Continental Drift

1967 - Communism’s promoted definition of Justice:

Justice: Ethical and legal category that refers to social equality of humanity, which is only possible only with the common ownership of the means of production, and which enables real equality in a legal sense. Justice as a standard of social relationships is not a timeless, universal, or unchanging concept. Middle-class society can claim only the formal legal equality of civil law as its highest principle of justice, because the primary purpose of justice – the protection of capitalist property – is the basis for the perpetuation of societal inequalities. Historical materialism discovered the class nature of justice and proved that the working class’s pursuit of justice requires the abolition of exploitation, social inequality, bureaucratic despotism, and imperialistic war, which means the elimination of capitalism and the establishing the common ownership of the means of production under socialism. The Marxist-Leninist concept of justice contains fundamentally includes equal social possibilities for all people to develop their personal abilities on the basis of inviolable legal and moral principles. By justice, we understand that the power of imperialism and militarism will finally be broken, the peaceful endeavors of the people will be protected, and every imperialistic attempt to misuse humanity for aggressive purposes will be ruthlessly eliminated; that socialist accomplishments are inviolable, that all citizens will be equally entitled to take part in socialist construction and through their work create a better life for all; that there will be no privileged classes that exploit and oppress the people, that the socialist principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” will be realized; and that those citizen who accomplishes best results for society will enjoy the highest appreciation be honor.

2010 - a leftist activist’s definition of ‘Social Justice’:

Social workers also apply social-justice principles to structural problems in the social service agencies in which they work. Armed with the long-term goal of empowering their clients, they use knowledge of existing legal principles and organizational structure to suggest changes to protect their clients, who are often powerless and underserved. For example, social workers may learn organizational ethics to ensure that clients are treated respectfully by staff or they may examine the organization’s policies on personal client information to make sure it is held in confidence.

Often, social workers bring social justice concepts into the wider social and political arena. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington an international group of social workers issued statements condemning terrorism but calling for examination of possible underlying causes. In particular, the statements suggested that terrorism may be fueled in part by global practices that led to poverty and rage among millions of Middle Eastern citizens.

Indeed, from the beginning of their profession, social workers have been involved in “connecting the dots” between peace and social justice. According to social work philosophy … Peace is not possible where there are gross inequalities of money and power, whether between workers and managers, nations and nations or men and women.

1967 - Communism’s promoted definition of War:

War: Violent continuation of politics, organized armed combat between classes, states, or nations, which is undertaken for the economic interests or political and military goals of specific classes. Historically, war is the result of the division of community into antagonistic classes. It is rooted in the production relationships of exploitive society, today represented by imperialism. Only when that social system is overthrown in every country will the socioeconomic grounds for war will disappear.

2010 - a leftist activist’s definition of ‘war’:

go to war.... corporations send a message, support a particular mindset with charity/donations, and they pretty much make the call on the war thing... how about a war profiteering amendment.... if that incentive was gone, there would be little draw for a war of choice.

A war amendment would state that any and all contracts between the victim nation would remain in effect (with other nations and not the invading nation) so that the economy of invaded nation would not be ripped out from under the victim nation's feet so to speak.

Had the U.S. reinstated Iraq's contracts with Russia, France, Germany and others, the insurgency may have been a shadow of what it is now, and many American kids might still be alive.

I’ll omit the conventional, class based definitions, as they are simply to much like that of the Communists of the last century.

Yes We Clam!

Clam sellers in Baarle Hertog, on the Dutch-Belgian border, find a novel way to sell their products (dank u wel to Carine)…

The Vicious Spreading of Unfounded Rumors

We haven’t heard much from Georges lately because the practicing of Santeria can be so time consuming.

Postcards from Emo-land

Looking for those great European thinkers dispensing wisdom in their time of need? Good luck! Most of it amounts to anguished self-pity and emotionialized scapegoating, such as we find with this brilliantly, if not unwittingly funny notion that Europe's huge defecits and debts are the fault of American lenders calling in their paper, as if there were no lenders from any other part of the world.

