To Arms!

So Much for the Truman Analogy

I've read here and there that Barack Obama's utter lack of a working life or practical experience are not serious impediments to a successful Presidency because, after all, Harry Truman was an untested, clueless, machine-politician and he did all right.

One look at the Obama cabinet is enough to squash that one. Truman may have been inexperienced in national politics but when he looked around that big table he saw George Marshall, Dean Acheson, James Forrestal and W.Averell Harriman. Obama on the other hand will be staring at Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, Janet Napolitano and Bill Richardson.

Heaven help us.

You Took the Words Right Out of my Mouth.

Just as I was sitting here over my second cup of coffee thinking how much Reid, Frank and Pelosi reminded me of Moe, Curly and Larry, the Jawa Report beats me to the metaphor. He has Schumer instead of Frank, but Chuckie makes a perfect Shemp.

These fools (and I mean that literally) will drive us all into poverty and then retire on their iron-clad, government guaranteed, inflation indexed pensions. I hope everyone who voted for Odumbo and the Corrupticrats takes a good long look around them...and then Google East Germany or 1970's Britain for a glimpse of your future.

Why isn't Barney Frank being ridden out of town on a rail for his insolent incompetence and his rank stupidity?

Why isn't Chris Dodd getting ready to shank Ted Stevens for the top bunk at Lorton?

The Markets Vote on Obama (3)

In the continuing referendum on the prospects of the American economy under an Obama/Pelosi/Reid regime, the Dow has taken out 8000. It also promises to be an ugly day in Europe and Asia. Make no mistake, there was no market failure here. A combination of social engineering regulation from the Democrat Congress and George Bush's massive entitlements expansion introduced market distortions that brought us to this point. The markets from New York to London to Hong Kong to Sydney are now predicting more of the same and worse. Obama's Clinton holdover cabinet, the Congress of Clowns and his own rank ignorance of what makes an economy function all point to a very painful decade.

As a sign of what's to be expected, 90 year old corruptocrat Robert Byrd is replaced by 84 year old corruptocrat Daniel Inouye as head of the Senate Appropriations Committee. These quotes from The Hill say it all:

Rather than give big speeches on the Senate floor or in committee hearings like his predecessor, the senior Hawaiian senator will strike a lot more deals in the backrooms.

Well that's a relief.

Many insiders regard him as a team player, often doing what the Democratic leadership wants but not shying away from telling his superiors to do what he thinks is right.

I feel much better now.

Inouye will hold the gavel of the powerful committee without his friend, whom he calls “brother.” Stevens was convicted on corruption charges and his reelection to his Senate seat is in doubt.

God help us.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution

I wonder if this chap has ever heard of Article 1, Section 8. The Congress shall have the power"To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;"

The Markets Vote (continued)

Markets aren't moved by vacuous words about hopeful audaciousness or audacious change, or hopefulness we can believe in. Markets are moved by tens of billions of individual decisions based on a hard look at a personal bottom line. The global markets have a held a two day referendum on an Obama administration and the results are in. Obo won and everybody else lost. Another 5% off the Dow was reflected by diving markets from London to Hong Kong. What are they pricing in? They're pricing in not just a full scale assault on the American economy by the Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Schumer/Rangel/Waxman economic know-nothings, they're pricing in the fact that Russia felt confident enough the day after the election to move missiles to the Polish border. They're pricing in the fact that the makers of global chaos have taken Obo's measure and decided, "Here is a man we can roll." They're pricing in the protectionism and statism that the Obo Administration will bring in. They're pricing in the fact a man who preached change has just brought in a sleazy Chicago political fixer to run his White House. The markets have voted no confidence. Welcome to the Nixon/Carter years.

The Markets Vote

The Dow has dropped 486 points as the markets begin to price in the reality, as opposed to the prospect, of an Obama/Reid/Pelosi assault on the economy.

Berlin 1932.

Redstate has a helpful little manifesto for surviving the coming winter. To it, I would add that the Republican Congressional leadership, McConnel, Boehner, all of them, must go.

And to all my compatriates who, for whatever reason, voted for Barack Obama. Well, you got your wish, I hope you're prepared for the winter to come...it's going be cold for Democrats, too.

I'm Talking to YOU, Eeyore.

