Twit in Chief

Why is President Barack Obama twittering? More specifically, why is President Obama twittering the following message on the Monday following the exposure of his administration as first responder hacks in the face of a libtard's bread and butter issue of environmental rape and slaughter and the attempted car bombing of Times Square by a "middle-aged white guy" and the riotous anti-anti-illegal immigration demonstrations spurred in part by the President's own fear of his daughter's unfinished ice cream cones melting in the curb where her father lays beaten and bloody after being "harrassed" by Arizona law enforcement:

At 4:30 p.m. ET, join David Plouffe for a strategy session on #OFA's plan for 2010 and how you can get involved. http://j.mp/9vqMAt

This is the President of the United States tweeting this!

Let's say it again: the President of the United States!

His picture is next to the tweet. Tweeting about Organizing for America, a non-Executive Branch, private sector organization, albeit the successor organization to Obama's campaign, the one through which the president can permanently campaign on all his little diabolical programs to change the country.

Still, he's President now. And what's he tweeting? A reminder about a call-in strategy session, conducted by David Plouffe, now a public servant in the employ of the Executive Office of the President, for Democrats on how in November not to end up zipped up in a full body leather outfit and mask with an S&M ball shoved in their maw and chain around their neck tied to a rusting old radiator in a basement of an abandoned house in Detroit.

That tweet goes into the great big bin of official presidential communications.

Unlike all of President George Bush's tweets about Halliburton's contracting strategy, there are no madeup words or mispellings, so we have to give Obama some props on that.

Still, who is this guy? Some kind of community organizer?

SBD is heartened by the fact that the President of the United States has to tweet his tweeps about a strategy session to stave off the November implosion. The loyal opposition is doing something right. But how weak is this man in his understanding of his responsibility to this nation that he sends out that tweet. That it's on his schedule to send that out. Even that it's on his flack's schedule to send that out under his name.

There is no dignity left in the office nor sense of decorum nor sense of the appropriate when the President feels this level of comfort in sending out reminders about his own personal independent fund raising organization.

As Americans, we strive to respect the Office of the President, to instill in our children the same respect, even when we disagree with the man occupying the office, but it's very, very hard these days.

To wit, what a punk.

LATER THAT DAY . . .:

Well, I guess the first message wasn't enough for the Twit in Chief's tweeps.

You stay focused, Mr. President!

Obama's Afghanistan Strategy

A Wrong and Despicable Thing

Obama's first foreign policy "success" - Honduras:

On October 28, Robert Micheletti’s interim government and ex-president Manuel Zelaya reportedly agreed to a formula that should restore “pariah” Honduras to the ranks of normal states. It should also permit Hondurans to elect their next president on November 29 without the international community breathing down their necks.

[...]

Since the Hondurans removed Zelaya from office for violating the constitution, the Obama administration has mismanaged the situation. It sided with the Chávez-influenced Organization of American States; it called Zelaya’s legal removal a military “coup;” and it threatened not to recognize the winner of an election process begun well before June 28.

The Obama team did an excellent job of undermining the Honduran economy by cutting off economic assistance, throttling tourism with travel warnings, yanking visas away from Hondurans, and creating a climate of massive uncertainty that spooked U.S. investors and businesses. The U.S. embassy in Honduras did yeomen’s work watching out for the interests of the Zelaya clan, leaving many to wonder which side it was pulling for.

In short, against a small, friendly, anti-Chávez ally, the administration mustered the sort of muscle it would never dare use against Iran, Russia, or Venezuela.

Hey There Obama

Beer Summit

The news out of Washington is that President Obama will be hosting a summit on race relations between whites, as represented by Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley, and blacks, as represented by Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

President Obama's highly anticipated sit-down with Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. over some brews is expected to take place early this week, administration officials said Sunday.

The President has selected the theme of “beer” to set the stage for a friendly discussion. Although the President’s inclination will be to offer Sgt. Crowley and Prof. Gates cold Heinekens wrapped in two ply cocktail napkins, Sydney Brillo Duodenum urges the President to direct the White House Bartender to seek out and procure some microbrews.

