New Conservative Media Shames the Shameless

Dave Weigel has an objective piece on the new conservative media. Thank God for recanting liberals who leave the pacifiers like Salon & Slate!

Fr. Bill Neenan S.J. Now in Heaven.

Fr. Neenan was a friend of mine since the early '60s when I met him in Minnesota. Then I reconnected with Bill at the University of Michigan where we were both in graduate school. I last saw him while accompanying my daughter Niki at Boston College where he had been Vice President of that distinguished educational institution. Bill was a brilliant economist who also served as a sort of campus "Mr Chips," recommending 100 books [which he had read!] to the students with school-wide messages encouraging wider reading. Bill was a true Ignatian with a wonderful personality and wit, who hopefully resides now in Heaven, which he earned many times over.

Is an Obama Immigration Amnesty for "Undocumented Aliens" legal?

Ross Douthat won't be keeping his Op-Ed slot in the tabloid NYT for long, as he commits the heresy of constitutional common sense on its ridiculous lapdog statist nonsense site. Ross convincingly argues that Obama will be ignoring the will of the electorate [because only one-third showed up at the polls!], making Nixon's "Silent Majority" argument---a fact that the elitists probably haven't even figured out. Sadly, Mitch McConnell has already stolen a page from Obama's preemptive capitulation script by saying what the new Senate WON'T do. [At least Mitch is not drawing a "red line" that he will ignore like Obama did on gassing Syrians---which has convinced the world that Obama is the fraud that cannot be feared.]

Walter Russell Meade on US Foreign Policy

Peter Beinart has a good summary of the several types of US foreign policy as described by Meade.

Anne Applebaum on Eastern Europe's Concerns about Putin

Anne Applebaum wrote Gulag for a Pulitzer Prize and is married to the Polish Foreign Minister.

She speaks fluent Russian and Polish, among other languages and has dire warnings about the extreme nationalists in Russia calling for the use of nukes on Warsaw and the Baltic members of NATO, all to demonstrate the flimsy Potemkin Village that NATO is compared to its projection of over-the-horizon force.

Read the above and contemplate how our witless President answered Romney in one of the debates that regarding Russia as an opponent was "so last century."

Obama, welcome to the 20th century.

Obama's GEICO impersonates Loners Hafta be Alone….

The NYT surprises us occasionally and here is one the rare occasions the lapdog nips the ankles of its Lord & Master Messiah Hussein.

Looks like Jesse's gonna be shot off his high horse, if you can catch the allusion.

Here's more from Howie Kurtz.

Packers Boast Best Fan Base in NFL

Forbes has a good article on NFL fan bases.

As a Packer fan since 1952 [I remember Tony Canadeo as QB], I can hardly differ.

ESPN names the other top four [Broncos, Saints, Ravens & Patriots.]

Terrorist Suicide Bomb Instructor Blows Up Self, 21 Aspiring Suicide Trainees.

Islam, the so-called Religion of Peace, lost 22 of its most aspiring devotees recently in an ISIS training base north of Baghdad.

Nowadays, good news is hard to find, so ENJOY!

Robin Williams and Me: Synchronicity

Valentine's Day 1981 I was in LA at The Comedy Store on Melrose and was sitting by myself having a drink at a small round bar table with a Variety rolled up in my back pocket. I got up to go to the men's room and was asked by a voice behind me, "Is this yours?" and handed me the Variety, which had fallen out of my pocket. It was Robin Williams all by himself, with a friendly smile on his face. [I know it was Valentines Day because as I went in, Tommy Smothers came out of the bathroom wearing an outsized button saying "Mom loved you more than me." Remember The Smothers Brothers?]

Flash forward three short months or so and I am with my fiancé at Williams College in Massachusetts seeing a Greek play starring Superman star Christopher Reeve in the lead. There is no room in the theater except at the very back row and I slide into a seat. Sitting next to me all by himself is Robin Williams! [I find out later that Reeve and Robin were roommates in NYC when they both started out in their acting careers.]

Bumping into Williams on both sides of this vast country and at Williams College no less!

Both times he was quiet [and friendly] and had a sort of solitary look about him that one wouldn't expect.

Requiescat in Pace.

Obama's Lack of Social Skills Reflected on the Golf Course

POLITICO has an excellent piece on why Obama has golfed 180 times during his failed presidency versus 24 for GWB.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Obama's brief tenure as a Senator did not supply him with negotiating skills and schmooze ability that ex-Governors Reagan & Clinton & GWB, for example, had to learn to get things done. Like Nixon & Jimmy Carter, Obama has a loner gene in his DNA that confines his golf partners to WH staffers for the vast majority of outings. His one round with golf fanatic John Boehner left him with deep distaste for a partner who didn't agree with this evident solipsistic and autistic social-skill lacking autocrat.

One of his advisors was quoted on background that Barack thinks dissent and dialogue is "messy."

At least he is not a serial cheater like LBJ or Billy Jeff Clinton, famous for his "Billigans" which were extensions of Mulligans.

He is most reminiscent of classical loner and non-golfer Jimmy Carter, whose retreats to Camp David and elsewhere symbolized his out-of-the-box essentially eccentric qualities.

How Iraq Fell Apart

That's Obama's urban legend. The Status of Forces Agreement was being haggled over by Al-Maliki, but Obama saw the [temporary] to-and-fro of this agreement as an excuse to make a quick exit. The US could have had the 11K residual soldiers there & a SoFA. And 11,000 might have been enough to stiffen the backbones of the cowardly Iraqi generals and also encourage peace between the Sunnis & Shi'ites. Now we'll never know, and the exit of a US presence gave Al-Maliki more leverage to play his divisive political games.

