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Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
US taps Delhi on Lanka foray: Marines to evacuate civilians
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Britain
President Barack Obama dislikes Britain, but he's keen to meet the Queen
President Obama has been rudeness personified towards Britain this week. His handling of the visit of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to Washington was appalling. First Brown wasn't granted a press conference with flags, then one was hastily arranged in the Oval office after the Brits had to beg. Obama looked like he would rather have been anywhere else than welcoming the British leader to his office and topped it all with his choice of present (*) for the PM. A box of 25 DVDS including ET, the Wizard of Oz and Star Wars? Oh, give me strength. We do have television and DVD stores on this side of the Atlantic. Even Gordon Brown will have seen those films too often already.

This was coupled with Michelle Obama's casual choice of gifts for the Brown sons - matching models of the helicopter which ferry her husband around. While Sarah Brown had spent time choosing gifts for the Obama girls, Michelle had clearly sent an aide to the White House gift shop at the last moment.

All in all, he doesn't think much of us, as I explained in my post here earlier this week.

But what's this? Something, suddenly, seems to have made the Obama White House perk up and start to take an interest in the Brits. The Queen has invited the President to tea when he's here for the G20 in April. And he's in through the front door of Buckingham Palace faster than a Harley Davidson roaring along Route 66.

Note how the coolness of Team Obama disappears when a bit of regal glamour is introduced into the equation. He might not like the Brits, but he can recognise a global superstar when he encounters one. He wants to be associated with her. He's shameless.

(*) If Obama, or someone in his inner circle, had spent two minutes thinking about what present to get Brown then they could easily have come up with something appropriate. He likes books. He loves American history. Get him a signed first edition of a good Robert Dallek book such as the brilliant Flawed Giant on LBJ. Come to think of it, Obama should read it too, if he hasn't yet, as it reveals a great deal about how a Presidency can go so wrong.
Oh my. A social climber. Who would have thought it? One oversteps the mark with the Brits at one's peril. The pointed elbows of a chicago pol don't stand a chance in the presense of centuries of honed and cutting British editorial vitriol. He best just go and solve the Middle East problems, it will be easier. The thugs of Hamas are more in his class.
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 || 03/07/2009 00:19 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I wouldn't mind a DVD collection including ET, the Wizard of Oz and Star Wars.
Posted by: Cherelet and Tenille1095 || 03/07/2009 6:11 Comments || Top||

#2  Simple explanation for the rudeness: Obama thinks of himself as African, and Africans don't like the UK.
Posted by: Cynicism Inc || 03/07/2009 7:28 Comments || Top||

#3  He best just go and solve the Middle East problems

Bite your tongue, blue man---we've enough trouble as it is.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 03/07/2009 7:34 Comments || Top||

#4  Well, Wizard of Oz and Star Wars are good movies. But as the gift to a head of state, a pile of DVDs you could find at Wal-Mart is pretty ghetto. But that's our Prez!
Posted by: Scooter McGruder || 03/07/2009 7:45 Comments || Top||

#5  Barry briefly discusses his paternal grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama's imprisonment in his 'memoir' Dreams of My Father. Onyango became a British army officer's cook but later got involved in the Mau Mau guerilla movement. He was arrested in 1949 and jailed for two years as the British struggled to quell "The Kenyan Emergency" one of Africa's bloodiest rebellions against colonial rule. Tribal grudges are an institution in African and they live on among many in the Lau and Kikuyu of Kenya. I'm certain a Chinese made helicopter from the White House gift shop was seen by Michelle as quite enough.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 7:56 Comments || Top||

#6  Maybe serving Zero a McDonalds Happy Meal at the Queens state banquet might be apt?
Posted by: Bright Pebbles the flatulent || 03/07/2009 9:43 Comments || Top||

#7  ...and perhaps a couple of Buckingham Palace snow globes for the kids.
Posted by: Bulldog || 03/07/2009 9:57 Comments || Top||

#8  Maybe serving Zero a McDonalds Happy Meal at the Queens state banquet might be apt?

Actually the worse revenge they could have is serving him British food.
Posted by: JFM || 03/07/2009 11:30 Comments || Top||

#9  PM Brown's reaction caught on Secret Service surveillance.
Posted by: ed || 03/07/2009 12:10 Comments || Top||

#10  Another Obama Gift
Posted by: Bright Pebbles the flatulent || 03/07/2009 12:44 Comments || Top||

#11  I think it's probably just a matter of the Obamas having no class, no manners, no civility. They're just rude, crude Chicago hustlers who don't know any better.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 03/07/2009 13:53 Comments || Top||

#12  Abu, however, they should have access to the best and brightest who can help them choose gifts and to teach them how to be polite to foreign heads of state.
Hmmm. I wonder what kind of gift O will give Ahmedinnerjacket when he comes to accept the United States' surrender? I'm sure it won't be a pile of DVD's, since DVD's are unIslamic.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 03/07/2009 14:24 Comments || Top||

#13  Maybe serving Zero a McDonalds Happy Meal at the Queens state banquet might be apt?

