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!

Born in the USA...

Meanwhile:

The Norwegian Nobel committee, which awards the peace prize, dismissed the criticism. "We always knew that there were too many events in the programme. Obama has to govern the US and we were told early on that he could not commit to all of them," 

Be careful what you wish for

Under the Bush yoke, goes the old story, Europe was disrespected by that crass cowboy and America's better angels hung their heads in shame. Then came the One:

“It’s very sad,” said Nobel Peace Center Director Bente Erichsen of the news that Obama would skip the peace center exhibit. Prize winners traditionally open the exhibitions about their work that accompany the Nobel festivities. “I totally understand why the Norwegian public is upset. If I could get a few minutes with the president, I’d say, ‘To walk through the exhibition wouldn’t take long, and I’m sure you would love the show. You have no idea what you are missing.’”
Meanwhile, the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet is reporting that the president has declined an invitation to lunch with King Harald V, an event every prize winner from the Dalai Lama to Al Gore has attended. (The newspaper’s headline: “Obama disses lunch with King Harald.”)
....
“The American president is acting like an elephant in a porcelain shop,” said Norwegian public-relations expert Rune Morck-Wergeland. “In Norwegian culture, it’s very important to keep an agreement. We’re religious about that, and Obama’s actions have been clumsy. You just don’t say no to an invitation from a European king. Maybe Obama’s advisers are not very educated about European culture, but he is coming off as rude, even if he doesn’t mean to.”
Indeed, judging by statements surrounding the president’s trip to Europe this week, it is beginning to appear as if the European love affair with Obama—which culminated in giving him the Nobel Prize—is over.

It would be tragic, if it weren't so funny.

The Inaugural Al Gore Poetry Prize

Here's a haiku for the Telegraph's Al Gore Poetry Prize:

Fake data buries
Science, settled like the snow
Outside my window.

Climate Change Denial

Palling around with journalists

To echo Mick, 'my guy' is Romney - competent, conservative, telegenic, tested, calm under fire But Palin reaches parts other products don't reach; she embodies the America I respect and she's the Cross that repels vampires. Palin's knockout act at the Gridiron Club was a revelation to the Beltway journos. Apart from the dynamism of her life force in contrast to the stasis of Obama, the hacks need Palin to spice up their product. Obama was the anointed One, but he's languished limp as arugula. Palin can take a punch or a hundred punches and rise up stronger. She is the one people want to read and write about, whether it's slander or praise. A prospective title fight between Palin and Obama could sell political journalism for the next 3 years. Carville gets it:


By the way Mary Matalin's Letters to my Daughters is excellent.

"Man made" is right

Anthropogenic Global Scamming - a simple model:

Hmmm...for 'honest' read 'culpably gullible and intellectually disgraced'.

Nigel and the dragon

What is the big theme binding these political phenomena of 2009?

Tea Parties
Palin's resurgence
Obama's shrinkage
The fightback against Anthropogenic Global Scamming
The electoral success of UKIP, UK Independence Party, principle policy-leave the EU.

The theme is that those, the governed, who haven't been bought off by Big Government and who still have folk memories of freedom and citizenship, are saying "Enough, too much."

In the UK we have many repellent, parasitic bosses, but probably the most repellent is the EU....one of the most successful scams in history. Talk about "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity." This EU squid wears a t-shirt that reads "we're sucking you dry for your own good." Imagine a supra-national constitution imposed on 27 nations by 27 governments without a single referendum. Oh, there was one in Ireland, but it gave the wrong answer, so there was re-run after suitable pressure points had been pushed. Into this swamp wades Nigel Farage, until recently the leader of UKIP. an elected MEP, to taunt the Vampire Squid in its chamber on the matter of the new EU President and Foreign Minister, 2 unelected nobodies:

Being Barack

You've just given a major speech at West Point. The military audience were stony-faced or asleep, quite unresponsive to the Commander-In-Chief's outline of a new doctrine of war - fight and run. Is that in Clausewitz? Sun Tzu maybe? Being called "the enemy camp" by Chris Matthews won't help the mood in West Point and beyond. What's next? Copenhagen. A friendly camp. You can jerk-off with the Greens and the bien pensant euro-trash bureaucrats who make up your most committed base. Too bad everyone's snickering behind their hands now that the words "Global Warming Scam" light up the sky like an aurora borealis. Good job it's long been re-branded "Climate Change". The dummies will never figure that out. Well maybe a few in Congress. Still your flacks can blame Australia and you can polish your halo. Then what? The Nobel Peace Prize. Ugh. You would have rejected it, but you got the call at 3am and it sounded good at the time. Every day there's new negative poll. Aren't these pollsters patriotic? They used to be. And why won't the Iranians make nice? Don't they see you're their friend? Who loves you, Barack? Hillary? Bill? Sarkozy? Brown? Zelaya? Jesse Jackson? The gays? The jews? The gay jews? Auntie Obama? Sure, she has a vote or two. Chavez loves you. And Castro. And Ghadaffy. Maybe the media will love you again if you send them money...tax breaks, ads, exemption from anti-trust. Sounds like a plan. Damn! Health care! Like that British climate scientist said in the email "Oh MAN! Will this crap never end?"