Dogs Versus Cats

Cats predominate in the densely-populated New England & Atlantic North as well as the Upper Middle West.

Dogs predominate in Texas and the Deep South----except for Florida.
I am slightly biased, as we have six housecats and two dogs.

Egypt, Jordan, UAE & Saudi All Distance Selves from Hamas This Time Around

The New York Times has an interesting piece by David Fitzpatrick that the mainstream media herd has declined to comment on. This time around, the Arab Levant of Jordan Saudi UAE & Egypt are onto Hamas terrorist gambit, and unlike simpletons like Kerry & the EU herd, just ain't buying it. As an FSO Arabist who has lived in three Arab countries [Lebanon, Saudi, & Egypt] and travelled to all but a couple Arab League members, this does not surprise me. After a year of Morsi and his autocratic ways and lack of any personal politics, no compromises led to the Egyptian Army reasserting its paramountcy. As I had written all along was going to happen. It would happen to Al-Maliki were his 60% majority not fireproof. Or at least he thinks, and never compromises. Over 1300 years, the Arabs have either ruled by tyranny or seen anarchy. Tsisi in Egypt is a tyrant replacing an anarchical situation Morsi caused. And Hamas is a member of the Ikhwan just as the Muslim Brotherhood is. With Morsi gone as a mediator, it's no wonder sensible Arabs are staying away and even silently urging Israel on by their thundering silence.

UN Human Rights Chief Yammers Endlessly About Israel, Mentions Hamas Parenthetically

A UN Political Hack named Pillay ragged heavily on Israel for its being a meany while those poor Hamas dudes get a rap on the knuckles for venial sins.

Last nite on BBC, the UN UNRWA Commissioner blamed Israel endlessly while not even citing Hamas' provocations amidst crowded neighborhoods in Gaza City. [Note: I was short-listed for this job in 1999, but thankfully missed the final cut.]

The nasty UNRWA [German] freak was screeching about Israeli attacks, the nasty dude didn't bother to mention that rockets were found in THREE of his UNRWA schools and a booby-trapped tunnel entrance under one of UNRWA's medical facilities.

Any wonder why the Israelis regard the UN as a Hamas ally and that the media are totally biased pro-Hamas?

Western newsmen in Gaza like the unctuous weepy fraud Barry Petersen are NOT ALLOWED any photos of Hamas terrorist "militants" and shepherded to hospitals where children are shown in terrible pain.

The Fatah rep to Washington let the cat out of the bag last night when he noted that 80% of the Palestinians killed were civilians, meaning of the 1300 dead Palestinians, close to 300 were Palestinian Hamas terrorists.

May dogs eat their bones!

Media Trackers Discovers Secret Cabal of Senior Left-Wing Politburo Members

A University of Wisconsin Professor somehow got busted as a member of a secret network of left-wing conspirators artfully hidden and consisting of more than 1000 members, including senior journalists and faculty on its membership rolls.

The concept resembles Ezra Klein's secret Journolist of a few years ago. Guess those lefties just love to conspire.

As Mark Rudd confided in me as my houseguest in Ann Arbor decades ago while he smoked my dope: "Dave, always remember, dare to cheat, dare to win."

The Economist has an article summing up the left-wing mindset perfectly!

Obama's Fatuous Foreign Policy as seen by WaPo Editorial Writer

Fred Hiatt enumerates a short version of the list of Obama's many miscalculations in foreign policy, leaving out major blunders such as [still] not arming the Ukraine government in Kiev with DEFENSIVE armaments to combat the well-equipped Separatist Insurgency being run out of Donetsk with much Russian help.

As for the famous "pivot" to East Asia, China seems to regard it as two years & change to throw its military weight around while the feeble, limp-wristed CEO of the USA displays a fatuous mindset concentrating on continued withdrawal from foreign commitments while demonizing his domestic opponents.

Meanwhile, he undertakes a strenuous tour of endless golf cum fund-raising in Air Force One, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

Obama "Floods the Zone" with Cloward-Piven Tactics to Destroy American Economy

Obama's Border Gambit with tens of thousands of teenage & younger Central American "refugees" seems to reflect two professors who devised a strategy to force America into huge government statist socialism by increasing entitlements and generally swamping the economy with rules, regs, and unnecessary supervision.

Several Congressmen as well as John Boehner have remarked on the fact that Obama studied [as a veritable never-seen "phantom" student according to classmates] the chaos theory propounded by Cloward & Piven, both Columbia professors, while he ghostly no-showed his way through undergraduate studies at Columbia---with a disappeared senior thesis on the USSR & no sign of his GPA.

Washington Post Editorial Board Condemns Hamas to Hell

The Post is avoiding the PC cowardice of the tabloid NYT & the PBS/NPR & old alphabet networks.

In 1999, I was personally short-listed to run UNRHWA in Gaza. Al Hamdililah, I didn't get the job. This was years before Hamas was elected over the PLO in Gaza, due to Condi Rice's insistence that the election be truly democratic.

Few are aware that during the Camp David Talks, the Israelis begged Sadat to take over Gaza, but the wise old Egyptian refrained. Gaza was and is a byword for ungovernable chaos, even before the criminal gang of terrorist thugs took over.

Israel tried to run the place for a decade or so and then let it go. Now Gaza is imploding as a powerless population lets itself be used as a human shield. So it can be a weapon for the nihilistic rage Islamic terrorists reserve for everyone.

