Obama was right out of upper-middle-class, liberal white guilt central casting: charismatic, young, half-African, an exotic name, hard-left credentials to the left of the hackish Hillary and Bill, full of platitudinous mush about hope and change and millions of green jobs, all directly imported from the faculty lounge, where gassing the car or changing light bulbs become complex endeavors.
And so we got an inexperienced, hard-left, messianic president whose job apparently was to enjoy life, politick, play golf, hang out at Marthas Vineyard, pick up prizes and awards, and turn the economy and foreign policy over to the Ivy League professoriate.
As I said, the madness abated in November 2010, and once again money is real and has to be paid back, debts are not stimulus, and the world abroad is not hopey-changy mush, but back again as a scary place.
Ill end with an anecdote about these years of madness. Out of the blue, an irate reader called me at my office this past Tuesday, feigning that he wished to talk about a strategic problem, but using the occasion to rant. After 20 seconds, I interrupted him and said the following:
Wait, wait, I have changed and now see how wrong I was in opposing your Obama. You see, he proved to us why Guantanamo was needed. That third war in Libya was necessary and I hope he goes into Yemen and the Sudan. Finally we got rid of the War Powers Act and the dreadful public campaign financing of presidential elections. Who else could have gotten gas up to $4 a gallon where it should be? Next hell get rid of those awful coal plants as we evolve to an 8-hour power day, saving us from global warming. Then look how well the economy recovered from Bushs. We finally have a president who accepted the sophisticated European model so we can enjoy life as it should be lived, as in Athens or Rome. The new $5 trillion in borrowing will make those fat cats pay higher taxes and that will mean more jobs for everyone. Airbus is better than Boeing anyway so why build planes in union-hating South Carolina? We can all buy Chryslers and GM now to support the workers and shun those awful Volvos and Mercedeses. And without any more oil or gas leasing we will soon have to use solar and wind. Most people dont need power anyway but waste it watching Oprah or grinding designer coffee beans.
Pakistan is accused of supporting terrorists (especially those attacking India), and of creating the Taliban in the early 1990s. In response, Pakistan points out that since September 11, 2001, the war on terror has killed nearly 40,000 Pakistanis, and cost Pakistan nearly $70 billion. But that is not the whole story. As with the original Taliban back in the early 1990s, the main source of current Taliban gunmen are the Madrasses (religious schools) in the tribal areas of Pakistan and northern Pakistan in general. Radio intercepts, prisoner interrogations and captured documents indicate that up to 60 percent of the Taliban found in southern Afghanistan, especially in Helmand province, are Pakistanis, most of them from these religious schools.
[Dawn] As news of the trouble in Bloody Karachi filters onto media outlets, the great tragedy is not the death of humans but it's the death of humanity that has added the element of the surreal to the entire situation.
Earlier weeks brought news of assassinations with the "victims" mostly being affiliated with 3 major political parties, and as part of the local gang war/political rivalry. Most people were 'okay' with the news. Let the mobsters kill each other was the word on the street. Imagine Al Pacino taking out Michael Corleone and you'll get what I mean. But since when did civilians, and that too children, become cannon fodder for them?
One can take a political look at this, but it doesn't make any sense to off your voter base. Any analysis of the issue would be purely conjecture and would never produce a unified result. Here's one of them to add to the Diaspora. Political parties at first started taking out "hits" against each other, well known party (read gang) members were the first ones to go. As rivalries and tempers flared, so did the trigger happy fingers and all of a sudden the melting pot that is Bloody Karachi went up in flames as the fight turned insane.
Pictures and videos of gunnies running openly in the streets served more than just to shock us. Anyone who saw those images questioned where the government's writ was, whatever little of it remains. Why isn't there a full scale crack down to ensure that the violence comes to a halt? Why aren't the people behind the political parties brought to task over what their hoodlums are doing? Well here's an explanation, the government is too busy worrying about having its corruption uncovered to care. Mr Zafar Qureshi bags all the attention of our parliamentarians (most of whom have had their hands in the cookie jar) and they do not have the time or the will to care for the ordinary civilians in Bloody Karachi. Of course Rehman Malik Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Näwaz Shärif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. flew into Bloody Karachi after midnight to "address" the situation, but whoever believes it is anything but a photo-op is deluded. A failing government wants to show it cares, however far from reality that may be.
What of the army and the rangers. Yes the hated duo, until of course the situation gets out of control and they have to be called in to manage affairs. Why aren't they stepping up? To prove to the masses that the civilian government is useless? To abide by the laws of the state to not go in until requested perhaps, but dear generals, our politicians are worried about the NICL scam, they don't have time to handle real issues that plague our nation.
All said and done, there a million possibilities to each question and very few answers. What is clear however is the sheer disregard being shown by the gangsters on the streets. Also visible is the unbelievable amount of contempt for the lives of ordinary citizens being shown by those in the corridors of power. Who cares less for the people's suffering is a question I dare not think about.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/10/2011 00:00 ||
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Al Pacino took out Michael Corleone? Must've been in Godfather IV...
I think we ought to be harder when minor functionaries of a failed leviathan reveal themselves to have a defective understanding of the role of government in free societies. Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary who came into office saying "we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe", has now offered up another soundbite for our times. On Friday, he defended the ban on Edison's iconic incandescent in economic terms:
We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money.
So what? I waste my own money on all kinds of things. If I wanted Steven Chu to have a say in it, I'd get Parson Bloomberg to marry us at Gracie Mansion.
More to the point, I wonder if Secretary Chu has any idea how stupid this argument sounds from an administration that has wasted more of other people's money than anybody else on the planet. Secretary Chu and his colleagues took a trillion dollars of "stimulus" and, for all the stimulating it did, might as well have given it in large bills to Charlie Sheen to snort coke off his hookers' bellies with. there's more...Who The Hell is Steven Chu and why isn't he ridden out of town, tarred and feathered?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/10/2011 11:46 ||
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So what? I waste my own money on all kinds of things. If I wanted Steven Chu to have a say in it, I'd get Parson Bloomberg to marry us at Gracie Mansion.
writing for Slate in April 2010
Why the U.S. recovery will be bigger, faster, and stronger than economists and politicians expect.
...The recovery came quickly because the public and private sectors reacted with great speed. In the 1990s, Japanese policymakers deliberated and delayed before embarking on a program that included interest-rate cuts, a huge stimulus program, expanded bank insurance, and the nationalization of failed institutions. In 2008 and 2009 it took the United States just 18 months to conduct the aggressive fiscal and monetary actions that Japan waited for 12 years to carry out. And the patient responded to the shock therapy, as the credit markets and financial sector bounced back. The author of this was Daniel Gross who did a column about three times a month for Slate in 2010.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
07/10/2011 00:16 ||
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Is Mr. Gross still with us? Or did he opt for the excellent whiskey and the borrowed shutter gun?
Posted by: S ||
07/10/2011 18:19 Comments ||
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Pain for many people, for a long time to come, was a sure bet even before Geithner cheated on his taxes. What Timmy & the Obaminators are doing is just making it worse. Google 'Karl Denninger' for a contrarian view.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dawn] As news of the trouble in 
I think we ought to be harder when minor functionaries of a failed leviathan reveal themselves to have a defective understanding of the role of government in free societies. Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary who came into office saying "we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe", has now offered up another soundbite for our times. On Friday, he defended the ban on Edison's iconic incandescent in economic terms:
