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

The results of President Barack Obama's nuclear posture review are in: the US will not develop any new nuclear weapon designs, and the US will not target countries that sign and comply with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

Thus writes TIA Daily's Jack Wakeland.

This nuclear posture follows the START treaty the US just signed with Russia that contains the following limits on each country:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He’s Just not that Into You

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

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

US leader Barack Obama will in the Czech capital on Thursday (8 April) sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty with his Russian counterpart before hosting a dinner with 11 heads of state and government from selected European countries.

The irony being that the internationally inept Obama is signing off on an arms reduction pact that the Bush White House negotiated.

The subject is security, something the EU has not the least serious bit of yet, but no matter – they need an orgy of photo-ops to cover for some deficiency of regards (as yet unearned, even in Europe,) that will replace any useful dialog with the near-weekly “historic summits” that have occupied the dim-bulb continental press for what now seems like years.

"This dinner points yet again to the fact that the European Union needs to make a common foreign policy a reality so that President Obama knows whom to call or who to invite for dinner."

Ergo: summits and dinners = continental security. Serious, serious “partners”, we have there.

The point is that there is no point in meeting at all with an ineffectual, consistently hostile “partner”, no matter how willing they are to set their passive-aggression aside for a week or so.

It also comes after Mr Obama cancelled an US-EU summit due to take place in Madrid in May, however. US and EU officials later suggested that future summits should be held only "when we both feel the need for one," rather than on a regular basis.

The developments embarrassed the Spanish EU presidency and have prompted questions of whether Washington continues to see the EU as an important player on the world stage.

The arrogance of the statement that assumes that anyone, anywhere “continues” to see the EU as an important player of the world stage, is undergirded by the idea that it even exists in any real way yet, as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

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

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

”Caring mayor wants Roma register”

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

“Ethnic registration for Roma”, headlines De Volkskrant. Social democratic mayor Cor de Vos of Nieuwegein, a town in the central Holland, says that councils with the largest Roma populations should keep an ethnic register of the community. “We are dealing with a group of people which is not integrated in Dutch society,” he declared.

If that’s the case, why don’t they “register” gays and anyone who might haver ever practiced Islam?

“They need to be helped, for their own sake and that of their neighbourhood. But we can’t do that without knowing their situation.” Last Wednesday it was revealed that the city council of Ede has been holding police, child welfare and justice department files on the Roma since 1978. The council apologised but also said: “The law isn't in step with the issues.

And of course that was bad, and wrong. Sooooo in the interest of “caring”, there will be a lot more of it.

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

Finally: An Entirely Valid Reason to Go on Strike

From Denmark: an entirely valid reason to go on strike (tak — hik — til Valerie)…

Scores of Carlsberg workers walked off their jobs in protest Thursday after the Danish brewer tightened laid-back rules on workplace drinking and removed beer coolers from work sites, a company spokesman said.

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

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

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

writes Jonah Goldberg.

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

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

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

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

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

German. The Language of Lurrrrve.

Or not. Not really.

So tonight...along the Rhein River....sits Bodo, who ponders if any average German gal will have a butcher who reads cowboy westerns, is deeply into jazz, drinks only fizzy water, wears boxer shorts, vacations yearly in Bulgaria in a cheap $18 a night hotel with a open seafood buffet line, and would like to meet a beastly German woman with a voluptuous body that begs.

Don’t give up Bodo! There’s someone for everyone!

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

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

The reasons are financial, of course, given France's high taxes, but the most surprising revelation in France, I Love You I am leaving you (What Frenchmen Abroad Are Telling Us) — which only studies Frenchmen having emigrated to Western-type countries with a development level comparable to France's own — is probably the number of Frenchmen of color deciding to relocate from the cradle of "Republican equality" — and from the eternal purveyor of racism lessons to clueless American clods — because of racial prejudice.

Verdict : "En France, les pratiques discriminatoires et le racisme ordinaire sont les mauvaises herbes que les autorités ne se donnent pas la peine de traiter sérieusement".

The only time racism is treated sérieusement in France is when it (allegedly) occurs en Amérique…

The Little Guy Looks Like he’s Really Getting into it

The Land of the Free Freeloader

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

The education sector in Europe has been hard hit by cuts in budgets, personnel and investment. Some universities, e.g. in the UK, might even have to be closed down. And some leading institutions could soon lose their top international rankings.

Aren’t you comforted that the huge, meddling nanny state is there to cushion the fall?

Students and pensioners to fill vacancies

Even the northern nations have felt the pinch. In the Netherlands, fiscal 2010–2011 will see 20% cuts in several sectors, including higher education, according to a study put out in February by John Aubrey Douglass from the University of California, Berkeley. Among other things, student scholarships are to be transformed into a system of bank loans for young people. The proposal sparked protests in February, in which over a thousand students occupied lecture halls in Amsterdam, Nijmegen, Utrecht and Rotterdam.

That the students themselves are only real beneficiary of those educations continues to allude the sort that occupy lecture halls for free gub’mint stuff of course, and to be sure the “societal benefit” can’t be much better in a part of the world that doesn’t really invest in R&D, not to mention the “national pride” benefit of all that free gub’mint larnin’...

Wipe Europe off world rankings

Wow! Only Two Years Late at That!

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

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

Change: What has changed and what has not

What has changed and what has not? asks Bill Prast (thanks to Mark)

We used to have a strong dollar ...
Politicians changed that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What hasn't been changed?

Is the politicians who promised Change.

Don't Forget to VOTE in November!!

Allons ons Dance

Where it all Falls Apart

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

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

An unnamed Interior Ministry official said on Saturday, March 27, that his ministry had "opened talks anew with the United States on this matter."

They want some magical solution, is exemplified by German home truthes.