I think that gloppy shit y'all have for breakfast over there would be more fitting. Poridge?
Posted by: Mike N. || 03/07/2009 14:52 Comments || Top||

#14  Give Hussein a meal of Spotted Dick and Kippers.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 03/07/2009 17:33 Comments || Top||

#15  they are classless, respectless tools. Hope and change, baby!
Posted by: Frank G || 03/07/2009 17:40 Comments || Top||

#16  Whatta jackass. Perhaps next time he needs to take a weekend off he could come out here and take some lessons from the belles in the retirement home. Apologies visiting Brits, I swear this 'ugly American' behavior is not the norm.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 03/07/2009 18:11 Comments || Top||

#17  Coming out of the Chicago political machine as they do, the Big O and his aides are probably unfamiliar with the idea of gifts that don't involve envelopes of cash.

At least they had the presence of mind to get a set of DVDs in Region 2 PAL format rather than the American Region 1 NTSC. Uh, didn't they?
Posted by: SteveS || 03/07/2009 18:12 Comments || Top||

#18  No, the cheap gift was a calculated insult. Remember, just a few days previous to Brown's visit Obama also sent back the bust of Churchill that Blair had given.

Petty, thinskinned and utterly lacking in either class or subtlety.
Posted by: lotp || 03/07/2009 21:31 Comments || Top||

#19  Petty, thinskinned and utterly lacking in either class or subtlety.

AKA Ghetto.
Posted by: Mike N. || 03/07/2009 21:39 Comments || Top||

#20  just remember: we've got a thin-skinned, angry, no-accomplishment racist redistributionist elitist in the White House - and her husband is even worse
Posted by: Frank G || 03/07/2009 21:41 Comments || Top||


Down Under
Paul Keating Rips Geithner
Posted by: Grunter || 03/07/2009 12:28 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is a post worth reading for anyone interested in the topic. A bit of background. Keating was the Australian Treasurer under Hawke before becoming Prime Minister in a less than auspicious manner. He then won the next election against an opposition leader who honestly addressed Australia's tax system but was pilloried by Keating whose turn of phrase could be devastating.

Keating had a lot of up close and personal dealings with Soeharto and his government. Soeharto was guilty of the East Timor Invasion and subjugation until the Asian debt crisis caused Indonesia to lose its grip and be forced out. That cost Keating dearly.

Be that as it may, the IMF does have an appalling record prescribing textbook prescriptions which more often than not are worse than the cure. So although Keating is not known as a particularly good Prime Minister of the socialist Australian Labor Party nor is he particularly well regarded he does have a good perspective on what happened at the time.

It is obvious Geithner is struggling to think for himself and lead the Treasury. He has obviously been promoted above his level of competence. It is appalling at such a time to note this amateurishness when other senior positions around him don't seem to be able to be filled.

Just another example of incompetence throughout the administration. Who would go to war with only a secretary of defence and no generals? Well that's exactly where we are and the Secretary of the Treasury can't even count his lunch money correctly. With Paul Volcker wandering around the halls of the Treasury looking for an adult to talk to and being forced to mumble into the mirror, this is a very serious and dangerous time. The thundering herd remains asleep and oblivious. The phone is ringing and it is 3 o'clock in the morning.
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 || 03/07/2009 17:48 Comments || Top||


Europe
The Great Destabilization
British prime minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African-American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy’s anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President.

The president’s guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office.

And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.

In return, America’s head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of “classic American movies

...Europe had embraced Obama as a “European American.” Very true. The president is the most European American ever to sit in the Oval Office. And, because of that, he doesn’t need any actual European Europeans getting in the way — just as, at his big victory-night rally in Chicago, the first megastar president didn’t need any megastar megastars from Hollywood clogging up the joint: Movie stars who wanted to fly in were told by his minders that he didn’t want any other celebrities deflecting attention from him. Same with world leaders. If it’s any consolation to Gordon Brown, he’s just not that into any of you.

What Mr. Brown and the rest of the world want is for America, the engine of the global economy, to pull the rest of them out of the quicksand — which isn’t unreasonable. Even though a big chunk of the subprime/securitization/credit-bubble axis originated in the United States and got exported round the planet, the reality is that almost every one of America’s trading partners will wind up getting far harder hit.