A little advice for anti-Obamanists from some people who should know. Thank you, Hillbuzz.

Closer to Home: This is Ridiculous

Labour has long been "soft on crime". Daft would be a better word. It is simply wrong that a property owner cannot defend his property, his family even his life without fear of arrest. Clearly, Mr. Singh did not have benefit of legal counsel before he talked to the police.

Thus Spake Tito Munoz...

There is little better metaphor than this of the complete disconnect between the American left in general, the Democratic Party and Barack Obama on the won hand and the American people. Tito the Builder speaks truth to the propaganda arm of the Obama campaign:

“I support McCain, but I’ve come to face you guys because I’m disgusted with you guys,” he said. “Why the hell are you going after Joe the Plumber? Joe the Plumber has an idea. He has a future. He wants to be something else. Why is that wrong? Everything is possible in America. I made it. Joe the Plumber could make it even better than me. . . . I was born in Colombia, but I was made in the U.S.A.”

Apollo Rising

Art, even at its highest, is such a poor imitation of the handiwork of God. There are more pictures here.

Why the Pass?

Jonah Goldberg at the NRO asks, not unreasonably, why Obama gets off so easy compared with "the four white guys" who preceded him as teh Democrat's nominee. Goldberg is talking specifically about the criticism that Oboomboom is some kind of world citizen rather than an American, with a point of view centered somewhere between LA and Manhattan, rather somewhere between Prague and Paris. The GOP and much of the press raised the cosmopolitan issue with varying degrees of success about Dukakis, Clinton, Gore and Kerry.

The broader question though is the unprecedented free ride that Obama gets both from the opposing party and from the press on every issue that cuts against him. I'm prepared to wager that no candidate for head of government in any democratic country has ever been elected with so little scrutiny as has Obama.

The "Debate": Be Still My Beating Heart.

Will either of these two zombies be moved off their stump speeches?

Schieffer: subject is domstic policy (yawn: Obbi repeats welfare promise, McC will try to out-welfare him).

I hope McC calls Obbi on the tax breaks. They're what used to be called to welfare. I'll bet he doesn't.

McC goes first. Straight into stump speech. Fannie/Freddy. Will he name names? Frank, Dodd, Cox? No. Of course not. Back to the mortgage buyout. Yawn. Nothing new.

Obbi-wan: Straight into the stump speech. I wonder if there's anything on Animal Planet.

McC: Going after Obbi's exchange with the plumber in Ohio. McC is right, but just not making the case. He's doing the Palin thing..talking strtaight to the camera.

Obbi: Doesn't answer. No one will care. There he goes on the 95%. If McC doesn't jump on this he deserves to lose. Obbi is flat out lying about what he said to the plumber. Come on...it was only a couple of days ago...go to the video. I saw it myself.

Mc C: A little more animated. Joe the Plumber, Bob the Builder. Can we spend it, yes we can!

Obbi: First to mention Warren Buffett. Too early in my time zone to drink, but here's a virtual shot.

McC: Americans pay second highest taxes in the industrialised countries. Why raise them more?

Schiffer: What will you cut?
Obbi: doesn't answer, Schieffer dings him. Obbi says give me a minute. Line by line, page by page, cut programs that don't work. Uh-huh. We've never heard that before. Note to candidates: There is no such thing as a line item veto. Still no answer. I gotta see a man about a horse.

McC: I'll veto EVERY earmark. Every one? Come on.

Obbi: Still nothing specific. Big deficit, running against W. Here we go again.

McC: Finally calls Obbu on it. "If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." Good line, wish he'd used it before.

Obbi is telling some outrageous porkies. "I'm for clean coal." "I opposed the trial lawyers on tort reform" "I opposed the teachers' unions on charter schools." None of that is true.

Leadership. Schiffer opens the door for McC to bring up Ayers/Wright/ACORN.
McC: Obama wouldn't face me early. Regret negative aspects. Skips Ayers, attacks John Lewis. Will Obbi repudiate JL? Goes after Obbi's flip-flops.

Obbo: "Nyah, nyah, I can't heeaaarrr you." Running against Bush again. Didn't repudiate Lewis. Nada.

McC: Sounds like he had his coffee this morning. No repudiation of Lewis, Obbi?