Including other Muslim terrorist groups…!

How Putin Has Become Ensnarled by the Web of Lies the Russian Media is Propagating

The New Republic has an interesting summary of the "tangled web" of deception that is turning into a trap for Putin, who now finds himself a victim of "a combination of PTSD & The Stockholm Syndrome."

Perhaps it's no wonder that Russian natives are flocking to EXIT the Russian Federation just as non-Americans are flocking to ENTER the USA illegally.

Russia is beginning to look a gigantic insane asylum full of fearful paranoids. Drunken paranoids with Putin losing control of the direction of the avalanche of lies that he started.

Ex-Commies suffer from moral decadence and a tendency to LIE

The Economist has a short article telling us what the intelligent & perceptive among us already knew.

Being brought up as a socialist gives a person TWICE the propensity to lie, cheat and steal. Click on the link to get the details.

Of course, this explains why the US socialist media lies without cease to the American People!!

Czech Editorial Sums up Chowder-Head Obungler to a Tee

This Czech editorial sums up the legion of Democrat voters without a clue.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting an inexperienced man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama Presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their President. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their President."

No Global Warming Since 1996, More COOLING in the Long-Term Forecast

Climate Depot delivers some sunspot facts that are spot-on.

Read the above link to discover more examples on how the AGW hoax is beginning to sputter out.

Die Mannshaft Wins the World Cup

Germany rightly is named die Mannshaft, "The Team," because more than almost any other nation at the Cup, they WERE a team.

Not to put too much weight on the analogy, both Brazil and Argentina depended on three or four superstars whereas Germany's winning goal was a volley from Shuerrle to Goetze, two VERY late substitutions.

Rather simplistic, but still a demonstration of why the seamless tissue of teamwork almost always beats brilliant solo performances.

Christie Blasts Obama for Careless Foreign Policy

Gov'r Christie is ahead in early NH polls for 2016 and is shrugging off the ridiculous McCarthyism of the Left-wing NYT & media over a supposed bridge repair "scandal."

Why doesn't the media examine the criminal in the White House and his fellow miscreant at DOJ, the ineffable mobster Eric Holder?

The US is the New Old Europe

Matt Continetti makes a lot of cogent points about the USA, or what he calls The New Old Europe, a category this ahistorical administration is defining all by itself.

Clemens Wergin expatiates on the decadence of the USA & how much the Euros are starting to get nervous.

Mario Rubio

The Economist MARCO RUBIO’S shoulder is sore. The junior senator from Florida has just had a cortisone injection to ease the pain from an old football injury. Congress is not short of square-jawed jocks. Given that politics often resembles a professional sport for the over-40s, this may be no coincidence. Mr Rubio, who won a college football scholarship, is an extreme case: his autobiography contains 26 references to the Miami Dolphins (apparently the first draft had many more). This mania for running back and forth can overshadow another, distinctly un-jock, interest of Mr Rubio’s, which is in social policy.

Over the past few months, while many of his colleagues have devoted themselves to mauling the president, he has proposed a series of government interventions to improve the lot of cash-strapped Americans. His aim is to have bills ready to go if Republicans take control of the Senate in November. This is not the first thing people associate with Mr Rubio, who came to national prominence when he defeated Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, in a Senate race in 2010. At the time he was described as the first Tea Party senator, which implied a desire to burn down government and pour salt on the ashes. This was mistaken.

Though Mr Rubio fitted the description of a young insurgent, his background is not that of an anti-government crusader. He first ran for public office aged 26, becoming a member of the city commission in West Miami, a town of 6,000 people. His tenure is remembered, if at all, for the introduction of a bicycle-mounted policeman. When Alberto Gutman, a state senator of distinctively Floridian heritage (he described himself as “Jewban”: ie, Jewish and Cuban) was indicted for a distinctively Floridian crime (Medicare fraud), opening up positions further down the food chain, Mr Rubio was elected to the statehouse aged just 28. His nine years there were mostly spent turning the agenda of Jeb Bush, a centrist Republican governor, into law. He also showed a wonkish streak, travelling around the state holding rather earnest-sounding “idea-raisers”: 100 proposals that emerged from them were subsequently turned into a book.

When he arrived in the Senate Mr Rubio was hailed as a future saviour of a Republican Party struggling to appeal to Hispanic voters, on the basis that his parents had left Cuba in 1956. An already difficult task was made harder when he had a fight with Univision, the biggest Spanish-language network, in 2011. It became impossible when House Republicans declined to consider an immigration reform bill that Mr Rubio, along with three other Republicans and four Democrats, had put his name to. He has since concluded that a law to address the 12m undocumented migrants in the country will be impossible until the border is secure and the criteria for deciding who gets to come change from prioritising family reunification to favouring workers.

This will not win over the voters that the GOP had hoped Mr Rubio would magically deliver: even young Cubans, who have long stood out among Latinos for their attachment to the Republican Party, have started to switch their loyalties to the Democrats. On climate change, too, Mr Rubio is hardly a breath of fresh air. Most scientists, he says, agree that man is to blame, but he sees no point in imposing heavy economic costs on Americans for uncertain benefits.

If Mr Rubio is going to rescue his party from anything it is from an overly narrow view of what government ought to do. Both Mr Rubio’s parents worked at low-wage jobs—his father as a bartender, his mother at Kmart—but were able to provide a life for him and his siblings that was within touching distance of the middle class. In the years since then, he argues, a mixture of globalisation and automation have held down wages for low-skilled workers, making it harder for people without university degrees to repeat what his own parents managed to do.

