Observations

Here are a few short cranky observations that have come to me as a result of all the societal roiling that is now taking place:

- Is nothing sacred anymore? After the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, Valarie Jarrett had the White House bathed in the rainbow colored lights of the homosexual community. Perhaps next we might put the head of a penis atop the Washington Monument?

- Mexico, it is felt, has designs on reacquiring much of the Southwest United States that it lost in the Mexican-American War. This movement even has a name,  the Reconquista Movement ... see: Wikipedia Entry. The simple strategy that Mexico is using is to flood this region with Mexicans ... and then have them, by sheer strength of numbers, vote for U.S. succession and to rejoin Mexico. My candid thoughts on this possibility is first to allow Mexico to re-acquire California ... just as long as it also assumes all of its crushing debts and entitlement obligations ... and grants Mexican citizenship to Governor Jerry Brown. After a bit, it might then have second thoughts about this brand of imperialism.

- Macy's has just stopped carrying all products that sport the Donald Trump name ... because of his comments on illegal immigrants coming in from Mexico. Yes, I can understand this wimpy-form of political correctness on Macy's part. But, if Macy customers were going to buy fewer Trump products because of this man's recent comments, they are obviously going to buy even fewer of them now that Macy' is no longer stocking them.

- Cuba and the United States are reopening embassies in each other's countries. However, Cuba says that it will not re-establish diplomatic relations until the United States cedes back Guantanamo and also stops broadcasting Radio Marte (like the old Radio Free Europe) into Cuba ... see: Breitbart Story. My question is ... who is going to populate these embassies if we don't have mutual diplomatic relations? Or does this mean that President Obama has already caved to Cuba on these two issues?

A Benghazi Lesson Learned

On the "direct advice" of President Obama, Sony Pictures has canceled the release of “The Interview” due to fears of possible threatened attacks by unspecified malcontents on the theaters that show it. This movie is supposedly funny yet depicts some personal insults to North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un. The Obama administration (with Hillary Clinton’s me-too blessing) has decried such unprovoked slights to a foreign leader and has jailed its directors, Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, on unspecified charges. The United States has also posted an apology to North Korea on YouTube and closed all its embassies in the Far East throughout this “holiday” season.

Hair on Fire

I know that I have gotten cynical in my dotage ... possibly too cynical ... but there is something manically weird about the United States's closing of 19 embassies in the Middle East and Africa ... see: CBS Story. Apparently our government has received credible and specific threats that there are massive Islamist attacks planned against one or more of our diplomatic facilities throughout the Muslim world.  And so all these embassies will be shuttered until at least the end of this week.  Numerous congress-persons have asserted that this terrorist chatter is even higher than it was before 9/11/2001 ... this time centered in Yemen.

The reasons I am somewhat cynical center around the following thoughts:

- This over-the-top drama certainly takes the media spotlight off of the many scandals that are plaguing the Obama administration. The embarrassing admission that al-Qaeda is capable of such a large-scale effort clearly refutes Obama's campaign assertion that al-Qaeda is on the run.  Therefore, the downside of this policy reversal must, to them, be smaller than the risks emanating out of these numerous scandals.

- Will these supposed locked-and-loaded terrorists conclude that, since these embassies have be briefly closed, they will pack up and slink back to their hideouts ... foregoing any planned attacks?  I sincerely doubt that timing is of the essence in any such planned assaults.

- If these supposed threats are "specific," why would we close all these embassies pell mell?  Would we not have some reasonable idea about exactly where and when these attacks might take place?

- Since, thanks to Fast-Eddie Snowden, the terrorists know a lot more about the process that the United States uses in tracking terrorist communications, perhaps al-Qaeda is pulling our chain with this recent staged chatter ... and using it to verify what they have learned.

- The Obama administration seldom does anything that is not driven by political considerations.  Why should this hair-on-fire stage performance be any different.

But, then again, I don't want to be proven wrong as a result of more spilled American blood.

Afterward: For some comments along this same line of thought see: The Powerline Blog.