Obbi" I can't believe the Obbo gets away with calling black/white (was that racist?). He completely denies that Lewis was out of line. He's not going to talk about it. OK, Obbi himself has raised Ayers...

McC: He's pretty good now. Pissed off without getting murder in his eye.

Obbi: Can we change the subject please? What a spineless wanker this guy is.

McC: Finally. Ayers an "old washed-up terrorist" good combination of contempt and seriousness. Quotes Hillary.

Obbi: Talks about Ayers. I was eight years old. Barely no the guy.

Yeah, yeah and I wasn't born when Hitler was around, so can I be a Nazi?

Obbi: Acorn has nothing to do with us. Oh yeah? How about that quarter-mil.
Obbi is very clearly not happy talking about this. Looks shifty for the first time in the campaign.

Why Biden is better than Palin?

Obbi: Because he agrees with me. Right.
In the immortal words of Popeye the Sailor: Had all I can stands, I can't stands no more

Obama Cult of Personality Watch 2

Dear Leader wannabe's embryonic cult of personality contiues to develop aided by a compliant media, useful idiots in the conservative camp and a generation of Americans stupified by television and indoctrinated by the academy. First it was Camp Obama, then the adoring German masses, then the obvious and profound contempt for democracy, then the Obama brownshorts (oops, that's brownshirts) at Acorn. Now he's in a middle school literature textbook. Fifteen pages. I'll bet Shakespeare doesn't rate that. He and his bitter half could end up as our own Nicolae and Elena Ceucescu.

How Did I Miss This?

I'm not sure how I missed this when it first came out. I just saw it on The Black Republican.

Pricing Socialism Into the Markets.

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. To assume that because B follows A that A therefore caused B is a logical fallacy. But logic does not of rule out a causal relationship between A and B, only that such a a relationship must be demonstrated and not assumed.

Is anyone out there asking whether the markets are tanking not in spite of the efforts of various governments, but because of those efforts? Is it not possible, likely even, that the markets are pricing in the dead weight of government "oversight"? Is it not possible, likely even, that the financial markets, which represent the sum of tens of billions of individual self-interested decisions, are voting no-confidence in the ability of governments to "manage" the economy? Is it not possible that the market has weighed and counted the real costs of relying on the goodwill and competence of the State and reacted accordingly? Mene, mene, tekel upharsin.

Just asking.

I See Dead People, oops those are Racists.

Michelle Malkin in a syndicated piece at NRO has a hysterical send up of the race card playing on behalf of BHO. It's morphed into self parody.

Wearing white - racist. Referring to Obbi as "that one"-racist, associating Obama with WIlliam Ayers - racist, Talking about "hockey moms" - racist. Making reference to Odumbo's "career" as a community organizer-racist. By these standards of course not only is all criticism of the Obamessiah racist, but merely disagreeing with The One marks the forehead with a scarlet R.

McCain-Obama "Debate"

And here they come. McCain in his red tie, Obama in his blue. Was that prearranged? If McCain doesn't find a way to nail Obbi on his idiotic economic plans, he deserves to lose.

First question on the economy. Obama won the coin toss. Good sign, BHO is running against Bush. Calling for oversight, cracking down on CEO's. The question was how to get the economy up and running quickly. Obbi says middle class tax cut, fix this, fix that, no specifics,. It's his stump speech.

McC.: Doing his town hall thing walks right over to the crowd. Stop sending money to OPEC. Getting specific. RTC solution purchase mortgages directly, write down to positive equity. Not my preferred choice...sounds a little lame really.

Brokaw: Who will be your Secretary of Treasury? They aren't going to answer that and it's a waste of time. McC mentions Warren Buffett (Christ almighty), Obbi goes along he likes WB too. Yeah, yeah.

Q2: Bailout. McC needs to sound a lot more confident. Here he goes after Fannie & Freddie. Referes to "Obama & his cronies". Name names, will ya? "Some members of Congress". Follow up. Obbi, Dodd, Frank,....

BHO: Obbi-= crdit crunch still exists. He dodges. He's still running against W. He says he warned about the problem a year ago. Oops. Screw up. Pointing out that McC's bill didn't pass. That's the point, fool. Will McC jump on that?

Obbi on followup: back to his stump speech. Talking about "modernizing" regulation? Huh?

McC: Back to the buy-out mortgage idea. Now back to the stump speech. We're No. 1 rah, rah, rah.

Q3: How can we trust you with with our money? Obbi takes out after W again. Loser's game. Here he goes, government spends too much money and I'm going to spend more. Then he says he's going to cut spending. Which is it?

McC: He's trying to make Obbi count it up. This isn't going to change anybody's mind. We all know BHO is a big spender. Problem is that ALL of you are big spenders. If you don't see any reason to vote for McC, you won't see one now either. McC pointing out that the 700B we send to OPEC is exactly enough to cover the Bailout. Drill, gas, wind, solar, ....

Obbi-More government money to subsidise energy research. McC needs to call him on the spend more/spend cut paradox. Sheez, he's even using McC's "line by line" speech. Says McC will give money to oil companies. So who's going to get Obbi's subsidy? Ben & Jerry's?

Thirty minutes in. Neither of these guys has gone beyond the same script they've been on for a year.

Obbi-we're going to bring car manufacturing back to America. OK, but why? I'm going to double the Peace Corps. Maybe the Peace Corps volunteers could work in the auto plants. Yawn.

Is there any point to this? It's just the same old, same old. I'll be back if either of them says anything new.

McC: Nothing new. Climate change kool-aid time. McC goes nuclear. Finally. He sounds like Obbi, we can do it, yes we can.

Obbi: This (climate change) is one of the biggest challenges of our time. He confuses the invention of the computer with the development of the Internet. At least he didn't give credit to Algore. I'll subsidise a "new green engine." Yeah, yeah, how about a phaser gun and transporter booth while we're at it.

Brokaw is pathetic. Send him back to Old Hacks' Home.

Now McC is running against, I kid you not, "Bush and Cheney". Drill here, drill now.

Cue Twilight Zone Theme

The Dear Leader just gets, well it's overused but apt, creepier and creepier.

Black Box

I've put that little Black Box widget on the sidebar. I encourage you to play around with it. It can be addictive. I'm curious as to others' results. Almost none of the blogs I land at are written by men. I find myself delivered to an extraordinary number of blogs by women writers--all sorts of them, romance, mystery, sci-fi,soft porn, poetry, and one poor woman who has those pictures of the ghastly Fabio on all her books. There also seem to be a lot of blogs by women who are suffereing from one sort of chronic, perhaps terminal, disease or another. Is this a reflection of the blogger population? Just the ones who have the Black Box widget?

Once is an Accident, Twice is a Coincidence. Three Times Looks Like ...

Carelessness? Closer to stupidity, I'd say. Is there a major country anywhere run by such a collection of clowns, crooks,and losers as is the United States? The House passes the Soviet Economy Emulation Act of 2008 and the market, which had been up nearly 4 per cent, promptly tanks. In the words of the Financial Times:

Reaction on Wall Street turned increasingly negative after the vote. The S&P 500 – which rose as much as 3.6 per cent ahead of the decision – fell 1.4 per cent, closing below its level on Monday after the House voted against the bill.

Palin-Biden Debate

Palin looks cool and collected. Biden looks vaguely Presidential in a stern white-bread kind of way, but tired and has that weird Botox face. The eyelid job makes him like a white guy playing Fu Manchu.

McCain has made Palin drink the climate change kool-aid. It's clear she doesn't believe it and it made her sound hesitant on an easy environment question.

Finally she skewers JB on climate change...it's burn carbon, split atoms or turn out the lights.

She sounds much less hesitant now.

He's going for same-sex marriage. That'll get you the votes of all those people who were going to vote for you anywhere. Palin gives a Libertarian/Federalist answer. She's good.

Biden flips. Now it's no.

On to foreign policy. Iraq. She's nailing BHO using Biden's vote, she sounds like she's done her homework this time. Biden is talking nonsense...trying to make McC. look like he didn't support the troops is a lost cause. She nailed him, she's got the facts, there's just no way for Biden to spin Obama's opposition to the surge.

He's still trying....no one is going to believe it..now he's running against Cheney.

Pakistan/Iran: why does Biden get the first shot at every question but one so far...oh. I forgot Ifill has a financial stake in an Obama win. Biden (and BHO) have a point about the locus of the problem being in Pakistan.

