"Bowling" For WWIII? Little Leaguer For Governor in 2038?

I had hoped to write an emigration and immigration piece today but conditions are lining up a little too quickly for a possible WWIII and as Einstein said he didn't know how WWIII would be fought, WWIV would be fought with sticks and stones.

This bastard McCain must never become president under any circumstances.

While Obama was bowling for Polish-American votes in Pennsylvania, this is what was happening in Polish-Poland.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080403/ap_on_re_eu/bush

Neither Obama nor Clinton are particularly "good" on the subject of world peace, but neither are they insane. Both have toyed with Christian Rapturist Zionists -- Obama: Robertson, Warren; Clinton: "The Fellowship Of The Ring (tm)". One hopes that given both candidates' formidable brains and basically neutral-to-benign approaches to life that these alliances are a useful fraud in the style of the Ohmert government of Israel's picking McCain spiritual advisor Hagee's pocket. There's a great pun here because the Spanish and Italian word for "pick-pocket" is "carterista." And what do we have here in Obama's foreign policy circles? Why none other than one of the great (Jimmy) Carteristas, Zbigniew Brzezinski.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/24/AR2007082402127.html

This is bad and good. Zbig's a cold-warrior and I doubt anyone who was deeply involved in that experience shucks it off lightly. Russia will always be "the enemy," even if it is now a capitalist country while the USA heads to a form of fiscal and monetary (National) Socialism. So, Zbig has to like what's happening in Poland and with NATO adding former Soviet satellites. Doing this is the equivalent of Russia putting a "missle-defense shield" in Nova Scotia and I WILL go down to the felt with that opinion.

McCain is very much in favor of aggression everywhere even thought -- especially because! -- Putin, Medvedev, whoever don't mess. They were willing to muscle Bush off Iran once before and they'll do whatever it takes to protect themselves up to and including joining OPEC, burying the U.S. economy or nuking them all and letting God sort it all out. Russia has it too good economically right now and they're not about to let U.S. jealousy mess anything up. One only hopes that Lake would be a counter-weight to Zbig in an Obama presidency on reviving the old Cold War.

Brzezinski's a good presence in an Obama Administration with regard to the Middle-East because he has been an opponent of Iraq II, and because of his being a Carterista. While Obama has flirted with both pro and con positions, he has positioned himself as the Iraq dove in the race and may stick to it. He'd better. He's probably a one-term president because of the economy, anyway. There's no reason to make that a certainty by switching to Iraq-hawk in office.

There are, however, other influences on Obama that give one pause concerning the Middle-East. Joe Lieberman is one. While, Holy Joe has thrown in with McCain here but he is very close to Obama as well and unless he does something terribly offensive to Obama during the campaign, he will come sniffing around for something in an Obama administration. Lieberman cannot beat either of Blumenthal or Lamont or Gjedenson or DeLauro for Senate in 2012. Lieberman wants Holy War and if he can't get it with McCain, he'll try to get it with Obama.

There's Colin Powell. He is sort of a mellow Lieberman. He's a loyal soldier, so he'll back McCain in the campaign unenthusiastically, but there have been rumors all along that he's been a back-channel foreign policy advisor to Obama. He merely has military ambitions in the Middle-East. He wanted and wants to win and knows that we all know his "doctrine" is not exactly Ghandi-esque. One can hope that if he's part of an Obama presidency, he'll weigh it up and decide another soldier's life isn't worth any of it.

There may well be a "folk" argument to include Rice somehow. We all know where she is on Russia and the Middle-East and everywhere else. Rice is just awful. She's essentially the foreign policy equivalent of a not too bright 11-year old who can't win at the game of Risk for lacking knowledge and brains but can't resist the losing strategy of placing a few soldiers everywhere and attacking blind.