Because Sgt. Crowley and Prof. Gates are both Massachusetts-based, SBD offers the following two selections:

For Sgt. Crowley, who caught a really big fish, we recommend that the President offer him the following:

Harpoon IPA

For Professor Gates, the President could not go wrong by offering his close friend the following:

John Harvard's Nut Brown Ale


Anything with the name "Harvard" in it should appeal to the professor.

And, of course, the President should have something special for himself, which is why this presidential hometown brew is sure to please His Coolness:

The Blue Cat Brew Pub Off the Rails Pale Ale

Who Gives a Damn About Honduras?

Quite frankly, Sydney Brillo Duodenum has not given a damn about Honduras, and would have been at pains to briskly locate it on a map, but now he has to think twice about that, because issues relating to contitutional republicanism, the rule of law, South American fascist dictators, America's world standing, and the incoherent declamations of the Man Child have occupied the news and roused SBD from his siesta.

Miguel A. Estrada provides the definitive explanation of just what the hell has been going on in Honduras. Estrada is a wise old latino lawyer; Borked nominee for the DC Court of Appeals; and a native of Honduras, so he is not talking out of his crack the way Mr. Obama has been doing.

Unlike the experts at the State Department, Mr. Estrada accomplishes this feat of investigastive bravado by visting the website of the Honduran Supreme Court and reading, albeit in Spanish, the Honduran Constitution and the Honduran Supreme Court’s decision regarding the actions of former President Zelaya. It shocks and amazes to discover that so few in the press have these necessary investigative skills, but no one said the End Times would not be shocking and amazing.

In any event, according to Mr. Estrada:

Honduras, the tiny Central American nation, had a change of leaders on June 28. The country's military arrested President Manuel Zelaya -- in his pajamas, he says -- and put him on a plane bound for Costa Rica. A new president, Roberto Micheletti, was appointed. Led by Cuba and Venezuela (Sudan and North Korea were not immediately available), the international community swiftly condemned this "coup."

Something clearly has gone awry with the rule of law in Honduras -- but it is not necessarily what you think. Begin with Zelaya's arrest. The Supreme Court of Honduras, as it turns out, had ordered the military to arrest Zelaya two days earlier. A second order (issued on the same day) authorized the military to enter Zelaya's home to execute the arrest. These orders were issued at the urgent request of the country's attorney general. All the relevant legal documents can be accessed (in Spanish) on the Supreme Court's website. They make for interesting reading.

So, the new fascist, paramilitary Star Chambered government of Honduras has diabolically posted all of its legal reasoning on the removal of Mr. Zelaya on a public website accessible by anyone in the world with a modicum of Spanish speaking skills. And to think this is happening in our hemisphere.

What you'll learn is that the Honduran Constitution may be amended in any way except three. No amendment can ever change (1) the country's borders, (2) the rules that limit a president to a single four-year term and (3) the requirement that presidential administrations must "succeed one another" in a "republican form of government."

In addition, Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection "shall cease forthwith" in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any "infraction" of the succession rules constitutes treason. The rules are so tight because these are terribly serious issues for Honduras, which lived under decades of military rule.

But what does that have to do with the fact that as Obama has told us, without provocation, on a whim the Honduran military arrested Mr. Zelaya in his pajamas and sent him to Costa Rica?

Earlier this year, with only a few months left in his term, he [Zelaya] ordered a referendum on whether a new constitutional convention should convene to write a wholly new constitution. Because the only conceivable motive for such a convention would be to amend the un-amendable parts of the existing constitution, it was easy to conclude -- as virtually everyone in Honduras did -- that this was nothing but a backdoor effort to change the rules governing presidential succession. Not unlike what Zelaya's close ally, Hugo Chavez, had done in Venezuela.