Mr Rubio has various proposals for addressing this, including a federal wage subsidy to top up the incomes of the low-paid. He wants to help more students go to college, but also thinks the federal government should experiment with hiring people without degrees for white-collar work, as an example to other employers. Some of these ideas are unlikely to fly, such as a scheme to allow students to sell a share of their future income in exchange for money to fund tuition up front. But they show an urge to innovate that the GOP’s Congressional wing has been missing.

Does a safety net give people courage to soar? This is daring stuff in the context of today’s Republican Party because it envisages a role for government that many conservatives would find distasteful. Where Republican orthodoxy suggests saving poor people from welfare dependency by mercifully reducing the amount of money they receive, Mr Rubio aims to cut welfare spending by reducing the demand for it, keeping funding at the same level but handing anti-poverty programmes over to the states to figure out what works. “I don’t take my children to the circus very often,” he says, “but when I do I have noticed that acrobats tend to be much more daring when they have a safety net beneath them.” Such support “is essential for the success of the free enterprise system”.

It is hard to imagine some other Republicans with presidential ambitions saying anything like that. Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, for example, often give the impression that the only thing standing between America and a restoration of the upwardly mobile society of the 1950s is a more faithful interpretation of the constitution. Mr Rubio is only 43, so he is probably not experienced enough to take on Hillary Clinton in 2016. But right now he is the most effective standard-bearer for conservatives who worry more about reducing poverty and long-term unemployment than about waging culture wars and cutting income tax. Whoever wins in November, these thoughts are worth taking seriously.

VAST Left-Wing Conspiracy Resembles a RICO Crime Spree

Powerline has shone a searchlight onto a highly-secret CABAL on the left, which the Senator from Searchlight, NV, is an outstanding member. Harriet Reid would condemn this network if it were part of the Koch Brothers' donations, but since it's a bunch of Democrats plotting on how to separate Americans from their income through taxes, no problem.

Obama Demonstrates Usual Lack of Decisive Leadership

The National Journal is a good barometer of the MOR political landscape of DC.

The Dear Leader nowadays decides not to decide, IOW, to lead from behind!

No photo ops at the Mexican border with this profile in cowardice!

Harry Reid Lurches From Lunacy Into Incomprehension

POLITICO has an article on Harry Reid's last ride into the sunset on his spavined nag of Senate Majority Leader.

IRCC and NOAA Baffled That Global Warming Is Reversed over last two Decades.

Forbes notes that NOAA, the climate agency of the USG, finally opened its new database on temperature change. Contrary to the Chicken Little brigades of Climate Change Fascists' predictions, the average temp of the USA is down -0.4 degree Fahrenheit over the last 16 years! That's half-a-degree cooler than the temp at the end of the last millennium. That's actually 1998.

And more disturbing to the climate activists, The Daily Mail has its analysts wondering why Antarctic sea ice has INCREASED since the last century.

Could the entire AGW be part of an enormous HOAX?

Read the articles linked above and judge for yourself.

How Obama Lost the Middle East

Classicist & Pundit Victor Davis Hanson put some thoughts forward on how the Bumbling Incompetent the USA must suffer for the next two years in the Oval Office "Lost" the Middle East.

In sum, with Obama politics always trumps policy and ideology reigns supreme.

Ditto for almost every every other obstacle Obama must confront or surmount---the Arrogant Know-It-All in Chief will not consult with Congress & knows that a compliant media will be a lapdog in blaming Congress for not being consulted.

The USA now has a shiftless rhetorician in charge of foreign & domestic affairs and as Dr. Hanson notes, the prognosis is not good.

And this cowardly large child looks around for someone to blame or at least make all these foreign policy setbacks from Crimea through Syria [and his imbecilic "red line" malfeasance] to ISIS or ISIL or IS go away.

In the meantime, this silly arrogant miscreant in the Oval Office misuses his power while trying to lower his handicap on the golf links.

You see, golf appears to this essentially shallow nitwit to be the only action even remotely under his control!

Certainly, sitting down with Mr. Boehner or even Harry Reid would be admitting defeat and this supremely delusional and completely arrogant imbecile knows that once he does that, the avalanche will commence and his presidency will be revealed to be the sham and shambles it already has become.

And admitting this will cause him to hemorrhage power until he is exposed as the classic Emperor without clothes!

Hanson has it right and Obama has lost his presidency.

The Quinnpiniac Poll which has Americans rating him as the WORST president since World War II will proceed backwards in time to Obama's being the WORST president since Woodrow Wilson, in the opinion of the American people, those geniuses who can sniff out a phony from far far away.

Fouad Ajami dies after working for Peace in the Middle East for Forty Years

Fouad was my house guest in two different apartments in DC back in the early '80s.

I lost touch with him in the last decade or so, but he was always generous with his wisdom & quiet intelligence.

I wanted to ask him especially about Egypt, a country he loved so much, but by then he was advising the Bush Administration on Iraq & later, Syria.

I can remember his calling me after Sadat's assassination to inquire whether I thought it was a good idea for him to accept an offer from NBC TV to go to Cairo.

I said I thought it was, but he ended up declining the offer, because he thought the Egyptians would look down on a mere Lebanese TV reporter.

George Tenet told me when he was CoS of the Senate Intelligence Committee that he thought Fouad was the most perceptive mind on the Arabs and the Middle East in general.

I agree.

IRS Tissue of Lies Unraveling? To mix the metaphor, is this the smoking gun?

Watergate looks like a Sunday School picnic compared to the parallel criminal cover-ups apparently sucked up by the knee-pad brigades of ObamaBots as gospel from Dear Leader's lips.

