Chuck's a-Talkin'

I have frequently claimed, in this space, to regard the two halves of the reigning American political duopoly as being equally ridiculous, and equally repugnant to free and decent people. And I haven't lied, either; I do so regard them. Normally, most of my heckling is directed at the knaves who can currently be regarded as "in power," I suppose because they're the ones who are mainly all up in my face, as the young folks might say. Right now, that would be the Donkey brand, and I've been pretty free with my disrespect. Until early this year, I had expended most of my fun-making on the Elephant variation (and Dubya, with his substance-addled faux-redneck speech and mannerisms, certainly made that both fun and easy). During the Clinton Donkey regime, they hadn't invented blogging yet, and I haunted a primitive arrangement known as "message boards" -- those of you who are near my age may remember them. Good fun, they were, from time to time.

So, anyway: with the Glorious Republic in the anticonstitutional mode in which it's operated since 1800 or so, those who squat in public office in general, and the presidency in particular, are there to be hooted at (or maybe farted at, depending on which way you're facing); and I enthusiastically include the current prexy, Rainbow Brite, in that group. Still, I abhor the immoral saying that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Sometimes, the person making fun of Mr. Obama is at least as much a horse's ass as Mr. Obama himself; and in the case of Mr. Charles Krauthammer, he's quite substantially worse. Today, Mr. Krauthammer staked his claim:

About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award "premature," as if the brilliance of Obama's foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.

To believe this, you have to be a dreamy adolescent (preferably Scandinavian and a member of the Socialist International) or an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points. After all, this was precisely the spin on the president's various apology tours through Europe and the Middle East: National self-denigration -- excuse me, outreach and understanding -- is not meant to yield immediate results; it simply plants the seeds of good feeling from which foreign policy successes shall come.

Chauncey Gardiner could not have said it better. Well, at nine months, let's review.

What's come from Obama holding his tongue while Iranian demonstrators were being shot and from his recognizing the legitimacy of a thug regime illegitimately returned to power in a fraudulent election? Iran cracks down even more mercilessly on the opposition and races ahead with its nuclear program.

What's come from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking human rights off the table on a visit to China and from Obama's shameful refusal to see the Dalai Lama (a postponement, we are told)? China hasn't moved an inch on North Korea, Iran or human rights. Indeed, it's pushing with Russia to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

Hmmmm ... "an indiscriminate imbiber of White House talking points," eh? What, O Chuckie, did you drink during the reign of George the Slow? (Of course, perhaps you weren't a consumer -- you may have been writing the lies yourself, for all we know.) And just imagine, the Chinese working to dethrone the dollar as the world's reserve currency! The nerve! After all, the dollar's just as sound as ... as ... well, as sound as whatever it is that's behind it. You know, the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government." Kind of like the full faith and credit of Bernie Madoff, only not quite as good.

What's come from the new-respect-for-Muslims Cairo speech and the unprecedented pressure on Israel for a total settlement freeze? "The settlement push backfired," reports The Post, and Arab-Israeli peace prospects have "arguably regressed."

"Unprecedented pressure on Israel?" Good thing the Obamster didn't consider withholding the Izzies' $3B/year allowance (which, you may be very certain, he didn't); to Krauthammer, that would have been the New Holocaust.

And what's come from Obama's single most dramatic foreign policy stroke -- the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.

So opposition to foreign missile bases, installed right on your border, is "virulent?" Imagine the feces that would hit the fan if the Russians started installing missile bases in Tijuana and Toronto. I'm guessing it really would be virulent. Russia should definitely not show any concern for what goes on in Eastern Europe (that's next door to Russia, for those whose geography was learned in the government schools), because they never had a czar named Monroe-ski to write a famous Doctrine, I guess, as we did. And we contrast sinister Russian influence with cuddly American protection. That latter sounds oddly like a commodity traditionally sold by gangsters. Bad word choice, there, Chuck ... should've gone with "nurturing" or something like that.

No, Obama still merits ridicule ... but not just everyone is entitled to hand it out. Mr. Krauthammer's publishers should take note.