It is also worth noting that only referendums approved by a two-thirds vote of the Honduran Congress may be put to the voters. Far from approving Zelaya's proposal, Congress voted that it was illegal.

The attorney general filed suit and secured a court order halting the referendum. Zelaya then announced that the voting would go forward just the same, but it would be called an "opinion survey." The courts again ruled this illegal. Undeterred, Zelaya directed the head of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, to proceed with the "survey" -- and "fired" him when he declined. The Supreme Court ruled the firing illegal and ordered Vasquez reinstated.

Zelaya had the ballots printed in Venezuela, but these were impounded by customs when they were brought back to Honduras. On June 25 -- three days before he was ousted -- Zelaya personally gathered a group of "supporters" and led it to seize the ballots, restating his intent to conduct the "survey" on June 28. That was the breaking point for the attorney general, who immediately sought a warrant from the Supreme Court for Zelaya's arrest on charges of treason, abuse of authority and other crimes. In response, the court ordered Zelaya's arrest by the country's army, which under Article 272 must enforce compliance with the Constitution, particularly with respect to presidential succession. The military executed the court's order on the morning of the proposed survey.

Oh, well that is a bit of a different story than what we’ve heard, now isn’t it?

But what of this sending the pajama-clad Zelaya to Costa Rica – surely that negates the constitutionality of removing him, as he was without benefit of clothing and toiletries, right?

No. As noted, Article 239 states clearly that one who behaves as Zelaya did in attempting to change presidential succession ceases immediately to be president. If there were any doubt on that score, the Congress removed it by convening immediately after Zelaya's arrest, condemning his illegal conduct and overwhelmingly voting (122 to 6) to remove him from office. The Congress is led by Zelaya's own Liberal Party (although it is true that Zelaya and his party have grown apart as he has moved left). Because Zelaya's vice president had earlier quit to run in the November elections, the next person in the line of succession was Micheletti, the Liberal leader of Congress. He was named to complete the remaining months of Zelaya's term.

It cannot be right to call this a "coup." Micheletti was lawfully made president by the country's elected Congress. The president is a civilian. The Honduran Congress and courts continue to function as before. The armed forces are under civilian control. The elections scheduled for November are still scheduled for November. Indeed, after reviewing the Constitution and consulting with the Supreme Court, the Congress and the electoral tribunal, respected Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga recently stated that the only possible conclusion is that Zelaya had lawfully been ousted under Article 239 before he was arrested, and that democracy in Honduras continues fully to operate in accordance with law. All Honduran bishops joined Rodriguez in this pronouncement.

True, Zelaya should not have been arbitrarily exiled from his homeland. That, however, does not mean he must be reinstalled as president of Honduras. It merely makes him an indicted private citizen with a meritorious immigration beef against his country.

Why should we give a damn anyway?

Because as Andy McCarthy at National Review succinctly puts it:

Bottom line: Hugo Chavez wants Zelaya in, the law of Honduras says Zelaya must be out; Obama sided with Chavez.

A surprise and yet not surprising.

Corruption

George Will:

Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil -- the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.

[...]

The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Who's Torturing Who?

SBD was out of sorts when he discovered that the Obama administration had released DOJ memorandums detailing the efforts of our intelligence agencies to prevent another Al Qaeda attack on the United States and the murder of American men, women, and children. He was even more disgusted to find that one of the memos entailed a detailed discussion of the use of insects – yes insects - against a particularly tough nut named Abu Zubaydah, who has a fear of insects. Now, SBD thought at first that CIA interrogators wanted to tie Mr. Zubaydah down to stakes in the desert near a fire ant colony. No such luck. Instead, the debate centered on the introduction of a single insect into a small holding cell, with the CIA interrogators telling Mr. Zubaydah that it was a stinging insect. The DOJ made it clear to the CIA that it could not use an actual stinging insect and they intimated they may have had trouble with the idea of lying to Mr. Zubaydah to make him believe that the insect was of a stinging type. The insect torture was never employed.

