Aside from the occasional visit to the States, our entire married life has been lived in the Wife’s Britain. Time moves so relentlessly, in writing this I first realized I’ve now spent about half my adult life outside of the U.S. But as our new house is being finished in New York, we’ve decided we will be spending a lot more time in the United States.
Which changes matters more than a bit. It is an illusion — the impression nowadays conveyed by instantaneous media that we all somehow dwell in the same place. Invariably, wherever you are, you become more rooted and better attuned to where you are physically than where you are not. As useful as they may be, the likes of Facebook cannot replace the truly face to face.
So spending less time home in Britain to spend more time home in the States is therefore an odd feeling. But given that new reality, a new blog title is really more appropriate to reflect that change. If you wish, please change your bookmarks and links, and come visit from now on at its new name and address: Atlantic Crossings.
This blog usually avoids citing the A.P. Yet even the A.P. today asks:
He won, but for what?
And we all know exactly what that piece is talking about. President Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first, Theodore Roosevelt, was awarded it mostly because he had negotiated the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The second, Woodrow Wilson, won because of his “Fourteen Points” and, when other world leaders were indifferent at best, he pushed hard for the creation of the League of Nations.
Still, that uncredited A.P. writer might have ventured to the Nobel’s own web site for its proferred reason. It tells us, straightforwardly, exactly “for what.” President Obama was awarded the prize . . .
…for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.
That’s why. That might well seem a bit less tangible at this point, barely nine months into his presidency, than Roosevelt’s or Wilson’s contributions. But to whom the Nobel Committee hands their awards is entirely their own business, of course.
Concluding his wonderings as to why, that same A.P. writer, following the A.P.’s habit of too often producing unintentionally amusing news articles, is here surely having an intentional laugh:
…The Nobel committee, it seems, had the audacity to hope that he’ll eventually produce a record worthy of its prize.
And as for that Nobel Committee, if President Obama doesn’t, looking back it will be pretty clear they’ve just diminished their own prize.
[Posted 9:30 AM NY time.]
. . . because the BBC otherwise would not dream of glamorizing, and depicting as cool, smoking to a UK and global audience, would it?:
Of course not.
[Posted 9 PM October 8 NY time.]
Roland Martin at CNN:
…The bid that was rejected Friday by the International Olympic Committee was not a Chicago, Illinois, bid. It was the official bid submitted by the United States Olympic Committee and was representative of the nation. Tokyo’s bid was that of Japan; Madrid’s was that of Spain; and Rio de Janeiro’s was that of Brazil.
Republicans want to spin the decision as a massive loss by President Obama and the Democrats who have always controlled Chicago politics.
“Hahahahaha,” wrote Erick Erickson on the conservative “RedState” blog, “I thought the world would love us more now that Bush was gone.”…
Something else, however, reeks. How many of those same conservatives lived the Bush presidency outside of the U.S.? Yours truly actually did — including “9/11″ and the run-up to the Iraq war, and has aimed for years to share a bit of that experience.
Shortly after Hitler had invaded the Soviet Union, the famous anti-communist Churchill famously spoke of how, if Hitler had invaded Hell, he would have found a way to make a favorable reference to the Devil. With President Obama, one is starting to wonder if anything could cause some Obama opponents to find themselves on his side. For even when it comes merely to his involvement in an American city’s Olympic bid, too many Obama-haters conservatives cannot seem to muster so much as even a favorable reference to him having sought some minor bettering of the American condition.
Only posturing ideologues — and/or real simpletons — could have imagined that under “world-adored” President Obama America would wake up on a Wednesday universally loved. Nastiness, ignorance and anti-American bigotry certainly remain, and always will. But what Mr Martin has himself just stumbled upon here is this: some (so-called) conservatives can be just as petty and “unpatriotic” at times as too many a liberal, and just as willing to concoct carefully phrased rhetorical devices to try to hide such.
Roland Martin is a CNN Commentator and Obama sycophant…
…Mr. Martin is one of the leftists in this country who spent the last several years rooting against our soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a strange set of priorities that leads a man to root against the United States on the battlefield and claim the rest of us are defeatists because of the Olympics.
To be clear, I root for America, therefore I root against Barack Obama…
Incredibly, this blog manages not to be an “Obama sycophant.” Yet it understands also that an Olympic bid is not about a president — any president. It is about America.
Or would Mr Erickson have not been pleased if Chicago had won the Olympics under President George W. Bush? So whatever the reasons the bid failed, it was indeed precisely about America. It was not about President Obama.