Last year, Germany had considered accepting prisoners but later backed off amid concerns that the men could prove dangerous.

I suspect that the only thing that would ameliorate their laundry list of what a solution should look like would be akin to eliminating the prisoners themselves, but that it happen in such a way that would permit the bobos to bitch about it for about 3 decades – it’s really where they get the idea of pushing the GWOT as the “new Vietnam War”.

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

The Man With the Golden Pipe Dreams

L'homme au rateau d'Or Episode _01
envoyé par Scoflaire_video. - Cliquez pour voir plus de vidéos marrantes.

Hydrocephalic Mega-state goes into Mythmaking

Charter of Fundamental Rights to be re-written as epic poem

At least it will make a nice fable of some long lost happier time that never existed, someday.

The European Commission is bracing itself for the prospect of politically sensitive requests from EU citizens once a key direct-democracy clause contained in the Lisbon Treaty takes effect.

In the mean time, we still have to hear the usual dyspeptic whining from Paris:

In a move that is likely to provoke the ire of francophones, already smarting from what they view as the galloping advance of the English language within the EU institutions and European communication with citizens at the expense of French, the tender required that poem be composed in the language of Shakespeare as English is, according to the tender document, the "literary language".

The American Expatriate Who Said That the Only Thing That Helped Concentration Camp Inmates Survive During World War II Was "Hope"

Once a month or so, a group of expatriate Americans meet in one of Paris's Irish pubs (along with a smaller number of French and other-foreign friends) to discuss American politics, policies, and the events of the day. I'm often the only conservative present (or one of the few conservatives present) at "Political Pub" as most of them seem to be leftists or, at least, Democrats.

• Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

During one of those meetings — in which the discussion led to war and to Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, and in which we were repeatedly told (certainly, I should say, I was repeatedly told) that the people present do not agree with war and that they are not in favor of military involvement — one young girl eventually got up and, for some reason, spoke of Adolf Hitler's concentration camps during World War II. She said that the only thing that those poor souls had going for them, the only thing that helped them survive, was "hope".

That's when I intervened. Hope did not help a single inmate survive. Whether the inmates were optimistic, they were murdered by Nazi butchers. Whether they were in a state of despair, they were murdered by Nazi butchers. Whatever they felt, however they felt, they were murdered by Nazi butchers. And the rare men and women and children who survived did so not because of hope (or because of despair), but in spite of hope (and in spite of despair).

No. The only thing that helped the inmates survive — or the main thing that helped the inmates survive, at any rate — was (well-armed) members of the United States armed forces (along with their British allies) killing Germans, as many as possible, as they headed East to defeat and destroy the Nazi régime.

La Grenouille qui Veut Etre Plus Forte que L'Elephant

We’ve touched on this idea of European talking heads “crowding out” to the point of absurdity any international confab. Never mind that they try to create and host as many of these moronic distractions as possible, or that they are a fantasy of a world long gone, where a head of state can merely accept the terms of any such event and force them on his population.

We’ve pointed out here on several occasions that there is also a desire to have it both ways. Sometimes they’re 27 members + the EP + the EC + OECD + whatever, and yet they want to be a singular, benevolent, apparently legitimate, über-power that the world bows to for simply appearing involved in so many worldy-world things, and you know, being European and saying what nice things the plebes should get for free from someone. Else.

You know it’s bad, when a European actually notices it too.

PASCAL Lamy, the formidable Frenchman who runs the World Trade Organisation, has a cunning plan to make Europeans less annoying as they crowd around the table at global gatherings like the G20. If they cannot agree to speak with one voice (by allowing a single envoy to represent the European Union), what if they agreed to speak with one mouth? If half a dozen European leaders will insist on turning up to the G20, could they divvy up the agenda ahead of time, and agree that one leader would speak (and only one) on each topic in the name of the EU?

It is a neat suggestion. Would it help?

When the G20 next meets, Europe will be represented by the national leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Italy (who are full members), plus Spain (which is an invited special guest), plus representatives of the union. The Dutch, who managed to sneak into the first G20 leaders' summits in Washington and London as Spanish-style guests, seem to have been axed from the list this time.

The thing worth noting here is that the writer doesn’t note that Pascal Lamy speaking on belaf of the WTO is doing a nice job of coaching the same folks he’s meant to adjudicate.

Realistically speaking, it isn’t a mob, or a “team” or anything of the sort. For the most part, if policy were a young, tender, innocent hope for the future, walking its’ way home, the combined effort of the Europeans to raise their profile, would be a gang raping her.

The new President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, has convinced EU colleagues that he must attend meetings of the G20 to represent the union's 27 national leaders, in addition to José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission (who is to represent the EU in areas where the commission's centralised bureaucracy has the lead, such as trade policy). In a nod to the rest of the world's impatience with the number of Europeans in the G20, the two presidents have agreed to share a sherpa, and to sit behind a single name-plate at the table. I don't think there are plans for anyone to sit on laps.

The problem is that what they bring is either pointless, or an internal matter and squabbling which due to the existence of borders within borders, is magically revived as an international matter, probably because there are still a few people out there who think the word “international” still sounds important.

The Invisible Hand Giving European Collectivist Types the Finger

In a bid to avert default on its sovereign debt, the Greek government is to sell off portions of its islands to Turkey

You’ll recall that just a week ago, the German suggestion that the Greek government sell off a few islands it owns was met with suggestions that it’s inhumane and racist, and was made worse by the unfounded image western Europeans hold of Greek corruption, sloppiness, and what Germans used to call uncontrollable Schlamperei.

Minister of Finance Giorgos Papakonstantinou claimed “accounting errors” before making the surprise offer, estimated in the region of €40 billion for 49% ownership of the Dodecanese islands of Patmos and Agathonissi, close to the Turkish coast.

