Numbers do not lie.

Well, except for when the Left gets a hold of ‘em, of course.  Then they’re of about as much use as Charles Barron’s favorite explanation of “You shut up.”

Mark Knoller has compiled some great stats about Year One. Here’s a taster of how the president has frittered away an entire year:

• 42 news conferences, against 21 for Bush.
• 158 (!) interviews.
• 28 fundraisers, against 6 for Bush.
• 7 rallies, all of them on behalf of losing candidates.
• 29 rounds of golf, against 7 for Bush.
• And a magnificent 21 days on which Obama did not have a public or press appearance. My, how excruciating those empty days must have been for him.

Read the rest here.

What’s not included: countless attacks on President Bush, infinite utterances of “Let me be clear” and other such oratorical banalities, and zillions of dollars redistributed to anything that destroys prosperity/life/freedom.

Although I would also have included the 1,200 self-references in the first eight months of his reign, the 170 or so parties/social events hosted by the White House as of December 2009, and the tripling of the budget deficit.

Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

I’m not entirely sure which loss would irritate President Obama more – although I suspect that the withdrawal of his daily worship fix from the MSM would have more impact on his impenetrable self-belief than the protesting howls of the masses – but we could soon find out: the public is deserting the 44th president, and certain brave enclaves of the MSM might just follow.  Not TIME or Newsweek, of course – their oaths of fealty bound generations to come – but The Economist, perhaps?

Whereas Newsweek has published 30 Obama covers, and TIME’s racked up 28, The Economist has only booked The One for a desultory 18 cover-shots so far (click the pic):

That’s against 50 covers that featured, or headlined, President Bush:

(There are almost certainly more Dubya covers, but The Economist’s online archive only stretches back as far as 2001. )

Unlike TIME and Newsweek, which are happily drooling into each other’s ears about their bottomless love for Obama, The Economist’s covers are not uniformly nauseating – they are generally optimistic, but that merely reflects The Economist’s soft-Left leanings and, at least until recently, the sentiments of a large swathe of the American populace.

If the MSM wants to revive its moribund circulation, one way that this might be accomplished (if it’s even still possible at this late stage) would be through providing coverage that at least aspires to be a little more even-handed.

And should that ever come to pass, then we won’t have to speculate: for President Obama will have lost both the people and the press.

Just in case any of you were worried that Dear Leader might be heading for premature burnout due to his strenuous posturing, fear not: for President Obama has chosen the much-underrated strategy of revitalizing himself through constant partying.

While the great unwashed continues to suffer, Carter Clews reports that the Obamas have,

hosted no less than 170 parties and social events through December 3 of 2009. And that does not even include the 17 parties and 11 open houses – feting more than 50,000 guests – ABC News reported the Obamas hosted throughout the Holiday Season.

Although Carter calculates that this equates to staging “one gala White House event every three days throughout the first year of the Obama Administration”, by my arithmetic it’s more like a par-tay every other day during Year One.

The White House Social Secretary, Desiree Rogers (whom Newsweek nauseatingly dubbed “The Busiest Woman in Washington“), is quoted as saying that the Obamas want to “replicate the same kind of environment they had in Chicago.”

In more ways than you know, Desiree.

Never mind the still-tanking economy, then, because the president is mightily chuffed with how he’s overtaken Paris Hilton as the most prolific socialite in the US.

As for his enabler, well, let’s just say that Desiree Rogers must enjoy the limelight that is reflected onto her off Obama.  Though I’m somewhat hesitant to make the claim, acknowledging the strength and depth of the competition for this honor, she just might be the most conceited person attached to the White House.

Enjoy the ride while it lasts, Mr. President.

No post on Newsweek is ever complete without mention of its assistant managing editor Evan Thomas, he of Obama’s “sort of God” fame, so here it is.

There is, thankfully, a silver-lining: Newsweek’s woes are even graver than TIME’s.  Jim Geraghty notes that Newsweek has lost almost $30 million this year, Ed Driscoll here chronicles its assorted troubles, and Bill O’Reilly believes that the publication won’t survive 2010.

Let’s hope that they’re right.

As good a place to start as any is with a quick reminder that TIME published perhaps the most revelatory piece in existence on Team Obama, uncovering the inspiration behind the audacious presidential campaign: and it was, to be sure, Diet Coke.

Way to scale new heights of journalism there, TIME.

So far, President Obama has been blessed with 28 appearances on TIME’s cover, with the first dating from October 23, 2006, and the most recent taking place yesterday, December 14, 2009.  For a gallery of all the covers, click on the pic below (yes, it’ll take you to my blog, where the shrine is displayed in its full splendor.  I did try to put it on here, but could only get the gallery to display all the covers in a single vertical column, which diminishes their impact significantly):

President Bush has also graced the cover of TIME on 28 occasions.  The first was June 21, 1999, and the most recent August 03, 2009 (prior to the August ’09 appearance, though, Dubya last appeared on the cover on November 6, 2006).  In a no doubt calculated snub, TIME didn’t even include him in the cover montages of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, 2008 or 2009 – but unlike the present occupant of the White House, I doubt that this bothered Bush in the slightest.  Click the pic again to be taken to the gallery of TIME Bush covers:

Both men have appeared on the cover the same number of times, but there the similarities end.  The difference in tone of the coverage will not come as a surprise to anyone who can read (or even see), and Obama’s potential future appearances are infinite, whereas Georgie-boy will only be rolled out again whenever TIME feels the urge to indulge in some more Blame Bush Doctrine fallacy.

Finally, a sliver of good news.  At the end of 2008, TIME discontinued publication of its Canadian edition, which had been in existence for over 60 years.  TIME somehow still manages to shift around 3.4 million copies of its magazines each week, although this has declined from a weekly circulation of 4.1 million in 2006.  And, despite its recent overhaul, TIME’s moribund health does not yet seem to be improving.

Perhaps they should just go the whole hog and put Obama on the cover every week, instead of merely every month.

Surely The One can save them?

Cross-posted.

The climate change hoax is going through a rough patch.

Its ringleaders are bravely ignoring revelations that the entire global warming/cooling edifice is built upon falsified data, African countries are threatening a walkout at the Copenhagen talks (which would just break my heart), and sentient populaces everywhere are increasingly skeptical about both our role in supposed anthropogenic climate change and our ability to do anything about it.

So the eco-fascists are trying to resume the offensive.

But they might want to rethink their strategy, which, at the moment, consists of lots of dubious government officials hectoring lots of other government and quasi-government officials about the evils of Western attempts to obliterate the environment.

A procession of leader-idiots has been lined up by the UN to address the negotiators at Copenhagen this week. Kicking the party off, and no doubt the perfect man for setting the tone for what will inevitably follow, is the assistant president of Sudan, Nafie Ali Nafie.  Then come speeches by countless others, the highlights of which will no doubt be provided by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe. Prepare to be wowed by whatever fantabulously moronic concoctions this lot can come up with, the collective intellectual prowess of whom approaches that of a potato.

And, proving that the UN does in fact have a sense of humor, the best has been saved until last: “Prince” Mostapha Zaher (one of TIME’s infinitely mockable Heroes of the Environment 2009), director-general of Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency, will close out the gabfest.

In a country where the term “government” has no application, it is a tragic testament to politically-correct idiocy that someone insisted upon the creation of a department for the environment.  Could this not have waited until/if a semblance of stability has been achieved?  I would say that those in power in Afghanistan should concentrate on the most basic basics, such as providing clean water, electricity and roads, but I guess that they need a National Environmental Protection Agency to be up and running before any of that, seeing as there are fewer than 50 days left to save the planet.

The speeches run from Wednesday until Friday.

The laughter will last forever.

Cross-posted.

And that is that the brainiacs in charge of it had not the slightest clue about what they were doing.