Moreover, that some liberals “rooted against our soldiers” NEVER justifies conservatives not being pro-America. In fact, to position knee-jerk opposition to everything done by President Obama as somehow synonymous with rooting for America? That is to adopt exactly the same ideological fatuousness the left engaged in for eight years towards President Bush.
Or maybe a Chicago Olympics would not have brought a great deal of business and money-spending foreign visitors to a city and region in “heartland” America that has not generally to date been on the top rung for international investment and foreign tourism in the U.S.?
One suspects there is also another reason for such anti-Obama exultation. Yours truly hesitates to go here. But it is hard not to.
And one does not have to be an NPR listener to think this either. There does appear to be a disturbing strand of conservatism that is full of breezy contempt, and even fear, of much of what emanates from outside of the U.S. Those views have been arrived at most often without adherents usually having traveled much outside the U.S., much less having resided abroad.
It has also helped formulate immigration laws since “9/11″ that make the U.S. not exactly the most desirable earthly locale to visit. In addition, that there is a massive degree of difference between disagreement and anti-Americanism escapes them because they lack essential frames of comparative reference beyond what they read on the net or see on FNC. Essentially, responding to anti-Americanism abroad does not require becoming xenophobic, yet one can only but sense that there remains a disturbing undercurrent of xenophobia in many of our current president’s (whom this blog did not support) political opponents.
Many of them don’t seem to like or much admire anything that smacks of the foreign if that foreign does not approach them on entirely their own terms. And the current president’s having had a foreign-born parent? Well, that hardly helps matters, for as we know already some of those very same people have already convinced themselves he should not be president anyway.
Thus it would hardly be surprising if many of those opponents viewed this failed Olympic bid in this manner overall: no 2016 Olympics in Chicago means no hordes of foreigners looking to venture to the U.S. for games President Obama had had the unmitigated gall to want to see Chicago, United States host.
[Posted 5:15 PM NY time.]
CNN:
The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected two amendments to include a government-run public health insurance option in the only compromise health care bill so far…
It is hardly profound to assert that intellectual honesty is obviously not important to many a politician, but this is taking dishonesty and/or ignorance and reducing them to a whole new level. For it is one thing to disagree with a “public option”: that is a valid opinion and holding it is perfectly reasonable. But it is entirely something else to couch the disagreement in bald-faced, “the debate is over” terms that make you sound, to anyone else who has lived elsewhere, or even reads the net, as if you inhabit a cocoon and know embarrassingly little to nothing about anywhere else.
And, even worse, you seem determined to make no effort to learn. And are proud of it. Moreover, there we were, thinking Democrats were the party of intellectual smarminess?
For why, 60 years after the creation of the NHS, does private insurance coverage choice exist now in Britain? And how can it possibly be growing? Apparently, factoids about which we should not ask:
…”A government-run plan will ultimately force private insurers out of business,” [Sen] Grassley said, adding that the federal government would run the plan and run the market in which the plan competes.
“It will come to a single payer,” he said of a government-run system for all. “That denies the American people choice.”…
And fingers snap: that’s that. Regardless of truthfulness, simply spouting it supposedly makes it “fact.” But given how this humble blog has just noted (for the umpteenth time) that that is far from the case, on what “fact” does the Senator base his flippant, ignorant certainty?
Indeed, that the existence of Medicare since 1965 coincides with the rise of the incredible variety of choice in private insurance? Private insurance that many Medicare recipients also avail themselves of as “top up” additional coverage? Just as many do in (supposedly) “single payer” Britain, when they “go private” in concert with National Health?
Undoubtedly we shouldn’t ask about all that either, but just accept what he states unquestioningly. Because Sen Grassley knows public — meaning, essentially, adding the choice of a Medicare-like program for those under 65 who don’t have private insurance — will “force private insurers out of business.”
And precisely how does he know that? No need to ask him. He just knows.
[Posted 5 PM NY time.]
The other day, David Hughes, in The Telegraph:
…Mr Obama’s churlishness is fresh evidence that the US/UK special relationship is a one-way street…
That “churlishness” should hardly be a surprise, and not even to The Telegraph. Sen Barack H. Obama was as we know a big favorite of Europeans to succeed President George W. Bush. That included between 60-80 percent of British, if varying polls at the time were to be believed.
However, now it appears that while most Europeans may adore President Obama, in return, actually, he doesn’t think much about (even care much about) Europeans. Which many Americans already well-appreciated. After all, he appeared to have serious reservations about most Americans, too.
