Heyna or No, Joe?

Since Joe Biden landed on the Democratic ticket, we've all been treated to commentary attesting to the Lincolnesque rise of this proud son of Scranton, Pa. Here we read the references to "working-class roots." There we see a headline trumpeting a "blue-collar messenger." And everywhere we turn, we bump into the most treasured compound-adjective of them all: lunch-bucket.

Something the man never owned. In fact, even at his age owing the abject unfamiliarity with what actual working people do, only an eccentric would have had a lunch-bucket after 1970 at the latest. But let's not get hung up on that, let's gat back to proletarian-hero-Joe, elected at the age of 29, that veritable Mister middle class who has spent more than half of his life in congress. After all, Scranton, PA is a lunch-bucket kind of town (when the allusion is politically useful), and not just a place where mafia induced insurance fires are more common than factory openings for all those Joe-lunch-buckets that the lifelong senator is supposed to be just like. Where exactly was this working-class nature and these supposed coal-country origins of his when he's adamantly opposing coal mining?

The baffling and evasive use of this allusion goes on:

The New York Times started it off with a column hailing this "lunch-bucket Democrat." The Boston Globe adds ethnicity, writing about "an Irish Catholic lunch-bucket Democrat." The Dallas Morning News emphasizes personality, celebrating a "gregarious lunch bucket Democrat" -- to distinguish him, evidently, from the nongregarious variety. The Economist contributes virtue, characterizing Sen. Biden as "a perfect example of a lunch bucket Democrat made good." And on it goes, with everyone from the Washington Post and Huffington Post to the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Associated Press serving up allusions to the senator's lunch bucket.
A rich piece of Americana, the lunch bucket evokes coal miners toting their picks and pails to work in some Thomas Hart Benton mural. Leave aside that coal mining is probably not Mr. Biden's favorite imagery. It's also somewhat out of date. In class terms, the circular lunch buckets that the sons of Scranton once carried into the mines have largely yielded to Tupperware containers stacked up inside the Dunder Mifflin fridge.

Were it not for "antiquing" excursions looking for precious junk they don't understand, I'd really like to know if anyone at the New York Times has actually seen a lunch-bucket. You know the type: in search of Americana to carefully place as conversation pieces in their "genuine" renovated rowhouses on the historic register... entirely unaware that their attempts to impersonate Americans aren't really going as well as they think they appear to...
Back to coal-crackin' Joe working hard at the colliary, we find his "humble" upbringing is hardly humble by the standards of Lackawanna, Luzerne, and the rest of the coal counties. In fact, while there really were coal crackers, strapped severely during the depression, reduced often to sending children to pick the same coal off of the railroad tracks that many of the same children (yes, those were the days - children) were mining, young Joe's father was doing rather much better as a sales representative for Amoco, and later a specialty products rep. He was one of those dreaded "businessmen". A middle-man of simplistic-lefty myth that they would tell you (were it not a democrat running) parasitically gets in the way of the people owning the means of production, and all that stuff they learned about in graduate school.

In 1941, Mr. Biden, while employed as a sales representative for Amoco Oil Company in Harrisburg, PA, married Jean Finnegan of Scranton.

During World War II, Mr. Biden was an executive in Boston, MA, of a war industry that supplied "plastic hulls," a special waterproof sealant, applied to all U.S. merchant-marine ships built during the war.

Following the war, he was co-owner of an airport and crop-dusting service on Long Island, New York.

In 1953 he moved with his family to the Wilmington suburb of Mayfield in Claymont, DE and returned to sales as manager for several Wilmington automobile agencies.

He then spent 15 years working in real estate condominium sales in New Castle County and in Rehoboth Beach for the Patterson-Schwartz agency.

In other words, he was more like one of "the bosses" of Marxist paradigmatic falsehoods or John Edwards Edwardian myth of two Americas – one always being fit to pit against the other. Like Joe, with his union card, cloth cap, and yes that lunch bucket we're treated to a smokescreen that is supposed to lend credibility to his planned cantankerous role as an attack dog in this election. It's okay, after all, he's one of those working men who's just come off his shift and is entitled to be drunk. Every one of those "proletarians" at the NYT probably quite sure that that's all those people are good for.

In the mean time, they're going to be objective and try to shoot holes through his female opponent who actually IS middle class. Not the kind of middle class that is said to suffer, pity itself, and lend credibility to those pretending to care about some sort of one of "two Americas" that are now to magically unite... the kind that finds a way to genuine accomplishment without the fake pity of a morally repugnant elite trying hard to appear sympathetic for the sake of their self-image.

The litmus test is even simpler: Heyna or no, Joe? If you've never heard that phrase, you wouldn't know a Northeast PA working class root if it smacked you with a sweaty kielbasa.

Magazine Pauper Doings

Speigel, like their transnational brethren of the one-trak Borg-like minds of most of the press did their bit for “the cause” by putting John McCain on the cover, especially airbrushed to look old and menacing. Title “the cold warrior” it scares it’s readership by suggesting that gasp that he might still win! Sounds like they would prefer that the election didn’t actually go to a vote.

As all politicians lend all manner of passion to the middle class and trying to convince people that they ARE middle class, the US press doesn’t seem to quite know what to do. They appear to be rather perplexed by the actual middle-class nature of Sarah Palin. The Union’s Local in London is much the same. Between stilted descriptions of the candidate and pandering to the press reports of her family’s travails, they read off opinions. All of them parrot stock lefty platitudes about her daughter, as if shocked that the conservatives in America would have the temerity to run a conservative.

Remember now, the mainstream press are of course, not biased. That an evening news viewer would know absolutlely nothing about

Sarah Palin’s husband had a DUI arrest when he was 22. The information came to light within a day, and filled the airwaves. At the same age, Obama used cocaine and is now the actual candidate and not a spouse was pretty well silenced, it was hushed. It was later cited as a reason we ourselves should all believe that anyone objecting to such a thing needed a high-colonic. But those defenses carried out by the press on behalf of a candidate, are of course, simply a matter of standards in reporting, as it’s still called that these days.

"They have a tradition of nominating fun, bantamweight cheerleaders from the West."

-Maureen Dowd, writing in

the New York Times

To do anything else would be called “swiftboating”. Unless you’re a leftist, and you get your campaign operatives to attack your opponent’s vice presidential candidate’s teenage daughter. That sort of treatment of birth, life and death appear to not be above somebodies’ pay grade.

Shirking their 'duty' to society?

Individuals are endlessly showered by hard-left statists about the "need" for ever more taxation and ever more government spending, all in the name of the vaguely defined nothingness of "social justice".

For a moment put yourself in the heavily-soiled Birkenstocks of our hard-left statist brothers and sisters. It is quite easy to do: turn off your rationality, your individuality, your thought processes, and become a sheep capable only of bleating emotive-based slogans which are devoid of logic and thought. One of your absolute key bleats will be about the "need" for "social justice". Central to his particular bleat:

"Everybody should contribute (ie. pay taxes) their fair share to ensure a just and civil society!" - Repeat ad nauseus.

Now, slowly ease out of the Birkenstocks and return to being a rational individual. As touched upon here and pointed out specifically today in the WSJ:

About 38% of U.S. households pay no income tax today.

The stat is indeed true and if memory serves correctly the next 12% in the food-chain "contributes" approximately 3% in income taxes to the "betterment" of society. The hardcore-leftists are always banging on about the "rich not paying their fair share in taxes". By "rich" of course the statists are bleating about those individuals who already pay millions/billions in to the coffers of government.

