.

Here’s the scenario, gang.  Republican House Speaker John Boehner (OH) is working to “extract” a roll-back/defunding of Obamacare in exchange for an increase in the national debt ceiling (we hit the ceiling on October 15th). Sounds a bit like out-and-out thuggery, a criminal shakedown gambit on the part of the Tea Party-infested GOP to completely tank the full faith & credit of the U.S. over legislation that was passed by Congress and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

.

This is nothing more than government by blackmail.  But, then again, the Republican Party was never really about anything else and certainly never interested in governing as much as bullying and terrorizing to force their will on the existing order.  Fuck’em ALL!

.

The GOP is going to find out that the train has left the station and their party-in-tatters has been blown out of the water, come November-2014.  There is a new order to things, a huge change in voting demographics for one thing (non-white eligible voters).

.

I can’t predict the future but I can opine that the enthusiasm level of Romney and McCain voters will not be very much on display in next year’s off-year congressional elections.  The only support the GOP congressional candidates have at this juncture is the 23% of the voting electorate, i.e., the Tea-Party nut bags.

.

.

Trying to defund Obamacare and then using that as a prop to whip up GOP voter turn-out in next November’s congressional elections is like beating a dead horse.  It will backfire big-time on Boehner & Company and it will be like Pickett’s charge on the 3rd day of the Battle of Gettysburg where something like 6,000 Confederates were mowed down by Yankee canon and infantrymen.

.

We’re going to witness a Gettysburg on the GOP next November and John Boehner thinks he can do a Pickett’s Charge up against the Obama Administration and wrest control of the implementation of Obamacare.  Get the hospital beds ready for the incoming casualties, John!

.

 

.

Diplomacy, without a military component is a dead letter.  That’s what President Obama just revealed to the world this past week.  We now know that Obama engaged Russian Vladimir Putin at last year’s G-20 conference about a strategy to resolve the Syrian chemical weapons issue.  President Obama chose his timing well when delivering a military ultimatum to Syria at this year’s G-20 summit in Moscow.

.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s shot-across-the-bow statement this week, i.e., that Syria could turn over its chemical weapons in one week to settle this matter, was jumped on by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, thereby setting in motion Russia’s subsequent dictate to Syria, its client-state, to turn over its complete stockpile of chemical weapons to international control.  None of this would have come about but for President Obama’s drop-dead threat to rain down missiles on Syrian military installations unless its chemical weapons were handed over to the international community and destroyed.

.

Syria folded like a cheap suit yesterday (Monday) by quickly accepting Russia’s suggestion for its client-state to transfer its chemical weapons to international control for destruction.  This blogger is fairly certain that Syrian President Bashar al Assad will see this thing through for one very good reason:  he knows he’s a dead-man walking otherwise and that his country is needlessly going to get a huge military spanking that will further alienate him from his people (if that’s even possible at this stage of the game).

.

President Obama has just unleashed a new era in World diplomacy:  maximum military “leverage” = maximum military diplomacy!  Military might will increasingly become wedded to diplomatic efforts to produce the maximum thrust for confronting truly hot spots around the globe with truly full-dominance leverage.  It is crude but it is going to work and is probably the only thing in the foreseeable future that will guarantee the roll-back of intransigent rogue nations and/or actors (Al Qaeda, et al., North Korea, Iran).

.

The President has been setting the stage for this week’s culmination of events (Syria and it’s lethal chemical weapons capacity) for a long time and deserves all of the credit for injecting another potent option in the international arena:  maximum military leverage will, in fact, produce maximum military diplomacy.  It’s all about the leverage.  It’s a common concept in real estate wherein you utilize the combined power of all of your assets and contacts to concentrate, accelerate and maximize your efforts.  There’s no reason why it can’t work in the international arena.  I think we are seeing the harbinger of what is to come.

.

President Obama roped in all of the competition by outfoxing and outflanking.  He deserve all due praise and recognition inasmuch as he has injected something a little different into the world order that will have significant repercussions for a very long time!   In essence, he is leveraging Right with Might – and not the other way around!

.

.

.

Obama just delivered a first-class dose of “whoop-ass” to Syria (and indirectly – to Russia) with his high-stakes, balls-to-the-wall march to rain missiles down on Syria.  Say what you will about his “reticence” in general, throughout his presidency, this was one time when he left it far behind and unleashed something we have not seen before, a hell-bent-for-leather drive toward a goal.

.

Make no mistake, Russia’s “offer” to encourage Syria to place her chemical weapons arsenal under the auspices of an international custodian was the DIRECT RESULT of Obama’s saber-rattling.  This whole deal may take unforeseen twists and turns or simply may not actually materialize.  But one thing is clear, this changes the dynamics of this whole show of brinksmanship.

.

