image toon - intl owg 1st = Chavez clown takes Oby seriously
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Americas Summit: Missed Opportunity
If President Barack Obama's goal at the fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago this weekend was to be better liked by the region's dictators and left-wing populists than his predecessor George W. Bush, the White House can chalk up a win. If, on the other hand, the commander in chief sought to advance American ideals, things didn't go well.
Mr. Obama had to know that the meeting is used by the region's politicians to rally the base back home by showing that they can put Uncle Sam in his place. Realizing this, the American president might have arrived at the Port of Spain prepared to return their volley. They have, after all, tolerated and even encouraged for decades one of the most repressive regimes of the 20th century.
In recent years, that repression has spread from Cuba to Venezuela, and today millions of Latin Americans live under tyranny. As the leader of the free world, Mr. Obama had the duty to speak out for these voiceless souls.
In this he failed... [snip]
Another way Mr. Obama could have neutralized the left would have been to announce a White House push for ratification of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.
That didn't happen either. He only promised to talk some more, a strategy that will offend no one and accomplish nothing. It is a strategy that sums up, to date, Mr. Obama's foreign policy for the region.
[Recommended > ]
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Remembering Ortega’s Gulag
President Obama sat quietly, enduring a 50-minute rambling diatribe from socialist Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega at the Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago over the weekend.
Ortega denounced what he called a century of “terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America” and lashed out at the U.S. trade embargo against Castro’s Cuba. He also condemned what he termed the "illegal" war that was waged against the Sandinista regime, that he once led, by U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s.
But if Ortega is interested in history lessons, then it might be useful, on this occasion, to reflect on the Marxist tyranny he once headed -- and on its barbaric and vicious oppression of the Nicaraguan people. In so doing, it becomes transparently clear that the United States was not just justified, but also noble, in its backing of the Contra freedom fighters, whose sole purpose was to liberate Nicaraguans from Sandinista despotism.
If Ortega wants to engage in history lessons, then its high time for a history lesson that involves the whole story, not just rhetoric about American “imperialism.” It's time for an honest reconciliation with who the Sandinistas really were and the tragic dark chapter they introduced into Nicaragua's history...
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The Memos Prove We Didn't Torture
The four memos on CIA interrogation released by the White House last week reveal a cautious and conservative Justice Department advising a CIA that cared deeply about staying within the law.
Far from "green lighting" torture -- or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees -- the memos detail the actual techniques used and the many measures taken to ensure that interrogations did not cause severe pain or degradation...
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What Releasing the CIA Memos is Really About
[HT:BM]
It's realistic, not cynical, to assume political entities generally act out of their own self-interests. And political self-interests are what the CIA memos are really about. The oldest declassified CIA memo is from 2002, the youngest from 2005. So one question is about timing. Why now?
Here's another option. It's about controlling the news cycle, putting opponents on the defensive, and diverting attention away from other, more-timely battles underway...
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Tone Deaf On Terror
If nothing else, President Obama's deci sion to overrule his own intelligence officials and release Bush-era legal memos justifying what The New York Times sanctimoniously described as the CIA's "brutal" interrogation techniques proves what a bunch of pushovers we Americans are.
We deprive captives of sleep, push them into walls and put harmless caterpillars that we say are poisonous in their cells.
Al Qaeda kidnaps Americans, tortures them, then decapitates them on TV.
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Descendents of Doolittle Raiders celebrate alongside the war heroes
For Todd Joyce of Louisville, Neb., the annual Doolittle Raiders reunion is more than just a gathering of old warriors. It’s a family reunion.
Joyce is the son of the late Raider Dick Joyce, pilot of Plane No. 10 and crew mate with the late Raider Horace “Sally” Crouch of Columbia.
He was one of about 40 Raider children and grandchildren who traveled to Columbia from across the nation for this week’s 67th anniversary reunion of his father’s famous Tokyo Raid.
“We would find it real hard to sit home on April 18,” Joyce said.
On that date in 1942, the 80 Raiders flew 16 Army bombers off a Navy carrier and bombed Japan just four months after Pearl Harbor. It is the most famous air raid in U.S. history...
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Father charged with hiring hit men to kill mini-skirt-wearing daughter
An Azeri immigrant in Russia's northern city of Saint Petersburg has been charged with hiring hit men to kill his 21-year-old daughter for wearing a mini-skirt, police say.
The man's arrest follows the detention last week of two other citizens of Azerbaijan, a majority Muslim state in the Caucasus, who confessed to murdering the girl, a university medical student.
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Free Speech vs. Islam in Europe
It is really great to be here in California. So a special thanks to the United States border police for letting me enter this country. It feels good to be allowed entering a country once in a while... [snip]
Ladies and gentlemen, free speech is no longer a given in Europe. What we once considered a natural element of our existence, our birth right, is now something we once again have to battle for. To exercise free speech has become a dangerous activity.