Something of a clue for the leftists when looking for those individuals not "paying their fair share for a just and civil society", start at the bottom and work your way up. Once you get the free-riders at the bottom "contributing" anything then we can talk about those already paying through the nose for the socialistic playthings "provided" to us all by your church, government.

Some individuals believe the movie Midnight Express is a love story.

I do not happen to be one of those individuals.

Certainly there will be changes to this exquisite bit coming out of Bruxelles, if not, good night and good luck:

British citizens could be convicted in their absence by foreign courts for traffic, credit card or other criminal offences under plans approved in principle by the European Parliament.

The proposals would allow citizens to be extradited automatically under fast-track procedures at the request of another European Union country on the basis of a decision by the foreign court.

Tim Worstall rather gets to the point on the matter:

Tried witout a jury, tried without defense. And all so that we can stop Germany from invading France again.

Not really all that good a deal really, is it?

Gosh, exactly why will the British government not hold a referendum on Lisbon? One would think the above would be a sure-fire vote getter.

Remember jolie demoiselle, the last summer, nous, la tour Eiffel…

French singers and musicians perform more and more of their songs partly or wholly in English, write Yves Eudes and Odile de Plas in Le Monde.

Pour être bien certain d'être incompréhensible, Sébastien [Tellier] a une méthode infaillible : "Je fais exprès de bafouiller." Pour se justifier, il élargit le débat : "Quand on est musicien et français, une grande malchance s'installe aussitôt, dit-il. Un Français qui chante du rock, ça fait nul, et c'est pareil pour le rap, le R'n'B, etc. Parce que dans l'âme, ce sont des trucs américains, c'est une question de culture, c'est profond. Alors dès qu'un Français fait du rock, il a l'air d'un blaireau, et voilà. Ce n'est pas un hasard si beaucoup de groupes français qui chantent en anglais dégradent leur voix avec des synthétiseurs, pour cacher ce son ringard du Français qui voudrait passer pour un Américain."

Grâce à son anglais inintelligible, Sébastien Tellier s'est construit une carrière internationale. Il parcourt l'Europe, et prépare deux tournées aux Etats-Unis : "J'aimerais aussi travailler là-bas avec leurs ingénieurs du son, ce sont les meilleurs en tout. Le rêve américain s'est peut-être effondré pour des tas de gens en Europe, mais pour les musiciens, il est intact."

Aujourd'hui, en France, des dizaines de jeunes musiciens professionnels chantent en anglais. Nés dans les années 1970 et 1980, ils baignent depuis la petite enfance dans la musique anglo-saxonne qu'écoutaient leurs parents. Souvent issus des classes moyennes aisées, ils ont toute facilité pour apprendre l'anglais, voyagent souvent, ont des copains à l'étranger. Pour démarrer leur carrière artistique, ces enfants de la mondialisation composent d'abord des musiques d'inspiration anglo-saxonne, avant de franchir spontanément l'étape ultime, l'écriture en anglais.

…Les plus jeunes en arrivent à rejeter complètement la chanson d'expression française. … Gérard Pont, patron des Francofolies depuis quatre ans et défenseur militant de la langue française, ne s'alarme pas de cette évolution. "Jusqu'à une date récente, le problème ne se posait pas, les Français qui chantaient en anglais étaient marginaux. Mais les choses changent, dit-il. C'est dommage pour la chanson francophone, mais des tas de jeunes groupes français qui choisissent l'anglais ont du talent, et ils ont un public. Ce festival doit être le reflet de ce qui se passe en France, et rester ouvert aux nouvelles tendances, sans oeillères. Je suis sûr que la chanson d'expression française a un bel avenir, mais si on décidait de bannir l'anglais des Francofolies, ce serait un suicide. Aujourd'hui, je défends "la chanson d'ici" : un artiste qui est né et a grandi à Bordeaux a toute sa place aux "Francos", même s'il chante en anglais."

Somebody really should do something...

Maybe a conference, a working group, pass a law. Better yet an inter-governmental working group planning a conference in the hopes of passing a law:

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

Of course, every sunspot has a silver-lining. Can anyone say, "New Funding Stream Possibility"? However, any proposal for funding could be tricky. Afterall, how will the workshop conclusions be implemented?

As with any consensus riven process, what was the original reax to those who previously predicted this situ and pronounced upon the possible impact on climate change:

In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.

The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.

Mmmm, the purity of "settled science".

Futureshock

It is never too early to stake out a claim on a top position in the coming neo-peasantry era:

Newspauper Doings

Everyone once thought globalisation was nothing more than a "race to the bottom". The true race to the bottom seems to be found in the balance sheets of our premiere vanity press outlets.

Of course, if they actually turned a profit perhaps our betters would understand the destruction of hyper-taxation writ large.

The Statist Quo

Whether it be the Guardian, the New York Times, the Independent, BBC Radio, or other ultra-statist commentators, the issue of income "inequity" is trumpted loud and long as the most pressing issue of the day (alongside the environment, 'free' healthcare, fuel poverty, neo-protectionism, tax avoidance, 'windfall' taxation, food miles, organic farming, GMOs, too tight underwear, you name it). An issue that if not "fixed" (by higher taxation and more government, natch) will destroy "social justice" by having all but the "mega-rich" in the workhouse. No questions asked, no alternatives envisioned.

The concept of income "inequity" is of course a relative concept. By being a relative concept, income "inequity" is also a concept of some subjectivity. There is no doubt that a poor person in Brasil would heartily change places with a "poor" person in the US or Europe. Doubtful whether that would play out in reverse of course.

Our statist brothers and sisters see this subject as a static truism which will never ever change. We are all stuck in place exactly where we are today for the rest of our lives. No opportunity to change our position, no opportunity to move up in the income stakes, we are all doomed to a Hobbseian existance of peasant farming .......... forever. The exception being the "mega-rich" of course.

As far as the US goes, an interesting report on the ability of US earners to move up the income ladder, a concept called income "mobility". A dynamic concept which by and large only dooms those who choose to doom themselves. If you are in the US, you stand a good chance of movin' on up to that dee-lux apartment in the sky. Conclusions from that report on income "mobility" in the US:

The analysis found that more than half of taxpayers (56 percent by one measure and 55 percent by another measure) moved to a different income quintile between 1996 and 2005. About half (58 percent by one measure and 45 percent by another measure) of those in the bottom income quintile in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005.

Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. In addition, the real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period. Further, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those in the higher income groups.

The analysis also found that the composition of the very top income groups changes dramatically over time. Less than half (40 percent or 43 percent by different measures) of those in the top 1 percent in 1996 were still in the top 1 percent in 2005. Only about 25 percent of individuals in the top 0.01 percent in 1996 remained in the top 0.01 percent in 2005.

Les soldats français savent que pour réussir une mission de paix, il faut parfois mener des opérations de guerre

Speaking of the "dix soldats français … morts en Afghanistan", Bernard Kouchner and Hervé Morin write in Le Monde that

ils savaient que pour réussir une mission de paix, il faut parfois mener des opérations de guerre.

