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.