Obama a Crypto-Socialist ACORN Plant? And Not a Mighty Oak Yet, For Sure!

NUTCRACKER SWEET!

Stanley Kurtz has been following Obama's Chicago career for a decade and a half in the Tribune, one of the few MSM reporters who actually dig for an investigative scoop. Here is his outstanding bombshell on Patrick Gaspard, doing the work the NYT & its pilot fish refuse to do. Patrick Gaspard is Political Director in the White House, occupying Karl Rove's old office:

With the revelation that White House Director of Political Affairs, Patrick Gaspard, has close ties to Bertha Lewis and to ACORN, Matthew Vadum and Erick Erickson appear to be onto something significant. While the Gaspard matter needs further investigation before we form any hard conclusions, it certainly seems to confirm that President Obama’s ties to a whole series of ACORN-controlled organizations are neither minor nor by any means long-past. In fact, making use of what Erickson and Vadum have discovered about Gaspard, we can trace these links still further.

There’s been a good deal of attention to ACORN of late, and deservedly so. Yet for all the fuss, what is arguably the most important Obama-ACORN tie of all has gotten short shrift. During the 2008 election, Obama’s close links to the far-left New Party were revealed and explored (although not by the mainstream press). Yet many seem to have forgotten that the New Party, particularly in Chicago, was dominated by ACORN (and by an ACORN-controlled SEIU union local). During the campaign, I detailed Obama’s New Party ties in two pieces, "Something New Here," and "Life of the New Party." Important evidence of Obama’s pursuit of the New Party endorsement can also be found in the September-October 1995 issue of "New Ground," newsletter of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Obama’s New Party ties matter because they show that his links to ACORN went far beyond shared on-the-ground organizing, legal representation, training, or even funding (although all of those ties existed and were important). By running for office with the New Party, Obama was effectively indicating that he shared ACORN’s radical political goals.

Gaspard was back in '95 the organizer of the New Party, a hard-left socialist/communist amalgam and Obama was about to run for State Senate of Illinois, and his funding information for his election in '96 has conveniently "disappeared" along with his Columbia U. thesis in '85 on US/Soviet nuclear disarmament. If unearthed, I'm sure Kurtz's suspicions that Obama was boosted into Chicago politics by outside hard-left financing from the New Party and the Workers' Party might be verified. Unlike most politicos, the hard left is pervasively dishonest and studies the methods of the Soviet era to get its M.O. straight. [No surprise that KGB documents that surfaced during a brief thaw in the late '90s indicated a cryto-advance by James Earl Carter, going bankrupt on his peanut farm, and Teddy Kennedy, thankfully dead, to the Kremlin for strategic assistance on getting Ronald Reagan defeated by Walter Mondale, As with most Democratic treason, these two feckless sh*ts were unsuccessful and the American media didn't look into the allegations [which even if false, merited investigation]. Kurtz ends with:

No doubt, some will dismiss the newly revealed connections between the Obama administration, Patrick Gaspard, Bertha Lewis, and ACORN as "guilt by association." Yet it seems to me that the evidence points to something more significant than that. We are talking about a persistent and shared political-ideological alliance between President Obama and the complex of community, labor, and party organizations controlled by ACORN. (See especially "Life of the New Party" for more on New Party ideology.) Again, the Gaspard issue is new and needs further investigation and consideration. Yet preliminary indications are that the Gaspard-ACORN-Bertha Lewis-New Party-WFP-SEIU ties are significant, and tell us something disturbing about the political ideology and intentions of President Obama. In particular, the connection between Gaspard, Lewis, the New Party, and the Working Families Party ought to draw our attention back to what may ultimately be the most important Obama-ACORN tie of all, his time with Chicago’s New Party

.
What we cannot forget is that Obama actually said with a straight face to one MSM reporter intrepid enough to ask a question about ACORN: "I was unaware that ACORN was receiving any government funding."

In spite of the fact that ACORN has been getting some sort of government funding since the mid-nineties, when he was representing that criminal RICO racketeering scofflaw organization as legal counsel. Needless to say, the intrepid reporter asked no follow-up question, probably mindful that his managing editor or TV producer would quickly remove him from a White House beat if he disturbed He who is "well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world,"

This narcissistic reincarnation of Akhnaten has himself as the godhead of a lurch leftward that will destroy any remaining influence, economic or geopolitical or military, that the USA has around the world.

Jimmy Carter gave it a good start with his Community Reconstruction Act, but his "detritus interruptus" agenda was halted by Ronald Reagan.

France Sees Obama as Paper Pussycat with No Claws & French Want Neo-Cons Back

President Sarkozy & even Gordon Brown were angry that Obama chaired a disarmament panel in the UN without bringing up Iran's latest infraction against the Non-Proliferation Philosophy Obama so ardently preaches. In Pittsburgh the following day, the G-20 inappropriately was the venue for Mr. Messiah to out the Ahmedinejad perfidy.

Of course, it is ironic when the French and even Brits under Brown are more aggressive toward pre-emptive action than the US, which historically has had a policeman's role, and the WSJ's Bret Stephens notes that now French newspapers are asking him to comment on:

....the "return" of the neoconservatives. [Their] thesis seemed to be that the shambles of Barack Obama's foreign policy had, after only nine months, made what was thought to be the most discredited wing of an ostensibly brain-dead conservative movement relevant again. And France—no longer straining at the sight of Michelle Obama shopping in Paris's 6th arrondissement—is taking notice.

Any student of the French will know their unerring gout that sniffs out truffles of the NEXT BIG THING, which may well be the discrediting of Obama's foreign policy, already littered with clownish episodes like a mis-translated Russian word for "RESET" on Hillarious's gift of a big red button to her Russian counterpart. Or the bizarre fecklessness of yanking the missile shield out of Poland on the 70th anniversary of the Russian invasion [part of the Molotov/Ribbentrop Protocol] of eastern Poland? Here's the result:

As for Russia, its ambassador to the U.N. last week bellyached that the U.S. "continues to be a rather difficult negotiating partner"—and that was after Mr. Obama cancelled the missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Thus does the politics of concession meet with the logic of contempt.

"Contempt" is what Russia, North Korea, and Iran have for Obama's overtures toward peace.

However, we are not allowed to see Obama's senior thesis at Columbia U. on US/Soviet disarmament written in 1985 because that jewel of scholarship has "disappeared" along with the financing records of all Obama's State Senate races in Illinois. Ah, the black hole of 1984, oops, the memory hole, has reappeared in America. As the Russians used to say during the days of Communism, "the future is assured, but it is the past which is uncertain." Or as President Sarkozy says with more eloquence and credibility than the homiletics that Obama preaches to gaping UNGA delegates:

"We are right to talk about the future," Mr. Sarkozy said, referring to the U.S. resolution on strengthening arms control treaties. "But the present comes before the future, and the present includes two major nuclear crises," i.e., Iran and North Korea. "We live in the real world, not in a virtual one." No prize for guessing into which world the Frenchman puts Mr. Obama.

"We say that we must reduce," he went on. "President Obama himself has said that he dreams of a world without nuclear weapons. Before our very eyes, two countries are doing exactly the opposite at this very moment. Since 2005, Iran has violated five Security Council Resolutions . . .

"I support America's 'extended hand.' But what have these proposals for dialogue produced for the international community? Nothing but more enriched uranium and more centrifuges. And last but not least, it has resulted in a statement by Iranian leaders calling for wiping off the map a Member of the United Nations. What are we to do? What conclusions are we to draw? At a certain moment hard facts will force us to make decisions."

Bravo, Monsieur Le President!

Finally, Stephens sums up the quandry facing Obama in his PUSSY-cat made of paper versus Three Nasty Dudes:

....the neocons are back because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il and Vladimir Putin never went away. A star may have shone in the east the day Barack Obama became president. But these three kings, at least, have yet to proffer the usual gifts of gold and incense and myrrh. Instead, the presents have been of a different kind. North Korea claims to be in the final stages of building a uranium enrichment facility—its second route to an atomic bomb. Iran, again caught cheating on its Nonproliferation Treaty obligations, has responded by wagging a finger at the U.S. and firing a round of missiles. Syria continues to aid and abet jihadists operating in Iraq. NATO countries have generally refused to send more troops to Afghanistan, and are all the more reluctant to do so now that the administration is itself wavering on the war.

Wavering seems to be in Obama's DNA, as he said no investigation of CIA interrogation techniques before Holder changed [Obama's} "mind." Ditto for the Missile Shield, April-September between promise to retain and yanking of same. Now Obama's peace overtures and "extended hand" are met with a missile test yesterday, as Ahmedinejad realizes the paper Pussycat has no claws or doesn't really like to use them.

Hopefully, Obama starts talking more with Petraeus [despite Hillarious's low opinion of "Betray-Us" and his subordinate Gen. McChrystal] about options to actually confront an Iran which makes its intentions broadly known---the elimination of a fellow UN member. The time for basking and saying things like:

"I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world,"

because the true "reality-based community" of neo-cons is completely aware that words count for nothing in the face of implacable hostility from North Korea and Iran [although the Iranian "people," as opposed to their illegitimate government, love the USA]. Or in the case of Russia, a relentless remorseless drive to dominate its neighbors. Scoop Jackson's "hotel burglar" testing every door to find one unlocked.

