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s I understand it, here’s the Obama/Clinton State Dept’s take on how they will win what we used to call the war on terror:  The problem between the U.S. and the jihadists is that we just haven’t been likable enough. We’ will win over Islam if we spend less on the military and more on fish sticks for orphans.

That was the gist of Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith A. McHale’s talk to the Center for a New American Security today.  (I thought the old Bush security was just fine, by the way, since no Americans were killed by jihadists on American soil during his watch, post 9/11.)  Here’s some excerpts:

Whether we are strengthening old alliances, forging new partnerships to meet complex global challenges, engaging with citizens and civil society, or charting new strategies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, our national interests depend on effective engagement and innovative public diplomacy. The stakes could not be higher. We must get this right…This is not a propaganda contest — it is a relationship race. And we have got to get back in the game.

Enhanced public diplomacy is a key component of the President’s new strategy in the region…To achieve the President’s aims, we are launching a multi-faceted strategy to provide platforms for local moderate voices, support democratic institutions and civil society, and position the United States as a long-term partner working to create opportunities and enable the people of the region to chart the futures of their own countries.

We are responding to requests from the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to help meet the needs of their people. Secretary Clinton recently announced more than $100 million in humanitarian support for the people of Pakistan. And Ambassador Holbrooke just announced another $200 million. Since 2002, the United States has provided a total of more than $3.4 billion to alleviate suffering and promote economic growth, education, health, security and good governance in Pakistan. [Oh, wait! You mean Bush tried this to the tun of $3.4 billion and they're still trying to kill us? No matter; just apply the Universal Obama Solution - throw lots of money at it.]

Yet we have a credibility gap with many in the region — some have called it a ‘trust deficit.’ So part of our task is reassuring the people that our aim in the region is to support their own aspirations. We need to do a better job of getting the word out about what we are doing to help Pakistan and Afghanistan become more stable and prosperous, both through the local media and by communicating directly with people.”

It is not about getting the word out, or the trust deficit, but it is most definitely about the aspirations of the people of the region.  A significant percentage of them have a deeply imbedded aspiration to bring pain, suffering and death to the Great Satan, and no amount of communication or prosperity is going to change that.  Only rewriting the Q’ran will change that.

Islam has nurtured radicals since the dawn of the religion, through times of great wealth and times of great poverty alike.  Radical Muslims abound in Lebanon, where Democracy still hangs on. And education? Cairo University, where Obama spoke to the Muslim world last week (except for Iran, of course, where the state didn’t broadcast it), has spawned its share of very well educated Islamo-savages.

McHale concluded her comments with a bizarre historical reference:

A few days after I started at the State Department, I moved into George Marshall’s old office. General Marshall saw a world beyond our shores devastated by war and reeling from economic crisis. He knew that our fates and our fortunes were intertwined and that America had to engage with the world to ensure our future. So he launched one of the most far-reaching engagement efforts in history. And today we are still reaping the rewards of that investment in mutual prosperity and security. From Cairo to Kabul, from quiet villages to crowded cities, America is once again reaching out a hand of friendship and seeking new relationships. We know it is the right thing to do and we know, like General Marshall did, that our future depends on it.

Yeah, but back then Europe was a Christian continent. And the enemy was broken, broke and starving – a point we’ll never get to if the administration can’t even admit that we’re fighting terrorists.  There is a role for public diplomacy – what we used to call foreign aid – but alone, it will have no measurable effect on the level of jihadist violence against us.

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“I don’t know anything about cars.” – Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., Newly Annointed Chairman Of GM

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really can’t believe I’m in America, reading in American media what an American president is doing to an American enterprise.  But I am.  It is true.  The government has named a new chairman for General Motors.  Not the GM board of directors, not the shareholders, but Steven Rattner, Obama’s car czar, who knows about as much about cars as the new chairman, Edward Whitacre.

This is far more radical than anything I thought Obama would be able to pull off, even in eight years, let alone 14 weeks.  Following on yesterday’s SCOTUS decision which said, basically, a contract is no longer a contract so investors can expect no protections, the critical condition of glorious American capitalism could not be more apparent.  I worry that it will not survive until 2010′s mid-term elections.