The guy with the slightly unnerving stare above is Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old banker picked by then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to design the TARP.

This article in the The Times (London) gives some behind-the-scenes details of the madness at the Treasury.  Kashkari describes how:

one colleague screamed in panic over the imploding financial system, while another almost died of heart problems because he worked on the bailout rather than seeking medical treatment.

Rather than screaming or nearly having a self-induced heart-attack, Kashkari’s own way of dealing with the sh*tstorm was to stuff his face with junk food.  Doritos, to be precise:

Mr Kashkari, who piled on 23 pounds as he comfort-ate family-sized bags of Doritos through the height of the credit crisis, described the panicked period between October 2008 and May 2009 as “like a dream”.

I’m sure that all the nutrients in family-sized bags of Doritos really fueled the deep thinking being done in the department.  So profound was the analysis, in fact, that Kashkari,

admitted that he plucked “a number out of the air” when deciding with Mr Paulson how much funding to request from Congress for the Tarp.

I’m so glad that it was an “expert” that totally guessed how much funding should comprise TARP, rather than some completely random guy off the street.  If he just “plucked a number out of the air”, then when didn’t he grab zero?  What’s wrong with that figure?

It gets better.  Guess what was used to calculate the bailout figures?

A new, prototype, semi-organic, super-computer?

Not quite.  Kashkari used his, er, BlackBarry as a handy pocket calculator, enabling him to compute that,

We have $11 trillion residential mortgages, $3 trillion commercial mortgages. Total $14 trillion. Five per cent of that is $700 billion. A nice round number.

Quite how someone almost had a heart-attack working out calculations of that depth escapes me.

So, $700 billion was chosen because, essentially, it was “a nice round number.”  As far as explanations go, that’s like claiming that Truman nuked Japan because he “had a hunch” about it.  A really strong hunch, mind you.

Note to Neel: though it no doubt flatters your ego, you might not want to give more interviews to international publications that do nothing but make you look like a chump.

Just a thought.

Cross-posted.

Via The Guardian:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

Awesome.  And it gets better, with the documents purportedly pushing to:

• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;

• Weaken the UN’s role in handling climate finance;

• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

The fig leaf of global absolutism has fallen.  In the aftermath of Climategate, the conspirators at Copenhagen (those countries who drafted the secret text supposedly operate under the comical moniker of “the circle of commitment.” Dum dum duuummm!) are engaging in a spectacular double-or-nothing gambit.  As with the domestic US political scene, Obama is in the vanguard of efforts to push something, anything, through before support for self-enslavement deteriorates even further.

Though reports centering on the leaked documents contain an element of conjecture, its existence should surprise no-one: the prime motivation underlying the war on carbon emissions is unbridled megalomania, whether on the national or international stage.

There is nothing – not one human activity, from birth until death – that does not result in the release of carbon dioxide.  With this being the case, there is nothing to which such legislation could not potentially be deemed applicable, and nothing for which it could not then be used as justification.

If this appears to be verging on the hysterical, consider this: when was the last time that the political class awarded itself new powers, which were then left on the shelf?

Never is when.  County councils in the UK, for instance, have used the cover of recently enacted anti-terror laws to spy on families suspected of putting their trash out on the wrong day.  Which is totally what the legislation was intended to be used for.  Totalitarian climate change legislation would be exploited to even worse effect.

“Climate change” hyperactivity hurts those who can least afford it the most, in both the developed and developing worlds.  Should the LDCs jump ship, climate change talks will be as paralyzed as the moribund Doha development round.  Even Obama would hesitate (I hope) to conclude an agreement binding only the developed nations to self-destruction.

AllahP might just have to get the Humpbot cameo prepared…

Cross-posted.

This is already doing the rounds elsewhere, but the innate stupidity of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price is so monumental that it’s worth re-posting as often as possible.

This guy makes Rep. Corrine Brown look intelligent.  If you really want to know what made Price go berserk on this occasion (not that it ever takes much, judging by his reputation), then this article explains it.

As for me, I’m interested in how strictly Price adheres to the Left’s the-louder-I-shout-the-more-right-I-am stratagem.  What a petulant brat.  Histrionics of this kind might excite the brainless base, but you’re otherwise just exposing your own idiocy, JWP.  He’s a sure-fire inclusion in the next round-up of Lesser-Known Democratic Kleptocrats.

Not that eruptions of this kind are unusual for him.  He broke the ankle of a white construction worker in 1991, and shamelessly played the race card in his own defense.  His lawyer, Billy Ravkind, joined in the fun and games, helpfully explaining that,

Race has got everything to do with everything.

Which really clears up a lot of things for me.  Even better still, Price was subsequently acquitted “amid speculation that a guilty verdict might have sparked the kind of racial violence that recently struck Los Angeles.”

So much for equality before the law.

If Price seems familiar, that’s because he’s the dunce who threw a wobbly when the very same fellow commissioner (Kenneth Mayfield) said “black-hole” in front of him last year:

Which then prompted another guy in the vicinity to jump on the solidarity bandwagon and demand an apology for the insensitivity with which “black-hole” was uttered.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Is it possible for a nation to survive deliberate stupidity of this depth?

Cross-posted.

So, leaving aside the big beasts for a moment, let’s turn our focus towards some of the lesser-known, but equally hopeless, Leftist minions:

First up is Hope Whitehead, who recently clinched the nomination to fill a vacancy in the Missouri House of Representatives .

And she has proven that she has the right stuff to be an excellent Democrat because her corruption is already established before even entering office.

Whitehead’s inappropriateness for public office of any kind is revealed by the fact that she owed $1,155 in personal property taxes and related fees (and only paid it back once her candidacy was all but in place as, under state law, candidates with overdue tax bills are ineligible for the ballot).  Additionally, she admitted to paying her vehicle taxes only when the two-year registration expired, not each year as required.

Next is Sheila Dixon, Mayor of Baltimore:

Not that you’d know it from the lack of media reporting, but she’s another member of that vast group of Democrats known as criminals.

Dixon was today convicted on one of five counts related to theft of gift cards intended for city charities.  Stealing from the poor and needy – nice!

And, seeing as she enjoys breaking the law so much, Dixon has another trial to look forward to, in March 2010 on charges on perjury.

Now on to Melvin “Kip” Holden, otherwise known as the Mayor-President of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana:

First of all: what?  What on God’s green earth is a Mayor-President?  How is one title or the other not enough?  I know that we’re talking about Louisiana here (it does admittedly take an awfully long time to shake off the lingering effects of being under French dominion), but still – the title’s a little too close to Eternal Sun God-King for my liking.

This one is admittedly quite (very) tenuous, but if it’s good enough for the Left to smear Sarah Palin through the actions of her sister-in-law, then I’ll abide by the same standard.

“Kip” is in the news (well, LA local news, at least) because his sister, Evelyn J. Holden, has pleaded guilty to the charge of conspiracy in aid of racketeering, in an ongoing federal probe of bribery in the local criminal justice system.  She faces up to five years in prison, which is lacking by a factor of ten, in my estimation.

Whether you were aware of it or not, Kip, this doesn’t reflect well on any members of the family.

You may recall Hiram “The Slasher” Monserrate as the personification of modern chivalry, who, during a fight – by which I mean an actual physical fight, as opposed to a more routine lovers’ tiff – with his girlfriend, slashed her across the face with a broken bottle.

After which he proceeded to drag her through his apartment lobby while she was bleeding from cuts around her eye and to her skull (which required 20 to 40 stitches).  Deniability is difficult once people have seen you hoisting around a battered woman in public, genius.

Hiram has been found guilty of misdemeanor assault but not felony assault, without which – you guessed it – he can retain his seat in the New York State Senate and collect his hard-earned $79,500 salary.