Both the Benghazi cover-up & the IRS scandal have pride of place in the vanguard of Obama's RICO network of crime schemes. Read the link above to find a company bragging that it has the contract to back up IRS archives.

Confidence in Newspapers falls to record lows

The NYT and other arrogant newspapers have lost the American public with their biased know-it-all insults to the average Joe's intelligence.

Gallup has latest bad news for Brian Williams and other news readers like Sawyer & Pelley for neglecting news on the right that they never report.

Robert Kagan: Why SuperPowers Don't Get to Retire

Kagan's article in TNR was so powerful in its argument that Obama invited the celebrated right-of-center historian [one of my favorites whose books I devour voraciously] to lunch to compare Weltanschaungs.

I was hoping that Kagan could suggest the Obungler to grow a spine rather than simply "lead from behind."

Why Obama is limp-wristed on Foreign Policy

The Financial Times has a very cogent article on Obama's tendency to bungle every single foreign policy issue that forces itself upon him. Christopher Caldwell has a great analysis on Obama's shortcomings that merits close reading.

Climate Global Warmers Are McCarthyites? Insist on Conformity or Skeptics Will be Shunned?

Lennart Bengtsson has resigned from the middle-of-the-road Global Warming Policy Foundation [GWPF] after the lemmings in the Anthropomorphic Global Warming [AGW] swarm totally shunned him, like the Puritanical dunces that they are, for joining an objective climate organization.

Der Spiegel has the details of the scandal that Nobel Laureate physicist Richard Feynman famously warned about in a 1974 Commencement Address which called for an "unusual level of honesty" in scientists that causes them to constantly retest their conclusions in the light of incoming data.

Like the dishonest and biased American media, the Global Warming Nazis insist on total conformity to the pre-conclusion that only science presuming AGW can be discussed and all other scenarios are being "harmful," as a paper Bengtsson submitted to an Environmental Pravda for publishing was rejected for.

Mound of blubber Fat Al Gore may insist that "the science is settled," but he got a 'D' in his only course in science at Vanderbilt and famously flies around in his own jet which emits more pollution in a day than the Average Joe does in a year.

And thimble wits like Gore and the hordes of Orcs that swarm over any dissenters are making any real science about climate change [and climates always change---i.e. like the Younger Dryas stadial 12.9-11.5k BP & the Holocene temperature variations and the so-called "Little Ice Age" ~1350-1850 AD] a matter of dogma and are becoming Stalinist collectivist criminals infesting the world of so-called intellectuals.

In the megalomania of the Global Warming Left, sunspots or other larger phenomena are outside the realm of the man-made utopia based on total government control [in this case, the UN-based IPCC] is anathema.

Global Warming is the newest religion and one had better comply or be shunned in "polite company."

Krugman & Li'l Ezra depants'd by WSJ's James Taranto over praising VA Death Panels.

Death Panels at the VA were not foreseen by the Twin Gurus of the Extreme Socialist left back in the mid-aughts. Like John Kerry, these amazing intellectual giants were for the VA before they were against it!

Sudanese Woman to be Hanged for Apostasy

Meriam Wani will be hanged as an apostate in Khartoum without a peep from the loathsome grotesque collection of frauds know as feminists. Ditto for the national joke known our Mainstream Media.

You see, these monstrosities of lies and deception called feminists and journalists are not allowed to say positive things about Christians without incurring the wrath of their compliant morally-deficient colleagues. These are the spineless degenerates who meekly submit to their membership in the postmodern "intellectual elite" that serves as the Ministry of Truth in the Orwellian universe of 1984/2014. Hence the degenerates feel that Islam can do no wrong as long as it fights Christianity, so there will be ZERO publicity for this crime against humanity by the barbarous inhabitants of Sudan, [which in Arabic means 'land of the blacks,' a pejorative term employed by the racist light-skinned monsters who are the Levantine and Peninsula Arabs]

So Meriam may hang for being born of a Muslim father who left her Christian mother shortly after she was born.

Hanging dissidents and religious is not unusual for this barbarous country in the midst of a barbarous "Arab Nation" that daily administers lashes and murders its citizens in the umpty-thousands in senseless civil wars, as in Syria now and Lebanon for two decades that began when I was studying Arabic in Beirut in 1975.

As another personal aside, I was introduced in the early '80s to Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, later hanged for his political views, by Martin Indyk, no less. Now Indyk is John 'Lurch' Kerry'd teawallah errand boy in the task of flagellating Israel for its perceived insensitivity to the members of the "religion of peace.' [/sarc]

The Big Brother that is the "intellectual elite" of the USA will studiously ignore this atrocity and Meriam will hang without imparting a warning lesson to the hypocrites who mindlessly and senselessly steer our country toward another 9/11.

Piketty Gets Depants'd after Assuming the Position!

The inimitable Larry Summers whom I sat across from in a small luncheon for ten in Chicago two decades ago, subtlety and discreetly inserts a stiletto in the back of Thomas Piketty's book on capital.

In essence, Summers notes the other-worldly proposals of Piketty for an international tax regime as ridiculous, hiding his sarcasm & irony under a patina of non-technocrat economic reasoning.

And Summers is also understated in pointing out Piketty's unwarranted macroeconomic assumptions that underlie the Frenchman's alluring and eminently impressive research and writing style [he quotes Jane Austen, among others!] Read Summers' article in full to get the flavor of Piketty's ideas and his own brilliance in discrediting the French guru.

The New Cold War has already begun.

