Monday, March 24, 2014

You keep using that phrase, Mister President...

So, as more "groups of armed men" (pronounced "спецназ" in Russian) overrun a third Ukrainian base in Crimea, our president tells a Dutch newspaper reporter that
The United States does not view Europe as a battleground between East and West, nor do we see the situation in Ukraine as a zero-sum game.
Except as someone on Facebook pointed out, national borders in Europe are absolutely a zero-sum game, what with the last unclaimed territory on the continent vanishing some time in the late Middle Ages. Land there is a finite resource: For a country to get more, another country has to give some up.

It's telling that this icon of modern progressivism, this standard bearer of the Gramscian Long March, doesn't see actual physical lines on a map as a zero-sum game, and yet does see income inequality as a zero-sum game, as though the economy were a RISK board and the only way for Bill the Janitor to get more fiscal territory is for Bill the Software Company Founder to give some up.

It's like President Obama is commenting on some bizarre photo negative of reality, or is actually the president of Bizarro America.
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22 comments:

  1. Fundamental Change.

    He promised it and we are getting it. Up is now down and left is now right. The sun no longer rises in the east but the west.

    Oh well. I guess we will get to glow in the dark after all.

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  2. Margaret Thatcher once said that the facts of life are conservative. So in essence, one could argue that liberalism is indeed that photo negative of reality.

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  3. He is the president of Bizarro America; unfortunately, we're all living in it.

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  4. "It's like he's living in some bizarre photo negative of reality, or is actually the president of Bizarro America."

    It IS Bizarro America.

    In America, if you didn't work, you didn't eat.

    In Bizarro America, if you don't work, you get fat on SNAP card purchased groceries.

    The fattest 1/3 of the country is also the "poorest" 1/3 of the country..... how does THAT happen?


    jimbob86

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  5. It's the President's job to babble vague hopeful nonsense, and blame people who don't babble the same kind of nonsense for everything that goes wrong. That's how he got the job, and that's how he passed his first employee review with flying colors. Been going great. Except some jerk made fun of his jeans. That was pretty low. Not fair. Not fair to pick on the jeans. He wasn't prepared for that, not fair to pick on him.

    There's apparently some country full of funny little foreigners having some kind of thing going on. That scary little Polish man is doing something. Or he's Russian or something. Maybe he'll have to read a script blaming somebody for it. Valerie Jarrett will let him know. Hey, what's on ESPN?

    We elected the Doonesbury caricature of Dan Quayle.

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  6. When I first heard the statement, "liberalism is a mental disorder," I thought it was kind of hyperbolic. Now, not so much.

    jf

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  7. I think the latter supposition is the correct one.

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  8. "We elected the Doonesbury caricature of Dan Quayle."

    QotD

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  9. I like the way the reporter fixed the quote to make sense before the reader actually gets to the quote.

    Nice to see they don't just fix the quote.

    All the time. Yet.

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  10. I'm fairly certain if you could somehow listen in on his thoughts, it would sound like an off-air TV station in 1970.

    Biden's would be an AM radio station just faintly picking up "Yackety Sax" every few seconds.

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  11. The Doonesbury Quayle parody would have been an improvement.

    Obama has a talent for picking bad people for regime change.

    First an AQ puke for Egypt, and now a bunch of Svoboda neonazis in the Ukraine.

    Here is a Svoboda MP handling an ethnic Russian broadcaster who broadcast a Putin statement as news. ( the violence starts at 1:45 )

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  12. I'm not surprised he's babbling this crap. Remember, he's the one who mistook the concept of American Exceptionalism to be mere patriotism and compared us to Greece (How are they doing now, anyway? Problems like they have don't go away in a single news cycle).

    I don't know if he believes what comes out of his mouth or if he's just trying to keep people from doing something until the result he wants is fait accompli.

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  13. If you think of it purely in terms of land mass you are correct that it is a zero-sum game. But if you think of it in terms of "progress", "social justice", or "uniting the oppressed workers of the world" then it's a win-win situation.

    I'm of the opinion that Obama and company have severe mental problems but that doesn't mean that their world view is devoid of consistency. I've dealt with a lot of crazy in my life but just because they were crazy didn't mean there no way to make sense of it if you squinted just right.

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  14. What I heard from all that was "Yes I know we made Europe a lot of promises, but you might want to brush up on your Russian."

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  15. I always thought of Obama as a hellspawned cross between an activist humanities major and the Smiler from Transmetropolitan.

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  16. Well, he DID promise to be more "flexible" after his re-election. I used to joke that Barry took his orders from Moscow Centre. It's not as funny these days.

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  17. TBeck: The honeymoon is over.

    Princess Obama is still butthurt over the diplomatic drubbing he got over Syria.

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  18. So, taking the bait, I plugged that russian word into google translate, and it came back with "translation: Goats, pronunciation: Spetnatz"

    Did the Russians really name their special ops after goats? Interesting factoid. I did not know that.

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  19. Technically, it is zero-sum:
    Russia: +10,000 sq miles
    Ukraine: -10,000 sq miles
    Sum = zero.

    F***ing math!

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  20. Just think of Crimea and its takeover by Russia as an example of Kelo writ large, and it all makes a kind of sense.

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  21. Well, there is that Netherlands thing. The Dutch scrapped a bit of land out of the sea, so it isn't quite a zero sum thing.

    Imagine if the Black Sea was plugged at the bosporous, and the remaining water was pumped out. The rivers draining would have to be channelled out. That would be an interesting thing. It would also end arguments about the port of Sevastapole.

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