Krugman's America has a Soul?

Op-Ed Columnist - Reclaiming America’s Soul - NYTimes.com

Wow, Paulie is a pretty strong leftist, I always thought he would have been a strict "randomness is god" materialist. Why would nature, let alone a nation, suddenly develop "a soul", and what would it look like?

Well, certainly not the Constitution to Paulie -- I've not seen any limits on what he finds acceptable for confiscation of private property, let alone the power of the federal government. He seems to be very sure of himself though.

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

Never? Golly. Like what "moral ideals"? Hatred for Republicans? BJs for all in the oval office and perjury is cool as long as you are a Democrat? Buying votes with other peoples money? Avoiding putting caterpillars on terrorists?

Slick Willie was doing foreign renditions, and it was the CIA that asked for the ability to use "enhanced interrogation", not the Bush administration. Anybody want to take a guess how Slick might have handled any request for executive guidance on interrogation methods? I'm thinking "don't ask, don't tell" was probably a really important Slickster policy for a lot more than what we know about.

For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

WOW, that is quite a paragraph -- first of all, Paulie knows "facts". He has defined the line for torture for starters, and there is no need to write any memos trying to figure it out. Writing memos is beside the point -- the fact that the previous 4 CIA directors as well as the current one did not want even the memos released is a "non-point". It was BUSH that INSTITUTED the "torture policy" -- the fact that the CIA REQUESTED it has nothing to do with it. What is more, Pauli knows WHY! It was to extract "false confessions" to justify the war!! Man, that is really amazing -- how come both the Senate and the house, including most Democrats voted for the war WITHOUT any such confessions at all??

How mushy does one's head have to be to listen to this guy? I would love to see Pauli spend say "15 min" pointing out his "vision of the soul of America" to old General US Grant and General Sherman in a nice Union camp after one of the major battles. Suppose they ever had any captured rebel soldiers that needed to be asked a few questions? Suppose they wrote a lot of "memos"?

My guess is that Pauli would pee his pants the first instant Grant or Sherman focused his attention on him. His inflated ego would just start folding in on itself as he realized that America really did have a soul, but it was once so real and powerful that just being exposed to a couple of embodiments of it would be too much for the sort of maggot that now infests the rapidly decaying carcass of our once great nation.

Freddie Foster?

Freddie Mac's Acting CFO Found Dead - WSJ.com

As soon as I heard about this "apparent suicide", I thought back to the Clinton years. For some strange reason, Democrat administrations seem to have a lot of "tragic events" -- the Vince Foster "suicide" was one of the marque events of the Clinton regeime, but there were plenty of others -- Ron Brown dying in a plane crash, a plane crash with a bunch of Secret Services guys on it coming back from a Presidential vacation in Jackson hole are a couple that come to mind.

The Democrats have a lot of Union and Mob ties, and I often wonder if any of those are "contributors" to any of these tragic events. The MSM has been keeping the fact that Democrats were driving the easing up of all the credit restrictions since the '70s, and especially that all of these finanacial firms have been pouring money into the democrat party by the bucket load since at least the early 2Ks. Why?

"Follow the money" is a standard MSM line when the Republicans have any power, but right now there seems to be much less concern in doing that.

Would BO, Dodd and Barney Frank be willing to have someone killed that might be going to something stinky that linked some of the "wrong people" to the pure and shining Democrat party of the people? Nah, of course not. To even consider that, one has to be so foolish to think that Global Warming is questionable, nations might not become prosperous by just running humongous deficits and not everyone will be nice to you just because you bow to them and apologize for existing.

We don't have any time for that radical thinking today. Everything is fine.

Barocky Road

In honor of the 44th President of the United States, Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a new flavor: "Barocky Road."

Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes.

The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient.

The nuts and flakes are all very bitter and hard to swallow.

The cost is $100.00 per scoop.

When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful waffle cone, but then the ice cream is taken away and given to the person in line behind you.

Thus you are left with an empty wallet, no change, holding an empty cone, with no hope of getting any ice cream.

Are you feeling stimulated?

