President Obama Has Lost Control of the Government

I watched just about all of Face the Nation and one thing that’s clear is that this President has lost control of the reins of government.  If he had pressed harder on the failed gun bill, sooner- - twisting arms in congress or otherwise dealing with them, he would have gotten this bill passed.  This President’s reflexes are still far too slow and amoeba like.  In terms of the Syrian situation, the Syrian people are fed up and disillusioned with the United States because they had a reasonable expectation we would take action, since we took action in the far less serious situations in Egypt and Libya.  Seventy thousand people have been killed by Assad and they said that 500,000 refugees have flooded into Jordan, and that Jordanian leader says that nation can’t handle such an influx of foreigners.  There is this false equivalency between Iraq and Syria people are promogating.  There is talk of “making sure of our facts before we act” yet the difference is as night and day.  We know on solid evidence from generals who gave the command to use chemical weapons.  We know of at least one specific date and we are in the process of nailing down other dates.  The problem is that if we do not act- and this is already happening - - that the people of Syria will increasingly be drawn into more radical solutions like backing Al Qaeda or other radical parties.  Harry Truman said that we should have sat Castro down when he first came to power in 1959 and said to him “You can either get support from us or from the Soviet Union- - and our support is a lot better deal”.  If we just let things slide in Syria the conflict could spread to other countries anyhow.  And perhaps those chemical weapons might fall into the wrong hands without us there to stop it.  As Lindsey Graham said today on Face the Nation, “We actually have two wars to fight.  One is to remove Assad, and the other is to get the Syrian people to rise up against extremism”.    But there is an even more fundamental problem with Obama than that.  He said “If that red line- - of chemical weapons - - is crossed, it is a real game changer and we’ll do major reassasment of our policy”.  The rest of the world is watching us.  And Iran and Israel are watching us.  And if Iran sees us buckle on Syria they will be emboldened to take more aggressive action against Israel.  And Israel itself can’t be too happy about how flaky we are being about Syria.  It’s been stated that “It’s not a case of wanting to get all of the facts.  The plain fact is - -We Just Don’t Care- - no matter WHAT the facts turn out to be”.  This is a sad state of affairs for a foreign policy of the leader of freedom.  On a more pragmatic point of view- - if President Obama is looking for an opening or overature with the Republicans in Congress- - this is it.  This is a way to get on their good side, and to take some sort of action everyone can agree on.  Otherwise- - those who believe – like the tea party does- - that President Obama’s Mideast policy was and is irresponsible- - the hand of this tea party position will be strengthened by Obama’s inaction.  To me this is one decision you don’t have to wait for history to determine was right or wrong.  The same arguments used about the enemies of Assad could have been employed with Nazi Germany.  “Well we don’t know which of Hitler’s enemies to support- - after all I hear tell a lot of opponents of the Nazi party are communists” 

Meet the Press was on.  I need to listen and learn from John Mc Cain because he’s the moderate between us two right now, when it comes to the Syrian war.  What I said is that we have to be “psychologically prepared” to send in ground troops, not that we’ll have to.  Mc Cain says ground troops are counter-indicated, but he wants to do all that other groovy stuff a super-power can do line institute no-fly zones and bomb the hell out of Assad’s headquarters, and hopefully get him.  As I said in that posting, we can’t use as an excuse that “we are just tired as a nation of war”, and therefore are justified in just “taking the next decade or so off” and letting things slide in the world.  And to disagree with what one person said- - I think a War may NOT be “as bad as we feared” if we are “out ahead and waiting for them”.  Don’t do “incrementalism” like in Viet Nam.  Get out ahead of the thing and be proactive.  They had a lot of coverage of the White House celebrity roast last night.  I always, like Obama feel that “if you’re going to say you need to reach out to people - - why not start with me?”  It’s perhaps self serving but it drives the point home.  Of course from now on we’ll associate this dinner as the occasion when we got Bin Laden two years ago.  In terms of Obama’s “red line” Mc Cain reminds us that the “red line” is not really necessary since Assad has done so many other “unacceptable” deeds on the world scene.  Some may wish to split hairs and fuzz out that clear “red line” and rationalize it as “Well are we one third the way across that - - fuzzy blur- we’re calling the red line now”?  But Mc Cain’s words aside, I think once a President explicidly draws a line in the sand and says “This line you absolutely may not cross” and Assad crosses it anyhow- - that makes our foreign policy stance worthless.