Although the New York State Senate has initiated an inquiry into whether Monserrate should face sanctions, I’m not holding my breath for a decent outcome. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. has already stated, without a trace of irony, that,

It would be a bad precedent to expel a senator for a misdemeanor.

Yeah, because that precedent would be far worse than tolerating politicians who have been convicted of committing crimes.

Pedro, by the way, has an ulterior motive in ensuring that Monserrate is treated leniently, as he is also under investigation himself for shady shenanigans at his Soundview Healthcare Network.

Of multiple ongoing inquiries into dodgy dealings there, one is that Pedro used employees of Soundview, a non-profit he controls, to work on his political campaigns.  Three Soundview Employees pleaded guilty in 2005 to diverting about $30,000 from programs for family care and AIDS treatment to Espada’s unsuccessful campaign for Bronx borough president in 2001.  Let me state that again: they were convicted of diverting funds and food intended for sick babies and AIDS patients to the benefit of Espada’s political campaigns.  What a guy.

Finally, for this installment, comes Herman Thomas:

Thomas, a former circuit judge in Alabama, faced 21 charges including sodomy and sexual abuse of… wait for it… male prisoners!  He was also accused of spanking inmates for sexual gratification, sometimes with a paddle.

After his lawyer made the inevitable claim that racism was the motivation behind the charges, as opposed to his alleged sexual assault of criminals, Thomas’ trial went through the motions and recently concluded.  Having spent three days in deliberation, the jury then returned an incomplete verdict, deciding on only seven of the 21 charges – Thomas was found not guilty on five counts of sexual abuse, one count of sodomy and one assault charge.

Though found to be not guilty (just about), this is still a long way from establishing his innocence.

Among other lamentable developments, this is the result of blind party allegiance and people relying on crib sheets to tell them how to vote, rather than bothering to find out anything about the candidates for themselves.

This is how democracy dies.

Cross-posted.

It’s too early for this.

After a wonderful Thanksgiving, an unadulterated serving of Michael Moore is perhaps the biggest system shock possible.  He is the antithesis of everything represented by Thanksgiving, manifested in human form.

We’re all aware of his incessant verbal diarrhea.  The guy can’t help it.  Get him started on anything related to politics, no matter how tenuous the link, and be prepared for an avalanche of anti-logic that even Rep. Alcee Hastings would struggle to match.

Moore’s latest political revolution is to have published an open letter to The One on his website, aiming to use his considerable sway with those millions of people who mistake his fictional movies for fact, and base their vote on that most firm of foundations.

I’m loathe to give his intellectual musings the oxygen of publicity, but I’ve rarely read such a prolonged brainfart.  Usually when people commit sustained incoherency to paper, they tend to realize it through a process known as “proof-reading.”  Then, having recognized the gibberish that they’d previously considered literary gold, they normally have the good sense to hit “delete.”  But not Moore, who takes as much pride in the vitriolicness of his words as in their irrationality.

The letter reads like the ramblings of an angry toddler.   It’s littered with inane talk of  “corporate backers”, “haters” and the like, takes a swing at Obama as “We can’t take your caving in, over and over” (quite where he got that impression from I’ve no idea – health care?  Cap’n'tax?  Porkulous?), and, displaying the total myopia common to all true believers, states that “When we elected you we didn’t expect miracles.”  Rrrrrrright.

Best of all, though, is the race-baiting undercurrent that no Left-wing argument worth its salt ever lacks:

You would still be the victim of their incessant venom on hate radio and television because no matter what you do, you can’t change the one thing about yourself that sends them over the edge.

Real subtle, Moore.  You might as well have followed that sentence with the Left’s unofficial motto, Because Republicans are RACIST, just to make it even more clear.

Incredibly, he then proves that he’s not only a titan of political philosophy, but also one of the foremost experts on terrorism, via his claim that,

I know you know that there are LESS than a hundred al-Qaeda left in Afghanistan!

I know that you know that I know that you know you’re full of it, Moore.  Less than a hundred al-Qaeda terrorists left in Afghanistan?  And he knows this how, exactly?

Oh, that’s right – facts do not matter in Bizarro world.

Moore rounds off his masterpiece by exhorting Obama to once again retreat, promising that if he does so, then,

You can be your mother’s son.

Which makes about as much sense as the preceding entirety of the letter.  That right there is surely going to form the central plank of Obama’s surrender-with-honor strategy, when it comes:  we’re ditching Afghanistan, because “I want to be my mother’s son.”  Flawless reasoning.

Democrats, your next presidential candidate awaits anointment.

Cross-posted.

I didn’t photoshop the pic, swear to God.  Looky here for the original.

Obama’s proposed health care diktat has made it into the dictionary.

But not quite how he’d have wanted it to do so.

It’s featured not under “awesome”, “brilliant” or “taxtastic”, having been instead chosen to demonstrate the proper usage of “much-vaunted.”

Whomsoever is responsible for this entry, I love you.

I’m not sure how long it’s been like this, nor how much longer it’ll last before being “corrected”, but let’s just enjoy the moment.  This is a victory akin to knocking Belgium out of a European conflagration, but I’ll take them all, big and infinitesimally small.

You know that you’ve got a problem, though, when even the dictionary starts mocking you.

Cross-posted.

The prospects of an unadulterated investigation into the Ft. Hood massacre have not been good from the get-go.

Cast-iron assurances of a comprehensive inquiry have the same ring to my ears as did Pelosi’s promise to create the “most ethical Congress in history” and Obama’s pledge to honor his own much-vaunted* “sunshine clause.”

With the MSM creating an entirely new psychiatric condition to explain away Nidal Malik Hasan’s murderous “aberration”, with Janet Napolitano automatically warning against any anti-Muslim backlash (fun fact for Janet: there were, according to the FBI, 1,477 crimes motivated by religious bias in 2007.  Of that figure, 133 were anti-Islamic, whereas 1,010 were anti-Jewish.  Still, who are the Democrats to let reality rain on their parade?) and with President Obama urging there to be no rush to judgment – unlike his ability to divine exactly what took place in the Henry Louis Gates affair after a nanosecond’s worth of analysis – the likelihood of a white-washed report disinfecting the atrocity of one of its most disturbing traits has always been pretty high.

The appointments of former Army Secretary Togo West (above) and former Navy Chief of Operations Admiral Vernon Clark to lead the investigation mean that that possibility is now all but a certainty, according to James Corum.  Writing in the Daily Telegraph (London), Corum states that,

At the core of the mass murder at Fort Hood Texas is the question of how the decades-old policies of the US Defence Department that have lowered standards in the name of “affirmative action” and “diversity” may have contributed to the retention of a clearly unfit officer and put him in the position to kill 13 American soldiers and wound another 28. For Togo West or Vernon Clark to question such policies (which were largely of their own making) would indicate a degree of intellectual openness and apolitical judgment that they have never exhibited before. So my bet is a complete gloss over the real questions at stake.

There’s a higher probability of wisdom flowing forth from the lips of Joe Biden than there is of this happening, but the Left would do well not to immediately dismiss Dr. Corum as a conservative wing-nut.  One look at his credentials should leave no disinterested party with any doubts as to his standing.

Rhetorical question alert: why, in that case, has the MSM gone nowhere near this?

[* Fun fact number two: check out the Longman dictionary's example of the proper usage of "much-vaunted." They clearly didn't get Axelrod's memo...]

Cross-posted.

Time to wake up, put on my $500+

and go for a

Once that’s done comes a quick change from Shorts Outfit #1 (dog-walking gear) to Shorts Outfit #2 (tourist gear)

Fun’s over: now for the serious stuff.

So, armed with a $900 (or was it $6,000?) handbag

I’m now ready to face world leaders

and their better-halves

Though sparse, I spend what little free time I have after making sacrifices for everyone else tending to my lead-ridden veggie patch

and reading

Great day so far!  I feel

and not

Being FLOTUS, I can call on some help in preparing dinner

before putting on my glad-rags

and hitting the town.