BO Knows Better

RealClearPolitics - The Interrogation Memorandums

One of the terrible things about Bush was that he was "arrogant", which is another way of saying that he didn't kneel to the left on every issue (only massive spending and prescription drugs). Well, that is sinful, you have to agree with those lefties 100%, they don't believe in diversity of thought.

The four most recent CIA Directors-John Deutch, George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden-all recommended against the release of these memorandums. President Obama's own newly appointed Director of CIA, Leon Panetta, also recommended against releasing the documents. Yet President Obama, in a seemingly relentless effort to discredit his predecessor, George W. Bush, made the memorandum available to the public anyway.

See, BO, the failed Community Organizer from Chicago knows more about gathering intelligence than the previous 4 CIA directors (2 of them appointed by Clinton) as well as his own current director, Leon Panetta. BO must be a joy to work for -- if you aren't going to take the advice of the folks you hired to do a job on a self-inflicted wound like the release of these memos, it is hard to imagine how you will have any working relationship at all when the time comes where other forces are dictating the game, lives are on the line, and outcomes are uncertain. Not surprising though, BO has never led anything in his life, he has probably never learned "you need to dance with the one you brung".

BO is obviously still a WHOLE lot more interested in defeating Republicans than al Quaeda. Unfortunately, the most likely outcome of his actions is going to be a lot of dead Americans. I'm not sure if he figures "we deserve it" and he will just do more aopology tours after a major city is a cinder, or we are burying 100's of K smallpox dead in trenches, or what. I guess as long as he can win the "torture" PR campaign, his position is "whatever".

Dear Mr President

Dear Mister President:

Thank you for helping my neighbors with their mortgage payments.You know the one's down the street who in the good times refinanced their house several times and bought SUV's, ATV's, RV's, a pool, a big screen, two Wave Runners and a Harley.

But I was wondering, since I am now expected to pay my mortgage and theirs, too, could you arrange for me to borrow their Harley now and then?

They also need help with their credit cards, when will you expect me to start making those payments for them too? I operate with a balanced budget, something neither you nor they seem to understand, but it requires planning and matching income to outflow.

P.S. I almost forgot - they told me they didn't file their income tax return this year. Should I go ahead and file for them or will you be appointing them to cabinet posts?

"Agressive" Interrogation Works?

Bush-era interrogation may have worked, Obama official says - CNN.com

Tell me it isn't so. I thought everyone knew that:

1. The Bush Administration used TORTURE
   
2. It was COMPLETELY INEFFECTIVE!! (and they knew it)
   

Now the media generally didn't go all the way to telling you WHY they would continue doing this, but the answers seemed obvious to me:

1. They were stupid
2. They were evil
   
3. Most likely both.
   

But wait, now we find out that "torture" was "something that didn't leave a mark". Putting a fuzzy caterpillar on your terrorist that was afraid of bugs, THAT was acceptable! (but not if it was a stinging caterpillar). In the Clinton administration we pretty much established that it wasn't sex unless pregnancy and multiple births ensued. Now in the BO administration we have discovered that little kids at picnics are regularly torturing their friends if they put a fuzzy caterpillar on them? What's more, the evil lawyers that tried to claim that such was NOT torture ought to be PROSECUTED for their opinion.

I stand corrected, I guess under THIS definition of "torture", it IS really rampant in America -- at summer camp, in the back yard, EVERYWHERE. I've heard that some of the kids (no doubt destined to become evil Republicans) will even make the claim that the caterpillar bites/stings to try to terrorize their victims more! The SADISTS!!

But wait! "aggressive interrogation" works! Wow, what a concept. It is like when the teacher comes into the classroom, sees an insult written on the board and asks "who did it"? According to what the BO administration has now figured out after careful study, if the teacher was to say "nobody leaves this room until I find out", that MIGHT have a better chance of working.

I hope we do a government study on that. Maybe they should try to figure out if people respond to incentives / disincentives in general? Finding out that they did would obviously be a huge piece of new information to the BO administration.