We now learn that we waterboarded Mr. Zubaydah 83 times in one month, although it’s not clear if that was before or after the failed insect consideration. The media has us believing that people “break” after one round of the bucket because several intrepid asshats, er reporters, have volunteered during sweeps week to be waterboarded and after doing so have declared that, if they were terrorist masterminds, they would fold like a Connecticut hedge fund in 2008. Perhaps.

We also learn that Khalid Sheik Mohammad, aka Fat Fuck, the confessed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 crime against humanity, was waterboarded 183 times during March 2003. Fat Fuck was captured in Pakistan on March 1, 2003, so apparently we wasted no time. 183 is a big number, and of course our innumerate society has difficulty with big numbers, as they shock and titillate. We are supposed to believe that “the law” was broken 182 times or even half that many times. But the lawyers had carefully prescribed the use of waterboarding to a certain number of minutes in a 24 hour period. Even Fat Fuck has stated that he was waterboarded five times. Whatever, SBD is not going to do the math himself to figure out how the interrogators used their allotted waterboarding time and how 183 “times” makes sense. He doesn’t fucking care. The point is the Fat Fuck broke and revealed a great deal of information that confirmed known knowns, revealed known unknowns and helped frame some unknown unknowns, as one crank once put it. Mission accomplished. But ongoing.

SBD does care that our enemies now know what our limits are. It’s no longer a scary rumor about those blood-crazed, revenge-driven crusader Americans with secret prisons, but about those legalistic, lily-livered, flop sweating mother-may-I pansy Americans discussing whether or not the use of a non-poisonous bug against an entomophobic islamo-fascist terrorist makes us all Nazi storm troopers.

SBD also cares that Americans are not getting the complete picture of how the Bush administration may have saved some of their butts with the information obtained from Fat Fuck. Even former Vice President Dick Cheney is asking for declassification of some memos that provide that type of information. It’s called context. If Mr. Obama is such a believer in full disclosure, than let’s have full disclosure. Let’s hear about what was at stake. But it’s all a sideshow and distraction, as if we are still not hunted day and night by the worst sorts of America haters. We are still at war.

SBD would prefer if no damn memos saw the light of day. Intelligence is a dark art that should stay dark. SBD would prefer that the information be revealed in a some summertime beach reading when he is well into retirement 30 years hence. Releasing this information makes it easier for some dickwad to ruin SBD’s retirement.

One of the adults who used to be in a position of responsibility, former CIA director Michael Hayden, stated it plainly and without profanity on Fox News with Chris Wallace:

I think that teaching our enemies our outer limits, by taking techniques off the table, we have made it more difficult in a whole host of circumstances I can imagine, more difficult for CIA officers to defend the nation.

There's another point, too, that I have to make. And it's just not the tactical effect of this technique or that. It's the broader effect on CIA officers.

I mean, if you're a current CIA officer today — in fact, I know this has happened at the agency after the release of these documents. Officers are saying, "The things I'm doing now — will this happen to me in five year because of the things I am doing now?"

And the answer they've been given by senior leadership is the only answer possible, which is, "I can't guarantee you that won't happen, but I do know it won't happen under this president." Now, think what that means.

The basic foundation of the legitimacy of the agency's action has shifted from some durability of law to a product of the American political process. That puts agency officers in a horrible position.

So I think the really dangerous effect of this, Chris, is that you will have agency officers stepping back from the kinds of things that the nation expects them to do. I mean, if you were to go to an agency officer today and say, "Go do this," and, "Why am I authorized to do this?"

And I say, "Well, it's authorized by the president. The attorney general says it's lawful. And it's been briefed to Congress." That agency officer's going to say, "Yeah, I know, but I see what's going on here now. Have you run it by the ACLU? What's the New York Times editorial board think? Have you discussed this with any potential presidential candidates?"

You're going to have this agency on the front line of defending you in this current war playing back from the line.

