Jay Leno Gets It Right on Syria . . . Funny but Sad for the Nation

The White House has a new slogan: "Hope and let the Russians fix it."

Last night President Obama spoke to the nation about Syria. Hopefully, Americans who were confused about the president's plan feel better now, knowing that he's confused too.

Well, it was confusing, wasn't it? First, President Obama laid out his reasoning for a strike against Syria. And then he gave the rebuttal.

John Kerry has insisted that any military strike on Syria will be "unbelievably small."  But not as small as the SUPPORT for a strike on Syria.

Gauging Obama's Syrian Debacle

The community organizer's humiliating pratfall has very serious unfortunate consequences for the United States and the rest of what used to be referred to as the free world.  A realistic (though far from complete) assessment of the damage caused by the amateurish president has been published by the slavishly liberal Washington Post in this column.  For an even better and more comprehensive analysis go here and click on the 9/13/13 post entitled The World Is a Tough Town.

Worth Noting

For the reasons set forth in this blog's September 6 Come Clean . . . post, your not-even-slightly-humble blogger is not interested in anything the nation's poseur-in-chief has to say.  Therefore I did not listen to his speech last night and instead spent the time in a more rewarding way -- with and listening to a far more erudite, interesting, and honest 5-year-old grandchild.

Today, however, some of the follow-on reports on the latest words emitted by the golden-voiced orator have been worth noting.  Of particular interest was the recasting of the speech as an honest one, as set forth, surprisingly, in the Washington Post in this column.

Any Real American President Would Be Embarrassed by This One's Syrian Pratfall

President Obama woke up Monday facing a Congressional defeat that many in both parties believed could hobble his presidency.  And by the end of the day, he found himself in the odd position of relying on his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, of all people, to bail him out.

. . . New York Times news report

Putin emerges as powerful and statesmanlike; Obama as an inept and clownish caricature of a leader of a supposedly great but currently ridiculous nation.

It could hardly be more humiliating for the community organizer in chief and the U.S. ! ! ! ! 

Genuine Red Lines

. . . and for the future:

Quadruple Standard ? ? ? ?

. . . and what about the U.S. government gassing its own citizens -- men, women, and children -- in its murderous attack on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas?

Astute Comic’s Serious and Accurate Depiction of Nation's Current Politics

Republican leaders have agreed to support President Obama's plan to attack Syria. See, that’s what I love about our country. The only time Republicans and Democrats can agree on something is when it’s time to bomb somebody.

If President Obama really wants to hurt the Syrian government, don’t send cruise missiles. He should send over some of his economic advisers.

Did you see Vladimir Putin and President Obama shake hands today? They said something to each other. Of course, we don’t know what they said, nobody does — except the NSA, the KGB, and Edward Snowden.

. . . Jay Leno

Come Clean First -- Then We Might, Perhaps, Listen a Wee Bit

Nothing that Obama may say about Syria or anything else will be considered credible, worthy of consideration, or even deserving of the slightest attention at least unless and until his administration comes clean with complete and truthful answers to all of the many outstanding questions about Benghazi, politicization of the IRS, and surveillance and spying on citizens by the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Lost Freedoms: Remembering and Lamenting

Ten things you could do in 1975 you can’t do today because America is much less free:

1. You could buy an airline ticket and fly without ever showing an ID.

2. You could buy cough syrup without showing an ID.

3. You could buy and sell gold coins without showing an ID.

4. You could buy a gun without showing an ID.

5. You could pull as much cash out of your bank account without the bank filing a report with the government.

6. You could get a job without having to prove you were an American.

7. You could buy cigarettes without showing an ID.

8. You could have a phone conversation without the government knowing who you called and who called you.

9. You could open a stock brokerage account without having to explain where the money came from.

10. You could open a Swiss bank account with ease. All Swiss banks were willing and happy to open accounts for Americans.

There are thousands of other examples. The monitoring is in place; all that is required from here is the clampdown.

The differences, between now and 1975 in the business sector are even more prevalent. In recent years, in industry after industry regulations and prohibitions have been poured on top of free markets. It doesn’t look like things will get any better in years to come. Eventually, the economy will suffocate and collapse, if this continues.

