Saturday, April 10, 2010

Arms Control Instead of Dictator Control: Obama's vision is for an America that has no independent national defense and no independent foreign policy

The results of President Barack Obama's nuclear posture review are in: the US will not develop any new nuclear weapon designs, and the US will not target countries that sign and comply with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
Thus writes TIA Daily's Jack Wakeland.
This nuclear posture follows the START treaty the US just signed with Russia that contains the following limits on each country:

• limit the total number of nuclear warheads to 1550
• limit the number of ICBM launchers and SLBM launch tubes to 800
• limit the total number of ICBMs, SLBMs, and nuclear-armed bombers deployed to 700

The vice president also affirms Obama's intention to pursue a comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) and to end programs to develop new anti-ballistic missile capabilities.

The problem with Obama's "nuclear posture review" is not that it is going to disarm America. Reducing the number of nuclear warheads from 2200 to 1550 does not significantly shrink the US nuclear weapons force. Declaring that the US will not develop any new nuclear weapons designs and pursuing the CTBT will not quickly render the aging and un-verified US nuclear weapons force obsolete and inoperative. It would take a few more decades of such purposeful neglect to complete the left's plan to sabotage our nation's nuclear force.

No, what Obama is trying to do is to create a set of international cultural-political commitments that will tend to lock in his vision of a post-American world. In this future, Barack Obama would like to see a world that is no longer led by the US. He would like to see America lose its dominant status and fade from center stage.

Despite the fact that ours is the first republic founded for the purpose of defending the rights of man; despite the fact that ours is the first nation to fight for liberty rather than for territorial plunder, and to do it on a global scale against all comers (Nazi, Communist, Islamo-fascist) for over 60 years—despite these obvious historical facts, President Barack Obama does not believe the US is an exception among nations.

(Remember that Obama attended a "liberation theology" church; a church in which the preacher fiercely objected to any pro-American feeling in the days after the 9/11 attacks in which 3000 Americans were killed. While people in Europe contemplated in horror America's defeat at the hands of Muslim terrorists, Obama's preacher was condemning those who spontaneously gathered to mourn that defeat and to sing "God Bless America." "God Bless America?!" Obama's preacher thundered in reply. "No!" "God Damn America!")

So—even though he could never be president long enough to assure that it will happen—Obama would like to see the US incrementally give up, promise not to use, and let fall into disrepair its exceptional arsenal of nuclear weapons. In Obama's determinist world view, America's exceptional weaponry does not belong in the hands of any nation. All men and all nations are driven deterministically by the material factors of their means of production and by the material factors of their "world-historical" and racial "power relationships." No man and no nation can claim to be a moral exception to that rule. Nuclear weapons give nations the capability to kill a large fraction of the human race. And unless that capability is removed, following the imperatives of their "world-historical" "power relationships," they will.

Removing nuclear weapons from the hands of free nations who have an exceptional history of using weapons only in defense of liberty will not, according to Obama, encourage dictatorships to become aggressive against their disarmed foes. No. It will encourage them to follow suit. Dictatorships will see that they will not lose their present standing in the "power relationships" among the nations of the world if they give up their nuclear weapons, too. They won't lose because the free nations of the world have given up theirs. Hell, given the qualitative and quantitative nuclear superiority of the US, Great Britain, France, and Israel, in a regime of worldwide nuclear disarmament the dictatorships would undoubtedly come out ahead.

Based on Obama's determinist nuclear posture review, for the next three years (at least), we're in for a foreign policy of arms control instead of dictator control:

• No more talk of the "forward strategy of freedom" (even though that Bush Administration policy will still be fully in operation in the Muslim World: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan...even Yemen)

• No more talk about the US being the guardian of law and order for the world (even though the US Navy and Marine Corps will continue to guard global free trade on the high seas).

• Lots of talk about how the UN is the guardian of "world peace" (even though they will continue to do nothing about anything except to issue numerous resolutions against the US and Israel).

• No more talk about regime change for dangerous or aggressive dictatorships (but then again, the Bush administration stopped talking about that back in April of 2006).

• No more talk about modernizing the US nuclear weapons force to make it more relevant to the rogue nation threats we face today.

Characteristic of the foreign policy of the left, the substance of Obama's "big" shift in the US nuclear posture is thin. It is, for the most part, an empty gesture.