In addition to making an ass of himself and the United States during his little jaunt to the Southern hemisphere this past week, which is so beautifully treated here by Heritage's Ray Walser, Mr. Obama has damaged this country’s intelligence gathering capabilities by allowing the release of this information. It’s all part of the grand plan, though. It’s part of Mr. Obama’s Great Moral Washing of the corrupted American soul; Act I in Mr. Obama’s Making Amends Musical Tour of the world. This performance will be a protracted affair with no intermission and no water breaks. Absolute torture.

Fresh from that trip, and after throwing the Agency under the bus, the Man Child running the country had the gall to visit the CIA today and stand before the Wall of Stars and tell the assembled CIA employees to not let his predations on their work distract them. "I know the last few days have been difficult," he said. "You need to know you've got my full support."

Uh, huh.

This man receives a daily briefing of the terrors arrayed against this country. He does not do what he does and does not say what he says in ignorance. It's all in foolishness and arrogance. As with every other action of his, he seeks to damage this country, to declare it's sins (they're not his!), to bring it low, and when he is ready and it is deserving, he will raise it up and save it.

The kid's a punk. A dangerous punk.

Long Term Perspective

President Obama, March 3, 2009:

"What you're now seeing is profit [sic] and earning ratios are starting to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it."

End of the week news, March 6, 2009:

MARKET SNAPSHOT
Stocks look cheap, but they could get cheaper; By some measures, P/E ratios are near lows, though it depends how you slice it

By Laura Mandaro, MarketWatch
Last update: 4:45 p.m. EST March 6, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Price-to-earnings ratios, a popular measure of how expensive stocks are by historical standards, have surpassed lows seen in recent recessions. But that's no guarantee they won't sink further.

"There's no doubt that people can look at market valuations and determine that stocks are relatively inexpensive -- but that doesn't mean they're going to quit going
down," said Michael Gibbs, director of equity strategy at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, Tenn.

The price-to-earnings ratio of stocks in the S&P 500 has sunk to 10.6 from nearly 17 at the end of 2007, says FactSet Research. That's based on the Thursday close of the S&P 500 compared to index members' past four quarters of operating earnings, or net income excluding what analysts consider to be extraordinary charges and gains.

Thomson Reuters, which publishes similar analysis, estimates the trailing P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is around 11.

Those numbers are well below the valuations reached during the market low of the 2001 recession, when the ratio stopped at 19. They're also lower than the P/E ratio of 13 touched at the market bottom during the 1990-1991 recession, says Morgan Keegan, which used data compiled by Yale University's Robert Shiller for its historical research.

But widen out the lens, and P/E ratios dropped even further in some earlier recessions. During the market low of the early 1980's recession, for example, stocks in the index were trading at a mere 8 times earnings. "There have been periods when the market multiple [P/E ratio] traded lower. And the economy is declining at a rapid pace, meaning earnings could fall more," Gibbs said.

We read this and we think, how can we use this sterile and unsurprising information to create an overwrought and emotional blog post. Let's try this:

Sydney Brillo Duodenum recently downloaded the iDie application for his iPhone. Essentially an actuarial table showing at any given moment your expected remaining lifespan, iDie finds that SBD has used up approximately 56 percent of his life. This little application has removed any and all sense of any "long-term perspective," as the President might describe it, on anything. It's all short term from here on out. In fact, it was during a highly productive part of that first 56 percent of his life that SBD maintained "a long term perspective" on things and it is that very thing which led him to be a good egg by directing a decent percentage of earnings into nest eggs. The result? A murder of crows has made off with almost half of SBD's little chicks and an unkindness of ravens has its eyes on the remaining little bastards. Living now only in the short term as SBD does, there simply isn't any long term opportunity to get back to break even.

Someone is to blame, of course.

First and foremost, SBD is to blame because he "bought into the system" as it were. His money is locked up in goodietwoshoes, government prescribed financial investment vehicles - 401(k), life insurance, 529, etc. - all designed to minimize taxes in addition to minimizing access to hard earned money. To get it out will cost money and penalties. And then what? Thus, SBD gave up his freedom for some kind of freedom in retirement. Short term advice to the next generation: never give up control of your money.

