary. Mary and the parson are simply traipsing off into a new way of life, liberated by the philosophy of the aliens.

IN THE COMMENTS: Now, this is smart, from creeley23:

I take Stevens' Hitchcock remark before "Peace Train" as a reference to the train-into-the-tunnel ending of North By Northwest, i.e. it was a coded reference to the "make love, not war" sentiment of the time.

Well, then. I wasn't going to say it, but I thought the "longer boats" were longer cocks! That's why it was so telling that Mary dropped her pants. And I thought "the parson" was some wags name for his waggler: Where does the parson go? I thought I had it all figured out!

"Please pardon this brief departure from my normal folderol, but every so often..."

"... a member of the chattering class issues a nugget of stupidity so egregious that no amount of mockery will suffice. Particularly when the issuer of said stupidity holds a Nobel Prize."

The Nobel Prize reference is to Paul Krugman. If you want something about the Obama Nobel Prize, there's this:

Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize.  A lot of his critics didn't think he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but he's got a shot now at showing the world he does deserve it by what he could be doing in the Middle East and North Africa.  Is he on a track to winning the Nobel Peace Prize again...?  What do you think?

Again?  These guys are taking bets on whether Obama is gearing up to win the Nobel Peace Prize again?  I mean you can arguably say that the world's imploding because of Obama.  The stabilizing force of the world has always been the United States of America, but nobody fears us.  There's no respect or fear of the United States, and he doesn't project any abject respect and love for this country.  These guys are speculating on whether he's qualified to win a second one?

"Harvard historian Niall Ferguson schools MSNBC’s Mika on what has happened in Egypt and Obama’s incompetence."

Very intense:

Why do some people presume the best of the Egyptian protesters and the worst of the Tea Party protesters?

This is something I've been mulling over especially after I heard Rush Limbaugh tie up a long monologue like this:

I find Obama's respect for protests funny.  He hates the Tea Party, he hates their rallies, he accuses them of being all kinds of things, but the protesters in Egypt, why, they are great, Muslim Brotherhood, secular, they're not interested in violence. Obama loves these people in Egypt all the while he is in violation of a federal judge.  This man is so concerned about the law in Egypt, he's got his own health care bill declared unconstitutional, and he acts like the court has never ruled.  So all this talk about democracy and the rule of law, give me a break, he's flipping Judge Vinson the bird.

He may claim to love democracy in Egypt.  He knows what that group is.  He's a community organizer.  He knows exactly what that group is.  That's why he's such a big supporter of that.  He knows that group's just a bunch of agitators.  But to sit around and start talking about, "Oh, we love democracy, and whenever we see it bubbling up, we're gonna support it out there."  Yeah, except when the judge says your health care bill's unconstitutional, we're gonna ignore that.  He loves democracy in action except when it's the Tea Party.  Then all of a sudden they become a bunch of tea baggers, as far as he's concerned.  Yeah.  I'm not kidding.  The American Tea Party, they're responsible for shooting people, they're responsible for all the violence. I mean, who's worked this crowd up into a fevered pitch?  I don't know that my program's on the air there.  And if it were -- he-he-he-he-he-he-he -- they wouldn't like me much.

There's a lot of stuff in there. I'm focused on the question I put in the title. Obviously, I'm also interested in the health care case. He wove that into the discussion — awkwardly... or elegantly?

Meanwhile, the NYT reports:

The Egyptian military, complying with most of the principal demands of the opposition, said Sunday that it had dissolved the country’s parliament, suspended its constitution and called for elections in six months, according to a statement by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces read on state television. It also said it would honor all of Egypt’s international agreements, including the peace treaty with Israel.

The military did not address a third major opposition demand to lift emergency rule. In previous statements, the council had promised to take that step once the security situation improved.

So, at this point, it's pretty much a military coup, making references to an entity called "the opposition," dissolving parliament, and suspending the constitution. I'm just trying to understand what's going on and why we should feel so much confidence about it.

Or is it political theater? Perhaps Obama et al. are only acting as though they have full confidence that the outcome will be democratic and free, because it is a way to state our expectations, make that outcome more likely, and position us to pressure the military government if that doesn't happen.

Have I stumbled into the answer to my original question up there in the post title? If it's "political theater," then a completely different set of gestures with respect to the Tea Party makes perfect sense.

"The US secretly agreed to give the Russians sensitive information on Britain’s nuclear deterrent to persuade them to sign a key treaty."

Says the UK Telegraph, relying on Wikileaks:

A series of classified messages sent to Washington by US negotiators show how information on Britain’s nuclear capability was crucial to securing Russia’s support for the “New START” deal.