And that was before Obama made clear that for him the economy takes a very distant back seat to the massive expansion of government for which it provides cover. That’s why he’s indifferent to the plummeting Dow. The president has made a strategic calculation that, to advance his plans for socialized health care, “green energy,” and a big-government state, it’s to his advantage for things to get worse. And, if things go from bad to worse in America, overseas they’ll go from worse to total societal collapse. We’ve already seen changes of government in Iceland and Latvia, rioting in Greece and Bulgaria. The great destabilization is starting on the fringes of Europe and working its way to the Continent’s center.

We’re seeing not just the first contraction in the global economy since 1945, but also the first crisis of globalization. This was the system America and the other leading economies encouraged everybody else to grab a piece of. But whatever piece you grabbed — exports in Taiwan, services in Ireland, construction in Spain, oligarchic industrial-scale kleptomania in Russia — it’s all crumbling.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 03/07/2009 08:16 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Politix
Obama fumbled Brown visit because he’s in over his head
Posted by: tipper || 03/07/2009 17:59 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  If Obama is as tired as the sources say then why do they have the Wednesday night parties?
Posted by: DoDo || 03/07/2009 19:47 Comments || Top||

#2  Wednesday night parties permit him to sleep in on Thursday and recover, prior to flying to Chicago on Friday for the week end.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 19:52 Comments || Top||

#3  Right. Then explain why Obama scratched his nose with his middle finger every time the English came within sight.
Posted by: ed || 03/07/2009 21:45 Comments || Top||

#4  So, if he DIDN'T mean to insult Brown, when can we expect the public apology? Yeah, thought so ...
Posted by: DMFD || 03/07/2009 23:16 Comments || Top||


Obama is in trouble
Did you feel it? The political ground shifting beneath President Barack Obama since his speech last week to Congress? It's been downhill since and I'm not referring mainly to the Dow Jones record-setting dive. The pivot point of the shift was the speech, or rather what the speech did to the evolving public narrative of Obama.

Let's review:

* Since the first of the year, Rush Limbaugh's audience has exploded , according to Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, even as his daily assaults on Obama have intensified. The conservative Talk Radio maestro has become quite possibly the most listened-to radio personality in America since before Paul Harvey (God rest his soul).

Demand for his air time hs suddenly become so intense, Limbaugh told The Examiner's Byron York earlier today, that his network sold 80 percent as much advertising in January 2009 as it did in all of 2008, and expects to sell-out the year by the end of March. That was before Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel launched an explicit counter-attack against Limbaugh that seems only to be making him bigger.

* Glenn Beck's eminently forgettable presence on CNN has been transformed, according to The Los Angeles Times, by his move to Fox News where his main theme has been variations on this question - Wake Up! Wake UP! What in Heaven's name does Barack Obama think he is doing to America? Beck has a tough time slot from which to win big ratings because he's in the middle of evening drive-time. Even so, in a very short period of time at Fox, his audience has grown to the point that it is now exceeded only by those of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.

* Obama remains personally popular with the public, but worries and even outright opposition to some of his cornerstone proposals are growing. Democrats in Congress are even beginning to express in public print their worries that Obama has reached too far with the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the $410 billion omnibus spending bill and the $3.6 trillion budget proposal (and the trillions more senior aides whisper are coming in further bailouts, loan guarantees, "tax cuts" that are really just grants, and other spending accountrements of Leviathan Unleashed.)

* Paralleling these developments, a potentially devastatng conservative case against Obama is coming together rapidly. Two influential columns this week tell the tale: On Thursday, Daniel Henninger offers this crucial observation in a WSJ piece otherwise devoted to asking why Republicans aren't more eagerly and quickly taking advantage of the fact the Obama Democrats have all but declared war on the 75 percent of the U.S. economy that is private and therefore productive of the nation's wealth:

"Beyond the stock market, there is a reason why, despite much goodwill toward his presidency, the Obama response to the faltering economy has left many feeling undone. There isn't much in his plan to stir the national soul. It's about 'sacrifice' now so that we can live for a future of small electric cars and windmills. This may move the Democratic Party's faith communities, but it cannot revive a great nation. If the Democrats want to embrace market failure as a basis for their ideology, let them have it. As politics, it's a downer."

The second column appeared today in The Washington Post and was written by Charles Krauthammer. Obama's mastery of public speaking has heretofore served to deflect attention away from the details of what he is actually proposing. And there is in those details, according to Krauthammer, a fundamental deception: Obama summons visions of catastrophe that are the result of too little government regulation of the financial markets and he offers as a solution vastly more government regulation of .... health care, energy and education...

The deception proceeds from the fundamental contradiction in the Obama strategy - talking like Ronald Reagan but walking like the second coming of Norman Thomas - and indeed that of all Washington liberals. Sensing the political fragility of the moment, they are racing to enact as much of their statist agenda as possible before the 2010 election puts the brakes on what, God willing, will ultimately be seen as an unfortunate interregnum between Republican Bush and a genuinely conservative regime to come...