But the wild-card in the Obama deck is Pat Robertson. How much Obama owes this guy is anyone's question. The circumstancial evidence is this. They are friendly. Obama gave his first interview following South Carolina to Robertson's network and it was not a hard-hitting one to be sure. It's hard to believe that Obama has had such success in courting the White Male Christian Right without Robertson's help. Robertson hates both Clinton and McCain and is the hawk's hawk. And boy does he have a hard-on for the potential third-front of WWIII, South America. It's no fun to read that, I realize. Nobody wants to think of Obama as being in Robertson's pocket. I doesn't seem to make any sense. We want to think of Obama as something different. But at least in my twisted mind Obama's "Reverend problem" isn't Wright, it's Robertson. Just as his Slavic-American problem isn't Tony Rezko. It's the bowling.

Obama's Slavic asset, however, could be Zbig. Brzezinski as a Carterista was never into the "war on drugs," but was an advocate of The Carter-Torrijos Accord. Most of Reagan's Latin American policy was a reversal of everything Carter had either done or ignored. It's good that Brzezinski and possibly Lake have advocated a diplomatic approach to South America which has included a willingness to set aside differences with Chavez and Correa and, perhaps, try to get Colombia resolved peacefully, meaning multi-lateral negotiations with the FARC or at the very least, not taking a side. Things are on the knife-edge there right now and with the release of Ingrid Betancourt perhaps the key to the Nobel Peace Prize thrown into the pot along with the oil, cocaine, and banking, a new malign presence, Nicolas Sarkozy, has joined the game with who knows what intentions.

With Obama, it may come down Powell having achieved his military "comeback" (following the years of the Calley disgrace) in Panama with Operation Just Cause and Robertson versus Brzezisnki, Lake and Gregory Craig (Perez-Balladares's attorney and advisor). While Obama has said he'd speak to Chavez, he's also said (albeit with some prompting by an NPR reporter) that the presence of more USD on account in the Caribbean and South America than in US banks is a "problem in fighting the war on terror."

I've focused on Obama's advisors and not Obama himself because so far Obama has shown as much interest in any of this as he has in ornithology. He's a cipher. We know he's a very bright guy. We think his default goals are peace and prosperity. We know he's basically a good guy. If his foreign policy instincts match the power, realpolitik, sensitivity and sophistication of his race speech, he'll be a comforting presence. But we really don't know what decision he'd make at 3AM and whom he trust most to help him make it now, do we?

Which brings us to Clinton. It's just as much of an open question with her despite all of the history we really do know! This has been her problem throughout. She's had to be on all three sides of every issue at least since she became a public figure. If we go by her rhetoric of right this minute, we have to worry. She has to differentiate herself from Obama and has decided to use a hawkish foreign policy approach to do so, because for some reason the "dovish" approach of a month ago, "Iraq withdrawal begins in 60 days," allowed Obama to run off a big string of wins with the lion's share of Republican cross-overs, independents, the Democratic Right and White Men in general. See what a puzzle this is?

Most of what she was a party to during the Clinton/Gore years was pretty good if we think about the hot spots. The dissolution of the FSU in a peaceful way accelerated following George H.W. Bush's decision to let things work themselves out in the USSR in the fall of 1991 was definitely a success and Senator Clinton would know better than to reopen any wounds there, we hope. Kosovo can be read too many ways. I don't have an opinion other than stopping ethnic cleansing even when there are no goodies at stake is a worthy goal. She does have another potential Brezinski problem there herself in Madeleine Albright.

Bill Clinton's failed effort to get an Israel-Palestine accord was an honest effort at least as opposed to the joke summit Bush put on last fall. Containment of Saddam was better than this shit but the sanctions and sorties weren't exactly "holistic." Bill Clinton's final affirmation of Carter-Torrijos in 1999, his ability to get along with Chavez and hands-off policy on the rest of Latin America including letting the Peruvian people dump Fujimori when the time came all must have had an effect on Hillary Clinton. How could she not have been affected positively by what her husband achieved in Northern Ireland with, again, no goodies on the table, just a shot at a peaceful resolution of a conflict?