While the foreign and defense ministers speak well, though, Le Monde readers and pundits (such as Bernard Dupaigne and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, a député who, after eight years, still hasn't learned to spell the first name of Georges Bush) seem to reject their viewpoint en masse (to put it diplomatically), Collège de France professor Gérard Fussman seemingly seeing some sort of monkey business in the fact that when they were killed, the French troops were protecting the flank of America's Begram base (Fussman adds that "les troupes de l'OTAN sont dans une situation pire que les troupes soviétiques") and numerous Le Monde readers (i.e., numerous French citizens) preferring to evoke American folly, American treachery, American plots, and "the American Big Brother".

The home front: "An ocean of cowardice"?

One commentator compares the government ministers' opinion piece to the pronouncements of Nazi Germany and/or Vichy France ("de la propagande de masse du même type que celle des années 1940 à 1944"), "La France n'a rien à faire dans cette galère" says another, "SOLDATS RENTREZ CHEZ VOUS CETTE GUERRE N'EST PAS LA NOTRE!" yells yet another, "l'éconiomie américaine est basée sur la guerre et nous, on suit" deplores a fourth, "Pourquoi ne parlent-ils pas du pipe line vers l'océan indien ????" asks a fifth, "l'Otan est l'invention des usa" charges a sixth (who respects all proper names' respective capital letters in his comment except… — for Uncle Sam's), "c'est une véritable dictature militaire US qui se cache derrière l'Otan et ses têtes de pont aux portes de la Russie" reveals a seventh (who adds that he hopes that Beijing will help bring America down — "Reste à espérer leur effondrement financier via la Chine et l'"himalaya" que représente les bons du trésor US"), as another evokes — I kid you not — the Russians as victims (!) of a plot masterminded by Bush ("torturés de voir comment on traite les russes victimes d'un complot ourdit par Bush") and a ninth evokes a future betrayal of NATO ("si demain il faut trahir l'OTAN ou l'Europe") while a tenth describes the war of the 1980s as pitting the Taliban terrorists, "amis des USA (qui les ont formés, armés, reçus à la Maison Blanche)", against (note the positive descriptives throughout the short phrase) "le régime laïc soutenu par l'URSS" (all-the while calling the 9-11 attacks a "preemptive attack by Bin Laden" (!!) — "probablement une attaque préventive de Bin Laden"), an eleventh quotes …Robespierre (!), and a clueless loser claims that it is the French "[qui] faisons le sale boulot pour les Americains" adding (just in case you were wondering), "ce qui rend le sacrifice de nos momes encore plus triste".

Meanwhile, one loner, fg, attempts to set things straight by putting the word "Mômes" (kids) for soldiers into perspective and by evoking "an ocean of cowardice" where "it is easier to throw up all over the Americans":

On s'engage au RPIMA [Régiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine] quand [on] est prêt, s'il le faut, à mourir en héros pour la France. C'est ce qu'ont fait ces 10 militaires. Au cours de l'Histoire, ce sont parfois quelques uns de ces hommes qui, plongés dans un océan de lâcheté, ont sauvé l'honneur. En d'autres temps, j'aurais préféré ne pas avoir à compter sur ceux qui refusent de voir le nouveau fascisme djihadiste pour ce qu'il est, sous prétexte que l'Afghanistan est loin et parce que c'est plus facile de vomir sur les américains.

Good Old Lefty San Francisco Values

With a good old Lefty San Francisco reaction too: the wife blames the US Dept. of Justice, prosecuting him to make up for “not catching terrorists.”

Same Lefty Peevishness, New Century

In a word...

Depression.



Leur depression de merde ? Qu'ils en crèvent...

Like No-one Could Guess What You Were Thinking

The telling difference between the right and left in America, is that the male membership of the two major parties wish they could bone their respective vice-presidential candidate.

France's problem with anti-Semitism

The problem is that it is deep seated and everywhere you look. If it isn't young Jews being hunted down in the streets of Paris by young zealots of France's second largest religion it is MSM commentary that defies any rational explanation other than institutionalized Jew-baiting.

No sooner was Siné booted out of the editorial team over at Charlie Hebdo for blurting out some outrageous anti-Semitic remarks (something about Sarkozy's son getting married and converting to Judaism to get some money and career advancement), the guy has started a web-based magazine where he can continue to spew his anti-Semitic hatred under the guise of satire.

Céline on Wheels

De retour à Paris suite à une virée à New York, Bertrand Latour est déjà sous les projos pour une petite tournée promotionnelle lors la sortie de son nouveau livre "Un milliard et des poussières".

The Democrats' Nurmeburg Rally Begins

And it will feature strategically placed "real people", specially trained and scripted.

Pickler reports that the Obama campaign “formally invited these people” (um, “people?”) to Denver, “providing airfare, lodging and great seats to watch Obama accept the nomination from a circular stage on the 50-yard line at Invesco Field.”

“Great seats” to the (sold-out) Obama Show, Pickler says! (Why let “the GOP” have all the fun with “characterizations of [Obama] as an out-of-touch celebrity?”)

Lest you think the “real people” will be keeping it real (“real?”), Pickler writes that “professional speechwriters are helping prepare their remarks…And just like any senator or other VIP speaker, an assigned staff member will oversee their schedules and logistical movements, including media interviews, speech coaching and on-stage rehearsals.”

The AP story which ended up getting picked up far and wide was purged of any reference to them being flown in, trained to speak publicly in a "real" sounding way, and given tactically structured and timed scripts.

As usual, their tack is an attempt at impersonating actual Americans. All I can see by way of the coverage is that the press simply doesn't question anything about the left. As awkward and implausible as it all looks, they play along. Michele Obama is suddenly transformed into someone who has never harbored a negativity for America, people with Kennedy signs suddenly appear from somewhere - "spontaneously". Suddenly we are a nation of people who may pity ourselves because we proudly and meekly suffer working 9 jobs, etc., etc., etc.

Like the last however-many Democrat candidates have come up with of course, Barack Obama, a confused pacifist, is implausibly compared to John F. Kennedy, a war veteran who stared the Soviets down, and lowered taxes. No questions are asked, in spite of an otherwise inexplicable 240 point drop in the Dow.

There MUST be a Connection

But alas, I can't seem to find it, although it must be somewhere. There must be a wat that Bu$hChimpyHitlerBurton and the United States of AmeriKKKa must have created, funded, blah-blah-blahed, these darling revised examples of the innocent, idyllic pastoral, "noble savage" of the leftist mind.

Nguema flattened the cocoa plantations, outlawed fishing in an island nation, and destroyed all the industry. He had 10 of his original 12 cabinet ministers killed, banned Western medicine, and let cholera run amok in regions whose political support he doubted. He declared that "intellectuals are the greatest problem facing Africa today" and then forbade use of the word "intellectual." He established links with the Soviet Union and kidnapped foreigners for ransom. He referred to himself as "God's Unique Miracle," shut down nearly all the country's schools and churches-in the overwhelmingly Christian country-and once, according to the Financial Times, "unskillfully hanged" 150 people in a soccer stadium "to the strains of Mary Hopkin singing 'Those Were the Days' over the loudspeaker system." A bit showy, you think? Perhaps, but it was Christmas.

The evil genius-idiot must have had a way to control these people's arms and legs, surely.