The magnetism of his historic moment began fading once the economic stimulus, the omnibus and the budget were on the table. As people focused more on the details and how they didn't square with what they thought he had promised during the campaign, the soaring rhetoric lost much of its power. It may even now be approaching a net negative because it throws so much more light on the inaequacies of the policies.

And so the ground has shifted and the essential narrative is changing. Before, supporting Obama was an act of personal and national affirmation made all the more pleasant and attractive by the seeming reasonableness of his policy proposals and the winsomeness of his public personality . He succeeded admirably in making himself a comfortable and reassuring choice, thus making it not merely "safe" to vote for him, but positively compelling.

Now, though, the mask is off and the disconnect between rhetoric and reality is emerging as the dominant driver of the Obama narrative. The contrast is no longer between the young, personable, historic candidate Obama and a creaky, cranky old Republican White Guy, it's between what America thought it was getting in a President Obama (cool, reasonable and beyond partisanship) and what it now sees as the reality of a President Obama (government spending out of control, an uncertain hand on foreign policy, broken promises, more bureaucrats, etc. etc.).

Put another way - what we see now is neither what we were promised, nor what we expected.

Forgive me, please for saying so, but, if you read my Valentine's Day column on why Obama seemed locked in on a strategy that was likely to make him a one-term occupant of the White House, none of the above would come as a surprise to you. My only surprise today is that the shift has begun so quickly.
Posted by: Fred || 03/07/2009 08:34 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Well written Fred....In 2 years you won't find anyone who will admit to voting for Bambi and maybe some sanity and conservatism will re-emerge.
Posted by: Warthog || 03/07/2009 11:57 Comments || Top||

#2  Obama's not in trouble, we are.
Posted by: Tiny Sleath5812 || 03/07/2009 12:09 Comments || Top||

#3  both comments hit the nail on the head
Posted by: rabid whitetail || 03/07/2009 13:03 Comments || Top||

#4  Now, though, the mask is off and the disconnect between rhetoric and reality is emerging

The "mask" was always OFF, if you took time to conduct a thoughtful analysis.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 13:24 Comments || Top||

#5  "The "mask" was always OFF, if you took time to conduct a thoughtful analysis"

The time being 10 minutes if you wanted to do a really careful job.
Posted by: AlanC || 03/07/2009 14:02 Comments || Top||

#6  Hey you right wing attack machine h8trz, Leave Barack Alone!
Posted by: ed || 03/07/2009 14:09 Comments || Top||

#7  "Obama is in trouble"

Fixed.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/07/2009 14:33 Comments || Top||

#8  #6 Hey you right wing attack machine h8trz, Leave Barack Alone!
Posted by: ed 2009-03-07 14:09


The penultimate PMS-Obama supporter who will be disavowing the video in 5...4...3......
Posted by: Uncle Phester || 03/07/2009 14:56 Comments || Top||

#9  Obama aside, any liberal Democrat would have been trouble with Pelosi and Reid pushing bills his/her way.
Posted by: Darrell || 03/07/2009 15:00 Comments || Top||

#10  How long before he's compared to Jimmy Carter?
Posted by: Raj || 03/07/2009 15:08 Comments || Top||

#11  Minus 10 days, Raj. :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/07/2009 17:18 Comments || Top||

#12  I think that the comparison to Carter is insulting to Carter, and I loathe Carter.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 03/07/2009 17:24 Comments || Top||

#13  And who takes over for him?

This is really scary (and I'm not sure this is an up-to-date list, they're going under the bus so fast):

1 Vice President and President of the Senate
Joe Biden

2 Speaker of the House of Representatives
Nancy Pelosi

3 President pro tempore of the Senate
Robert Byrd

4 Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton

5 Secretary of the Treasury
Timothy Geithner

6 Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates

7 Attorney General
Eric Holder

8 Secretary of the Interior
Ken Salazar

9 Secretary of Agriculture
Tom Vilsack

Secretary of Commerce
Gary Locke (confirmation pending)

10 Secretary of Labor
Hilda Solis

Secretary of Health and Human Services
Kathleen Sebelius (confirmation pending)

11 Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Shaun Donovan

12 Secretary of Transportation
Ray LaHood

13 Secretary of Energy
Steven Chu

14 Secretary of Education
Arne Duncan

15 Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Eric Shinseki

16 Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano
Posted by: Sherry || 03/07/2009 22:10 Comments || Top||

#14  Sherry, that almost makes me wish for the scenario at the end of Tom Clancy's book Debt of Honor. (A crazed Japanese pilot crashes a 747 into the capitol building just after Jack Ryan is sworn in as vice president (having replaced the corrupt vice president), killing the President, the Supreme Court, most cabinet secretaries, and both houses of Congress.)
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 03/07/2009 23:18 Comments || Top||

#15  Hmmmm.