Palin: party line on Iran..cannot be allowed nukes...quoting Ahmadi-Nejed...pulling out Obama's meeting quote. She's holding her own. WIll JB repeat the Kissinger lie? Obbi got taken to the woodshed on that.

JB: denies Obbi said anything of the sort. Claims A'jad not in control of Iranian security. He'll be surprised to hear that. JB is sputtering a bit, something about McC. refusing to talk to Spain.

Palin: backs up Israel, embassy in Jerusalem (yeah, right), never again.

Biden: running against Bush again. They'll never learn.

Palin: she's got him. Why are looking back, because you can't look forward. She just smiled and pointed out that Bush and Cheney aren't running.

Biden: still doing it, this is what Palin was waiting for, as long he's running against W, he's circling the drain.

Palin: on nukes. Didn't quite answer the question (when if ever should nukes be used) but showed she understands what deterrence is. She should have said that nukes are a last resort against an existential threat to the national security of the United states.

Biden: talked about Afghanistan. Also didn't answer the question.

Palin: good rebuttal. She's clearly been studying.

I expected a lot worse and I expected better of Biden. He's spent at least half his time complaining about Bush.

As I said....

Senate votes to nationalize the banking system with a pork-laden,corrupt monstrosity and the market promptly plunges nearly 400 points.

Who'd Have thought?

The Nixon, er Bush, administration attempts to extend government control of the economy to European levels, and the markets tank. The House of Representatives then refuses to Sovietize the entire US financial system, and the markets recover 500 points. Extra points for connecting the dots.

Skank of the Year.

Can there be a sleazier, skankier, more low-rent woman on the planet? If I saw her on Oxford Terrace late at night I'd assume she was working the drunk trade.

Ugly too.

News of the Bleeding Obvious.

This is a great example of how the chattering classes just don't understand that most people do not hold the same set of opinions as the cultural scumariat who dominate the media and academia.

Some political analysts are puzzled that Obama is not doing better, given that Republican President George W. Bush is unpopular and the economy is deteriorating.

"If you look at the raw partisan numbers, it might suggest that Senator Obama is not doing quite as well as you would think," said Andrew Dowdle, professor of politics at the University of Arkansas.

Ummm, could it be because Bush isn't running? Just a thought.

B.Hussein Obama in His Own Words.

As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved.

Whatever ones opinion on abortion, this is just weird and creepy. Note the way he refers to the baby as "it" and "this". BHO's little speech captures perfectly the profound anti-humanist bent of the post-modern left.

Say Goodnight, Nancy.

When the Speaker of the House can't handle questions from a senile old hack like Larry King, then it's time to move back to San Francisco and check into rehab.

Check out some of these:

KING: Before we talk about some other things, let's get right to the major story of the day.

What's your read on Russia/Georgia?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, everyone is speaking with one voice on the subject -- Democrats, Republicans, the Congress, the president -- that Russia must withdraw from Georgia. Russia's -- Georgia's borders must be protected -- respected and that we must have a conversation -- a diplomatic conversation in terms of NATO -- I mean more than a conversation -- to resolve the issues there.

Firmin: Oooh, Vlad the Impaler must be quaking in his jackboots. Nan is threatening SOMETHING MORE THAN A CONVERSATION

KING: But if they keep up this activity, do we have to, frankly, do something in the nature of returning the violence?

PELOSI: Well, I think we have to start first to try to get them to honor -- sign and honor a cease-fire, a truce. That's absolutely essential, because what the Russians did is really outside the circle of civilized behavior. You just don't roll your tanks and your airplanes into another country and expect people to sit back and say that's OK.

Firmin: If you're the Russians, that's exactly what you do, Nan. Look up Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Afghanistan for recent examples.


KING: Do you fear the possibility of American boys and girls going there?

PELOSI: I think we can start with the Europeans. This is a neighborhood thing for NATO. I think the NATO forces, if there's a need for peacekeepers, can contribute to those. We're doing a lot as far as NATO is concerned in Afghanistan. We wish they'd do more there. They can do more in Georgia.

Firmin: Boys and girls? Sounds like we're going send the 7th grade of Thomas Jefferson Primary. It's a neighbourhood thing after all. This is a 10 on the gibberish scale.

KING: So you don't see Americans being involved in this conflict?