The Frenchman in a Suit Who Inquired of a War Supporter If He Could Ask Him a Question

I was present at the speech David E. Sanger gave at the Paris launch of the French translation of his book, L'Héritage (The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power).

During question-and-answer time, I made some comment to the Chief Washington Correspondent for The New York Times concerning Iraq and the fact that of the myriad reports and articles in Western newspapers and on Western TV shows throughout the years regarding the allegedly "unnecessary" and "disastrous" Iraq war, it was odd that so few seem to have been written by… Iraqis themselves.

• Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

After the presentation was over, some young Frenchman (of Middle Eastern origins?) in a very well-tailored suit came up to me and said, "Can I ask you a question?" Mais oui. "Do you really believe that not a single Iraqi has died during the Iraqi war?!" At that, he let out a peal of high-pitched mocking laughter (I am tempted to think Brüno), his eyes wide open and staring into mine.

How to answer this? I decided to join in his laughter. "The way you described that was very funny." It indeed sounded ridiculous. "The only problem is, I wasn't the one who said that — or anything like it. You are…" This got him riled, and he started berating me about all the things about the Iraq war that I supposedly unaware of…

Everyday Meetings with Common Europeans

Notes taken from everyday life in France and "old" Europe

• The American Expatriate who said that the only thing that helped concentration camp inmates survive during World War II was "hope"
• The Frenchman who inquired of a war supporter if he could ask him a question
• More news of stellar treatment from France's health care system
• A dispassionate discussion with the members of the band
• The Spanish artist who would not go to America
• The Danish girl who knew what kind of nation the United States is
• The Latin American lady who refuses to drink Coca-Cola
• The friend who asked me if I was happy
• The flight attendant who doesn't like violence
• Some initial French reactions to 9-11
• Immortal proclamations of Franco-American friendship on 9-11
• The firefighter gives a lesson in truck mechanics
• The BUT argument: Patterns in conversations in France
• The 50-year-old man who lectured me about America's race problems
• Taking World War II as an example, a Frenchman gives a lesson on the meaning of injustice
• I give my cat's veterinarian a scare
• The train conductor explains why the SNCF website should not be user-friendly

You know the type

Why does it always seem to be our compassionate, all-inclusive, all-caring, all-knowing statist friends who display the latent streak of violence:


Just imagine the hand-wringing, indignation and concern if the shoe was on the other foot.

Also Known As…

Among other things, the Xaybe'h de Camara cantina
near Mexico's Chichen Itza offers fried fish…


This is also known as position 35-C
in the latest edition of the Kama Sutra…

Still Damp and Moist

Hermann’s Observer notes a high pressure front.

Elsewehere: Europeans loved for who they really are. What the hell – the old ways always worked for them.

Once More, with Feeling

Finally, we have an explanation to those strange syphilitic beings roaming the great Godhead’s chosen continent. And it the fault of those dastardly Americans!

Case have increased fourfold in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside, the areas of Britain where Facebook is most popular.

It probably has more to do with the unenthusiastic shiftless festered mess that has come to represent British womanhood at this point, and the number of them that out of pure boredom, would screw anything that’s tied down.

Meta-capitalists are natural allies of the communists … What we have is a gigantic symbiosis of all globalist and statist forces around the world

As always, Olavo de Carvalho has the inside dirt on the state of communism in Latin America — and on the entire planet…

Communist and pro-communist parties rule about a dozen Latin American countries today. This fact, by itself, is enough to prove that the “end of communism,” proclaimed by the Right soon after the fall of the Soviet Union, is a myth. World communism was never only an appendix of the USSR. It actually created the USSR, not the other way around. It existed a century before the Russian Revolution and continued to exist after the nominal extinction of Soviet power.

What made the resurgence of communism easier — not only in Latin America, but around the world — was the cowardly timidity of Western right-wingers who, instead of taking the opportunity of the fall of the USSR to punish the communists for their crimes, chose instead a policy of “extending them a hand,” as if asking for their pardon for having defeated them, and offering them all sorts of aid, enabling them to reappear with a new or attenuated identity, even protecting them from being called “communists” (the fashionable euphemism is now “populism”).

I believe that this absurd surrender of the winners was also stimulated by powerful globalist circles, whose interest in establishing worldwide bureaucratic controls converges with the objectives of the communists. The number of billionaire companies which came to openly contribute to leftist parties is enormous. I call “meta-capitalists” the individuals and groups which grew so wealthy with the market economy that they can’t stand anymore being at the mercy of the free market and seek, instead, to control everything, supporting bureaucracy instead of capitalism. Meta-capitalists are natural allies of the communists. … What we have is a gigantic symbiosis of all globalist and statist forces around the world.

To the New American's question, What role have Hugo Chavez and Venezuelan Petrodollars played in this resurgence? Is the Cuban government an important player? Olavo de Carvalho answers:

Hugo Chavez is only a scarecrow that the Latin American Left waves before the world to distract the attention away from the São Paulo Forum, which is the true strategic command of the Latin American revolution. Cuba and Venezuela are important as shelters for terrorists and drug traffickers. In Venezuela and other Spanish-speaking countries ruled by the São Paulo Forum, there is strong and organized opposition, while in Brazil all that is left is the Left itself, which controls the scene absolutely.

[Indeed,] however unbelievable it may seem, there is a strong and organized resistance against the rise of neo-communism in Venezuela. Colombia, likewise, is a remarkable center of resistance. On the other hand, nowhere else has the Right been so utterly destroyed as it has been in Brazil, which is, for this very reason, the headquarters of Latin American revolution. … In this sense, American political analysts are always getting it all backwards: They are alarmed at Venezuela and do not understand that the headquarters of the revolution is in Brazil.

And what does Olavo de Carvalho think of los Estados Unidos — where he currently lives?

In 2005, as I was getting tired of receiving weekly death threats from leftist maniacs, I found it was a good idea to accept a job as a Washington foreign correspondent that was offered to me by a traditional Brazilian business newspaper, the Diário do Comércio (“Business Daily”), and here I am living in Virginia with my family. I love to be here, because Americans, though already infected by the neo-communist virus, are not yet so stupid as Brazilians have become.

The French Decision to Step Back From the Carbon Tax, Says Rocard, Will One Day Be Seen as a Crime Against Humanity

Al Gore Redux: Although the relinquishment of France's carbon tax law is approved by a majority of Frenchmen (69%), Michel Rocard says that the government's decision to step back from the bill and wait instead for a EU-wide carbon tax law is criminal, suggesting that one day it will even be seen as a crime against humanity.

Meanwhile, Le Monde's readers are outraged that state governments in the U.S. are demanding that their respective schools teach a more differentiated view of global warming climate change, the French reporter and readers alike likening it to creationism and to believing the Earth is flat.

Privacy, Violated

Last month’s dancing bear routine of false indignation over the US government tracking financial transaction has yielded fairly efficiently to numb silence over the EU spying on people in precisely the same way.

The European Commission is to begin talks with member states on the Europe-wide monitoring of financial transactions by suspected terrorists.

Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for justice and fundamental rights, announced yesterday (24 March) that the scheme would be modelled on the Terrorist Financing Tracking Programme (TFTP) operated by the United States. “We would like to set up our own TFTP,” she said.

Now, it seems that looking at others’ data is oh-tay, except without these louts howling and baying about rights being shredded, etcetera, etcetera...

Reding said that she would also seek to negotiate a framework agreement with the US that would set standards for all transatlantic agreements involving data sharing.

A new agreement on Swift is necessary after the European Parliament, using new powers under the Lisbon treaty, rejected an interim agreement with the US in February.

After all, just a few weeks ago, the issue was all about as pedestrian as being about personal attention seeking behavior, if anything.

MEPs have been basking in the warm glow of global political attention over the EU-US arrangements on sharing bank transfer data. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek on Friday (5 February) to enlist his support for a temporary data-sharing deal.

William Kennard, the new US ambassador to the EU, was lobbying so assiduously in the corridors of Parliament that Guy Verhofstadt, leader of the Liberal group, quipped that Kennard was “working harder than an MEP”. German centre-right MEP Manfred Weber, who is the European People Party's co-ordinator on SWIFT, also seemed to have doubts about the diligence of his colleagues

If anything says “too late, no deal” to data sharing with the EU from now on, it’s motives like those ones we see having been touted over the use of SWIFT data.

If they want to play that game with the lives of their citizens, then to hell with them. They simply can’t be trusted.

Behind the Green Door

While our statist friends prattle on and on and on and on about green new deal this, green jobs that, sustainability sustainability sustainability, it looks as though our Bosch brothers and sisters are indeed doing what they do best, putting it all into practice:

Dresden has long been known as centre for quality handicrafts, but an erotic shop is taking a new twist on the tradition by offering dildos formed from local Elbe River sandstone.

Not to be confused with those Saxons plying their own splinter-free version of green new jobs:

According to news agency DDP, Elmar Thüry and family started making the dildos in 2006. They' dubbed their woody sex toys "The country pleasure maker" and a "natural alternative to synthetic dildos."

When his wife, Maria, expressed misgivings about the business, Thüry says he told her what he tells all his customers - that spruce wood doesn't splinter and has a special resonance.

"Guitars and violins aren't made of spruce wood for nothing," he told DDP.

His wife satisfied, Thüry set about carving out his business, naming the company, "Waldmichlsholdi," which is a play on words on a popular German folk song. All five family members, aged 18 to 46, have a hand in producing the products.

Somehow we think our prodnose statist friends don't exactly have this pleasure-driven version of au naturale as the preferred version of au naturale.

However, that most holy of grails does play a part in our story. Our statist friends get what they crave most*, VAT is included in all purchases made (at least on the wood).

*outside of repeated attempts at forcing freakish controls upon the individual.

Sarkozy-Obama: The Subjects of Discord

Les Dossiers Qui Fâchent: An article in Le Monde concerning Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to the United States presents the objects of discord between the French president and Barack Obama: foreign policy (Afghanistan, Middle East, Iran…), EADS, finance regulation, global warming issues after Copenhagen…

For the Murder of Six Babies, One of the Worst Infanticide Cases in History, 2.5 Years per Victim in Jail

For killing her babies — six of them over as many years — in one of the worst infanticide cases in history, Céline Lesage was sentenced not to death, not to life in prison, but to 15 years in jail (2 1/2 per baby) — apparently because by the time she gets out, she will no longer be able to have children and there will be no more "reason" for the serial killer to remain behind bars…

"Elle pense que la justice a été correctement appliquée", dit son avocate.

Idealizing “a Virtuous and Equal Poverty for All”

Dr. Sanity nails it:

Indeed. As I have noted time and again, the left with their regressive agenda are in complete denial about the sinister motives that drive their so-called "compassion" for others. Progressivism is just another strategy to obtain power over the lives of others. Getting this kind of power over others--and at the same time reinforcing your own grandiosity and sense of superiority!-- is far more important than trying to convince others of your position.

But its all part of the ideologically enhanced sense of moral and intellectual superiority that drives all these progressive, neo-Marxist fascists.

If you listen to these fiscal histrionics, who believe that wealth and progress are magically created out of their wishes and whims, you begin to get an idea of the kind of utopia they actually envision--that is, if they were rational enough to actually take their cognitively dissonant ideas to a logical endpoint.

For example, spend enough time around these latter-day Marxists (whose political ideas invariably lead to untold poverty and human misery), and you could easily begin to think that human beings are entirely spiritual beings, existing in a golden glow of non-material nothingness. You would think that people are not composed of matter and have substance in a 3-dimensional, material world. Or, you could cue the Madonna music and believe exactly the opposite: that we are living in a material world, and that human beings are nothing more than physical, material creatures. And, of course the Obama Administration is going to rescue us from ourselves and make it so that we don't have all that money to spend on such useless "things". He says that he's only going to "soak the rich", but as the WSJ noted, there's only one teensy little problem:

Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 --paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.

What is becoming obvious of the actions considered most important by the Obama Administration are:
The de facto nationalization of the Heath system
Financial regulation that will remander of autonomy of individual wealth and savings
Carbon regulation, providing effective control over the energy sector.
The three of which represent roughly half of the United States GNP. In the guise of trying to remake the crony-capitalism that the European “Social Democracies” are trying desperately to shed, he is creating the tools by which a bad actor can create a command economy. Don’t forget, it only took a decade of incrementalism for the eastern states of Germany to become the Marxist-Leninist DDR.

Let's stop and think about the Marxist modus operandi for a moment. If you take the anti-materialistic and anti-capitalist, "redistribute the wealth" message to its logical extreme, you must inexorably reach the conclusion that the highest values of society should be to encourage a virtuous--and equal--poverty for all; while homelessness and hunger would be proof that an individual has attained the highest moral plane. From the perspective of the "anti-materialists", malnourished children in societies of mud huts wearing rags and owning nothing- would be the epitome of human existence; since the possession of material wealth only condemns us to meaningless and empty lives given over in pursuit of meaningless and empty things. Clearly the poor have managed to eke out a life of powerful meaning and spiritual worth.

Only one problem with all this Marxist and neo-Marxst BS: human beings are not either spiritual or material. They are both at the same time. And, even more important for this discussion, there is a direct link between human freedom and those material goods the left incessantly tells us we should shun. Consider: all the marvelous goods and services that our incredible capitalistic society makes possible would not exist unless there were thinking, rational MINDS creating them.

Everything had to be done as it was, of course “for the workers”, and “the good of man”. This is the same rotten tree that the “progressives” who detest human progress hide behind as well.

As we have seen with the absurd demonization of the Insurance companies, those people who actually suppress the cost of procedures, and are little more than middle-men, the methodology of constructing a puppet show of inverse good-guys and bad-guys is alive and well in the present age. All it could leave us with is the culture of a Nomenclatura, where the government controls so many of life’s basic functions, and does it so badly, that getting ANYTHING done will require the petty criminality of “needing to know somebody”. Like the political penetration the left has made of educati0on and social services, I think you know what new “power class” will benefit from that.

As faith was an enemy of the fascists by virtue of its’ ability to give people a means of honest reflection independent of the vilest nationalists, so it goes today: which is why so many on the left, in the course of constructing an authoritarian framework over the little things in life, attempt to make an straw man of independent entities functioning freely in society, and are bound up with the notion of individual freedoms and autonomy, as “authorities” to be defeated. Mad as it sounds, 1918, 1933, and 2010 have more in common that anyone cares to think.

After all, we already have a minority of young willing “street fighters” treating a leader as though he is infallible, and press hacks willingly and unsceptically taking his every effort with unquestioning fealty – making a halo for him with every thoughtless repetition of his every breath being “historic”. Sure is. They just don’t know what history he’s reflecting back to.

Lincoln Graphic Biopic Preview: Honest Abe's Cooper Union Speech Described the Way Members of the Republican Party Were Demonized

Present at the Cooper Union's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's February 1860 visit to New York City and of his speech in the Peter Cooper-founded venue — widely credited with being crucial to handing Honest Abe the Republican Party's nomination for presidential candidate three months later — Erik Svane and Dan Greenberg (authors of the upcoming graphic novel, The Life & Times of Abraham Lincoln — which is, really, more of a graphic "biopic") decided that their readers might want them to share a preview of the book's Cooper Union sequence…







Included in the Cooper Union sequence from Svane and Greenberg's graphic biopic are the remarks that Lincoln addresses to the Republican Party's adversaries; read them below or on the first and second pages above and… ask yourself how much things have really changed in a century and a half…

…when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to [Republicans]. In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of [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.

Crisis of faith in Germany

Astute readers of NP are no doubt aware of the myriad of problems which have been rocking the Church, especially in Germany. Years of scandal, cover-up and deception appear to be driving the flock away in droves from the faith:

Germans are losing their fear of climate change, according to a survey, with just 42 percent worried about global warming.

It seems the long and chilly winter has taken its toll on climate change sensibilities despite the fact that weather has nothing to do with climate.

The latest figure is a clear drop from the 62 percent of Germans who said they were scared of such changes just last autumn.

To add insult to injury, our German brothers and sisters firmly show their new-found heretical beliefs know no bounds:

The new survey, carried out by polling company Infratest for Der Spiegel magazine, showed a quarter of those questioned thought Germany would profit from climate change rather than be badly affected by it.

Flooding America with a tidal wave of poisonous initiatives, orders, regulations, and laws

The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis (thanks to Mark).

A flood of apocalyptic legislation: The real goal of "health care" legislation, the real foal of "cap-and-trade", and the real goal of the "stimulus" is to rip the guts out of our private economy and transfer wide swaths of it over to the government to control.

Pravda Tells the Truth About the State of the Free Market in America

It already made a splash when it came out several months ago, but Pravda's Stanislav Mishin article is as pertinent today, if not more so, as when it first came out.

…the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives.

…The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past … months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

The good news is that the part about "the American public [taking] this with barely a whimper" has been proven false. As has the final paragraph, including the sentence, "The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is."

The Joke's on US

I hope the following jokes (?) were really spoken in primetime by the comedians they are attributed to — in any case, Thanks to Mark…

The liberals are asking us to give Obama time.
We agree — and think 25 to life would be appropriate.
— Jay Leno

America needs Obama-Care like
Nancy Pelosi needs a Halloween mask.
— Jay Leno

Q: Have you heard about McDonald's' new Obama Value Meal?
A: Order anything you like and the guy behind you has to pay for it.
— Conan O'Brian

Q: What does Barack Obama call lunch with a convicted felon?
A: A fund raiser.
— Jay Leno

Q: What's the difference between Obama's cabinet and a penitentiary?
A: One is filled with tax evaders, blackmailers, and threats to society.
The other is for housing prisoners.
— David Letterman

Q: If Nancy Pelosi and Obama were on a boat in the middle
of the ocean and it started to sink, who would be saved?
A. America.
— Fallon

Q: What's the difference between Obama and his dog, Bo?
A: Bo has papers.
— Kimmel

Q: What was the most positive result of the "Cash for clunkers" program?
A: It took 95% of the Obama bumper stickers off the road.
— David Letterman

Paging Captain Obvious...

Long rationalizing that Boeing aircraft sales are a subsidy Europeans plumping for their cronyistic monomania in business have to take a step back today. The WTO whose rounds of agreements they scuttled more than once came to seem like a useful instrument to them – that is, until they saw it doing what it was supposed to: resolve trade disputes:

The World Trade Organization ruled on Tuesday that the European plane maker Airbus received improper subsidies for its $13 billion A380 superjumbo jet and several other airplanes, hurting Boeing, its American rival, industry officials in the United States and Europe said.

Despite the fact that EADS/Airbus need not take any risks with its’ own revenue by not having to pay off the “loans” governments give it until a venture is profitable, the bleating about them not getting a fair shake will likely resume after a few weeks of the memory of this ruling fading away.

Think about it: a subsidized monopolist entity trying to give itself a form of ‘victim status’ as a way of bypassing the commercial challenges real businesses face.

Boeing has contended that the subsidies helped Airbus vault past it in 2003 to become the world’s largest plane maker. Boeing hopes that the ruling could help it catch up once its new 787 Dreamliner jet hits the market.

The decision was made as tensions mounted over European claims of protectionism in the Pentagon’s competition for a $35 billion to $40 billion contract for Air Force refueling tankers, the latest scrape between the companies.

Stranger still, the push for the sales deal with the United States Air Force was the clincher in a deal to produce enough of an order book and revenue to make viable the replacement of the Europeans’ military lift capacity.

Sales to USAF were to functionally subsidize EADS, Airbus, and the heavy lift capacity of the European militaries who signed up rejuvenate their aging, nearly non-existent fleets.

Nice trick, if you can keep them all bamboozled, especially since it will have the fringe benefit of artificially inflating EADS’ market share at the cost of both the American and European taxpayer.

The W.T.O. is also looking into a European complaint that Boeing has benefited improperly from subsidies from its military business. Airbus said in the statement that “resolution will finally only be found in trans-Atlantic negotiations.”

The last phrase of which should be “nuts,” because it fits their view that this is warfare with their real enemy itself, and taking pride in that foe’s unwillingness to harm them.

Comparing Hate Between the Right and the Left

Let's compare hate between the tea partiers (the right) and the left, writes Bob Parks, while Instapundit reports a shameless attack on a Democratic representative's office (thanks to Valerie and Hervé).

In any case, writes Erick Erickson (who's also written that "the Democrats are running to the nearest microphone in an effort to play the victim and generate sympathy as they try to steer poll numbers back in their direction"),

I would point out that it was the Democrats who just took over 1/6th of the American economy despite upwards of 56% of the American public being opposed. And they expect people to . . . what . . . clap?

As I said earlier today, violence is unacceptable, but none of us should be surprised — especially the left, which feeds off riots, protest, and molotov cocktail parties every time they strongly oppose something. The Weather Underground was not a Republican insurgency at the Weather Channel.

…I can’t say enough — we should beat them at the ballot box. Violence is inexcusable. But did they really think the public would just roll over when they willfully imposed the largest tax increase in America history, betrayed major Obama campaign promises, and mocked, taunted, and ridiculed the people who believe the constitution actually has meaning and value?

Instapundit, again (refreshing memories):

A STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE: Leftist death threats against Bush at protests.

Then, of course, there was Craig Kilborn’s “Snipers Wanted” moment.

We don't want to be labeled the party of "no"? As it pertains to this bill, how about "hell no"?

The best reaction so far to Sunday's vote is by Bobby Jindal, who examines each of five arguments against repeal…

Timothy P Cahill, state treasurer of Massachusetts (aka "the template" for the national health-care reform legislation) adds:

If not for federal Medicaid reimbursements and commitments from Washington to prop up this plan, Massachusetts would be broke. The only reason MassCare has survived is that we have been repeatedly bailed out by the federal government. But that raises the question: Who will bail America out if we implement a similar program?

Euro-parliament Funkadelic

John Rosenthal has an article in the Weekly Standard on EUtopia’s War on the GWOT. Think of it as their own little Passive-Aggressive Jihad against their own population.

One curious feature of the SWIFTboating of using the SWIFT financial clearinghouse to monitor terrorism funding, was that a salve was sought in the proposal to negotiate an interim agreement. So servile are these governments, that they made a conscious effort to employ the very “revolutionaries” that the Islamists would castrate first:

While the German government had consented to negotiations on the agreement in July 2009, it is notable that when the completed agreement was approved by the European Council four months later, Germany abstained. As the council decision required unanimity, a German “no” would have killed the agreement then and there. But rather than bearing the onus of having torpedoed a crucial transatlantic security arrangement, the German government by its abstention simply handed off the issue to “Dany the Red,” Werner Langen, and the other “putschists” in the European parliament.