Some haters criticized my choice of clothing, given what was scheduled for before cocktails – it’s enough to make me

Just time for a quick prayer

before catching some zzz’s (6:17 – 6:37)

and dreaming of Utopia.

Ahhhhhh.

PS: The clip above is un-embeddable, but it’s still up at YouTube and is well worth watching Michelle surrender to the Sandman during the funeral proceedings…

Cross-posted.

The public autopsies performed on Creigh Deeds’ lackluster gubernatorial campaign have been comprehensive, but that’s no reason not to exhume the cadaver and prod it some more.

This particular error ranks far down the index of Deeds’ brainfarts (if his painful confusion surrounding issues of taxation scored a 10, then this is more like a 2), but it’s revealing about his run as a whole, nonetheless.

Because the carelessness of the candidate in his own preparation was reflected by his team in their meticulously proof-read “Deomcratic Sample Ballot.”

I know that these election crib sheets are popular, but c’mon.  If you cannot figure out how not to invalidate your own ballot, then your vote rightfully won’t count.  And if you haven’t bothered to work out for whom to cast your vote, then you shouldn’t be able to rely on some cheat sheet for direction.

As far as guarantees of minimal brain activity go, it ain’t exactly setting the bar high.

Or maybe this was a tactic of the Democrat strategists to expose their candidate’s common touch?  The ability to read and write proficiently, after all, is a hallmark of elitism and inequality.  And it’s not the first time that this administration has eschewed the diktats of traditional spelling: remember this?  And this?

Dan Quayle, your redemption is at hand.

Cross-posted.

Is surely this one.

From an article in the Christian Science Monitor, of all places.

Has no-one there watched American Pie? Or was it written that way accidentally-on-purpose in order to provoke the intended target…

PS – Is it not also the worst possible acronym for a group of Islamic nutters?  Talk about undermining yourself from the very start.  Although I guess they can be excused, as they definitely haven’t seen that iconic slice of American movie-making…

Cross-posted.

And a nightmare for those of us still resisting the junk science of global cooling global warming climate change imminent anthropogenic (but particularly American and conservative led) global meltdown chaos theory.

Please excuse the brevity of this post, but (1) the day job is kicking my tuckus, (2) this piece of news is so monumentally stupid that thinking about it is giving me a headache and (3) I’m pretty confident that no-one here needs my help in dissecting the lunacy of this ruling.

Fresh out of the United Kingdom today comes news that,

Judge rules that green views are the “same as religious beliefs” as sacked environmentalist wins legal battle.

Yeah, you read that right.  Though we’ve long known it, the faith dimension of the environmentalists has been fully recognized by the UK judiciary.  Does this mean that Al Gore can now officially be equated with the Son of God?

Cue the opening of the floodgates for a veritable sh*tstorm of entirely frivolous and wholly unnecessary lawsuits in the UK, not to mention reams of new legislation covering enviro-worship and affording these persecuted modern day prophets/martyrs with the protection of the State.

Once again, the UK is the trailblazer in setting moronic, not to mention insanely self-destructive, trends.

So how long will it be before this judicial masterpiece makes its way across the pond?

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

Gore Vidal, another member of the Left-wing mob who is not in the least bit qualified as any kind of political analyst yet considers himself one nonetheless, has appeared on the Joy Behar show, with eminently (or, were I to speak the English of Sonia Sotomayor, “imminently”) predictable results.

Vidal’s moral compass can be deduced by his reaction to the long overdue arrest of Roman Polanski.  Sky News quoted him as telling The Atlantic that,

I really don’t give a f*ck.  Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

Rather than placing the blame on Polanski’s own decision to drug and rape a girl barely in her teenage years, Vidal made the claim that Polanski was instead a victim of anti-Semitism and xenophobia.  Which will in all probability form the backbone of Polanski’s no doubt airtight defense at his (hopefully) upcoming trial.

Proving that level of vileness to be anything but a fluke, Vidal stated — at around the 1:52 mark on the vid — on Behar’s show, with regard to President Bush, that,

That’s one murder that I miss not committing.

To which Behar gave the robust reply of,

Yes, well, it’s too late, anyway.

To be fair, though, anyone who only hates — rather than actively seeking to do harm to — the 43rd president is a paradigm of objectivity to the Left, so perhaps Behar was simply trying to burnish her credentials as a “moderate” by not quite joining in with Vidal’s assassination fantasy.

This must be the mythical “respectful debate” whose passing the Democrats have long bewailed (well, since January 2009, at any rate).

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

Apparently.

One of the many blights of our time is that if some public figure or another (be it a politician, actor, celebrity or any other miscellaneous useless cretin) makes a big show of apologizing for past sins, then they are usually granted fairly immediate forgiveness by the press, on behalf of the public.

Look!, they whimper: this shows that they are human after all, and we should love them for it.

In fact, some politicians actively seek the opportunity to act out such a cringing display of false repentance, knowing that it could well led to a bounce in the polls.  This is the ultimate in calculated cynicism, with people deliberately aiming to benefit from actions for which they should more properly be castigated, if not punished.

Taking this theme to an all-time high, and likely to be the exception that proves the rule because this one is so heinous, is Frederic Mitterand.  Not only is he French, but he is also the nephew of the late former Prime Minister of France, Francois Mitterand.

Freddy is currently France’s culture minister, a position that he holds despite his well-publicized penchant for kiddie-fiddling.

I kid you not.  In his 2005 autobiography The Bad Life, Freddy wrote that,

I got into the habit of paying for boys… All these rituals of the market for youths, the slave market excite me enormously… One could judge this abominable spectacle from a moral standpoint but it pleases me beyond the reasonable… The profusion of very attractive and immediately available young boys puts me in a state of desire that I no longer need to hinder nor hide… as I know that I will not be refused.

That was four years ago!  He confessed to this in print!  How could he then be given another position of authority?

And he’s only in the sh*t now as the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the leader of France’s abhorrent National Front party, went on a political chat show on Monday and read excerpts of his autobiography to a bewildered audience.  So it’s not only the Obama administration that does such an awesome job of vetting its officials.

Finally, two very predictable epilogues to this sordid tale so far: (1) Ignoring the fact that he’s a pedophile, Freddy has brazenly claimed that,

If the National Front drag[s] me through the mud then it is an honour for me.

And (2) he’s emerged as one of the most vociferous defenders of Roman Polanski.

Of course.

Non-political post alert, but we can’t focus on the big stuff all the time.  That way madness lies.

The vid above captures some low-lives in the UK (Swansea, to be a little more precise) picking fights with random strangers.  Nothing strange about that, it’s entirely commonplace in the UK after dark.

But what you really want to see starts around the one-minute mark, for the thugs then pick on two cross-dressing guys.  Easy target, right?

Not this time, as the guys in drag just happened to be cage fighters on a stag (bachelor) night.

Awesome.

It’s kinda difficult to tell what’s going on, partly because of the camera angle but also because the three yobs are seemingly floored by one punch (or more likely a lightning quick succession of punches.  Hee-yah!).

Watch in joy as the shirtless idiot proceeds to get up and stumble around, before falling over again.  The happy ending is that the still-dazed moron and his droogs are then nicked by the local police.

Rather than sending petty criminals like this to jail (which the UK cannot do, anyway, as there is no room left in any of its prisons – seriously), can we not just give them a severe beating?

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

Yes, I know, another post about the media.  But it’s like manna from Heaven: infinite in supply and nourishing for the soul.

The hero of this misadventure is Sen. Dick Durbin, who, it seems to me, is happy enough to be surrounded by cameras in the pic above.

But appearances can be deceptive and he’s apparently a rather fickle publicity-whore.