McCullough's Next Book Is About What America Owes France

In her Le Monde article about David McCullough, Corine Lesnes insists on telling us about the next book that the author of John Adams is working on. It sounds like a "See?! See what good friends they are and how much we clueless Americans owe them?!" type of book (although it seems hard to see what his example about Americans being ignorant of two and a half million (American) soldiers having been sent to France has anything to do with a lack of gratitude and/or knowledge on the Americans' part)…

A 75 ans, McCullough a "au moins vingt-sept idées de sujets" pour ses prochains livres. Comme pour boucler la boucle des années Bush, il a entrepris un livre qui entend montrer aux Américains ce qu'ils doivent aux Français. Parution prévue en 2010. Le livre débute avec les médecins qui sont venus étudier à la Sorbonne en 1830 et court jusqu'en 1939 lorsque la guerre commence et que les artistes émigrent à New York. On y croisera, dit-il, Edith Wharton, Langston Hughes, Hemingway. David McCullough veut faire l'inventaire littéraire, artistique, musical de tout ce qui a été créé, inventé, découvert à Paris mais dont les Américains ignorent de fait les origines.

"Il est essentiel de comprendre à quel point nous devons à la France ou aux Français, beaucoup de choses que nous croyons purement américaines", dit-il. "L'histoire américaine s'est plus déroulée en France que dans n'importe quel autre pays, Etats-Unis exceptés. Si je demande aux gens combien de soldats ont été envoyés en France, ils n'en ont aucune idée. La réponse est : deux millions et demi !"

Avec Rosalee, son épouse, David McCullough a prévu de passer une partie de l'automne à Paris, pour humer l'air du temps et prendre quelques croquis des lieux. "Comprendre les Français est pour les Américains une manière de se comprendre eux-mêmes", dit-il. Si vous croisez un monsieur enthousiaste, qui chante un air de jazz, peut-être s'agit-il de David McCullough. Il est sur les traces de Gene Kelly, un Américain à Paris, de Pittsburgh, comme lui...

At any time, there are only a few good kids; they are virtually friendless, surrounded by enemies, detractors, and the perpetually indifferent

Feeling lonely yet?

asks Christopher Cook as he wonders what the world would look like if it were a schoolyard.

The bully beats on the weaker kids, and the good kid's instinct is to stop him.

The left and the Democrats use a number of different methods and play a bunch of different roles, but their goal is always the same: to stop the good kid from doing anything.

Sometimes, they play the role of the schoolmarm who, foolishly seeing violence as wrong under any circumstance, sends BOTH the bully and the good kid to the principal for equal punishment (rather than rewarding the good kid for stopping the bully from harming the weak and defenseless).

Sometimes, they play the role of the other kids—not the ones at the bottom rung who are always bullied, but the ones who fear he might turn his eye towards them if they do anything to try to stop him. They implore the good kid not to challenge the bully, lest the bully's eye turn in new directions. Better to let the weak kids absorb ALL the bully's hatred.

Sometimes, they whisper in the good kid's ear, telling him that he's not as strong as he thinks he is, that he cannot defeat the bully. They slowly erode not only his self-confidence, but also his natural belief in the use of his natural strength to defend the weak and innocent. They try to convince him that he's no different from the rest of the kids, that there's nothing special about him.

And sometimes, they play the role of the kids who actually suggest that the only reason the bully is a bully at all is because he's aware of the good kid's plans to stand up to him, and he's engaging in preemptive bullying. The very existence of the bully is blamed on the good kid.

An American Carol

There is a movie you are not supposed to see when it opens October 3 (David Zucker's movie is clueless, but of course!), called An American Carol (Gracias a Valerie).

Who needs a toilet? The place is one big shithole

Libération PropagandaStaffel lets slip that even in the EU, toilets are a luxury. Hey, not to worry. Once that Lisbon Statement Agenda Plan thing kicks in, there will be toilets a plenty.

If Israel doesn't behave, said the Russian General, "we will continue [!] to deliver weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas"

"Nous sommes là parce que les Géorgiens sont des incapables, que leur administration s'est effondrée et que la ville était livrée aux pillards. Regardez ceci…" [Le général Vyachislav Borisov] me montre, sur son téléphone portable, des photos d'armes dont il souligne lourdement l'origine israélienne. "Est-ce que vous croyez qu'on pouvait laisser ce bazar sans surveillance? D'ailleurs, je vais vous dire…" Il se rengorge. Allume une cigarette dont l'allumette fait sursauter le petit tankiste blond qui s'était endormi dans sa tourelle. "Nous avons convoqué, à Moscou, le ministre des affaires étrangères israéliennes. Et il lui a été dit que, s'il continuait à fournir les Géorgiens, nous continuerions, nous, de livrer le Hezbollah et le Hamas." Nous continuerions… Quel aveu!

Thus reports Bernard-Henri Lévy from Georgia. The philosopher recounts his meeting with Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili.

De tous les grands résistants que j'aurai rencontrés dans ma vie, de tous les Massoud ou Izetbegovic dont il m'a été donné de prendre la défense, il est le plus évidemment étranger à l'univers de la guerre, à ses rites, ses emblèmes, sa culture — mais il fait face.

"Laissez-moi préciser une chose, m'interrompt-il avec une gravité soudaine. Il ne faut pas laisser dire que c'est nous qui avons commencé cette guerre… Nous sommes début août. Mes ministres sont en vacances. Je suis moi-même, en Italie, en train de faire une cure d'amaigrissement et sur le point de partir pour Pékin. Or voilà que, dans la presse italienne, je lis : Préparatifs de guerre en Géorgie . Vous m'avez bien entendu : je suis là, tranquille, en Italie, et je lis que mon propre pays est en train de préparer une guerre! Sentant que quelque chose ne tourne pas rond, je rentre dare-dare à Tbilissi. Et qu'est-ce que mes services de renseignement m'apprennent?" Il fait la moue du type qui pose une colle et vous laisse une chance de trouver la bonne réponse… "Que ce sont les Russes qui, au moment même où ils abreuvent les agences de presse de ce baratin, sont en train de vider Shrinvali de ses habitants, de masser des troupes, des transports de troupes, des ravitailleurs de fioul en territoire géorgien et de faire passer, enfin, des colonnes de chars par le tunnel Roky, qui sépare les deux Osséties. Alors, supposez que vous êtes responsable d'un pays et que vous apprenez ça – vous faites quoi?" Il se lève, va répondre à deux portables qui sonnent en même temps sur son bureau, revient, étire ses longues jambes… "Au cent cinquantième char positionné face à vos villes, vous êtes obligé d'admettre que la guerre a commencé et, malgré la disproportion des forces, vous n'avez plus le choix…"

President Mikhail Saakashvili gives three basic reasons for which Moscow has attacked Georgia, including the following:

nous sommes le pays où passe le BTC, ce pipe-line qui relie Bakou à Ceyhan via Tbilissi; en sorte que, si nous tombons, si Moscou met à ma place un employé de Gazprom, vous serez, vous, les Européens, dépendants à 100% des Russes pour votre approvisionnement en énergie … Le message est clair. Rice ou pas, les Russes sont ici chez eux. Ils se déplacent, en Géorgie, comme en terrain conquis. Ce n'est pas exactement le coup de Prague. C'est sa version XXIe siècle – lent, par petites touches, à coups d'humiliations, intimidations, parades et paniques…

Bernard-Henri Lévy ends his article thus:

C'est l'Américain Richard Holbrooke, diplomate de fort calibre et proche de Barack Obama, qui, retrouvé, à la fin de la nuit, au bar de notre hôtel commun, aura le dernier mot : "Il flotte, dans cette affaire, un mauvais parfum d'apaisement et de munichisme." Eh oui. Ou bien nous sommes capables de hausser vraiment le ton et de dire, en Géorgie, stop à Poutine. Ou bien l'homme qui est allé, selon ses propres termes, "buter jusque dans les chiottes" les civils de Tchétchénie se sentira le droit de faire de même avec n'importe lequel de ses voisins.