Will it take a catastrophe to knock the scales off the eyes of the pussycat?

Obama versus Democracy and Free Elections? It Could Happen Here!

Honduras is an example of Obama's anti-democratic government tilt in diplomacy. First, Obama has been extremely tough on Israel while welcoming a terrorist [ret.] like Qaddafi into his fold. Then in Honduras, after both houses of the legislature and a 15-0 vote removes a caudillo-wannabe like Zelaya from office, Obama supports the Chavez-Ortega-Lulu stooge. Is this on a par with his removing Polish missile sites on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion from the East? Not quite that level, which like the incorrect word in Russian for "RESET," lies at the door of Hillary Rodham Incompetent [alrhough she accuses Gen. McChrystal of being the same].

You get the picture. The Keystone Kop foreign policy of this petty tyrant matches the incompetent attempts to take over the US health system, with opaqueness and misdirection throughout the process. The only reason he attempts to lie, cheat, and steal his way to destroying the American economic system is thorough a pliant national media, whose fawning mendacity matches Obama's flip-flops on almost every issue he makes a decision on. Is this the result of a "chickified" process-driven administration led by a Mama's-Boy-in-Chief? Pelosi's refusal for a THREE DAY examination on line and Baucus's mad rush to exit the ObamaCare out of committee [Kerry said "nobody reads it anyway"] exemplify this governing elite's contempt for any controls.

I hope the Roberts Court rules the entire ObamaCare Rush-to-Legislate [with an inception date of 2013 for enforcement, just to assure BHusseinO's reelection!] unconstitutional. I wonder who will raise the issues in court?

Obama wants Zelaya back in office so he himself will only be the second-worst president in the hemisphere.

Obama & NYT & Congress on Transparency F & F & D-

Secret Agent Editors is the title of James Taranto's satirical putdown of the New York Times and its Ombudsman, who happened to have co-authored a book with Jill Abramson on Clarence Thomas, that trust-fund child of back-country Georgia who was slandered or "borked" by Teddy, thankfully dead and deep in Purgatory or even lower. Here's Jimmy:
[

Abramson] and Bill Keller, the executive editor, said last week that they would now assign an editor to monitor opinion media and brief them frequently on bubbling controversies. Keller declined to identify the editor, saying he wanted to spare that person "a bombardment of e-mails and excoriation in the blogosphere."

Heaven forfend that the Secret Agent editor would have to sift through leads that could waste his time while Bill and Jill actually decide what is "fit to print," and more notably in the case of the NYT, what's necessary to omit. James concludes:

The Obama administration, as we noted Wednesday, was supposed to usher in a new era of transparency in government, Instead we find ourselves in a new era of opacity, not only in government but in the media. The New York Times now employs secret agent editors. Hoyt writes, of the sex-slavery sting, that "most news organizations consider such tactics unethical--The Times specifically prohibits reporters from misrepresenting themselves or making secret recordings." True enough. But even James O'Keefe told the Acorn employees his name. At least in that sense, he was more honest with his targets than the Times now is with its readers.

UPDATE Ann Althouse has a BRILLIANT piece on whether it is wrong for her to wait too long to blog about writing about what the NYT public editor has written about why the NYT took so long to write about the ACORN story!?! But the endearing Badger Law Prof is exceeded by a lucid commenter named "William":

"Some facts are more factual than other facts. Malcolm Muggeridge was a reporter for the Guardian in Moscow during the thirties. The Guardian was a liberal British newspaper. Muggeridge was one of the few western reporters who wrote about the Soviet famine. The Guardian printed his articles but they held them back until a day when they could headline some fresh Nazi atrocity and, thus, bury his article inside the paper. During the twentieth century the sins of capitalism and fascism have been covered exhaustively. That's as it should be. But the sins of communism were revealed reluctantly and grudgingly. Worse there seems to be no curiousity on the part of journalists as to why such paragons of the profession as Lincoln Steffens, the Webbs, Theodore White, I.F. Stone. et al. got so many things wrong."

The NYT has perfected putting stories like Van Jones, ACORN, the NEA touting Obama for grants, et al, on p.20 below the fold, but recently they simply ignored them completely.
And as for the fellow travelers like Steffens, the Webbs, White, Stone, they were intellectual cowards, just like each and every one of us at various periods of our existence. I'm re-reading Arthur Koestler's masterpiece "Darkness at Noon" to help my daughter in a Russian history class, and Rubashov comes only slowly to realize the lie that leftism has at its very core. Contrary to leftist dogma, "One cannot do surgery with a dirty scalpel."

Slate tells America Not to be Proud of the Roberts Court

Dahlia Lithwick makes no pretense about being non-partisan. Read her linked article to find out how harmful shooting down McCain-Feingold is because that silly First Amendment is honored far too muchinr Dahlia's perspective. Shouldn't let constitutional verities stand in the way of Progressive political agendas. Here's a tidbit from legal commissar Dahlia:

Trying to square the tone of that argument with the Gallup pole [sic] results of the same week requires ignoring either one or the other almost entirely. But that's where the public confusion kicks in. Because a similarly dramatic oral argument in a seminal voting rights case last term revealed a majority of the court that was almost as sneeringly contemptuous of the onerous "preclearance provision".......

Besides the fact that her spell-check doesn't work on the words "poll" and "pole," just as her mind doesn't work on subtle nuances between "right" and "wrong," this is political slapstick. To Dahlia, if it's "left," it's automatically alright and never wrong. Sadly, the American people obviously aren't paying attention to Dahlia because the Roberts Court is rising in popularity.. As she says, according to the "poles." Off line, you can read her dreck in Newsweak, where it fits right in with the "Surreality-based world community" that scribbles drivel in that rapidly declinng dead-tree [unintentionally] satirical rag. How sad America can't understand that her guidance is for their own enlightenment and ultimate good!?!

Oh, the humanity!

Sink, Britannia, Sink Beneath the Waves.....

Theodore Dalrymple is the pen name of a Brit doctor whose books reflect 40 years of being a Doctor of Medicine in some of the most hellish outliers of the former Brit Empire. I've read two of his books and believe his pointed writings are a good indication of the road Obama is inviting the Americvan people to take---to cultural, social, political, international mediocrity as Britain has done under Queen E II.

Whenever I am in Amsterdam, I stay in a small, elegant and well-run hotel. The excellent and obliging staff are all Dutch.

Whenever I am in London, I stay at a small, elegant and well-run hotel. The excellent and obliging staff are all foreign—which is just as well, for if they were English the hotel would not be well-run for long. When the English try to run a good hotel, they combine pomposity with slovenliness.

Perhaps this would not be so serious a matter if the British economy were not a so-called service economy. It has been such ever since Margaret Thatcher solved our chronic industrial relations problem by the simple expedient of getting rid of industry. This certainly worked, and perhaps was inevitable in the circumstances, but it was necessary to find some other way of making our way in the world. This we have not done.

Incompetence and incapacity are everywhere. Despite ever-rising local taxes, town and city councils are either unable or unwilling to clear the streets of litter, with the result that Britain is by far the dirtiest country in Europe.

Although we spend four times as much on education per head as in 1950, the illiteracy rate has not gone down. I used to try to plumb the depths (or shallows) of youthful British ignorance by asking my patients a few simple questions. Fifty percent responded to the question "What is arithmetic?" by answering "What is arithmetic?" It is not that they were good at doing something that they could not name: When I asked one young man, not mentally deficient, to multiply three by four, he replied "We didn't get that far."

This is the result of 11 years of state-funded compulsory education, or rather attendance at school, at a cost of between $100,000 and $200,000. The government's response has been to raise the school-leaving age to 18, thus making total ignorance even more expensive.

This is at the bottom rung of society, but incompetence starts at the very top. It is doubtful whether any major country has had a more incompetent leader than Gordon Brown for many years. The product of a pleasure-hating Scottish Presbyterian tradition, he behaves as if taxation were a moral good in itself, regardless of the uses to which it is put; he is widely believed to have taken lessons in how to smile, though he has not been an apt pupil, for he now makes disconcertingly odd grimaces at inappropriate moments. He is the only leader known to me who combines dourness with frivolity.

Early in his disastrous career in government he sold the country's gold reserves at a derisory price, against all advice, driving the price lower by the manner in which he arranged the sale. A convenience-store owner couldn't, and almost certainly wouldn't, have done worse.

After 12 years of ceaseless Brownian motion, British public finances have gone from being comparatively healthy to being catastrophically bad. In order to expand vastly the public sector in which he is a true believer, Mr. Brown has raised taxes by stealth, undertaken government obligations that appear nowhere in the accounts and that will weigh on future generations, and eased credit to encourage asset inflation and give people the illusion of prosperity. For the duration of his time in government, Britain has been like a consumptive patient, with an excess of bogus well-being shortly before expiry. If the world is an opera stage, Britain has been playing Violetta or Mimi in the last act.

What, then, of the opposition? Surely it has managed to hit a few of the easy targets with which the government has so thoughtfully supplied it?

No words of mine can adequately convey the contempt in which the Conservatives are now, rightly, held by almost everyone. I do not recall meeting anyone who thinks that David Cameron, their leader, is anything other than a careerist in the mold of Tony Blair. The most that anyone allows himself to hope is that, beneath the thin veneer of opportunism, there beats a heart of oak.

