Get Real, Mec!

What world are we in when French leaders give lessons (correct ones) to America's president?! (Dieu merci Nicolas Sarkozy beat Ségolène Royal…)

At the United Nations, Nicolas Sarkozy tells Obama to get real (merci à Instapundit) regarding nuclear weapons and proliferation…

See the cover of Canada's National Post…

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

Outstanding French Documentary on World War II

French TV has aired an outstanding documentary on World War II (the only problem — at least to some — being that the images have been colorized).

In Apocalypse — La 2e guerre mondiale, unlike other modern documentaries (American or foreign), we get a sense of the horror of the fighting and death tolls on the Pacific islands that led to the atomic bombs and Stalin is not whitewashed (or not as much as usual); we learn notably that "after liberating Birkenau, Stalin kept it open for his own purposes." (Biggest regret: Patton does not get much airtime; also, some France 2 suit seems to have omitted any Yanks in the trailer below…)

See the six 52-minute-long episodes if you can catch 'em…

Apocalypse, la 2e Guerre Mondiale
envoyé par sunnysideofthedoc. - Regardez plus de courts métrages.

“Julia Child’s cuisine is academic and bourgeois”: French food experts are divided about Ms. Child and her cooking

"Julia Child may have been America’s best-known 'French chef'," writes Maïa de la Baume, "but here in Paris few know her fabled cookbooks, let alone her name."

…French food experts are divided about Ms. Child and her cooking. Some say she caricatured French cuisine in her book and cooking show, making it seem too heavy and formal. Others believe she demystified it and see her as a role model in France, where cooking shows are rare and cuisine is not necessarily viewed as something anyone can interpret.

“Julia Child’s cuisine is academic and bourgeois,” said Julie Andrieu, a television personality and cookbook author. “It shows that in America, the cliché of beef, baguette and canard farci remains.”

…Ms. Andrieu, the cookbook author, said that despite Ms. Child’s clichéd recipes, her style could be defined as a “combination of scientific and empirical virtues” that helped explain why Americans wrote better cookbooks than the French.

“The French think that they are natural-born cooks; they prepare a dish off the top of their heads, without testing it,” she said. “In France, we rush over explanations.”

After watching “Julie & Julia,” Ms. Andrieu said, she felt compelled to go home and make boeuf bourguignon according to Ms. Child’s recipe. “I cut the flour in half, and it turned out to be the best I had ever made,” she said.

Mr. Epié even thinks that Ms. Child’s story should encourage the French to discuss their cuisine in a more democratic way.

Call in an Airstrike

Zapatero’s revolutionary paradise is a shambles.

According to the estimates of R. R. de Acuña & Asociados - as outlined in the Expansion article - there are currently 1.67 millon flats and houses on the market and looking for a buyer in Spain. To this number need to be added the 327,350 properties under construction but still unfinished, together with the 1.098 millon for which planning permision has been granted and which now have two years - by law - to be completed. No half measures here. Whatsmore, the 1.098 million with planning permission have already been allocated a credit line of 52.947 billion euros by the Spanish banking sector.

On the bright side, the migrant workers might actually find decent housing. You remember them. They’re the people in Spain who show up to work sober.

Firstly the estimate of 25% unemployment by the end of next year contained in the report may well be on the low side, especially if the Spanish government is running out of funding for the stimulus programmes. Spanish INEM employment department officials have already leaked estimates that if the Plan E type projects are not renewed, then we could see something like 700,000 additional unemployed in October and November of this year alone. If these warnings turn out to be realistic then my feeling is that we will hit 25% unemployment around Easter, and then start heading up towards 30%. We should break through the 30% level around the turn of 2010/11 or by the spring of 2011

See? Socialism WORKS!

That whole rule of law thing

It can be tricky.

Two litigants come before the judge, present evidence, argue the law, plead their case, and judges rule. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose:

Poland and Estonia have won a court challenge to European Commission attempts to rein in their carbon emissions, a move that could threaten the European Union's flagship mechanism for combatting climate change.

The European Court of First Instance on Wednesday backed complaints from the two eastern EU member states, saying that the commission had "exceeded the limits of its power" when it rejected their national carbon emission reduction plans.