Memo's To Be Proud Of

The Case for the ‘Torture Memos’ by Rich Lowry on National Review Online

I've read a few of the dueling "torture books" -- on the left, the "horror" of any sort of treatment short of a comfy chair, nice bed and three squares a day is of course barbaric. The very idea that any sort of "coercion" at all would be used is simply unconscionable. If that is your standard and you want to accept the consequences of it, then so be it. I really hope they see the treatment of "right wing extremists" as being worthy of such high standards. They seem to be already calling for highly paid Wall Street types that they deem to be responsible for the financial meltdown to be "taken out and shot", "horse whipped", "hung", or some other not very nice sentiment. I'm certain those desires are meant to be figurative, but it is odd how much gusto they seem to be able to gather against those nasty Wall Street types. I wonder if it would help if they realized those folks are 90%+ Democrats and gave tons of money to both BO and the Democrat party to help get control of Washington?

Of course, the stogy issue from the right is to make "torture" almost boring -- we put our special forces guys through waterboarding to help them get familiar with the approach in case it is used on them. Most of them have likely had a couple "boo boos" already in their careers -- fractures, contusions, lacerations, hypothermia, deydration, sleep deprivation, etc, etc, so they have seen some of that more painful side of life. It seems that pain is pretty unavoidable for those that get away from the keyboard / tv / high horse from time to time, so the issue sort of becomes "how much pain" pretty quickly.

Thus, the memos -- "where is the line"? As Lowry points out, in all of human history, and even most all of the countries in the world today, any such thought process isn't even an issue. If one decides that they have a responsibility to their fellow citizens to protect them from folks intent on killing then by any means possible, then what one is interested in is methods that work within some boundary that makes sense. Perfection isn't even a consideration.

I'm reminded of surgeons -- no question, even today with anesthetic, they inflict some severe pain -- in civil war times, the pain often had to be beyond unbearable. They don't WANT to inflict pain any more than a US interrogator, but they know that to not to the surgery is going to be worse than doing it. So too an interrogator, they only want the information, the pain is just a side effect. One would think that your average liberal utilitarian "what provides the most good for the greatest number", and "man is the measure of all things" would not be so bothered. I'm not sure there is any pain that could be inflicted on a baby in a partial birth abortion that would even give them any pause at all, and that has no prospect of saving any lives, only of taking one.

So the memos drag on about using a caterpillar (did these folks ever go camping?), how far you can push the waterboarding, and using using special "walls" to make a loud noise so the person thinks they are hurt worse then they are. Now that BO has spoiled all the surprise, getting captured by the US must be at worst as scary as a fun house where you can sit and watch everyone come out the other side. Now our enemies know that US policy never did allow any "lasting injury", and the new policy appartently doesn't allow any detainees to feel more stressed than your average Carribean cruise.

I'm wondering if we are going to maintain this attitude when we lose a city, a stadium, or a few million people to germ or poison attack? One would have thought that 9-11 would be enough for a little "learning experience", but apparently not. Lessons are so quickly forgotten by some parts of our population. I can kind of understand forgetting 32-53 and 65-83, but 2001 is < 8 years ago. One would think we would have more national memory than that. "The short and the dead" I guess.

Those Nasty Christians

State retracts militia report | News-Leader.com | Springfield News-Leader

Gotta love this.

Missouri Highway Patrol Superintendent James F. Keathley ordered the Missouri Information Analysis Center to "permanently cease distribution" of the Feb. 20 report, which labels fundamentalist Christians, members of third-party political movements, strict followers of the U.S. Constitution and people who oppose taxes, abortion and illegal immigration as possible members of militias.

Gee, I wonder if a state had profiled say "Muslims, Hispanics, and Blacks" as potential "terrorists, illegal aliens, and drug users" there would have been any outcry from Federal anti-discrimination and "hate speech" types? Suppose that would have lasted 2 months????

Oh wait -- Christians, Ron Paul followers, folks that believe the Constitution means something, think they are better judges of what to do with their money than the government DO sound like REALLY radical types!!!

Uh, wonder where the ACLU is on the profiling thing in this case???

Facts and Reason on Carbon

Bound to Burn by Peter W. Huber, City Journal Spring 2009

This article is long and slightly technical, but it probably does about as good a job of summarizing a fairly complex issue as can reasonably be done.

First of all, what we already HAVE been doing since roughly the Carter era is making decisions that hurt our economy and while they MAY help OUR emissions, end up hurting world net emissions (stopping nuclear, developing less coal, failing to do oil shale):

Cut to the chase. We rich people can’t stop the world’s 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach. We can’t even make any durable dent in global emissions—because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy. What we can do, if we’re foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.

