What I Missed On My Obamacation
Yeah, well, as predicted I didn’t finish The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France: 1789-1815, but knocked out a dozen pages at Nauset Light Beach on Cape Cod, a few dozen more each night prior to nodding off … an excellent, quick-and-dirty yet intimately detailed view of grand events and the personalities that drove them. Bonaparte 101. OK, here’s what I missed on my Obamacation, while gazing out reflectively at various parts of the Atlantic Ocean and mulling 18th-century European politics:
Ted K attempts to engineer his succession, by urging Gov. Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts Legislature to reverse his 2004 effort to engineer John Kerry’s succession … by giving power of appointment back to the Democratic governor that they took away from the Republican one. Howie Carr does the honors at the Boston Herald. It’s Massachusetts and Kennedy politics at their most naked and cynical, which is saying something.
Here’s some Massachusetts politics most moronical. Gov. Deval Patrick, who never seems to have trouble scraping up a few hundred grand to hire hacks to do-nothing job, shuts the state pools in mid-August, in the middle of a heat wave, citing … lack of a few hundred grand. Boston Herald does the honors again, cruelly inviting the masses to swim in the pool at Deval’s estate in the Berkshires.
In other business, Obama goes on vacation a couple dozen miles south of here on Martha’s Vineyard with his agenda in disarray due to … stop me if you’ve heard this one before … his poor political skills, lack of principles and fundamentally bad ideas. OK, that’s not exactly how the Washington Post puts it in this report on the disgruntlement of the left. All I have to say is it’s painful watching them learn that experience, honesty and common sense actually count for something.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports American tourists are threatening to boycott Scotland over the Scottish government’s decision to free a convicted terrorist due to compassion over his terminal prostate cancer. Never mind what that situation says about the quality of government health care in Britain. As a resident of a state and a nation that both currently have governments given to variously moronic and objectionable policies and practices, I can’t support a boycott of Scotland without calling for a boycott of the United States and Massachusetts.
This one’s just fun. Google “lefty peacenik myopia” and you should find a link to this Matthew Yglesias piece taking issue with the term ”wars of necessity.” Yglesias helpfully presents himself as Exhibit A of how dangerously shortsighted the American peacenik left is, also, how idiotic it is to expect any useful commentary out of a 20-something. Yglesias explains that the Korean War while “good” because the South Korans were our friends, it wasn’t a war of necessity, because Kim Il Sung wasn’t invading San Francisco.
He goes on to explain that due to our geography, it would be hard for any war to meet the “necessity” test. He doesn’t elaborate, unfortunately, because I’d like to hear a more complete lefty peacenik argument on the acceptable rationales for the use of armed force, and what the alternatives are.*
But maybe he’s got a point. The United States could have saved itself a lot of trouble and expense by letting the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and their assorted proxies take over Asia and Europe, both places where San Francisco isn’t, hence laking a vital interest beyond any ancillary warm fuzziness with which we might regard them and their citizenry. Don’t even get me started how much trouble we could have avoided by letting Saddam Hussein take over the Middle East back in 1990. Fortunately, it’s never too late to stick your head in the sand. We can abandon East Asia and see what happens there, let the mullahs have the Middle East, and let Vlad do what he likes with Europe, then watch them all fight over Africa, I guess. Because, as Yglesias explains, we have big oceans so none of that is our problem. I thought the lefties were all about thinking globally, but apparently that just applies to warmalism.
Damn, it was good to be away. From the Internet, that is. OK, back to that book. I guess “quick-and-dirty” isn’t exactly the best description for 900-odd pages, except that those 900-odd wrap up a fairly intense quarter of a century.
* On second thought, maybe not. After the last eight years, I think I’ve heard enough.
Topics: everything
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:55 am Comments (1) on Sunday, August 23, 2009
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August 23rd, 2009 at 9:52 pm
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