After Obama and Biden resign for mental health reasons, wonder what Shrillery's got on Pelosi to force her to resign in Shrillery's favor? (Byrd doesn't count - even he will agree he's too demented old.)

You just know it's gotta be juicy.

Nancy, if it rolls down to you, don't go anywhere near Ft. Marcy Park.

Just sayin'....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/07/2009 23:52 Comments || Top||


The Chas Freeman-Lyndon LaRouche connection
Michael C. Moynihan, "Hit & Run" @ Reason Magazine

If I can add to Matt Welch's post on the execrable Chas Freeman (I blogged his Tiananmen massacre apologetics here): It should be pointed out that, despite his position as former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Freeman seems not to have too deep an understanding of the history of the Middle East....Also, it is perhaps worth mentioning that The Nation's Robert Dreyfuss, quoted in Welch's post denouncing the "neocons [and] friends of the Israeli far right" that oppose Freeman (like liberal blogger Matt Yglesias), is a former Middle East editor of the Executive Intelligence Review, house organ of the Lyndon LaRouche movement.
Posted by: Mike || 03/07/2009 07:49 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  My, my, my... getting right crowded under that bus, isn't it, Chas?
Posted by: Sgt. Mom || 03/07/2009 8:59 Comments || Top||

#2  I don't understand: a man promotes a book which says Jews rule USA---and then tries to get a job in US government?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 03/07/2009 13:09 Comments || Top||

#3  A very, very, very good question g(r)omgoru.
Posted by: trailing wife || 03/07/2009 19:27 Comments || Top||


The Great Non Sequitur
by Charles Krauthammer

Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely.

Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle.

All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this: "Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful home buyers.

The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing-in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.

Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.
Posted by: Fred || 03/07/2009 00:00 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  <<<< intellectually dishonest to the core. >>>

Nailed it.

Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 || 03/07/2009 0:15 Comments || Top||

#2  First they took the schools.
Then courts and bureaucracy.
Now the White House.
Your house is next.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 03/07/2009 1:36 Comments || Top||

#3  As nobody had a gun to my head, of course I completely ignored Bambi's joint session barf-fest. My jaw hit the floor when I read CK's column here. How illiterate, face-smackingly illogical, and idiotic can things become? Health care, education, and energy? (and that leaves aside the Bambi's ilk is clueless as to what the issues/solutions are in those various areas)

That he can make such a preposterous speech - and that even CK gives it the courtesy of calling it clever rhetoric - momentarily shocks me until I return to my months-long torpor of almost literally not believing what I'm seeing and hearing.
Posted by: Verlaine || 03/07/2009 3:24 Comments || Top||

#4  Verlaine, I don't believe that the current occupant in the Oval Office sees all of the economic turmoil as a problem to be solved. He sees it more as a very fortunately timed (for him) distraction. Wasn't it one of Clinton's retreads (can't remember if it was Begala, could have been Emmanuel or Carville) who said that "you can't waste a good crisis"?

The economy is on life support? Well...toss money at it, blame Reid/Pelosi if it doesn't "recover", and cram through his favorite pet causes before anyone notices.

He hasn't a clue how to pay for it all, and could care less about the total bill. The important thing is that his narcissism is temporarily sated. (It's never completely sated, it's always going to be a gaping hole no matter how much adoration he gets.)

For now, there are enough idjits who still think he farts rainbows and shits gold to get his favorite failed policies in place. Some members of the media are starting to figure out they had been had, but they are still acting like toddlers entranced by something shiny. If he waits a year or so, he might lose the wobblier members of his fan club. That's why he needs to get this stuff done NOW.
Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie || 03/07/2009 8:28 Comments || Top||

#5  Socilization - it's the only way.

Resistance is futile.
Posted by: Bobby at the Kids Place in Texas || 03/07/2009 9:59 Comments || Top||

#6  <<<< intellectually dishonest to the core. >>>

inappropriate limitation fixed
Posted by: Clegum Ghibelline2050 || 03/07/2009 12:20 Comments || Top||

#7  True 1st hand:

One of my Drs. goes gaga at the mere mention of Prez O'bambi; just this week she melted down like a vanilla ice cream cone in the sun at the mere mention of his name.