One has only to read his autobiography to learn that. But such does not make him a “bad” person per se. Perhaps just in the wrong role.
That book also certainly confirms his fundamental confusion about himself until at least his later 30s; and that sort of “confusion” perhaps better meshes with a professor of African studies and post-colonial theory than it does with a U.S. president. For if you’ve been in university — particularly in a history or in a social science graduate program — and you are younger than age 60, you have likely known a “Barack Obama.” You may even have sat in a seminar next to “him”.
“He” couldn’t speak of the U.S., or the West, except in mostly disparaging terms. After all, ‘his” family was forced to move to America because America — or Britain, or France — had made life impossible for them back “home”. “He” was the one who also composed the research project on Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and the impact of west African freedom movements on the anti-colonialism of the PLO.
So, as might be expected given that outlook, President Obama does have time especially for self-hating Europeans and Americans. But while they may have righted some, essentially he blames Europeans, and their descendants in America, for nearly all of the problems of the world.
He’s not alone in that: American liberalism since the 1960s has been imbued with that attitude. Yet that the world might be — and have been — far worse off without America? That never quite fits into such thinking.
As president, though, “he” cannot publicly be so intellectually blunt. And it is difficult to function as an anti-American president…of the United States. One has to be politic, of course.
Hence the likes of his relating himself to FDR and Ronald Reagan.
All things considered, if only “churlishness” were his biggest problem.
[Posted 5:10 PM NY time.]
Regular visitors well-know how this blog fearlessly tackles so many of the great matters of our day. So fear not. For this post continues in that elevated realm.
Saturday night, stumbling upon “Wanted” on HBO just as it was beginning, we thought: why not watch? Yours truly heard himself say “Morgan Freeman doesn’t usually make bad films.” And, as we know, Angelina Jolie had a major role in it, so given how nothing else looked appealing, we felt we might as well indulge and partake from start to finish of one of Ms Jolie’s entertainment efforts.
This was also the film for which Universal produced a UK DVD promo ad that got the company into trouble. Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority, moved to action owing to one complaint, “investigated” it. The ASA ruled subsequently against Universal, stating that “the ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 6.2 (Violence and cruelty) and 7.4.1 (Mental harm).”
Clearly, a vital use of time and resources, in necessary and proportionate response to overwhelming public concerns about the ad’s violence and cruelty and mental harm. Yet that ad itself was decidedly tame compared to the actual full length feature itself, which makes the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan seem like a stroll on a beach. Also, its momentary, gratuitous sex scenes are ludicrous and hardly necessary to the “story”.
And while its comic book based storyline itself has its moments, it is, ultimately, silly. Still, the movie does hold one’s attention. A lot like a terrible car crash, perhaps.
That said, it also has a reasonable twist towards the end (which yours truly will not give away), taking it above the level of the norm for such films. However, on another salient issue, about an hour or so in, the wife observed that Ms Jolie’s tattoos are definitely not attractive. “Should I get those?” she wondered sarcastically aloud.
At that yours truly decided to tread somewhat carefully, sensing what was coming next; and moments later, it did. Seeing Ms Jolie clearly, face on in a scene, the wife then remarked, ‘What is it about her that men seem sooo to like? I just don’t see it. She looks like “Libby” from Neighbours, except “Libby” is more attractive.’
A decidedly original comparison that, and it took your blogger somewhat by surprise. Reflecting on it for a moment, it did strike this writer as not without merit. But aside from admitting that, and as fearless as it might otherwise be, on any further particulars on this subject this blog has no more to say.
Back to politics, religion and so on. Those are far safer.
[Posted 7:05 PM September 27, NY time.]
The White House tweets quite clearly . . .
¿Quiere saber que le ofrece la reforma? Conteste el nuevo cuestionario disponible en nuestro sitio web…
. . . so most Americans can easily understand.
[Posted 9 AM NY time.]
CNN:
An Afghan-born Colorado man charged with plotting to make bombs from household chemicals made several recent purchases from beauty supply stores in suburban Denver, telling workers he had “a lot of girlfriends,” employees said Thursday.
Najibullah Zazi, now charged with plotting to set off “weapons of mass destruction” in the United States was “a regular” at the Beauty Supply Warehouse in Aurora, Colorado, one store worker said…
With his and others’ arrests, and another’s in another planned attack, it seems decidedly likely that many who otherwise would have been murdered in the near future, won’t be; and none of them, or their families, will, of course, ever know that. A building that might have been bombed and become infamous won’t have been. And perhaps a subway line that would have become etched in memories as a grave and a terror attack site, won’t be.