So, most of our energy saving efforts shoot both ourselves and the world emissions in the foot. But, as the liberals often say, "you have to do SOMETHING" -- they nearly always prefer counterproductive action to a relatively benign status quo. It is just the way they are wired.

The oil-coal economics come down to this. Per unit of energy delivered, coal costs about one-fifth as much as oil—but contains one-third more carbon. High carbon taxes (or tradable permits, or any other economic equivalent) sharply narrow the price gap between oil and the one fuel that can displace it worldwide, here and now. The oil nasties will celebrate the green war on carbon as enthusiastically as the coal industry celebrated the green war on uranium 30 years ago.

Thirty years ago, the case against nuclear power was framed as the “Zero-Infinity Dilemma.” The risks of a meltdown might be vanishingly small, but if it happened, the costs would be infinitely large, so we should forget about uranium. Computer models demonstrated that meltdowns were highly unlikely and that the costs of a meltdown, should one occur, would be manageable—but greens scoffed: huge computer models couldn’t be trusted. So we ended up burning much more coal. The software shoe is on the other foot now; the machines that said nukes wouldn’t melt now say that the ice caps will. Warming skeptics scoff in turn, and can quite plausibly argue that a planet is harder to model than a nuclear reactor. But that’s a detail. From a rhetorical perspective, any claim that the infinite, the apocalypse, or the Almighty supports your side of the argument shuts down all further discussion.

So BO has promised to do carbon taxes and "invest" 100's of Billions in wind and solar. The 3rd world is doing coal for 3 cents a Kwh. Wind is 15 cents, Solar is 30 (when the wind blows and the sun shines) -- so even though we have no path at all to getting to the capacity that we require, we would be paying 5 and 10x as much for energy as the folks we are competing with IF we could get it that way (which we can't). Want to make a bet what is going to continue to happen to our jobs? We are going to pay other Americans inflated government salaries to hamstring us with a sunk-cost in ultra expensive energy for decades to come. Our major ongoing cost of production, communication and even entertainment is going to be 5-10x that of our competitors. I wonder who wins at that game??

Shoveling wind and sun is much, much harder. Windmills are now 50-story skyscrapers. Yet one windmill generates a piddling 2 to 3 megawatts. A jumbo jet needs 100 megawatts to get off the ground; Google is building 100-megawatt server farms. Meeting New York City’s total energy demand would require 13,000 of those skyscrapers spinning at top speed, which would require scattering about 50,000 of them across the state, to make sure that you always hit enough windy spots. To answer the howls of green protest that inevitably greet realistic engineering estimates like these, note that real-world systems must be able to meet peak, not average, demand; that reserve margins are essential; and that converting electric power into liquid or gaseous fuels to power the existing transportation and heating systems would entail substantial losses. What was Mayor Bloomberg thinking when he suggested that he might just tuck windmills into Manhattan? Such thoughts betray a deep ignorance about how difficult it is to get a lot of energy out of sources as thin and dilute as wind and sun.

It’s often suggested that technology improvements and mass production will sharply lower the cost of wind and solar. But engineers have pursued these technologies for decades, and while costs of some components have fallen, there is no serious prospect of costs plummeting and performance soaring as they have in our laptops and cell phones. When you replace conventional with renewable energy, everything gets bigger, not smaller—and bigger costs more, not less. Even if solar cells themselves were free, solar power would remain very expensive because of the huge structures and support systems required to extract large amounts of electricity from a source so weak that it takes hours to deliver a tan.

There is some complexity here, but the bottom line, as in most things where the BO position is followed is "we're screwed".

BO Attacks On Pirates

The BO administration is claiming that there was an unfortunate misunderstanding relative to his orders on the Somali Pirates.

Apparently he thought he was authorizing "a TAX on Pirates" and it was fatally misconstrued as the authorization of "attacks".

BO will be traveling to Somalia to bow deeply to as many leaders as possible, apologize profusely and seek agreement on more taxes for high income Pirates.

Safety With BO

"On a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009."