Justice is never perfect. Especially when one side can self-adjudicate if they don't like the verdict (forget about letting the judges issue the stays until the appeals process is over, we have agenda-foisting to do):

Despite a court victory over the European Commission, Poland and Estonia cannot issue additional carbon permits, the EU executive has said.

The European Court of First Instance on Wednesday backed complaints from the two eastern EU member states, saying that the commission had "exceeded the limits of its power" when it rejected their national carbon emission reduction plans.

The commission does not believe there will be much change to the distribution of allowances.

On Thursday, EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas said that as a result of the court's ruling, the commission would now have to reconsider its decisions on the two countries' emissions strategies, but that the two countries should wait until it did so.

"Ahead of these decisions, those countries are not allowed to issue any additional allowances beyond those created in the E.U. ETS registry system," he said in a statement.

So much for the spirit of the law in which two parties place themselves before the impartial bar of justice and ask the judge to decide. How do we know the fix is in? Fortunately, a member of the gadfly/hangers-on community spills the beans:

Sanjeev Kumar, the emissions trading scheme co-ordinator for conservation group WWF told EUobserver: "I've never seen a ruling as direct and aggressive."

"But at the same time in the end it's a lot of fuss about nothing. The ruling only applies to phase two of the ETS [until 2012], after which allocation is centralised."

Translation: Slow walk the appeals process and drag it out until 2012 when we are calling the shots fully. Small member states? Screw 'em.

Ireland, are you paying attention?

That FREE Healthcare

Weekend praise: the Dirndl

From a strictly cultural point-of-view, of course....

How does the U.S. say no nowadays to Russia on a major military transfer when the administration does not want to consider Russia a strategic threat?

When Russia issues a reminder that it wants to buy an advanced, helicopter-carrying warship from France that’s built for amphibious assaults — hello all you folks along the Black, Baltic and Caspian Seas — then it’s pressing deeper its own reset button on altered relations with the United States and NATO.

That is how John Vinocur starts his (aptly-entitled) article, Russia Tries to Control the Reset Button.

The Americans can insist that scrapping plans for a ground-based missile shield on Moscow’s borders is all about Iran and not Russia, and that the Obama administration has traded away nothing to the Russians in the process.

But the Kremlin has made clear its will to extend what it considers a triumph. It’s talking up a plan that Russia sees as containing an alliance-splitting downside for the United States whichever way it turns.

The latest gambit is the warship purchase bid. Trumpeted by Russia three times over the last month — think Moscow wants to grab Europe’s attention? — and confirmed by the French Defense Ministry, the Russian proposal involves buying a 21,300-ton Mistral class helicopter carrier and eventual joint production of four or five more.

A response of silence over the long term from the American side could look like another cave-in to Russia in the minds of the European and Central Asian allies who consider Moscow to have vetoed the ground-based missile defense system.

Even more problematically, should a deal for the helicopter carriers materialize, it would open the door — at least in the view of an American specialist on international arms transactions — for European allies to sell arms to China.

That’s a horrific idea for the American military, yet it remains a suspended project on a low flame inside the European Union. Indeed, China arms sales continue to have the open backing of President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But how does the United States say no nowadays to Russia (and France, if it agrees to build the ship and share the technology) on a major military transfer when the administration does not want to consider Russia a strategic threat?

…Russia, though, is exulting in a process in which its influence appears to be growing while American policy setbacks wobble from diminished control over events in Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan to taunting Russian arms sales to Venezuela.

In relation to the ship purchase talks — against the background of Russia’s invasion of Georgia last year and its virtual annexation of two Georgian provinces — the Russian Navy’s commander in chief, Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky, rhapsodized over how he could have done the Georgia job in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours if he had had the French warship.

Caption Call - Bellissimo Edition

Air France Pilot to French Air Traffic Controllers: "Vous ne foutez rien! … Connards! Vous êtes des enfoirés, vous travaillez comme des cons!"

While the French are busy praising Barack Obama and his efforts to make government in America as intrusive as it is in France, and as present as France's much-ballyhooed service public, Fabrice Amedeo has a report in Le Figaro (merci à Duncan Hill) saying the France's air traffic controllers (i.e., the French government's air traffic controllers) are basically irresponsible.