She is smart as hell which makes the whole O'bambi worship phenom disgusting.
Posted by: Red Dawg || 03/07/2009 13:12 Comments || Top||

#8  For now, there are enough idjits who still think he farts rainbows and shits gold to get his favorite failed policies in place.

at Ace Of Spades HQ, the stock phrase is "bringing unicorns, that shit skittles"


LOL
Posted by: Frank G || 03/07/2009 18:06 Comments || Top||


Science & Technology
Tree Hugger says the pill is turning Walleye into hermaphrodites.
Now that spring is right around the corner, my mind has turned to thoughts of love—and all the waste that love produces. Condoms are surely clogging landfills around the country, but my partner insists that the birth control pill is turning all our fish into hermaphrodites. What form of birth control is kindest to the planet?

The Green Lantern heartily approves of sex as an eco-friendly activity. Besides the puffs of CO2 emitted by mood-setting candles and the electricity used to play that Sade CD, sex ends up being a pretty low-impact way to kill a few hours. (Plus, it can keep your heating bill down.) At the same time, population growth taxes our environmental resources, so doing your part to prevent unwanted offspring is itself a green endeavor. If you're concerned about how your birth control is affecting the environment, though, there are ways to mitigate that impact.

The two leading forms of nonpermanent birth control in the United States are the oral contraceptive pill and the male condom. Each takes its toll on our environment.

While it's true that most of us have never come across a stray Ortho-Tri-Cyclen package on the beach or a city sidewalk, that doesn't mean the contents of the pill won't find their way into the environment just the same. The hormones in these products—either progestin or a combination of progestin and estrogen—are known as endocrine disruptors, and women who take the pill end up passing some of them through their urine. If they make it through the wastewater systems, the hormones can flush into rivers and streams. The bulk of the research done on the environmental impacts of contraceptives has focused on estrogen, which has been linked to the feminization of male fish living downstream from municipal sewage treatment plants. We can't place all the blame for this problem on the pill, though: Women excrete several kinds of estrogen—both natural varieties and the synthetic kind that comes in some versions of the pill. (Natural estrogens are more prevalent in our waterways, though the synthetic sticks around a little longer.) So simply cutting out contraceptives won't solve the problem of intersex fish: What's really needed is better sewage treatment.

If you're concerned about your estrogenic contributions, though, switch to a progestin-only contraceptive, which you can take in pill form or—if you want to take things a step further and cut down on packaging waste—as a one-time shot or implant that lasts three months to three years. However, you'd still be taking a bit of an ecological gamble—the effects of progestin on aquatic wildlife haven't been studied much, and we don't know how much of it regularly appears in our waterways. (Endocrine disruptors can have effects at extremely low concentrations, and it's only in the past decade or so that toxicologists have had the technology to detect these trace amounts.)

What about condoms, the baby-prevention method favored by 18 percent of American women? Most condoms sold in the United States are made of biodegradable latex. However, they also contain preservatives and hardening agents to make sure the rubber can withstand a fair amount of friction. Those additives also make it harder for the condoms to break down in the landfill. Lambskin condoms are biodegradable, but chemical additives may inhibit the process. Naturalamb, the only widely available animal-based brand in the United States, does lubricate the lamb intestines they import from New Zealand, so it's unclear just how easily its product breaks down. Natural condoms, however, are still likely to be a greener choice than latex condoms, and are equally as effective at preventing pregnancy. (Polyurethane condoms, which make up about 3 percent to 4 percent of U.S. sales, won't break down at all.)

If you're still curious, balance at the link. (last para is a doozie)
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 10:11 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Oh, thank goodness! I thought the writer was going to suggest getting rid of all the estrogen emitters!
Posted by: trailing wife || 03/07/2009 15:32 Comments || Top||

#2  Estrogen emitters emit estrogen
Posted by: badanov || 03/07/2009 15:57 Comments || Top||


Home Front Economy
Geithner - Gone by June
Posted by: tipper || 03/07/2009 17:56 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Gone by tomorrow would be better.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/07/2009 18:33 Comments || Top||

#2  Barbara, I think you and Jimmy Cayne would be in agreement. (warning profane language)
Posted by: tipper || 03/07/2009 18:46 Comments || Top||

#3  Something tells me a number of Barry's appointments will be rucking up soon. Discretion really is the better part of valor. This administration has the herpes, most of these people are young, and nobody wants this Barry rash to follow them for the rest of their careers.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 19:15 Comments || Top||

#4  Yes but the Hussein administration has done some favors for the US : Hillary and Biden are welded at the hip to Hussein and are now full partners in descent in the political toxic waste dump that will be the legacy Hussein's term produces for the Dems.
Posted by: Shieldwolf || 03/07/2009 20:41 Comments || Top||

#5  I hear that Bob Mugabe is available for the position.
Posted by: DMFD || 03/07/2009 23:17 Comments || Top||


The Law of Unintended Consequences
Posted by: tipper || 03/07/2009 17:54 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:


Home Front: Culture Wars
My beautiful America. How richly blessed we are!
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 09:27 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Hey, Besoeker, it says explore fifty states.