And here comes the sad part: no matter how well Bernard-Henri Lévy's article is thought out, most of the reader reactions leave a whiff of exactly what he and Holbrooke deplore: un mauvais parfum d'apaisement et de munichisme. As a couple of the rare readers not to engage in (direct or indirect) anti-Americanism (the conflict "is helping McCain!") point out:

Honte à tous les lecteurs du "Monde" encore englués dans leurs archéo-réflexes pro-russes (pro-soviétiques ?) et stupidement anti-U.S. Cette "guerre froide" chez les lecteurs du "Monde" est proprement surréaliste : il n'y a même plus aucun prétexte idéologique mais de la seule et pure sordide géostratégie bricolée sur des résidus de clivage Est/Ouest. Fort peu de contre-argumentation sur le fond mais beaucoup de viles attaques "ad hominem"

Les réactions haineuses contre BHL dont je suis loin d'être un admirateur sont sidérantes de parti-pris! Ce qu'il raconte est banal si l'on suit la situation dans la presse internationale et les analyses économiques et géopolitiques. Toute cette haine de munichois haïsseurs d'Amérique, aux yeux de Chimène pour Poutine qui souhaitent dépendre à 100% du gaz et du pétrole russes rappelle la tradition d'aveuglement intellectuel de certains Français à l'égard des dictatures d'Hitler à Mao!

Earth to Norks: Fear This

Man Meets Moron

Starry eyed, well off American jets off to Europe to dine off the teat of the British taxpayer. She seems unaware to have discovered something called the voucher, something she surely railed at while stateside.

EURota responds.

O' Hail the Messiah

(merci à RV)

Moveon Sends New Message (Actually, the Same Old Message) to Members

From Copious Dissent (Hat tip to Valerie)

Peacekeeping, Russian Style

Via This is London

Proud to be Ineffectual

But there are lessons we can draw from this crisis. First, the European Union rose to the occasion. At the behest of the French presidency, Europe put itself on the front lines from the outset of hostilities to resolve this conflict -- the third on European soil since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Throughout the first phase of this latest crisis, Europe's commitment was decisive: It was the European Union, through France, that created a space for diplomacy by quickly proposing reasonable terms for a cease-fire and rendering the political cost of pursuing war exorbitant for both parties. If our efforts finally paid off, it is because Europe -- despite a few differences in tone -- did not limit itself to condemnation.

- Nicolas Sarkozy, from Le Figaro on
Sunday-17/Monday-18 August

Three is a consolidation of numbers, of course... That he means the US is obvious, and no, the US did not limit itself to condemnation. It made sure the door for talks remain while a limited demonstration of support for the Georgians could clearly be seen by the Russians, and in a manner that didn’t appear unrelated to Georgia in any way. THAT is how one doesn’t escalate but communicates an opinion.

Gyrating to come with any kind of fake cease-fire that the EU could show off for people, Super-Sarko announces a recovery from the previous hoodwink the Russian put him through. Monday (18-AUG) was supposed to let the world see Russians withdrawing from “Georgia proper” as it’s just been redefined through European acquiescence and clearly without the Euro-warm-fuzzy of “meditative” consent with the Georgians, but it seem that all we know by Wednesday that Russians troops are joyriding around, and Tbilisi is still cut off as if to be offer the Russians the option of turning it into another Sarajevo, and Georgian access to the sea has been effectively cut off.

If anything, this exercise has shown the world where the Russians stand – both on their plans to dismantle Georgia’s independence, and the lack of seriousness with which they take any sort of diplomacy that requires anything of them. Ah! But they AGREE to things. They’ll sign anything, and that seems to be good enough for Europe’s aging children.

What HAS slowed the Russians down was the unanimity the nations on its borders took. Much as the Russians have traditionally feared being surrounded by enemies, its’ done a nice job of ensuring that they remain enemies. Those states – the Ukraine, Poland, and others who have a fear of becoming Russian satellites again, and being battered around by others, were quite clear. The sent official to Georgia as the only sort of meaningful human shield there ever was, and demonstrated their desire to deny the Russians their prize of intimidating them. Ukraine reaffirmed its’ desire to join NATO, and Poland signed a missile deal. Even the BBC which was fond of being imprecise about who and how many in Poland supported the effort, said this morning that there was a longstanding majority for it.

It’s funny how statistics can change.

Back to Sarkozy and Kouchner, and what was actually a noble attempt to use what their power and office could let them – it was a classical diplomatic move that was actually quite effective at keeping the issue alive – give the aggressor a way to back off. Knowing that there are forces against a back-off, let them show themselves for who they are to clarify for the rest of the stakeholders what’s going on. Out of this, one historically found alliances and agreements of opinion if not some agreement on a course of actions.

The mystery with Europe is what it is they think a course of action is, and whether or not it’s just intended to prevent domestic criticism in the form of a nagging criticism over Scerbenica or Rwanda.

Think Progress

I wonder if the NYT's editorial board is reporting this with envy?

President Hugo Chávez is using his decree powers to enact a set of socialist-inspired measures that seem based on a package of constitutional changes that voters rejected last year.

Beyond the second year university student notions of land redistribution, elimination of cash money, fist-pumping “peace”, and other permanent population repressants, EU Rota is all over another under-reported feature of the budding poop-stain's exploits like white on rice: while railing at supposedly abusive and unaccountable corporations, he's nationalizing his way into making the state become one itself (and little else). It comes complete with the Communist obsession with materialism, and the usual inability to actually provide for that illusion of a people as a monolith. Good luck "people", you're building a bridge to the late 19th century.

Say it with Box-Cutters

Curious how some 'youths' will solve a parking problem.

"It's just a simple fight that broke out. It had to do with cars being double-parked and someone wanted to get out in a hurry ... it's just a simple thing that kind of got out of hand,"

It Actually DOES Translate into German, by the Way

- Hat-tip to Jörg

In Ethno-Class Warfare Obsessed EUtopia, this will Surely Cause Confusion

Through the Looking-glass

Putin has become a sort of new philosopher. An evil one, using a false front to stoke up private hackers days before the conflict started, recruiting irregular soldiers, and Europe's dimbulberati are eating it up, as readily noted in these comments, where the usual culprits are disembodied and unexplained citations of America and "zionists". Radio Liberty calls the attempts by any part of the Western Alliance to deal with this, a matter of having to operate on the terms of Putin's "parallel universe".

Nearly all of the rhetoric used by Moscow to justify its actions in the war with Georgia is derived from Western historical thinking and practice -- only put "through the looking-glass," to borrow a phrase from Lewis Carroll. An EU official stationed in Tbilisi throughout the conflict observed at one point that Putin appeared to be creating a "parallel universe, a mockery of the West" when he spoke of the Russian mission to end the "genocide" in South Ossetia and administer international justice on the "perpetrators" in Tbilisi.

But Putin appears to have a more serious objective than simply mocking the West. Not for the first time, he has usurped the pantheon of Western values and infused it with a very different theology. What emerges is a mirror image of the West, containing the same historical narrative with its high and low points, but strangely distorted for most Western eyes.

As do what seem to be thousands of seemingly independant commentators from Russia leaving comments on blogs and message boards which a chilling uniformity of thought with virtually no straying from the Government-driven message. They may be compelled to engage in wild hyperboly about the dignity of the Russian nation, changing reasons and rationalizations wildly, but it's origin in in the near absolute tacit editorial control of the electronic media in Russia by the state, or by those dependant and closely tied to it.