Let no one fool you about Islam being just a religion. In its essence Islam is a political ideology and a totalitarian ideology. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life and society and prohibits individual, political and religious rights and freedoms. Islam is not compatible with our Western civilization or democracy, nor will it ever be, because Islam doesn’t want to coexist, it wants to submit and set the entire agenda. Islam’s end goal, for all time, is to dominate and establish a world ruled by Islam.
That, ladies and gentlemen, that is why Winston Churchill compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as the famous Italian writer Orianna Fallaci did and why the brave Californian psychiatrist dr. Wafa Sultan rightfully said about the clash between the West and Islam that it is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between rationality and barbarity.
As you know, the current Islamization of Europe is not an invasion like those we have seen in the past. This time it is not a military invasion with swords, this time we have to deal with a stealth invasion. Nowadays, the armies are replaced by cultural relativism and mass-immigration. It is this dangerous cocktail that is the main cause of the Islamization and is responsible for the introduction of Sharia law in Europe...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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Cuba's Bailout
Here's a few things you're not hearing from the MSM regarding travel and remittances to Cuba. Until fairly recently, the Castro regime (classified by the U.S. State Department as a state-sponsor-of terrorism, and classified by the liberal media as a victim of a "cruel U.S. embargo") was in fact enjoying a (conservatively estimated) $1 billion a year lifeline straight from the U.S., which also serves as Cuba's biggest food-supplier and 5th biggest commercial partner. The $1 billion plus bundle came in the form of cash remittances to Cuba from some of Castro's former subjects and from the spending by these former subjects upon their frequent visits to their homeland. This $1 billion in remittances approaches China's monetary infusion into Cuba...
[What's China doing pouring >1Billion $ into Cuba? A: Oil. They're using the slant-drilling technology we could be using to drill from the shore (no evil oil rigs or truely risky tanker ships) to mine oil fields in US teritorial waters. {And no doubt taking all the evironmental safety measures we would were we to do it. Right}
Our Just-Say-No Energy policy is insane and will cost us dearly.]
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Putin’s Tariffs Stall Russian Growth for Caterpillar
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s trade measures are starting to keep Deere & Co. combines and Caterpillar Inc. trucks out of Russian wheat fields and coal mines, dimming the companies’ prospects for expansion abroad.
Deere and Caterpillar, reeling from the longest U.S. recession in a quarter century, were the companies most affected by loan restrictions and tariffs of as much as 25 percent that Putin imposed this year, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey of the top 50 American businesses operating in Russia.
Putin’s efforts may hurt U.S. companies’ operations in the rest of the world, said De Maria, of Sterne Agee.
“There is a worry that these measures could spread to China and other emerging-market countries,” De Maria said. That “would be a blow to the Deere brand and others, stifling their growth strategy as local companies build share.”
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US court allows apartheid cases
A US court has ruled that victims of South Africa's apartheid-era government can sue General Motors, IBM and other corporations accused of complicity in human rights abuses.
The lawsuits argue that the car-makers knew their vehicles were being used by South African forces to violently suppress protests.They also claim that IBM and Fujitsu knew their computers were being used by South Africa's white minority government to help strip black citizens of their rights...
[So manufacturers of anything are now to be responsible for how anyone uses them? We need overhaul our broken judicial system.]
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Miami judge rules against Florida gay adoption ban
MIAMI – A judge on Tuesday ruled that a strict Florida law that blocks gay people from adopting children is unconstitutional, declaring there was no legal or scientific reason for sexual orientation alone to prohibit anyone from adopting.
[ah, excuse me: but if they passed a law saying it it illegal, does that not count as a 'legal reason'?]
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States Can't Afford to Track Stimulus Spending - AP Forgets to Ask Why
Apparently, one-tenth of one percent is too much money spend tracking, ah, your money. The states are now starting to complain that they don't have enough money to track and publicize all the spending they're doing: [snip]
Among the questions the Post and the AP decided not ask were:
- Why not take the money out of the state programs being supplemented? Don't these states already have offices devoted to tracking spending?
- Why didn't our representatives think of this before voting for this bill? Aside from, you know, the fact that they apparently didn't read the bill.
- If transparency is important for stimulus spending, why are the state Democrats blocking actual transparency in both school and the general budget review?
You can see why having newspapers around is so critical to a functioning democracy.
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The President's Mirage
Does Obama's recovery plan ignore economic logic?
President Obama has made no secret of his vision for America's 21st-century economy. We will lead the world in "green" technologies to stop global warming. Advancing medical breakthroughs will improve our well-being, control health spending and enable us to expand insurance coverage. These investments in energy and health care, as well as education, will revive the economy and create millions of well-paying new jobs for middle-class Americans.
What Obama proposes is a "post-material economy." He would de-emphasize the production of ever-more private goods and services, harnessing the economy to achieve broad social goals. In the process, he sets aside the standard logic of economic progress.
Since the dawn of the Industrial Age, this has been simple: produce more with less. ("Productivity," in economic jargon.) Mass markets developed for clothes, cars, computers and much more because declining costs expanded production. Living standards rose.
By contrast, the logic of the "post-material economy" is just the opposite: Spend more and get less...
[Highly Recommended > ]
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A worthy plan
When President Obama delivered his record-breaking $3.6 trillion budget to Congress, it was Page One news and led all the TV broadcasts - with little or no critical analysis.
But when the Republicans brought forth their alternative budget, it was relegated to the back pages and received only a cursory mention on the nightly news shows, usually accompanied by a Democratic talking head who dismissed the GOP plan as coldhearted and a penny-pinching approach that turned its back on people in need during these hard economic times.
Actually, the House Republican plan does a number of things to grow the economy that the Democrats do not, like provide tax incentives for business investment, economic growth and job creation; borrow a lot less than the Democrats would and create less debt; and not raise taxes, when to do so would be job-killer in a recession.
In short, House Republicans took up Mr. Obama's challenge to offer their own budget, and it turns out to be pretty good. It deserves a lot more attention than it got from the news media...
[Recommended > ]
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Reagan's Legacy: Our 25-Year Boom
[HT:JH]
Golden Age: After 25 years of record-setting economic performance around the world, set off by President Reagan's free-market policies, the world has fallen into a recession. Is this the inevitable end of an era?
Let's go back to 1982, in many ways the bleakest year since the Depression. The economy had emerged severely damaged by the stagflation of the 1970s. Americans' confidence, both in government and in the economy, had reached a low ebb in 1980. Many felt our best years lay behind us.
On the nations' campuses and even in some of its boardrooms, people were talking about capitalism as a failed system.
Some advocated a "third way" between socialism and capitalism, as in Europe, which would include heavy doses of government intervention in markets to bring them back to life. Still others took up the call in E.F. Schumacher's best-seller, "Small Is Beautiful," to downsize expectations. Live frugally, they said. Inhabit small houses. Drive small cars. Don't use oil. Rein in your ambitions.
One man didn't agree with this: President Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 amid a wave of voter disgust at his predecessor's failures.
It was Reagan who brought America's capitalist economy roaring back to life, ending energy price controls, slashing income tax rates by 25% and dramatically reducing tax rates on capital gains.
Americans had been told for years — as they're now being told again — to expect diminished standards of living. Then they watched as the Reagan years set in place one of the most durable and remarkable booms in incomes and wealth in history.
Yet the media and academia rarely credited Reagan for his accomplishments — especially on the economy, where "Reaganomics" became a term of opprobrium among the intelligentsia.
But it's a fact.
As the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research once declared, we lived in the "longest sustained period of prosperity in the 20th century" from 1982 to 1999 — one big boom, the NBER said, set off by Reagan. [snip]
A shocking new Rasmussen Poll shows that just 53% think capitalism is superior to socialism — despite the fact that socialism, wherever it's been tried, has brought misery and poverty.
So is Reagan's dream of free-market capitalism dead? Or is it just sleeping, as in the 1970s, waiting for a new champion to emerge?
[And do we passively wait for a 'leader' or demand a return to the principles that made this country great?]
[Not long, Recommended > ]
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Corn Ethanol Will Not Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions
CALIFORNIA
California regulators, trying to assess the true environmental cost of corn ethanol, are poised to declare that the biofuel cannot help the state reduce global warming.
As they see it, corn is no better – and might be worse – than petroleum when total greenhouse gas emissions are considered.
Such a declaration, to be considered later this week by the California Air Resources Board, would be a considerable blow to the corn-ethanol industry in the United States.
If passed, the measure could serve as a model as other states and the federal government tackle carbon emissions. But California's regulators say they have no choice...
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Oil chief warns US green policy will kill economy
Washington's energy and environment policy risks plunging the US into an economic tailspin that could turn it into "the world's cleanest third world country", one of the US oil industry's most successful chief executives has warned.
James Hackett, chairman and chief executive of Anadarko, one of the US's largest independent oil and gas companies, said in an interview:"The histrionic and maniacal focus on carbon dioxide is intellectually repugnant to me."
[Of course we need hear of this from a UK paper...]
