ANGST!

Perhaps it is because of a need to fill the 24/7 news cycles of cable television but it seems to me that there is a growing number of stressful situations that are gripping the news reporting in this country. What once might have been a column on page B22 of the NY Times is now the hysterical lead on many internet blogs and cable TV talking-heads shows.

For instance, to mention but a few:
- Swine flu (or H1N1) -- In a normal year about 35,000 people die in this country from the flu. So far one person has died here from the Mexican swine influenza “pandemic” and yet our citizens are in a media-induced panic. Go figure.
- War in Afghanistan/Pakistan – Barack Obama has made this war a centerpiece of his '“Overseas Contingency Operation” (no longer “War on Terror”). So far we are not getting the daily casualty reports and dovish hysteria like we once did in Iraq under Bush. But I predict that, within 6-12 months, this conflict will be just as media assaulted.
- Somali pirates – This nuisance, it seems, could be wiped out with a few Predator drone strikes, but frustratingly lingers in the cable news cycle like a bad case of teenage acne.
- Banking crisis -- Since last October, this has been a headline grabber with the latest worry being the “stress test” which all banks recently passed (maybe not?).
- Unemployment – the media’s focus on the unemployment rate started under the Bush administration, but now the Labor Department's breathless monthly update has become a reason for the stock market to swoon.
- Nuclear proliferation in Iran/North Korea – The media is more than happy to go partners with Amadinajab and Kim Jong Il to keep their audiences in a perpetual state of angst over when and where these tin-hat dictators are going to drop the big one on the civilized world.
- Torture – the only thing more tortured than a water-boarded terrorist is the hypocritical rhetoric fanned by the American fourth estate.
- Disappearing U.S. auto industry – daily hand-wringing is the recipe for this naturally occurring bit of financial capitalism.
- Global warming – ‘nuf said.

Svengali

Al Gore is and has been playing a very high-stakes game … and so far has been winning (an Oscar, Nobel prize. etc.). His clarion calls for the reduction of man-made carbon emissions to stop the march of global warming, sea-level rising, and species extinctions has captured the imagination and slavish following of scientists, politicians and other naïve children worldwide. He, along with Barak Obama and Nancy Pelosi, have called for the elimination of all fossil fuels as the basis for our country’s energy production … to be replaced by wind, solar and other “renewables” … but, strangely, not nuclear. (One might even say that these three alarmists are quite quixotic by both literally and figuratively tilting at windmills.)

But, I am not here to argue the pros and cons of global warming but rather present some questions about Al Gore’s future emotional stability. Popular opinion in favor of man-made global warming has begun to wane in the light of increasing scientific skepticism and a willingness to question the Gore and UN dogma (see Climate Debate ). This has shifted our former Vice President and inventor of the internet into high gear. He has recently come back to his congressional playpen to pontificate some more on his emotional environmental crusade (see Gore Testifies and Alone). Now, as Al Gore sees his audience slipping away, he seems to be getting more and more frenetic (“The Earth has a fever!”) And, what will Gore do if and when his preachings about our ecological demise are finally and fully debunked? One might hope for his mental health that, like Malthus’s crackpot ideas about world over-population, this day of his reckoning does not happen until he has left this Earth … to its own self-regulating devices. At which point his place in history, IMHO, will become a very sad footnote.

Earth Day

Let's all celebrate ... like sending a recycled paper e-mail message to Al Gore.

No Sulphur Smell Now

An enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Coast Guard

Al Sharpton has done it once again. He has called the Somali pirates a “voluntary Coast Guard”. See: Al Sharpton’s fantasy. Now, as if making up multiple media lies about Towanda Brawley, castigating the Duke University soccer team with racial invective, and standing by in 1995 while a Harlem crowd was urged to “Burn down the Jew store” which killed seven of its employees … was not enough. Now Al baby is yanking another warped fantasy out of his twisted mind. Why this man has one second of time on any cable news program is indicative of the degree to which TV producers will sell their souls for ratings.

Or are the Somali buccaneers “ecological warriors” as quoted in the Huffington Post (read further in the above hyperlink.) I guess they must just be trying to mitigate global warming? And we killed three of them for heaven's sake!

Chicken Hawk?