One thing that Democrats excel at even beyond the "political normal" for any politician is inconsistency. We have heard 100's or even thousands of times how "Bush made us less safe" -- and of course, one of the ways that he did that was through "torture". Bush and Cheney were and are evil men that made the world hate us, and one of the reasons that the world hates us is "torture".

What was more interesting was the accompanying statement by the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, trying to justify Obama's decision--or at least put it "into perspective." The perspective, the context, is that in the months after 9/11, "we did not have a clear understanding of the enemy we were dealing with, and our every effort was focused on preventing further attacks that would kill more Americans. It was during these months that the CIA was struggling to obtain critical information from captured al Qaida leaders, and requested permission to use harsher interrogation methods. The OLC memos make clear that senior legal officials judged the harsher methods to be legal."

Blair continues: "Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos and those guidelines."

So: We were once in danger. Now we live in "a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009." Now, in April 2009, Obama's Director of National Intelligence seems to be saying, we're safe.

So either those horrible methods actually worked to put those dark days behind us, or all that was required was the sweetness and light of the divine presence of BO to make us safe.

We have now decided to tell every terrorist in the world "what we won't do"; for what? For the "benefit" of being able to re-state that BO finds Bush and Cheney to be evil? They won the election, they have said it over and over, when will they believe that they have made that point enough so that those that find their positions to be convincing are convinced, and those of us who are much less enamored with the divine power of BO are not likely to be convinced by further blandishments.

What the evil Bush and Cheney did "made us less safe" according to BO. On that, we are clear. It was evil and it didn't work, that is their position. Now, somehow, we are "more safe". How are we "more safe" than no terrorist attacks on the US since 9-11?? Are we now somehow metaphysically secure to not even have a cause for any concern due to the holy power of BO? I don't know, they don't say -- it seems odd that pirates took a US ship for the first time in 200 years, we are sending more troops to Afghanistan, and we have to shoot at folks from Predators in Pakistan. Is their a flaw in his most holy BO protective essence?

What will convince me of the correctness of the "BO Doctrine" of apology and blaming the past" will be RESULTS. Statements from al Quaeda to the majesty of BO and their desire to serve him humbly, or simply silence and a world wide reduction of violence in addition to no attacks against the US. As a citizen of the US, I find a "blame America" strategy to to be costly in that while there are no limits on how high we might have risen, there will eventually be some doormat level that we can't manage to sink below. When we are apologizing for existing and drawing breath, the next step could be painful.

We have fallen a good long way since "the change" started in '06, but seeing the acceleration since January, I'm afraid there is a lot of falling left to do.

The stench of BO's America -- a nation sorry for it's very existance.

Kooks, Demagogues, and Right Wingers On Tax Day

A Short Citizen's Guide to Kooks, Demagogues, and Right-Wingers On Tax Day | Robert Reich's Blog

The nice thing about the left is that they are always so caring and respectful--they believe whole heartedly in diversity, and as the intellectual cream of the crop, they know that diversity of thought is the only kind that really counts. That is why they are so open minded.

A buddy of mine asked me which of the key messages of the tea parties will resonate with the general public? That they are deranged, or that they are dangerous? I responded that with something like 80% of the public, even though it looks like millions turned out in protest, what will resonate is "Tea Party"? Who did that, and did anyone show up? I looked out on CNN today a couple times, not a word about the tax protests.

Mr Reich, and a few of the more radical of the lefties are of course up in arms about anyone showing up from the right to protest for any reason. What right do those people have to a different opionion? Well, to listen to Bob or most lefties, none at all. Our founding fathers created a nation dedicated to total thought agreement and maximum enjoyment of the payment of taxes. The essense of "American" is to transfer as much of your income as possible to the government to redistribute to any bank, deadbeat mortgate holder, defunct brokerage house, failing unionized car manufacturer, or just someone that has less money than you for whatever reason. The reasons we are all Americans is that we believe in the government taking as much of our money as they want, and anyone that questions that is simply "not patriotic".

