Anklegrabber

After a wonderful week in the bucolic Rockies it is tough for me to once again sink into the pigslop of international politics. I don't have a lot to talk about and will keep it short.

Before I left I read an interview with the outgoing Philippine President where he said that the United States was obligated to go after China regarding their audacious moves of late, harassing various countries, redrawing maps and taking over the disputed Scarborough Shoal with the purposes of creating a military base, not 150 miles from Subic Bay. China has been encroaching on its neighbors of late like ants at a Sunday picnic.

I couldn't withhold a chuckle. Sorry pal, Ash Carter's protestations notwithstanding, this President will never, perhaps that is overstating, barring an attack by alien spaceships that threatens the total subjugation of mankind, Barack Obama will never lift a finger to help an ally confronted by a superpower. It is every man and country for itself.

He admitted that the Ukraine was too close to Russia to worry about. His followers have now been convinced by a brilliant but simplistic PR campaign that the global battle is between those that want diplomacy or favor war.

Unfortunately we do live in a time when many countries that are perhaps not as enlightened and morally superior as we hold ourselves to be and are not above taking what they want, when they want and swallowing, if not pushing the little guys around. The United States used to be somebody the little guys could count on when the big bad bullies started acting like assholes. No more. Power is still the prevailing currency in our world, not platitudes.

Obama realpolitic says take what you want, you'll be sorry one day because everyone will know that you are a poopyhead. China is laughing at the defense secretary's bluster, they know exactly what we will do and not do in these situations, that have been long in planning. Perhaps we should save time and giftwrap Taiwan and the rest of southeast asia and present it to Beijing as a humble offering, save them some time in their expansionist pursuits.

I hesitate to think of where we would be if the Chamberlin like Obama was in charge of this country during World War II and how the course of history would have been changed. Think about it.

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Has anybody else been following the Jen Psaki deleted video controversy at the State Department? Feel like we are in a real life episode of Wag the Dog. Of course we lie to you, but only when we think it is absolutely necessary. Like they don't know exactly who ordered the deletion...

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) on Friday called for the State Department's inspector general to probe the deletion of about eight minutes of the video.

The deleted segment included a suggestion from Psaki, who was then the State Department's press secretary, that negotiations on the Iran nuclear agreement began earlier that had been disclosed and that her predecessor had lied about the timing.
The State Department has said an unknown official ordered the edit but that but an investigation into where the order came from had hit a "dead end."

The State Department admitted Wednesday that the video had been intentionally edited after originally attributing it to a "glitch."

Psaki, now the White House communications director, denied on Wednesday that she had asked for the edit. Marie Harf, her deputy at the State Department at the time of the 2013 briefing, also denied involvement.