The scenario employed against Greece, Portugal and Spain by New York-based international financial gamblers is all too familiar to anyone who recalls the events of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Then, as now, hedge funds targeted a country whose GDP was largely dependent on tourist dollars - Thailand - and had fiscal problems at the time.

I guess the humane thing to do would be for the rest of humanity to make loans to them and write them off, owing to the mere european-ness of those Europeans.

This self-absorbed explanation can only be explained by the notion that Thailand is a tourist economy because that's where Europeans go to beach and molest children, THEREfore an alighnment can be drawn to the last economic tale the author could find a straw-man to associate with, even if it does happen to be the erstwhile Hungarian "open democracy" funder George Soros.

The scenario employed against Greece, Portugal and Spain by New York-based international financial gamblers is all too familiar to anyone who recalls the events of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. Then, as now, hedge funds targeted a country whose GDP was largely dependent on tourist dollars - Thailand - and had fiscal problems at the time.

Because spinning is the same as doing or saying, of course, and Europeans should somehow be allowed to determine taxation worldwide, of course. The passivity is only out-done by the arrogance.

A consensus is developing among Western experts that the globalisation of financial transactions has not led to overall economic growth, being now considered a huge disappointment.

I suppose that will remain true until, like the loans made to souther Europe to ease it's growth, and hedge its' risks, a big deal only if they have to pay it back. Make no mistake about it, were the bonds not offered to cover for bloated states that can't control state spending.

By allowing NY financial traders to viciously attack struggling EU members, the US is putting the transatlantic partnership in jeopardy.

As if they really were a partner, and not a hideous chore one would prefer to avoid.

The difference with America is that the US states that are overleveraged won't be in a position to make silly arguments about the standing of a nation's image and the affection with which it's held in the world.

It's as silly at the argument thrown around prior to the deposing of Saddam Hussein that if the US did what leftist activist demanded, that "the world" would love the U.S. Well, some of the world does, and some of the world doesn't, and that will always be true. But you can be sure that the entire world isn't going to buy the "lender's emotional obligations" to Europe's government employees' unions argument.

All of this over an long overdue and inevitable currency revaluation.

It’s Kind of Like Sticking it to the Man

Now there’s one passionate environmentalist

Maybe there are Pictures of them in the Zapruder Film

Next time you find some virulent loon spewing invective at you for not submitting to their demand that you convert to their religion of Anthropogenic Global Warming, just ask them the activist’s usual evasive question: ‘whose paying you?’

The difference is, though, that you won’t be asking them to degrade or evade as the phrase is normally employed, even if they are unwittingly supporting racketeering. You’ll be entitled to a factual answer:

In recent years, however, on the initiative of Lord Kinnock when he was its chairman, the British Council has been hijacked to promote the need for action on climate change. In answer to a Freedom of Information request, we can now see some of the curious ways in which the British Council has been spending our money.

More than £3.5 million has gone on recruiting a worldwide network of young "climate activists" in over 70 countries to engage in climate change propaganda – what Marxists used to call agitprop – and to pressure their politicians to join the worldwide struggle. Under a programme called Challenge Europe, £1.1 million has been paid out to fund young "climate advocates" in 17 countries across Europe, including Britain itself. But £2.5 million has been spent on a more ambitious project to recruit a global network of 100,000 activists in 60 countries across the world, led by 1,300 young "International Climate Champions", to participate in "international peer networks, both in person and online, to share ideas, projects and experiences".

Of this sum, £303,093.24 went to China; £71,262.91 to Brazil; £53,006.25 to Japan; £70,132.88 to India (including £11,000 to Dr Pachauri's Teri institute); £77,507.89 to oil-rich Qatar; and £50,000 to the US. There was £120,000 for a dozen different countries in Africa, including £14,000 to fund climate champions in starving Zimbabwe.

Then again mendacity has never been much of a problem to green advocates of the forcable primitivization of man.

One of the most widely quoted and most alarmist passages in the main 2007 report was a warning that, by 2020, global warming could reduce crop yields in some countries in Africa by 50 per cent. Dr Pachauri not only allowed this claim to be included in the short Synthesis Report, of which he was co-editor, but has publicly repeated it many times since.