I was unable to attend the local tea party as I had a business engagement that evening, but I did get to drive by. Looked like in excess of 1K people peacefully and quite quietly gathered with signs that were generally pretty tame -- "Trillions in Debt: CHAINS we can believe in" was pretty good I thought. What a far cry from Code Pink throwing buckets of blood on people or all manner of "Bush is a Terrorist", etc anti-war signs. Cindy Sheehan in a ditch outside the Bush ranch in the summer of '05 was a national story for weeks. One woman and some occasional hangers on saying "get out of Iraq" was worth hours of coverage, millions of people questioning the spending of many trillions of dollars is worth virtually none. Our press has no biases.

I shudder to think what would have happened if the Bush administration had come out with a Homeland Security finding on "Left Wing Anti-War Protesters" the week of some sort of planned anti-war demonstration. The press would have been apocolyptic for weeks -- and I'm not sure that if such a thing had happened, I might somewhat agree with them. Surprise, the BO administration comes out with a finding on "Right Wing Extremeism" on Monday of this week. Not a single MSM invocation of "chilling", even when the report goes so far as to indicate that "returning servicemen are a special threat". Oh, really? I thought the "demean the soldiers" went out with Vietnam -- apparently not.

A lot of the lefties seem to think that if you didn't protest a $400 Billion deficit, you can't protest $2 Trillion deficit. Huh? If I don't get mad over someone driving 40MPH, I'm not allowed to say anything about someone driving 200MPH? If I don't bitch about someone having 4 beers, I'm some sort of a hypocrite if I say that 20 is too many? There seems to have been a sudden development of some sort of logic that would receive rather shrill laughter were the shoe on the other foot. I believe that it is supposed to be the claim of the left that the right has all these "hard line views" and doesn't understand "gray". Most Republicans I know are "unhappy" with any deficits at all, were VERY pleased when the combination of the Repubilcan congress and Bill Clinton gave us a surplus, and VERY dissappointed when the combination for Bush and a Republican congress gave us deficits.

BO is exceeding the entrie Bush 8 year deficit spending in 4 months, and will exceed the entire deficit spending of all US presidents prior to him in 8 years by his own rosy estimates. The protests are not primarily about CURRENT taxation, they are about the DIRECTION that our country has turned. Some of us believe that we have turned in a direction that calls into question the very meaning of "America" in ways that may not be possible to ever recover. Are we right? Only the future will tell, but at one time we were a country where "diversity of thought" was considered a very good and prudent thing. We believed in not only an economic market, but even more importantly in a market of "idea competion" where concerned citizens were willing to stand up and take a postiion, even if (and sometimes especially) if it was contrary to the views of the masses.

Has that day passed? Maybe, but I'm proud to cast my lot with the "Kooks, Demagogues and Right Wingers".

Core Liberal Argument

Excellent coverage of the most effective liberal argument. 

SHUT UP!

BO Really Is Historic!

Hostage captain recaptured by pirates after dramatic escape attempt - Times Online

Hey, BO makes history! First US ship that pirates have taken in 200 years!!

More details have emerged about Wednesday’s dramatic seizure — and release — of the 509ft Maersk Alabama, which became the first US merchant vessel to be taken by pirates since the North African Barbary Wars two centuries ago.

The MSM doesn't seem to be making as much of a deal out of the historic nature of this one would expect! I got to read quite a bit about the Barbary Pirates in  "Six Frigates".

BO's Country?

RealClearPolitics - Articles - It's Your Country Too, Mr. President

Charles has another great column, but I disagree with his premise about the US being BO's country. BO seems to be more proud of being Luo (his tribe). He is very proud of his Kenyan heritage, but he seems quite ambivalent about white folks.

The MSM seems be in continuous worship mode and somehow seems to think that the BO trip to Europe was a "success" -- in what way? He got no stimulus money from those goverments, no help in Afghanistan, no help on Iran, and even less than no help on N Korea after saying:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

So what was the "strong international response"? Nothing!!! The security council couldn't even agree that Korea had done anything wrong. BO was snubbed 100%!!! Totally ineffectual with the UN, the body that he declared would be so important to his foreign policy. How does the MSM treat that abject failure? They don't -- "hail BO the magnificent".

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

It is pretty clear what BO meant by being "a citizen of the world" during the campaign -- he seeks to apologize for the country that he was elected to lead. It is hard to imagine a sadder commentary on where we have fallen.