more political crap

Jean Paul Sartre

As usual, participants on both sides of the political aisle are acting like imbeciles in the Isis/refugee debate. Certain GOP candidates only want to bring christian refugees over and some think that now is the time to start a new wave of internment camps.

The liberals all of a sudden have perfect faith in the ability of the government to vet any hijab and kaffiyeh wearing newcomers to make sure no more americans get whacked. Both sides are way off. As usual. When the TSA has a 95% failure rate, it makes it difficult for some of us to suspend disbelief.

I heard Barack Obama mention yesterday that America is such a great country that we barely missed a step after the Boston Marathon bombing. Like, hey, these things happen. The shut up and take it strategy.

Vice President Biden, a guy I generally like but who is prone to occasional bouts of utter stupidity, yesterday said that ISIS didn't present an existential threat to our country.

We discussed this at coffee this morning. Bill looked up the term "existential threat" at PolitiFact on his iPad and this guy weighed with this definition but others disagreed, as philosophers weighing existential matters are often prone to do.

"An existential threat is one that would deprive the United States of its sovereignty under the Constitution, would threaten the territorial integrity of the United States or the safety within U.S. borders of large numbers of Americans, or would pose a manifest challenge to U.S. core interests abroad in a way that would compel an undesired and unwelcome change in our freely chosen ways of life at home."  Ted Bromund,  Foreign policy analyst - Heritage Foundation.

I haven't has an existential threat since college myself, when a large and heavy volume of Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason fell off the bookshelf and hit me square on the head, causing quite the headache. Sort of soured me on philosophy.

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Obama has done everything he can not to ramp up the fight against radical youknowwho so it was sort of funny that after the French took out the ISIS headquarters in Raqqah, he piped up that we had given them the intelligence and coordinates. Okay, so then why didn't we do anything if we had the coordinates?

There is a small controversy brewing about the current administration and liberal postulation that refugees have never been responsible for terrorist acts. When someone pointed out the Tsarnaev brothers the riposte was that they were not technically refugees, but asylees. Talk about hairsplitting. Plus there is the Kentucky case that somebody conveniently forgot about. And the Uzhbeki.

The truth is that the French and Belgium Isis bastards were not refugees but natural born which makes things even worse and begs another question which nobody wants to answer; can those people ever integrate into civilized society and was it a mistake to ever try to accommodate them? Would you break bread with a person who finds it perfectly acceptable to kill somebody over a cartoon, something nobody but John Kerry apparently finds remotely legitimate and understandable?

Interesting that according to a 2014 poll conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Qatar, almost 23% of Syrian refugees had a somewhat positive or nuanced view of ISIS, a number that is admittedly dwarfed by the Palestinians 60%.

Isis has been remarkably good at backing up its threats of late. They say they have some activities planned in New York and Washington D.C.. The guy on offense always has a tactical advantage over the defender, a reactive position. Don't be surprised if they make good on one of these threats. The politicians will beat their breasts in sorrow for the cameras, grab a few headlines, and just watch, nothing will change, nothing will be accomplished.

I read an interesting quote from a woman in the newspaper the other day who said that "When people show you who they are, believe them." I believe that we have lost our facility to see and would rather project, obscuring the essential nature of our opponents. And of course, to a sizable number of our fellows, no matter what happens, it will always be our fault.

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Eagles of Death Metal. Such a strange name for a band, now forever linked to blood and tragedy. Altamontian.

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Another one from SunTzu:

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

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George Will wrote an editorial today called Time to get serious which was anything but. The Bow tied sesquipedalian had the ludicrous idea that it is now time for the tough talking bully Chris Christie to assume the presidential mantle. The smarmy pedant has a big fat boy crush on the porcine bridge botcher.

The New Jersey native is reviled in his home state, has no traction nationally and is best known for telling the great majority of the people he encounters to shut up.

Whatever. Not my horse to whip. What really pissed me off is that the pasty patrician also took a couple unnecessary shots at John Lennon, in matters of political thinking and grammar. Dissed the song imagine as a saccharine wallow.

Insipid and uncalled for. Too bad John isn't around to give it back. Pick on a dead Beatle, Will. Very classy. Better be careful going after Trump. He could win and make your miserable life even more miserable.