The origin of this claim was a report written for a Canadian advocacy group by Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan academic who draws part of his current income from advising on how to make applications for "carbon credits". As his primary sources he cited reports for three North African governments. But none of these remotely supported what he wrote

No matter. They’re only words. They’ll only turn into policies.

Let’s Employ their Logic, which...

...would when used by European critics of anything and everything American, would throw spaghetti at the wall, and ‘merely ask questions’. Plausitting the similarity between Haiti and Belgium wouldn’t fall far outside the form of logic when anything perceived to be an authority of any sort can be marginalized, as though they were all ‘raging against the machine.’

Today in Belgium there was a nasty train accident with over 20 people killed.

Not too long ago, a typical sort of invective was ejaculated over the notion that American medical personnel in Haiti were amputating indiscriminately. Does that logic apply in Belgium at the scene of this week’s head-on commuter train crash?

The accident occurred at 0830 local time (during the morning commute) on a train line south-west of Brussels, Belgium. Two commuter trains collided head-on after one of them missed a red light. The trains are thought to have been carrying 300 people over 25 of whom died in the collision. Several of the people were injured badly enough to require amputation.

I would bet that it would be met with nothing other than guarded concern for the fate of the injured, and that the thought of criticizing the practices of the emergency medical staff on the scene in the city of Halle in Flemish Brabant.

Otherwise, feel free to ignore the rest of the Examiner article which repeated the report of amputation not found in most of the print pieces, but was reported by Deutsche-Welle, AP, and BBC. It otherwise tries to salve fear of train wrecks and otherwise try to scare people out of their cars for reasons of using the energy you're buying and taxed for anyway, in spite of decades of propaganda on the subject.
The author seems blissfully unaware that unlike a rather empty train or bus, after one drives to work, ones’ car is emitting nothing into the air. Rationalizations about the efficiency of mass transit are always founded on the notion that they are always full, all the time, and ignore that transit systems are normally exempt from energy taxes, and frequently receive unmetered energy at no cost.

Ah, but I digress.

Another part of the story is rather predictable, but just as much of a train wreck, quite frankly:

Belgian train drivers went on strike Tuesday in protest at working conditions after the head on collision between two rush hour trains in which 18 people died.

The Belgian rail company SNCB said the spontaneous walkout had been widely followed and many cancellations and delays would follow.

Conditions that they were never previously aware of? I’ll bet not. One wonders who this perfunctory and ritualized strike is really against. It flies in the face of the idea that someone, somewhere can, by bureaucratic diktat, do more than the striking railroad workers who killed these people by screwing up.

The strikers denounced the downgrading of their employment conditions, which they said could have been a factor in the deadly train crash.

Of course, of course...

As the crash investigation got underway Monday, Flemish Brabant provincial governor Lodewijk De Witte said one of the trains had apparently failed to stop at a red light and hit the other at high speed.

The train line where the crash happened is fitted with a security system designed to halt trains automatically at a stop sign.

However one of the trains was not equipped with the system, according to Marc Descheemaecker, a senior SNCB official.

Which is a great reason to rely on an automated system that isn’t installed, and otherwise demand higher pay due to some lack of awareness that this would cause, justifying some Katrina-esque looting in the face of suffering of the accident victims, their loved ones, and the survivors of those killed.

The New Urban Hillbillies

Bypassing the court, and living in their own universe, the foreign origin population of a Danish housing project are practicing their own vigilante law:

A council of elder men seems to be the deciding factor on the Vollsmose Estate in Odense, where local people seek decisions on divorces, rivalries and debts.

“We can confirm that there is a Council of Elders. We have strong suspicions that they solve a number of criminal cases internally. But that is the culture here. It’s just difficult to prove when it all happens in secrecy. The Council has existed for several years,” says Vollsmose Local Police Leader Per Frank.

The Council of Elders has been accused of ignoring a suspected paedophile and not reporting him to the police. Instead, the council banished the suspect to Germany in 2008

So how’s that “new man” Socialism collectivism thing working for ya? Probably not that well if there are people improvising quasi-“libertarian” solutions to work around it.

