Perhaps the most important story of the week for U.S. foreign policy was Ayatolla Ali Khamenei’s swift, rude rejection of President Hope’s latest “I can talk ‘em into it” overture towards Tehran, but it was hardly the only big news.  The need to make money robbed me of time to blog on these two other recent news items:

Fuoad Ajami in the WSJ: 

The opponents of the American project in Iraq did not know much about Afghanistan. They despaired of Iraq’s sectarianism and ethnic fragmentation, but those pale in comparison with the tribalism and ethnic complications of Afghanistan. If you had your fill with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites of Iraq, welcome to the warring histories of the Pashtuns, the Uzbeks, the Tajiks, and the Hazara Shiites of Afghanistan.

In their disdain for that Iraq project, the Democrats and the liberal left had insisted that Iraq was an artificial state put together by colonial fiat, and that it was a fool’s errand to try to make it whole and intact. Now in Afghanistan, we are in the quintessential world of banditry and tribalism, a political culture that has abhorred and resisted central authority.

I’ve said it ever since Obama rejected Iran and embraced Afghanistan that his position had nothing to do with commitment to or understanding of Afghanistan; it was only a pose so we could appear tough while still being for defeat in Iran.  Ajami’s piece gives depth and confirmation to my position, and points out that Obama has yet to commit to Afghanistan and lay out his objectives – a position that strengthens the Taliban every day.

Also in the WSJ, John Bolton:

While President Obama’s unanticipated Nowruz holiday greeting to Iran generated considerable press attention, his video wasn’t really this week’s big news related to the Islamic Republic. Far more important was that a senior defector — Iran’s former Deputy Minister of Defense Ali Reza Asghari — disclosed Tehran’s financing of Syria’s nuclear weapons program. That program’s centerpiece was a North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria. Israel destroyed it in September 2007.

At this point, it is impossible to ignore Iran’s active efforts to expand, improve and conceal its nuclear weapons program in Syria while it pretends to “negotiate” with Britain, France and Germany (the “EU-3″). No amount of video messages will change this reality. The question is whether this new information about Iran will sink in, or if Washington will continue to turn a blind eye toward Iran’s nuclear deceptions.

That the Pyongyang-Damascus-Tehran nuclear axis went undetected and unacknowledged for so long is an intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. It represents a plain unwillingness to allow hard truths to overcome well-entrenched policy views disguised as intelligence findings.

Our intelligence capabilities in Greater Jihadistan remain a pale shadow of our Cold War capabilities, even though the threat is real and far more complex.  Does anyone think our capabilities will improve under an Obama administration that has put a political hack in charge of the CIA? 

Bolton thinks Obama may well succeed in sparking some talks with Tehran, but that Tehran will use the talks just as they have used the EU-3 (Britain, France, Germany) talks: A good way to cover up and stall, while the Mullahs continue to pursue their dream of nuclear jihad.

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So what if Obama wants to talk to Iran … Iran doesn’t want to talk to him.  If ever there was a symbol of how naive and dangerous Obama’s egomaniacal foreign policy is, it was the swiftness and nastiness with which Iran shoved the invitation back up Barack’s backside.

In diplomatic-time, the clock had barely ticked before Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the primary policy-setter for Iran, spoke:

“They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven’t seen any change.

“He insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day. If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed.”

Reminder: The change Iran is looking for is the complete withdrawal of the U.S. from the Islamic world, apologies for our bad behavior, and if memory serves, 20 virgins and a goat.

Well, Prez-O, the ball’s in your court. What’s next?

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J

udging for the number of times this and similar videos are posted on YouTube, more likely than not you’ve seen Bob Basso as Thomas Paine. If not, or if you’re up for an inspired five-minute pep rally to get your blood boiling and your mind focused, here’s the one I believe is the most recent:

 If you’re not a tea-drinker, go out and borrow a tea bag or two from a friend and mail them to your most egregious representatives.  And don’t bother with what you may have heard about just sending the tag, not the bag, because they’re all worried about their security.  Poor babies. Show them they have something to worry about – at least as far as job security goes – send the whole bag.

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O

ne thing you can’t deny about gay marriage advocates in California: They are relentless.  Even before the California Supreme Court issues its ruling on Prop 8 following hearings two weeks ago the homosexual lobby is at it again:

SACRAMENTO — The sponsors of a second ballot measure seeking to repeal California’s ban on same-sex marriage have been cleared to start collecting signatures.

