Uncommon Commentary #97: It Ought to be Spelled "Wreckonciliation"

The Republican upset in Massachusetts is welcome news, but I don't see how it means what many have said it means, namely, that Health Scare (see the list of Domanisms) can be pronounced "dead."  The Senate and House bills, after all, have both already passed their respective chambers, and so all that remains to be done is to reconcile these evil non-identical twins into a single piece of legislation for Emperor Nerobama to sign into law.  Since I used the word "reconcile" in the previous sentence, this is a suitable opportunity to point out that Senate Democrats could make use of Budget Reconciliation to modify the Senate’s Health Scare with a mere 51 votes—really only 50, since Biden would cast the deciding vote in the event of a deadlock.  Moreover, Budget Wreckonciliation won’t even be necessary if the House of Reprehensives accepts the senatorial bill in its present form.  Anyway, even before the election, Democrats were whispering that, should the unthinkable happen, they would delay Mr. Brown's swearing-in long enough so that Kennedy's temporary replacement could vote for the final version of Health Scare. (Well, what do you expect in the Obama Nation: optimism?)

Uncommon Commentary #96

Just as after "9/11," celebrities of popular "culture"—now there's an oxymoron—have taken to telethons to urge everyone (else) to send money, this time to Haiti.  It seems to me that their message is being sent to the wrong audience; they ought to exhort not working people but each other, since they're probably richer than all the members of their audience combined.

Uncommon Commentary #95

One of the worst characteristics of the US form of government is that when a presidential administration turns out to be inept and malfeasant, we have to wait four years for a chance to get rid of it.  The parliamentary system has flaws of its own, but at least it allows for the vote of "no confidence" that sorely needs to be expressed regarding Obama-Reid-Pelosi.

Uncommon Commentary #94: The Audacity of a Dope

You can imagine how I regret not having read Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, especially now that I've learned that in this tome our future President likens the British Empire to the USSR—I would have expected that to be a compliment from him—as well as to South Africa during the era of apartheid, even though that policy of racial separation was generally opposed by South Africans of British ancestry. (Indeed, Afrikaaner racism had been a source of friction between Briton and Boer ever since the former arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, in the late Eighteenth Century.)  Furthermore, in the Comparatively Good Old Days before he became the (mis)leader of what used to be known as the Free World, it was said that Obama holds a strong grudge against our closest ally for her history of empire-building.
Has it not occurred to Obama that his own country is a product of colonialism, that of the British and also our own (as practiced, post-Independence, in lands previously occupied by American Indians or Hispanics)?  That the extension of British rule meant the extension of civilization, from which his father's side of the family benefitted?  That British paramountcy not only extended but also improved civilization, since it was primarily British might that put an end to both piracy and the slave trade, and which provided protection that great numbers of missionaries needed in order to bring the Gospel to peoples who knew only superstition?  That, early on in World War II, the Colonies, Protectorates, and Dominions aided the motherland in defending the rest of the world from the Axis?  That the dissolution of said empire opened a door for such tyrants as Idi Amin and Kwame Nkrumah (and Obama)?  That the problem of India's and Pakistan's both having nuclear arms arose because Great Britain no longer rules the Indian subcontinent?  With all due respect to our President—that, is, none—I would say that the British Empire had less in common with the Soviet Union than does the USA now that it's an Obama nation.

Being an author, I'm interested in psychology, and so I'm curious as to the motives for Emperor Nerobama's Anglophobia.  I discern several possibilities, not necessarily in this order of probability:  1) Obama minimizes the value of our longstanding alliances, and so the United Kingdom, as our oldest real friend (as opposed to France, which might once have claimed this title), in his perverse logic, deserves the most belittling.  2) Expressing indignation at (others') imperialism, and at the supposedly tyrannical governance of the Thirteen Colonies, is a Usan (see the list of Domanisms) tradition.  3) Since Great Britain, more than any other state, epitomized capitalism, imperialism, and Western Civilization in the Nineteenth Century, she is a special target for hate by leftists like Obama.  4) Obama has an Œdipus complex, and his mother had an Anglo-Saxon name: Dunham! (This would also explain why he speaks of himself as if he were entirely of Kenyan descent, although he's just as much White as he is Black; why he was willing, in that "major speech on race," to tell the country that his still-living White grandmother was racially prejudiced; and maybe why he brusquely instructed the UK to take back the bust of Sir Winston Churchill, who also had a White Yank for a mother, which was made a gift to President Bush in 2001.)  On the other hand, it may be that 5) He just feels that he needs another way to be wrong; if so, he needn't have concerned himself.

