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Apparently, Obama’s foolishness knows no end. Now he has decided to legitimize the UN’s latest bash Israel conference. Anne Bayefsky has the story.
… All his campaign promises to the contrary, sacrificing Israel for the sake of currying favor with others — demagogues included — is clearly at the top of the new president’s agenda. Israel asked Obama not to attend. Canada also pulled out of Durban II and expected American support. Instead, today’s American foreign policy leaves America’s closest ally and its biggest trading partner out in the cold.
The speed at which President Obama is selling off American assets is breathtaking. The speed at which he is selling them out is even faster.
The Brits produce obits like no one else. And from time to time they have produced men like no one else. Max Boot starts this off.
The sun long ago set on the British Empire. In Iraq, Britain even revealed its inability to do the kind of counterinsurgency operations which were the hallmarks of British soldiers for decades. But if you want a taste of how Britain became “great” read this obit of Colonel David Smiley, a swashbuckling hero of World War II and beyond whose exploits sound too fantastic to be true–but true they are. …
Here’s the Daily Telegraph Obit of Col. David Smiley.
Colonel David Smiley, who died on January 9 aged 92, was one of the most celebrated cloak-and-dagger agents of the Second World War, serving behind enemy lines in Albania, Greece, Abyssinia and Japanese-controlled eastern Thailand.
After the war he organised secret operations against the Russians and their allies in Albania and Poland, among other places. Later, as Britain’s era of domination in the Arabian peninsula drew to a close, he commanded the Sultan of Oman’s armed forces in a highly successful counter-insurgency.
After his assignment in Oman, he organised – with the British intelligence service, MI6 – royalist guerrilla resistance against a Soviet-backed Nasserite regime in Yemen. Smiley’s efforts helped force the eventual withdrawal of the Egyptians and their Soviet mentors, paved the way for the emergence of a less anti-Western Yemeni government, and confirmed his reputation as one of Britain’s leading post-war military Arabists.
In more conventional style, while commanding the Royal Horse Guards (the Blues), Smiley rode alongside the Queen as commander of her escort at the Coronation in 1953.
During the Second World War he was parachuted four times behind enemy lines. On one occasion he was obliged to escape from Albania in a rowing boat. On another mission, in Japanese-controlled eastern Thailand, he was stretchered for three days through the jungle with severe burns after a booby-trap meant for a senior Japanese officer exploded prematurely. …
And from the London Sunday Times, an appraisal of The Bill.
… the $787 billion fiscal stimulus that passed through Congress last week was almost too prescriptive, since Obama had allowed the House Democrats to write the cheques themselves: so, for example, there was $335m for STD prevention, $400m for research on global warming, $198m for Filipino veterans of the second world war. Noble of them, I’m sure, but how much is all of that guaranteed to “get America back to work”? Yet Obama mocked those who made such complaints: “You get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill; this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point.”
In other words, Obama is backing the most primitive interpretation of Keynes’s theories: that any form of government spending amounts to an economic stimulus. He is almost blind to supply-side economics, which suggests that if you want to encourage profitable job creation, you should concentrate on reducing companies’ payroll taxes – and then leave individual businesses to decide how best to employ the funds released.
Instead, the young president seems to want to take us back to some of the failed policies of the 1930s, under the mistaken impression that they were a great triumph. He illustrates with dreadful clarity George Santayana’s most-quoted aphorism: those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
Remember Tom Friedman’s frequent breathless prose about Dubai? If he reads his own paper, he’ll learn about Dubai’s downward spiral.
Sofia, a 34-year-old Frenchwoman, moved here a year ago to take a job in advertising, so confident about Dubai’s fast-growing economy that she bought an apartment for almost $300,000 with a 15-year mortgage.
Now, like many of the foreign workers who make up 90 percent of the population here, she has been laid off and faces the prospect of being forced to leave this Persian Gulf city — or worse.
“I’m really scared of what could happen, because I bought property here,” said Sofia, who asked that her last name be withheld because she is still hunting for a new job. “If I can’t pay it off, I was told I could end up in debtors’ prison.”
With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield. …
As for the modernity of Dubai, Roger Simon notes an Israeli tennis player is barred from a tennis tournament there.
David Brooks says Americans dream of Denver, not Dubai.
You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living.
Those dreams have been aroused over the past few months. The economic crisis has devastated the fast-growing developments on the far suburban fringe. Americans now taste the bitter fruit of their overconsumption.
The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They’ll move back to the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community — and maybe even superior beer.
America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam.
Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don’t seem to want the Dutch option. …
There is no end to what the triumphant Dems wish to do. Next, according to the Detroit News, the fairness doctrine?
… You’d think the Democrats would savor their victory and ignore their critics.
That they can’t suggests an insecurity about the ability of their ideas and policies to hold the hearts and minds of the electorate.
Stifling dissent is a favored weapon of those who are convinced they know what’s best for the people and are willing to trample the people’s rights to give it to them.
The Fairness Doctrine is right out of the playbooks of Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin and others who so value popularity they’ll protect it by any means necessary.
This is censorship, poorly masked. And whether you cheer Limbaugh or detest him, if you don’t stand up for his right to speak against the tide, you’ll ultimately lose your right to do the same.
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