Since Barack Obama has never served in the U.S. armed services and since our current President also courageously gave the direct order on Saturday morning allowing the U.S. Navy to use deadly force if Captain Phillips (being held by the Somali pirates) was in imminent danger and since professional Navy Seal snipers shot dead three of these pirates on Sunday morning and since the Somali pirate organization has sworn future revenge on U.S. nationals for this action … can we now call President Obama a “chicken hawk” … like we did to so many non-veteran higher-ups in the previous administration who dared stir up the Islamic terrorist wasp nest? (Just to keep things balanced.)

Atomic Ant

Barack Obama has made a dramatic commitment to “alternative energy” to combat that bubble-headed bugaboo “greenhouse gasses.” Apparently to him this only means solar and wind energy (and possibly geothermal) methodologies. He has also vowed to put out of business the utilities that burn coal for electricity (see Bankrupting Coal ). He also said in his campaign that he would “consider” expanding our nuclear electrical generating capabilities. We currently get about 20% of our electricity from nuclear power plants (see: United States Nuclear) whereas France (see: French Nuclear) gets over 75% and Japan (see: Japan Nuclear) gets over 35% of their electricity from same. And many of our nuclear power plants are getting quite old and do not take advantage of many of the advances made in this technology over the last twenty years.

But two other facts have recently been revealed to me (on CSPAN this past weekend) that show that Obama may have briefly considered expanding nuclear energy … but he has just as quickly rejected it. Witness:

- The recent $789 billion Stimulus Bill contains no governmental loan guarantees for building more nuclear power plants. Because of the incredible high capital investment required, without these guarantees, it is quite unlikely that any new nuclear plants will be built during Obama’s tenure.

- The Energy Department, under Obama, has recently stopped construction on the long-term nuclear waste storage facility being built at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Storing nuclear waste has one of the primary barriers to our expansion of nuclear power generation.
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To put this problem in its proper perspective, take some time perusing the following table of energy consumption trends in the United States (see U.S. Energy Consumption. Print it out and put it on your refrigerator). Now these are numbers put out by the U.S. Government … so they are not more smoke being blown up our rear ends by Sierra Club tree-huggers. From this table it is very clear that, for coal generation of electricity to be replaced by solar arrays, wind farms, and geothermal energy, it would require an expansion of these latter three sources by over 30,000 %. This is pure fantasy. (Again, please, please take the time to study this data.) Are Obama and his advisors reading this data? If they are and if they persist with their fairy-tale green energy policies, then they are pulling the biggest scam in political history. And this is a scam that may well cost our economy its future and cause our future generations to retreat to cave-dwelling.

One last thought – how come Iran can pursue nuclear power generation (even if just a chimera) with liberal assent … while we are denied this option?

The Enabler

I do give President Obama credit for his good intentions toward Old Europe. (God help us if he were making these mistakes on purpose.) But, it doesn’t take much to view Old Europe as a pack of spoiled children. On his G20/NATO swing Obama has kissed the cuffs and hems of all the leaders of Old Europe and, other than fawning and adoring groupie audiences, what has he gotten in return? -- certainly no real help in Afghanistan, continued tut-tuting about America’s role in the world’s financial crisis, and an opportunity to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a bunch of Brussels bureaucrats who want to tell our financial institutions how to operate. Excuse me … it is not like the European banks did not swallow the financial-derivative bait with as much gusto and avarice as their American counterparts … only to be bailed our by the U.S. taxpayer (with the AIG pass-throughs). Obama said recently in Strasbourg, France that we Americans have been “dismissive, even derisive" of Old Europe. To my mind we have not been “dismissive, even derisive" enough.

Twice in this last century the United States has spent considerable blood and treasure to stop Europe’s self-annulations. Then we helped them rebuild after the Armageddon of World War II. We watched in painful silence as they dismantled their national defenses and forced the United States to become the world’s policemen and the only counterparty to Communist threats. (This alone permitted them their numerous self-indulgent social engineering experiments.) We tolerated their (and the Far East’s) thumb-on-the-scale trading practices that helped deplete our monetary reserves. We have bowed to their snobbish cackling about the threat of global warming and are poised to allow them even to tax our domestic energy usage. We have put up with the monstrous graft and kickback schemes between their politicians and the dictators in the Middle East and Africa. We have squirmed as they let NATO go sickly and they have done squat to help us stop the spread of nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. And we have borne their pompous preachings on how really awful we have been in trying to protect them and the rest of the world from Islamic extremism.