I'd feel sorry for you. Being Barack can be a bitch. Then I recall your agency in preventing a mandate to help babies who survive abortion. Then I don't feel sorry for you.

West Point - the enemy camp

For the avoidance of doubt:

Family guy

Who said this?

I loved President Bush. He is my No. 1 man in my life because he helped me when I really needed that help.

It was Auntie Obama, arrived in USA in 2000, ordered out in 2002, ordered deported in 2004, now awaiting a re-hearing of her already adjudicated plea for political asylum from Kenya while living in public housing in Boston. She used to visit state senator Obama who must have been studiedly incurious about how come she lives in America. I don't blame him really, but it gives me pause on his frame of mind for immigration law.

Who said this?

I am a Christian.

It was Grandma Obama, now in Mecca on the Hajj paid for by Saudi King Abdullah.

I like Obama's Auntie and Grandma. They seem feisty, decent people, albeit protective of the family's black sheep.

Obiter dicta

1. I was sent this Newt Gingrich quote today:

I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials.

2. From the Telegraph blogsite a comment from 'sunnysocal':

Wow, you guys are my new favorite News website. I haven’t heard or read a thing about this Manhattan Declaration. I was also reading the posts by James Delingpole regarding global warming. Time and time again I have to read the English news websites for information regarding things that the MSM in the US don’t want us to know about.

I do agree and the Telegraph blog home is a good pointer to a lot of good stuff. Matt Drudge is an avid Daily Mail linker and the Delingpole post referred to in the Telegraph is today's top left link on Drudgereport, tho it was linked on Anatreptic 3 days ago. Journalism school hardly exists in Britain. Go figure.

This weekend, the end of an affair

Who wrote this?

If we could see a Reduced Shakespeare summary of Obama’s presidency so far, it would read:

Dither, dither, speech. Foreign trip, bow, reassure. Seminar, summit. Shoot a jump shot with the guys, throw out the first pitch in mom jeans. Compromise, concede, close the deal. Dither, dither, water down, news conference.

Answer.

And who's less than thrilled?



And mordant satire, no less, as the Chinese premier adopts the position familiar to Saturday Night Live:



So, what is going on? Dowd, Matthews, Saturday Night Live are liberal curs, but they are curs even before they are liberal and they can tell when the wind has turned and they can turn with the wind:

Anthropogenic Global Scamming - today's crib sheet

Upton Sinclair:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Powerline:

A CEO is going to hire a new accountant and summons a series of candidates. He asks each applicant, "What is two plus two?" The first two candidates answer, "Four." They don't get the job. The third responds, "What do you want it to be?" He gets hired.

James Delingpole: The final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?

Popular Technology: 450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming.

9/11 - the director's cut

The perverted decision to try the illegal combatant, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, in a civil court in New York City is such an Obaman blunder that little further comment is necessary:

I speculate that the DoJ left-wing lawyers from Holder down foresaw an opportunity to put Bush and Cheney on trial using KSM as their tool. Waterboarding could be criticized for excluding evidence and Obaman respect for due process a la Harvard Law School contrasted with cowboy justice. But they didn't think it thru, did they? Bush and Cheney now shine thru as resolute, effective defenders of America, while the Obamans look like agenda-driven political mice, squeaking about DoJ protocols to justify the unjustifiable.

Bear in mind that most of the Obamans have no experience running anything, so decision-taking is something they make up on the fly. When the decision looks bad have Holder say he didn't consult Obama, just told him, then Obama say he told Holder to decide and add that he takes responsibility for everything when pressed. Wouldn't it be nice to say "It's above my pay grade" again?

Another day, another ludicrous decision. Meanwhile Obama's "very close to a decision" on Afghanistan - in or out? win or retreat? God help the poor grunts who have to implement this naif's decisions. God help us all who have this fraud-for-President deciding how to cope with a nuclear Iran.

Toxic asses

In the UK the socialist/opportunist Labour government has stunk up the country for the last 12 years and now smells of death itself. Even its apparatchiks in the media are sick of it. A General Election must be held by May 2010 and the Conservatives seem threatened only from the right by the anti-EU UK Independence Party and from the far left by the British National Party, a semi-fascist outfit with racist roots which taps into valid concerns about immigration, Islamism, multiculturalism and political correctness. Under such stress it's only natural for Gordon Brown to revert to his core instinct - envy. So the centre-piece of Labour's programme is...wait for it...a jihad against bankers' bonuses with overt threats to legislate to tear up existing contracts. This is self-evidently monstrous in a free society, but so now are other laws on stuff like 'hate-speech' and shutting down adoption agencies which refuse to collaborate with homosexual adoption.

Anyway let me use the bankers' bonus hook to hang up a concise statement of what just happened:

The financial debacle was due to the generation of toxic assets, presided over in the UK by those toxic asses - Chancellor Gordon Brown and Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The toxic assets were derivatives of mortgages. The mortgage bubble in America was generated by racist left-wing legislation and blackmail plus government mandated underpricing of risk via artificially cheap credit. The whole crap sandwich is wrapped in a depraved level of government debt which essentially funds the pensions of today's government workers and bribes Democratic and Labour voters with money borrowed from China to be repaid by future generations. It's like Saturn devouring his children. In the UK Saturn is Brown. In the US Saturn is Obama. The children are our children.

Lachrymose 'gay' Chicago liberals for Bush

..and Cheney! If appreciation of Bush, especially in contrast to Obama, becomes 'gay' liturgy, then the ground is moving. The comments here are as revealing as this post:

robert c Says:

November 11, 2009 at 9:03 am
Well stated guys. I am growing ever fonder of old W the longer Bean Pole and Ms. Bitchy occupy his old Pennsylvannia Ave. diggs. It was pretty disturbing to watch how the MSM and the uber liberal banshees would malign W every chance they got. Now to watch them disembowel themselves every time someone criticizes the latest zOmbie policy makes me quiver with laughter. GWB had the courage of his convictions. We may not have always agreed with everything he did, but here was a president who didn’t gauge his every move by opinion polls or party politics. He was unfairly blamed for many things not under his control. I lived in New Orleans during Katrina and know full well most of the inaction and stupidity that caused widespread heartache could definitvely be laid on the doorstep of Blanco and Nagin. ( two matching pieces of wet toast if there ever was a set ) W has been nothing but a class act especially since his retirement. I roared with approval over a recent article entitled “What if George Bush had done this”. OMG talk about hitting the ole nail squarely on its head. Made me want to glue a copy of the article onto closet case Anderson Cooper’s forehead and give him some real 360. Thank you Mr. President & Laura for the visit to Ft. Hood, for your caring, concern and constant nobility.

Reply
Barbara Says:

November 11, 2009 at 9:25 am
What a great article you have written. When Bush grabbed the bullhorn and made those comments at the WTO, with his arm around the fireman…it was a great moment.

The Fireman actually teared up too.

I had differences with Bush on somethings, and I believe our soldiers gave him much respect…something I doubt is happening now with Obama.

I truly believe Obama doesn’t like the military and you don’t see any emotion from him when he talks about them….the only emotion you see from him, is when he speaks to ACORN & SEIU!

I feel for those soldiers that have to fight under him!

Bush & Laura actually showed their compassion, without having cameras around all the time.

I join you in thanking them.

Reply
ssmith Says:

November 11, 2009 at 9:28 am
After loathing George Bush and Dick Cheney for so long, I am realising how wrong I was about this man, especially when compared to the America-loathing Marxist-in-chief in the WH now.
Same for Dick Cheney, couldn’t stand the man, now I realise he did everything he had to do to keep this country safe.

I cannot believe how the MSM misrepresents everything, I used to listen to them, watch them… here idiots like charlie gibson and george stenospous spout their opinions.. now, it has NO impact on my opinions of anything.
I saw this utter-bias reporting against Hillary and then against Sarah Palin. F U Brian williams and the rest of the MSM!! No one believes a word you say anymore!

Thank you to the Bushes for their caring, these are genuine Americans who love their country and the US military. God Bless them both.

Another comment:

It's a mystery

As Obama scrupulously suspends judgement over the possible motive of the Fort Hood mass murderer, another enigma, the DC sniper, John Allen Muhammad, was gently put to sleep last night. He died peacefully, "calm and stoic, defiant to the end." His motives are a mystery too:

Answers to why he and a teenage accomplice methodically hunted people going about their daily chores, why he chose his victims, including a middle schooler on his way to class, and how many there were went to the grave with him.

Maybe there's a clue in the drawings of Muhammad's pupil assassin:




Muhammad was a member of Nation of Islam, whose head, Minister Louis Farrakhan points out:

if it were in fact a Black-White hate thing, why would he shoot five persons of color--one an Indian and four Blacks and one a child?

Ok, irony aside, let's re-state the bleeding obvious:

1. A principle motive was "Jihad", Islamist war on infidels. His accomplice says so and there's ample evidence in Muhammad's history.
2. Most of the media are lying about it thru suppressio veri, partly from motives of avoiding a backlash against innocent muslims, partly as reflexive propaganda to support a "social justice" narrative about who is victim, who is oppressor.
3. The US government, whose first duty is the safety of America, is lying about it to avoid having to discriminate against a thought system that wants to overthrow Western, Christian, Enlightenment inspired society in favour of Islam. That was so with Bush as well as Obama.
4. Obama is a special case. Tho he is a conscious socialist, his affinity to Islam is less direct. He is acculturated to Islam, the son of a muslim, the stepson of a muslim, educated in an Islamic school, fiercely supported by American muslims, especially Louis Farrakhan. Furthermore Obama is a product of the Frankfurt/Alinsky/Gramsci school of re-modelling human society. Islam and the Left apparently are antithetical, but actually are natural allies embodied in Barack Hussein Obama. They have the same goal - to command speech, thought and family life; and the same enemy - us.