Plusieurs incidents liés à un sous-effectif en tour de contrôle ont ainsi été rapportés par les pilotes d'Air France. L'un d'entre eux, contacté par Le Figaro, raconte être passé près de la catastrophe au-dessus de Paris. «C'était un Airbus A 300 de la Kenyan Airlines dont le système anticollision ne marchait pas, rapporte le pilote. C'est le nôtre qui a assuré la manœuvre : nous avons plongé à 4 000 pieds par minute.» À cette vitesse de descente, l'avion est à une minute de l'impact au sol. «Du cockpit, j'ai entendu l'Airbus me passer juste au-dessus, explique le pilote. Une fois posé, le contrôle me donne l'autorisation de traverser la piste. J'aperçois alors en visu un avion au décollage et je m'arrête net. En quelques minutes, j'ai vécu deux risques d'accidents majeurs.»

Why might this be? Well, it has to do with people who do not want to work more or taking off to have and enjoy their free time, not least female controllers who somehow seem to be absent during vacation time and when school starts again.

And why don't the people responsible do anything? "Nous restons très en retrait sur ce dossier car nous craignons des représailles telles qu'une grève" says one airport director — anonymously.

We also learn that in Paris, several catastrophes have been avoided only in the nick of time, and that one pilot — upon learning that only two runways were open at aéroport Charles de Gaulle (one of th biggest airports in Europe) — sputtered, "You're useless!" in reply to a controller saying, "I don't give a damn." The pilot continues: "You're a**holes, you work like jerks" (which makes the air traffic controllers laugh and give lectures in politeness)…

In addition, a pilots' union representative, Bruno Sinatti, says he is not satisfied with the steps that Air France took for its fleet's safety after the crash of a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris four months ago…

The New State Religion Needs its’ Saints

If you think I’m exaggerating in calling the directionless pap that they call global environmentalism a state religion, why then do they want to rig up a druidic anthropomorphic idol to worship?

The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Rev. Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, on Saturday declared Bolivian President Evo Morales as “World Hero of Mother Earth” in a ceremony at the presidential palace in this capital.

With a medal and a parchment scroll, the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization named Morales “the maximum exponent and paradigm of love for Mother Earth” in the resolution for his decoration that was read during the ceremony.

This came with no mention of Morales’ nationalization of the local gas industry, making the government itself a purveyor of “magical matricide agent” they call “human development.”

He added that he will continue trying to get the international community to acknowledge the rights of Mother Earth.

Besides Morales, the former Cuban head of state Fidel Castro has been named “World Hero of Solidarity” and the late ex-president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, will be honored as “World Hero of Social Justice.”

Isn’t it comforting to see Marxist oppressors accepting religion, just as the Arab nationalist have in their death throws as Saddam Hussein did to appeal to the gullible and those with part-time faith in something read solely as a elementary factional and political communication tool?

Part of the appeal of “earth worship” is that it predates any sort of significant philosophical thinking, especially about the complexities of free will, and the cultivated understanding of right and wrong. All the new “nature worship” is, is a self indulgent attempt to mimic the rituals of evolved and deep philosophical investigations. The greatest feature of this “tree love” crap is that (like communism was) is utterly materialistic – it’s a ritual begging for nourishment and good weather as if belief was nothing more than a transaction. It is neither compelling or challenging to the soul. It requires no introspection. All it is, is a bit for literal and material comforts and little else, despite what the idiots promoting it sell it as.

All the while, the budding strongmen depending on the propensity of enough people to NOT be introspective are employing it in a bid to recreate the unhealthy complex of civil leadership and enforced belief that characterized the worst times of medieval Europe, and epitomizes the paranoid cultures of the near east. In other words, “it’s good to be the King”

“Obama Renounces the USA’s Claim to Leadership”

John Rosenthal points out that a German news site headlines the Apologizer-in-Chief's UN address as follows: “Obama Renounces the USA’s Claim to Leadership”. The Europeans have understood it all…

But hey! What can you expect when you must devote all your energies on the planet's real problem: challenging those pesky, clueless conservatives from America's heartland…

How Is That New Respect for Our Friends'n'Allies Working for You, Barack? (IV)

… it is extraordinarily significant that a major ally supposedly wowed by Obama’s charisma and popularity, can publicly do the equivalent of throwing a pie into the president’s face with no consequences

writes Barry Rubin (shookhran to Larwyn) as he points out that

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner … stated that he doesn’t favor blocking the export of refined oil products to Iran, the keystone of the new sanctions proposed by Obama.