As evidenced by the terrible fate that’s befallen WTAD, the oldest radio station in Quincy, IL.  After having the temerity to alert the commoners to the fact that their elected representative would soon be gracing their town with his presence, Durbin’s office swiftly retaliated by informing the station that it would no longer be included on the list of those receiving notices from the senator about his forthcoming visits to West-Central Illinois.

Which, come to think of it, really is a gross violation of the media’s proper role of complete subservience to their Democratic overlords.  How dare they make available to the public any information not explicitly approved for release by the senator himself?

Durbin, you’ll no doubt recall, is the epitome of moral strength and character after hosting his own version of a health-care town hall meeting which emulated the proper version in exactly no ways at all.  Whereas the originals were large, open and energetic, Dick’s counterfeit product was small, private and limp.  Any innuendo in that last sentence was entirely accidental, honest.

Excommunication awaits any and all unruly media outlets, until they learn to emulate the unparalleled journalistic integrity of TIME Magazine.

No sooner than a leaked IAEA report – anemically entitled “Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program” – states that Iran has “sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable” nuclear weapon, does the outgoing head of the IAEA then conversely announce that “Israel is [the] number one threat to [the] Middle East.“

Nothing can be more revealing as to the dysfunction, inadequacy and impotence of the IAEA.

The efforts of the international community over the past six years have amounted to precisely nothing.  The Bush administration ceded leadership of this issue to the EU3 (France, Germany and the United Kingdom), in a bid to bolster its multi-lateral credentials and in the vain hope that Iran would perhaps respond more favorably to negotiations led by powers other than the US.  Iran must have been overjoyed that it has only had to deal with the appeasing former powers of Europe, while Russia and China prevent the Security Council from taking any meaningful steps whatsoever.  For Russia, this was due to its trade and military ties with Iran, not to mention the antiquated Cold War mentality that anything that diminishes the US benefits Mother Russia, while China has maintained its strict policy of militant non-interference in the domestic affairs of other nation-states, no matter what.

As culpable as Russia and China in allowing Iran all the time that it needs to advance its nuclear weapons program, however, is Dr. ElBaradei.

This man should never have been permitted to assume leadership of the IAEA, which has racked up nothing but successive failures under his charge.  Libya surrendered its WMD program – of which the IAEA was entirely oblivious – only after becoming incontinent with fear following the shock and awe of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Libya’s capitulation quickly led to the discovery of A. Q. Khan’s nuclear black-market, another development about which the IAEA knew diddly squat, and, in North Korea, the IAEA was comprehensively sidelined by the Six-Party Talks.  Perhaps most damning of all, the IAEA had not the slightest inkling of Iran’s 20-year history of clandestine nuclear tinkering, until its very public exposure in 2002.

This, of course, is all in addition to ElBaradei’s legendary ability to grasp the wrong end of the stick by repeatedly praising Iranian non-cooperation and singling out Israel for criticism, as well as his frequent dispensation of invaluable advice, such as:

We have to cross our fingers that nothing will happen.

Thanks, Doc.

When Iran succeeds in acquiring nuclear weapons, they should build a monument to ElBaradei.  The only, admittedly very small, consolation now is that the good doctor will be replaced in December by Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano (although this change in public facade will nevertheless leave the IAEA as toothless as ever).

One final, disturbing thought to leave you with: we have been led to believe that the level of technological knowledge and sophistication needed to design functioning nuclear weapons is such that they are virtually unattainable to those countries that can be least trusted with them.  Proliferation has already undermined this notion severely.

Now Google “Nth Country Experiment” and shatter the illusion completely.

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

Ahhh!

Ain’t that just the sweetest thing?

Lots of cutey-pituty ChiComs all dressed up in pink, marching around in white leather go-go boots!

What happened here?  The politburo members must have had competing, and quite confusing, thoughts of Barbie dolls, strippers and weapons all jumbled together, leading – taa daa! – to what we see above.

Not that we should underestimate what these killer-chicks (known as the “iron roses” – awesome!  It’s just like a comic book!  Can I be Super Dragon Communist Destroyer of the West?) are capable of, however.  Any country that still venerates history’s number one, all-time mass murderer has some deep issues.

But such propaganda is the life-blood of dictatorial regimes and the CCP is second to none at its practice.

After the Olympics and the iron roses, what next?

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

Question: what does any responsible person do during an economic contraction?

Please choose one of the following options:

(A) Reduce present spending.

(B) Delay future spending.

(C) Refurbish your home.

For you and I, the answer’s almost certainly A, B or both.

But if you’re Congress, then the correct answer is C, of course!

Why, after all, should the porkers have to suffer simply because the peons are?

Thus has Congress magnanimously decided to approve a legislative appropriations bill, which contains a measure to increase Congress’ annual budget by 5.8 percent to $4.7 billion.

This additional waste of taxpayer monies includes such irresistible highlights as a $500,000 program for senators to send out postcards about their town hall meetings (like anybody doesn’t already know about them), $30,000 for receptions for foreign dignitaries (particularly if they’re from Iran, North Korea, China, Russia or Cuba) and $4 million for consultants (because having more people formulate legislation other than the politicians themselves is exactly what we need).  Politico details the perks here.

Well, what right do we have to deny our overlords anything that they might desire?

We’re only the voters.

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

With the fusing of political parties everywhere into one hideous amorphous mass (a process that’s reaching its apogee in Europe, where party names have long since ceased to provide anything but the merest hint as to that party’s alleged values), the choice facing the electorate increasingly appears to be that between big and bigger government, high and higher taxes, and little or no accountability. The traditional dividing lines have softened and blurred, leading to the rise of the independents and their king-making capacity. The decisions of voters are less than ever based on how much they agree with a given party’s platform, but rather on how little they disagree with it.

With one exception, that is.

One lonely boundary still splits the Left from the Right, and it has not only remained constant, but has strengthened with each passing day of the Obama administration: the division between intentions and results.

A central tenet of the Left is its slavish devotion to the tyranny of intentions. Whereas those on the Right characteristically rely more on empirical and tangible observations and logic, the void of reason at the heart of Left-wing ideology has been replaced by emotions and intentions. For them, results are mere side-effects of a stated policy: it is the intentions underlying any given policy that reveal its true worth.

Which is exactly the type of anti-logic to be expected of the Democratic Party. Intentions and results are not mutually exclusive concepts, unable to coexist simultaneously. The difference then becomes one of interpretation – Democrats are largely contented by the lingering warm thoughts that motivated the legislation in the first place, whereas conservatives are far more likely to turn to concrete results as proof (hopefully) of the new law’s worth.

Allow me to take this out of the realm of the abstract, with thanks to then-Senator Obama (the entire video is a masterpiece of Obamian double-speak, but especially around the 0:45 and 2:30 minute marks):

Senator and President Obama is so wedded to the idea of increasing tax levies that he considers the outcome to be of secondary significance. For him, the very act of raising taxes for “the right reasons” more than compensates for the lower taxation yields that follow, clearly elevating intentions over results.

So how can the Left derive satisfaction from something as ephemeral as “good intentions”?

Simple. It’s been forced to do so.

This single-minded focus on intentions is the hallmark of those who have only held academic jobs and of an ideology that has never succeeded. Obama has only ever been a part of the invisible economy, so is well-versed in performing jobs associated with no real output, and he is an adherent of an ideology that has failed every time and every place that it’s unfortunately been put into practice. In the absence of results to support their contentions, those on the Left are presented with two options: change policy or discard the results. And the path of least resistance is once again the winner.

Examples of this mental affliction abound. Porkulous? Cap ‘n’ tax? Obama’s promise to reduce the number of abortions committed in the US by, bizarrely, making them easier to carry out? How about the president’s recent, and supposedly triumphant, conclusion of a UN Security Council resolution committing the UN’s 192 member states to working towards a world free of nuclear weapons? Nothing but more of the same, intentions over results. No meaningful follow-up action will take place, reducing the agreement to a public relations boost for Obama, a short but false moment of global harmony and another occasion for the Left to chant in unison that love is all you need. Time wasted on this could, instead, have been used discussing Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Honduras or a host of other issues.