And we won’t have to endure another crop of sitcom actors intellectuals sharing with us irrefutable evidence as to how Joe Biden was behind it all. Also, we may now watch another alternate reality unfold: what would have ensued beginning September 11, 2001, had the FBI managed to crack the 9/11 plot and raided the planes and arrested those Islamic extremists* just before the take-offs.
We will hear of the big misunderstandings, or how they just meant to “scare.” Islamic extremists* murder untold numbers (most of them other Muslims) globally, but somehow never caught beforehand are any engaged in the planning stages. Only scooped up are wedding planners/ computer students/ bookstore owners/ water supply charity workers/ young men seeking to find themselves while visiting Taliban Afghanistan in 2001 . . .
[*NOTE: If the phrase "Islamic terrorists" is not considered acceptable, in the minefield of terminology we must inhabit the above is evidently increasingly deemed an acceptable one. At least according to the BBC. That despite the fact that it may seem a bit unfair, for one may be an "extremist" without looking to engage in mass murder.]
[Posted 9 AM NY time.]
Hello again from NY! The in-laws are back in Britain. And we are back here for a while. (More on that later.)
_____________________________
We’ve returned to find someone named Glenn Beck — who, previously, never ceased to inform anyone within hearing how he doesn’t actually know anything — quoted in The Washington Post, being interviewed by Katie Couric:
…“John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama,” …
…“McCain is this weird progressive like Theodore Roosevelt was.”…
Ooh, it appears that Mr Beck has actually recently stumbled across some U.S. history . . . that has happened since 1800:
So learnin’ isn’t entirely beyond this Mr Beck, after all? He’s seemingly spent 2009 cramming. Indeed, as the above demonstrates, he’s apparently even skimmed a full book or maybe even two:
Time For Kids: Theodore Roosevelt: The Adventurous President
[Posted 8 AM NY time.]
The travel industry has criticised plans to introduce a $10 (£6) tax on all British holidaymakers entering the United States.
The charge will apply to all travellers entering the US under the Visa Waiver Programme using the online authorisation system ESTA, which was launched in January.
Although the bill, entitled the Travel Promotion Act, is yet to be ratified by the House of Representatives, it was passed by an overwhelming majority in the Senate this week and looks likely to come into force early next year…
Yours truly apologizes, but this sort of thing causes this blog only to groan. To be clear, it is directed not just at British holidaymakers, but at all “visa waiver” travellers — meaning most western Europeans. It would nice if President Obama vetoed this, but he probably won’t, although it continues to demonstrate how we can apparently look to devise as many ways as possible to cause foreign visitors (and prospective ones) to feel themselves decidedly unwelcome and unwanted.
Indeed, we appear hell-bent always to allow our sainted leaders to pile on just one more little “vital necessity” to the ever-increasing hassles of those who wish to enter the U.S. briefly (and spend money!) to go to Disney World, or to the Statue of Liberty, or to do business, by the front door, perfectly legally.
If at international arrivals at US airports it isn’t the police-style immigration officers (at Heathrow border agents wear business-like attire, with women often in skirts and men in shirts and ties) manning the “Welcome to the United States” desks while armed (before the singular public clientele on this planet as weaponless as it is possible reasonably to make them), it is the electronic photographing and fingerprinting of foreign visitors’ seeming everything other than their rear ends (well, not yet anyway — at least until some congressman who hasn’t travelled abroad since 1995 stumbles on “the idea”, that is; in contrast almost no one gets photographed and fingerprinted entering the UK), to the $5 (wonderfully, credit cards are accepted) luggage carts at JFK (while luggage carts are free at Heathrow).
And the sorry list could go on. International visitation — especially from Western Europe — continues to decline, and we don’t even seem to care. But in a recession, especially, one would think we would?
“Travel Promotion Act?” It is to laugh.
Daily Mail headline, 4 June 2007:
Bush faces demonstrations over missiles as he arrives in Prague
Meaning those Europeans sure were angry over that President Bush trying to foist that “shield” on them, fearful he was pushing them into a confrontation with Russia.
_____________________________
Obama infuriates Europe as he scraps Bush’s ‘Son of Star Wars’ missile defence shield
Meaning those Europeans sure are angry over that President Obama cancelling that “shield”, and now leaving them quite possibly at the mercy of Russia.
_____________________________
It’s nice to be the Mail: present news any which way you want.
Noticed? There’s been a lot of this recently. The BBC reports:
Right-wing groups who claim to oppose Islamic extremism are trying to provoke violence on Britain’s streets, the communities minister has said.