I would add some more to the list:

11. In California, you could smoke in a bar.

12. In Michigan, where I lived then, you could buy alcohol at age 18.

13. You could buy a “gas guzzler” car, like the classic 1976 Buick 225.

14. If you were a child, you could play soldier, or cops and robbers, or cowboys and Indians with real looking plastic guns — instead of the ugly, bright-colored ones mandated today.

15. You could be politically incorrect.

16. You could attend a public school that didn’t look like, and operate like, a prison.

17. You could go to a pro baseball game and get an actual bat on “Bat Day.”

18. You could be an energetic boy without getting pumped full of Ritalin.

19. You could blast off an Estes model rocket in any vacant lot, especially a school’s.

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- See more at: http://calwatchdog.com/2013/09/03/we-are-much-less-free-than-in-1975/#sthash.E3MHBD0s.dpuf

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Economic Policy Journal

list by John Seiler

Why Can't U.S. Rise to Mexico's Election Integrity Standard?

Olympian Ego, Subterranean Credibility

America's foremost community organizer now claims that, notwithstanding what we repeatedly heard hims say, he wasn't the one who set the use-of-chemical-weapons red line for Syria's regime.  No indeed, the Messianic Barack Obama currently is out there claiming that it was the world that set the now embarrassingly infamous red line.

So Obama now thinks -- or least is claiming -- that he speaks for the whole world?  If the claim had any element of truth, one would expect some prominent allies to act in concert with the U.S. in the proposed aggressive action against Syria.

In any event though, unless Mr. Obama is sufficiently delusional to actually believe that his uttering something makes it true, his incredible statement is just a pathetic effort to vote "present" on whether to launch a military attack against Syria . . . another attempt to avoid responsibility for anything.

The first such effort on his proposed Syrian adventure was his taking a duck on the question by submitting it to Congress.  

Who knows what he really wants Congress to do?

The proposal he submitted to Congress would have authorized him to order our military to do anything he wanted with respect to Syria and not just the limited actions he has said and continues to say is all that he intends.  As he certainly knew would be the case, Congress now is considering only a far more limited measure.

In any event, Congress, and not the nation's golden-voiced orator, will be responsibility for inaction, if the Congress fails to authorize the use of military force, or any failure or shortcoming achieved as a result of whatever limited action ultimately is authorized. 

Is there any doubt that if action is authorized, taken, and achieves success -- whatever that may be -- that the stalwart commander-in-chief suddenly will appear, coming forward to claim credit?  

Meanwhile, the prominent pendency of the Syrian issue furthers the Obama administration's interests by serving as a distraction from all the scandals that it has tried to slough off as "phony" -- use of the IRS as a political weapon, the surveillance of and spying on American citizens by the nation's intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the continued mislabeling as "workplace violence" of the multiple terrorist murders at Fort Hood by the radical Muslim major, and the ongoing coverup and lying about the Benghazi travesty.

The cruelest lies with respect to the last of the above-listed examples were the promises to families of the Benghazi murder victims that the producer of the video on which the administration falsely blamed the attack would be brought to justice.  In just the last several days it has become indisputably clear that the administration knew within minutes of the initial shots being fired that Benghazi onslaught was not a spontaneous reaction to any video but an organized terrorist attack.  

Love This

From WTTC News in Dallas, we get this heartwarming tale of a long-time criminal, named Deyfon Pipkins, 33, who tried to climb in a window of a home:

The elderly owner inside saw him and fired one shot, ending Deyfon's criminal career.  

As the police do, they came by, gathered up the corpse, and then went to notify Deyfon's family of his timely demise.

It seems that the family was upset though, because they showed up at the scene.

“He could have used a warning," Lakesha Thompson, Pipkins' sister-in-law, said.  "He could have let him know that he did have a gun on his property and he would use it in self-defense."

*     *     *     *     *

COMMENT FROM THE SIDELINE:  "That's certainly true, Lakesha.  He also could have invited him in, given him a beer, and then helped him cart the TV out to the curb.