The secretary of state on Friday gave the group Yes on Equality until August 17 to collect the nearly 700,000 signatures needed to qualify its initiative for the 2010 ballot.

If approved by voters, the group’s proposed constitutional amendment would rescind Proposition 8, which passed last November. The California Supreme Court is expected to rule any time on legal challenges to the voter-approved measure. (LA Times)

You could see this one coming.  The gay marriage movement picked up considerable momentum between the state’s two successful sanctity of marriage initiatives, Prop 22, which passed by 61.4  percent in 2000 and Prop 8, which passed by 52.5 percent in 2008.  But they are taking a risk of voter backlash.  They’ve lost twice, and if the SCOCA rules Prop 8 is constitutional, the momentum very likely could turn toward the sanctity of marriage.

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all Street was down today but eked out its first positive week in quite some time – but don’t look for a continuation Monday as, first, the Congressional Budget Office said today Obamarx’s budget will produce losses $2.3 TRILLION worse than the White House predicts ($9.3 trillion worth from 2010-2019) and second, that the Obamarxists say damn the torpedoed economy, they’re not going to cut a single program.

Included in the programs they’re not about to cut is their greenhouse gas cap and trade program, which received endorsement of a Discovery Channel feature on alternative energy Incredible Wife and I watched this week.  With every single new technology they showed, someone looked earnestly into the camera and said:

“We need carbon emission cap and trade for this to work.  Without that financial incentive, this technology is just an overpriced waste of time and money.”

Or something to that effect.  Translation:  Unless the fuels you use get crazy expensive, you’d never be crazy enough to use the fuels the Greenies want you to use.  The price tag of this little incentive program for clean energy?

President Obama’s climate plan could cost industry close to $2 trillion, nearly three times the White House’s initial estimate of the so-called “cap-and-trade” legislation, according to Senate staffers who were briefed by the White House.

A top economic aide to Mr. Obama told a group of Senate staffers last month that the president’s climate-change plan would surely raise more than the $646 billion over eight years the White House had estimated publicly, according to multiple a number of staffers who attended the briefing Feb. 26.

“We all looked at each other like, ‘Wow, that’s a big number,’” said a top Republican staffer who attended the meeting along with between 50 and 60 other Democratic and Republican congressional aides. (WashTimes)

How reassuring do you find it that they had no clue what the program was going to cost?  But so what? Who cares? Obamarx says larger deficits and larger than expected costs for his programs mean nothing to him.

“What we will not cut are investments that will lead to real growth and prosperity over the long term. That’s why our budget … enhances America’s competitiveness by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and building a clean energy economy.”

Enhances competitiveness by making everything we make, everything we grow, more expensive?  Please explain – without a teleprompter – how that works.

But no matter. Whether we want to do it or not, we have to do it to save the fragile planet, which without alternative energy and an end to greenhouse gas over-emitting, will soon be awash in seawater from rising oceans.  Riiiiight …

How many times have you seen the word “collapse” used lately to describe what could unfold should human-caused global warming, and more particularly warming seas, erode the West Antarctic Ice Sheet? (One metric: A Google search for “West Antarctic Ice Sheet” and “collapse” gets 29,800 hits.)

The word is used again in the headline on one of two new papers in the journal Nature focusing on past comings and goings of that huge expanse of ice. But this paper, by David Pollard at Penn State and Robert M. DeConto of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, provides an estimated time frame for the loss of ice that its authors say should be of some comfort. (If the sheet melted entirely, sea levels worldwide would rise more than 15 feet.)

Dr. Pollard and Dr. DeConto ran a five-million-year computer simulation of the ice sheet’s comings and goings, using data on past actual climate and ocean conditions gleaned from seabed samples (the subject of the other paper) to validate the resulting patterns.

The bottom line? In this simulation, the ice sheet does collapse when waters beneath fringing ice shelves warm 7 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit or so, but the process — at its fastest — takes thousands of years. Over all, the pace of sea-level rise from the resulting ice loss doesn’t go beyond about 1.5 feet per century, Dr. Pollard said …. (NYT)

That’s less than a quarter inch a year – the same amount the ocean’s been rising for the last 100,000 20,000 years or so [corrected], more than 19,800 years before human involvement (what a joke!) in our climate.  And in case you missed that attribution, folks, it says NYT, as in the New York Times – hardly a bastion of anti-Warmie journalism.

Yet Obamarx marches on with his scheme of cap and trade, despite the damage it will do to an economy that is far more stretched and fragile than he admits, despite the fact that there is no immediate threat from global warming. There’s a word for that. Demagoguery.

We may have a horrible government, but we’ve got a beautiful language.

Hat-tip: Jim. Art: Minnesotans for Global Warming

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So you know – who doesn’t by now? – that last night Pres. Obama didn’t do himself any favors with the disabled and their families when he likened his lack of bowling skills (129 high game) as being “like the Special Olympics or something.” But did you know:

• If you type in “special olympics obama leno” into Google you get 48,800 hits … 48,801 after I post this?

• Or that Memeorandum lists a total of some 42 news articles and blog posts on the gaffe including The Moderate Voice, pw, Fox News, Stop The ACLU, Scared Monkeys, Washington Post, Fausta’s Blog, Talking Points Memo, Jules Crittenden, Mother, May I Sleep …, USA Today, Perfunction, The Caucus, Michelle Malkin, The Cloakroom, The Strata-Sphere, TBogg, Patterico’s Pontifications, Don Surber, NO QUARTER, Conservatives4Palin.com, Wizbang, NewsBusters.org, Hugh Hewitt’s TownHall Blog, The Sundries Shack, NY Daily News, Yourish.com, The Swamp, Associated Press, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Stop The ACLU, Riehl World View, Bob Cesca’s Awesome Blog!, Liberal Values, Althouse and Alan Colmes’ Liberaland?

And, oh!, he speaks so well. And, oh!, he’s so inclusive! But before you get too comfortable in your mild amusement over the president’s vice-president-ism, you really need to be put in your place, you hate-mongering Conservative you. From the Liberal Values link above:

Of course if you read the right wing blogs I predict that the only portion you will read much about is the gaffe in which Obama compares his bowling to the Special Olympics, getting far more attention than matters of substance on the economy. With all their complaints about “political correctness” we all know that it is the right wingers who dwell far more on this type of thing as they thrive on personal attacks as opposed to consideration of issues.

To the extent we dwell on this sort of thing – and we really do dwell far more on matters of substance on Obama’s torpedoing of the economy and the Constitution – it is because they invented political correctness and they impose it on us, destroying First Amendment rights in the process, not the other way around.

Get ready for the Obama PR machine to take over: Reports say Obama called Special Olympics chair Tim Shriver from Air Force One to apologize, and invited a Special Olympics bunch to the White House to play basketball with him.  Poor kids will have no idea they’re being bruttally exploited for the president’s numbers.

And I’m willing to give Obama  his due.  His patter with Leno about a doctor following him around with a defibrillator in tow was pretty funny, and he did have one truly insightful line that all of us, conservatives and libs alike, should take to heart:

MR. OBAMA: And, you know, the immediate bonuses that went to AIG are a problem. But the larger problem is we’ve got to get back to an attitude where people know enough is enough, and people have a sense of responsibility and they understand that their actions are going to have an impact on everybody.

Mr. Obama, enough is enough with this spending already!  Don’t you have a sense of responsibility, an understanding that your actions are going to have a very, very negative impact on everybody?

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T

errorists … no wait, let me look up the right word … uh, man-caused disaster causers … may soon be released by our Atty Gen onto our shores, in a move that’s just sure to increase our safety.  (Why didn’t Bush think of that?  He was sooo concerned about terror … uh, man-caused disasters.)  Here’s the report:

Some of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners could be released into the United States while others could be put on trial in the American court system, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday. …

Holder told reporters at the Justice Department that the administration’s review, made on a case-by-case basis, would determine whether the prisoners need to be put on trial or whether they can be released.

“For those who are in that second category, who can be released, there are a variety of options that we have. Among them is the possibility that we could release them into this country,” he said. (Reuters)

That’s such a swell idea!  We can show them our way of life and how open and tolerant we are, and it’s just sure as fleas on dogs to win them over to our side, where they’ll be nice, complacent citizens contributing to the national well-being.

Or they just might blow a bunch of us up.