And it’s in no way limited to the American Left. The odious Robert Mugabe is equally fixated on intentions over results, having succeeded in transforming Zimbabwe from the bread-bowl of Africa into its basket-case. Mugabe’s hatred for his white citizens and his obsession with redistributing their farms to those with no experience or knowledge of farming predictably resulted in the destitution that now ravages Zimbabwe. But Mugabe nevertheless congratulates himself on having done what was right and fair, mindless of the devastation that it’s caused.

The mindset that allows for this level of self-deception is a deeply dangerous one. Foregoing results as the surest measure of a policy in favor of intentions allows those framing the legislation to permanently claim moral superiority in everything that they do. Such people, convinced of their own righteousness (see: the mad mullahs of Iran), are usually those least suitable for positions of power.

But who are we to argue with the most ethical Congress ever?

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

And because it’s 8:41am on a Friday, let’s start with the good news:

In a somewhat less than effective display of military prowess to mark the anniversary of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War (y’know, the one in which Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran and the Iranians, in turn, used children to clear mine-fields), the Iranian air force succeeded in destroying its only AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) aircraft.

The awesomeness, believe it or not, doesn’t stop there.

Because guess what the downed-aircraft proceeded to hit on the ground?

Its impact was cushioned by none other than the mausoleum of the Islamic revolution’s founder, Ruhollah Khomeini, who, let us not forget, was such a charming and spiritually sound guy that he married his wife when she was 13-years old.

But don’t let this farce detract from the growing threat posed by Iran.  This sheer ineptitude, after all, is precisely why the mullocracy is so obsessed with acquiring nuclear weapons, as nukes are a force-multiplier like no other.

Between that and this recent news, however, I’d say that Divine retribution has been picking some wonderful targets of late.

Now for the bad news:

Iran has informed the IAEA that it is building a previously undisclosed uranium enrichment plan.  Add one more target to the hit-list, boys and girls.

So having dropped any and all preconditions to negotiations, agreed to face-to-face talks and generally been as subservient as possible, this is what President Obama has earned in return.

The choice facing Obama is simple, as it always has been.  He can continue his victory through defeat policy of capitulating to odious thugs and dictators the world over, or he can acknowledge the reality that we gain nothing by appeasing such people.  They, on the other hand, receive propaganda victories galore, in addition to basking in the warm glow that results from defying the Great Satan.

Iran has made not one concession during six years worth of Western offers/inducements/bribes.

We cannot nice them into line – but we just might be able to threaten them into line.

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

President Obama’s epic egotism is reaching such stratospheric heights that it now rivals that of even the mighty John Edwards, self-proclaimed Most Beautiful Man Alive™.

According to Fox News, the president has managed to talk about himself 1,198 times during a mere 41 speeches so far this year.

Not bad!

But, really, what better topic is there?

The choice is either to speechify about the myriad problems afflicting the US (boooorrrring!) or wax lyrical on an issue of which he never tires – his very own self.

This should come as no surprise, after all, from the king of the personal anecdote and the man who saw fit to give Queen Elizabeth II an iPod stuffed to bursting with a variety of photos/songs/speeches, all of which centered around, erm, him.

Sure, he’s a member of pretty much the most elite club going, but one’s achievements are amplified by modesty and diminished by pride, a lesson that the 44th president has yet to learn.

Could it perhaps be that the popular worship of the president, led by the ever-faithful MSM, is contributing to his exaggerated sense of self?

Just try telling me that this shrine wouldn’t make you believe your own hype.

Enjoy it while you can, Mr. President, because nothing lasts forever.

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

In today’s least surprising news, The Washington Times reports that various Democrats are preparing to run in 2010 on platforms of re-re-iterating just how downright mean and nasty the 43rd POTUS was (and evil!  Mustn’t forget to include evil!).

Yeah, this one’s gotten old, already.

We’d better get used to it, though.  As with so many things, the United Kingdom provides a window to the future for what lies ahead for US conservatives.  Despite having been in power there for 12 years now, the Labour Party still runs against opponents whom they defeated all that time ago, barely cognizant of how the Conservative Party has changed in the interceding years.

But why stop with President Bush?  There’s no statute of limitations, is there?  So why not make it party policy to equate modern Republicans with Herbert Hoover, thus drawing a straight line between the Great Depression and its modern variant (in that inimitable Democratic way of making nonsensical mental leaps that would make even Rep. Alcee Hastings proud)?

Oh, that’s why: because it’s stupid.

This either speaks to the stupidity of the politicians (in rehashing an exhausted tactic from yesteryear) or the stupidity of the electorate (in potentially falling for this alleged “strategy” so soon after its last deployment), but I’m not sure which.  Let’s split the difference – there’s plenty enough stupid to go around.

Forget the so-called personal anecdotes, character-assassination pieces and Democratic/media hysteria.

Those who know President Bush almost unanimously portray him as charming, personable and a history buff.  The first MBA president (Woodrow Wilson – the man who segregated Washington D.C., let it never be forgotten – was the first with a PhD), he had a higher GPA at Yale than John Kerry.  He also had substantial private sector experience, the success of which I’ll leave up to you.

He did make mistakes.  Some quite large.  And he knows that the Left will cravenly denounce them at every opportunity.

So it reveals the dignity of the man that he won’t criticize President Obama, because the president “deserves my silence.” Remember that, creatures of the Left, or has your selective-amnesia kicked in once again?

That’s called “civility” (n. ci·vil·i·ty).

Former Presidents Clinton and Carter, please take note.

Unfortunately for President Bush and us, however, it is now official Democratic Party policy to blame him for anything that goes wrong anywhere until 2067.

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

If there is any proof to the received wisdom that it’s somehow possible to be too successful/too handsome to become POTUS, then Mitt Romney is probably it.

But Mitt’s going to battle against his misfortune and (almost certainly) try again in 2012.

By which time he could be primed to take advantage of the groundswell of public sentiment against Obama and his statist cohorts.

Particularly if he doesn’t let up on the Carter Mark II theme, which he got going at this year’s Values Voter Summit, taunting Democrats that:

“I’ll bet you never dreamed you’d look back at Jimmy Carter as the good old days.”

Nice, Mitt, nice.

Time and again, Democrats have proven expert at attacking Republicans through a combination of relentlessly base, if not outright offensive, comparisons and shamelessly placing the blame for all the universe’s problems upon the shoulders of the incumbent (Republican) president.

Well, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, and particularly not when the planet’s most ignorant educated man is still willing and able to remind everyone of the catastrophic anti-logic at the core of the Democratic Party.

It’s long past time that we learned from the Left’s tenacity and returned the favor.

So let’s not let a day go by from now until 2012 without one Republican (at least) associating Obama with the Carter golden age, and see how the Democrats like the taste of their own medicine.

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

I was going to let this go, but then Health and Human Services head honcho Kathleen Sebelius turned what I (naively) considered to be an instance of unrepeatable inanity into a serial offense.

Sebelius (who, aside from advancing the cause of socialism in the US, enjoys evading taxes and siphoning taxpayer money off to cronies) here achieves the remarkable feat of telling us all that we need to know about the Democratic view of governance through a single physical movement.

That is, by demonstrating to the great unwashed how to cough “properly.”

Why is this so revealing, I hear you ask?

Because it is proof, once again, that Democrats think that we, the people, are entirely incompetent (ha!) and cannot figure out for ourselves how to do a single thing, even of the immense complexity of coughing.  And there I was, thinking that it was an involuntary motion, much akin to breathing.