The Daily Mail has another article by Edward Lucas whose book The New Cold War I finished yesterday for the SECOND time.

Read the book, it's that good and a new updated edition is coming onto the market ASAP.

Democrat Liberal Hypocrisy well-hidden by its sycophantic stenographers in the Mass Media.

Matt Continetti at the Free Beacon explains how the Democrats whine about income inequality while running the biggest elitist oligarchy on the planet.

Just One Minute has a take on this from another angle, defrocking the loathsome Krugman chapter and verse.

Obama Loses all Credibility in the BRICS

Obama has lost any vestigial respect from the big developing powers. Read this FT article to get the lowdown.

Tony Podesta's Downfall from the Heights of Marriage

Matt Continetti has a great piece in The Free Beacon about ultra-rich Podesta's breakup with Heather Miller. I was a direct report to Tony Podesta in the 1968 Indiana Primary working for Gene McCarthy. I ran into Tony last walking near his ritzy Kalorama home.His only greeting was "Hi Professor" as he walked past me without stopping.

Tony had put his young brother John in a job as my assistant in the New York Primary in 1968. John was last seen moving back into the WH to be Obama's sherpa/troubleshooter after serving as Clinton's chief-of-staff.

O tempora, O mores!

Putin's Oiligarchy: German Response is Ambivalent & Reflects European Nuances on Standing Up to its Russian Dilemma

The influential German newspaper Handelsblatt has an interesting article on the fundamental stresses that Putin's Crimean annexation is causing Europe to confront. Here is the précis:

The 'right to self-determination of peoples' that has been held up with such ceremonial pathos in Europe is an ambivalent category. In reality, Europe only wants the 'right to self-determination' for nations exactly as they currently exist. ... Not only does the Crimea crisis unmask the heavy-handed superpower aspirations of Russia and its attention-hungry president, it also uncovers Europe's inner weaknesses, as well as the continent's ambiguities. Putin serves only too well as a scapegoat."

Wolfram Weimer is a thoughtful and accomplished writer who sets out a very perceptive and well-written series of problems the Russian annexation is making Europe confront: the time horizon which goes back to 395 A.D. at the death of Theodosius I, when the Roman Empire was divided into East & West. The East/West division became greater with the split between Catholic and Orthodox in 1054. And the Crimea has been Russian since Catherine the Great conquered the Khanate in the 18th century, only Ukrainian since 1954 when Ukrainian-born Khrushchev "gave" Russian Crimea to the Ukraine as a "gift." Europe's time frame is about 1900 while Russia mindsets go back to before Peter the Great westernized Russia around 1700. Russia still has a sense of inferiority which it paradoxically offsets with extreme statements of universality and political/military suppression/invasion of its neighbors. Putin is seen in this light as an ill-mannered lower class thug seeking attention and touting a petrostate nationalism that embarrasses well-educated Russians [whom Putin would call "westernized" as an insult.]

Weimer speaks of Putin's own resentment of US/European "dominance" which criticizes Russian intervention and hegemony while moving NATO eastward & almost imperceptibly imposing its own political, economic & cultural dominance. Putin is now attempting to shift the Russian mindset eastward with an assertion of its unique contributions to both East & West.

Weimer hits the ball in Western Europe's court when criticizing the Crimean plebiscite for inclusion in Russia conflicts with the many movements in Europe for regional autonomy: Castile/Catalonia, Basques/Madrid, Scotland/England, Occitan & Corsica/France, even Venice/Italy and so on. The balkanization of Western Europe may be occurring in slow motion while Russia agglomerates its empire in the same fashion. Finland reportedly is the latest border state to join the menu of border states that Putin may consider pressuring into a closer relationship.

Economically, Europe also has an identity problem with its subsidiary relationship with both the US & Russia, where especially Russia considers the West as a 'grocery store' where an exchange of oil & gas buys baubles and bangles for its nomenklatura.

Weimer finally pinpoints Germany's lack of Realpolitik in punching below its weight as the leading power of Europe while ceding all western initiative to the U.S. And the German inability to see the Crimea as anything except "western" also narrows its own perceptions of the problem at hand. No one takes German threats of sanctions seriously, including Putin.

And Weimer says that as for Putin:

'the Crimea crisis unmask the heavy-handed superpower aspirations of Russia and its attention-hungry president, it also uncovers Europe's inner weaknesses, as well as the continent's ambiguities. Putin serves only too well as a scapegoat. The repressive czar of an oilgarchy; a dissenter who treats homosexuals and journalists like annoying flies; a militarist and former member of the KGB who places the right of the strong above legal strength; the lower-class macho man - it's so easy (and repeatedly justified) to simply view Putin as Europe's villain.

Weimer concludes that the Crimean crisis may reveal much to Europeans if they can accept a nuanced view of Russia as more than the thuggish reign of its new czar. Europe's own identity and self-esteem are also involved in the Crimean crisis, and Germany in particular has to play a more assertive role.

[[[FOOTNOTE]]]Since Angela Merkel speaks fluent Russian and Putin grammatically-correct heavy-accented German, it seems that economic superpower Germany has a key role in mutual self-understanding [although Merkel's comment after a recent conversation with Putin did wonder if the very short 5'2" czar was living in a world of fantasy!!]

Expected Moves by Russia into Ukraine Predicted in 2006

Edward Lucas was the Economist's Moscow Bureau Chief for nearly a decade in the nineties and early 00's. His book The New Cold War is a clear-eyed view of Putin and the new Russia almost 25 years after the shackles of Communism were removed. In 2006 it was a WSJ Book of the Year. The 2009 revised version is even more damning than the original and goes into almost microscopic detail on the methods Putin's FSB [read KGB with a new moniker] applies state power to suppress almost all political opposition.

Murdering Journalists who report on Putin's misdeeds makes it difficult to penetrate the opaque screen around the thuggish, sloppy and heavy-handed methods employed. But Putin's accession to power in 1999 as President pro tempore until the elections in early 2000 demonstrate this brutal dwarf [5'2"] at his worst. In order to get the Russian people panicked, his FSB hit squads blew up three apartment buildings in Moscow which killed 300 people. This was blamed on Chechen separatists and Putin was able to begin his genocidal attack on Chechnya, with massive casualties on both sides. Lucas points out Putin's responsibility for this series of explosions with almost irrefutable circumstantial evidence of a massive FSB cover-up, with three conflicting versions put out by these Keystone Kops to prove their sloppy unprofessional murderous behavior.

The list of Putin's actions to cancel Yeltsin's good intentions to federalize the FSU by concentrating all state power in his hands is enumerated by endless well-written anecdotal and documented evidence, with copious footnotes to help the serious reader through the rough patches.

And it must be said that Putin has found a formula to ensure his popularity with the majority of the Russian people. A burgeoning economy contrasts strongly with Yeltsin's hapless bouts with runaway inflation and crashes beyond his control. The internal stability Putin's one-party autocracy provides has produced a rapidly growing middle class, something unknown in Russia's long history of Czardom and Communism. Putin's "gas station with nukes" makes for economic growth through a Petrostate and assured fearful respect internationally as a nuclear power second only to the USA. As long as Russia has oil and gas to export, the economy is safe.

But Russia's endemic corruption dwarfs the peccadillos of other advanced industrial countries, save perhaps the PRC. The billions of dollars oligarchs have amassed and the smug superiority of the Nomenklatura state officials in favor with the Kremlin attest to a society far from a fair shake and chances to elevate oneself.

And Putin's insecurity remains strong, even while he invades his neighbors Georgia and Ukraine. Russianized Ukraine may be next, followed by Estonia, which Lucas says is somehow an especially irritating thorn in Moscow's flesh, perhaps because of its spectacular economic success. Transnistria resembles South Ossetia in its breakaway from its parent neighbor, in this case Moldava.

Recall that Putin has said that the dissolution of the Soviet Union is the "great tragedy" of the 20th century. His attention will remain westward because countries like the "Stans" are economic basket cases except for oil-rich Azerbaijan. And Putin is said to remark to guests in his personal office that the bookshelves lining the walls are from Stalin's personal library. He often takes a book off the shelf and opens it to show sentences the brutal despot has underlined or made marginal comments. Putin has the same diminutive stature, astounding cunning, ruthless methods and autodidactic habits of his genocidal mentor. They both incarcerat[ed] dissidents in mental hospitals and view[ed] minorities in their territory as potential enemies, e.g. the Chechens andTatars. They differ only in degree---Putin has no Gulags nor does he believe in Communism. But the inbred insecurity is the same and the heavy-handed methods are similar.

Lucas does make one overriding assertion that any student of Russian can agree with. In the long centuries of Russian history, except for a few months of Kerensky in 1917 and Yeltsin's sad tenure of luckless mediocrity, there has never been a period of political liberty for the individual Russian citizens. The Romanov czars were succeeded by the Communist czars. Ivan The Terrible's Oprichniki were followed by the Romanovs' Okhrana and the Communists' Chekist, OGPU, NKVD, KGB and now Putin's FSB, of which he is a graduate member. As long as they have some measure of prosperity, the average Russian is content and views any opposition to his ruler as extremism. Western thought went through a Renaissance and Enlightenment and prizes individualism. The average Russian fears too much individual responsibility and this might account for Putin's extraordinary popularity. Over 60% on average and in times of panic [bombs in Moscow] and foreign expansion, the rate goes higher.

One wonders if Obama has really remembers his thesis on nuclear disarmament written in the mid-80's while at Columbia U. Conveniently "lost," it might throw some light on the clueless bumpkin he was on foreign relations with the Soviet Union. Romney nailed him in the debate with his "leading geopolitical foe" and now Obama is trying to wriggle out of his starry-eyed naiveté. He must have taken the tiny band of democracy activists in Moscow seriously, without understanding the massive weight of history Russia still carries and will carry into the conceivable future. As far as political freedom is concerned, the average Russian is still a serf, and ominously, doesn't mind being a serf at all, as long as he is well off.

WSJ/NBC Poll Putting Obama at 41%, but Lede deeply Buried as to Party Affiliation of polling subjects

Note the Participant percentages and you will find 43% Dem and 37%.
Strong Democrat................................................ 19

Not very strong Democrat .................................. 13

Independent/lean Democrat............................... 11

Strictly Independent ........................................... 15

Not Independent/lean Republican ............................ 15

Not very strong Republican................................ 9

Strong Republican ............................................. 13

Other (VOL) .......................................................

Not sure ......................................................…..

Invariably these WSJ/NBC polls skew Democrat in their participant level and they bury this fact on page 25 [also per usual]

Can one imagine that Obama's skimpy approval rating of 41% would be HIGHER if the poll weren't skewed about 10% leftward?

Methinks not

Another example of the dishonesty of the left-biased mainstream media.

Incidentally, burying the self-perceived affiliation of the participants is almost NORMAL in all of these polls---such as ABC/WashPost and CBS/NYT. Even CNN and other "neutral" outlets lean left and so all these polls get misleading headlines which the average reader thinks are fair and balanced in their polling.