Only one president elected after the fall of the Berlin Wall has asked for Congress to fund new nuclear weapons designs. In 2007, George W. Bush asked for and Congress refused to fund a program to design miniature, low-yield, "bunker-buster" warheads. Mr. Bush also asked Congress and Congress also refused to fund a program to develop new thermo-nuclear weapons that would be more resistant to aging and would have more easily provable performance when they age. Obama's fellow party members already took new nuclear weapons design off the table three years ago.

Removing NPT signatories from our nuclear target lists is even less relevant.

Brazil never feared that we might be targeting Sao Palo or Rio de Janeiro. Although it would be nice to think that Hugo Chavez fears that we've got an MX missile aimed at his residence, what he really fears is the First Marine Expeditionary Force—a conventional amphibious force that could knock over his regime in one day.

The promise to not target NPT-compliant states is an empty gesture engineered to please the equally empty foreign policies of UN-centric, altruist-pacifist old Europe. Old Europe gave up its responsibility for national defense decades ago. They gave it up and dumped the responsibility onto the United States and have complained ever since that the US has usurped their independent foreign policies. But one can't have an independent foreign policy without having an independent capacity to defend oneself.

The foreign policy vision that drives Obama is that of an America that has faded away in the pattern of old Europe. His vision is for an America that has no independent national defense and no independent foreign policy; a territory that is a nation in name only; an America for a post-America world. Thus his policy is one of sabotage by inaction and neglect. This passive-aggressive stance against America's national interests must, however, be in place for decades before it pays its intended dividends.

In domestic policy, the Obama administration has given us the sabotage of America's semi-capitalist, semi-free economic and political order. When coupled with the Fed's policy of maintaining its "expanded" balance sheet indefinitely, Obama's ruinous spending spree promises to give us at least three years of "stagflation"—high unemployment and high inflation. So to complete the 1970s flashback, president Obama is going to give us a foreign policy of sabotage by inaction and neglect, just like Jimmy Carter's.

But Obama's vision of a post-American world will take more than three years to implement—much more. It will not get very far if we say "no" in 2012.

He’s Just not that Into You

The White House set up a focus meeting with former eastern European Soviet satellite states. The EU feels snubbed that it can’t bring to it a circus atmosphere of bring representatives of the utterly symbolic rotating Presidency, European Connission, Euro-this-and-that, and a retinue of thousands.

The US' decision not to invite any EU officials to a top-level security event in Prague is being seen as a fresh put-down by some in Brussels.

US leader Barack Obama will in the Czech capital on Thursday (8 April) sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty with his Russian counterpart before hosting a dinner with 11 heads of state and government from selected European countries.
The irony being that the internationally inept Obama is signing off on an arms reduction pact that the Bush White House negotiated.

The subject is security, something the EU has not the least serious bit of yet, but no matter – they need an orgy of photo-ops to cover for some deficiency of regards (as yet unearned, even in Europe,) that will replace any useful dialog with the near-weekly “historic summits” that have occupied the dim-bulb continental press for what now seems like years.
"This dinner points yet again to the fact that the European Union needs to make a common foreign policy a reality so that President Obama knows whom to call or who to invite for dinner."
Ergo: summits and dinners = continental security. Serious, serious “partners”, we have there.

The point is that there is no point in meeting at all with an ineffectual, consistently hostile “partner”, no matter how willing they are to set their passive-aggression aside for a week or so.
It also comes after Mr Obama cancelled an US-EU summit due to take place in Madrid in May, however. US and EU officials later suggested that future summits should be held only "when we both feel the need for one," rather than on a regular basis.

The developments embarrassed the Spanish EU presidency and have prompted questions of whether Washington continues to see the EU as an important player on the world stage.
The arrogance of the statement that assumes that anyone, anywhere “continues” to see the EU as an important player of the world stage, is undergirded by the idea that it even exists in any real way yet, as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

What’s emerging from the continued, strange hyperventilation from Brussels is that they are desperate to seek legitimacy, and that even those like the US who are desperate to help the Europeans form a Unitary state can’t find a way to plausibly support it with any seriousness.

Contentions are with those who ARE seriously in need to being dealt with diplomatically – and they are Russia, China, and the key players in the near east and Asia-pacific. There is a NEED to do that now, and on an ongoing basis. There is NO NEED to spend diplomatic capital playing dress-up for the Europeans, so that they can feel that they aren’t the dorky last kid picked to play dodge-ball.

