Selective Meddling

While attempting to set a new standard for media butt-snorkling idolatry, the AP inadvertently exposes an inconsistency in President Obama's foreign policy stances....

America's president and Africa's son, Barack Obama dashed with pride onto the continent of his ancestors Saturday, challenging its people to shed tyranny, corruption and conflict in favor of peace. Campaigning to all of Africa, he said "Yes you can."

[...]

"Africa doesn't need strongmen," Obama said. "It needs strong institutions."
The son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, Obama bluntly told Africa to take more responsibility for itself but proclaimed: "America will be with you."

Hmmm...those words have the distinct odor of the previously officially shunned policy of "meddling".

OK, so it isn't really meddling, but it is certainly much stronger rhetoric than we saw out of the President when it came to the uprising in Iran, where he went out of his way not to "meddle".

It would have been nice to see the sycophantic AP print the following graph during the Iran crisis:

America's president, Barack Obama, challenged the Iranian people to shed tyranny, corruption and conflict in favor of peace. Campaigning to all of Iran, he said "Yes you can."

[...]

"Iran doesn't need mullahs and strongmen," Obama said. "It needs strong democracy and freedom." Obama bluntly told Iran: "America will be with you."

Would that have been so hard for the President??

When Soothsayers Change their Spots

Both Campaign Spot and Instapundit highlight this great little piece of tut-tutting by Clintonista Robert Reich:

When Will The Recovery Begin? Never.
July 9, 2009, 5:02PM

The so-called "green shoots" of recovery are turning brown in the scorching summer sun. In fact, the whole debate about when and how a recovery will begin is wrongly framed. On one side are the V-shapers who look back at prior recessions and conclude that the faster an economy drops, the faster it gets back on track. And because this economy fell off a cliff late last fall, they expect it to roar to life early next year. Hence the V shape.

Unfortunately, V-shapers are looking back at the wrong recessions. Focus on those that started with the bursting of a giant speculative bubble and you see slow recoveries. The reason is asset values at bottom are so low that investor confidence returns only gradually.

That's where the more sober U-shapers come in. They predict a more gradual recovery, as investors slowly tiptoe back into the market.

Personally, I don't buy into either camp. In a recession this deep, recovery doesn't depend on investors. It depends on consumers who, after all, are 70 percent of the U.S. economy. And this time consumers got really whacked. Until consumers start spending again, you can forget any recovery, V or U shaped.

No recovery, ever? Never, ever? An interestingly pessimistic view from the left side of the ailse. What makes it ever more interesting is that not even 4 months ago, Robert Reich predicted a smooth recovery:

My Recovery Prediction
There's a reason it's called the "business cycle."
Robert B. Reich | March 25, 2009

I've got something of a reputation as an economic soothsayer. Last March I predicted the economy would slide off a cliff in six months. Six months later, it did. How did I know? I'll get to that later. Now, I'm predicting the economy will start to recover in the second quarter of next year.

First, look at the economic fundamentals -- such as historic ratios of home values to rents and incomes and of stock prices to corporate earnings. At the rate houses and stocks are now dropping, they'll be terrific bargains by the middle of next year. Meanwhile, given how fast business inventories are now dropping, firms will probably start rebuilding by then. Business investments in plants and equipment are now nearing a standstill, so by the third quarter of next year companies will need to replace lots of aging equipment. On the consumer side, the sharp falloff in spending on durables means lots of cars and appliances will begin wearing out by the middle of next year.

I guess even 'economic soothsayers' can stop patting themselves on the back long enough to change their predictions.

However I think the best part is Reich's inference in both articles that the economy won't turn around until "consumers" start spending money again. That seems a far cry from the current Democratic mantra that only President Obama's Good-Time, Happy, Nanny State Government® can spend us out of the recession.

To me, it sounds like Reich is making a great case for tax cuts, especially of the payroll variety. No better way in my mind of getting people to start spending more than to immediately put more money in each and every paycheck.

I doubt we will ever hear that out of the mouth of Robert Reich though. It might get him blacklisted from the tony parties in Washington, Manhattan, and Cambridge on the Charles.....

Going Green with Cap & Trade!

Great Video for the weekend from the Tax Foundation!



Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt

They can take my Atari from my Cold, Dead Hands

Instapundit was ruminating about the fact that you can by 1 Terabyte of storage now for under $100.

That got me thinking about my first home computer, which I also got for under $100.

I present to you, the Timex-Sinclair 1000:



The thing could almost pass for a Blackberry today...except that it has no screen. And on the issue of storage, it was unlimited! Or only limited to the number of blank cassette tapes you had lying around....

But the thing I always remember, was that we had to buy a memory expansion pack (seen attached in the pic above), and that got us all the way up to 16K of system memory!! Yes...16*K*... God bless the early '80s.