Yes, we’ve just endured two wars.  Yes, we’re tired as a nation.  But, we let the water-board issue slip by unchecked, unaccounted for.  Now, we are faced with open defiance of long-recognized international law that was plainly out in the open for all to see.  We can split hairs by insisting that we don’t really have complete verification that the Syrian government actually gave the order to deploy these weapons.  The overwhelming evidence and circumstantial evidence indicates OTHERWISE.

.

President Obama is looking at the tremendous leverage this country enjoys today (our overwhelming military arsenal) and decided to use it as maximum “leverage” to grind down this third-rate, tin-horn schmuck of a dictator.  The Arab Spring has swept throughout the Middle East and that landscape is permanently altered – tipped toward “people-power”.  Syria was due for an extreme makeover and they brought it on themselves by defiantly deploying chemical weapons on their own people with grisly results (the videos released by the White House clearly show those effects).

.

Obama played puppet master and forced Russia’s hand to rein in their client state.  Using the mere presence of an all-powerful U.S. military presence to overtly intimidate (and quite successfully) a rogue nation caught in the act of violating the internationally-recognized taboo regarding the use of chemical weapons  shows that the President was fully intent on breaking down obstinancy of Syria.  He is simply enforcing a long-accepted international norm, after all.

.

In a sense, Obama is just putting some order back into our planet.  There are certain boundaries that nations must not cross.  It’s not really a stretch to suggest that the President thought this out and concluded that by raising the stakes so high he would eventually force someone’s hand.  If it turns out to be the case in this instance I think we can see this repeated in the future.  It sure beats actually bombing and straffing whole civilian populations and laying waste to a country’s infrastructure.

.

I don’t even pretend to have mastered all of the “geopolitical” ramifications of targeting Syrian military assets and using tomahawk cruise missiles to eliminate those assets.  At first blush, you’d have to conclude that doing so would simply stir up a hornet’s nest in that region of the world, what with all of the competing forces at odds with one another in such a very small geographical area.

.

What I would like to hear is the cold, hard, dry analysis of what will most likely happen if Bashar al Assad is allowed to continue to claim stewardship to a large arsenal of weaponized chemical agents.  Is this a case for pure containment or have we already passed the point of no-return with this blood-thirsty, tin-horn dictator.  Where does one actually start to even begin the process of de-fanging Bashar, if that is even possible or feasible.  Any clear-eyed assessment of the Syrian situation would have to conclude at the very outset that there are an awful lot of “moving parts” at work here.

.

On top of that, the United States armed Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons which  Saddam then used extensively against Iraq.  Russia used chemical weapons in their 9-year war with Afghanistan and again in their battle to subdue Chechnya.  Where was the world’s condemnation in either of these two cases?

.

We have a civil war occurring in Syria (just as we did in Iraq) and there simply are no clear viable choices, only the lesser of evil ones.  That’s what we’re really faced with here.  Perhaps the only option available now is to throw our lot in with the most meritorious rebel groups and supply them with a large enough arsenal to force Bashar to come to the negotiating table and submit to a power transition.

.

What I see happening, ultimately, is President Obama initiating limited but quick and punishing military strikes against the Assad regime but then expeditiously funneling large quantities of arms and munitions to those meritorious rebel forces with the hope that the military strikes have more than evened the playing field to provide the rebels a strong enough foothold on the battlefield to eventually, and sooner than later, overthrow the Assad dynasty.

.

The only saving grace with that outcome would be that the rebel groups, while not appreciably better than the Assad government, would at least refrain from using chemical weapons.  That might be reason enough to rain missiles down on Syria.

.

What do you think?

.

.

.

It’s been a long-time coming, but this week may see the rebirth of the union movement in this country, coming as it will from the fast-food industry & Walmart. There are now currently 58 cities where fast-food workers are on strike. Walmart saw the first such union movement for better living wages earlier this summer and that continues.  Word is that September 5 will kick off a national effort to bring the collective bargaining power of low-wage workers in this nation to the forefront in the news cycle.  Let’s hold our collective breaths.  Unions are what made the middle class and hopefully the renewal of the union movement can shore up an all too obvious devastated middle class.

.

The GI-Bill and the union movement really made this country’s middle class and any claims to the contrary are pure bunk.  The computer age, in effect, has “atomized” us as a society to such an extent that contemplating collaborative efforts, i.e. unions, was pushed to the far reaches or given very short shrift. Well, guess what, we are still a human collective with all of the same human impulses that has worked its will down through the ages.  The recent nascent unionizing efforts will – hopefully – jump-start this nation into better (more humane) times ahead where individuals will reclaim their real freedom – economic rights and self-determination.

.

Just saying ……….

.

.

Like father, like son.  Syrian leader Bashar al Assad certainly does his father proud with his government’s (regime’s) option to go ahead and gas civilians.  While the opposition might be just as “corrupt” as the current Syrian leader, the move to openly use internationally-outlawed poisonous gas-laced weaponry on his own people certainly merits that his regime take on a stiff dose of their own medicine (i.e., U.S. tomahawk cruise missiles targeted on to Syrian military “assets”).