PELOSI: Well, I would hope that it would be resolved, again, respecting the borders, honoring the truth and engaging in diplomatic -- a discussion on how to resolve the problems there.

Firmin: C'mon Nan, just admit it. You couldn't find Georgia on a map if it was tattooed on your butt. You don't have a clue what's going on.

Hillary Just Won't Go Away (I hope).

This is interesting. Hillary's folks are arguing that if John Edwards little fling had hit the media earlier, he would have been out of the race and a good part of his vote would have gone to Hillary. If the Hillites are correct, then she probably would've gotten the nomination instead of B. Hussein Obama. I wonder if anybody at Camp Obama had an inkling of this. Something else to create harmony and understanding at the Dem's convention.

Australia 1, Terrorists 0.

This is why you want the Aussies with you in a fight. They never give up. Well done mates. I hope the bastard didn't hurt himself running away.

Cleaning up the planet, one scumbag at a time.

Latest News: World View Still Emerging, Expected to be Complete Any Year Now.

How much longer can Bush Derangement Syndrome keep this campaign going?

Offshore drilling-flip.
Slavery reparations-flop.

All part of B. Hussein Obama's emerging world view, I guess.

B.Hussein Obama's Emerging World View

The cover of this week's Newsweek lists a story by breathless Obama cheerleader Fareed Zakaria called "Obama: An Emerging World View." This is someone who expects to move into the White House in six months. Hasn't he left it a little late in the day to be acquiring a world view? Has the MSM become so immersed in its role as the propaganda arm of the Obama campaign that they've become completely innured to irony?

Flippity Flop

I forgot about these:
Wearing a flag pin. Flip.
Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. Flop.

Give me a W-E-A-S-E-L.

Blinded by the Light

You have got to love this picture. As usual, the Obamarama crowd is as politically and culturally tone deaf as the BHO himself. Intended to ridicule alleged right wing fears about The Obaman, the New Yorker instead skewers lefty stereotypes of conservatives. As meta-politics turned high comedy, it doesn't get any better. It's a little weird that the New Yorker was so out of tune with the zeitgeist, but I guess they were just blinded by the light.

Scenes From The Religion of Peace, I.

Scenes like this barely provoke comment anymore. It's a long way from protecting poor baby Alex from John McCain.

The Meta-universe of Senator B. Hussein Obama

Has B. Hussein Obama ever said or done anything that he doesn't instantly regret and seek to undo? Does he, like Colonel Flagg, keep himself in a state of constant confusion so that he can never be forced to give a straight answer? Or does he live in some kind of discursive hyperspace where there are alternate Obamas living in alternate realities?
Pull out of NAFTA? Flip.
Jeremiah Wright? Flop.
Campaign finance? Flip.
Immediate pullout from Iraq? Flop
FISA? Flip.
Putting his kids on tabloid TV? Flop.

Look, the man is a W-E-A-S-E-L.

Prediction, he'll flip on what he said about kids learning Spanish.

Does Jesse Jackson Know About This Handy Device?

Do you think the good Reverend has a set of these babies in his pocket. There's a fortune to be made here. A matched set of Hillary Nut-crackers and Jesse Jackson Nut-cutters. There's a factory in China geraing up right now.

Obama Takes Us Monkey Fishing

Silent Running has an interesting take on the Odumbo birth certificate matter. I'm pretty sure that the Obamessiah was in fact born in a manger in Hawaii in 1961 just as he claims and that he has the birth certificate to prove it. The O's are just spinning this out in the hope they can get an O'Reilly or a Limbaugh to bite. Then they'll pull out the certificate and have a good laugh. Let's not go monkey fishing with Obama.

The Pot & The Kettle: Vodafone & Telecom

I read somewhere last year that some wag had said ...all New Zealanders hate Telecom and there's nothing they hate worse than the thought of giving them any more money for anything else. Add Vodafone to the list. When is the government going to open the mobile and broadband markets in this country and cut these gougers off at the knees.

The New Zealand consumer is getting raped by these people (Sky TV is another offender, but that's a tale for another day). We have the most expensive and worst broadband and mobile service on the planet because of the Vodacom duopoly.

Boycott the iPhone (which is no prize either...I've got one, I know). If you have to buy it, get it off the Internet or have a mate bring you one from Singapore or Europe.