Could it be any more obvious? Obama’s salient international characteristic is not popularity but weakness. Already, Obama has been defied [by] or has buckled under to a long list of countries including: China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Venezuela, and now perhaps France.

…Nahum Barnea, arguably the Israeli left’s most distinguished writer, who backs a complete settlement freeze and would like to support Obama, wrote [that] Obama “is cool….Yet the U.S. president is not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. He’s supposed to bring results.”

Well-put. While American opinion-makers continue to focus on Obama’s “coolness” and Western Europeans cheer him—what’s not to cheer in an American president who let’s you do whatever you want?—the world is giving him the cold shoulder.

What they really meant to say was .....

Why Can't Those Greedy Capitalist Pigs in America Take the Compassionate European Health Systems as an Example and — Wait a Minute!

The American Right Protests Obama's "Socialism"
[On the rich capitalist pigs' signs:]
No [Health] Care for the Poor!

The ever-lucid Plantu, who always has got the Americans figured out (those money-grubbing, treacherous louts!), has made a total caricature out of tea parties as well as conservatives' concerns and demands. Obviously, those greedy capitalistic pigs in America should follow what the charitable, compassionate, ever-solidaristic Europeans are doing and emulate their…

Except, wait! Two months prior to Plantu's anti-American cartoon, Le Monde came out with an interesting article (to say the least) on its front page…

In it, Cécile Prieur informs us that more than 25% of Paris doctors (and nearly a third of dentists and almost 2/5 of gynocologists) refuse to treat poor clients. The denials of the CMU — a name someone like BHO should love: couverture médicale universelle or universal medical cover — are illegal but rarely sanctioned…

But wait; that's because the French capital's doctors are as greedy capitalist pigs as Americans as a whole are, and that's all the more reason for the government to intervene and establish — No!

La première raison invoquée est la lourdeur administrative et la "paperasse" qu'impliquerait la prise en charge des patients CMU : ces derniers ne payant pas leur consultation, le remboursement du médecin s'effectue par l'assurance-maladie, ce qui peut prendre du temps si le praticien n'est pas informatisé.

But they Made the Deathtraps Run on Time

Berlin: The S-Bahn, she is broken. And all this in a place where whining and self-loathing is the city’s official sport. The city’s commuter trains, having once been entirely run by the East Germans (even in the west), appear to have barely benefitted from the cursory face lift that it’s gotten since then. Seriously, if the 50’s were in again, they’d be stylin’!

Maybe they can call the whole thing a living museum of the former Communist state, or something. But then again they only take historical memory as long as it doesn’t really hurt.

Thanks to Observing Hermann: it’s still better than bad art.

Compounding to that Additional Irony Nuance

Erik’s post of this morning reminds us that vigilance comes, and vigilance goes. What matters is the moral position from which your partis begins. From John O Koehler’s excellent overview, Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police, we find an odd relationship between the continuation of the German left’s strange relationship with violence from both a position of heroically imaged vainglorious rebellion, and violence of a vainglorious state:

Although some guerrillas were schooled in Cuba, the most important training was handled by the Stasi.
Leftist urban guerrilla groups began a reign of terror in Chile in 1983 with bombings and assassinations, exactly the kind of actions for which the Stasi had provided training. Bombs were exploding in Santiago, Vina del Mar, Quilpue, Concepcion, and Talca, damaging supermarkets, buses, government offices and four stores in Santiago's largest shopping center. Between 1983 and 1986 there were more than a thousand bombings attributed to the clandestine Communist Front and the Revolutionary Movement, which also was blamed for killing twenty-one military officers and policemen.25 Between 1984 and 1988 the East Germans contributed $6,795,015 to the Chilean Communist Party for the financing of terrorism.

As the Stasi, the Nazis, and the thousand turdblossoms that the Comintern let bloom, populations cower before violence and enable another in a history of many ideological minorities brutalize the public again. They've been trained in to this Groundhog Day pattern, and they can't really see a freedom from it - not at least among the trees in the forest where they stand.

Until the fall of the East German communist regime, few suspected that more than two hundred of the most dangerous terrorists had been trained by specialists of the Stasi in East Germany. The last class graduated in August 1989, when the DDR was already heading toward disintegration. It appears that not all graduates of the last East German terrorism course for Chilean radicals returned to their homeland. A West European antiterrorist investigator told me, on condition of anonymity, that there were strong indications that some of them had joined the Basque separatist movement ETA, which had been terrorizing Spain for years.