But, of course, the Democrats have figured out a new and improved way of doing it.  So much for what we think we know.

Whether the intended audience was children or adults (or, in this case, journalists), it makes no difference.  This is condescending, patronizing and paternalistic government of the worst kind, seeking to control everything that we do.

Must we now be taught how to cough?

Will there be a new category of non-jobs created solely for the inspection and approval of personal coughing techniques?

For those of us with a sense of history, this will be familiar, as ever.  The Obama administration is hardly the first to covet control of matters as large as the (inter)national economy, as small as the way we cough, and everything in-between.

Up next: the administration thoughtfully demonstrates how best to assume the “submissive” pose.

Cross-posted at Track-A-’Crat.

They commit suicide.

Though it’s a perennial favorite among left-wing enclaves, any (serious) talk of the demise of the US as the world’s sole superpower is so out of whack with reality that it’s normally not worth engaging your brain. When you’ve heard how the story goes once, you’ve heard it a thousand times.

Particularly when it’s Deepak Chopra (apologies, linked to a slightly aged piece in the Huff Po), who does nothing more than slightly re-heat all the tepid and vapid arguments of yesteryear about why a multi-polar world would be so, so nice.

Except, genius, that we’ve already had a multi-polar world on many previous occasions.  And it resulted in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World II (and, less directly, the Cold War), to name the biggies of the last two centuries alone.

Is even recent history that forgettable, now?

Significant state power, once gained, dissipates very slowly: few countries have lost their status as a superpower. Spain, Portugal and Holland are examples of this in the modern age, but, despite their deep problems, the United Kingdom, France and Russia still cling to their superpower standing, at least for now.

There has, however, never before been a power like the United States.

The (former) empires of France, Britain, Persia, Russia, China and Rome do not even come close to the military might of the US.  Short of the entire world teaming up against America, none could take her down – and even then, my money would be on the US. It’d be like Hulk Hogan fighting a room full of toddlers: unpleasant, to be sure, but more irritating than anything else (for the Hulkster, anyway).

Not that the US’ authority comprises only military means.  Combined with the twin allures of its (usually) dynamic economy and open society, the US towers over the rest of the world.

The real stake in the heart of this soft-intellectualism, however, is the most basic point: who would take over?

For as much as the Left loves to imagine it, there would be no orderly division of labor between America and the wannabees.  There never has been and there never will be, until (God forbid) we have some kind of global governance rule.

That aside, intense (and violent) competition will emerge among those nation-states covetous of American influence.  Historically, the world is at its most dangerous when states seek to change the prevailing order.

Which is precisely what is happening today. The ascension of a young and inexperienced president has afforded nefarious regimes the world over another opportunity to see how far they can push America back and expand their own influence. China is challenging the US Navy in the South China Sea.  Latent Russian hostility is on the rise, as they achieve feats such as ousting the US from its only Central Asian air base in Kyrgyzstan.  Iran is as belligerent as usual and closer than ever to obtaining nuclear weapons.  North Korea, behaving true to form despite Kim Jong-il’s incapacity, is conducting nuclear tests without a care in the world.  Serial basket-case Pakistan is nowhere nearer becoming the theoretical stable democracy that some analysts think not only possible, but also a panacea for their many problems. Finally, the mini-me Castros of Latin America are still nipping at America’s heels, but let’s leave them to their own plots and schemes while we focus on the big boys.

Within the last week alone – not that you’d know it from a domestic media that has focused exclusively on the riveting spectacle of Democrats blanketly defaming tens of millions of conservatives as racists – Russia has concluded pacts with the Georgian regions of Abkhazian and South Ossetia, allowing it to maintain military bases in both places for nearly a half-century to come. Everyone, please welcome back the Russian Empire. That, of course, is in addition to Russian warnings that it will seize (Georgian) ships in the Black Sea. Iran, meanwhile, is delirious with self-satisfaction now that its pure intransigence has led to its being dropped from the agenda for a September 24th meeting of the UNSC chaired by President Obama, a moratorium on further UNSC sanctions and the grand prize, bi-lateral negotiations with the United States. The DPRK, ever desperate to ensure that the world takes note of its pitiful existence, has been similarly rewarded with one-on-one talks, after it decided to renounce the 1953 armistice with South Korea.

More so even than acts of great strength, acts of weakness on this scale are never forgotten.

It is so dangerously naive to believe that we can all just get along, as Chopra and so many other left-wing flyweights unquestioningly do (with not the least among them being President Obama), that it defies comprehension.

Can they truly believe that China or Russia would be content with sharing global predominance with the US and do not harbor ambitions of usurping the US entirely?  That they wouldn’t subsequently transpose their oppression from the domestic to the international level?

And do they really want to see that happen?

I’m not sure that I want to know the answer.

]]> http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/09/17/superpowers-do-not-die/feed/ 12 http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/09/16/whatever-happened-to-the-913-march/ http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2009/09/16/whatever-happened-to-the-913-march/#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:14:09 +0000 Track-A-'Crat http://hotair.com/greenroom/?p=8831 If you’re wondering what happened to any coverage of the 9/13 counter-counter-government march, then puzzle no more: there was none.

In a rare fit of lucidity, the spin merchants of the mainstream media realized that the amount of propaganda needed to magic what was an outright failure into a wonderful triumph threatened to break reality itself asunder.

Would that they would come to this conclusion more often.

So, whereas I joined our march, my (liberal) wife attended the one the next day.  Bearing in mind that we’ve decided that the only way not to argue about politics is, essentially, not to talk about it – or, at least, not to allow me to voice an opinion -, this worked out quite well.  His ‘n’ her marches on consecutive days, with equal custody rights to our shiny new SLR.  These are some of the shots she took during her brief rendez-vous with the other supporters (before realizing how dismal the whole affair was going to be and retreating to Dupont Circle for brunch, instead).

Let’s start with this pic:

A beautiful shot of a gorgeous afternoon in DC it may be, but you’d never know that it’s also the core of the counter-demonstration in favor of having the government take yet more rights and responsibilities away from us peons.  You could barely move in the same area, such was the crush of people the day before.

Exhibit B: the same area, shot from a little farther back, with equally few people milling around (and most of them were probably completely unaware of what was supposed to be happening around them):

Next, one brave soul captures Democratic emotional-logic, if there is such a thing, at its peak.  Well done, ma’am:

And, finally, the march gets underway:

Although it seems fair to say that it never really took off:

After which was left a lonely group of hard-core statists, who no doubt exchanged thrilling personal anecdotes about just how awesome infinite government is:

And that’s that.

You may recall that the opposition during the 9/12 march itself amounted to one rag-tag band of moonbats (bottom pic here), who couldn’t even comprehend the Grand Canyon-sized contradiction written all over their own signs, God bless ‘em.  In the three hours that I spent at the Tea Party, they were the only opponents that I saw there.

Not that the 9/13 turnout was much better.  Even President Obama has more spine than these lily-livered activists.

Is that the best they can do?

Democrats should be worried.  When even the bait of “free” services and increased handouts, not to mention the chance to spend a delightful afternoon screaming about imaginary right-wing racism with other Borg, isn’t enough to provoke their monolithic base into action, something has gone gravely awry.

How long until the Democrats decide to adopt this latest masterpiece from the EU?

It’ll certainly be popular with the work-shy element of their base…

In what is simultaneously the most unpredictable and least surprising piece of news that I’ve read in a long time (trust me, it’ll become clearer as you read), it turns out that Iran supposedly carries out more sex-change operations than any other country aside from the home of the lady-boy, Thailand.

The Guardian reports here on what will purportedly be Iran’s first transsexual marriage, between a woman known only as Shaghayegh and her best friend from school, who recently underwent sex-change surgery to become a man.