More Ralph Peters - "At some point you just need to knock off the BS":

"And I am ready to puke"

Muslim shouts 'Allahu Akbar', guns down 44 soldiers in Texas; President Obama says motive is uncertain:

We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.

White policeman arrests black Harvard professor on a rant: President Obama says:

I think it’s fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry.No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3 — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact.

These people are just wired differently from me

In making his concession speech, Democratic governor Jon Corzine was consoling his followers when he said, “My mother is probably the only one that’s happy tonight. She’s a Republican. She’s 93 years old so, we’re not going to worry too much about that.”

The line got a big laugh.

h/t Stephanie Guttman

Slapdash thoughts from London at 7am on Christie winning NJ

Thank God! Maybe Christie is wishywashy on policy, but Obama/Corzine is toast. I'll celebrate in NJ with friends and family in a couple of weeks. This will hasten the exodus from NY to NJ. Above all I want the state-dependent black cities in NJ to get their funding withdrawn. It simply pays them to be peons and underperform their whole lives in return for a tainted vote. By geography and talent NJ should be one of the most dynamic, attractive places in the world. Great beaches, lots of open space, family friendly towns, urbanity, international access, interesting weather but not too interesting. Instead NJ's been stuck with a vicious corruptocracy, keeping the middle-class on life support. Hope and change...we'll see. Christie's number 1 job should be to make stealing elections harder. Next de-fund government and attract investment. That means cutting taxes and getting a head start in the competition with the rest of the USA, especially the North-Eastern socialist states.

BTW Mick's quite right in his characterization of brainwashed attitudes to the National Health Service in the UK. This is no exaggeration:

In other western democracies like Canada and the UK, government-run health care is a very, very sacred cow, no matter how obviously dysfunctional the system is and no matter how many people have to die to keep every bureaucrat in their job.

I'd add that NJ's health care is pretty disfunctional too. The abstract answer is to get government out of health care. Result - plenty of liberal sob stories, personal responsibility, better health, richer people, voluntary charity.

Anyway down with thieves and liars and let me have men around me who are fat!

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look

CAESAR
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
ANTONY
Fear him not, Caesar; he's not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman and well given.
CAESAR
Would he were fatter!

CANDIDATUS CHRISTIE
At least man up and say I'm fat.

Make my day

We quite often see famous people in my part of London. I've snapped David Blaine, Mike Myers (Austin Powers), Cameron Diaz and others. One evening I left my apartment to be confronted by packed-up plain-clothes guarding the Clintons and Blairs who were dining across the street when the men were both in power. I'm usually blasé about celebrities unless it's Margaret Thatcher. I'm forever in mourning that I wasn't Shakespeare's contemporary and amanuensis. He lived, wrote and acted in these parts. But the news that Clint Eastwood was rumoured to be shooting in the area sent a thrill up my leg. He's been filming at Elephant and Castle, London, SE1, next to where I play football. I wasn't around but here's a couple of shots I found:

I wonder if Clint knows that he was shooting on the ground where Charlie Chaplin grew up. I have a lead that he'll be a couple of minutes from my apartment in a few days. If I can shoot him with my 300mm it will make my day! Woohoo!

New Jersey fashion

This takes a minute to download.

Englewood, NJ, is one of the most copacetic suburbs I know. If Christie beats Corzine in a couple of weeks then northern New Jersey may be flooded with boat people from NYC, fleeing Big Tax. The NJ coastguard will be rescuing raft people from the West River and returning them weeping to the West Side Highway where Bloomberg and Paterson will be waiting with greedy grins.

The guy in the striped shorts is a star, but Poncho Lady at 2.20 has a smile from Central Casting in the sky.

"Libtard" is a euphemism

The headline in Reuters is:

U.S. healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year

The story starts:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.

Ok, pass over the artificial, incestuous foundation of this specimen of government propaganda. Take it at face value; only community organizers and journalists would see waste elimination as an argument for new spending. Waste is what you eliminate, spending other people's money is what you have to justify. Duh.

The "study" omits how much of the waste arises from government healthcare now. So let's decide on a show of hands....Lots?..... I see a sea of hands. So the libtards argue that the answer to a chronically wasteful system is to giantize that system. "Retards", I don't think so. "Fuckwits", is the working term. In truth that's too kind. It's not only fuckwittedness that's driving Obama (tho that does apply to most of his voters), it's a wish to tear America down and re-build it in a way that elites and victim groups can boss productive individuals.

What was Sarkozy's mistake?

Good piece on Sarkozy's disillusionment with Obama:

"There is room for the two of us," he said, expecting his enthusiastic embrace of American values, which carries political risks at home, to pay dividends in Washington.