An Exposé of the Family Court System: Parents Have a Right to the Care, Custody, and Companionship of Their Children

Stephen Baskerville gives a brief but in-depth (and damning) exposé of the history of America's family court system, which he calls "an abuse of government power … virtually 100%". "What we need more than anything in this country", adds the author of Taken Into Custody (The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family), is "a presumption of shared parenting" as well as

an act that will preserve, that will codify the ancient, very ancient recognition in the common law — in this country and in the English common law — that parents have a right to the care, custody, and companionship of their children and to supervise their upbringing; this is decades, if not centuries of case law … it's simply common sense…

Ripped from the Culture Pages

So, do you think you’ve had a bad day?

Chef found butchered in kitchen

I blame manmade global warming, actually. That is, if it already isn’t on the list.

But Copenhagen Police say the evidence suggests the man may have inflicted the stab wounds on himself.

‘We don’t know if it was an accident, a homicide or if the injuries were self-inflicted

Unless it was something else. Nice job narrowing it down, by the way, Coppers. At least the brilliant conclusions didn’t require humanity to recalibrate the stupid index.

Next week!: we bring you stories ripped from the pages of the society column. So don’t touch that dial!

Oh, THAT consensus....

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

Oh, THAT consensus....

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organizational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

Cupid's Arrow Downs a Lancaster

What better day than today for a strange old love story? From 1946, it's A Matter of Life and Death. What ho, old Chum? It's David Niven and Kim Hunter, madly in love.



Part I



Part II

This Year it’s a Barry White vs. Small Appliance Cage Match

In the survey seven out of ten Dutchmen say that Valentine’s Day is ‘unattractive’ to them. Phrases they use to describe the day are ‘juvenile’, ‘commercial’ and ‘of little substance’.

Which is sad, because any pretext to snog is a good one as far as humanoids with a pulse are concerned. The womenfolk, though, seem a lot less self-conscious about it than these robotic, rutting, romantically deficient oafs:

Dutch women are more prone to give Valentine’s Day a positive review. Forty percent say that they are excited about celebrating it, whilst only twenty-five percent of Dutch men share their enthusiasm.

Anthropogenic terminology can account for the visible disparity, however.

The Scandals That Have Rocked the Miss France Pageant

Remember the Miss America scandal back in '84? (Proof America is racist!!) That's nothin'; les Ricains ne sont que des amateurs! Popeater has all the info on the scandals that have rocked the Miss France pageant (the first of which, incidentally, occurred — see photo 7 — the year before America's Vanessa Williams scandal)…

Remember the 80's when the World was Supposed to Have no Future?

How Come So Much of What Honest Abe Spoke of 150 Years Ago Seems Relevant Today?

How come so much of what Abraham Lincoln spoke of 150 years ago seems relevant today?

A careful reading of Abraham Lincoln's speeches seems to bring up pertinent comments on or about: the stimulus, the ever-increasing debt and deficits, the arguments for reforming (and ditching) the Constitution, the Democrats' double standards, and the caricature made of the Republican Party and their members (such as Sarah Palin) and like-minded people (such as the tea partiers) contrasted with the heroic image bestowed upon the Democrats and progressives' standard-bearers (such as Barack Obama), and the élites of the East Coast, the Ivy League universities, and Hollywood.

Incidentally, Dan Greenberg's and my graphic novel biography of Honest Abe, The Life & Times of Abraham Lincoln, is slated for publication later this year…

Doesn't Abraham Lincoln's Speech in the Illinois Legislature on the State Bank (January 11, 1837) sound somewhat like the subprime mess, the stimulus, and the search for ever-larger deficits?

It is an old maxim and a very sound one, that he that dances should always pay the fiddler. Now, sir, in the present case, if any gentlemen, whose money is a burden to them, choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the people's money being used to pay the fiddler …

These capitalists generally generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and now, that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel.

… I make the assertion boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank. … No, Sir, it it the politician who is the first to sound the alarm, (which, by the way, is a false one.) It is he, who, by these unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and direct. It is he, and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of the people's public treasure…

Doesn't Abraham Lincoln's June 20, 1848, Speech on Internal Improvements (first para below) and his February 13, 1848, letter to a Josephus Hewett (second para) sound like he is talking to those who wish to ditch or at least reform the Constitution and the Electoral College?