Tough call – but apparently an easier call for Holder to make than the call to keep open the one place on the planet that’s perfect for these thugs, Guantanamo.  And if the Islamists every stop their war against us and agree to live in peace, we can let them go, just like we let go of our German, Italian and Japanese prisoners when WWII ended.

hat-tip: Infidels are Cool

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Last week, eight Dems joined with 80 percent of the GOP in the House and stopped NanPo, handmaiden of Gaea and Hades, from jamming through a controversy-stuffed omnibus public lands bill.  Congressmen had been granted a leisurely 40 minutes to reach the 1,000-page bill, which was crammed full o’ crapola (here, here).

Well, it’s back, and Obamarx’s and Pelostalin’s promises to run the most ethical, transparent government ever notwithstanding, the Dems are still trying to avoid any public scrutiny of the bill. Check this out – it’s a gushing LA Times blog item about a massive federal land grab in the bill, with highlights by me:

A sweeping conservation bill that would designate more than 700,000 acres of California public land as wilderness passed the Senate — again.

Today’s 77-20 vote cleared the way for House approval, perhaps next week.

The Senate approved a similar version of the lands bill in January. But it took the measure up again after it narrowly fell short of the two-thirds approval required in the House for noncontroversial matters. Democratic leaders brought the bill back before the Senate in a procedural move designed to set up a House vote that would allow it to be approved on a majority vote while preventing opponents from attempting to amend it.

Opponents complained that the bill would infringe on private property rights and close off areas to energy production.

Non-controversial?  If opponents say it’ll do little itty bitty things like crush private property rights and keep us dependent on Mohammed’s oil pumpers, how exactly is it non-controversial?  And if it is in fact non-controversial, why the need to prevent opponents from amending it?  What do they want to attach, an amendment about how non-controversial it is?

The Dems are continuing to shred the constitution and suppress freedom.  Sound vaguely familiar?

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I would like for you to present your clear concise plan for our Foreign Policy. There is a resurgent Russia pursuing Nuclear Arms. Iran is still in a two year deal with Russia for ballistic missile tech. The Middle-East remains in turmoil, Afghanistan is a wreck, Pakistan threatens destabilization. At the same time China tests our resolve. What’s the plan Mr. President?

T

hat’s one of the better questions up at Ask The President, a new Web site that lets you ask and vote thumb up or thumbs down on others’ questions. Most are stacked one way or another, as the one above is, obviously reflecting a pro-strong defense viewpoint.  More are like this one:

Polls consistently show the majority of Americans strongly support a single-payer healthcare system. In a recent survey conducted by New York Times/CBS (1/11-15/09), respondents indicated they preferred a single-payer model 2 to 1 over a privatized system. Why then, is a single-payer model not being seriously considered and discussed as part of the major healthcare reform proposals under your administration?

The site is just barely up; very few votes have been cast. Astonishingly (perhaps not) the vote on the first question, on defense, was 0-4 when I logged on (It’s 1-4 now).  No one thought Obama should have a clear policy towards states that pose a threat.  The vote on the healthcare question: 1/1, with my vote.

Log on, have some fun, do some mischief.  Flag that healthcare question as obscene, and answer the question I just posted:

Mr. President, will you immediately stop rushing bills through Congress, blaming a trumped-up need to act quickly, and allow the substantial changes you are proposing to have a fair and public hearing?

UPDATE: At noon today, the vote on my question was 13 for an open process as the president promised us during the campaign … and 38 who think rushing through 1,000-page, gazillion-dollar bills before anyone has read them just the perfect thing for our country and democracy.

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A

merica, meet your new Commerce Sec., former Washington gov Gary Locke.  On the surface, he looks great for the job, having done that whole Pacific Rim trading thing while governor, but under the surface there’s illegal contributions from poor Buddhist monks, oily bundling, suspicious contracts and hefty lobbying fees from Chinese firms.

Says Michelle Malkin, who’s got over 10 years invested incovering this guy:

Washington has been warned — not just by me, but by many other close observers of the former Washington state governor who have followed his career marked by sloppy adherence to campaign finance laws and corporate cronyism.

She goes on to rightly chide Republicans, quoting this piece from The Olympian:

None of the Republicans on the committee indicated he or she would vote against Locke.

Rockefeller said he and Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the panel’s top Republican, had reviewed Locke’s background check done by the FBI and his financial statements.

“They were clean,” Rockefeller said.

“Boring would be a better word,” Hutchison said.

What part of “Did you do your homework?” would you like to yell into the faces of those two?  When the nearly inevitable scandal takes down Locke remember these two saying he was “clean” and “boring.”

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