Obama's "Communication" Problem

I'm not entirely sure what's going on with Odumbo. Is it that: 1) He just says whatever his advisors put in front of him without asking whether it blatantly contradicts something he said earlier or is plain stupid. 2) He's a liar on the order of the Clintons. 3) He just doesn't have any strong opinions about anything nor any sort of intellectual framework to his thinking. 4) He has early-onset Alzheimer's.

A) If it's #1, then it's back to Jimmy Carter and the White House Amateur Hour. The man is just too feckless and inexperienced to be President. Added to a political tin ear for anything outside the African-American/egghead/Malibu opinion universe, we have a man who is not ready for prime time. Give him a few gray hairs and rich(er) wife and we have John Kerry redux.

B) If it's #2, do we really want to go through another four or eight years of wondering whether the President's worldview has any relationship at all with objective reality? Big O's lies are of a different sort than Clinton's. Bubba tried to lawyer his way out of the truth without getting caught telling direct falsehoods. He wasn't very good at it, but he tried. BHO on the other hand is more the post-modernist. His words mean just what he intends them to mean and nothing else. Look at his Smear Fighting page and his explanation of the flag pin controversy. Essentially, he just says it never happened.

C) If it's number 3, see A) above.

D) If it's number 4, maybe he'll put me on his web site.

Complete Intellectual Collapse

The insanity of the Bush administration's so-called Korea policy has reached the point of, as John Bolton so aptly put it, "total intellectual collapse. North Korea handed over to the Chinese a piece of paper that might has well have been a hold-up note. They admitted to all the stuff we already know about and don't really care about and completely left out any mention of the plutonium bombs and uranium enrichment program. Anyone with eyes or ears has long known that the State Department prefers any deal to no deal, but there is now the real possibility that history will one day judge Christopher Hill, Condoleeza Rice and the President to have been complicit in the destruction of an American or Japanese city by a North Korean nuclear weapon.

Here's Hill before the agreement:"This idea that we would ignore the most contentious items and take them up later is ridiculous. I don’t believe in ‘carve outs’ and even if I did (which I don’t) how in the world would this work in practical terms? Do you really think we could make concessions on the basis of an incomplete declaration, then somehow we would be able to return to the contentious issues AFTER – AFTER!!!??? — giving away all our leverage? Why? I can tell you this stupidity has never been under consideration by anyone who is part of the process or truly close to the process."

In the event of course, the "declaration" did leave out all of the "most contentious" problems. Here's Hill after the agreement:“you’re looking at a partially finished product here and we’ve got to finish the job.” “Obviously, we would like to deal with things in one fell swoop, but sometimes,” Hill told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on July 1, “you have to kind of do things on an incremental basis… I would draw your attention to the fact that a year ago they were producing plutonium and not only are they not producing plutonium, but they can’t produce plutonium because the thing is disabled.” That's hardly the point. They may or may not be able to produce plutonium now, but they already enough for at least one and maybe as many as a dozen low yield bombs. They're also continuing to enrich uranium. That was omitted from the declaration--just an oversight, I'm sure.

There are only two possibilities here. Either Hill is a liar on the order of Bill Clinton, or he was completely duped by Rice and the President. In either case he should resign.

Go Surfers.

Every now and again I'm reminded that there is justice in the world. In Malibu, surfers go all Jack Bauer on the scum of journalism. Here's the link.

Warmenists vs The Poor, III

I thought I remembered this story from the London Times awhile back. It seems that if you're rich enough, you can assuage your guilt over your carbon crimes by sending a poor Indian peasant from the 21st Century back to the tecnhnology of the Bronze Age.

As the Times story (from 2007) puts it:
"Somewhere in the Indian countryside, a farmer is about to repay Mr Cameron’s debt to the planet. Climate Care’s latest enterprise is to provide “treadle pumps” to poor rural families so they can get water on to their land without using diesel power. The pumps are worked by stepping on pedals. If a peasant treads for two hours a day, it will take at least three years to offset the CO2 from Mr Cameron’s return flight to India"

So once that treadle pump is in place, who you do think is going to provide the muscle power? No, not Big Al Gore, although he could use the exercise. It will be the children who will in all liklihood be taken out of school to do the work.