I now wish to submit a few remarks on the general proposition of amending the constitution. As a general rule, I think, we would much better let it alone. No slight occasion should tempt us to touch it. Better not take the first step, which may lead to a habit of altering it. Better, rather, habituate ourselves to think of it, as unalterable. It can scarcely be made better than it is. New provisions, would introduce new difficulties, and thus create, and increase appetite for still further change. No sir, let it stand as it is. New hands have never touched it. The men who made it, have done their work, and have passed away. Who shall improve, on what they did?

I was once of your opinion … that presidential electors should be dispensed with; but a more thorough knowledge of the causes that first introduced them, has made me doubt. Those causes were briefly these. The convention that framed the constitution had this difficulty: the small states wished to so frame the government as that they might be equal to the large ones regardless of the inequality of the population; the large ones insisted on equality in proportion to population. They compromised it, by basing the House of Representatives on population, and the Senate on states regardless of population; and the executive on both principles, by electors in each state, equal in numbers to her senators and representatives. Now, throw away the machinery of electors, and the compromise is broken up, and the whole yielded to the principle of large states. … Have you reflected on these things?

Doesn't Abraham Lincoln's 1854 Fragments on Government sound like he is (re)asserting what true Americans stand for — belief in the individual and the common man?

Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men … ours began, by affirming those rights. They said, some men are too ignorant, and vicious, to share in government. Possibly so, said we; and, by your system, you would always keep them ignorant, and vicious. We proposed to give all a chance; and we expected the weak to grow stronger, the ignorant, wiser; and all better, and happier, together.

Moreover, with regards to Washington politicos trying to submit every part of society (and their allegedly ignorant, vicious members) to government control:

This is a world of compensations, and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.

Doesn't Abraham Lincoln's Speech on the Sub-Treasury at Springfield (December 26, 1839) sound somewhat like he is refuting what the holier-than-thou Democrats insist is the difference between themselves and the greedy, flawed, treacherous members of the demonized opposition party?

Mr. Lamborn [a prominent Democrat] insists that the difference between the Van Buren party [the Democrats], and the Whigs [to a certain extent, the forerunners of the Republicans] is, that although, the former sometimes err in practice, they are always correct in principle — whereas the latter are wrong in principle — and the better to impress this proposition, he uses a figurative expression in these words: "The Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the head and the heart."

The first branch of the figure, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, I admit is not merely figuratively, but literally true. Who that looks but for a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons, and their hundreds of others [who have also handled the nation's purses in, uh, less than an honest way], scampering away with the public money to Texas [then an independent republic], to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of "running itch."

It seems that this malady of the heels, operates on these sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures, very much like the cork-leg, in the comic song, did on its owner: which, when he had once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing this point thread bare, I will related an anecdote, which seems too strikingly in point to be omitted.

A witty Irish soldier, who was always boasting of his bravery, when no danger was near, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of an engagement, being asked by his Captain why he did so, replied: "Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but some how or other, whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it." So with Mr. Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their hand for the most laudable purpose, that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but before they can possibly get it out again their rascally "vulnerable heels" will run away with them.

Seriously: this proposition of Mr. Lamborn is nothing more or less, than a request that his party may be tried by their professions instead of their practices. Perhaps no position that the party assumes is more liable to, or more deserving of exposure, than this very modest request.

Doesn't Abraham Lincoln's demonstration of the Democrats' double standards in the 1852 election between his party's Millard Fillmore and the Democrats' Franklin Pierce remind you somewhat of the clueless-Palin-vs.-dream-candidate-Obama double standards during the campaign?

O ho! Judge [Douglas]; it is you, is it, that thinks a man [or a woman] should furnish proof of superiority of statesmanship, before he [or she] is looked to as a candidate for the first office? Do please show us those proofs in the case of your "gallant and honest man, Frank Pierce." Do please name a single one that you consider such. What good thing, or even part of a good thing has the country ever enjoyed, which originated with him? What evil thing has been averted by him? Compare his proofs of statesmanship with those of Mr. Fillmore, up to the times respectively when their names were first connected with presidential elections.