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Socialized Medicine on Display
Latest news in the exciting saga of Britain's socialized medicine is that a nurse, Margaret Haywood, aged 58, has been struck off for the crime of exposing neglect and mistreatment of elderly patients at the Royal Sussex Hospital on a television program. It was found that because of this: "It would not be in the public interest for her to be able to practise as a nurse." [snip]
After a decade of New Labour, much of Britain's hospital system is coming to defy description. Not even Cancer Ward, Solzhenitsyn's harrowing description of hospital treatment in Stalinist Russia, had quite such refinements of socialized medicine. And woe betide would-be whistle-blowers...
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Palin 'Media Malpractice' Documentarian Thrown Off USC Campus
"Media Malpractice" documentarian John Ziegler was thrown off the USC campus in southern California Wednesday by security guards.
Ziegler was attempting to interview people attending The Annenberg Norman Lear Center's excellence in journalism awards ceremony at which CBS's Katie Couric was to be honored for her "Evening News" segments with Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Unfortunately, the good folks at USC didn't want Ziegler to speak with anyone, and physically escorted him off campus -- in handcuffs.
[I saw this on TV and it was disturbing in that the fellow never attempted to enter/'crash' the (invitation only) event, but rather stand passively on a side walk and try to give away DVDs of his chronicle re: the smear campaign he believes Palin to have been subjected to.
Nonetheless the campus police saw fit to handcuff him and remove him, his only 'offense' being that of having an opinion, respectfully/harmlessly conveyed.
Evidently too much for the current definition of 'diversity of thought' at our colleges.]
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Steyn on Obama 'distractions'
The Great One nails it again, taking on both the media and the Obama administration for defining foreign policy challenges as nothing more than "distractions:"
.. Tom Blumer of Newsbusters notes that in the last 30 days there have been some 2,500 stories featuring Obama and "distractions," as opposed to about 800 "distractions" for Bush in his entire second term. The sub-headline of the Reuters story suggests the unprecedented pace at which the mountain of distractions is piling up: "First North Korea, Iran - now Somali pirates."...
When all the world’s a “distraction,” maybe you’re not the main event after all...
Typical Steyn. Making you laugh out loud while making you think. Damned effective combination.
Read the whole thing.
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51% View Tea Parties Favorably, Political Class Strongly Disagrees
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week, including 32% who say their view of the events is Very favorable.
Thirty-three percent (33%) hold an unfavorable opinion of the tea parties according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.
While half the nation has a favorable opinion of last Wednesday’s events, the nation’s Political Class has a much dimmer view—just 13% of the political elite offered even a somewhat favorable assessment while 81% said the opposite. Among the Political Class, not a single survey respondent said they had a Very Favorable opinion of the events while 60% shared a Very Unfavorable assessment.
['Representitive' governmnet.]
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Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
Both Nazism and the Communism brought great human suffering to the world, killing and imprisoning untold millions of individuals while destroying many societies and cultures, before they were finally defeated. And yet, as Dennis Prager asks,
Why is it that when people want to describe particularly evil individuals or regimes, they use the terms "Nazi" or "Fascist" but almost never "Communist?"
After all, he notes,
There are Mao Restaurants in major cities in the Western world. Can one imagine Hitler Restaurants? Che Guevara T-shirts are ubiquitous, yet there are no Heinrich Himmler T-shirts.
Good question and observation, Mr. Prager; this is something I've asked myself many times because, as you note
This question is of vital significance. First, without moral clarity, humanity has little chance of avoiding a dark future. Second, the reasons for this moral imbalance tell us a great deal about ourselves today.
While he thinks both are evil to the core he offers what he thinks are significant differences affecting the perception of both.
Basically, he believes, while most have acknowledged the evils of the Nazi philosophy the left still hasn't come to terms with the evil that is was--and still is--Communism...
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Student Strip Search Heads To High Court
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear the case of a young Arizona honor student who was strip-searched in the eighth grade by school officials looking for ibuprofen pills.
Savana Redding and her mother have been fighting the Safford Unified School District in Safford, Ariz., since 2003...
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Woman sees her house being robbed on webcam
US authorities say a woman checking her video surveillance system from the internet while she was at work caught four people robbing her house.
Police say Jeanne Thomas logged on to the $US250 Wilife system and saw a person standing in her house. She quickly called 911. While talking to the operator, she saw several other people.
She pleaded with the dispatcher to send police, and 18 officers arrived and surrounded the house several minutes later...
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DailyKos Kook Attacks Heroic Capt. Phillips
You have to wonder what is running through the minds of some of the kooks at the extreme-left DailyKos website. Amazingly, one America-hating Kossack who goes by the handle "---" actually denounced rescued Maersk Alabama Captain Richard Phillips for"recklessly put[ting] himself, the crew, and the Navy Seals at unnecessary risk."
[You can't make this stuff up.]
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