That thee public's ignorance and lack of curiosity is being used so well reminds us of just what kind of government the world is dealing with - a neo-Soviet one.

Soviet Quality Construction for the Supreme Soviet

Generation sneer: American Architects always have to listen to it travelling in Europe. It’s the stock lecture about shabby this and that, blah, blah, blah... how European tradesmen are just better and just plain superhuman. Until their shabby meal-ticket work falls down.

- Qwayassss! to Are you sure

And to top it off you see crap like this pictured on the left. A building construction site (not road, utility, or bridge work) in Belgium where trucks are tracking mud out onto a public road - not once but permanently. In the US, the county eviro-pinkertons would shut your ass down, charge you to remediate it, and possibly make you resubmit your permit with a watershed impact study. But as we all know, the Europeans are just better at you name it - which is to say whatever subject at hand happens to be.

Merde in France

1 out of 4 restaurants in France break hygiene rules or serve up food unfit for human consumption. So that's why I never stop throwing up.

Declarations, Always Positive, Never Flawed. No Reflection Ever Required.

Never has been being told to mind your own business been so beautifully stretched.

Handshakes and congratulations were offered all around. But by the time the sun was up, Russian tanks were advancing again, this time taking positions around the strategically important city of Gori, in central Georgia.

It soon became clear that the six-point deal not only failed to slow the Russian advance, but it also allowed Russia to claim that it could push deeper into Georgia as part of so-called additional security measures it was granted in the agreement. Mr. Sarkozy, according to a senior Georgian official who witnessed the negotiations, also failed to persuade the Russians to agree to any time limit on their military action.

And always declared a success, and promptly forgotten. Sarkozy’s rapprochement to Putin/Medvedyev was brushed off on one level, and employed against it’s own purpose on another one. In Europe, the need to prove something about their culture and flaccid incapacity to effect action is so great, that it’s declared a success.

As the current holders of the EU presidency, the French were always going to be at the forefront of the EU's efforts to mediate between Russia and Georgia.

President Nicolas Sarkozy has shown a flair for the high-profile diplomatic intervention.

His latest success comes on the back of much-heralded diplomatic triumphs –

- Thx to OMMAG

Why Did They Do It?

Because in spite of anything they say, most Europeans are actually stupid bigots with the sense of humor of 10 year olds, that’s why.



Caught out, they had no choice other than to defend the ‘national pride’.

"We felt it was something appropriate, and that it would be interpreted as an affectionate gesture,"

Sadder still, one Canadian commenting on the story (which is big because team member Jose Calderon plays professionally for the Toronto Raptors,) tries salving their embarrassment:

Why is it assumed that the Spanish basketball team was making fun of the Chinese?

Now Spanish official are calling foul for fear of cutting into a meal-ticket they’re cooking up - an Olympic bi of their own. Samantha Chang wisely asks to that point:

[<---Excuse me, b*tches, but do my eyes look like that?]

Tellingly, the Spanish Basketball Federation declined to comment Wednesday. "The players explained what happened," said Juan Antonio Villanueva, the flak for Madrid's 2016 Olympic bid. "We think that's enough."

Jiri Dolezal's Hunger Strike: The Type of News That the MSM Doesn't Make Waves About

You have been told about opposition to Bush's policies, and to the Iraq war, and to the anti-ballistic missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, have you not? And should any protesters engage in a hunger strike, you would expect that to be front-page news too, right?

Well, it so happens, that there has been a hunger strike, but the reason that you haven't heard about it (or that it has been hidden at the bottom of an article, one single mainstream media article) is that Jiří X. Doležal is holding his strike in favor of the missile plans, stating that

installing a radar base in his country would buttress national security and was an important expression of assertiveness after decades of Czech passivity under communist occupation.

He called opponents of the plans a fringe of leftist radicals who were succumbing "to traditional Czech cowardice."

European Moral Weight: Good for About 36 Hours of Appeasement

It seems that as long as you keep repeating the word “peacekeeper” and make it so that their governments don’t have to do anything, Europeans will quietly fall into line.

Troops waved at journalists and one soldier shouted to a photographer: "Come with us, beauty, we're going to Tbilisi!"

After doing a nice job of buying the Russian narrative, and ignoring the state-sponsored propagandized uniformity of thought that it came out of Russia with, critic tried to make hay of the EU “brokering a peace” between Russia and Georgia immediately, as though the Russians’ behavior could be programmed or their motives trusted. It was broken within hours.

Buffoons. The Russians permitted the Europeans to show up and seem like statesmen because it bought them more time, and gave them a way to sanitize their image. Since then they broke the deal and rolled deeper into Georgia, within one hour’s drive of Tbilisi.

People ratting on about how this was intended as a slap against the US have lost their marbles. The thrust of the opposition to Georgia taking part in the NATO Membership Action Plan were Germany and France. THAT is what gave the Russians the sense that a disagreement on the issue within the NATO states would give them enough time to take a bigger bite out of Georgia, a nation they’ve been chipping away at since they moment they both got their freedom from the Soviet Union.

What can the US do about it, knowing that Europe see no problem with these modern-day echoes of the invasion of Sudetenland?:

South Ossetia is not, as some have suggested, tit-for-tat payback for American and European recognition, over Russian objections, of Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Russia has been "at war" with democratic Georgia for some time. Driven to distraction by Mr. Saakashvili's assertiveness and Georgia's desire to join NATO, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin first tried to bring the country to its knees through economic warfare beginning in 2005. He cut off access to Russian markets, expelled Georgians from Russia, quadrupled the price of Russian energy to Georgia, and severed transport links.

Georgia failed to collapse. To the contrary, it has flourished: After the Rose Revolution of 2003 ended the corrupt reign of Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister, Georgia instituted far-reaching reforms to its governing structures, cleaned up the endemic corruption that infected every facet of pre-Rose Revolution life, and found new markets for its products in Turkey and Europe. It persevered with some of the most profound and thorough economic and pro-business reforms ever undertaken by a developing country -- slashing taxes and government regulations, and privatizing state-owned enterprises. All of which is reflected in Georgia's meteoric rise on the World Bank's Doing Business indicators. The irrelevance of Russian economic sanctions to Georgia made the ideological challenge that the Rose Revolution posed to Putin's vision of Russia even more profound.

[snip]

The real payback for Moscow's decision to invade Georgia should be the sweet revenge of a strong, prosperous and fully independent Georgia. Building on the strides Georgia has already made, Brussels and Washington should give Tbilisi a clear road to NATO and EU membership.

The question put to the US by the same Euro-natters that would find any sort of action by America “frighteningly aggressive” is that America HASN’T acted boldly. Well – where IS Georgia anyway? On America’s immediate neighborhood? If not, why the childish demands and goading from critics in Europe about what others should/shouldn’t/are/aren’t doing?

The Russians could just as easily toy with the sovereignty of EU member states and potential ones too. So what exactly are they going to do about it?

Soft Power exposed

VDH on Georgia:

Indeed, tired of European lectures, the Russians are now telling the world that soft power is, well, soft. Moscow doesn’t give a damn about the United Nations, the European Union, the World Court at the Hague, or any finger-pointing moralist from Geneva or London. Did anyone in Paris miss any sleep over the rubble of Grozny?