Another example of the dishonesty of the mainstream media.

Sheryl Attkisson would be very PO'd in her reporting this if she hadn't resigned" yesterday.

FT and Obama's 'Chicken Kiev" Moment

Edward Luce damns Obama with faint praise. Classic understated British putdown of a US POTUS who makes Jimmy Carter look warlike….

Another Holodomor? 19th Century Rules? Kerry shows his yellow state of mind.

The Holodomor was the series of catastrophes that first the Soviets and then the Germans visited upon Ukraine. Millions died of starvation in the '20's and purges in the '30's by the malignant tumor named Stalin.

Then came Hitler and millions more died, mostly Jewish Ukrainians.

Now Putin is threatening a third slaughter of Ukrainians, as he annexes Crimea just as Hitler "annexed" Sudetenland before swallowing all Czechoslovakia.

Now a cowardly POTUS and his grandiose lapdog Kerry threaten "sanctions" and Obama's absence from the upcoming G-8 meeting in Sochi this summer. Obama is certainly "leading from behind" and House Intel Chief Rogers is right when he says Putin is playing chess and Obama "marbles."

The reason Obama doesn't call the rest of the G-8 to call for the ejection of Russia from the body and cancellation of the Sochi meetings is the NONE of our "allies" take Obama seriously after his "red line" fiasco in Syria.

Thanks to Obama, the United States is now a second-tier actor on the world stage and we all better get used to it. Timothy Snyder, acclaimed author of Bloodlands showing Ukraine's sufferings since the Soviet takeover has the best analysis.

Left unsaid by all is the Ukrainian West's total determination to resist Russian domination which has murdered millions of their majority Catholic Uniate and its other minority citizens since 1917.

Russian Orthodoxy is the fig leaf supposedly hiding Putin's naked aggression.Edward Lucas, author of The New Cold War, emphasizes Obama and the EU's "postmodern" views on foreign policy as journeys into a liberal la-la land where everybody gets trophies.

Lucas says that Western banks enabling Russian corrupt oligarchs, including Putin, are as big a factor in Putin's calculations as irredentist territorial ambitions.

Barry Rubin Dead at Sixty-Four

Barry was a friend long ago whose eccentricities were outweighed by his humanity. I haven't seen him for 20 years, but read his occasional pieces on Israel and the Middle East.l

Zakaria: US/Iran Nuclear Deal a "Train Wreck"

Obama Advisor Fareed Zakaria interviewed Iranian Rouhani and came back with the strong impression that Iran and the US have two entirely different outcomes in mind as a goal of the agreement on nuclear management.

Leave it to the amateur "Red Line" Obama and his grandiose spokes boy John Kerry to botch up another relationship in the Middle East.

Read the Washington Beacon article above because you won't read it in the Obama-worshipping Mainstream Media.

State Department Malfeasance Bordering on Treason

Patrick Kennedy is Undersecretary of State for Management and a nasty littles specimen ever since I clashed with him decades ago in my decade-long FSO career.

The WSJ has an article by the DCM of the Embassy in Libya Gregory Hicks pinning the blame on Kennedy for replacing diplomatic security [Americans] with Libyan mercenaries, a disastrous outsourcing in a flammable environment. At the first outbreak on Sept 11th, they disappeared.

Of course, had Kennedy ever served overseas in a dangerous environment, as I had in Vietnam and Beirut and Saudi Arabia, this career desk jockey would have had a sense of the undependability of local militias. But Kennedy knew better, of course.

Don't expect this expert in equivocation to suffer any punishment. He and his feckless boss Hilary have a future to protect. Ditching Kennedy would implicitly confer some sense of accountability to a silly collection of affirmative action diplomats which make the US the laughingstock of the planet as Obama messes up sixty years of success with his amateur hour diplomacy. The Vietnam war hero [!] Kerry will continue the cover-up.

The cover-up of Benghazi will make Watergate look like the burglary it was. Nobody died at Watergate.

And the fact that the Benghazi cover-up was instrumental in getting Obama elected to a second term makes this a crime against the US Constitution.

Not that the Democratic tabloids like the NYT and the WaPo have any respect for the Constitution…!

Bashir sends FonMin to Lie for Sake of Country

Bashir al Assad continues his genocide of Sunnis in Syria---60% of the population ruled by a nasty Alawite minority of 15%. Meanwhile in Montreux in Switzerland Foreign Minister Moallem ranted on for a half-hour past his allotment about "terrorists." A 'terrorist' appears in his vocabulary to be anyone opposing Bashir's tyrannical regime.

As one who has been to Syria half-a-dozen times, I remember the kind and hospitable Syrian people who Bashir's gunsels are killing at a rate of a thousand a day with his Russian arms.

The Russians want their warm water base in Latakia so desperately that they will allow the last Syrian to die before they leave their port.

The Persian Version

Robert Graves poem about the other side's perceptions comes in handy when it comes to World War I, whose centenary we are "celebrating" this year. I'm trudging through Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers, a handy guide for the dishonesty of the British Foreign Office under the tutelage of Earl Grey and the duplicity of the French as well.

I'm also reading the horrendous propaganda of The Literary Digest history, a massive 10 volume collection of aspersions against the Germans and the "imbecile" Austro-Hungarians [a sample of Francis Whiting Halsey's objectivity.

I first broached the Literary Digest version over 60 years ago, when I first learned to read. It was a gift from my Grandma Mangan, who always badgered me to be a doctor.