Oh, but don't be upset! The START treaty was Obama's chosen post-elections showdown with GOP last fall:

Just two weeks after an election that left him struggling to find his way forward, President Obama has decided to confront Senate Republicans in a make-or-break battle over arms control that could be an early test of his mettle heading into the final two years of his term.

Obama proved his mettle! What's more important? Our relationship with the UK or proof of Obama's mettle after the crushing 2010 elections?

"WikiLeaks Fallout: Should Hillary Clinton Resign?"

Asks David Corn.

Clinton... signed orders instructing U.S. foreign service officers to spy on the diplomats of other nations....

Diplomats are not spies (though spies do pose as diplomats)....

The administration's strategy -- as is to be expected -- is to focus on the easy-to-demonize messenger, not the hard-to-explain message. But Diplomatgate ought to be a top priority for the oversight committees of Congress....

... [O]ne can expect Clinton to dig in her heels, as the administration decries the leaker and ignores the leaks.

New Wikileakage — "a secret chronicle of the United States’ relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism."

The NYT passes along the "brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats."

¶ Gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would “help salve” China’s “concerns about living with a reunified Korea” that is in a “benign alliance” with the United States.
¶ Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of “Let’s Make a Deal.” Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in a group of detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be “a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe.”

Much more at the link.

"I'd also like to know whether Paul really believes in a conspiracy among the U.S., Canadian and Mexican governments..."

"... to turn North America into a 'borderless, mass continent' bisected by a 10-lane superhighway. Because that's what he said in 2008. 'It's a real thing,' he said of the imaginary threat to U.S. sovereignty, 'and when you talk about it, the thing you just have to be aware of is that if you talk about it like it's a conspiracy, they'll paint you as a nut.' Very little paint is needed."

Should John Brennan be the new Director of National Intelligence?

Dennis Blair has resigned, and Obama says he has "more confidence" in Brennan. Michael Anton looks at some things Brennan has said:

First, in prepared remarks in Washington, Brennan referred to his love for “al-Quds,” which happens to be the Arab revanchist name for the city that the rest of us call “Jerusalem.” This terminology is routinely used by Islamist terror groups to rally the faithful....

[Second, a]t a conference in Washington, he said that the Obama administration is exploring ways to strengthen the hand of “moderate elements” within Hezbollah....

Earlier this year Brennan said that the 20% recidivism rate of the Gitmo detainees released up to that point was “not that bad.” See, he explained, the rate for American criminals sometimes approaches 50%....

"Obama's use of Meds Yeghern 'is an elegant dodge to avoid using the 'g-word'..."

"... but the substance of what he states about what happened gives no comfort to those who cling to the Turkish official version... '1.5 million Armenians were rounded up and massacred or marched to their death.' Despite the passive construction, that assumes intentionality."

The leaked Gates memo: We have no plan for dealing with nuclear Iran.

If diplomacy fails...

Why was this leaked now? The memo was written in January but only today are “government officials” finally whispering about it to the Times. Normally I’d assume that it was leaked by the White House itself in yet another naive attempt to pressure allied powers about the severity of the threat, but the story’s simply too embarrassing to Obama. Presumably the leakers are insiders who are worried that, three months later, we’re still not taking the prospect of an Iranian bomb seriously enough.

We have a president who doesn't even believe we are the good guys. True or false?

Did you hesitate? Because you shouldn't even have to hesitate.

Did you hesitate?
	No. I went right to false.
	No. I went right to true.
	Yes, but I said false.
	Yes, but I said true.
	I'm still in hesitation mode. Come on, Obama! Help me out here.
pollcode.com free polls

"President Obama yesterday did his best impression of a high-school sophomore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clichés he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher."

Rich Lowry talks about Barack Obama's U.N. speech.

Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation's pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?...

"For those who question the character and cause of my nation," Obama said, "I ask you to look at the concrete actions we have taken in just nine months." In other words, he's the redeemer of a nation....

Ugh. Sigh. And I thought Gaddafy was the clown. But that was yesterday, as I watched TV with the sound off, under the influence of post-toe-op drugs.

I'm torn. I was just thinking that Obama would have been so much better if he had made foreign policy the centerpiece of his presidency instead of perversely investing his reputation in complicated health care puzzles. Now, I'm thinking perhaps we're better off that he's gotten hopelessly distracted by insoluable insurance problems.

***

You know, Lowry's description made me think of Mr. Van Driessen on "Beavis and Butt-Head." I was going to embed some apt video clip of the hippie teacher — maybe something with him lecturing the boys about world peace — but all I could find was this and my inner Nancy Pelosi scolded me about this balance between freedom and safety.

Moammar Gaddafi loves Barack Obama, Rush rants about a rant, etc. etc.