”Caring mayor wants Roma register”

Why does their “caring” sound so much like a cross between pandering and fascism?

“Ethnic registration for Roma”, headlines De Volkskrant. Social democratic mayor Cor de Vos of Nieuwegein, a town in the central Holland, says that councils with the largest Roma populations should keep an ethnic register of the community. “We are dealing with a group of people which is not integrated in Dutch society,” he declared.
If that’s the case, why don’t they “register” gays and anyone who might haver ever practiced Islam?
“They need to be helped, for their own sake and that of their neighbourhood. But we can’t do that without knowing their situation.” Last Wednesday it was revealed that the city council of Ede has been holding police, child welfare and justice department files on the Roma since 1978. The council apologised but also said: “The law isn't in step with the issues.
And of course that was bad, and wrong. Sooooo in the interest of “caring”, there will be a lot more of it.

What next? Tattooed registration numbers to “show you care”?

Finally: An Entirely Valid Reason to Go on Strike

From Denmark: an entirely valid reason to go on strike (tak — hik — til Valerie)…
Scores of Carlsberg workers walked off their jobs in protest Thursday after the Danish brewer tightened laid-back rules on workplace drinking and removed beer coolers from work sites, a company spokesman said.

The warehouse and production workers in Denmark are rebelling against the company's new alcohol policy, which allows them to drink beer only during lunch hours in the canteen. Previously, they could help themselves to beer throughout the day, from coolers placed around the work sites.

Friday, April 09, 2010

We can't become Europe unless someone else is willing to become America

We can't become Europe unless someone else is willing to become America
writes Jonah Goldberg.
Look at it this way. My 7 year-old daughter has a great lifestyle. She has all of her clothes and food bought for her. She goes on great vacations. She has plenty of leisure time. A day doesn't go by where I don't look at her and feel envious at how good she's got it compared to me. But here's the problem: If I decide to live like her, who's going to take my place?

Europe is a free-rider. It can only afford to be Europe because we can afford to be America.

The most obvious and most cited illustration of this fact is national defense. Europe's defense budgets have been miniscule because Europeans can count on Uncle Sam to protect them. Britain, which has the most credible military in NATO after ours, has funded its butter account with its gun account. As Mark Steyn recently noted in National Review, from 1951 to 1997 the share of British government expenditure on defense fell from 24 percent to 7 percent, while the share on health and welfare increased from 22 percent to 53 percent. And that was before New Labor started rolling back Thatcherism. If America Europeanizes, who's going to protect Europe? Who's going to keep the sea lanes open? Who's going to contain Iran? China? OK, maybe. But then who's going to contain China?

But that's not the only way in which Europeans are free-riders. America invents a lot of stuff. When was the last time you used a Portuguese electronic device? How often does Europe come out with a breakthrough drug? Not often, and when they do, it's usually because companies like Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline increasingly conduct their research here. Indeed, the top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other single country combined. We nearly monopolize the Nobel Prize in medicine, and we create stuff at a rate Europe hasn't seen since da Vinci was in his workshop.

If America truly Europeanized, where would the innovations come from?

German. The Language of Lurrrrve.

Or not. Not really.

So tonight...along the Rhein River....sits Bodo, who ponders if any average German gal will have a butcher who reads cowboy westerns, is deeply into jazz, drinks only fizzy water, wears boxer shorts, vacations yearly in Bulgaria in a cheap $18 a night hotel with a open seafood buffet line, and would like to meet a beastly German woman with a voluptuous body that begs.
Don’t give up Bodo! There’s someone for everyone!

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Left Because of Racial Discrimination: What Frenchmen Living Abroad Are Telling Their Compatriots

A new book by Christian Roudaut, France, je t'aime je te quitte (Ce que les Français de l'étranger nous disent), gives France the reasons so many of its sons and daughters have left the country to seek fame and fortune (or, simply, a better life) abroad.