Second, Obama is most certainly to blame for our present condition. It is absurd and obtuse to claim that he "inherited" this "crisis." He blames out of control government spending, so-called lax regulatory oversight, and capitalist greed. It was Booooooosh that did it. We know that government spending got out of control paying for things President Obama himself is now promising full sized versions of: nationalized health care, education outlays, hidden welfare; bailouts for deadbeats, statist energy policy. And yes, there certainly was a great deal of regulatory blindness, especially the kinds that allow quasi-government entities - Fathead and Frannie Fuckface - to run amok in a vital area of the nation's economy and pysche. And while it's interesting and makes allowance for stern furrowed brow speeches, capitalist greed is what funded President Obama's break the bank presidential campaign. The regime was not built on drib and drab contributions from some hempclothed fat chick with hairy underarms living in a tent under a freeway in Portland, OR. Wall Street and James Bond-type villains paid for President Obama's campaign. It was Barack Obama's "philosophy" that brought us to where we are today. Government meddling and control over market forces, government policies that pervert human action and create moral hazard are to blame. In the past 40 some days, President Obama has promised a degree of government meddling, coercion, perversion, and disruption unseen in modern times. His policies and philosophy took us to where we are today. Falsely, they indict free market principles that have never been allowed to function. Obama is now in control and promising an explicit and accelerated application of his philosophy.

People need to understand that this will not blow over. People sometimes become trapped in their own circumstance, believing it to be global and paradigm altering when it really just an isolated squall in the wide ocean. Not this. This not melodrama or middle age heat or desk draw whiskey or even sour grapes talking. It's sober fear. America is in the grip - the clenched fist - of an egomaniacal academic charlatan.

Our republic is in great peril and there is not a goddamned thing that can be done about it. It must simply play itself out in the short term. Obama will get most of what he wants. In that sense he will succeed. He will create a government chatal class, incapable of ever being a Greatest Generation. Obama's success is national failure. The Republic is dying. SBD's "long term perspective" is that in the short term, he witnesses it die.

That Special Relationship

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is in town this week to be snubbed by His Royal Highhandedness BHO in order to ensure that no one is any longer under the impression that any kind of special relationship exists between the United States and Britain. Snubbing is the order of the day when it comes to HRH BHO and the United Kingdom. In a disgusting, amateurish, and petty maneuver, Churchill no longer broods over the Oval Office rug that so captivated Bill Clinton, his bust having been banished to the British Ambassador's residence on Massachusetts Ave, just down from Sheriff Joe's pork farm.

Before being treated like a breakfast banger on a plate in front of a Kings Cross chav, Brown had high hopes for his trip. What with Britain collapsing under the same stupidity afflicting America and with not even a pebble left in his arsenal to do anything about it, there was no better time for Brown to fly to Washington and cozy up with a fellow liberal fascist. After all, Brits "voted" for Barack Obama in droves, so a high profile meeting with HRH BHO could only help the actually-elected Brown's own political situation and improve his dismal chances for re-election. Also, seeing as how Britain is completely out of money (aren't we all!), Brown needs another kind of bailout and that HRH BHO fellow seems to have handle on about a trillion necessary things. Brown's problem is that HRH BHO has not yet gotten it into his head that it is his job to save the whole planet, not just the United States. Silly man, that's for the second 100 days.

Thus, we have two men who understand nothing of free markets, entrepreneurialism, individual freedom, constitutionalism, economics, and human nature, and know too much about government printing presses, glad handing about DC. It's a special relationship, indeed. One hopes Brown can stay for the Wednesday night cocktail party at the White House. We hear they are grand affairs. He may even catch a glimpse of HRH Michele's Michael Kors-framed guns.