Let's do a quick check on how America's relations with the world have improved since Obama:

France - Ignored. Ignored! You may dislike a Frog, but you may not ignore him. Amour propre and all that; Obama should understand. Hear what the French say about US policy towards Iran:

singes mangeurs de fromage

UK - Special relationship no more. Churchill bust returned immediately. DVD of Hollywood movies doesn't work. British military heroism in Afghanistan counts the same as that of US military heroism in the Administration's reckoning. That may not be a good thing.

Canada - Stephen Harper, Uncle Sam needs you. Please invade.

Czech Republic, Poland - Small far away countries of which we know little. Call them at midnight to abandon land-based missile defence.

Flyover America - Far away country of which we know little.

Italy - Run by a bogeyman. Don't shake his hand.

Iranian democrats facing torture and murder- Don't meddle.

Honduran democrats - Meddle.

Israel - Yes, Israel. We need to talk about Israel.

Ok, I'm being flippant, but truth is flippanter than fiction. The flipped finger, the smirk, the absent handshakes, the body language, the insulting gifts...all the graceless details point the same way; the longer a country has been allied to the USA, the less the Obamans like that country.

But look on the bright side. The USA is much, much closer to Ghadaffy, Chavez, Castro, the 12th Imamists in Iran, the Sudanese terrorist government, the Nobel Peace Prize committee, the UN.

Reality is beyond satire. Americans who still support Obama because he's charming or because he's black or because he's not George Bush (who of course had excellent personal relations with Blair, Sarkozy, Berlusconi, Harper and America's traditional allies), or because he's improved America's standing in the world, those Americans don't need therapy, they need a metaphorical slap round the head. If history is a guide that's what they'll get, but it won't be so metaphorical.

As Obama dithers about Afghanistan let me cite a finer Hamlet:

It is not nor it will not come to good.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Superlatively bad:

-A narcissistic liar is President.
-The US military risk their lives under the command of a dithering political coward who empathizes with America's enemies.
-Corrupt elitists command the levers of power and can gerrymander elections, media coverage and corporate behaviour.


Superlatively good:

-The toxic nature of liberalism is apparent.
-What is left of America's political immune system is at action stations.
-Polls are trending right.
-Obama's fairy dust has turned into buffoon dust. He's less feared than ridiculed.
-This is fun.

Would you risk your life on the say-so of this Commander-In-Chief?

Gates:

It's just a matter now of getting the time with the president when we can sort through these options and then tee them up for him to make a decision

Weakness is provocative

The USA is represented by Obama and Clinton, the weakest, most appeasing American politicians in my lifetime. They betray America's allies, humiliate America to Russia and in return:

Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.”

What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.”

Make them pay for breathing

Ryanair is the most successful airline in the world. Here's why:

Wag The Dog

I'll keep this short. Maybe the crescendo of failures by Obama, topped by this very public humiliation by the IOC, calls for a script rewrite if he wants to avoid being a joke figure for the rest of his presidency. The obvious plot twist is to hit Iran. I don't think Obama has the guts to order the the USAF into battle alone, but he'd let Israel take most of the risk and try to claim some glory from a logistical support role for the USA.

Chicago is out!? Chicago is out!?

I'll refrain from joyful comment except for this I just read:

Obama thinks America sucks, and now the IOC agrees with him.

Too good to check

Tehran, 22 Sep 2009:

Iran's sole Simorgh AWACS aircraft was lost during a military parade Sept. 22, one of two Iranian military aircraft that crashed in Tehran while participating in a display to mark the anniversary of the start of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

The Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force operated a single Simorgh, a former Iraqi Air Force Adnan. The Adnan AWACS was in turn a modification of a Soviet-built Ilyushin Il-76 transport.
The Simorgh collided with one of the Air Force's Northrop F-5E Tiger II fighters over the area of the Imam Khomeyni Shrine, southern Tehran.

As well as the poetry of the Iranian airforce taking a nosedive onto Ayatollah Khomeini's mausoleum, it's noteworthy that Israel is up against 34 year old fighter planes, unless, that is, Obama orders the USAF to intercept Israeli bombers en route to Iran. I wouldn't put it past him. If you were Netanyahu, how much notice would you give the Obamans of an impending strike on Iranian nukes?

Obaman exceptionalism

I've long been disgusted by everything on Planet Obama, but the videos of Acorn officers conspiring to abet the rape of children made me sit up. When you pile it up... the Black Panthers, Rev Wright, Acorn running the Census, preventing the treatment of babies that survive abortion, palling with terrorists, no birth certificate, few primary source documents, Van Jones, Auntie Obama, Charlie Rangel, donations from 'A.Hitler', pervasive tax evasion, pervasive racism, und und und...I don't conclude that this government is the winner in a culture war.

I conclude that it's a criminal racket.

Script rewrite

Rumours of conservatism's death have been exaggerated

Also of The New York Times hardback, non-fiction bestseller list, numbers 1,3,4,5,7 are by conservatives. There are no liberal books in the top 15.  Glenn Beck is top of the paperback list. 