The reasons are financial, of course, given France's high taxes, but the most surprising revelation in France, I Love You I am leaving you (What Frenchmen Abroad Are Telling Us) — which only studies Frenchmen having emigrated to Western-type countries with a development level comparable to France's own — is probably the number of Frenchmen of color deciding to relocate from the cradle of "Republican equality" — and from the eternal purveyor of racism lessons to clueless American clods — because of racial prejudice.
Verdict : "En France, les pratiques discriminatoires et le racisme ordinaire sont les mauvaises herbes que les autorités ne se donnent pas la peine de traiter sérieusement".
The only time racism is treated sérieusement in France is when it (allegedly) occurs en Amérique

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

The Land of the Free Freeloader

It seems that the dictum of “getting good services in good and bad times” being the price for higher taxation, not to mention being the modern-day equivalent of a serf, just doesn’t work:

The education sector in Europe has been hard hit by cuts in budgets, personnel and investment. Some universities, e.g. in the UK, might even have to be closed down. And some leading institutions could soon lose their top international rankings.
Aren’t you comforted that the huge, meddling nanny state is there to cushion the fall?
Students and pensioners to fill vacancies

Even the northern nations have felt the pinch. In the Netherlands, fiscal 2010–2011 will see 20% cuts in several sectors, including higher education, according to a study put out in February by John Aubrey Douglass from the University of California, Berkeley. Among other things, student scholarships are to be transformed into a system of bank loans for young people. The proposal sparked protests in February, in which over a thousand students occupied lecture halls in Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Utrecht and Rotterdam.
That the students themselves are only real beneficiary of those educations continues to allude the sort that occupy lecture halls for free gub’mint stuff of course, and to be sure the “societal benefit” can’t be much better in a part of the world that doesn’t really invest in R&D, not to mention the “national pride” benefit of all that free gub’mint larnin’...
Wipe Europe off world rankings

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

Wow! Only Two Years Late at That!

Straight from the “Look, Paw, we kann reed!” department:

A study for the European Commission suggests growing biofuel crops can create more greenhouse gases than it saves.

Monday, April 05, 2010

Change: What has changed and what has not

What has changed and what has not? asks Bill Prast (thanks to Mark)
We used to have a strong dollar ...
Politicians changed that.

Life used to be sacred ...
Politicians changed that.

Marriage used to be sacred ...
Politicians changed that.

Families used to be respected ...
Politicians changed that.

WE USED TO PRAY TO GOD ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to have a strong manufacturing economy ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to have lower, fairer taxes ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to have a government that listened to the people ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to enjoy more freedom of movement ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to export American made goods ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to be an openly Christian nation ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to teach patriotism in schools ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to educate children in schools ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to pledge allegiance to our Flag ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to respect our Military Veterans ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to enjoy freedom of speech ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to enforce LEGAL citizenship ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to walk down the street safely ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to be ashamed of perverted behavior ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to be respected around the world ...
Politicians changed that.

We used to have affordable food & gas prices ...
Politicians changed that, too.

What hasn't been changed?

Is the politicians who promised Change.

Don't Forget to VOTE in November!!

Allons ons Dance

Where it all Falls Apart

Years of lefty and Euro-hyperventilation on the matter of imprisoning prisoners of war have always come down to this:

According to an Interior Ministry spokesman, Berlin is talking to Washington about relocating suitable detainees after they get released from the US-owned Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

An unnamed Interior Ministry official said on Saturday, March 27, that his ministry had "opened talks anew with the United States on this matter."
They want some magical solution, is exemplified by German home truthes.
Last year, Germany had considered accepting prisoners but later backed off amid concerns that the men could prove dangerous.
I suspect that the only thing that would ameliorate their laundry list of what a solution should look like would be akin to eliminating the prisoners themselves, but that it happen in such a way that would permit the bobos to bitch about it for about 3 decades – it’s really where they get the idea of pushing the GWOT as the “new Vietnam War”.

Again, the popular thing to do is to want your own society to fail, but advocate it knowing that it won’t place them at any risk, but give them a cause over which to bleed others’ attention and sympathies dry.

Hydrocephalic Mega-state goes into Mythmaking

Charter of Fundamental Rights to be re-written as epic poem
At least it will make a nice fable of some long lost happier time that never existed, someday.
The European Commission is bracing itself for the prospect of politically sensitive requests from EU citizens once a key direct-democracy clause contained in the Lisbon Treaty takes effect.
In the mean time, we still have to hear the usual dyspeptic whining from Paris:
In a move that is likely to provoke the ire of francophones, already smarting from what they view as the galloping advance of the English language within the EU institutions and European communication with citizens at the expense of French, the tender required that poem be composed in the language of Shakespeare as English is, according to the tender document, the "literary language".