Barack Obama

Boy oh boy, did Vlad the Impaler score big today. 

President Barack Obama on Thursday overhauled plans for a missile defence shield in eastern Europe, promising instead stronger, swifter defence systems to protect U.S. allies against any threat from Iran.

In a move that may ease tensions with Moscow but spur regional fears of resurgent Kremlin influence, Obama said he had approved recommendations from U.S. military leaders to shift focus to defending against Iran's short and medium-term missile capabilities."This new approach will provide capabilities sooner, build on proven systems and offer greater defences against the threat of missile attack," Obama said in a brief statement on scrapping plans for ground-based interceptors in Poland and a related radar site in the Czech Republic

Moscow said it would welcome the decision to drop the program, which had complicated U.S. efforts to enlist Russian support over Afghanistan, Iran and nuclear arms control.{...}

The new plan is to send Aegis destroyers to defend Europe against any rogue nuclear threats. Yeah, that'll work.  Like Russia wouldn't take issue with them cruising the Baltic. 

{insert slap to forehead here}

Failing to earn big points in the bonus round, the nimrods in the Obama adminstration apparently are unable to bookmark Wikipedia, because on this day seventy years ago, Stalin invaded Poland from the east, creating a second front for the beleaguered Polish troops who were doing their damndest to hold off the Nazis. 

Now, seventy years later, we're well out of the Cold War, but we have a ruler in Russia who seemingly longs for it, and enjoys rattling his saber and his natural gas supplies to get what he wants, signalling a return to Russian hegemony in what he considers Russia's historical sphere of influence.  President Bush puts forward a missile defense program, to, ostensibly,protect NATO members in eastern Europe from a rogue attack from Iran. The added benefit of the program is that no matter what its intended design, Russia doesn't like it.  These countries are its former satellites; part of Russia's former sphere of influence, and if Russia can't have them back in the fold, as it were, Vlad certainly, at the very least, does not want western influence in his backyard.  Then Vlad goes and invades Georgia. It's no coinicidence that Poland, which had been dragging its feet on the program, signed on a few days later.

Now, a little over a year later, our rube of a president, ostensibly to gain access to Russian train tracks for the shipping of supplies into Afghanistan, to avoid Taliban-infested routes in Pakistan, dumps this program entirely.

Just how far does a Ginsu go when shoving it into the back of a Czech or a Pole? Can you get that puppy all the way through their bodies, or is it just a flesh wound which will heal easily? Either way, don't expect either country to be on board with anything the US does for quite some time---as in until a new administration is elected.

What doesn't make sense is that this is, purportedly, for Russian rail access into Afghanistan.  THIS is the purported end game? It doesn't make much sense because the give and take is not proportional.  And as much as I would like to think Obama really is this stupid, he's got decent foreign policy analysts on his team who would prevent him from making such a deal. No, the deal only makes sense if the US is getting something else in return---like, say, Russia's cooperation at the UN Security Council when it comes to Iranian sanctions? Bigger, badder sanctions they've been blocking in the Security Council for some time because they're making too much loot selling Iran nuclear "power" components.

Next week, Obama planning to be the first US president to actually chair a meeting of the Security Council---"devoted to nuclear proliferation and disarmament."  Did he give up missile defense, in effect giving in to Russia (and Teheran, by the way), so he could make a bigger, bolder splash at the UN next week? Did Obama throw Poland and the Czech Republic under the bus to bolster his own international statesman whimsies?  Would he really go that far? 

Yep. I believe he would.  The guy's ego knows no bounds. 

If this is the case---that this move is, essentially, laying the ground work for Obama's big UN day next week---one wonders what other concessions will be announced in coming days.  There will have to be other concessions, because Russia isn't the only country who's been dragging their feet on Iranian sanctions: the Chinese have been blocking sanctions, as well. What is Obama going to give up to the Chinese to get them to play ball?  A lessening of pressure to get the PRC to control its neighbor, North Korea?  The removal of hasty and recent tarriffs on Chinese tires?  A withdrawal of the Navy from the Taiwanese Straits? Do tell! 

Just how much of "this" is Obama going to give up for "that"?  I suppose it all depends just how much Obama wants to become the international statesman of our time. Which, I gather, is rather a lot.  

Would somebody please report me to Obama's minion, Linda Douglass, as putting out "disinformation" regarding their odious health care reform legislation? 

Seriously. 

You can email the pertinent information here: flag@whitehouse.gov

I'll even go trolling through the archives for you, so you have some links to throw in your email as examples of my unpatriotic treachery.  You can find evidence of my treason here, here, here and here, just for starters. 

I've put out plenty of "disinformation," according to the White House, so by all means, slap on the fetters. 

As has been pointed out in numerous places, this is not about correcting misleading information, or actively combating some disinformation campaign, this is about shutting dissenters up.  What other conclusion could we come to?  This administration has never been about debate or free speech, with their manufactured town hall meetings; their organized grassroots disinformation campaigns to prevent further dissemenation of an investigation into Obama's working relationship with a domestic terrorist; they allowed their friends in the media and local government to go after the one guy who asked the one question to which their candidate didn't give a good answer. According to Obama and his minions, you can shout all the negatives you want about his plans, because no one will listen, but don't you dare make him look like a fool, because if you do, that's when he'll kneecap you.  Before it's just been a bureaucratic-kneecapping.  But now it's turning violent, with union thugs---you know, those same unions who helped get Obama elected and which he's done his level-best to keep paid-off---beating up protestors at town hall meetings. 

It's The Chicago Way. 

They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago Way!

People have pulled this quote out a lot ever since Obama announced his candidacy, but in my opinion, it was a little premature.  Now, however, the similarities are too pronounced to ignore. I mean, seriously: I can't be the only one who sees the Daley Legacy in these actions.  They've gone beyond words and are now enforcing their worldview with fists.  And I'm not talking about those wussy brothers who run the show now.  I'm talking about Papa Daley.  You know, that badass, whose hamfisted running of the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois is the stuff of legend.  

I am not having it. 

Report me.  Please. 

That's the only way this kind of crap will stop.  If enough people gin up the courage to want to be in this "dissenters database" we'll have it beat.  Because, honestly, when has the government ever been able to run a database?  Give me one example of a time that the government actually had good, reliable, up-to-date, accurate information in one of its databases.  Is the "No-Fly List" ringing a bell?  If we swarm it, like a hive of pissed-off bees, we can beat it.  Easily.  I may be an insignificant little bee, but I still have a stinger, and there's no one on which I'd rather use it than someone who wants to shut me up simply because I disagree with them.

Please report me.   

I don't care what happens, and I'm not afraid.  I beat cancer.   Anything these assholes can do to me is downright piddly in comparison to chemo.

Well, Bammy has achieved one of his campaign goals: making America popular again.

Barack Obama has restored America’s global standing to where it was before the Bush era, but many in the Muslim world remain hostile, according to a survey published on Thursday.

The Pew Research Center’s annual global attitudes survey indicated that people polled in 25 countries now had a more positive attitude towards the US. The exception was Israel, where approval dipped after President Obama courted the Muslim world in a June speech in Cairo.{...}

 If you want the actual "improvement" numbers, hit the link and you'll get the rundown.  But, the real whopper comes from Madeleine "Foggiest Bottom" Albright, idiot ex-Secretary of State.

“It is certainly better to have a president who is respected and who is popular than who is not,” said Madeleine Albright, former secretary of state, referring to the contrast in international public regard for Mr Obama with that for former president George W. Bush. “We were in a hole in our reputation and leadership... There is a long way to go but it is much better to start here.”

For the most part, however, attitudes were negative in much of the Muslim world, including allies in Turkey and Pakistan. Only 14 percent of Turks gave the US a favourable rating, barely up on last year.

“I personally am a little surprised by the continuing Muslim numbers,” Ms Albright said. She described the Muslim and Western worlds as being in a “very deep rift”, which would “take some time to fix”.

So, according to Madeleine Albright, somehow, a. Barack Obama is now, apparently, the United States of America and b. she couldn't possibly understand how the numbers from Muslim countries could be bad when it comes to America's "popularity."

Barack Fargin' Obama is NOT the United States of America.  He's not God.  He's not Jesus.  He is a politician.  Who happened to get elected, God only knows how, President of the United States of America.  That does not mean he is now the actual country.  One does not equal the other. He is not the land north of Mexico and south of Canada, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.  I know Europeans are stupid this way, and could actually believe this, but you can't travel to Obama's navel, like you would Yellowstone National Park.  His shoulder is not Chicago.  His ears are not San Francisco.  His dreamy brown eyes are not New York.  He is the president, but he is not America.  How hard is that to understand? 

Oh, yes, I'm probably taking this a little too literally, but how the fuck do you equate America's supposed new popularity with Barack Obama?  America is a country.  It's ridiculous. Barack Obama is one of its citizens.  He is not the country; he's just another citizen, despite his job. He will leave office someday.  You might want to gird your loins for that, because, according to the Constitution, the peaceful handover of power is absolute, and one day he will either get spanked out of office (hopefully) or will leave after two terms.  Are you going to hate my country then, depending upon who's elected?  Who the fuck are you to say which way we should go?  That's our business.  If you want a say in it, move here, gain citizenship, and effin' vote, you assholes.  Otherwise, it's none of your goddamned business.  I would never say, "Oh, I hate Germany because Angela Merkel is Chancellor. I would never visit because she's in charge.  I hate them!"  Why wouldn't I say that?  Because it's none of my goddamned business who the Germans elect to be Chancellor.  Neither is it any of my business to say Ahmadinejad is a good reason to hate Iran. Because then you're proclaiming dislike for millions of people based on the cock-eyed views of one man. It's patently unfair to the people of the country to have their worth judged solely on who happens to be running the joint.

