Current Events - Page 18

Overstate? And difficult? Hardly. It is easiest to give in to it all, and say "Less is More". How to achieve that and remain noble, is another matter.

When an activity or even a law is counter to the ultimate authority in a country, that law is said to be unlawful, regardless of whose desk or bench it came from.
 

Okay, so that sounds correct, but you have to know who or what is "the ultimate authority".

That can only be determined by LEADERSHIP. That means someone, somewhere, sometime. It is not a one size fits all thing that voting can guarantee. Maybe that is the problem. That is what is being sold.

Okay, so that sounds correct, but you have to know who or what is "the ultimate authority".

That can only be determined by LEADERSHIP.

Absolutely not. The ultimate law and authority in the land is the Constitution, still, and regardless of how unpalatable that may be for some. The responsibility lay with the common people, to not only apprehend the law, but to practice it in the "common" and at the ballot box -the embodiment of self-sovereignty. Unfortuately, we don't vote that way, and it has been such a long time since we have, that it is unlikely that such a viable candidate should be produced by a decidely bought and paid for process. What we have done with it, and the political process overall has brought us to a place replete with the immense complications we have come to accept as part and parcel of civil government. Should we be suprised at the hijacking of and disconnected nature of the modern political process after we have turned our noses up at all of the warnings and disregarded or dismissed some of the built in protections?

Let us talk about the responsibility of "the common people"! PLEASE! You want to say how hallowed it is, and at the same time, go on insulting their course when it denies them their own destiny? OUCH, in so many ways.

The vote can go, when you can come up with a better alternative, than say a bonfire.

When I, and perhaps others such as myself are confident that the people have come to a point wherein no amount of education or awareness can overcome what may end up being generations of mindless grazing leading to an overwhelming and universal apathy, I will be more than willing to embrace the inferno.

A Christian embracing hell? WTH?

The simple life, and with plenty of guns. I shall have to fear what numbers constitute critical mass for when the burnings will begin. I won't have long, by the sounds if it!

I thought this was interesting:

NYTimes opinion by Ross Douthat:

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/why-is-president-obamas-foreign-policy-unpopular/

...even though Obama has been allegedly giving a war-weary public “the foreign policy they want” (by pulling out of Iraq, opting for non-intervention in Syria, etc.), his foreign policy ratings are currently terrible.

...Kagan argues, credibly, that these numbers are actually a judgment on the president’s national security stewardship, and not just an extension of public disillusionment with his domestic policy. Then, somewhat less credibly, he proffers this interpretation of the swoon:

What’s the explanation? I await further investigation by pollsters, but until then I offer one hypothesis:

A majority of Americans may not want to intervene in Syria, do anything serious about Iran or care what happens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt or Ukraine. They may prefer a minimalist foreign policy in which the United States no longer plays a leading role in the world and leaves others to deal with their own miserable problems. They may want a more narrowly self-interested American policy. In short, they may want what Obama so far has been giving them. But they’re not proud of it, and they’re not grateful to him for giving them what they want.

… To follow a leader to triumph inspires loyalty, gratitude and affection. Following a leader in retreat inspires no such emotions.

Rubbish, counters Daniel Larison: The problem is that Obama hasn’t been giving the public the non-interventionist policies they desire:

The “paradox” can be explained very easily...

… When Obama was re-elected, Americans were led to expect that the U.S. would not be preoccupied with foreign conflicts and crises, and for most of Obama’s second term just the opposite has occurred.

... Let me suggest a third possibility. If you actually look at the trajectory of the president’s foreign policy approval ratings last year, you’ll see two notable nosedives: One last June, coinciding with the Snowden affair, which took him from favorable into unfavorable territory, and then another when he was contemplating strikes against Syria, when his numbers went from single-digit to double-digit negatives. (They subsequently recovered slightly, but have dipped anew with the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.)

...I think a president has some power to shape public opinion, that he isn’t just a prisoner of war-weariness or disillusionment or what-have-you. But that power depends on execution and results, not just on some crude dichotomy between Bold Leadership and Self-Interested Retreat.

...But invoking public opinion to prove that his policy has erred in one direction or another seems like (mostly) a mistake: Those numbers reflect casual judgments on outcomes, not informed judgments on strategy, and should be treated mostly just as examples of the near-inevitable orphaning of difficulty, setback and defeat.

I wonder how much "vision" Obama, really has.  Certainly he does not have much when dealing with the Saudi King, or understanding Putin's grudge and desire for his vision for his own Russian legacy.

We are not "out of" Iraq anymore than we are "out of" Afghanistan.

I also don't buy that the Potus is acting unilaterally, though he's the one sounding like an idiot trying to sell us all on the current "US" position.

Public opinion polls are devious, almost as devious as the way in which mass media manipulates opinion itself. We are fed bits and pieces of truth, just enough to report, but not nearly enough to paint a comprehensive picture of the event. The purpose doesn't seem to be as much to educate and inform as it does to be one of manipulation. How can the average American who doesn't understand the context of these things beyond the reported facade hold an opinion other than a yea or nay depending upon how things are framed? Example: Syria. Reports are all about some despots use of gas on the populous, but this is in no way a complete view of our interests there. The purpose, to garner support for action or sanctions which would never receive such support if they were forwarded in terms of the actual objectives.