Unfortunately for Deyfon, Texas is a Castle Doctrine state, and the homeowner chose to shoot Deyfon, as it is right and proper to do.

For that matter, Lakesha, you could have warned Deyfon "Deyfon, you need to quit breakin' into those peoples houses and stealin' they shit.  Someone is goin' to pop a cap in yo' ass!"

P.S.  Deyfon had an 18-page-long rap sheet.  
         May he rest in peace.

Rationales for Past Forays

Disavowals of any intention to act as the globe's policeman appear disingenuous in light of the fact that punishing the Syrian regime for supposedly using chemical weapons against its civil war opponents serves no national interest, let alone a vital one, of the United States.

Setting that aside, however, one has to view the chemical warfare claims with the skepticism called for by the history of the rationales used as the bases for past aggressive military actions.

*  The Nazis used the claim that their opponents and would-be targets set the Reichstag fire in Berlin in 1933 to gain power and justify coming down on their domestic enemies and Jews.  Of course, the whole thing was staged.

*  Six years later, Nazi German faked a Polish attack on a German radio station as an excuse to begin the attack on Poland that started World War II.

*  False claims by the Johnson Administration of an attack on an American naval ship led to the U.S. Congress authorizing the expansion and intensification of our Vietnam War debacle.

*  Still more recently, our current endless war in the Middle East began on the basis of faulty intelligence claims about the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The lesson to be drawn from the foregoing examples -- which are just a few of the many that could be cited -- is that we would be well advised to question any evidence proffered, first, about whether chemical weapons actually were used in the Syrian conflict, and second, if they were, about the identity of the dastardly party or parties who used them.

And finally, why should we care?  Neither side in Syria's domestic bloodletting is noble or friendly toward the U.S., and both of them strike me as being equally murderous, demented, and evil.

Remember too that the war drums always are beaten by governmental elders, statists, who have in mind the adage that

 War Is the Health of the State

and that others will be doing the fighting, dying, and suffering.

Getting Serious About Syria

Nothing and nobody involved in the ludicrously murderous civil war in Syria poses any real threat to any national interest of the United States.

So why should we get involved in the war there?  What would we accomplish or hope to accomplish?

Make no mistake about it -- bombing targets in Syria would be an act of war against that country irrespective of whether we  claim or view such an act to be a limited one.  Syria has not attacked the U.S. or any U.S. national interest,  Nor is it a threat to do so.  We don't have a dog in the fighting there, and none of those dogs are friendly to us.

The fact that one or another faction in Syria has or may have let loose chemical weapons with deadly effects there does not alter anything stated hereinabove.

While we may view attacking someone or something or someplace in Syria as limited in nature, cost, and scope, it should be kept in mind that a fight is not over unless and until the party that one has turned into an adversary decides that it is over.  History is replete with evidence that it is far easier to get into a war than it is to exit from a conflict once it has begun.  As certainly as night follows day and day follows night, once we unleash the dogs of war, American blood eventually will be spilled in ways that now may not be foreseeable . . . but, in any case, not in the protection of any vital national interest.

It is true that the credibility of America's current president is at stake -- he did (foolishly and needlessly) proclaim that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be "a red line" that the U.S. would not permit to be crossed.  So -- the question must be asked -- are we supposed to engage in an act of war just because Mr. Obama gratuitously said something stupid about a matter that was none of his or America's business?

We've come a long way . . . way too long a way . . . since the days that the nation's founders -- who were far wiser than those who have followed in their footsteps -- determined that America would not not become engaged in foreign entanglements or venture abroad seeking monsters to destroy,  and would be a friend to liberty everywhere but fight only for our own.

There is virtue in minding one's own business.

Sufficiently Paranoid ? ? ? ?

Are you potentially dangerous to the country or your fellow citizens?

Few, if any. of my friends and acquaintances are not according to criteria put forth by agencies of the federal government for identifying potential threats.

To see whether you are or might be considered to be a possible danger, take a look at 72 of the multitude of official criteria for determining who needs to be watched.  The list of these criteria together with the source of each of them can be viewed here.