What about the other seven?
Posted by: no mo uro || 03/07/2009 16:12 Comments || Top||


Holder’s “Nation of cowards”
Attorney General Eric Holder caused a small stir by telling us we are a nation of cowards, afraid to talk about race. You could almost hear the collective groan rise from Americans of all kinds. Who on earth wants to talk about race? Well, college-educated black intellectuals like Holder do. It sometimes seems, in fact, that college-educated black intellectuals want to talk about little else. The rest of us would rather just get on with life.

If we are afraid to talk about race, it’s with good reason. For white people, at least, talking openly about race is a sure way to get yourself in trouble. The only white people who are willing to speak frankly on this topic are those who are old enough and/or financially secure enough not to give a damn — Pat Buchanan, for instance. For an ordinary white middle-class Joe, with a family to feed and a job to hold on to, by far the wisest strategy is just to keep his mouth shut, parrot a few multi-culti catch-phrases if the topic comes up, rent a couple of good action movies to see him through the Martin Luther King holiday, and take a crossword puzzle along to keep himself awake through those Diversity Awareness seminars his company makes him attend once a year in hopes of insulating the firm against nuisance “discrimination” lawsuits.

My private suspicion is that Holder was trying to pull off a “Hundred Flowers” strategy. In 1956 Mao Tse-tung launched a movement under the slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend.” The idea was to encourage intellectuals and ordinary people to offer criticisms of state policy and the Communist Party — to have a conversation, you might say.

People who took up the call, making open criticisms, ended up in slave-labor camps, or dead. It is widely believed (though the case is still argued) that the entire movement was intended from the start to flush out “enemies of the people” so that they could be hustled away to the camps. Stories leaked out from Mao’s inner circle that he afterwards boasted of having pulled of a yang-mou. That’s a play on words. Yin and yang are the contrasting principles in Chinese philosophy, yin standing for darkness and shadow (among other things), yang for brightness, openness, and so on. The usual word for a plot is yin-mou, “shadowy scheme.” Mao was boasting of having pulled off a wide-open scheme, like a robbery in broad daylight.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 03/07/2009 07:50 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  You know, I might be a touch paranoid, but I wonder of Derb isn't correct about it being a stunt to flush out fodder for discrimination lawsuit fodder...
Or it could just be another example of the Obama administrations breathtaking ineptitude, now that they are where the buck stops.

I know, I know - never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, but still...
Posted by: Sgt. Mom || 03/07/2009 8:57 Comments || Top||

#2  Holder threw down the card early. Barry and Michelle threw it down with plastic helos to evil former white colonialist Brown. We'll see more of it in days to come as the chrominium flies off the shiny objects that have been elevated to power.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 9:11 Comments || Top||

#3  Holder should resign. If he doesn't he should be fired just like Ag Secretary Butz was during the Nixon administration for making "insensitive" remarks. Cowards? Excuse me? I'm insulted. I'm outraged. You wanna talk about cowards? Who's afraid to try to make it through life without Affirmative Action? Who's afraid to stand on their own two feet and make an honest assessment of their own lives and the lives of their fellow blacks in this country...to be responsible for their own lives and their own actions? Not me.
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 03/07/2009 13:02 Comments || Top||

#4  A white South African made the same point to me several years ago: It was easier to talk about race in supposedly racist South Africa (this was still during Apartheid) than in the US.

I made the point that speaking frankly about race in America was a guaranteed career ending move, and could even be considered illegal (if that person had hire/fire authority).

As long as that's true we will never have an honest discussion of race in America.
Posted by: Frozen Al || 03/07/2009 14:35 Comments || Top||

#5  I only discuss race with the denizens of the Union cemeteries at Gettysburg, Andersonville, etc. I haven't told them about the "Nation of Cowards" remark yet.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 03/07/2009 16:58 Comments || Top||

#6  AH9418 - if you get a chance listen to Dave Alvin & The Guilty Men's song "Andersonville". Excellent and haunting

/full disclosure: Dave's a fave of mine from Downey, CA.
Posted by: Frank G || 03/07/2009 17:57 Comments || Top||


Pathologising dissent? Now that’s Orwellian
Posted by: tipper || 03/07/2009 05:42 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I saw a web page once for some extreme gun control group that claimed that people who believed in the intent of the 2nd Amendment were not patriots but rath - get this - insurrectionists.

Didn't the USSR use to do this to people?