By her Senate voting record, however, none of that meant shit. She's always been a Middle-East hawk and her vote in favor of Kyl-Lieberman was the single worst vote she's ever cast. That time, she had all the information. To be fair, I really don't yet know where Obama, the person, stands. Madeleine Albright will continue to be a strong Zionist influence on Clinton as will all the AIPAC money. "60 days" is a joke. I don't know enough about either Richard Holbrooke or Dennis Ross to offer an opinion that means anything but my guess is that they lean 60-40 hawkish on the Middle-East. Joe Wilson's endorsement of Clinton is certainly a plus in my book, however.

It really is a toss-up with her on both Russia and the Middle-East.

She hasn't said much about Northern South America and she does have a lot of powerful friends here on the "peace and prosperity" side of things, so I don't expect her to be aggressive. That said, if she wins the nomination and the presidency and feels that her "War-On-Terror" position won it for her, then the usual conflation of the "War On Drugs", excuse me, "Narco-Terrorism," with the "War On Terror," she may well be more aggressive than even Bush has been. Christ, aside from sending Rice and Brownfield to wag fingers, he really has been pretty mellow.

So, above you find few wooden nickels from here about your Democratic candidates on foreign policy. These are the only two people who could stop McCain from doing a really naughty thing.

Kucinich's plan for a cabinet level Department Of Peace was bad because, why, again? Last I checked Kucinich was a Democrat and believed in capitalism and his views would fit somewhere in the center of any other country's main center-left parties.

There are young people in Colombia who like a "peace and prosperity" model instead of the PARA-or-FARC violence. This was a cri-de-coeur in 1979 in Belfast but something of a reality following the efforts of President Bill Clinton. Utimately, some combination of Kucinich, fungibility of assets and privacy wins. They just don't win the moment you want exactly. We think of Northern Ireland as a mere langiappe now. But....



Sue me. I watched a Northern Irish movie last night and. I watched CARACOL this mornng and saw Sarkozy and Ambassador Brownfield getting a little hot and bothered over Ingrid Betancourt. That led to my thinking that Sarkozy is kind of a nut-ball and it's a good thing that he can't do too much without EU and NATO approval. I started thinking that if Al Gore were president she wouldn't be a FARC prisoner today. And then I got to pondering NATO and other stuff as well. And reading some US headlines and worrying that WWIII is not likely but not an impossibility by any means.

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But to whet your appetites for the immigration/emigration post, here's some good news: Kelso-Jr will play short and bat leadoff but may move to cleanup (depending on whether they lack for getting hits or for power) for his GVLL team "The Rangers" in the so-called "juniors" division (ages 8 & 9) which opens its season on Sunday. His mother forgot the name of the team's sponsor and they don't get the unis until Saturday. I hope it's something super-cool like "Faicco's Pork Store," "A. Zito Bakery," or "Murray's Bagels."

His mother tells me he has been the feature attraction at every practice and every open session of the Chelsea Piers baseball clinic because he his at least two inches shorter and 15 pounds lighter than the next biggest kid but is far and away the best player in his age bracket. My father's been practicing with him every weekend since I decamped and has been working on lots of fundamental stuff, so he hasn't seen Kelso-Jr play yet. Down here, I caught him for 50 pitches every day from 60' 6" and he throws about 35 strikes for every ball. Very good speed and good movement because his hands are so small he has to grip with all four fingers. I won't let him throw breaking balls and he won't be able to throw a changeup until his hands get bigger, but no matter. They don't let the kids pitch until the "minors" (10 & 11-year olds) level.

He gets it all from Grandpa who play a season in the minors for the Yankees in the early 50s. The ability skipped a generation with me! I'm the worst. But just to know this is happening makes everything tolerable. He's a little guy with a huge personality, too, so maybe I'm writing about a future Governor of the State of New York.

How in the world am I missing that? Every father's dream come true? Some discussion next post and I guarantee it will be about emigration and immigration and will be bathos-free.

Kelso's Nuts love you