Never mind the fact that these comfortable fantasists are carrying on as if they were Paraguayan peasants, you can predict that they’ve “gone straight” with some schtick about preserving the privacy of their own terrorists, and possibly the privacy of some innocent EUvian citizens as well, even if their own governments treat them like children.

In the spirit of reinforcing the individual autonomy and free will though they seem to have no problem with sweeping up the innocent with the guilty when it comes to taking some data-hostagetaker’s word about the taxpayers he’s informing on:

Two years earlier, the German foreign intelligence service, the BND, had purchased data stolen from the Liechtenstein-based LGT Bank. The purchase led to, among other things, a televised police raid on the home of Klaus Zumwinkel, one of Germany’s best-known business executives and now its most famous tax evader. Not only did the BND pay the data thief the equivalent of $5.5 million. According to reports in the German media, it also furnished him with a new identity. One can only conclude that in the eyes of both of Germany’s leading political parties, it is good and righteous for Germany to violate a bank client’s expectation of confidentiality in the name of combating tax evasion and topping up the coffers of the German treasury, but it is bad and evil for the United States to do the same in the name of combating terrorism and saving lives.

The BND, you’ll recall, was the same failed spook outfit that was so on the take and badly infiltrated by East Germany’s Stasi that the rest of civilization had virtually no reason to let them see your phonebook.

In fact, there is likely no way of knowing how many of their own citizens the bad actors in the BND betrayed, let alone the dead in East Germany who were revealed to be western intelligence sources. Then, like now, getting in the spirit of pretending it isn’t happening includes the same kind of negligence with the safety and well-being of their own citizens. As were the motives for doing it: markets, the infantile notion that appeasement will succeed, and to a certain degree, a shared outlook founded on having the same imaginary ideological enemies.

Well, if telephone or Internet users in Germany experience the “threatening feeling of being observed,” it is likely because they really are being observed. German law enforcement authorities are able to employ wiretaps and other forms of electronic surveillance with an ease that would make their American counterparts green with envy. In 2007, nearly 1 million phone calls were monitored by police in Berlin alone. Over 1,000 Berlin residents were the targets of wiretaps. A 2003 study conducted by Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law found that wiretaps are used by law enforcement authorities some 30 times more frequently in Germany than in the United States.

Which is fine, unless a potential terrorist feels like he or she is being made uncomfortable.

Frankly, it would be funny, if only THEY got killed, but there’s a reason the name of The Hamburg Cell is so widely known.

Good On Ya, Nico

No if only our logo-branded fearless “historic” leader would listen:

So the French Government abandoned their planned Environmental Tax because Man-made Global Warming is junk science, or more appropriately a religious belief? No. It was abandoned because being a French only tax would put French industry at a disadvantage to it's European competitors. Yes. This argument does hold water but can, and should, be applied to a larger scale than Europe. Same goes for USA vs it's competitors, which is the global economy.

After having just committed trillions to the scrapheap of Socialism’s failed intentions, have no doubt that the White House will be going “full speed ahead” on Carbon capping, just as the United States is within 5 years of becoming a net exporter of fossil energy.

Anyone doubting the solomonic sophistication of Barack Obama need look no further than “world citizen’s” inability to even aknowledge his own nation’s needs during a recession. I’m sure he’ll continue acting like a third-rate city councilman, and try to look smart with some “Green Jobs” statement, but only his supporters who are still mooching off their spouse or parents will buy it.

-תודה, תודה לך! to Chai Gai

Great Moments in Trans-Euvian Interpersonal Dialog

Sure, you laugh now, but wait until you try to get a driver’s license.

Two points of order

1) How stories are created.
2) How facts are created.

Reality, as always, is optional.

Gauche caviar meets Godzilla

I’m still keeping my hopes up for a Taiwan-style parliamentary brawl:

Confirmation of European commission becomes free-for-all

My hopes are pinned on a tough Bulgarian fireplug with a ‘tude and a mono-brow coming in to liven things up. It also makes adding Libya in the next round of enlargement talks seem plausible.

Let’s Hope Some of that Jack Went for Hookers and Nose-Candy

So is that why it sounds like some kind of secret code when they say “I’m going to a convention”?

Senior Dutch police officers spent over 730,000 euros on trips to other countries in the last two years, newspaper AD reports today. The paper bases the item on data received from police.

Most of the trips were connected with programmes aimed at fighting the international drugs trade and human trafficking. However, the most expensive were 'teambuilding' trips for police force commanders.

I guess it’s a little like “going to Uganda”, if you know what I mean, because the politics of the natives ain’t pretty.

Live US Congressional Video Feed (Healthcare Edition)

It’s a Brave New Something or Other

EU diplomats to benefit from new intelligence hub

Filling roles and checking boxes as one seemed to be expected to, the EU is working on celebrating with stunning fanfare and admiration, the development of an Intelligence Centre to (as always,) attempt some sort of force multiplication scheme, by gathering up the product of member states’ spook outfits. The problem with the calculus is that the denominator is zero, and they just aren’t that sure what to do with a kickoff that started with a press announcement that seems to have already declared a success of the thing that doesn’t really exist, save for:

a cell of secret service agents seconded from EU capitals. The cell, headed up by a French agent, pools classified information sent in by member states and drafts occasional four-to-10-page-long reports on topics ranging from terrorism to, for example, Iran's diplomatic contacts with neighbouring countries.

A huge improvement on a rough start. Their information assets on 9-11 amounted to:

SitCen started out as "a piece of A4 paper, a telephone and a pool table," according to one anecdote. When 9/11 struck in 2001, the commission's phone lines and internet crashed due to heavy traffic, leaving it cut off and triggering the creation of the Crisis Room. "There was one TV set in the building. We were crouched round a telephone listening to the TV at the other end of the line," another EU official said

SitCen is a butch, and possibly involved-in-something way of saying “Situation Center,” with a bold, movie-like ring.

So world-beating and representative of the a font of usefulness, its current products include something you can hire a few college punks part-time to do.

SitCen also runs a round-the-clock alert desk which uses open sources, such as BBC Monitoring or photos taken by commercial satellites, and sends emails and SMSes to selected EU diplomats two or three times a day.

Speaking of bold, the forgone success has the following bold, assertive stuff going for it:

The details of the EAS' new intelligence branch are still up in the air.

It is unclear where it will be situated and who will be in charge. But the current head of SitCen, former British diplomat William Shapcott, is the top candidate due to his friendly ties with member states' secret services.

The mandate for the new department also remains to be written.

Look out world! Here they come!

SitCen already sends staff to visit the EU's foreign police and military missions to gather information and has a mystique due to the secretive nature of its work.

Which is stunningly unsecretive, featuring software audio-scanning features that compare favorably to the new smartphone I bought a few weeks back.

But the new EAS branch will not have undercover operatives in the field on the model of member states' intelligence agencies. "Belgium and Austria proposed this [creating an EU secret service] after Madrid. But we are still light years away from it,"

Lucky for them, Teheran isn’t a light year away, in fact, it’s in missile range.Which sure justifies a title like:>

EU diplomats to benefit from new intelligence hub

The key to which is, beside reading the newspapers, is using good information security and discipline.

Meanwhile, the best classified information is often shared through informal channels

However, eclipsing the usual amateur night antics, we find the very well practiced and professional antics of Eurotopian policiana:

"The French are worried that the EAS will be dominated by British people," one EU official said.

The familiarity of a announcement of that sort must be rather comforting in these troubled times where MEPs try to create a security organization without being able to say out loud what it’s mandate should be, in favor of the usual bland, bullshit that makes everything they do reek of a UN spouses and kids gunny-sack race.

Some EU diplomats would like it to make policy recommendations as well as analytical reports. Others are posing questions about its ethos: "Will it be used to aggressively pursue member states' national interests or for common goals, such as peace-building and crisis relief?" one EU official asked.

On the face of it, I wonder about the “some that don’t part,” and applaud them for not throwing in a ‘Climate Change’ mandate in there, as one would expect from Pavlov’s dog. Oops! Hold the phone!

Cue the marching bands

If one cares to see how things are really done in Washington/government, a fascinating (yet nauseatingly fawning) article from the New York Times:

That Mr. Obama has come this far — within a whisper of passing historic social legislation — is remarkable in itself. But the story of how he did it is not his alone. It is the story of how a struggling president partnered with a pair of experienced legislators — Ms. Pelosi and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Reid — to reach for a goal that Mr. Obama has often said had eluded his predecessors going back to Theodore Roosevelt.

Their journey over the last two months, interviews with White House aides, lawmakers, outside advisers, lobbyists and political strategists show, involved tensions, resolve, political spadework — and a little bit of luck.

The authors do not mention whether that would be "good luck" or "bad luck". How the game is played by those listening to the "voice" of the people:

The speaker, though, was determined to go ahead. “We will go through the gate,” she said at a news conference on Jan. 28. “If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed.”

As if your "voice" actually matters:

New Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveying finds that 56% of voters oppose the effort to “reduce spending on Medicare by several hundred billion dollars.” Just 33% support the idea. Those figures include 12% who Strongly Favor the Medicare cuts and 38% who are Strongly Opposed.

Perhaps more significantly, 70% of senior citizens oppose the plan to reduce spending on Medicare including 55% who are Strongly Opposed. Seniors are more likely to use the health care system and more likely to vote than younger adults.

Most voters also oppose the other big component being counted on to cover the cost of the health care plan. Just 31% favor the idea of enacting “a significant excise tax on the most expensive health insurance plans provided by employers." Fifty-four percent (54%) are opposed.

The Congressional Budget Office yesterday said that the proposed legislation would reduce the deficit, but voters are skeptical of the official government projections. Eighty-one percent (81%) believe the health care plan will cost more than projected. That’s one reason voters believe passage of the plan will increase the deficit and is likely to mean higher middle class taxes. Fifty-seven percent (57%) predict that passage of the plan will hurt the U.S. economy.

That helps to explain why 50% of voters say they’re less likely to vote to reelect a member of Congress who supports the health care bill.

While the cost of the plan causes problems for advocates of reform, 80% of voters like “an insurance exchange where people can shop for competing insurance plans.” Two-thirds (69%) favor a plan that prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone with pre-existing conditions.

Sixty percent (60%) support subsidies to the poor and an expansion of Medicaid. Fifty-four percent (54%) favor requiring nearly all employers to provide health insurance coverage. Fifty-one percent (51%) of voters favor a board to carry out cost control measures for Medicare.

On the other side of the ledger, just 45% favor requiring all Americans to buy or obtain health insurance. Fifty percent (50%) are opposed.

Forty-seven percent (47%) support spending “several hundred billion dollars over the coming decade to expand coverage of the uninsured.” Fifty-one percent (51%) are opposed.

On the issue of abortion, 55% favor prohibiting “coverage of abortion by any insurance plan that receives federal government subsidies.”

Overall, before being told of the various provisions of the reform plan, 45% supported the legislation, and 52% were opposed. Those numbers are unchanged after respondents were asked about the various aspects of the legislation.

Never fear, your betters are on the case:

Oh Alcee, you more than anyone should know what happens when the rulebook is tossed and the crushing weight of government is aligned against the individual.