But, apparently, no one has a problem doing that to America.  America's fair game.  We can only be popular if a democrat is at the helm.  

Fuck that.  

Bammy's no better than the rest of us, but, because he's a politician, he might actually be worse. If you came to America, you might learn that the majority of the citizenry hate politicians because they're a bunch of lying windbags, who only look after themselves.  If you think positively of America now that Bammy's in office, well, you're stupid.  America has THREE HUNDRED MILLION people living here other than Bammy.  Come and visit.  You might like the landscape.  You might like some of us.  You might not.  But to base your opinion of a country solely on its elected leadership means you're an uneducated, poorly travelled idiot. 

I can understand how it helps to get things done on an international basis, fair or not, when you've got someone at the helm who is respected by all.  Witness the seemy underbelly of international trade negotiations.  Peter Mandelson---who is now a cabinet member for Gordon Brown and who is now Lord Mandelson to you, you common peon---a few years back was the EU Trade Commissioner, and he made it patently clear he wasn't going to make any concessions on the EU's agricultural subsidies until the US did.  Which was complete and utter bullshit, because President Bush had already said, repeatedly, to the EU that if they made cuts, the US would follow, which, at the time, was a rather large possible concession, meant to move trade talks forward. Bush meant it, and was willing to take the heat from the agricultural community for it if the EU bit.  Mandelson meant his statement, as well, yet the difference was that Mandelson didn't want to make any concessions, because the French would have strung him up by his thumbs if he did, so he used Bush's unpopularity, and the general opinion of him as the bad guy, as a convenient excuse for getting out of actually negotiating for change.  Mandelson was a weasel, and he got away with it, simply because Bush was unpopular.  There are a thousand different examples from the world of IGOs to further this point.  Bush was unpopular from Day One, simply because of who he was and what he represented. No one wanted to do business with him, and, furthermore, people cheered and screamed with delight when Hugo Chavez spoke from the podium at the UN General Assembly when he said he smelled sulfur in the air after Bush spoke.  It's not pretty, but those are the facts.  It helps to be popular.  Or at least unassuming.  43 was neither of those, and it did make things harder for him. 

That aside, why should popularity, of all things, be what greases the skids?  And I'm not talking about "majority wins" here; I'm talking about this absurd notion that someone who is popular is always better.  Why does it matter?  I really dislike this crap, because it means that the only people qualified to get things done, apparently, are the Prom King and Queen, and the Captain of the football team and the cheerleading squad. Get over thinking high school is the ruling paradigm of life, for chrissakes.  Why do you accord more status to the jerk whom everyone likes rather than the spotty geek in the corner whom everyone hates, simply because no one gets them, but who is smarter than everyone else combined?  It makes no sense.  Get a spine already and get over it. 

I've rambled on long enough.  Time to end this post before it gets even more incoherent than it already is. 

As if all the rest wasn't bad enough, the Prez throws like a girl. 

Heh.  

{source}

Thus sayeth Obama's National Security Advisor General James Jones (USMC Ret.):

"I firmly believe that the United States is not only safe, but will be more secure, and the American people are increasingly safer because of the president's leadership that he has displayed consistently over the last four months both at home and abroad."

Of course, this is taken out of context.  He was specifically replying to Big Dick Cheney's claims that by banning "torture" Obama has made America less safe, but still...he goes there...

...on the exact same day that North Korea declared the armistice which ended the Korean War in 1953 invalid because South Korea joined up with the US to inspect ships coming out of NK for nuclear and other weaponry goodies.  And this is after they've tested, what, three or four missles over the past couple of days and detonated one nuclear bomb underground.  But let's get back to the armistice-busting.  This armistice, which split the Korean peninsula into two countries, separated by a DMZ at the 38th Parallel, has stood for fifty-six years, and neither side has ever threatened abandoning it until today. Why could that be? Hmmm.  Let's think about it for a second.  There's plenty of speculation running around that Kim's health is on the wane and that he's looking to solidify his legacy.  But why would he be doing this now?  Does he want to spend the summer on a beach in the south?  Or is it because Kim Jong-Il feels he can get away with it now.  Do you suspect he feels more or less threatened by the United States of America and its current Commander in Chief, Barack Obama than he did when George W. Bush was in office?  I don't know.  What could it possibly be? 

/sarcasm.