Uncommon Commentary #93: Keep It Simple and Stupid

People have a penchant for oversimplifying everything, with undesirable consequences.  Seemingly everyone thinks that the only choices we have are between treason and the love-it-or-leave-it attitude, between "tyranny" and what we call democracy, between Fundamentalism and/or fanaticism and skepticism toward religion, between the Islamic world and the secular West, between the Republican and Democratic parties, between bureaucratized medical care and the excessive costs of the present system, and so on.

Uncommon Commentary #92: Smart Bombs and Short Memories

Ten years ago (not to the day), perhaps trying to prove that, half a century after its founding, it still had a reason to exist, the NATO took the credit for thwarting Serbia's attempt at purging her Kosovo province of ethnic Albanians. In view of this, and of some subsequent opinion pieces that take the NATO claim for granted, a lengthening of the public's infamously short memory would seem to be in order. (I'd like to have written this uncommon commentary a decade ago, but the Doman Domain did not then exist.)

For the first nine weeks of the 78-day NATO aerial attack, all that we heard from the media was how miserably the "smart"-bombing campaign was failing to achieve its objectives; then, Serbian leader Milosevic said that he might be willing to withdraw troops, and the press executed a flip-flop worthy of then-President Clinton. (We were told, for instance, that NATO negotiators were "dictating terms" to Serbia—but if that was true, why were those terms so lenient? The Serbians didn't have to turn anyone over for war-crime trials, pay reparations, or even apologize to the ethnic Albanians whom they had tried to annihilate. Indeed, the peace settlement was actually more generous to Serbia, the infrastructure of which country was shortly reconstructed by the former foreign adversaries, than to the Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA, which was unilaterally required to disarm.) One cannot rely upon the mainstream press for accurate and unbiased reporting of the facts, but even the military leaders, on the eve of Milosevic's announcement that he would be willing to withdraw troops, were not acting at all as though they were on the verge of triumph. The US Army and Air Force were sniping at one another over the non-deployment of helicopters which supposedly had the potential to "turn around" the situation. (If you've ever had any sort of leadership position, you know that one of the hallmarks of a fiasco is finger-pointing by members of your organization.) One general, almost on the eve of Milosevic's reversal, told the US public that they would have to steel themselves for a long and hard campaign!

My theory (although it is only theory) is that Milosevic made his unexpected offer precisely because he hoped that the "peacemakers" would compel Kosovo's real defenders to lay down their weapons, whereafter his army would be able to return and complete its work of "ethnic cleansing," but that he didn't include the possibility of his own ouster in his calculations. There is also a lesson to be learned in that the KLA fought the Serbs to a standstill in old-fashioned ground engagements, but that people attribute the victory to the NATO "air assault" simply because that's all that they heard about. In reality, the most that could justly be said of the NATO intervention is that it added another dimension to the KLA's resistance. The misconception explored in this uncommon commentary may stem from the fact that, ever since the invention of the aeroplane, many moulders of opinion have insisted upon viewing it as a juggernaut, a tool for winning wars without recourse to something so casualty-intensive (and thus politically risky) as placing troops in the field—hence Joe Biden's proposal to micro-manage the Afghan counterinsurgency from a distance; the subject of this last sentence, however, could provide enough material for a separate uncommon commentary.

Uncommon Commentary #91

With what in most anyone else could be interpreted as evidence of humility, Emperor Nerobama said that he has yet to earn his Nobel Peace Prize. If he sincerely feels that way, why did he accept it?