This beauty is still in cold storage somewhere in my parents house...so when my boy gets around to asking for his first computer......yes, you know where I am going with this....heh heh heh.

Independence Day v. Dependence Day

Thanks to Dinocrat (via Larwyn), we can read and compare the first Fourth of July speeches given by the last two Presidents.

I took the liberty of putting the two transcripts into Wordle, to see what might pop out.

So you tell me, which of the following word clouds actually looks like it's subject is 'Independence Day'?





Maybe some speechwriters have a different feel for what words people associate with Independence Day, but I have to tell you, word cloud #1 does not jump out at me. Word cloud #2 does.

I leave it up to you to figure out which speech was given in 2001 and which in 2009....

That Troublesome Constitution

Instapundit:

ANOTHER “CRISIS” REQUIRING EXTRAORDINARY MEASURES! US-Russian Arms Negotiators “Under the Gun,” Might Temporarily Bypass Senate Ratification for Treaty.

Here’s a hint — if you bypass Senate ratification, it’s not a treaty.

Funny, in an administration filled with lawyers and led by a former CONLAW Professor, there is a surprising ignorance about the Constitution.

Or perhaps it is just the opposite...perhaps they are *soooo* smart about the Constitution, that they have all sorts of nifty ways to get around it when it is an inconvenience.

Of course neither option is very comforting....

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Cold Front in Hades

It is a little colder in Hell today...though probably not frozen over.

Bill Maher has apologized to John McCain:

Remember during the campaign when John McCain attacked Obama for acting like a celebrity and we all laughed at the grumpy old shellshocked fool? Well, it turns out he was right. Sorry, senator. I'm sending a nice gift basket of high-fiber muffins your way.

The rest of the column isn't all that good, but there does seem to be a large majority in this country that would like the President to get the heck out of our televisions.

Someone needs to remind President Obama that he was a mid-season replacement show last January, the television season is now over, and he should take a break until September or October.....

Obama's Deurbanized Zones

It looks like Obama has a plan to help our cities survive and become greener at the same time:

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

Yeah, we should probably get rid of those pesky buildings in order to make room for all the tent cities we will need thanks to George Bush!

But I remember watching a documentary recently about the new wide open natural spaces in New York City, where wildlife runs free.



Oh, wait...That was 'I Am Legend'. My bad.....

But what the hey...the animals looked happy!

A Picture is Worth 1000 Words...

...or none at all.

People are making some hay about this photo of First Lady Michelle Obama



Now, as much as I like to bash her for her previously stated dislike for her lot in a wonderful life, and wearing expensive shoes to feed the homeless, and $100/lb steak at the White House...I can't bash her for this photograph.

Photos are but an instant in time. Sure they can reflect the emotion of a person, but they can just as easily be misleading. Emotions take moments, even seconds to express. Thus taking a sliver of that expression as it evolves can produce a snapshot of something entirely different.

Lets take a case in point... Do we really think that President Bush looks like this?







Of course not...these were but slivers in time during an emotional expression. But hey, the left sure did love to use them to advance their case that he was a dunce and a moron.

Now was the First Lady scowling at Carla Bruni...maybe...maybe not. We just don't know. (In fact if you ask me, based on the angles, I would say she is looking *behind* Bruni)

My ultimate point is, there will be plenty of fodder for which to criticize the hypocritical First Lady, but lets not start the meme that an alleged scowl proves that she is a mean bitch. To do so would be no better than how the left treated Bush....and we need to remind ourselves that we are better than them....

UPDATE: Thanks again to Instapundit for the Instalanche! I have also fixed the bad picture. One drawback to a job where you can't read 'blogspot' sites or access Blogger...I didn't know it was an issue until I got home tonight. For the same reason, I haven't read the comments yet....

UPDATE II: Well I certainly am getting beat up in the comments... But if you think I am soft on Obama, look around the rest of the blog and decide for yourself.

In the end, I don't necessarily disagree that she might be a shrew, or a cold-hearted bitch, or whatever else. But I was simply stating that based on my photographic experience, this picture doesn't "prove" any of that, no more than Bush's funny faces "proved" he was allegedly an idiot. If you want to spotlight the arrogance of the First Lady, use her words against her. There are certainly plenty of those to go around.

But ultimately I think there are plenty of bigger issues to go after besides discerning the temperament of the First Lady.

UPDATE III: Now almost 2 years since I published this post, I noticed that the Yahoo News image of Mrs Obama and Carla Bruni that I originally used was blank. A search of Yanhoo News images for "Obama + Bruni" now gets ZERO his. So it appears that someone put that official image down the memory hole. Thank goodness for the internet....there are plenty of other copies out there....