Stephanie Miller has this "social responsibility" Reverend on, and Stewart Sutcliffe endorses his world outlook.  Christianity more than anything else is about "responsability" both social and personal.  People forget this.  The guest stated that many tea bagger Christians have actually been "converted" to liberalism from reading their Bibles.  There is ample of material in the Old Testament alone to refute so many tea party ideas.  Of course Stewart is a guy who is known for being loathe to change his mine on any subject.  But let me give one negative and one positive example of where Stewart did change his mind.  For the negative example we have Mitt Romney.  It was the end of the year of 2011 that Stewart told me he had completed his "full investigation" of Mitt Romney and was scheduled to come out with a New Years day editorial as to why supporting Mitt Romney for President would be an unmitigtated disaster.  On the positive side there is that individual around here whom Stewart "had been warning me about" and yet it was perhaps the Sunday before last that Stewart was forced to reverse his position on saying "obviously I was wrong".  In terms of Earth People who have Changed their minds- - we have SANDRA DAY OCONNER of Supreme Court fame.  Just this this morning O Conner came out with a reversal of sentament on "Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to have voted the way I did in Bush verses Gore in 2000 - - which was a briech of Court policy in "Not allowing this case to be case law for Any Other case".  It takes a big man, or in this case, woman, to admit that she was Wrong on such a Key Issue that has so affected the course of American History.  By the way - - in the Federation they refer to the youngest brother as Jahar "Jay-har" with the accent on the first syllable.  They picked this up from the Reigelian "Sha-HAR", which is actually a word in that language- - and is a common given name that I'm only told is a "respectable name".  To get back to Stu Baby for a moment- - it was in that Stanford - USC game of a couple years ago where Stu quoted me the General Patton proverb of "Show me a good loser - and I'll show you a loser" and Stewart insists that games were being played with the clock or USC would have scored thus ending the game right there.  I think there is little doubt that Stu had a lot of money riding on that game, or something.

Leo le Port yesterday was talking about things Google welcomes in terms of getting your web site to be known, and things it regards as “gaming the system”.  But there are some sites where you don’t have a brick and mortar store where Google will admit they ignore you and there is nothing you can do about it because “That’s just the way things are”.  And most people still use Google as a search site so those vendors are pretty much screwed.  I think even now Google does a little too much “thinking for me” because they’ll steer me to sites “everybody else is going to” even if it’s not what I exactly had in mind.  Chris Marquardt was on the show and they finished up “storm” as an assignment and now are going for the word “bubble”.  Leo claims scype has better sound coming all the way from Europe than do domestic sources.  The thing is these computer geeks expend a lot of time on things I won’t spend time on.  Like Leo does these routine purges of his hard drive every few months or whenever he thinks he has a virus.  Of course reloading old files to a new hard drive is no easy feat. And it’s just time consuming.  And the idea of even putting yourself through that every three or four years – the way Leo thinks is normal, when you purchase a new computer- - I find mind boggeling.  Leo did say for the first time today that Windows will not continue to support XP in another year.  But Leo assured one caller that “XP had been worked on and patched so much that it will probably continue to be pretty safe even without regular updates”.  And then adds that “Besides, most of the hackers now have moved on to current formats”.

I have one more topic to bring up today and it involves asking yourselves "Obvious questions that occur to you".  As you know so many times we don't ask the Obvious questions because we as it were "learn an axiom by rote" and never get around to asking what it really means.  The whole Einstein equation of E equals MC square is a prime example.  We are always told "This means that is anything goes the speed of light it turns entirely into energy".  Yet Einsteins own equations don't state this.  First of all the energy - mass ratio is not affected by Speed, for reasons we have stated in the past.  Secondly - - since both Mass and Energy have a value of Infinity- - when at the speed of light- - mathematical equations of a "digital" nature (that could be used by a digital computer) would be pointless since Infinity is a Value that cannot be expressed on a digital computer.  (Selah)  Here is the following past from last night.  I was trying to explain to Jay how the formula E = Mc squared - - makes no sense if “c” is a single number since it could be miles or inches, and likewise the seconds could be minutes.  I told Jay the whole point of these equations is having an Unknown based on two independent variables with a certain relation to each other.  But you need some commonality in numbers to even multiply them.  I understand the relation between, for example, impact verses mass and speed, or illumination having a relation to light signal and distance square.  But here you don’t have such a working relationship.  So just how does this equation work?  OK we're back live.  My point is that units in physics involve a great deal of "spesificity" involving just What is being Measured or "Calibrated".  People don't realize that the "common denominator" principle extends to other venues of math.  On a final point- - it was a day last week when I hit my Seventh anniversary as a blogger.  And early on I admitted that "I'm going to be talking a lot about religion and metaphysics in these blogs".  Certain ideas perhaps I have "evolved" on a bit- - to use that Presidential expression.  One of these is the notion that Ideas constitute a physical reality of their own.   At that time I was thinking "Well even if we can't prove the existance of the Soul- - we know that somehow the mind generates "Energy" and this "Energy" is left hanging in the ether or something- - though I always spoke of this sixth or psychic dimension where these things called "Ideas" have their domain and existance.  So therefore - to borrow from Sylvia Brown, even is the soul no longer exists there remained this "energy" that lingered in a haunted house or whatever.  Again this is an issue I have modified my position on over the years.  I now don't believe you can Quantify - - in a measurable physics sense- - you cant quantify this sort of Mental Intelligence as somehow some "energy" or "force".  If you could, they would have measured it by now.  Therefore it would follow that if you see some "intelligence" in the Evolution of nature and the Universe- - you can't impute any physicality hence "provability" to this.  All of your persuasion must be Inferential rather than test tube oriented.  The closest we came in our writings lately to this "physicality of ideas" notion is in repeating an old axiom that "If two shapes are absolutely Identical in every aspect, they are The Same- - even if they are to be Located in different Spaces or different Times.  (Selah)  This is an old Mal Evans doctrine.