Overcompensating

Lindsey Graham, the only one of these clowns that should have even remotely been considered as a serious candidate for the Republican nomination, looked and sounded quite sad to be up there in the kiddie-debates with his fellow losers.  But, what the hell is he trying to accomplish with these promises of endless war ?  We get it already, you're super-duper serious about foreign-policy because your answer to every problem is always Bomb, Bomb, Bomb !, and if the bombs don't work, send in the soldiers.  It's almost as if he's trying to compensate for...something; Who knows what ?

I guess some people out there were quite impressed with Carly Fiorina's performance (low expectations ?).  I'll say this for her: She wasn't standing on a box to make herself look taller.*


* Okay, those shoes may have slight heels, though I can't tell for sure.  She still comes across a hell of a lot more comfortable in her skin than Lindsey.

Anything for Attention

This, right here, is called desperation.   Lindsey Graham, who has been in the US Congress for two decades now, is, like his crazy uncle buddy John McCain, considered to be something of an expert on foreign policy, though in US politics this simply requires a lot of bellicose bluster, and having a raging hard-on for bombing Iran.  Although he is frequently mocked in Democratic/Progressive media, because, 'confirmed bachelor', hee hee, he is in wider circles, generally fairly well respected.  And, unlike a lot of his competitors in the Republican bid for the presidency in 2016, he is, the obsession with bombing Iran aside, not a complete whack-a-loon.

But with time running down for the Republican debates on Fox News, which will be restricted to the top ten candidates in the national polls, and with Kasich entering the race, now sixteen 'serious' candidates in the running, Graham is getting desperate.  He needs to raise his profile at any cost, especially with the media spending all their time obsessing over the daily clowning of one Donald J Trump.  And so, in response to an act of complete assholishness by Trump, in giving out Graham's cellphone-number to the public, we get this.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

This is not a man vying to become the next Youtube-star.  This, in 2015, is the kind of stunt that might make the difference in who has the chance to become the next President of the United States.

Fox 'News' on that 'Bad Deal'

So, I find myself wondering*, what does Fox News have to say about the deal the Obama administration has apparently reached with Iran ?  A measured 'let's wait and see, while we digest the details' perhaps ?  No, of course not.

Officials: Iran nuclear deal fuels Middle East arms race, boosts Russia’s influence

Those 'officials' being, apparently, professional neo-con lunatic and bomb-thrower John Bolton, perpetual (to the point that it almost seems like compensation for something) warmonger Lindsey Graham, an obscure first-term senator called Ben Sasse, and some unknown 'intelligence official'.

The newly announced Iran nuclear deal and the negotiations leading up to it already are fueling an all-but-declared nuclear arms race in the Middle East, according to current and former government officials who say the situation also creates an opening for Russia to exert more influence in the region. 

As opposed to the inevitable arms-race that would result in the absence of a deal, as Iran felt compelled to seek a deterrent against an attack by the United States or Israel, and the almost inevitable move of Iran closer into Russia's orbit.

"We have given Iran the path it has been seeking for almost 35 years. The other states in the region are not going to sit idly by, which is why in effect the nuclear arms race is already underway," former U.N. Ambassador and Fox News contributor John Bolton said, adding that Iran and other nations have used civilian nuclear energy programs as cover for covert enrichment programs. 

You've given Iran the path they've been seeking ?  Huh ?  Because, it is so much easier to develop nuclear weapons whilst under international monitoring and scrutiny, than to do so under a covert programme ?

"Every Sunni Arab nation is going to see [a nuclear Iran] as an inevitable outcome," Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. "The worst possible outcome of the deal would be to create a nuclear arms race in the Mideast where Sunni Arabs feel threatened." 

Why would they see that, unless they were getting their information from Fox News & Bibi ?  I certainly hope they have far better sources of intellligence than that.  A nuclear arms-race is the inevitable outcome of no deal, as Iran clearly sees a nuclear weapon as the only effective deterrent against an attack by the US and/or Israel (and the desire in the West for 'regime-change' in Tehran, at any cost, with or without the nuclear issue, is real and clear), as neither the US nor Israel is willing currently to wage an actual ground-war against Iran to prevent it obtaining a weapon, and as the completely hypothetical 'better deal' imagined by the Republicans & Likudniks seems to require the total capitulation of Iran to Western interests.  Short of the West being willing to threaten Tehran with an actual nuclear assault, there is nothing, no amount of bombings, no amount of sanctions that will ever bring that about, without massive expenditure and loss of lives by the West.

Your choices are as they ever were: war, nuclear war, or an attempt at least at diplomacy.  Here's hoping that the grownups retain control of the White House for the next couple of electoral cycles.


* Is there such a thing as a rhetorical lie ?