H/t Hotair.

I, "Birther"

'Birther' is the name given to someone who wants Presidential candidates to show that they are 'natural born citizens' as required under the Constitution. The name is meant to carry the connotation of 'Truther', someone who understands that the Truth about 9/11 is that Bush and Cheney bombed the Pentagon. In the same way "Climate Change Denier" carries a bad smell across from "Holocaust Denier."

Conservative opinion formers like NRO, Powerline, John Hawkins have reflexively dissociated themselves from the audacious idea that Obama is not a natural born citizen, but the tenor of rational commentary by the readers of these articles is that something smells bad. Perhaps the readers feel less peer pressure on this charged subject.

Now the esteemed Andrew McCarthy has revised his stance in a must-read article, "Suborned in the USA." The point of McCarthy's article is that Obama is acting like he's ineligible.

He is shown to have lied materially in his autobiography and to have produced a certification of live birth which means nothing.

He is asked to permit Hawaii to release a routine document often required for business throughout US life in order to show that he is a legitimate President under the Constitution - the certificate of live birth.

In McCain's case there was full discovery and Congressional hearings.

He spends serious money to avoid doing that and to avoid producing other elementary primary biographical documents. It seems he's covering something up, tho not necessarily his place of birth.

There's an anxiety to corral the issue as a tin-foil hat or racist fantasy - ie to make it unrespectable to require that the President show his birth certificate. Bill Maher in the LA Times:

it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people, and it is to them I offer this deal: I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma.

For this purpose it doesn't matter what Obama's politics are and I'd say the same were it Romney or Palin or Ron Paul. There's an incipient move in Congress to require this elementary qualifying documentation for future candidates. This matters for the 2012 election as well as the deeper Constitutional principle.

Hope, change, race - all irrelevant.

UPDATE: see also.

Down from slavery

The parallel lives of 2 mixed race Americans, Barack Obama and Booker T. Washington, show how degraded has become the once honourable cause of racial equality. President Obama be-clowned himself over the arrest of his Irish-Yoruba friend, Harvard professor "Skip" Gates, "the nation's most famous black scholar", "public intellectual".

Booker T. wrote 100 years ago:

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

Update h/t Powerline: Cambridge Police Profiling Still A Grim Reality for Harvard Faculty Assholes

Because it pays

Spread that wealth around:

"Mr Brown was the first black man ever to stand for Mayor of Alligator and it took Mr Obama’s election to galvanise him into action....After 30 years, I didn’t think an African-American would be able to be mayor. I didn’t think the position was open to me. When he won, I decided that I knew the changes that needed to be made here and I thought that I could make those changes.
"If we don’t look after our youth, what do we have? The population is dying out and I want more people here. I want better living conditions.
I just want the people to be comfortable. Small towns like this depend on government funding and that’s what we’re seeking.
"I mingle with a lot of the young kids here in the community because if you deal with the people and their problems you understand more what’s going on if you’re out with them.”
The town’s facilities were substandard, he said, gesturing towards the humble town hall, where a “No Loitering” sign is nailed next to the door. “There isn’t even a phone or a fax machine in there. How can we communicate with the outside world and ask for things?"

European anti-Americanism in the Age of Obama

Some thoughts on a Powerline post:

Writing as a Briton with American children who have both Jewish and 'aryan' German antecedents, I think that anti-Americanism is strongest in Germany (looking outside America, that is) and motivated by inferiority complex and unexpiated shame. The main attraction of Obama is that he is weakening America and apologizing for America's sheer rottenness, as he sees it. That brings America much closer to Germany. America's alleged war-crimes are totemic to Germans for the same reason. The mood music from Obama on the moral equivalence of Israel to the Palestinians is music to Teutons too.

Britons (I prefer that to 'Brits' which rhymes with 'shits') don't have a complex about this stuff. Once there may have been a slight inferiority complex, but we solved that when all we snaggle-toothed, snaggle-brained charmers took your most beautiful women. The BBC is a problem. It has it's own vast, childish, depraved agenda and over the decades that has infected the British middle-class.....but we have a robust press compared to America and even The Guardian is more heterogeneous than the New York Times. Moreover there's just too much mingling between the USA and the UK for false stereotypes to fool most of the people most of the time unless those caricatures pervade the US media as with Bush and Palin. The mother lode of anti-Americanism is to be found in America.

An example of the mingling is British accents on American ads when there's no British association. It's as tho British accents, even regional British accents, were just regional American accents. We're starting to speak the same sports language too as soccer sweeps America (I know, I know, it's hardly on tv, but in Houston, NYC and NJ where I've lived it's by far the most played sport). If the USA were playing England today, the USA would be favourite to win.

I also have high hopes for the reported friendship between our Queen and your First Lady. Despite Mrs Obama's affirmative action background, life changes people and the simple friendship of an older and younger mother can be a mighty force in this naughty world. Obama and Prince Philip next?

