How they must have laughed as they watched Susan Rice go on all the talk shows blaming it on some Los Angeles film-maker. They were probably in stitches while viewing the paid advertisements shown in Pakistan blaming the whole thing on amateurs posting on YouTube. It must have opened their eyes to see how the Washington press corps swallowed it hook, line and sinker, like hayseeds from the sticks. That forced a re-evaluation of everything.
And then they knew: they had his number. They had the administration dialed in. They understood exactly what they were dealing with. The Iranians too must have been watching from the sidelines and concluded what Nemetsov understood. As did Putin. Here was a man with no core; whose only value was to protect the precious image of himself, because image was all there was.
And at that moment the wolves, heretofore only circling on the periphery, as if by mutual consent advanced. They understood. They knew. And the man at the center of the closing circle has been busy throwing ever larger pieces of raw meat them to keep them away. But the wolves are no longer to be denied and the circle is tightening.
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From a comment to that post:
By most accounts, most young Iranians love most things Western, especially Tech.
Unlike our most favored immigrants from south of the border, most Iranians are highly educated, and become highly assimilated.
There is good evidence for this, among others David Goldman (Spengler)
Iran has become a country radically different from the vision of its theocratic rulers, with prevailing social pathologies quite at odds with the self-image of radical Islam.
Iran’s fertility decline from about seven children per female in 1979 to just 1.6 in 2012 remains a conundrum to demographers. Never before in recorded history has the birth rate of a big country fallen so fast and so far. Iran’s population is aging faster than that of any
other country in the world. In 2050, 30% of its people will be over 60, the same ratio as in the United States but with a tenth of America’s per capita GDP. I see no way to avoid a social catastrophe unique in human experience.
He thinks this may lie behind the rulers’ quest for hegemony. Hitler had similar fears for his own mortality and accelerated his plans in spite of reservations by his generals.
Another thing about Iran- just as Obama bailed Cuba out right when they seem to be in the most trouble in years, so will he be bailing out Iran as the they teeter on the edge of a banking collapse
As put by Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the judiciary spokesman, bad loans amount to $72.2 billion (at the official exchange rate). Mohseni-Ejei was the second top official in weeks, after Ali Tayebnia, the minister of economy, who confirmed the massive figure, which is more than twice the amount already announced.
Toxic loans coupled with crippling sanctions have led Iranian banks to be running out of capital, pushing deposit-taking banks to offer higher rates than monetary officials insist on.
So just when we’ve got them right where we want them, he gives them everything they want. Real shrewd Obama. The entire world now knows they can walk all over this guy.
He bailed them out in 2009 too, by doing nothing at a time when we might have gotten a lot of leverage by helping the Iranian opposition.
The entire world now knows they can walk all over this guy.
Except Boehner and McConnell.
In lying publicly and obviously the Obama people not only showed their contempt for the American public, they also broadcast to our enemies that the US govt cares only about domestic political appearances and not at all about attacks against US interests overseas.
It’s going to be a wild ride until Obama leaves office.
I fear it will be an even wilder ride after he leaves, which would be the reason for him and what (we know) he’s been working on. Mainstream conservative pundits etc. continue to dismiss him as a hapless seat filler, but I’m not so sure. There’s no end of wild speculation and theory, and I suppose mine is no better informed than any other, probably much less. But, when I tally up what I do know or read, since the beginning of this mess, it’s very, very troubling.
I cannot help but think that even the most incompetent clown would have gotten just a couple of things correct, and with far less malice, if any. What’s going to happen with Israel? we know that Samantha Power has stated openly that there’s a duty to protect the Palestinians, will he go after them? Those who know his culture know the deep strain of anti-Semitism that although denied is very mainstream. Surely, Israel intelligence have a better idea who he is, even if a majority of Americans are still clueless?
I pray that it’s just that, a completely inept, corrupt version of big city Democrat politics, gone wild at the Federal level. With luck, a responsible and serious conservative comes in and stand’s her back up on her two legs. I just know from personal experience just how long the progressives/liberals/socialists/communists/anarchists have been salivating for this type of “change”.
While it’s impossible to know what’s in the head and heart of a proven liar, I, like a lot of people, can’t resist speculating.
My current best hypothesis is Moral Stupidity.
While Obama is obviously no deep thinker, he seems to have significant intuitive social intelligence. That, combined with his narcissism and the fact that he says what so many people already want to believe, makes him very politically effective at doing incredibly destructive things. This is what makes him appear to be some sort of evil genius
But he’s also repeatedly restrained by his own epic moral and intellectual shallowness. His values are so bad and his goals so short-sighted that he keeps “winning”, only to find out that each “success” further exposes his incompetence. Obamacare is only the most outrageous example among many.
It’s been fascinating to watch the scales fall from the eyes of a few of his erstwhile supporters. Once one sees through the illusion, it’s impossible to un-see.
What I can’t figure out is how many of his remaining apologists are still genuinely hypnotized by Obama’s seemingly unshakeable self regard, how many are lying to themselves, and how many see exactly who he is but are still putting a good face on the situation in order to avoid a public meltdown among progressives.
Did I see somewhere he still has a 50% approval rating? What does that say?
It says that a lot of the people surveyed are some combo of 1) not paying attention, 2) foolish, 3) on the take, 4) agreeing with him, or 5) not wanting to be called racist.
Also, a corollary of (1), the economy is picking up and that’s always positive for presidential approval ratings. Maybe it accounts for the entire spread between his baseline approval rating (30-40%?) and whatever his approval % is now.
“How they must have laughed as they watched Susan Rice go on all the talk shows blaming it on some Los Angeles film-maker.”
Obama & Co. know very well that America’s adversaries are laughing at them. (Well, maybe John Kerry is too dumb to realize this, but he’s not running the show.) The Obamanites don’t care. It is their goal to do as much as they can, while Obama is in office, to destroy America’s power, influence and credibility, in the long term.
That is why they make commitments they have no intention of keeping, like drawing the “red line” in Syria and demanding that Russia withdraw from Ukraine. Anything that makes the US look like a foolish, helpless giant is good, from their point of view.
They believe that the US, since the death of FDR, has been the arch-villain of world history, and they mean to save humanity from Uncle Sam’s reign of terror.
When Iran comes out as a nuclear power, constraining US freedom of action in the Middle East for the foreseeable future, and very likely setting Israel on the road to disestablishment (if not holocaust), that will be Obama’s intended legacy.
Was the purpose of sloppily taking over 1/6th of the economy really about health care or about ruining our economy and gaining control over the economy, the health and the privacy of those recalcitrant independent Americans? While Bush saw Afghanistan and Iraq as potential pincers on either side of Iran, hoping that they could be demonstrations of the validity of the democratic government and economics he believed worked, surely Obama (or someone in there) sees empowering Iran, encouraging the Muslim Brotherhood and when that didn’t work discouraging Sisi, not sending arms nor to the Kurds (nor the Ukrainians as a side measure), not encouraging the Iranian revolt – all may create vacuums, but there seems a consistency in what are choices – a brag that this administration won the war in Iraq would be a legacy, destroying Iraq isn’t much of one. I’m willing to think Obama (and his cohorts) think America is uniquely evil – that seems the assumption of much he says. But what does he (or they) think is good? Is this the thirties – or is it the forties and Wallace has become president?
So Putin plans to ally Russia with Greece, Italy, Germany, France and Russia (for sure) and
1. abolish NATO
2. form a free trade zone of Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Korea. Australia and exclude the USA because the USA is too bossy.
All without war – just a simple zhug zwangh.