Posh! Enough of this enabling of European effetism! I sincerely hope that this G20/NATO trip will cause the scales fall from Obama’s eyes and he will finally start encouraging the United States to act more in its own self interest … that is, at least until such time as Old Europe grows up and a pair.

The French Connection

The above is a view from Germany looking over the Rhine River to Strasbourg, France and seeing the results of the anti-everything riots that are taking place during the NATO summit meetings there. Now France has been reluctant to commit anything meaningful to NATO’s efforts to stop the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan … much to President Obama chagrin (see French Reluctance). However, to me, this rioting by Code Pink or Act Up rowdies or whatever provides to France the perfect opportunity to kill deux oiseaus avec l’un rocher.

The answer: Send in droves of riot police and round up these radicals by the hundreds or even thousands. Then try them quickly and give them the option of 30 years in prison (for aiding and abetting felonious arson) or joining the French Foreign Legion. When most chose the latter course, assemble this ragtag mob into crack units of mercenaries by training the soles off their feet. Then send them to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. If they refuse to kill their soul mates, then court-martial them and, like Laurel and Hardy in that French Foreign Legion movie, shoot them at dawn. After a few of said punishments, we should then have a real committed French fighting force to aid our GIs in their Afghan mission. And we might also start to like the French other than for their cuisine.

Do I seem too harsh?

Never Mind

Gilda Radner once played a character on “Saturday Night Live” called Emily Litella. This Emily Litella generally would sit with another news anchor on “Weekend Update,” and would read a seemingly serious editorial. She invariably misunderstood some word or issue in this editorial and would go off at length on this misunderstanding … bringing up irrelevant nonsense after irrelevant nonsense. Finally her co-anchor would tell Emily Litella that her original jumping off point was in error … at which point Emily Litella would shrug and say, "Never mind.”

Yesterday, I wrote a bit of a puff blog on Barack Obama, complementing him on his contribution to the convivial nature of the G20 economic summit in London (see: New World Order). Now, today we see Obama has given a speech in Strasbourg, France (see French Town Meeting) in which he went out of his way to disrespect the country over which he governs. He said that the United States:

- had often behaved arrogantly towards Europe, and had been “dismissive, even derisive",
- “shares the blame [for the world economic meltdown] ... we've just emerged from an era marked by [our] irresponsibility".
- “now embodies [in him] the new idealism and the new fight for progress … on climate change, on clearing up the financial and economic mess left by his predecessors, and all the other mega-problems.”
- has shown “a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world."
- "made a mistake by allowing the Taliban to reemerge [in Afghanistan] during the height of the Iraq war."

So, Obama still can’t resist, on foreign soil no less, in berating the United States for its flaws and in believing that he will lead our country back on the path that Europeans will find more palatable.

Re: my new respect for Obama’s leadership, “Never mind.”

New World Order

It appears President and Michelle Obama have helped create a new conviviality among world leaders. See the G20 Results. Michelle Obama snookered up to Queen Elizabeth in a very forward but seemingly accepted manner. See Hug a Mug. And Barack Obama unexpectedly bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia. See Your Highness. But these gaffs aside, our President did help calm the waters between China and France over dealing with financial tax havens (see “G20 Results” reference). Even Dmitry Medvedev of Russia hailed Obama as “my new comrade” (at once, both a fraternal and frightening appellation.) But, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, the G20 world economic summit seems to have been a winner for the good ole U.S.A.

Time will, of course, tell. But at least it appears that the world has endorsed our smiling savior as its new matinee idol. And I will acknowledge that this group embrace is a dollop of gravy on an otherwise dreary meal of economic gristle.

G20

The G20 economic summit is meeting tomorrow in London and there are considerable protestations … marching, breaking windows and invading buildings. Here is a sample of the kind of demonstrations that are taking place. But, there is one problem. It is Socialism and Communism that means not working. But, Capitalism means working your tuckus off. Somebody should really clue these radicals in. By the bye, I wonder how many of these extremists have real jobs?