But the auguries are not good: Not only was Mr. Cameron's only pre-political job in public relations, hardly a school for intellectual and moral probity, but he has subscribed to every fashionable policy nostrum from environmentalism to large, indeed profligate, government expenditure. Not truth, but the latest poll, has guided him—at a time when only truth will serve. However, he will be truly representative as prime minister. Like his country, he is quite without substance.

Too hard on his country? You have to read his books to find just how much a horrible collection of Teachers' Unions has dumbed down what formerly was a country which at least educated its elites well.

Just like the crime scheme or RICO racketeers in AFTA & NEA are now inflicting third-rate educational dogmas on the USA, the UK has moved much further down the path to a compleat "Idiocracy," a dystopia described in Mike Judge's movie which I predict will in the future be regarded as the New 1984 oMental Decliine and Moral Degeneracy. A prophetic film depicting the future of a voucherless USA.

In the meantime, the UK can by example lead us down the primrose path to primal immaturity.

Female Logic of the Old Grey Lady Lyin' Again

James Taranto has again caught the NYT in its litany of absurdities:

What a difference a presidential election can make. Suddenly the anti-antiterror left is applauding the U.S. government's antiterror efforts. The New York Times has a fascinating quote on the indictment of Najibullah Zazi for allegedly planning bombings in New York:

T

he Zazi case "actually looks like the case the government kept claiming it had but never did," said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University law school.
Her center has studied all the prosecutions of terrorism-related crimes since 2001, and she said many had turned out to be "fantasy terrorism cases" where the threat seemed modest or even nonexistent.
This time, she said, "the ingredients here are quite scary," and the government's statements have had none of the bombast and exaggeration that accompanied some previous arrest announcements.

So let's see if we have this straight: For the past eight years, when George W. Bush was turning the world against us and making the terror threat worse, there were no serious terror plots. Now that the world loves us again, suddenly a serious terror threat has materialized. What's wrong with this picture?

Hats off to James and the WSJ for unmasking still another victim of academicide showing herself a total and compleat [DNC] partisan. Ms. Greenburg obviously believes Richard Reid and others who tried to blow up aircraft in trans-Atlantic flights weren't "quite scary."

For that, I'll guess she'd have to take a long look in her mirror.

Sarkozy Mocks Obambi on Iran; US Media Silent

President Sarkozy of France has done the ultimate role-reversal, put France ahead of the US in realistic gunboat diplomacy. The tabloid of record called the NYT has ignored the insults.

While deer-in-the-headlights Brobambi shuffles and jukes and jives in the UNGA with back-at-ya swagger to socialist bananalands, Sarkozy demonstrates that he is a real leader. Not a strutting schoolboy prancing through the UN hood with his inner posse of Chavez, Ortega, Zelaya [oops, couldn't make it] and Mugabe like Brobambi, but Sarkozy knows REALPOLITIK.

For reasons yet to be determined, the National Post appears to have de-linked their own front page story on their website. Mr. Spillius reported a similar (albeit watered-down) version in the UK’s Telegraph.

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”
Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

The rest of Sarkozy’s remarks were, well, remarkable:

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.
“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.
“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.
The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.
“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naive.”
No American newspapers seem to have featured Sarkozy’s justifiably derisive remarks about Obama’s naivete regarding the realities of nuclear technology. Still we can be grateful for the freedom of the press, as embodied and celebrated by the Newseum — including the chilling reconstruction of segments of the Berlin Wall. These serve as a reminder that however oppressive or myopic the powers-that-be, news cannot be stifled.

This reticence of the news media in the US fits in with Brobambi's "disappeared" grad thesis at Columbia U.

Not one American newspaper save perhaps a couple of conservative journals has even MENTIONED the "lost" records. The libtard mafia screeches and yells "look over there" or calls one a "racist," as it did when trotting out senile failure and pathetic loser James Earl Carter like the insane cuckoo clock he is.

Thank God for Sarkozy. et sa femme! While Gordon Brown sinks in his own s-pile and Brobambi demonstrates that he is unfit for high office, the French president shamed Brobambi into calling Iran on neutrality.

Another of the Endless Examples of NYT FRAUD & DELIBERATE DECEPTION

Nassim Taleb's Black Swan is an epistemological masterpiece, explaining how unexpected events can be an iron bar in a house of cards everyone previously regarded as Fort Knox.

Nassim fisks Gregg Easterbrook of the NYT mercilessly in the link above, displaying Easterbrook's evident dishonesty and ignorance and perhaps a hidden agenda. Check the link for many instances of a book reviewer evidently not reading the book. Or getting his editorial slant from a libtard managing editor.

Since Slate was the only other publication to publish a flagrantly unintelligent and dishonest review, it appears the libtards have something against Mr. Taleb.

Is Obama a Socialist or does he Just Hate Capitalism

Obama is raising our taxes and even the supine George Stephanopoulos called him on it. Any American in his new social democrat mixed economy would pay a hefty $3000+ per family if said citizen went uninsured. He is raising taxes on drug companies as well even though their 'exorbitant profits' are nowhere near those of software and brewing companies.

Mr. Obama's dig at profits reveals a certain disdain for markets. Health insurers have a 3.3% profit margin, less than the 4.6% average for all businesses in the country. Drug companies do enjoy, on average, a 17% profit margin. But that's still less than software companies, which earn on average a 22% profit margin. Brewers make 18%. Are these industries the next targets for a revenue hungry Obama administration?

That "certain disdain for markets" pervades the socialist nonsense of this glorified Chicago alderman about five levels above his God-given skill sets. Along with pervasive corruption and his dishonest distancing himself from it: "I didn't know ACORN received government money..." and "I was unaware of Rev. Wright's strong black racism...." [the latter is exaggerated], Obama is railroading the American people into buying a pig in a poke. Rather, we've already bought it and now find out it isn't the silk purse we were promised at the blind auction.

He is already Jimmy Carter in ruining our future with $9 trillion and is on his way to being the Robert Mugabe of the western hemisphere. Where is Ian Smith when we need him? The people of Harare have been asking that question for decades and soon we will be pining for the days of Jimmy Carter's double digit inflation, interest rates and unemployment.

Dear Leader Brobambi PLedges Transparency, Delivers Opaque Obscurantism

Polish Betrayal Behind Him, Brobambi is now talking to his chief foreign policy advisor for the Middle East, Muammer Qaddafi [whose name in the local Arabic slang means "camel vomit.] Muammer may become Brobambi's Advisor for life if his wish in front of the UN today for Obama Forever is rewarded by Allah with good favor.

In the meantime, Brobambi's rush to socialize American medicine proceeds rapidly, as Max the Hocus Pocus Baucus rushes an unaccountable version through Senate Committee without CBO study [John Kerry, combing his hair, noted that this would amount to a stalling tactic.]

Transparency, Obscurantism, it's all the same to a traitor to the Constitution.

Pro ObamaCare Rally 9/13 Draws 800, or perhaps more

Two pictures tell the story. Go to the link and see how the union-made giant posters for the Public Option are more numerous than the "supporters."

FT Lies About Climate Change as an Editorial Policy, Apparently

Internal contradictions in libtard propaganda screeds are always comical but the once respectable Financial Times is becoming a veritable wastebin for silly exhalations ejacualated by hysterical climateers who yell the sky is falling and are amazed when after a couple of decades, people begin to doubt.

In an article fallaciously named "Global Insight: No melting of climate doubts," the agitprop cadre unconscious of silliness says:
.

..scepticism in the UK about man-made climate change had increased slightly over the past five years. Lorraine Whitmarsh, the project leader, said “hardened sceptics” remained steady at 20 per cent of the sample. But the number who agreed that “claims that human activities are changing the climate are exaggerated” rose from 15 to 29 per cent.

Let's do the math: 20% hardened sceptics & 29% exaggerated = 49% which in the special math of the FT equals "increased slightly" over the 35% who previously were either hardened or somewhat sceptical. Did Lorraine Whitmarsh completely bamboozle the hapless Clive Cookson who wrote the piece with her big brown eyes? Here's another stupid remark:

Climate scientists seem puzzled about what more they can do to convince people of the urgency of their case. “I don’t understand the psychology here. It should be about the evidence but it’s actually about beliefs,” says Vicky Pope, head of climate change at the UK Met Office

A case could be made that there might be other factors out there besides belief, or that perhaps the "belief" is an ideology of imposing carbon taxes on breathing so that the EU can finally tax every person [and his/her animals perhaps?] for pushing CO2 out of their nostrils & in the case of the FT writer, Clive Cookson, methane out of his buttocks. But wait, there's more:

As it happens, the average temperature of the world as a whole has risen little over the past decade, though some regions such as the Arctic have warmed appreciably – and sceptics have drawn succour from the virtual absence of global warming since 1998. But climatologists say this can be explained by natural patterns of climate, with a temporary cooling trend masking the underlying warming.

And people who are scientists, not climatologists, can explain it with solar cycles that are 11-year sunspot periods which are called Mulder events or periods. Of course, this would absolutely ruin the arguments of the socialist cabal seeking to impose cap & trade taxes on rich countries. But the serially flatulent Cookson isn't through:

There is no scientific consensus on how long this pause will continue. Mojib Latif, professor of climate physics at Germany’s Leibniz Institute, delighted sceptics with a statement this month that the world might in fact cool over the next decade or two, before rapid warming resumed.

But the UK Met Office, which has one of the world’s most respected computer models, predicts a resumption of global warming from next year, “with about half of the years to 2015 likely to be warmer globally than the current warmest year on record [1998]”.

Let's see, world-renowned scientist or "most-respected" computer models, probably by the IRCC, which the science-challenged UK which is not any more winning Nobels in anything except flatulence, sees as its hope to keep the shell game going.

Oh by the way, the northern American Midwest has had the coldest summer in decades, and since 1998, contrary to fart-machine Cookson and the "highly-respected" IRCC, the world temp has remained the same and may be beginning to decline a bit. All because of the sun, which causes 99% of the heat which affects the Earth's cliimate, give or take a tenth of a percent.

Solipsists and narcissistic "climatologists" are the intellects a mediocre moron like Cookson might "get." Herr Prof Mojib Latif probably has an IQ fifty points above and an education much better than the half-baked Oxbridge grads now posing as "experts."

Drool, Britannia, you're so over the hill that your climate science sucks as much as your NHS.

Unintentional Death by "Misdiagnosis" in NHS

The Telegraph has an article that shows studies indicate that one out of six cases is misdiagnosed in the UK. Actually, the article says the percentage might be much higher, but the notoriously reticent British don't often complain if no serious consequences, leaving many medical mistakes unreported.

Given the marvelous efficiency of the VA system of hospitals [my pop-in-law has been waiting since March for a special hearing aid he qualified for under a new VA program], imagine how much fun ObamaCare will be when it is run by caring liberal functionaries appointed by congresscritters and senators who have their own gold-plated healthcare far above the teeming throngs of run-of-the-mill citizens, including newly amnestied illegal immigrants who will flood the system with sick relatives who will sneak into the USA to escape their own sweltering hellholes.

Since the American mainstream media has obviously forgotten any and all principles of journalism and due diligence, Americans must look to European precedents to see how a public US health system might [mal]function. One article from either the Telegraph or the Daily Mail quoted a Brit doc who worked for the NHS and had his own private practice as well---"my private operation avoids FOUR or FIVE levels of management the NHS imposes."

ObamaCare will make Big Government REALLY REALLY BIG! Great to have more levels of management, although there is a school of thought that persists in saying that competition does drive down the cost of medical care. How quaint!

U.S. Has Highest Progressive Taxes in the World

Sweden used to have the highest, but now it is the US followed by Ireland which taxes the richest 10% of their inhabitants the highest, as the linked OECD chart demonstrates [h/t Powerline].

Next time a libtard tells you that GWB and the Repubs tax the poor and let the rich go, you might refer to the official numbers & deflect the agitprop the cadre has been indoctrinated with. They usually are very uneducated and don't know any better, so be kind.

Liberal McCarthyism: "Racist!" is the new "Commie!"

Ed Driscoll quotes Peter Brimelow in a great piece that "A racist is a conservative winning an argument with a liberal." "Liberal McCarthyism" is George Will's mot juste for the current seething in the libtard House of Bedlam as the inmates shriek and wail because their Dear Leader is being unmasked as a liar on ACORN and a feeble second-rate version of Jimmy Carter, if you can wrap your brain around that cognitive extreme. Here is roger simon's take:

One of the interesting things about the response to Rep. Joe Wilson’s blurting out “You lie!” to Barack Obama during the President’s healthcare speech to Congress was that Wilson was censured for his incivility, not his lack of veracity. And indeed, there is an argument to be made (as Dennis Prager and others have) that good manners should reign at the top levels of government, though I confess I am partial to the honest outspokenness of “Question Time” in the British Parliament.

No matter your opinion of these standards, however, Wilson was basically telling the truth. This was tacitly acknowledged the next day when the administration “clarified” the intent of the healthcare bill, suddenly spelling out language preventing illegal aliens from gaining free access to the system.

But Obama has always been a liar. We have known that since he claimed he didn’t know anything about the extreme views of Jeremiah Wright – after having spent twenty years in Rev. Wright’s church (the same church Oprah Winfrey had left eight years before because she was uncomfortable with the views of the bigoted minister). The MSM gave him a pass on this whopper, enabling his election, because he was their candidate. They were evidently unfazed by the ancient Roman legal principal: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

Well, there have been plenty of omnibuses since, but few so risible as Obama’s answers this Sunday to George Stephanopoulos concering the ACORN scandal:

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?
OBAMA: You know, if — frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.
OBAMA: You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’re not committing to — to cut off the federal funding?
OBAMA: George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to.

These ludicrous statements almost Fisk themselves, but allow me to do it briefly.

“You know, if – frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.”

I hate corny Internet acronyms, but this one deserves the corniest of all: ROTFLOL. ACORN is the best-known community organizing group in the country. Obama was a community organizer. He knows perfectly well where their money comes from. Also, his minions have been running all over the cable news playing clean-up for this debacle – not to mention that Arnold Schwarzenegger, among other “minor” figures, has publicly called for an investigation.

“You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.”

That video – singular? As of now it is six – or is it seven – videos from locations ranging from the nation’s capital to Brooklyn to San Diego with who knows how many more to come. Surely, Obama knows that – or the gist – and was simply attempting to downgrade the importance, which leads to his last statement…

“George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to.”

Translation from the Barack: I’m going to semi-stonewall this, because I know I can rely on you, my friends in the mainstream media, to downplay this as a minor episode so that, in the end, I will be able to override this momentary aberration in Congress and continue to fund (and grow) our ACORN allies.

Everything is upside down here because Obama knows what we all do – ACORN is a poster boy for the welfare state in all its manifestations. This is no sideshow. It’s the heart of the matter. No wonder he is lying about it.

Roger omits the fact that Obama was for a time outside legal counsel of some sort. However, on style points, Brobambi as a talking head is a much more convincing liar than James Earl ever was. Still, at this point it looks like he'll be another Dem one-termer POTUS.

While the mess from ACORN is beginning to be processed, thanks to Hannah Giles and her "pimp," Andrew Breitbart is readying another salvo across the bows of the slipshod sloppy shoddy operation known as the mainstream media. They already have their hat out to Dear Leader for tips in thanks for their slavish devotion to the Truth According to Obamania. I'm sure if they keep kissing the hem of his robe long enough, he'll give the begging MSM every consideration. Of course, real estate agents, nurses, elderly, will all have to wait, but the elderly at least can consult with their death panel doctors in a subsidized fashion.

What Color is a Chameleon?

Bismarck in the late nineteenth century is famously quoted as having said "God has a special providence, for drunks, children, madmen, and the United States of America." At the time, the US had pulled out of a disastrous Civil War and was in the middle of an astounding age of rapid development, derided by Charles Beard and other academicide victims as the age of "The Robber Barons."

Reading Stanley Kurtz's study of Obama's early years in the Weekly Standard, one has to wonder if the USA has come to the end of its run of exceptionally good luck both economically and in foreign affairs.

The picture Kurtz paints is of a young Obama obsessed with his racial identity and trying to out-left former Black Panther Bobby Rush in his run for Congressional nomination in '99-00. More disturbing is the depiction of Obama as a sort of one-trick pony in his mysteriously funded [the records of his State Senate campaigns' donations have, like his ColumbiaU graduation thesis, mysteriously "disappeared"] eight years as a State Senator in Springfield. He is resolutely an advocate of affirmative action and set-asides, and his attention-span with issues outside his core of expanding a new War on Poverty [bigger than the one we lost with LBJ] appears minimal.

The fact is that the American people have been sold a "pig in a poke." We are finding out about this POTUS in his OTJ month by month and the first trimester doesn't look promising. As Kurtz's article notes, Obama is essentially a spender and has little regard for the fiscal niceties of deficits, let alone the monetary consequences of massive borrowing to fund the $9 trillion deficit, larger in nine months than GWB amassed in eight years.

And his spending is socially targeted, as in the minority quotas he demanded in Chicago for black neighborhoods and construction projects. His political henchmen in Hyde Park were rabid in demanding 70% of all civic construction projects be minority run. Often this simply resulted in housing projects being built rapidly and shoddily, only to fall apart because the companies failed to follow through with their maintenance contract responsibilities.

However, with Obama, it is social justice and economic redistribution of income that trumps any efficient use of public funds. And the more important problem is that Obama always wanted to tax more and spend more and grow government at the expense of the private sector, if his eight years in the State Senate are any indication of his true beliefs.

As we have begun to realize after being flim-flammed by a dishonest and neglectful mainstream media, Obama has a history of far-left social and economic agenda items he pursued while in the Illinois Senate that now appear to be on the national agenda, if he can manage to fool all the people all the time.

But as another POTUS from Illinois famously observed "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people, some of the time. But you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

Lotsa luck, Obama, because you are starting to be found out for whom you really are.

Sick of Hollyweirdos Telling You What to Do. Dinosaurs Before Long?

The Weekly Standard has an article on the looming end of the star system as pixels replace humans and special FX becomes the order of the day. Here is John Podhoretz's teaser intro:

“The eight most successful movies over the course of the year’s first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star. Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It’s not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons. Will Ferrell’s movie tanked. Julia Roberts laid an egg. Adam Sandler couldn’t sell a ticket. Johnny Depp disappointed. Denzel Washington and John Travolta bombed together. Instead, the movies whose successes depended on their strong leading performances were the ones featuring the 57-year-old Irishman Liam Neeson (Taken, $145 million) and the out-of-work TV comedian Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, $146 million).

“The 2009 box-office numbers offer the most dramatic evidence yet that the system around which the motion-picture business has oriented itself almost since its creation in the early years of the last century–the star system, which it largely invented–has finally reached its end.”

An interesting article and all the celebritards are now on display ceaselessly conveying their sophomoric [for those who went to college] views on politics. For the high school dropouts like Sean Penn, the political lunacy has leached into his ability to draw viewers, and his flicks have flunked one after the other, despite being deemed "critical successes" by other dropouts of his ilk. Of course, John P notes that Hollyweird will be the last place which finally realizes that the electricity is being shut off. Perhaps Bollywood, with its dynamism and exotic energy, and other Asian flicks will now begin to replace the tired self-absorbed Euro-American cynics. Slumdog Millionaire was boffo and who knows.....

Anyway, Tom Hanks, who may be related to Abe Lincoln's lost love Nancy, is a sure draw. Other surprises lurk in the piece:

In the past 25 years the only performer to go a decade without a box-office failure was Tom Hanks. Between 1975 and 2000, the two actors whose movies grossed the largest amounts of money were--this is not a joke--Steve Guttenberg and Dan Aykroyd.

Whatever happened to Steve and Dan? Bad agents?

Jonah Goldberg on the Right Wing Killed JFK Myth

Jonah demonstrates the patented self-deluding mindset of the Groupthink Left and their Hollyweirdo allies, the Oliver Stones with third-rate minds and hearts filled with hate for the USA. As JG puts it:

Amid the fog of denial, remorse, and confusion over the Kennedy assassination, an informal strategic response developed that would serve the purposes of the burgeoning New Left as well as assuage the consciences of liberals generally: transform Kennedy into an allpurpose martyr for causes he didn’t take up and for a politics he didn’t subscribe to.

JFK and Joe McCarthy were best of friends when they both came to DC in the '46 House of Reps, both veterans and Irish. Bobby became Joe McCarthy's chief legislative assistant, a fact that is buried in the Memory Hole where facts unpalatable to the libtards go to die. I saw Bobby speak at Marquette High in Milwaukee in '58 as he prepared the state for the '60 Wisconsin primary, where JFK bested Hubert Horatio Hornblower in a bitterly fought contest in HHH's neighboring state. I actually saw JFK in a motorcade in the '60 primary in Milwaukee, just a fleeting glimpse. Anyone who knows anything about JFK, and I've read two dozen books, knows that despite the Camelot Disinformation Clouds of pixie dust thrown into the air by hagiographers, JFK might have been killed as the result of a KGB or Castro-engineered plot that went shockingly correct. One ex-CIA fellow says a top Russian told him in the '90s that Khrushchev had warmed to JFK after the Cuban missile crisis, but Castro was seething with hatred and aware of numerous CIA efforts to have him terminated with extreme prejudice. Castro had screamed at Nikita K during the crisis to begin a nuke attack on the USA rather than withdraw the missiles. NK wasn't going that route.

No libtard would ever admit that their beloved Fidel would have killed JFK, but there's a lot of evidence two Cuban operatives fled the Dallas scene to Mexico City, whence they were spirited from the Embassy [the same one lil Oswald had visited] to Havana. Oswald may have been the fall guy or got off two lucky shots, but there were things and evidence conveniently not addressed, as no one wanted another thermonuke confrontation any time soon. Wars of national liberation were the thing of the moment and the one thing JFK would have done would have gone into Vietnam. Jonah is right that he didn't have the inclination to do the civil rights thing the way LBJ had.

History from the libtard script always tries to put the right in the docket when they themselves eff up which is more often than not. Opposing versions are hooted at and derided without being investigated thoroughly. The academicide elites have this drill down to a science, about the only thing they're good at. Tenure brings privileges and lawyers are always in the wings waiting to jump on conservatives who go too far in their twisted book of rules.

Watch the Obamacare parade start to dissolve as Menendez turns Health Care into Immigration Reform and the iron bar is put on the ObamaCare House of Cards. It'll be all the Repubs and nasty conservatives, who get their fingers bitten off and beat up by union thugs, yeah, it's their fault poor people won't have health care!

Just saying....

Sweden Cuts Taxes to Stimulate Economy!

Powerline [h/t: darcysport tweet] notes that the Reagan supply-side revolution is finally coming to Sweden:

We noted here that the United States has the most progressive income tax system in the developed world. That's right--embarrassingly enough, more progressive than Sweden's.

Actually, a generation of economic stagnation has taught the Swedes a lesson. They've learned that government does not produce wealth, and if they want more people to work, jobs have to pay better, after taxes. Sweden is therefore in the midst of a series of tax cuts aimed at preserving the long-term viability of its economy. Today's headline: "Sweden slashes income tax further to boost jobs."

It's an interesting comparison: Sweden experimented with the nanny state, learned that it was devastating to the economic and moral health of its people, and is moving back toward individualism. Here in the U.S., we had the world's most dynamic economy, and the lesson we took away from that--some of us, anyway--was that we were doing something wrong and needed to socialize everything. Curious.

This is Powerline's piece on the top 10% of the US paying 71% of the taxes. Here's Powerline's punch-in-the-mouth conclusion:

Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress now promise to exacerbate the unfairness of our tax system by concentrating tax liabilities even more exclusively among high income earners. Apart from the long-term economic consequences of such a policy, it is simply unjust.

Roger that!

Roger Mudd Calls Kennedy Memoirs "Complete Fabrication"

Teddy ran against Jimmy Carter in 1980 because the Israeli Lobby wanted the unctuous little meddlesome creep to butt out of its affairs. I was John Anderson's Middle East Advisor for about two months until I offended the Lobby by writing a speech for Anderson that he delivered at the largest synagogue in LA [introduced by Ed Asner] that didn't have the "canonical" language insisted upon. I found from the Finance folks in Anderson's back offices that 70% of Anderson's money was from Jewish sources. So Kennedy mousetrapped Jimmy from the left while Anderson squeezed him from the right. Jimmy hates the American Jewish community to this day for that lese majeste and has become a rabid anti-Semite. BTW, George H.W.Bush had a variation of the media rondelay played against him when Ross Perot, after demonstrating craziness on several levels and dropping out [N.Koreans disrupted his daughter's wedding], decided to reenter and all was forgotten, because the media's target was GHWB. But Bush is a mensch and doesn't hold a grudge, unlike the wimp who gave us four years of mush.

But I digress. Roger Mudd lost his shot at the anchor job at NBC [the drunken Kennedy lies about everything, even that] after interviewing Teddy on Cape Cod and EMK effed up the job completely. Fat Teddy asked for a re-do DC and Roger complied, but committed the unforgivable sin of journalism, asking the hung-over drunken murderer [and in '83-84 traitor trying to get Kremlin help for Mondale according to KGB documents, along with the bitter Jimmy] why he wanted to be president. Kennedy wracked his liquor-soaked brain and mumbled and stuttered and lost the nomination.

Of course, in the addled brain of an alcoholic, it was all Roger's fault and a willing suck-up named Brokaw, now on the
Robin Hood Foundation's board sluicing Soros money to ACORN as I write this, came in and for twenty years, Duncan the Wonder Horse bored us all while Dan Blather lied to us all and network news swirled down the porcelain gateway to where it is today, in a septic tank where the biggest chunks float to the top.

CNN came to fill the vacuum and ten years later, Murdoch introduced FoxNEWS which Turner predicted CNN "would squash like a bug." Yeah, Ted. How's that alcoholic haze going for you? You and Teddy suck from the pewter pot and see the world as the world is not. [Apologies to A.E. Housman]

I forgot, Teddy's dead, victim of healthcare that no one of us readers could ever afford.

Anti-Fascism = Jew Hatred in Baader Meinhof Movie?

dave & shimon at a Dead Sea Hotel discussing pipelines

Robert Graves was half-German and his uncle Von Ranke was Germany's most famous historian in the late nineteenth century, who coined the phrase "wie es eigentlich gesehen ist" or "how it really was" to define the task of the true historian. The movie on the Baader Meinhof Gang, who was a fact of the seventies that all Germans found hard to ignore, are now depicted in Von Ranke's terms, but the perspicacious reviewer of the flick who teaches at St. Francis College in Brooklyn finds that somehow a Herr Aust, who was the progenitor of the film as the ultimate verisimilitude of how it really was, actually failed to either find or depict some salient facts. As the reviewer notes:

Where the film falls down has to do with the name that the gang gave itself: the Red Army Faction (RAF). With the Soviet army camped nearby, notes writer Paul Berman, the RAF saw itself as an extension of the Soviet cause, which during the 1970s seemed far from hopeless. The RAF even received funds and logistical support from the East German secret police, the Stasi. As the historian Jeffrey Herf puts it, the gang’s exploits thus constitute “an episode in the history of Communism”; through it, the USSR got an enormous return on its investment in the German New Left. But the role of the Stasi barely surfaces in Aust’s film. Since the movie’s completion, moreover, historians working in the East German archives have discovered that the cop who killed Ohnesorg at the protest was working for the Stasi. And as Aust told me himself with some excitement, the two photographers who captured Ohnesorg’s last moments also had links to the Stasi.

The Stasi was also the crucial intermediary between the RAF and Palestinian terrorists and between older forms of anti-Semitism and its newer incarnation as anti-Zionism. The film touches only in passing on the anti-Semitism of parts of the New Left. But RAF members were pathbreakers here as well. In the wake of the Palestinian massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, notes Herf, Meinhof became the first public figure in post-Holocaust Germany to describe the murder of Jews as an anti-fascist act.

When I spoke with Aust, who still sees himself as a man of the Left, I asked him if he had read the German left-wing author Mattias Kuntzel’s book on the close ties between the Nazis and both the Muslim Brotherhood and the founder of the Palestinian movement, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He had not. When I suggested that the book might have given him a crucial perspective on the RAF, about whom he’s been writing for over 30 years, he replied, “Possibly.”

His reply led me to wonder what the film might have been like had Aust acknowledged, say, the links between the RAF and Francois Genoud, the neo-Nazi executor of Goebbels’s will who was dubbed “Sheik Francois” by some of the Palestinian terror leaders he worked with. Similarly, a film so deeply concerned with accusations of resurgent Nazism might have noted that Horst Mahler, one of the central players in the RAF, began on the neo-Nazi Right, joined the RAF, and since his release from prison has again become a full-fledged neo-Nazi.

Aust’s book on the RAF, first published in 1985, has gone through three revisions as new information became available. His movie deserves viewing, but it also merits, or perhaps even demands, a similar updating.

Okay, so some of the facts "surfaced" after the completion of the film, but how the connection between Palestinian terrorists and the Nazis was so well known that Meinhof's specious claim might have been put in the context of the Grand Mufti's devotion to Hitler. If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the absurd calculus comes out that Hitler is Meinhof's friend, since they both hate Jews as their enemy. And Horst Mahler's neo-Nazi background before and after his B-M Gang incarnation, how is that not relevant? If Von Ranke is your guideline, breaking a storyline ain't as important as tellin' it like it is.

Maybe Robert Graves was right in the end of Goodbye to All That when he first noted that the Brits had fought on the wrong side, since the Froggies [or whatever pejorative he used] were insufferable. But then he noted that the Germans "had to be treated like dogs, either they are completely under control or they try to control everything....nothing in between" or words to that effect. I'm sure the spirit of his deceased great-uncle was perturbed, but German insubordination resurfaced a second time with Hitler and a second conflict exhausted Europe so that it is now an energy satrapy of Russia and economically unsustainable. But Putin, who may have been "running" Stasi operations like Baader Meinhof when he was KGB czarovitch in East Germany, now has ex-Prime Minister Schroeder safely on a leash sitting on his haunches and walking beside him when Vlad says "heel." How much longer, now that Brobambi has ceded American sovereignty to the UN, Russia, Iran, and resolutely opposes the visa for President Michelletti of Honduras to visit the UN, will the US not resist having the UN take over our status as the world currency of choice with a new "international currency."

If he's as spineless as he was on the missile shield, the Europeans may yet cede sovereignty to Russia, at least in its eastern members of the EU.

FoxNEWS Primetime Viewership Exceeds Combined Viewers of ALL other Cable News

Ranting by sport-of-nature Maddow and Keith Overbite's rampages with the facts aren't the only downside. L'il "Teabagger" Anderson Cooper of CNN's 360 is sinking in the quicksand of his gaydar musings and only Lou Dobbs seems to keep his nose above the waterline on the C[orrupt]N[ews]N[etwork]. Nancy Grace lost any eyeballs worth counting by blaming the Duke lacrosse players of rape when the ho' in question was a serial rape-victim ['crying wolf or in this case rape"].

Of course, Fox does have credible opposition figures from the other side, which egomaniac KO & weirdo Maddow can't handle.
UPDATE Glenn Beck at 5PM had almost as many viewers at 3.4 million as Olbermann and Maddow with their entire 8-12PM line-up COMBINED! If Glenn were moved to BOR's slot, who is edging in a wobbly fashion toward The Vacuum Between Big Ears & Won's orc-crowd, he'd double BOR's figures, I'll bet.

Did anyone see Wolf Blitzer, former editor of the Jerusalem Post, get the only question on Jews and the Bible wrong on JEOPARDY last night? Andy Richter earned $68K [and a chance to play again] for St. Jude's while Blitzer was in the minus-column, where his weird news show on C[orrupt] N[ews]N[etwork] belongs.

Missile Shield Insanity

If they ever give out Pulitzers for blogging,Tom Maguire would be my candidate. His commenters are as astute as any, and his analysis world-class, in this case, deconstructing the silly arguments for eliminating the missile-shield.

I for one would like to have a peek at [Manchurian Candidate?] Obambi's [conveniently disappeared] thesis at Columbia on US/Soviet disarmament. I'm sure it would give cynical lil Vlad Putin a few chuckles.

Strange how Obama's biographers will have giant holes in their search for records [including his Illinois State Senate records, also gone amissin']. What have I left out?

Parenthetically, I happen to be reading Anna Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia at the moment, not a book that would ever be on Ellen Tauscher, the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control's reading list. Anna's murder was caught on camera two years ago, but strangely no suspect has surfaced....!

The Poles are betrayed once again, and Putin is arming up Chavez to the hilt. i

Last nite WorldFocus on our PBS channel had a piece on the rehabilitation of Stalin in Putin's Russia. Afterward, Nina Khrushcheva, granddaughter of the Soviet dictator and now teaching at the New School in NYC, said that Russia is grandiose and a separate civilization in itself and that the West had to recognize that. She then said that Dostoievsky once wrote that Russian history is always a battle between progress and beauty---reminiscent of Ruth Benedict's Chrysanthemum and the Sword, written during World War II on Japan.

Putin's office inherited Stalin's office in the Kremlin and has Stalin's entire personal library in bookcases on the walls surrounding his desk. He is fond of showing visitors passages in books Stalin read where the brutal Tartar underlined the words or annotated in his own handwriting. It is clear that Vlad The Empoisoner means to return to some sort of autocratic rule masquerading as democracy---he means to do it by subjugating the "Near Abroad" and Obambi's move today demonstrates that his tactics are working.

And if one opposes Putin, ask that former Polonium-poisoned KGB source in London, or for that matter, Anna Politkovskaya, about the best methods to do so. Oops, you can't. They are both dead from the same reason.
UPDATE
The tedious PBS Lehrer clone WorldVision had two apologists for Obama's insane stupidity tonight, one an arrogant female named Robbins from the NYT and another purporting affiliation with a foreign policy group. Their arguments remained completely oblivious to the fact that the NYT was embarassed at being newsworthy by pointing out the 70th anniversary, or as I put it in a note to TMV:
Of course it's about Russia, although the Groupthinkeers on the NYT/WaPo DNC foreign policy agitprop squads would like to have you think otherwise. They are Obamamaniacs who actually extracted the exceedingly embarrassing eff-up of announcing the missile decision on the 70th Anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland, according to the agreement of the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact in August, 1939. Putin must be ROTFL uproariously at Obama's imbecilic timing. [The NYT thought the timing so incredibly bad that they excised the offending paragraph, actually noting this ridiculous mistake, off their online article. WITHOUT REPORTING THE CHANGE---in line with Bill Keller & Pinch Sully-berger's dedicated campaign to make the NYT the "fishwrap of record."] This ridiculous timing error adds to the moronic removal of the "tripwire" and of linkage, violating two basic tenets of World Diplomacy and Political Military Affairs 101.

"ArmsControlWonks" are pretty much evenly divided, though they do like the technical side of things. However, EVERY single European politician and diplomat who isn't under Putin's thumb knows that one HUGE bargaining chip in the fight to keep European energy from becoming completely under Putin's control has just been removed. The Eastern Europeans have no lost complete confidence in the US's ability to be a foreign policy leader. Obama has done in months what took Jimmy Carter three years to do.

For those who actually understand these things, Putin's next goal is the Baku/Ceyhan Pipeline through Georgia, which sparked last year's August Russian invasion. These matters are light-years above Rudi's foreign policy skill sets, but serious people don't rely on the NYT and the jabberwocky MSM to define what is a foreign policy mistake. And Obama who was always punching above his weight with Putin, has just moved from a flyweight down to a featherweight. This dude is making Carter's give-away of the Panama Canal to [eventually] China look like a brilliant move!

The Democrats always wonder why people think they are weak on national security. Obama once again demonstrates why.

Dear Leader Brobambi PLedges Missile Defense From Iran

The Spineless Won has changed his mind [if that political animal has one] since April. The capitulation to Putin only proves Obambi is as much of a thin reed of a boy-man as Putin guessed.

Double-digit IQ Joe Biden gave an indication of the credibility of this ridiculous invitation to Russian hawks to resume pushing westward by making the announcement himself, a sure indication of the levity and frivolous nature of this retreat from world power.

Since Hillary Rodham had to sign on, it's another indication of a foreign policy going nowhere except to retreat. To celebrate the removal of the missile shield, Russia concluded a massive arms deal with Venezuela. Not to be outdone, China announced a $16 billion acquisition of fuel from the Venz to be transported through the Panama Canal, which serial traitor James Earl Carter conveniently allowed the PRC to take over as another of his amazing foreign policy coups.

Argentina Following Venezuela in Destroying a Free Press?

Italy, Buffoon Chavez, and Ho-in-Chief Pres. Kirchner are all showing the way to the ridiculous Speaker[ette] of the US House who wants to quash talk radio.

Oh yeah, I forgot Putin. Just saying.....

Manchurian Candidate James Earl Carter Continues Program to destroy USA

Buffoon baboon Chavez signs a $16 billion deal to supply the PRC with fuel. How? Through the Panama Canal, most probably, signed to Panama by Spider Monkey Carter in the seventies and now under control of China. At the same time that Russia & China sign long-term petroleum deals with Iran and Venezuela, the Speaker[ette] of the House and Dingy Harry Reid cooperate with Dear Leader Obambi to restrain development of US oil reserves onshore and offshore. RINO Gov. Crist of FL had his cat's paw Lemieux put a hold on FL offshore oil development. Even dimwit Martinez never would have been so stupid. And Sen. Nelson didn't need to do so, since he relies on RINOs like Crist to do his dirty work. And the Gore-bot continues his fake Global Warming crusade just to keep the American patriots off-balance. And Cap & Trade will cost every American $2000 while China, India, and Russia do nothing to counter emissions. Just because the EU is in terminal decline doesn't mean the USA should march blindly to the march of the lemmings.

Just saying.....

High Res Photo Shows Over a Million at the 9/12 Tea Party

This photo demonstrates the screeching MSM which claims a small number for the March of 9/12 Patriots symbolizing the unity of the USA is simply that, sound and fury signifying nothing.

I was at the famous 1970 Demonstration on the Mall against the War in Vietnam and this crowd equals or surpasses that crowd of over a million.

POSTSCRIPT & UPDATE Click on the link and [h/t: Darleen Click] enjoy the panorama of Freedom an d Justice marching against a tyranny of a slight majority.

Rahm-bo Agonistes: Struggles of a Hypomaniac Chronicled by Suck-Ups

Psychology Today is still Freudian after all these years, and the recent issue about Rahm Emanuel goes adorational quickly:

Emanuel displays many characteristics of a hypomanic temperament. This mildly manic disposition—which is not a mental illness—comes with assets that could propel someone to the top of his field: immense energy, drive, confidence, creativity, and infectious enthusiasm. I have found through interviews and historical accounts that hypomania has animated many leaders, from Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Carnegie to Emanuel's former boss Bill Clinton.[Ed. Note: Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Joseph Stalin would also perhaps qualify as hypomanics...]

But wait, there's more!
B

ut it also carries a cluster of liabilities: overconfidence, irritability, and especially impulsivity that often pitches the hypomanic into hostility. Drives are heightened and impulse control is weakened, making the hypomanic brain like a Porsche with no brakes. In keeping with his hypomanic temperament, Emanuel doesn't need much sleep and he can't stay still. "He's like a shark that always has to keep moving or he dies," says John Lapp, who worked for Emanuel. And, like Clinton, Emanuel is highly creative, not least because his hyperkinetic mind can't stop generating ideas. "He's an idea machine," Sabato says.

As is Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton and a few paranoid schizophrenics I attended as a hospital orderly in a psych ward a long while ago..... Psychology Today goes into metaphorical hyperspace with the following apercu by author John Gartner:

If you picture the id and ego as a horse and rider, Rahm has a gigantic horse—like other hypomanics. But he's also a highly skilled rider. He's more heat-seeking missile than loose cannon.

Ah yes, but these are caring, loving maniacs and have their hearts in the right place, being Dumborats:

The center of the Emanuel universe was the family dinner table, a boisterous place where all the meaningful issues of the day were hotly debated. While Rahm has called the verbal combat that took place there "gladiatorial," Zeke described it to me as more of a Talmudic debate—the Jewish tradition of argument where one's opponent is viewed as an ally in the search for truth. "It's a sign of love to take someone's view seriously," says Zeke, who has fostered at NIH a style modeled directly on the Emanuel dinner table; he calls it "combative collegiality."

The most important measure of mental health, psychoanalyst Melanie Klein believed, is a capacity to integrate caring and aggressive feelings in relationships. In that regard, the Emanuels grew up extremely healthy. While a great deal of aggression was tolerated and sparked "a lot of competition, a lot of bloodshed, and plenty of fights between the brothers," it was also tempered by the underlying warmth. The warmth factor not only counterbalanced the aggression—this was not The Sopranos—it reduced the hostility that so often accompanies hypomania

Yeah, the old Jewish saw: "What's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable." No hostility there, just aggression against one's worldly goods! But not finished with the brown-nose ass-kissing, the PT folks quote the fishwrap of record, the Liberal Death Star, to achieve a sort of new French-kiss of journalistic groveling.

A strong capacity for good fraternal relationships may help explain the unusually intimate chemistry between Obama and his chief of staff. "In meetings, it's not uncommon for Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanuel to engage in teasing banter," Leibovich wrote in The New York Times [Ed note: aforesaid Liberal Death Star]. When Obama complained during a meeting that Emanuel's knuckle-cracking was distracting him, Emanuel stood up and held "the offending knuckle" to Obama's ear and, "like an annoying little brother, snapped off a few special cracks."

Some heads of state might take offense at such irreverence. Emanuel was nearly fired from the Clinton White House for clashing with Hillary. But Obama, with his team-of-rivals approach, has shown a confident capacity to work with strong personalities. "Obama values truth-telling and bluntness" and he "has a lot of loving-teasing relationships," the Times' Leibovich told me. "The Emanuel dinner table represents his idealized cabinet meeting."

I should have recused myself because one of my daughter's baby sitters in Glencoe or Wilmette did claim to have baby-sat the Emanuel clan decades previous, but upon further reflection, decided not to do so in the interest of bioethics. Read the entire story to catch the reference.

Lucretia Pelosi Keeps Protecting ACORN---Does She Deserve a Pimp-Slap?

John Fund has an excellent summary of ACORN's sins of commissiion and omission, mortal and venial, which cannot be found in the "fishwrap of record" called the NYT. This sentence jumps out at the reader:

Acorn's allies in Congress have long stopped every move to rein it in. Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), for example, has tried six times to get House floor votes restricting Acorn's access to federal funds but has been blocked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hand-picked Rules Committee members. Some Democrats have grumbled. Michigan's John Conyers, chair of the Judiciary Committee, urged a hearing be held on Acorn abuses in March, but later told the Washington Times "the powers that be decided against it."

When even a notorious under-the-table artist like Conyers thinks ACORN is worthy of investigation, you know something is rotten in the District of Columbia. What was that slogan Nancy wanted to use in '06 for the Congressional Campaign, "Contract on America?"

What she and her House Dem allies are doing is worthy of a Mafia hit contract on the Constitution and good government in the USA. I guess her slogan fits, in her botox-riddled mindset.

Cy Vance Jr. New NYC D.A.

Cy Sr. was the ultimate lawyer, and I knew his personal assistant, a woman named Elva Morgan, before she remarried. Cy and his wife Grace [nee Sloan] hosted young Lisa Halaby when she was a homeless hippie back in Far Hills, N.J., and years later, she got a job with the Jordanian national airline and was in the airport when Cy Sr. spotted her in the crowd, picked her out and introduced her to King Hussein, who married her eventually and made her Queen Lisa, er, I mean Queen Noor. True story.

Wpnder if Cy Jr. has political ambitions. Cy Sr. had been adopted by a Dem VP candidate in the twenties named Davis, and raised in the household as a family member. A hockey goalie at Hotchkiss, he earned his stripes as a lawyer resolving a big Hollyweird movie case in the forties and through his political connections, hooked up with George Ball, who told me some of these tales. Cy Sr. always wanted to solve the Cyprus conundrum [a play on his name?] and I once handled in the State Dept a request from a Latin American country addressed to "Cyprus Vance."

POSTSCRIPT The above letter was not the zaniest request I ever encountered in my ill-starred State Dept career. That would be an urgent phone call from the Saudi Foreign Ministry in Jidda asking me if I'd ever heard of a country called "Al-Jezirah Al-Akhdar." I thought for a few minutes [Al-Jezirah is usually translated as "peninsula" and finally figured that Green Peninsula was the Cape Verde Islands. The Saudi official on the other end of the line then laughed. It came about that the President of the Cape Verde Islands in Africa had an official visit scheduled one month to the day later that year to Saudi to beg for money, which is what African countries did in the seventies. The President's plane was sitting in the Jidda Airport and the Protocol officials were in a frenzy trying to figure out what to do with him, not even knowing which country he was from....!!

For my services to the Saudi Foreign Ministry, however brief, I should have been awarded a medal, or at least a cash reward!!!

You just can't make these things up. And with the Saudis, as the only Arabist in the U.S. Embassy working with the Saudi military as a Political Military Officer, I have a dozen or so more UNBELIEVABLE tales of international misunderstanding.

Partners in Peace?

 

George Mitchell and Benjamin Netanyahu met today. I hope they get along as well as I did while meeting [now] President Shimon Peres back in the day.

Beeb Buries Lede, To The VERY END of Story!

The BBC has an ambivalent take on the Taliban, at least in Pakistan, it would appear. Orla Guerin has shifted her pro-Hezbollah and pro-Hamas allegiances to Pakistan where she pollutes the BBC Evening News with pro-Taliban, pro-AlQaeda agitprop, evidently with strong Beeb support from her managing editor.

The BBC also has a different twist on the capture of Muslim Khan, the Swat insurgency's top Taliban, whom Orla and her IRA compadres praise with faint damnation in an article which, in the very last few paragraphs, as an afterthought, tells what is REALLY going on in the Swat Valley. After noting the Taliban terror brigades displaced two million Swat residents, the Beeb says:

Although many have returned, there is still unrest and bloodshed in the troubled district. Fighting is still reportedly continuing in isolated pockets.
And in recent weeks, more than 200 corpses have been found across the valley.
The killings have been carried out execution-style and the bodies are believed to be of suspected Taliban.
Security forces have strenuously denied carrying out extrajudicial killings as part of their offensive. They claim local residents are behind the attacks.
While this remains unconfirmed, local residents have formed tribal militias to take on militants in what correspondents say is a new development for the region.
In early September, members of a local tribal militia killed three suspected insurgents.
The army has been encouraging the voluntary tribal fighting forces, which exist in other parts of north-west Pakistan.

Oh, the humanity! Local residents resist terrorists whom the BBC glorifies and kill them without fair judicial process when they are rooted out. I hope Orla and her camera crew imitate Mr. Farrell of the NYT and go up there to investigate first-hand.
Oops, no Brit Special Forces to protect this sport of nature. Guess journalism cedes to Entertainment Tongiht celebrity values.
POSTSCRIPTSlate five days later picks up the New York Times' latest crime, this a sin of commission, against journalism on the issue:

The recent push to root the Taliban out of Swat Valley has been praised by Washington officials as an example of how the Pakistani government has gotten serious about targeting militants. But as "perhaps hundreds" of bodies have been dumped on the streets lately, it could raise new questions about Washington's alliance with the Pakistani military, which has already come under fire from lawmakers. The military says it isn't involved in any extrajudicial killings and insists revenge killings by civilians, a relatively common phenomenon in the area, are to blame. But many human rights activists and regular citizens say there has been something suspiciously similar about the way the victims have been tortured and killed. Officials believe the military may be trying to keep support for the Taliban in check while it also seeks revenge for the numerous army casualties.

The New York Times continues its rabid journalistic fervor overseas while Jill Abrahamson, whom I would talk to when she was at the Wall Street Journal back in the day, can't seem to run any investigative stories [sins of omission] on ACORN [nor can it find space to review Mark Levin's three-month bestseller in its Sunday Book section.

Guess journalism [again] cedes to Entertainment Tongiht celebrity values. Libtard values prevail at the Grey Lady whose dead-tree days are numbered in the hundreds rather than the thousands.

Fouad Ajami Tells the Truth About Losers: Paris, Berlin, Cairo, Ankara

Fouad Ajami has another brilliant piece giving an overview of the world since 9/11 eight long years ago:

No Arabs had been emotionally invested in Mullah Omar and the Taliban, but the ruler in Baghdad was a favored son of that Arab nation. The decapitation of his regime was a cautionary tale for his Arab brethren. Grant George W. Bush his due. He drew a line when the world of the Arabs was truly in the wind and played upon by powerful temptations. Mr. Obama and his advisers need not pay heroic tribute to the men and women who labored before them. But they have so maligned their predecessors and their motives that the appeal to 9/11 rings hollow and contrived. In those years behind us, American liberalism distanced itself from American patriotism, and the damage is there to see.

Barack Obama's transparent duplicity in pursuing a war in Afghanistan while craven political cowardice makes him allow a malicious persecution of the CIA is the undercurrent of Fouad's article in the WSJ. George W. Bush will be remembered for his guts of steel in doubling down with the "Surge" in 2007 while his political enemies were dissing him and booing his State of the Union Address [lest the moronic left forget, it's on the videotape, as Warner Wolf used to say]. But the real treason is not the Fifth Column of political opportunists like Reid and Pelosi, it is in the Eurotrash surrender to Islam implicitly as it cowers and kowtows in abject frozen deer-in-the-headlights panic:

For the American effort in Afghanistan to stick on the ground in the face of a Taliban insurgency that's gaining in strength and geographical reach, Mr. Obama will have to make a hard choice. He will need a troop commitment of sufficient weight to turn the tide of war. Furthermore, he will have to face his own coalition on the left and convince it that there is a project in Afghanistan worth fighting (and paying) for.

By the evidence of things, this is a decision that he has refused to make, as he pursues his sweeping domestic agenda while keeping Afghanistan in play. He had been sure that NATO forces would rush to his banners, that Europe had stayed away from a serious commitment in Afghanistan because it had been seized with an animus for his predecessor. But Mr. Bush had been an alibi all along. The Europeans are in no mood for this war.

There is a British contingent of decent size in Afghanistan, but there had been one in Iraq as well. The likes of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder (who dabbled in the most craven of anti-Americanism) are gone and forgotten, but the French and the Germans have not ridden to the rescue of Kandahar. The stringent restrictions on their forces, their very rules of engagement, have left Afghanistan an Anglo-American burden in much the same way Iraq had been.

Robert Graves' mother was German and a relative of the eminent historian Von Ranke. Graves knew the Germans well from his long summer vacations as a youth in Bavaria and somewhere in his writings says "You have to remember to treat the Germans like dogs, or else they will turn on you." Ditto for the Arabs and Turks, whom the Germans resemble in more ways than they care to admit. If the Turks are Arabs with a work ethic, the Germans are Turks with organizational discipline. But they still fall short of being a trustworthy ally.:

There is a British contingent of decent size in Afghanistan, but there had been one in Iraq as well. The likes of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder (who dabbled in the most craven of anti-Americanism) are gone and forgotten, but the French and the Germans have not ridden to the rescue of Kandahar. The stringent restrictions on their forces, their very rules of engagement, have left Afghanistan an Anglo-American burden in much the same way Iraq had been.

But the shakiest allies are the anarchic Arabs and their built-in duality of an autocrat/underclass division permanently in a state of tension. Since their world conquest days ended with the Umayyad move to Damascus with its Spanish Andalusian outlier, the Arabs have been under the thumb of various internal autocrats. Then they fell to external conquerors such as the Turks, Mongols, and later European overlords. Fouad was a guest at my condo back in the day for a few weeks and told me of his Pan-Arab passions [and delusions] after Nasser declared that the Umma-t-il-Arabiyya of the first four caliphs would return if the Arabs united and threw off the yoke of Sultans and Kings and various other dispensations, like Egypt had done with King Farouk and Iraq was soon to do with its Hashemite monarch in 1958. What ensued, however, was the new dispensation of Saddam Husseins, Hafez-al Assads, and other ethnarchs of minority status---the Sunni minority in Iraq, the Alawite minority in Syria, et cetera.... "new boss, same as the old boss..." as the Who put it in "Won't Get Fooled Again." Switching from inefficent arbitrary Soviet-style terror to a more efficient Hitler-type modality in effect.... But the Arabs appear stuck and even congealed in a self-destructive cycleof political stagnation well-documented over the past few decades by the UN and othe World NGOs. Fouad's perspective sums it up well:

Eight years ago, we were visited by the furies of Arab lands. We were rudely awakened from a decade whose gurus and pundits had announced the end of ideology, of politics itself, and the triumph of the world-wide Web and the "electronic herd." We had discovered that on the other side of the world masterminds of terror, and preachers, and their foot-soldiers were telling of America the most sordid of tales. We had become, without knowing it, a party to a civil war in the Arab-Islamic world between the autocrats and their disaffected children, between those who wanted to live a normal life and warriors of the faith bent on imposing their will on that troubled arc of geography.

Our country answered that call, not always brilliantly, for we are fated to be strangers in that world and thus fated to improvise and make our way through unfamiliar alleyways. We met chameleons and hustlers of every shade and had to learn, in a hurry, incomprehensible atavisms and pathologies. We fared best when we trusted our sense of things. We certainly haven't been kept safe by the crowds in Paris and Berlin, or by those in Ankara and Cairo who feign desire for our friendship while they yearn for our undoing.

The spineless and degenerate Europeans connive at our undoing while dining off our steadfast resistance to Communism and [with Schroeder's assistance] the post-Soviet Putinism seeking to make Europe into an economic energy colony. Sadly, it doesn't seem this time that it's a case of "reculer pour mieux sauter" than drives the Europeans, even the formerly doughty Brits.

Instead, Europe's "Middle Way" of a mixed economy is leading the EU into complete mediocrity, and any economic gains are made ultimately at the cost of enriching the surrounding satrapies giving the EU the raw materials and, sadly as baggage, the religious and other hysterias a mediocre second-rate civilization is in no ways equipped to forestall. My other buddy from the glory days when Fouad was my houseguest [and later rented my condo after my wedding to a condo-equipped spouse], was Christopher Hitchens, who also has morphed into a late-onset Realpolitik appreciation of America's role in the world.

But the Fifth Column now running Congress and, to a lesser degree, the Oval Office, cannot abdicate and just walk away from America's responsibilities abroad, including Latin America and Iran where BHusseinO has shown apparent weakness. The price to be paid will be far higher than a political payback in the short term. As Fouad astutely reckons, the long-term cost of American negligence in national security vis-a-vis the rest of the planet will punish our descendants here in what is still the land of opportunity.