The French, I detect, are actually pro-American, but even more strongly pro-French and need to be assured of their own importance. Obama really should have dined with the Sarkozys at the top of the Eiffel Tower. There's never been a bigger bang for a diplomatic buck than that chance to butter up the President of France and Obama frivolously threw it away. Quel dommage!

We could take it country by country....Russia, India....but the rule is that most elites want a weaker America in order to raise their own self-esteem. Obama's really effective at that, so he's the man. As America switches from hyper-power to has-been and aborts and apologizes and borrows it's way out of history, so the anti-Americanism will become disdain and mockery. But Osama is right..men back the strong horse and Islam looks like that. My guess is that the Islamic power will not be Middle Eastern, but will be France or Germany or Russia. They won't be apologizing.

Palin post-resignation

Sarah Palin generates more emotion than any American politician. That's because it's hard to invent a character more threatening to modern liberals and their faux-conservative pets like Colin Powell. She's authentic, they're cosmetic; she's fertile, they're sterile; she's brave, they have bravado; she smiles, they sneer; she hunts, they snare; she has natural intelligence, they have a law degree; she believes in God, they believe in Obama. Look at her experience - from nothing to mayor to governor to vp nominee; mother of a soldier, mother of an unwed mother, mother of a Down's baby, grandmother, beauty queen, hoopster, hunter, journalist, wife, businesswoman, icon. She overshadows Obama even when he's meeting Putin - ok I'll sling in the obvious on auto-pilot: suppose Palin had said "President Putin".

The woman is a rebuke to everything that modern liberals cherish and they know it and loath it as they loath the truth about themselves. Their religion is growth through gratification and approval; she embodies duty, service and parental love; she's a follower of Christ, damn it. She believes that stuff. She has a servant's heart.

The most telling meme against her isn't that she's a quitter. Her whole life refutes that. It's her supposed inadequacy in the politics of the wider world. Well her understanding of economics is as complete as it needs to be:

"President Obama is growing government outrageously, and it's immoral and it's uneconomic, his plan that he tries to sell America. His plan to "put America on the right track" economically, incurring the debt that our nation is incurring, trillions of dollars that we're passing on to our kids, expecting them to pay off for us, is immoral and doesn't even make economic sense."

The rest is detail. Apart from getting elected Obama has shown himself mega-wrong about strategy, tactics and morality in everything he's touched - a clown as vp, a tax evader running tax, a racialist to the Supreme Court, even-handedness between murderers and democrats in Iran, meddling in Honduras, palling around with Chavez, equivocating between Israel and the demonic gangsters who ruin the Palestinians, showing weakness to Russia, undermining allies...it's endless. Obama is the worst President, but may be necessary to provoke America to throw off its sickness. Meanwhile Europe and Britain are turning right.

Let us now praise famous men

The be-medalled one on the right has never seen combat. The lapel-pinned one on the left, saluting like a pro, has never been in the military, but he has been a community organizer and commander-in-chief. He has views on lapel pins like the one he's wearing today at the D-Day celebrations:

Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security. I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest.

These folk are phonies of course, but there was one real person who wasn't invited, someone who did serve in WWII, Queen Elizabeth II. She wasn't invited because Sarkozy wanted the D-Day anniversary to be a Sarkozy-Obama event and Brown didn't want to be upstaged. Prince Charles was a last minute insertion as the British public became scandalized. This phoney-fest was memorable however. British veterans booed Gordon Brown:

The veterans booed him because it is thought that Downing Street encouraged Sarkozy to not invite the Queen so that he could get another photo-op with Obama. The Obama obsession seems evidenced by the Prime Mentalist’s renaming of ‘Omaha beach’ to ‘Obama beach'

Gordon Brown is a dead man walking in British politics and it's possible that today will be the last straw for the cowardly, callow, careerists who have been running my country for the last 12 years, so that they finally defenestrate him.

Scatalogical humour

Click on London-SE1 for a tableau in front of Tower Bridge and St Paul's:

Lies,damned lies,statistics and Hope and Change

In the last few days the yield on US government debt has risen dramatically. Lenders are reluctant. Today the decline in the value of the dollar accelerates as gold, oil and Sterling surge up. The US has 4-8-12 more years of Harvard Law School economics to endure, whereas the UK government will be replaced within a year by the Conservatives. So while the credit agencies put the UK on credit watch with negative implications but re-affirm the US as triple-A, the markets realize that in the UK there's hope for change whereas in the US there's Hope and Change. Some difference.

I've queried America's credit worthiness for a while, eg "A trillion here, a trillion there..." , but I'm not as polite as the Chinese:

Another global financial crisis triggered by a loss of confidence in the dollar may be inevitable unless the U.S. saves more, said Yu Yongding, a former Chinese central bank adviser.

