Say what?!

Your tax dollars at work on NPR:

The finger

The Twin Towers (1368ft) were once the tallest buildings. Islamic terrorists destroyed them early in this decade. Today, near the decade's end, the Burj Dubai (2716ft) is opened. It's height equals the Twin Towers combined. The symbolism of height and global status is obvious, but unremarked in the West.  


Burj Dubai is funded by high oil prices, paid by the West to the Arabs. Oil prices are high because Western governments have prevented domestic exploration and production. So there is less oil, more dependence on our enemies and more pollution in the world. The only practical response has been expansion of bio-fuel production at taxpayer expense; hence food shortages because of misallocated land. It's nice that liberals get to feel virtuous tho. Would that self-approval were an alternative energy source.

Burj Dubai, a finger in the sky.

Film of the year, of 2009

Man of the year 2009

For repaying insult with silence:

America, year zero

Obama reviews 2009:

Nobel Peace Prize - I feel very humble.

Copenhagen Global Warming - social democratic police clubbed eco-fascists in a freezing blizzard. How to frame that? Try 'China dazzled by America's first black President.'

Copenhagen Olympics - I was selling Chicago bull.

Afghanistan - the US military now has a clearly defined objective: do not embarrass me. The Taleban now has a clearly defined objective: wait for 18 months.

War on Terror - re-branded as 'lawsuits against mysteriously motivated mass murderers'. Nice alliteration. Somebody tell the Fort Hood guy and the underpants guy and KSM and Dick Cheney.

Israel - 4 per cent of Israelis think I'm on their side, but the religion of American Jews is Liberalism, so nuts to you, Netanyahu.

The Poles - I cancelled missile defence in Poland and Putin agreed to spend more on missile offence. We save, they spend. That's called 'finesse' in Harvard.

The Polls - things change... like voting registers, boundaries, subsidies to the MSM, votes for aliens, votes for convicts, votes for Mickey Mouse.

The Pols - sing it with gusto: "They can all be bought, tralala."

Speaking of Health Care - we bribed our own side's senators with money borrowed from China to be re-paid by our children so that they can buy compulsory health insurance or go to jail like it says in a penumbra to the Constitution. Yes we can.

TARP - Bush did it. Wait, it kindasorta looks as tho it worked. I did it.

The Economy - fuzzy math fixes all.

Iran - I ran.

Bah! Humbug! for buddhists

This has been a low, dishonest year in American politics. To Nile Gardiner's neat ranking of Obama's 10 worst foreign policy blunders, I'd add this shining turd of appeasement - cancelling his meeting with the Dalai Lama 'to keep China happy'.

Why? 10 reasons:

1. Appeasement doesn't work.
2. Weakness is provocative.
3. DL has the Congressional Gold Medal, America's highest civilian award.
4. In 2008 candidate Obama told President Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony to protest China's repression in Tibet.
5. So did Hillary Clinton, the current SecState.
6. Nine other Presidents met the DL.
7. Tibetan patriots in Chinese jails are betrayed.
8. Iran's tyrants are emboldened and Iran's dissidents weakened.
9. It's a disgrace to America.
10 The DL has the Nobel Peace Prize.


When I was researching for a little talk about Sherpas which I gave this afternoon to my daughter's 3rd grade class in NJ, I came across this 1950's shot of the DL (on the right) with Mao before the 1959 clamp down and the DL's flight from Tibet.

'Arbeit macht frei'

The sign at the entrance to Auschwitz has been stolen. I took these photos of the bars of a cell window in the punishment block, almost the last sight of many, and of Israeli students leaving through the entrance.

Prisoners in Auschwitz ridiculed the German cynicism of the slogan by saying Arbeit Macht Frei durch den Schornstein (Work brings freedom through the chimney).

Negotiating master class

"Look, I know we owe you $2 trillion dollars, but we need another couple of t and here's the hit I need you to take on Global Warming. The world is watching and I need to leave now to beat the blizzard in Washington. Do our DVD's work in China? Oh, you make them, great. Well contact my office for a box set of my speeches. Sovereignty is so 20th century, don't you agree?"

Wen's loss of face was rewarded by face-time with a flunky:

The day's most remarkable feature was a direct and unprecedented personal clash between the US President, Barack Obama, and the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, in which Mr Wen took deep offence at Mr Obama's insistence – in public – that the Chinese should allow their promised cuts in greenhouse gases to be internationally verified. When the President, in an unyielding speech, said that without international verification "any agreement would be empty words on a page", that was too much for Mr Wen. He left the conference in Copenhagen's Bella Centre, returned to his hotel in the city, and responded with a direct snub of his own – he sent low-level delegates to take his place in the talks.

Popcorn time

Normally I skip the turgid prose, turgid minds, turgid souls and turgid politics of liberal websites like Huffpo and Kos. There's a Newspeak dishonesty about them too which soils by association - "Abortion is a woman's right to choose"; AGW sceptics are "Climate Change deniers". They usually argue in bad faith and state what they want to be true as tho it were true - dull, dirty stuff that stinks up public discourse. But when liberals start knifing each other it can be entertaining:

Pour some more butter on the popcorn . . .

Liberal disillusion with Obama is seeping in and the contrast with the Tea-Parties' authenticity and the life force of Sarah Palin is painful. Imagine Palin were an insurgent liberal facing a cold fish conservative president. HuffKos would be punching the sky with joy. But the left is stuck with a coool President, but cool as in 'frigid', and stuck with cadaverous leaders in Reid and Pelosi. Reid looks and stoops like an undertaker. Pelosi can do "Night of the Living Dead" without make-up. Palin oozes energy, health, fertility and the future. Who ya gonna vote for? Superwoman or Cool Stiff and the Zombies? Couple of clips:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

But it ain't my soothsaying:

Obama, the hero of Chicago's Round 1 elimination from the Olympics on his last visit to Copenhagen, will jet in as a deus ex machina. We may confidently expect his flight to be diverted by blizzards.

Guess what:

World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”.......Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century

UPDATE, FURTHER TRAVEL ADVISORY FOR THE PRESIDENT:

Washington Snowstorm May Snarl Weekend Holiday Shopping, Travel

Chilly is it? Oh the humanity!

There is a god and he has a sense of humour. As the Cold, the Bad and the Ugly riot outside the Copenhagen Global Warming summit, some vignettes:

- Danish police are merrily clubbing the eco-socialist mob, probably grateful for some action to ward off the chill and snow.
- Gordon Brown is trapped at the conference centre by the protestors.
- Happy-clappy Warmist enviro-journalists are freezing to death in the queues to get in out of the cold.
- The Global Scamming Association of backward African kleptocracies has almost given up posturing for "Climate Justice" in the form of squillions of Western taxpayers' money as reparations for, well, everything. Their walkouts are just pissing everyone off.
- The global murmuring against the whoring of science grows louder like a train bearing down on a car stuck on a railroad crossing. The Warmist nomenklatura are in that car, probably a stretch limo.
- And Obama, the hero of Chicago's Round 1 elimination from the Olympics on his last visit to Copenhagen, will jet in as a deus ex machina. We may confidently expect his flight to be diverted by blizzards.

This is fast becoming Obama's role on the world stage: managing disappointment.

What a hoot!