Doesn't Abraham Lincoln's "few words" defending maligned Republicans and conservative principles "to the Southern people" during his Cooper Union speech of February 27, 1860, sound like he is speaking about principled Republicans and earnest tea partiers to today's Democrats, élite Easterners, university professors (and students), Hollywood bigwigs, and other self-declared liberals and progressives?

You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us a reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify.

And — mournfully — this from Abraham Lincoln January 27, 1838, Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield:

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Aaaany Day Now...

I’m surprised that no-one called for a “summit” yet.

The European Union could announce "very strong sanctions" against Tehran within "days or weeks," Finnish foreign minister Alexander Stubb said on Thursday (11 February). Last week, Iran declared itself a "nuclear state," prompting the US to call for tougher sanctions.

The UN security council should take the lead on sanctions, but if that is not successful "we'll do it through the EU. I would estimate, in a matter of days or weeks," Mr Stubb said at a press conference in Ottawa, after meeting his Canadian counterpart.

And here’s the part that always falls apart in the face of German companies, in particular, being able to make the sale:

Sanctions would involve a financial embargo and "issues related to energy," he said.

Which makes me ask after all of these years: how’s that “tough love” thing working for ya?

«Iran resumed uranium conversion activities today at a nuclear facility – a step that Europeans and the US warned would prompt them to seek UN sanctions against Tehran.»

- 08-August-2005

Now we’re getting somewhere! What next? Emo-kid suicide threats?

The GOP should wear the "Party of No" as a badge of honor; They should market it

Democrats are going full steam at bashing Republicans as "The Party of No"

reports Nolan Finley (thanks to Vincent).

But what's the downside to obstructing an agenda a majority of the American people oppose?

The GOP should wear the "Party of No" as a badge of honor. They should market it.

Because what Republicans are saying "no" to are the same things the American people are saying "no" to. They're saying no to a massive expansion of government, no to outrageous deficit spending, no to the inevitable tax increases, no to job-killing mandates and no to policy-making from the extreme left.

Who wouldn't say yes to politicians who say no to all that?

…Obama this week made the grandstanding gesture of inviting Republicans to a bipartisan, half-day, televised health care summit and warned them to come prepared to compromise. At the same time, both he and congressional leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the legislation Democrats passed without including one Republican priority. The question isn't whether Republicans will stop saying no, but whether Democrats will say yes to moving to the middle.

They continue to push a proposal the public isn't buying. Despite an intensive PR effort by the president and his surrogates, despite an advertising campaign financed by big pharmaceutical and health care companies, despite a barrage of scare stories ginned up by the media to create a demand for government-controlled health care -- the fact remains that Democrats haven't been able to move Americans behind their plan.

….Republicans are offering a menu of market-driven reforms. Not one is in the final package because Democrats gambled they could leverage their super majority to force through a one-party bill that fulfills a left-wing wish list. They couldn't, and now they're blaming the GOP.

What the Republicans would do with health care is less sweeping than what Obama envisions and less costly. That places it more in line with the comfort level of a public that is increasingly anxious about the exploding federal government.

The GOP has asked for tight limits on medical malpractice lawsuits, expansion of tax-sheltered health savings accounts to encourage patient involvement in controlling costs, increased competition in the insurance market and measures to help the hard-to-insure get coverage. That's what they're saying yes to, and it could form the basis for reasonable health reforms -- if the Democrats stopped saying no.

Obstructing unpopular measures carries little political risk.

Republicans can read the mood of the nation; they aren't going to say "yes" to joining Democrats in their refusal to accept political reality.

So How Are We Supposed to Remember What Happened in 1950? China "Took Over" Tibet!

"China, which took over Tibet in 1950", writes the BBC in a story about Obama's upcoming meeting with the Dalai Lama. It sounds almost like Beijing's invasion, occupation, and subjugation was the result of a mutual agreement or, at worst, nothing more ominous than a hostile… takeover in business transactions.

Nothing as bad — naturally — as what happened, say, in Iraq under Bush (and Blair)'s "catastrophic" invasion and "disastrous" war…