The calm before the ….?

I’ve been having a hard time blogging the past couple of days.  I feel as if I’ve said all that I’m capable of saying about the news already on the table, and nothing new has come along.

I suspect that the lull, both in the news and in my own brain, is occasioned by the fact that we have a new Congress that hasn’t really gotten moving yet.  For the four years of the Democratic Congress, not to mention that this same Congress ahd two “glory” years under Obama, there was always a lot to talk about.  Now, things are fallow.  Obama is in wait-and-see mode, even as he basks in the bounce from having a new Congress putting the brakes on his less savory schemes.  I suspect that Americans being the forgiving people they are, will decide in 2012 that Barack Obama was a poor creature grossly manipulated by Nancy Pelosi, and that we really ought to give him another chance, especially because it would look bad to vote him out of office.

I am finding amusing the fact that the media is trumpeting that nobody worth knowing is preparing to run on the Right in 2012.  (See, e.g., this.)  In fact, to people paying attention on the right, all of the hopefuls are known, and some of them look quite good.  It’s just that the press, focused obsessively on Palin, Beck and Limbaugh, hasn’t been paying attention.  That’s a good thing, in a way, because it allows the hopefuls to consolidate a power base before the media’s engines of destruction turn against them.

I captioned this post “the calm before the ….?” because I really don’t know what’s coming down the pike in the near future.  I could make various gloom and doom predictions based upon the way in which the totalitarian jackals abroad seem to be salivating about Obama’s weaknesses, but I’m actually seeing silver linings.

For example, in past wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel has restrained herself at Bush’s and Clinton’s request.  Trusting both those governments, Israel backed down without taking any fight to its successful conclusion.  Now, with a Hezbollah government to her north, Israel may engage in a real war, unhampered by Obama’s drag.  She doesn’t trust Obama anyway, so she’ll be tempted to ignore his dubious enticements not to fight.  She’ll have some security from a Republican House, and that may be enough.

Likewise, matters may come to a head with Venezuela.  Hoping for something dramatic to happen may seem mean and superficial, but there’s a virtue to clarity and resolution.  Right now, Chavez is engaged in convert attacks that are hard to challenge, especially with a primarily leftist world media.  If Chavez acts on the perception (accurate, I think) that Obama’s weak, the gloves may come off, and world observers might see enough to stop the little Leftist love affair with that tyrant.

In other words, sometimes the status quo stops heavy bloodshed, but it nevertheless enables a slow bleed that can still lead, if not to death, at least to virtually terminal anemia.  The clarity that emerges when the strong man is gone might be helpful.

Or I might be whistling in the wind.