Finding God in a Dog

You know how I keep saying that Obama is the best President we've had since LBJ? Paul Krugman lays out the case for why this is in the latest Rolling Stone:

High office shouldn't be about putting points on the electoral scoreboard, it should be about changing the country for the better. Has Obama done that? Do his achievements look likely to endure? The answer to both questions is yes.

BHO of course doesn't shit rainbows. We can, and should, fault BHO on domestic mass surveillance, failure to reign in Wall Street, excusing CIA misconduct during the previous decade, continued drone strikes, a stimulus that was too small and targeted badly, and not putting his green economy agenda first instead of third on hist list of things to do during the 2009-2010 Congress. Most of all, it remains to be seen how much of his health care reform survives repeated court challenges. But Krugman makes a pretty good case that BHO's domestic agenda overall has been very positive, and transformative in a way we haven't seen since the sixties.

The Independent has the story:

The prospects of British involvement in military action in Syria receded dramatically tonight when David Cameron suffered a humiliating Commons defeat on the issue.

Even though the Prime Minister conceded a second final vote before British forces took part in military strikes, a rebellion by Conservatives and strong opposition by Labour saw a government motion defeated by 285 votes to 272. The defeat was a huge surprise and leaves Mr Cameron's strategy in disarray. He now looks unable to deliver British support to American-led strikes he wants to give.

Cameron lost the vote for many reasons; one of the biggest, no doubt, is that war with Syria doesn't poll well in Britain (2).

Such a war doesn't poll much better with Americans:

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, taken August 19-23, found that 25 percent of Americans would support U.S. intervention if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces used chemicals to attack civilians, while 46 percent would oppose it. That represented a decline in backing for U.S. action since August 13, when Reuters/Ipsos tracking polls found that 30.2 percent of Americans supported intervention in Syria if chemicals had been used, while 41.6 percent did not.

So, to sum it up:

• War with Syria is unpopular in the United States


• War with Syria is unpopular in our biggest ally, the United Kingdom


• The government of the United Kingdom lost two votes on going to war, which makes it unlikely that they'll be able to do anything to help us even if Cameron wanted to ignore his own people.


• Russia sent warships to support the Syrian government. (Oh, did I forget to mention that? Well, they did. Which means that war with Syria is likely to become, at best, a proxy war with Russia pretty quickly.)

Despite all this, President Obama is set to go it alone in Syria.

His hubris is quickly catching up to that of his predecessor.

For his first term, I give Obama a B-. This might seem like a low grade, but given his unwillingness to prosecute torture and other abuses of the previous administration, it might even be higher than he deserves.

Let's break it down:

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CHEERS to the winner of the Iowa Republican Caucuses...whenever you guys figure out who it is. (These idiots keep screwing up elections, and they want to run the country?) Not that it matters much .. with the margins this close, the presumptuous nominee, Mitt Romney, gets as many delegates as former third-tier nobody Rick Santorum. That's gotta smart!

CHEERS to the actual winner of the Iowa Caucuses.

CHEERS to the nutty people who have apparently dropped out, and the nutty people who still think they have a shot.

And while we're at it, CHEERS to Rick Santorum for coming out in favor of giving Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip complete rights as Israeli citizens, including the vote. That is, after all, what he implies right here. Of course, this is precisely what the Israeli government has always wanted to avoid, which is why they never formally annexed the West Bank .. but never mind that!