Bits of this ’n’ that

[aadler]

 
I had a bit of a WTF? disconnect last week. On the news was a brief item touching on the Democratic debate, the one during which Barack Obama said that he would meet with world leaders (including our enemies) without precondition, and Hillary Clinton said she wouldn’t let herself be used by those enemies for propaganda advantage. The news item itself dealt with the reaction of registered Democratics to that exchange … and indicated that most of them scored Obama higher than Clinton.

Huh? Huh?

Let’s be clear on something: I despise Hillary Clinton. I don’t like her politics, I don’t like her morals, and I don’t like her personality. Normally, anything bad for her would give me cause to celebrate. On that particular matter, though, she was dead right, and Obama was dead wrong, and to hear that Democrats — not the out-of-touch ivory tower leadership, but the rank and file of ordinary citizens — ruled it against her, simply took my breath away. Do they truly live in a different world from the one I occupy? Are our perspectives so starkly disparate that there’s no possibility of reconciling them? The thought is bewildering and frightening.

We live in interesting times, and they become more interesting with every passing day. And — recent good news from Iraq notwithstanding — I expect things to get worse before they get better.

*               *               *

In more directly personal news:

My running program is going better than ever; in fact, I’ve expanded to twice a day. I’m doing the two-mile run now two minutes faster than qualifying time, and if I can trim another thirty seconds I’ll be scoring at 20% higher than the necessary minimum. I’m scheduled for an APFT in two days, and I’m more confident than I’ve ever been. In Iraq I gained weight, and had to work off some of it after I returned home; same in Afghanistan, though not so bad (the SF unit I was with had a good gym). Here, I’ve lost twenty pounds, taken up three notches in my belt and one in my watch-band. I feel good.

After a hiatus of several weeks, I’m doing more work on my rewrite of sroni’s “Queen’s Gambit”. Nothing spectacular, just trying to hold myself to the consistent 500 words per day that was working for me before. More than that, I’m beginning to get a feel for the story again. I already understood it — I had considerable input into the overall plot while Roni was writing her draft — but now I’m getting inside it. And about time.

It appears that the Internet-connected computers at the MWR have been modified so that they won’t recognize flash drives. That’s annoying and inconvenient, but fortunately I can accomplish most of the information transfer I need to do by using a floppy disk. Still haven’t been able to get the wireless card operating properly in my own laptop, though.

In previous deployments, I’ve found myself getting depressed as the end approached, depressed at the thought of going home. This time? maybe not.

Comments

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Have you tried putting the flash drive into the computer before you log in? I have this problem at work, the drives are mapped at log-in and you can't add another afterwards.

[thirdgorchbro.livejournal.com]

I don't want to give offense, but this is one of many areas where I think my fellow conservatives have lost perspective in recent years. What is wrong with negotiating with our enemies? Nixon and Kissinger, by being willing to negotiate with China, were able to take advanage of a Sino-Soviet split that had existed for at least a decade. Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, then turned right around and negotiated arms reductions and helped make the peaceful end of the Cold War possible. Kennedy, no pantywaist, negotiated a successful end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

My understanding of Obama's quote is that he was referring to Iran and North Korea, not al Qaeda. No one's talking about negotiating with terrorist groups. But being willing to negotiate with a hostile nation "without preconditions" just means you're willing to talk. It doesn't mean you approve of their system of government, and it doesn't mean you're going to give the house away either. Negotiations may not get us what we want, but why not try? When Bush said, "We don't negotiate with evil," I shook my head in disbelief. We elect a President, not a Pope. Where have all the old-fashioned realists gone?

[tessarin.livejournal.com]

Hadn't heard this, strangely we have a similar thing with the honey moon period for Gordon Brown over here. Floods, BSE, Terrorism, treason with regard to the EU, mishandling of pretty much everything plus raining every day and he is still up in the polls.

I blame Cameroon for being a wet old etonian idiot.

Never understood the Clinton love either. They always looked like sleezeballs to me. Always winds me up how he claims credit for part of the N Ireland peace process.

[aadler]

I took a try at it, but no dice. Apparently they just don’t want people using flash drives … or, possibly, there’s some other cause for the internal conflict and it simply doesn’t matter enough for anybody to correct it.

These things happen. Considering some of the trouble various people have caused over the past few years, a certain number of restrictions are inevitable. This particular one just happens to be personally inconvenient to me.

[aadler]

I draw a careful distinction between Bill and Hillary. I believe that she has very firmly held principles (which she will violate if she thinks the return is worth it, ‘all for the higher cause’), whereas I see her husband as a classic narcissistic sociopath. I lived in Arkansas when he began his political career there, and actually voted for him once — against a Republican incumbent — so the extent to which I currently abhor him wasn’t drummed into me by any political marching orders: he earned it all himself, by a near-total absence of anything resembling personal character.

As for Northern Ireland, don’t take it personally. He’s always taken credit for whatever he could, including a lot of stuff he opposed until he saw it was going to happen anyhow. Whatever will keep him in the spotlight.

[aadler]

I take no offense, and agree with most of what you said, but I still feel that Hillary was right and Obama wrong. The American Presidency has enormous international prestige, and a meeting with the President carries vast political cachet. A meeting, not just negotiations; to give them an audience, without preconditions, is to give them something for nothing, and people who are already against us — yes, Iran and North Korea — shouldn’t get anything they haven’t earned. They’ll just grab it for advantage, offer nothing in return, and use it as an opportunity to posture for the world stage.

Nixon, Kennedy and Reagan all negotiated from strength. Nixon and Reagan, in particular, could meet with adversaries because they were already known to be strong (Kennedy had to prove it on the firing line when dealing with Kruschev, and a good thing for us all that he actually had the backbone to carry it off). Obama delivered a sound-good line without sufficient thought behind it, and was slapped for it … and rightly so, even if I personally dislike the deliverer of the slap.