It’s the story of Europe. It’s how small, violent cells later find themselves in power, and there’s always a rogue state involved – whether it’s a Syrian faction, well connected Saudis, the former Stasi or the former KGB.

A Remake of the Madrid Bombings in Germany's Elections?

The "next strike is very near, a strike that will surprise everyone in its effect, which will be much more shocking than that of 9/11/2001.”

From Ryan Mauro's FrontPage article, we learn that

The German security services are about to be tested…

Western intelligence agencies have been picking up signs of a brewing Al-Qaeda plot against Germany throughout 2009. The German newspaper, Der Spiegel reported in June that U.S. intelligence believed that Al-Qaeda had outsourced the plan to attack Germany to one of its affiliates called Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, previously known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which has been focused primarily on fighting the government of Algeria.

Thanks to Ben Duffy who spent three years in Germany and who adds:

An attack on German soil would totally work too. They'd do whatever the terrorists told them to do after that, and be so damned proud of their sensibility for doing so. I know Germans. They would also blame it on the United States.

Update: John Rosenthal says that "Harrach’s message to Germany was highly ambiguous", pointing out that

Bekkay Harrach, a German Islamist of Moroccan descent who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Talha Al-Almani or “Abu Talha the German” … begins his speech by stating precisely his gratitude toward Germany … Harrach then goes on to stress more general grounds for al-Qaeda as such to be grateful — or at least not particularly hostile – toward Germany. … Harrach repeatedly returns to the theme of the general forbearance of al-Qaeda toward Germany.

If, however, Harrach shows forbearance and even gratitude toward Germany, the same cannot be said of his attitude toward German Chancellor Angela Merkel. … The upshot of Harrach’s video warning appears to be that Germans should vote out Chancellor Merkel and her Christian Democrats next Sunday if they want to avoid an attack on German soil.

A Mindless Montage of Beliefs all Around, like being a Pro-Choice Vegan Pet Owner Wearing Uggs

Nag, nag, nag, nag.

In Brussels, European Union officials have grown increasingly frustrated at the US stance, saying it has fallen short on both its level of ambition to reduce emissions and on offering aid to developing nations.

“So far, we thought the basic problem was the Chinese and the Indians. But now I think the problem appears to lie most clearly with the US,” a European Commission official said. Talks were “not going well”.

European officials say the Obama administration lacks focus because its top talent is wrapped up in the all-consuming debate over healthcare.

So Osama bin forgotten again, eh?

But the European delegation appears to be turning the appearance of the situation around. Having been permanently pussy-whipped by NGOs as these Europeans are, with a larger GDP than the US, they trying to look like they’re speaking truth to power and imply that the US government is cheap, thoughtless, hates the poor, etc. with resembles a kind of tongue in cheek irony of a drunk trying to talk his way out of being pulled over for running a red.

EU criticised for 'inadequate' climate fund
Civil society groups worry that if the West does not stump enough cash for adaptation and mitigation, any global climate deal is off

11.09.2009 @ 07:39 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The European Commission has proposed that the EU pay as little as €2 billion a year to fund third world carbon reduction measures and adaptation to unavoidable climate change.
Climate finance for the third world has become the main focus of discussion in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate change summit in December. If the EU and US stump up significant chunks of cash for cutting emissions and climate adaptation, developing countries may in return commit to considerable CO2 reductions, even though it is the industrialised north that is responsible for most of the emissions that caused the problem.

Look, that butch act might work in the bushes at the park, but a certain bulging plain manila envelope has been forgotten.

Last December at the UN climate talks in Bali, Indonesia, the EU committed to such monies, but it was only today for the first time that the EU executive has proposed any specific figures.

So over the past year, unspecific figures have been transmitted to some fashionably poor society? Will the wonders of their love of humanity ever end?

The EU "will not and cannot bankroll the negotiations alone," Dimas said.

Which sounds a lot better that saying that even though you think it’s a Star Trek like planetary emergency, you haven’t thrown in a centime.