Little does Brown understand that in addition to a severe resentment and anger at America, which enfolds his deep desire to see her brought low before he can "save" it, HRH BHO also has deep resentment and anger for the way the British Empire treated his ancestral homeland Kenya, home to the father that abandoned HRH BHO with his white mother in cowardly racist America. HRH BHO will do nothing for Brown but appear in pictures that raise questions about their dental hygiene and choice in footwear. Let's remember that Brown is Tony Blair's successor. Brown is not Britain's George Bush; he's not some Before Barack holdover; he's not a free market conservative or Thatcherite or some other hero from the past that HRH BHO has to meet to be nicey-nicey with to demonstrate his New Age Diplomacy but secretly hates because he represents the discredited philosophies of western civilization, parliamentary democracy and constitutional republicanism. Brown's a life long practitioner of HRH BHO's dark arts. He's lived the Agenda. He is one of its architects. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer under Blair, the Timmy Geithner of the British Cabinet; the wielder of the Red Budget Box. Like his boss before him, Brown has been quite lavish in his public spending and thus left the country with nothing to fight the global downturn. Brown is where HRH BHO, and by extension the rest of us, will be in four years. A deep dark hole of his own making with nobody to bail him out. HRH BHO does not want anyone to focus on Brown or Labour. Britain's present situation is an immediate indictment of everything HRH BHO has planned for the United States and thus Brown is a potential distraction and harbinger of the future.

What Britain needs and likely never have again is identified by Commentary's Peter Wehner:

On March 3, 1980, Thatcher (now Prime Minister) delivered an address whose main burden was placed on the role of the state and the right of the individual to freedom from state interference. “The first principle of this government… is to revive a sense of individual responsibility,” she said. She went on to say, “What we need is a strong state determined to maintain in good repair the frame which surrounds society. But the frame should not be so heavy or so elaborate as to dominate the whole picture. Ordinary men and women who are neither poor nor suffering should not look to the state as a universal provider.” And she then listed the layers of illusion that “has smothered our moral sense”:

The illusion that government can be a universal provider, and yet society still stay free and prosperous. The illusion that government can print money, and yet the nation still have sound money. The illusion that every loss can be covered by a subsidy. The illusion that we can break the link between reward and effort, and still get the reward.

This is the philosophy that President Obama and his team of propeller heads are seeking to discredit and reverse. The President, facing an economic crisis that demanded action (particularly in the realm of our financial system and credit flow), used this opportunity to attempt a staggering power grab by the federal government. His plans would enlarge its reach and scope beyond anything in our lifetime. And so Barack Obama — supremely ambitious, young, and new — has revived an age-old debate over how the economy works. He is casting his lot with collectivists and statists; his intent is to put us on a glide path to European-style socialism. Unless he is able to suspend the laws of economics, I rather doubt Obama will succeed. As a result, he may end up not repudiating Thatcherism and Reaganism, but revivifying them.

Unfortunately, socialist and fascist experiments rarely end quietly or well.

Heck of a job, Timmy!

The S&P

The NASDAQ

The Dow

A Quick Note About Vice President Biden

Sydney Brillo Duodenum has certainly carried his tune well in the chorus of mockers of Vice President Joe Biden. It’s an easy tune to carry up and down the scale. Nevertheless, SBD does not expect President Obama to stand in the baritone section and sing along. It’s odd that SBD would need to remind President Obama that HE chose Joe Biden as his running mate and thus no matter what Vice President Biden may say, one does not expect the President to mock him, as he did so ungraciously at his White House Stimulus Campaign Stop, er press conference. President Obama would have us believe that Vice President Biden is the Fredo Corelone of his administration. It is also odd that SBD would need to remind President Obama that the reason HE chose Joe Biden as his running mate is because of Biden’s 30 long years on Capitol Hill displaying his big foreign policy sack and extolling the virtues of the nanny state. In reality, President Obama chose Joe Biden because he has experience greatly lacking in himself. Again, President Obama comes off as a callow punk.

Mr. President, leave the mockery to us ideologues.


Future Caption: Oct. 2011 - President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden go fishing on Lake Tahoe.