Those wacky and whimsical French youths

A down market clothing shop in Paris' 19th arrondissement is being investigated by police for selling womens' tops with the inscription "No Jews allowed".

Note that the 19th arrondissement is where a Jewish kid was recently hunted down and beaten into a coma. French authorities have expressed doubts as to the anti-Semitic nature of the attack. The 19th arrondissement is also the hotbed of radical Islamic activity that spawned a contingent of French youths who made their way to Iraq.

The disturbing discoveries of Obama's connections don't make Obama less palatable among whites because of skin color, but for cultural reasons

In reply to Juan Williams' The Race Issue Isn't Going Away, Christopher Cook provides an answer to his contention that "there is a hidden racist vote among whites that threatens to undo Barack Obama's chances for the presidency."

The compelling poll numbers that Williams quotes in his Wall Street Journal article do seem, to some degree at least, to support Williams' contention, states Cook.

And yet...

What would the numbers have been on these same poll questions if asked BEFORE we started getting to know Barack Obama and his associations?

Remember, back at the beginning, how Obama seemed very "post-racial"? At first, the race issue didn't seem like it was a part of who he was or what he was saying. Whites saw this, and for a while, it seems that many more considered the possibility of voting for him, not as a black or a white man, but as a candidate sufficiently connected to the mainstream to be a president for all Americans.

…[The] disturbing discoveries [of his connections] don't make Obama less palatable among whites because of the color of his skin. They make him less palatable among whites because they put him out of the mainstream. Aggregated together, these various associations and statements aren't scary for racial reasons, they're scary for cultural reasons.

It is important at this juncture to point out that this is not "black culture." It does not represent all, or even a majority, of black Americans. Rather, it is a dysfunctional sub-culture—one that most Americans of all races finds disturbing and unfortunate. For the last half century, the left has attempted—with great success, unfortunately—to designate this sub-culture as being the only "authentic" black culture.

…And, to put the question bluntly to people like Juan Williams and others—what on earth makes you think that this is about his skin color?

Conjure up, if you will, a hypothetical candidate. The candidate is white, and thus he "looks like" the majority of Americans. His ethnic descent is from the hypothetical European country of Crovakia. His wife is a barely closeted Crovakian separatist. He's been attending an militant Crovakian church for 20 years, pastored by an racist, anti-American conspiracy theorist. The candidate is making baseless allegations that opposition by any non-Crovakian is actually a racist attack against all Crovakians. A veiled threat of violence by a small but dangerous subset of Crovakians hovers in the air.

Does anyone seriously think that white Americans would vote for this guy just because he shares their skin color?

Please.

…Imagine a counterfactual scenario: Let's say the first black candidate is Michael Steele…

Christopher Cook ends by pointing out that The Corner has the much funnier version of this article: Peter Kirsanow's 25 Reasons You May be a Racist. As for Star Parker, she has an article entitled Black Politics? You mean liberal politics:

It's not like black conservatives have nothing to say here. Hoover Institution scholar Shelby Steele wrote a book about Obama. Tom Sowell has regularly written about him, as have I. But black conservatives are not considered relevant to these discussions because race is not an issue of ethnicity but an issue of politics. Black politics means liberal politics and hence black conservatives are not black.

Le gène tricolore

The French must have more than one of these.

News from Georgia

Georgia's civil news service, which is still under DDOS attack, can be consulted at this Blogspot url.

Blinkered by their Phobic Hatred

The USA was Bleu Blanc Beur before you we born, Bernard.

Paging Superfrenchie: we’ve found your fellow trash-talking buffoons

The Americans' relay victory was all the more sweet considering the way France declared itself the favorite prior to the Olympics. The Frenchmen weren't shy about repeating it either. In a news conference prior to the start of the Games, Bernard, who boasts a tattoo of a shark on his abdomen, was asked what he thought about his country's chances against the United States.

"The Americans?" Bernard said. "We will smash them."

Several of Bernard's teammates followed his lead, even going to far as to suggest that the Americans were scared of the French.

"This morning, Bob (Bowman) had said the French was saying some stuff, talking a little bit of trash," Phelps said. "It fired me up more than anything else. I told Garret, and he said 'You know what?' We're going to let our swimming do the talking."

Indeed.

Phelps' hopes of breaking Mark Spitz's record of seven golds in a single games appeared doomed when the French took over the lead at the 250 mark. They were 4.03 seconds under world-record pace at 350 meters before Lezak, the oldest American male swimmer at 32, rallied over the closing strokes.

Note to SF, Fox is pleased to cover ALL the leading teams and players in the Olympics, not just their own and a few Europeans. While you’re at it, check out the usual cultural bigotry even in the fonts.

- Thanks a bunch to Shy Guy
and Gringo suave.

"We Are All Russians Now" — The Georgian Conflict: "Putin Made the Right Choice" Against "American Hegemony"; "Bravo"; "May France Change Sides"

Fighting, wars implicate American troops? America is accused of being the guilty party, and Americans are accused of being criminals — and that, while under unceasing broadsides of mockery, hatred, and bile.

Fighting, wars implicate non-American (say, Russian) troops? America is accused of being the guilty party (!), and Americans are accused of being criminals (!) — while Russia is described as… a poor victim (!) of Anglo-Saxon perfidy and of American imperialism (and of a Georgian strongman variously described as a dog, a madman, a proponent of "Greater Georgia", the dictator of Tbilisi, and "a dictator 'good for US' as they say at the CIA").

Just as with Rwanda, it would seem that it turns out that the French love of peace and its hatred of war are but a smokescreen for anti-Americanism. Just take a look at the innumerable reactions to the fighting in Georgia, almost all of which invariably go from "Oui… but" to …outright support for the Russian army taking the offense! (If you read French, the original post provides more details, including a tiny handful of common-sense comments…)

• "The Russians aren't angels but, in this case, their leaders have been pushed to the limit. Washington pushes to crime"

• "Good news, another slap for Bush" War, it turns out (in the country devoted to peace), is good news — when it humiliates America and/or its leaders.
• "All this is the result of the USA's policies in the region... America's expansionism outside of their borders is a nightmare that has been going on for years." No expansionism where Russia is concerned, of course…
• "The Russians have reacted well. Bravo."
• "I am not reacting — at the present moment —, on the depth of a story I don't know enough about... But I admit without shame that I was damn happy to see the downcast and stupid face of a Georges [sic] W Bush asking almost humbly … the Russian bear to stop knocking that poor Georgian president aka a NATO poodle" One knows enough about America and Iraq to react — immediately and with uncessant bile — to that story… As for the war's victims, again, who cares about them?
• "And one more defeat for Georges [sic] Bush! Hopefully we'll get rid of him soon! Because one wonders where we will be taken by the plans of that warmonger and his new vassals." No language of that sort is bestowed upon Putin or Medvedev.
  