It’s “very natural” for the world to be concerned about the U.S. government’s spending and planned record fiscal deficit, Yu said in e-mailed comments yesterday relating to a visit to Beijing by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The Obama administration aims to reduce the fiscal deficit to “roughly” 3 percent of gross domestic product from a projected 12.9 percent this year, Geithner reaffirmed today. The treasury secretary added that China’s investments in U.S. financial assets are very safe, and that the Obama administration is committed to a strong dollar.

It may be helpful if “Geithner can show us some arithmetic,” said Yu. “We need to know how the U.S. government can achieve this objective.”

The deficit is projected to reach $1.75 trillion in the year ending Sept. 30 from last year’s $455 billion shortfall, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

By happy chance today GM files for bankruptcy, but will be kept afloat with money borrowed from China to be repaid by our children to the advantage of the UAW and the disadvantage of Americans who work for Ford, Honda, Toyota.

Black is white

Would Obama have been ok with this from Hillary Clinton?

"I would hope that a wise Latina white woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white mixed race male who hasn't lived that life."

No.

Stack that with Sotomayor's perfunctory denial of equality under the law to whites in Ricci v. DeStefano and her tittering affirmation that policy is made in Appeal Courts and her leadership role in La Raza (The Race) and it seems that she's either a racist, a chauvinist or a pc hack or all of the above. Everyone knows that there's no way a conservative could overcome such a record to be appointed to The Supreme Court and no Senator who puts country before politics should approve this awful nomination.

Ironically liberals have their doubts too since no-one knows her view on Roe v. Wade. As a betting man I'm happy to take long odds against this nomination succeeding. Note that The Supreme Court will probably rule on Ricci v. Destefano before Senate hearings are complete. Whatever the ruling, it will include excoriating commentary upon the injustice of Sotomayor's judgement from judges who believe in equality before the law. Just one memorable phrase in that commentary can sink the nomination of this casual racist. Chief Justice Roberts was definitive in 2007:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race

I do have mixed feelings since something tells me that Sotomayor, once appointed, might decide that Roe v. Wade was a mistake. She is Catholic after all and would make 6 Roman Candles out of the 9. But I nominate another Puerto Rican from the South Bronx, Judge José Cabranes, who wrote of Sotomayor's judgement in Ricci:

This per curiam opinion adopted in toto the reasoning of the District Court, without further elaboration or substantive comment, and thereby converted a lengthy, unpublished district court opinion, grappling with significant constitutional and statutory claims of first impression, into the law of this Circuit. It did so, moreover, in an opinion that lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal. Indeed, the opinion contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at he core of this case, and a casual reader of the opinion could be excused for wondering whether a learning disability played at least as much a role in this case as the alleged racial discrimination. This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.

Altogether now sing "Fuhgeddaboudit, he ain't a broad." Well, this is my judgement:

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of gender is to stop discriminating on the basis of gender

Jonathan Miller

Here's the pitch: English intellectual speaks nearly non-stop for half an hour - 15 minutes on Shakespeare, 15 minutes on stammering, also waves his arms. Lap it up:

I threw in the last clip as an afterthought. In it Miller, a famous atheist, draws from Dudley Moore a model of deep Intelligent Design.

Worse than a crime, a blunder

Obama's Press Secretary tweaks the tail of a big bad wolf he thinks has the measure of:

“You're not going to find very many of these newspapers and truth within 25 words of each other,” Gibbs continued.

The British Press is more adept at telling truth to power than the lapdogs whom he's addressing. The particular story denied by Gibbs has a named source with impressive credentials. Moreover it's carefully written. It may not be true, I hope it isn't, but the reporting looks responsible compared to plenty in the NYT or the W.Post or the LA Times, regular sources of plagiarism, unsourced half-truths and outright lies. The British Press is more streetwise, more diverse, more hungry, more competitive AND it has a sense of humour. When stories are made up, the rest of the pack will tear into the fabrication and editors get fired - Piers Morgan memorably so.

Gibbs didn't need to set this up. The UK Press now has a vested interest in contrasting the truth of their stories with the truth of his. He will lose.

UPDATE - from The Daily Telegraph's response:

Can you imagine Gibbs making these remarks about The New York Times or The Washington Post, or NBC, ABC or CBS? This would never happen. The British press, especially the Telegraph, has been singled out because they frequently publish articles critical of the Obama administration and are not afraid to take on the status quo in Washington. Increasingly, millions of Americans are turning to online UK news websites for cutting edge reports on American politics and U.S. foreign policy that the mainstream media refuses to cover in the States, especially if it is unflattering to the Obama White House.

Robert Gibbs' completely unwarranted rant against the British press is an absolute disgrace, and the President should disown his views. An unreserved apology by Gibbs is also in order.

For all its talk of "raising America's standing" in the world after the Bush years, the Obama administration is doing a spectacularly bad job of reaching out to its allies. Unfortunately this is the new face of America's public diplomacy, which will only serve to alienate public opinion across the Atlantic. Congratulations Gibbs - you've just made an enemy out of the entire British media, quite an achievement for the man in charge of selling the President's message.

"The entire British media" is hyperbole only if you think of the BBC as British.