If your brain is on the verge of shutting down through trying to reconcile this news with the theocracy’s penchant for barbarically persecuting (not to mention executing) homosexuals, then here’s the kicker: the late Ayatollah Khomeini issued a religious fatwa in which he stated that there was no religious restriction on sex-change procedures.

Can you guess why?

That’s right!

In an attempt to rid Iran of homosexuality, which is already outlawed there.  A more intolerant illusion of tolerance is not possible.  While the theocracy, and Ahmadinejad in particular, cannot stand the thought of homosexuals, they can abide – if not actively encourage – the presence of transgender people?  How does that make any sense?

It doesn’t, of course.  The mullocracy is riven by deep contradictions, this just being one of the most bizarre.

No doubt some on the Left will be all too ready to accept this as a sign of the Iranian regime’s much-fabled but non-existent capacity for moderation, just as they claim that the leadership cannot be as zealously anti-Semitic as they evidently are, given the presence within Iran of the Middle East’s largest Jewish population (outside of Israel itself, that is).  Here’s the thing about that: Jewish people in Iran number around 20-25,000, by most accounts.  Out of a population of 66 million.  The Jewish populace therefore equates to a whopping 0.04 percent of Iran’s total population.

If this could not appear to get any worse, think again: accounts of forced sex-change operations are widespread, done in an horrific effort to preserve the mullah’s fantasy world where homosexuality doesn’t exist.  If you’re in Iran and homosexual, the choice facing you is between bad and worse.

But never mind all that.  Instead, let’s attribute to the theocracy all the virtues of compassion, tolerance and sanity that they so plainly lack and do nothing to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons.

It’ll all even out in the end, right?

Oh deary me.

Less than 48 hours after President Obama decided to reward Tehran for its complete and utter obstinacy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – the man with such intimate knowledge of his own country that he even knows that not a single homosexual resides there – has now decided that the bi-lateral negotiations are not going to cover the nuclear issue, after all.

Well, who would want to talk about such a trifling issue, really?

This is precisely why negotiations without preconditions were not offered previously, and can only come as a surprise to those who are willfully blind as to the nature and history of the Iranian theocracy.  For everyone else (read: all those not affiliated with the Democratic Party in any way whatsoever), this is nothing but another step on the path towards the imminent Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons.

How our leaders are still duped by Iran’s time-honed strategy of offer-and-rescind is beneath my ability to explain.

The consequences, however, are far more easily elucidated: Iran gains a propaganda victory through making it appear that the Great Satan has capitulated; having already agreed to negotiations in principle, the Obama administration may still go through with them in a futile attempt to salvage whatever scraps of face remain after such a swift slap round the chops; and, most importantly for the mullahs, they gain yet more crucial time to dedicate to their weaponization schemes.

There are no easy choices and few good outcomes on this issue, but the worst by far remains Iranian possession of nukes.  At least with North Korea we have a somewhat compliant China (mostly) helping to keep the Dear Leader within the confines of his playpen, but who could fulfill a similar role with regard to Iran?

The Bush administration’s strategy veered schizophrenically from John Bolton’s singleminded determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nukes to eventually settling for merely slowing down their development horizon.  The Obama administration’s strategy, from what I can gather, consists almost entirely of talking nicely to an abhorrent collection of misogynists, bigots, racists and anti-Semites, and hoping for the best.

The complacency is stunning.  Time is running out to do anything substantive and if President Obama’s brainwave is to simply run down the clock and shrug his shoulders in resignation once the theocracy has turned the nightmare into reality, then he’s doing a bang-up job.

Otherwise, serious thinking caps (if not military helmets) need to go on right now.

Some pics from the DC Tea Party for your viewing pleasure. I was there, along with the crew of the Political Castaway, and The Other McCain was floating around somewhere, as well.  Forgive me for the lack of accompanying text, but (a) a picture is worth a thousand words and (b) I’m still not quite up to par today (having turned 30 yesterday).

So without further ado, the immediate view from stepping out of the Archives metro stop:

My sentiments exactly:

I think they’re being generous to the guy, but where would we be without Al “I created the internet” Gore:

Waitaminnit.  You’re telling me that a job is better than hand-outs?

The ultimate all-American family:

Now we’re talkin’:

And the obligatory shot of the feeble counter-protest:

To surmise, it was what you’d expect from a conservative rally.  Civil, good-natured and, of course, incident-free.  No smashing up of McDonalds or any other symbols of global oppression/imperialism for us, thank you very much.

It’s beyond me how anyone can ever accurately estimate (or pretend to, at least) the number of people at this type of event, so I’m going to say that there were 15.72 million people there.

Yep, sounds about right.

2010 – bring it on.

Forget for a moment, if you can, that of the two so-called leaders above, one looks like he’s been caught during a trademark mouth-breathe and the other looks like an aged and bloated Michael Jackson, and prepare to be amazed (once again) at the depthless stupidity of those who rule over us.

As if the recent release of mass murderer Abdel Basset Mohamed al-Megrahi (and subsequent revelation that it was essentially done in exchange for some black gold) were not humiliating enough, the United Kingdom has somewhat remarkably trumped itself in successive intelligence-defying decisions.

Brief aside: Scotland is not even a fully sovereign nation, lacking as it does the capacity to form and conduct its own foreign and defense policies, and was the chief architect behind al-Megrahi’s release.  Can America not therefore deem Scotland a hostile non-state actor and act accordingly?

Back to the main point: according to the Daily Telegraph, for the past six months the SAS has been training Gaddafi’s soldiers, which some within the SAS find distasteful for many reasons, not least of all the fact that the Col’s regime,

for years provided Republican terrorists with the Semtex explosive, machine-guns and anti-aircraft missiles used against British troops during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Talk about asking for trouble.  The SAS + Libyan troops = nothing good.

Have we learned nothing from enabling vicious leaders elsewhere to become even more malicious in intent and capable in action?

I guess I should just get with the now.  Yesterday’s enemies are today’s allies, and trust but verify has been replaced with trust and then trust some more.  Seeing as Libya’s our new BFF, then why don’t we just go right ahead and give them back all those WMDs that they surrendered a few years ago?

Perhaps Prime Minister Brown is simply adhering to Lord Palmerston’s timeless maxim that,

We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests it is our duty to follow.

But still.

It’s Gaddafi.

My two cents, from the perspective of a Brit in Washington D.C.

As President Obama attempts to whitewash 9/11 into an ambiguous could’ve-happened-to-anyone “tragedy” through his refusal to place the blame unequivocally on the shoulders of Islamic terrorism and his plans to transform it from a day of commemoration into a day of service, so has it become perfectly acceptable for other components of the far-Left to demean the events of that day.

I use quotation marks above with good reason: 9/11 was not a tragedy.  It was an abomination, a horror and a wake-up call.  Deaths from earthquakes, tsunamis and such like are tragedies, for no-one is to blame.  “Tragedy” implies that there’s no accountability, that we were helpless to prevent it and that whatever took place just occurred.

Which is exactly how the Obama administration wants to see 9/11.

Not believing that the US stands for all that is right in this conflict (in fact, not even acknowledging that we are at war with militant Islam) concomitantly means that President Obama does not view the terrorists and their nation-state havens as entirely wrong.

This is how history dies, when the man with more influence than any other puts his revisionist view on a pedestal.  Because it is then adopted by others, most recently the WWF, which saw fit to use 9/11 as an abhorrent warning to greedy Westerners to curb their supposedly unsustainable lifestyles.

How many people gave that advertisement the thumbs up?  How many of those people think that the US “deserved” 9/11?  How many of those people are themselves American?  And how pervasive is this view becoming among certain sections of the populace?

The most fitting memorial for 9/11 is to continue doing what Americans do every day.  Do not allow the terrorists to claim whatever Pyrrhic victory they can through an annual disruption of American life.

Remember the day in private, mark it in public and continue to do what has made America the indispensable nation.