.

If we can believe President Obama that this is strictly limited in scope and of a short time span then the President’s decision to allow Congress to vote for a war measure seems destined to bear fruit.

.

There are no good choices here.  The choice is really whether or not to uphold the international ban on poisonous gas-laced weaponry.  It is a universally-recognized legal statute that has just recently been openly flouted by a third-rate tin-horn dictator.

.

You decide……..

.

.

.

The gridlock in our national politics is not just in Congress.

.

It resides within our two-party structure.  While it may have served a useful purpose for the 1st 200-years of our nation’s existence it no longer serves this country well.

.

Without at least a viable alternative to the GOP and the Democratic Party we’re going to see more protracted warfare by the two main parties against each other and consequently the high probability of more and more political inertia and gridlock just when this nation is entering into a period of profoundly pressing real-world problems.  Things like global warming, emerging nations becoming the consumers and Americans becoming the sweat shop for those nations, all-encompassing banks tightening their grip on our economy like a vise grip, and the most frightening – the emergence of a vast underclass super-imposed by a tiny, tiny but all powerful, all-wealthy super-class (the 1% of the top 1%).

.

So, let’s hear it for another version of the Bull Moose Party (think – Teddy Roosevelt – 1912).  Or maybe a Progressive coalition, starting out in California and gaining support from states like New York and Massachusetts and perhaps Michigan and Oregon/Washington.

.

Seriously, something has to “give” over the next 5-years.  The trench warfare between the Democratic Party and the GOP is eventually going to wear this country down to a frazzle.

.

Any thoughts, suggestions, comments, observations?

Rand Paul Top Pick for Republicans in 2016

.

Knowing the Republican presidential candidates vying for the 2016 Republican nomination should tell you all you need to know about the pitiful state the GOP finds itself in today.

.

Paul Ryan – Mr. “Gut” Medicare and turn it into a voucher free-for-all.  Last man standing, wins!  Or his budget which makes even further cuts into social programs than the sequester is doing right now.

.

Rand Paul – Get rid of everything and put it all into “private” hands.  Society can be run by individuals running “individually”.  Any pooling of resources (i.e., government) is a waste of time and impinges on the individual.  Enough said.

.

Ted Cruz – Mr. “I’m just crazy and I am a total Tea Bagger.  Social Security and Medicare will wither away under my watch.  And virtually everything else as well.

.

Marco Rubio.  Mr. “First I was for immigration, then I was against it, then I was for it, then ….” This path to citizenship should be stretch to – oh, maybe – 33-years and not the 13-years as currently contemplated in the legislation before us.  Never mind that by fucking up on immigration he’s consigning the GOP to virtually permanent minority status – or worse – extinction.  66% of latino voters identify the GOP as hostile to latinos.   But, hell, I’m so damn good looking I’ll just run on my looks and keep on saying stuff like the earth is still flat.

.

Scott Walker.  Mr. “I’ll break the unions (no collective bargaining rights for state workers, police and fire fighters, health care workers) and I’ll continue to pass legislation at 3:00-a.m. in the Wisconsin State House.”   And of course, mandatory sonograms for any pregnant woman even thinking of having an abortion.

.

Let’s just throw in Alan West for good measure.  We can go back to the gold old days of Joseph McCarthy’s political witch hunts.  This time, however, we can identify Al Qaeda sympathizers in high places and all areas of government.  I’m just the dickwad to root out the terrorists in the Obama Administration.  We definitely need laws outlawing Sharia law and maximally enforced and I’ll be the anti-Sharia Czar.

.

Well, I guess we’ll also have to include Michigan governor Rick Snyder.  (Mr. “Let’s force Detroit into bankruptcy and then strip the pensions of municipal workers which have already been FULLY vested!”).  Rick’s also “Mr. let’s take over city governments in general (like Flint) and strip them of their legally elected representatives and put in place a state trustee instead.  So much for democracy or local government.

.

And last, but not least – Governor John Kasich of Ohio (my home state – Go Bucks!).  Mr. “Let’s attach an extremely restrictive abortion bill within the overall state budget and then vote on that omnibus bill on a Sunday afternoon and then I sneak out of the State Capitol through the back door to an unmarked car!”

.

If you doubt my “slant” on the GOP as a national party in dire straits – please read this week’s column on the GOP by Joan Walsh in http://www.salon.com.  (The vanishing GOP voter   —    http://www.salon.com/2013/07/24/the_vanishing_gop_voter)  I think she’ll more than prove my point here.

.

Your assignment is to read Ms. Walsh’s column and take it to heart.  2014 – it’ll come fast and we need to RETAKE the House of Representatives, for God’s sake!

.