• "France must support the Russians who are provoked in a stupid fashion by that mad president of Georgia. Mad and, above all, manipulated by the United States"
• "The dictator from Tbilisi … has just provoked Russia in an inconsiderate way".
• "Georgia is headed by a small Stalin, himself a Georgian, who takes his orders and dough from Washington … It's a fraudulent government" One wonders how many posts and comments of a similar nature these people left about Saddam Hussein during Iraq's conflict with America… (I don't remember seeing many…)
  
• "The only winners are Anglo-Saxon arms dealers and Mikhal Saakachvili himself." The Russians being nothing but innocent victims of what one French commentator calls ironically "our United-Statesian friends (sic)"? (Say, wasn't this the same speech we heard during the Soviet era?)
• "What game did the Americans play?" "Washington is in the process of creating a new war in Europe. They must be stopped. … It's a plot against the European Union."
• "Goergia [sic] isn't even a country, it's an American base … Putin made the correct choice, and I hope that more follow: respect for the peoples, for their integrity, and for the forceful opposition to NATO and American hegemony. May France change sides."
• "The United States' imbecilic, uncultivated, and brainless imperialism had unleashed a war in Russia. But Russia will show she isn't Iraq! "We are all Russians now" I feel like saying"…

As U*2 would say: "Americans, you are hated here…"

On the (narrow) bright side: Among the few common-sense comments, there is that of LoR:

On se croirait revenu aux temps de l'Allemagne nazie. Quand on laissa Hitler envahir les Sudètes puis l'ensemble de la Tchécoslovaquie. L'UE continuera-t-elle longtemps à observer une invasion en règle d'un Etat par un autre sans réagir militairement. Il est fort à parier que quand la Moldavie tentera de récupérer sa province séparatiste de Transnistrie, l'UE observera sans broncher l'armée russe envahir voire annexer la Moldavie. Décidément, nous sommes gouvernés par des "munichois" !!

"Où sont nos droits de l'hommistes professionnels" asks Jean-Louis C ; "quel silence. quelle honte de ne voir personne s'élever contre le retour de la russie aux pires heures du stalinisme sous la houlette du dictateur poutine."

gmt adds :

Saakashvili n'est pas un tendre, les Occidentaux ne jouent pas un jeu innocent, d'accord. La mort d'innocents est inacceptable. Mais regardons les responsabilités en face. La Russie, qui hurle contre toute indépendance de la Tchétchénie, se cache à peine de soutenir les séparatismes abkhaze et sud-ossète. Si l'argument de stabilité est valable d'un côté, il l'est de l'autre. L'hypocrisie et l'arrogance du Kremlin dans cette affaire dépassent, et de loin, celles des Occidentaux ou de Tbilissi !

And gmt concludes thus:

Hallucinants, les dérapages verbaux de certains ! Combien de pays faudra-t-il sacrifier avant que ces gens ne comprennent que leur anti-américanisme obsessionnel ne les autorise pas à orienter le sort des millions de gens qui, eux, vivent dans ces pays ? Cet égocentrisme à bonne conscience est décidément révoltant !

In related news, check out the article on Le Monde's Iraq coverage as well as "I Don't Like Americans" (Letters to the Editor of Le Monde)…

Update: Bernard-Henri Lévy expresses support for Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili and comes under a torrent of criticism…

It was used to buy donuts

His Only Imperative is the Territorial protection of the Ego Bubble

Superfrenchie, in the usual fashion of being more concerned with his own feelings than reality, has taken great joy in a joint exercise between US and French Air Force fighters in Arizona. Abiding by his usual fixation that there is somebody, somewhere who didn’t drink from his cup, he asks why it didn’t make it onto Fox News.

Why demand that? Fox News, or any national news outfit for that matter (outside of maybe Pentagon channel, Stars and Strips, and the local station near the base) doesn’t report on these exercises at all, and certainly is less interested in finding a national victory in a participatory training exercise. If they did, SF would likely characterize it as cultural warmongering or some such. No – in his fragile emotional construct, they should have reported this one because the Rafales beat the F-16s. US news outlets, you see, should be made responsible for the tender feelings of the populations of Europe.

But his zeal to harangue someone for omitting details seems to be limited to needing propaganda that give him something to wallow around in. What he omits is that the pilots had swapped aircraft in order to intimately understand how each others’ aircraft behave if they have to fly joint missions.

Four French Air Force pilots flying all four F-16 in the exercise were shot down by American Air Force pilots flying Rafales, and two Rafales were shot down by French Air Force pilots.

The U.S. and French air force partnership is not limited to aircraft exercises, but also the entire spectrum of interoperable maintenance and proficiency training, logistics and sustainment of these aircraft.

The maintainers and support crews also had the chance to interact with the other country's aircraft and crews. French support personnel received a tour of Luke's engine shop during their visit.

French military have been fighting alongside American forces in Afghanistan since October 2001 and continue to play a supportive role today.

"Every U.S. and French Airman who took part in this deployment is better for the experience", said Col. Kurt Neubauer, 56th Fighter Wing commander. "Training with the French air force provided us the invaluable opportunity to learn from each other's operational experience, improve our combat skills and strengthen the bond of friendship between our great air forces and our great countries."

"The French visit provided an excellent opportunity to strengthen our social relationship and enhance future relations," said Lt. Col. Peter Bilodeau, 309th Fighter Squadron commander. "There should be as many combined operations as possible before there are lessons learned in combat."

The French airmen shared the same view of working and training together and reiterated the fact that France has been a long time ally of the U.S.

"The cooperation between France and the U.S. goes all the way back to World War I," said Col. Philippe Poireault, French air force detachment commander. "This was an extraordinary opportunity for both the French and U.S. to learn from each other, and we look forward to strengthening that relationship."

What’s plain as day, is that the USAF’s tone is positive and filled with gratitude. It’s the polar opposite of Superfrenchie’s negativity, even as he childishly demands respect from random members of the American public for the sake of his desired melodrama of Americans somehow thanking HIM for a foreign military that Americans DO respect, one which he isn’t a part of.

With respect to SF’s flying orgasm, the Air Force seems to have omitted the losses from their press release in what seems like a never ending need to keep warm and cozy the high maintenance egos of the civilian population of France, a.k.a. the center of the known universe.

As we can detect from his tone, what Superfrenchie would prefer to see would be that these complex, difficult, and costly flight exercises which are critical for safety and success at a time of tension would be some sort of kangaroo court on the single thing that seems to burden his soul: that anything the French do as individuals, a public, or a representatives of a nation is not naturally assumed to be so completely and utterly correct at all times - that the flaws and foibles of individuals, their judgment, their motives, are not considered in any way. It fits the ball and chain that has burdened so many Europeans for centuries – the desire to defend any flaw to the death for the sake of ones’ pride, and the use of any positive outcome as a sign of the superiority over others of individuals, even if it was they had nothing to do with it.

Unlike SF, TF1 reports it straight.

Randomly ask any French person what anything their military does mean to them, and 90% of the time you’ll give you a parroted “to hell with the world” recitation about them not being necessary anymore now that they have no hostile borders, or some feeble teenager-level platitudes about peace, along with some John Lennon-like fantasies about the world that are divorced of any fact about the state of affairs on the big blue ball. What then, if not this nationalism from those so attached to chiding others about “post-nationalism”, are we to make of it other than a feeble attempt to do whatever it takes to move goalposts and philosophies to flag the sort of pride that contradicts the prescription the same culture (with a chilling uniformity in the population) has for all others who are not of them. A prejudice even commonly extended to other Europeans.

The sad thing is that in their myopia he can’t seem to see and take pride and satisfaction in the realism, dedication, love of nation and culture, and decency of France’s pilots, air crews, and service personnel.

Georgia gets a taste of EU "soft power"

...and it tastes like a shit sandwich served up as nouvelle cuisine. When the Russians come a knockin', Georgia requests a US mediation. What, no neighborly EU soft limp dick power for you guys? Eastern Europe knows what it is like to be thrown under the bus by the effete, elite Zeropeans.