Posted by: no mo uro || 03/07/2009 6:55 Comments || Top||

#2  rath=rather
Posted by: no mo uro || 03/07/2009 6:55 Comments || Top||

#3  You ain't seen nuthing yet.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru || 03/07/2009 7:38 Comments || Top||

#4  Funny thing is, it wasn't that long ago that dissent was the highest form of patriotism.
Posted by: Mike || 03/07/2009 7:48 Comments || Top||

#5  People who believe in the intent of the Second Amendment and act on it ARE insurrectionists. But there are very few. AG Holder does have a point about being a nation of cowards, but it's not only about race. We are afraid of personal independence.
Posted by: Glenmore || 03/07/2009 11:27 Comments || Top||

#6  We are afraid of personal independence.

Which carries the tag - personal responsibility. Much easier to 'blame the man' or 'blame the system' or 'them' then take the responsibility and consequences that come with it.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 03/07/2009 11:35 Comments || Top||

#7  I have it on the authority of one Mrs. William Jefferson Blythe Clinton that we have a right to disagree and to debate with any administration. I heard her shriek it with my own ears.
Posted by: eLarson || 03/07/2009 17:08 Comments || Top||

#8  that's "Mrs. Cankles Who Doesn't Know Russian From Shit" too you, sir!

Good Day!
Posted by: Frank G || 03/07/2009 18:17 Comments || Top||


Home Front Economy
Whoopi Goldberg has an opinion on tax hikes.
You just have to love the irony. I wonder if this is catching?
AoS note: remember to put your own comments in yellow.
Posted by: Omoter Speaking for Boskone7794 || 03/07/2009 00:35 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  They got what they wanted and have found out they don't like it. They are now riding the Waaaambulance.
Posted by: Deacon Blues || 03/07/2009 8:08 Comments || Top||

#2  For the first time, I actually support Obama's tax hikes!

Now pay my mortgage, Whoopi, and shaddup!
Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie || 03/07/2009 8:10 Comments || Top||

#3  I listened to the whole thing. Couldn't watch it though. That was just too much. All through it I felt warm yellow liquid flowing down my leg and it wasn't mine.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon || 03/07/2009 9:00 Comments || Top||

#4  How to start your day with a Positive Approach

1. Open a new file in your computer.
2. Name it 'The View'.
3. Send it to the Recycle Bin.
4. Empty the Recycle Bin.
5. Your PC will ask you: 'Do you really want to get rid of 'The View?'
6. Firmly Click 'Yes.'
7. Feel better?

GOOD! - Tomorrow we'll do Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Posted by: Besoeker || 03/07/2009 9:18 Comments || Top||

#5  that show is beyond stupid. The idea that anybody gets their opinion from the View is disturbing. Joy Behar is quite possibly the dumbest person w/a show. There's a vid of Ann Coulter verbally pummeling Behar on Larry King. It's so bad you almost feel sorry for the mental midget Behar (again I say you almost feel sorry).
Posted by: Whineper Prince aka Broadhead6 || 03/07/2009 9:35 Comments || Top||

#6  Whoopi should have listened to Elizabeth. They never listen to poor little Elizabeth. They all shut up and listen when Whoopi or Joy speaks but they all shout Elizabeth down the minute she opens her mouth. It's a wonder why she doesn't just give up. Ever notice how rude liberals are?
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 03/07/2009 13:13 Comments || Top||

#7  "Ever notice how rude liberals are?"

Only on days that end in "y," Abu.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut || 03/07/2009 14:23 Comments || Top||



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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has dominated Mexico for six years.
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Two weeks of WOT
Sat 2009-03-07
  US taps Delhi on Lanka foray: Marines to evacuate civilians
Fri 2009-03-06
  Marwan to be 'freed' as part of Shalit deal
Thu 2009-03-05
  ICC issues arrest warrant for Sudan's president-for-life
Wed 2009-03-04
  Lanka troops in last Tamil Tiger Towne
Tue 2009-03-03
  Lanka cricketers shot up in Lahore
Mon 2009-03-02
  Hariri tribunal gets underway in The Hague
Sun 2009-03-01
  Mighty Pak Army claims famous victory in Bajaur
Sat 2009-02-28
  Bangla sepoy mutiny: Mass grave horror stuns nation
Fri 2009-02-27
  Paleofactions agree to form unity govt
Thu 2009-02-26
  Bangla: At least 50 feared dead in sepoy mutiny
Wed 2009-02-25
  Lanka: Troops enter last Tamil Tiger-controlled town
Tue 2009-02-24
  Mulla Omar orders halt to attacks on Pak troops
Mon 2009-02-23
  100 rounded up in Nineveh
Sun 2009-02-22
  1 European killed, 9 others wounded in Egypt blast
Sat 2009-02-21
  Handcuffed JMB man pops grenade at press meet

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