And, yet, today, of all days, is the day that the freakin' NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR to the President of the United States of America decides to declare the US is safer than ever.  How could we not be safe?  EUROPE LOVES US!  Of course we're safe, because our allies respect and admire us again!  This makes us inherently more safe.  Of course it does.  And how are they working to make the world safer from North Korea with their allies?  They're working hard with its allies at the UN on a resolution:

"{...}where we are gathering the different points of views of those engaged," {US Ambassador to the UN} Rice said. "It's serious business. It's complicated and we need to be in touch with our capitals repeatedly. And this is going to be one that we work to get right rather than to pop out prematurely." 

And just what are they trying to gather different points of view for?  This complicated diplomatic process is trying to put forth... SANCTIONS!  Yes, the almighty, all-holy sanctions that Kim Jong-Il has proven time and time again he doesn't give a crap about and has a flagrantly good time proving as much. 

What world are these people living in?  Because it sure as hell isn't the real one. 

I have one nagging question about the release of those "torture memos" and the idea that Obama is going to instruct the Attorney General to prosecute those who advised the Bush Administration that torture was hunky dory.

Just how are you going to prosecute these people?  What would the Justice Department charge them with?  Obviously, direct charges of torture are out, as in with the CIA operatives Obama has "pardoned," but where is the legal statute in the US Code that says the government can charge you for handing out what it deems was bad legal advice? These were legal opinions these lawyers issued.  They weren't law; these memos were their best guess as to what the legality of such an action would be. Again, where's the code law that says that simply probing the legality of torture is verboten?  If this is illegal, anyone who uses WestLaw to research something an administration doesn't like could, conceivably, be in trouble---never mind what people actually do with that information.  Where's the case law that says these people can be prosecuted?  Congress can't just come in, pass a law because it appears one isn't on the books (to me, at least) that simply advocating torture is illegal and prosecute these lawyers under that would also be illegal. Why hasn't this aspect been discussed?  I don't get it.  Perhaps I'm just uneducated on this, but I think that if there was such a statute which covered such things, every other lawyer in the country would be in jail right about now and law school applications would go down tremendously.  These things are usually left to state bar associations, not the legal system unless there is outright fraud and other well-documented illegality involved.  But bad advice?  Not so much.  And let's not leave out the fact that in this specific case the descriptor "bad" is highly subjective.  

That it's Eric Holder---the dude who thought it was kosher to pardon serial tax-evader Marc Rich---who would possibly be pushing the prosecution of said lawyers is, pardon the wording, rich.  Furthermore, witch hunting aside, that Obama would go after the memos' authors is scary.  With this action, his setting a precedent, which would say, "We're going to put a paradigm into place that will make it possible for you to be held accountable for just looking at certain options."  Now, these particular memos were actually used as legal cover; what happens when, at some point in time in the future, some administration looks at all the options, yet refuses to follow through, and uses a different option---perhaps one that was legally kosher and worked.  Can you potentially see a situation where the author of a legal memo fleshing out the details of one of the disregarded options was prosecuted down the road simply for doing their job? That's a whole new level of scary.  This administration would like to snuff out language and ideas it already doesn't like; that it would try to do the same to legal ideas is wholly repugnant to me.  And this is from me, the chick who doesn't really like lawyers all that much.  

This would be the time for some of the devoted brainiac lawyer-Cake Eater readers to chime in, because, really, I'm not getting this one.  AT ALL.  Perhaps I haven't been watching enough punditry over the preceding few days and I missed something vital, but, really, this makes no sense to me. 

Look at this photo and tell me what you think is wrong with it.

This photo was on the front page of the FT this morning. 

No, I don't think there was any pshopping going on, to give Obama that holier-than-thou look to him.  I simply think that the woman behind him, whom is barely visible, shot off her flash at the same time the Reuters photographer clicked on their shutter. 

My high school journalism teacher, Mrs. Havlik, aka "The Witch", would have freaked out if I had taken this photo and presented it to her for the front page of the school newspaper.  The quality is horrible.  She, at the very least, would have recognized that, and would have gone scouring for better photos.  Yet, Reuters feels absolutely fine with submitting this photo to the wire, and, even better, the editors at the FT felt like this was worth of reproducing on the front page of an international newspaper.  

Have all editorial standards gone to hell in the age of Obama?  So much so that they'd be willing to put this craptastic photo on the front page in an effort to push their Obama-"friendly" agenda? 

Gah.

I have taken advantage of the new spirit of transparency, mes amies, and...MON DIEU!...it really IS that small.  

Yeah, that was a shot of the inexpensive variety.  Sue me.  Perhaps you can do better, my devoted Cake Eater readers. 

So, anyone else find it just a wee bit ironic, that after the Chosen One rambled on and on during the election about how Afghanistan is the war we're supposed to be fighting, that when he gets his chance to solve the problem, on top of the two divisions he's already sending in, he settles for sending in 4,000 military trainers, to train and hundreds of civilians "advisers"?  That this is his solution to the problem, when he'd sneer if any other NATO country offered up this kind of paltry help?

Yeah, I know.  I don't really find it all that ironic either.