I'm looking for a full text of the rambling remarks of the Libyan lunatic, whom I watched on TV with the sound off as I lay here on the sofa, post-toe-op, waiting for Sister Morphine to come around again and whom I read about in this comment from Chip Ahoy (in the Black Wasp Café):

Muammar Gaddafi with his jet-black hair + black brimless flat-top hat = droopy Mickey Mouse ears.

I used to have Mickey Mouse ears. Also had a devil Halloween costume with a pointy red tail that I used for pajamas when Halloween was over. I used to run around the house with both the mouse ears and the devil tail pants until the tail fell off the pants and the ensemble was ruined.

That's what Gaddafi reminds me of.

This WaPo report will have to do for now:

[W]hen it came to America's 44th president, Gaddafi offered only warm words, calling him "our son" and "our Obama," and saying, "The election of Obama is the beginning of change."...

Oh, there's almost no text in that article. I want the words of the Moammar Mouse. Dammit. I'm going to have to resort to the Rush Limbaugh show transcript (which I listened to on the podcast this afternoon as I drowsed on my Limbesque drugs):

KHADAFY:  This is an historic event. One day the black doesn't go where the whites go and cannot be in a bus where the whites is, now the American people, the black African Kenyan voted for him and made him a president, this is a great thing. We're proud of that. You are the beginning of a change. He did go for a change but as far as I'm concerned Obama is a glimpse in the dark for the four years or the next eight years and I'm afraid that we may go back to square one. How can you guarantee America after Obama? Can you guarantee after Obama how America will be governed? No one can guarantee America. We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as a President of America.

RUSH:  Now, what are we supposed to do here as American citizens?  Here is this lunatic who openly applauded the return of the Lockerbie bomber, had his own son escort the bomber back from the UK, gets off the plane out there in Libya, through a cheering throng, this lunatic shows up today, makes a speech, "We love Barack Obama, and we want Barack Obama to be president forever. If he can't be president forever it's back to square one." He's talking about our president....

RUSH: Folks, now, don't forget, I'm holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers, it's actually a YouTube video, we got a transcript of it here, of June 11, 2008, and in it Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy says that Obama suffers an inferiority complex that might make him behave whiter than the white.  And the inferiority complex that he suffers is that he's really a Muslim but he can't admit it.  So Khadafy, you know, right out of the Star Wars bar scene today up there making a speech, "We love Obama, president forever, black man in Africa, our son." Now, you gotta keep in mind that Khadafy keeps calling him our son, Kenyan, Khadafy says he's a Muslim.  Now, I'm wondering, did the Obama administration go to Khadafy today and say, "Look, do not celebrate Obama, it is not going to be helpful, Moammar, if you go out there and celebrate Obama."  Just like they told him, "Look, the deal is, we're going to release the Lockerbie bomber, but you don't have a celebration for the guy," and they did do that, and Khadafy flipped 'em off.

Maybe the Obama administration did go to him and say, "Look, Moammar, we love you, man, but you can't start praising Obama. You can't start praising him because it's not going to help us."  Maybe they did it and he just didn't listen to them like he ignored them on the Lockerbie thing.  If I'd gone to the United Nations and made a speech and I've got Moammar Khadafy following me praising it, I'd really question myself.  I would ask if somebody injected me with some mind altering poison.  It doesn't seem to bother these guys.

Ranting about a rant.  That makes sense. On drugs.

"They’re saying, 'We just don’t trust you guys.' It's the same gridlock we had last year when Bush was president."

Somehow Obama can't create agreement in the fight against "climate change" (formerly known as "global warming").

Obama, warmly clasping hands with Hugo Chavez.

"Como Esta?"

The Vatican rejects Caroline Kennedy.

Obama picks Catholics as ambassador, but these are Catholics who support abortion, and the Vatican says no.

"If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed.''

"Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed overtures from President Barak Obama...."

Preliminary observation: Yikes. The New York Times is misspelling the President's name in the first sentence of a lead news story. Is doom near?

Primary observation: Obama charmed us American's with his hopey-changey rhetoric. He even made (some of) us think that he would transform world politics by talking the right way. Like this:



But — it's no surprise — they aren't buying it:

In his most direct assessment of Obama and prospects for improved ties, Khamenei said there will be no change between the two countries unless the American president puts an end to U.S. hostility toward Iran and brings ''real changes'' in foreign policy.

''They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven't seen any change."...

... Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year and accuse the country of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons in the same message.

''As long as the U.S. government continues the same policies and directions of the previous 30 years, we will be the same nation of the past 30 years,'' Khamenei said. ''The Iranian nation can't be deceived or threatened.''

Of course not. And it was silly ever to think that it could.