Climate Care, an arm of JP Morgan's environmental markets group is the benevolent gang behind the scheme to let Third World peasants do the heavy lifting so green robed hypocrites can keep flying around to conferences.

Weird-O.

Does anyone else find this just a little creepy?

Warmenists vs. The Poor, II

As I noted yesterday, the direct diversion of food crops into biofuel production and the change in cultivation from plants for food to plants for fuel will inevitably decrease the amount of food available in the market, raise prices and push the marginal poor right over into starvation. This Wall Street Journal story from Japan is an apt example. The farmer is being subsidized to grow a variety of rice suitable for conversion into ethanol instead of the food rice he used to grow. This wouldn't happen without subsidies. I don't know how ecofanatics sleep at night. Maybe they'll send some starvation offsets to Manila or Jakarta.

Fitna

Hmmm. I just watched Geert Wilder's film on Islam, Fitna. (It's posted at Pat Dollard's site.) I deliberately waited 3 months to watch it, as distance lends detachment. I see absolutely nothing controversial about this at all. Islamic fascism in its own words. Wilder's comments are a few seconds at the very end. Yeah, yeah, I know. You can take snippets of various extreme Christian preachers or ultra-Zionist rabbis and make a similar flick about Christianity or Judaism.

The difference of course is that the rest of Islam is either too cowed to disown the freaks in their midst, too ignorant to know how sick they are, or they understand perfectly what's going on and agree with it. Christians and Jews on the other hand generally fall all over themselves disowning anybody who's the slightest bit non-PC. Even Odumbo threw his own pastor to the mob when Jeremiah's opinions got a little too weird for the punters.

Warmenists vs. The Poor Part I

As anyone in an undergraduate economics class could tell you the fuel market and food markets were essentially separate. Rises in oil price had only an indirect marginal effect on the price of food through fuel and fertilizer costs. Climate fanatics however have suceeded in linking the two directly by enlisting Big Agriculture and Big Government in forcing biofuel mandates on the world. Not only are food crops like palm oil and soybeans now diverted directly to fuel production, agricultural land is diverted to the production of fuel crops rather than food crops. If you're growing corn for ethanol, you plant high sugar varieties, if you're growing for food, you want high protein. Less wheat, more corn, and so on. None of this could have happened without the perverse incentives of government subsidies. Congratulations for joining at the hip two groups who couldn't care less about the poor--climate fundmentalists and agribusiness.
When even the BBC gets it, it should be obvious to everyone.

Warmenists Finally Go Around the Bend

This can't be parodied. This man is to all appearances serious about putting climate realists on trial. Junk science is what should be a crime. On the positive side, this kind of madness usually means that a trend has run its course. But does this wacko have a security clearance?

Just When I Was About to Go Home

Just when I was considering abandoning this blog, Barack Obama and his whining wife get the Democratic nomination. If he gets elected, we are doomed. He's a tool of the Soros hypocrites and the PC brigade, he associates with racists and terrorists, and, I have to say, in a colorblind society, he wouldn't have gotten the nomination. As the few readers who visit know, I have no brief for Billary. But if she had gotten 90% of the white vote the way BO got 90% of the black vote, the cries of racism would still be echoing. If John McCain's pastor had said what Jeremiah Wright said, McCain could go home now.

He has a complete pass from the media, no one is going to go looking under the slimey rocks of Chicago politics, no one calls him on his contradictions and his airy-fairy pronouncements. Soooo, to arms. Let us deconstruct BO and his nonsense and send him to McGovernland.

A Tear in the Fabric

Some events are big enough to rend the global zeitgeist. Some are immediately obvious like the Holocaust, some, like 9/11 only become apparent because of the later effects. What they have in common is that such events somehow change the matrix in which we all live. That little chill you felt, the momentary flickering of your monitor, the noise on your iPod that wasn't there before, the weird dreams you keep having. Something has changed.

I think the Sichuan earthquake is such an event. Look at Wen Jiabao. You don't get to where he is by having a soft heart, but the worry on his face is real. He knows, and you can bet they know all over China, that soon enough the grief and fear will turn to anger. On a day not far off, 80 million people in Sichuan will start looking for someone to blame. They won't rail at God..this is an atheist society. They will look at the only source of power in the land...the Party...and they will want some answers.