"I Am an Atheist," Says Castro's Niece, "But If I Had Faith, I Would Pray for Obama's Success"

Another stellar (and typical) endorsement for the Apologizer-in-Chief:

"Comme beaucoup de Cubains, j'ai vu (son) élection avec une grande espérance. [Barack Obama] est un homme intelligent, bon, profondément humain, comme en témoignent sa biographie, sa trajectoire et ses valeurs. Il fait son possible pour que tous ses concitoyens aient accès à la santé", confie Mariela Castro.

"Mais être président des Etats-Unis ne signifie pas qu'il puisse modifier l'attitude des groupes de pression qui décident la relation avec Cuba, la politique à l'égard de l'Amérique latine ou influent sur la problématique Israël-Palestine, poursuit-elle. Je suis athée, mais si j'avais la foi, je prierai pour que Barack Obama réussisse."

By the way, if you are going to do an interview in the mainstream media, who best to do an interview with, as Jean-Michel Caroit does in Le Monde, than the likes of an "exotic" dictator or his niece?

The Official Guide to the Irish Re-vote on Lisbon

The Aryan Science of Leftism

Dutch lefties demand that Geert Wilders publish his heritage. Presumably to establish the impurity of his thoughts. After all, this is über-evolved and caring non-prejudicial Europe, where genetics are thought to trump intellect and free will.

Anthropologist Lizzy van Leeuwen writes this week in De Groene Amsterdammer that Geert Wilders is of Indian descent, but he tries to hide behind his dyed blonde hair.

Elsewhere, Thomas Landon writing at Brussels Journal points out that sofa-surfing Dutch “radicals” link Wilders’ world view to Nazism, as his grandfather who was a Dutch colonist in Indonesia might have sympathized with the Dutch Nazi party. That ill reasoned might ignores the man’s Jewish wife.

His father fled the area to escape from the Nazis and became so traumatized from the experience that he refused to physically enter Germany even forty years later.

No matter. A politically useful accusation is a politically useful accusation, truth notwithstanding. With all the flair if a tabloid rag, the opinions of an obviously angry and biased person are magically justified by their title or profession, as there is nothing else to stand on.

When speculating on what’s going on in the mind almost solely on a narrow and exclusionary selection of facts and by some unexplained speculation about the color of his skin, just what type of “indo” heritage do Dutch colonists have exactly, and how does one conflate this childish and bigoted oversimplification into an accusation of racism?

In the sealed room of the European left’s intellectualism, the sycophant-regency need not ever ask simple questions when they are constructing yet another passive-aggressive smear campaign by “only asking questions”.

Barack Obama's Dangerously Naïve Foreign Policy

A shortened version of the following text was published in the International Herald Tribune:

Nicholas Kulish and Judy Dempsey write that "staunch East European allies like Poland and the Czech Republic appeared likely to become more realistic and less idealistic about American foreign policy" (No Shock for Poles and Czechs, Sept. 18).

If only Barack Obama's foreign policy would be more realistic and less idealistic. George W. Bush's policies recognized, realistically, the existence of rogue countries and threats from nations like Russia, Iran, and, yes, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as well as the importance of solidarity — not least the symbolic kind — with the states that feel threatened by same.

Obama's policies are based on the naïve mantra that it is all a matter of "mutual understanding" and that talk can, and will, make everybody come together. In this fairy tale, there are no bad guys in the world (easy to believe if you do not pay too much attention to such things as Saddam's killing fields, the Iranian Mullahs' mass arrests, Kim Jong-Il's starving masses, and the Kremlin's bullying its neighbors) and America (and the West) has no enemies — with the singular exception, of course, of… those pesky, clueless conservative Republicans who don't see the light and who won't keep quiet. The only rogue country in the world (besides perhaps Israel) is America, which — both domestically and globally — needs an outreaching, empathizing pacifist à la Chamberlain at its helm — an Apologizer-in-Chief, if you will — to set America, and thereby the world, right.

We have seen this myopia masking as far-sightedness before, and it didn't work. Back during the 2008 election, several of us suggested that all signs pointed to Obama turning out to be a Jimmy Carter II (Letters, Oct. 10, 2008). If Jimmy Carter's Camp David accords were a success, the 39th president's State Department managed to alienate one faithful (if at times distasteful) ally after another. And two of them — Nicaragua's Somoza and Iran's Shah — were overthrown during his tenure, both of whom were replaced by régimes arguably far more repressive and more hostile to Washington if not the Western world itself. With regards to the 44th president continuing Carter's naïve policies (consciously or otherwise), Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy has suggested a definition for what can be called the Obama Doctrine:

abandoning our allies, emboldening our enemies, and diminishing our country.