First, the BBC outright employs the expression “Islamic extremism” without doubting quotes. Therefore, there is, definitely, such a thing as Islamic extremism, and we need not fear saying so. After all, the BBC just said so. But that’s not the main issue.
John Denham spoke after clashes between different groups at a new London mosque, during a march by the group Stop the Islamification of Europe.
Demonstrations by an affiliated group, the English Defence League, have led to violence in Birmingham in recent weeks…
The question is: are they actually “right-wing” groups? Indeed, many of them seem more like (what were once) “traditional” Labour voters. Regardless, Sunday, The Guardian/Observer offered up similar:
Hundreds of police will be monitoring Trafalgar Square today as extreme right-wing organisations and football-linked groups are expected to confront a coalition of Muslim groups holding a Palestine solidarity march in London…
The Independent also:
Fury as Muslim meeting is switched to Pall Mall while right-wingers protest in Trafalgar Square
Are the Beeb, the Guardian and the Indy therefore telling us the “white, working class” is normally Tory? One assumes not. Yet if we have been given the “all clear,” at least by the BBC, now publicly to utter the expression “Islamic extremism,” once more, however, we see this: major media failing (deliberately?) to appreciate there is a world of difference between a “right-winger” and a “fascist.”
The political compass is about “property” — first and foremost and in all its forms. The less one thinks of private property, the more one is to the left. The less one wants to see control of private property, the more one is on the right.
Therefore a fascist in reality is a combination of a hyper-nationalist and someone coming at government from left of center. Why left? Because he is most interested in state primacy over all property, including the rights of the individual. Democratic socialists share an essential — thought not as extreme, of course — commonality of view.
That in league to some extent with the similarly private property loathing other left-winger: a communist. He is different though, in that he is also one who, we are told, seeks to liberate the workers of the world irrespective of national borders. So because he is not as wrapped up in “the state” that other leftists (especially socialists) more readily accept, a real communist — because he is indifferent to the idea of national boundaries — cannot, technically, be a fascist.
A “conservative” can be on the left or the right, depending on what the prevailing “norm” is. A “conservative” is merely one who is uncomfortable with tinkering with long-existing traditions and “change” for change’s sake. But it has become wrongly synonymous with “the right.”
That understood, pointing to an “arch-conservative” — meaning an extreme “right-winger” — as closely synonymous with fascist is badly off target. True, because the nation-state is long the world norm conservatives are usually strong nationalists. However, because conservatives also view the individual and private property — not the state — as supreme, they are usually also “small government, free market” types.
That being so, Mussolini was NOT a “right-winger”. For while a hyper-nationalist, he was in no sense a “small government, free market” man. For him, the state was supreme: it was to direct not only the means of production but also the life of each individual to achieve greater glory for the state. The fate of any individual was decidedly secondary and even inconsequential.
Hitler was in the same boat. Remember, National Socialism? Rather a clue, one might think.
Which is why, also, Slobodan Milosevic was a fascist: ostensibly a communist, he is more accurately described as having been a state-centered, left-winger who morphed into an extreme nationalist.
None of that means that if one is left of center in a democracy, one is on the cusp of fascism. Rather, it means only there is a blurry line crossed as state-centered-ism moves towards ever-increasing regulation over every facet of each individual’s life, with every individual faced with an ever more intrusive and capricious government exacting ever higher penalties upon anyone who fails to conform to the ever-widening state’s “goals”. To justify the ongoing state power surge, the individual is always unfailingly informed that whatever the state demands — however disproportionate to resolving any given issue — is always inherently sensible and absolutely necessary for the greater good.
There’s the distinction: that governance is most definitely not “right-wing”. But one suspects the last thing left-leaning mainstream media of today would want viewers to read too much about is how social democracy taken to the extreme, perverts not into communism, but in fact, into fascism? That couldn’t be so because many wish to couple “right-wing” in the public mind with “fascist?” Could it be?
President Obama, interrupted by another heckler:
TV cook Keith Floyd has passed away. If you’ve never seen him, you have to:
Even if you don’t cook very well (like myself), Keith Floyd’s programs were always entertaining. He will be missed.
It’s an imperfect comparison of course, but what immediately jumps to my mind (for American readers back home) was he was sorta a motormouth Bob Ross of cooking — if Bob had had a glass of wine in his hand, and tried to make pizza that is.
Or cook in a rowboat:
Apparently, he died lamenting his legacy as bequeathing to us rubbish cooking shows. A shame that. It isn’t: because his was the first and not rubbish.