"I am here because of the will of one man, I am here because of the dogged determination of one man, Nicolas Sarkozy"

"I am here because of the will of one man, I am here because of the dogged determination of one man, Nicolas Sarkozy," said before entering the courtroom.

"I will come out of this a free man and exonerated," [Dominique de Villepin] said, adding that "I know that truth will prevail."

…Mr de Villepin faces charges of conspiring to slander Sarkozy in 2004 when the pair were waging a fierce battle to win their right-wing party's nomination to succeed President Jacques Chirac.

The trial, due to run for a month, will focus on the biggest political scandal France has seen in years – a tortuous and murky affair worthy of a thriller, featuring forged documents, spies and bitter enmities.

The so-called "Clearstream affair" nearly destroyed the centre-right government of the then president Jacques Chirac in which the former diplomat Mr de Villepin and the blunt-spoken outsider Sarkozy were rival ministers.

Dominique de Villepin and a big fan (not!) of his…

At least these hecklers did not say, "You lie!"

Still amazingly they heckled all the same:



(h/t to those Small Dead Animals)

Handbags at twenty paces

"I will find the swine who started this scandal and hang them from a butcher's hook."

Clearstream : bataille de poissons morts
Uploaded by Labaf. - Sitcom, sketch, and standup comedy videos.

Take from the Hard Working, Give to the Ungrateful

It’s been the incongruous M.O. of leftism since Kaiser Wilhelm’s day. Of course when they succeed, what you end up with is fascism and an intrusive state that has its nose in everything including the bedroom. Eventually these societies collapse and diminish the lives of a generation with it. Oh well, as far as they’re concerned. The idea was to show others how compassionate their intentions are.

Somewhere in the prism of the left wing love of violence, age, decadence, and laziness gave way to other forms of “revolutionary action” which seem to revolve around them seeming maternal, but doing everything possible to actually wreck things in society that actually work, and make their supposed constituency, the poor, more miserable.

Reefer Good, Mr. Pibb Bad

Who thought being that libertine could be so lecturesome? Baghdad on the bay is as overbearing as ever.

"You don't vote for somebody because of what they look like; You vote for somebody because of what they stand for" (BHO, 2006)

In 2000, many Republicans urged a black man, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, to run for president. If Powell had chosen to pursue it and had secured the Republican Party's nomination, he could well have become the country's first black president — with broad GOP support.

Larry Elder's piece gets better:

In 2006, a black man, then-Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, ran for U.S. Senate as a Republican. Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigned against him and in favor of his white Democratic opponent.

Obama told an audience at the historically black Bowie State University:

"Listen, I think it's great that the Republican Party has discovered black people. But here's the thing . . . . You don't vote for somebody because of what they look like. You vote for somebody because of what they stand for."

Did this make Obama a "racist" against his own people by opposing a fellow black?

Sounds like a reasonable enough chap...

Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, has just released a statement vowing not to be "silenced" by "right wing attack dogs" targeting "progressive individuals" and "community organizations." Stern, whose union has sometimes been linked with the community organizing group ACORN, which yesterday suffered an enormous blow when the House of Representatives voted 345-45 to cut off all federal funds for the organization, said his union will not be intimidated by a right-wing "backlash" that is "fierce, ugly and anti-American."

Stop the presses

A fairly typical story in the Guardian/Observer regarding the UN asking for money from "rich" countries:

The swine flu pandemic could kill millions and cause anarchy in the world's poorest nations unless £900m can be raised from rich countries to pay for vaccines and antiviral medicines, says a UN report leaked to the Observer.

So far, fairly routine. Then there is this:

The 47-page report provides a detailed breakdown of the basic needs of 75 vulnerable countries with the weakest capacity to withstand an escalation of the virus. Six countries from Latin America, including Cuba and Bolivia, 21 countries from Asia and the Pacific such as North Korea and Bangladesh, and 40 countries from Africa such as Congo and Eritrea are included in the survey.

Cuba? The very same Cuba which the statist left claims to have a superior healthcare system to that of Gringo Norte? My, my....