Whitacre was picked for two reasons.  The published one is that he guided AT&T through the transition from land-based wire telephone carrier to a leader in the wireless industry.  The Obamaites see a similar future for GM, with it transforming from a market-driven car company to a government-driven car company, manufacturing cars Big Brother wants us to drive, whether we want to or not.

The unspoken reason for his selection is because Whitacre can be counted on to do what government tells him to do, as was evident when he quickly (and rightly) acquiesced to government pressure to open AT&T’s hardware to the feds for post-9/11 surveillance purposes.  Not all telcom CEOs folded so quickly to government pressure, and since folding to government pressure is what’s in store for GM, Whitacre will make an ideal Obama-era chairman for the company.

The appointment should infuriate the Left.  Besides being a lackey to George Bush’s gestapo security machine, Whitacre received a peon-snubbing $158.8 million retirement package from AT&T and was involved in some pretty brutal corporate downsizings (probably in no small part due to shifting jobs overseas).  Oh, and let’s not forget that under his tenure AT&T censored (oops!) a Pearl Jam concert right when the band was blasting George Bush.

But Daily Kos has nothing posted on him as of his hour.  Democratic Underground? Mum.  [By the way, I typed "democraticunderground" instead of "democraticunderground.com," and was redirected to one of those stupid sponsored-link pages.  Guess who came out on top?  Barbara Boxer!] As for Huffington Post, which as I predicted in a tweet earlier today leads with how Homeland Security foresaw today’s attack on the Holocaust Museum in its report on right-wing radicalism, it also couldn’t find a reason to cover – let alone criticize – Whitacre’s appointment.

Of course not.  They know what’s going on.  Their long-awaited revolution is happening and they don’t want to crow about it too early because suddenly they’re very concerned about the enemy getting wind of our intentions.  Not al-Qaeda – tell them anything - they don’t want their enemy, normal Americans, to wake up to what’s going on.  No, they want to be much further down the road to economic ruin in the name of wealth redistribution before they haul out the red flags and have a victory parade.

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en. John Barrasso delivered a bit of a barn-burner at yesterday’s Committee on Oversight joint hearing on “Scientific Integrity and Transparency Reforms at the Environmental Protection Agency.” He’s been carrying this particular flag for a while, all but ignored by the Dem power structure. Following are excerpts from his statement:

I am concerned about the shadow cabinet position of Energy and Climate Czar. This vague position “coordinates” energy and climate change policy in the cabinet. This person is not confirmed by the Senate. How the EPA Administrator and the Czar work together remains highly ambiguous. The person appointed to this post is Carol Browner. Browner, coincidently, was the EPA Director under President Clinton. By appointing Browner, the Administration now has two EPA Directors, one confirmed by Congress, the other not. One accountable to Congress, the other not.

Obama has now appointed 18 czars – imagine what the Left would have said if “Bushitler” had done the same.  They’re all problematic, but Browner is particulary so, especially given the economy-crushing global warming agenda Obama is pushing.  Barrasso details some of the more nefarious acts Browner undertook while she was Clinton’s Congressionally overseen EPA chief:

She [a Washington Examiner reporter] stated that “Browner ordered Virginia to reduce the amount of ambient nitrogen oxide, not because levels were anywhere near dangerous, but because that was the only pollutant that had not declined in the past 25 years.” She stated that that Browner proposed banning chlorine, used as a disinfectant in 98 percent of municipal water treatment, “in the absence of any evidence that chlorine leads to cancer or birth defects.”  Indeed, the author points out that Peru was suing the United States for classifying chlorine as a possible carcinogen “because then Peru removed chorine from its water supply, and the resulting cholera epidemic killed thousands.” She also cited Browner’s attempt to get the Food and Drug Administration to ban anti-asthma inhalers because the EPA “considered it more important to get rid of devices that release trace amounts of chlorofluorcarbons than to allow 30 million Americans to breathe easily.” She stated “public outcry, not science, caused the EPA to back off.” These are just a few examples in a larger column that cites many more.

Now this woman is operating in Jack Bauer-like fashion, with no hand, save Obama’s, constraining her.  This is not exactly the model of that transparency thing Obama promised during the campaign.

The Czar positions that the Obama Administration has created seem to be designed to not be transparent. We won’t ever know whether or not politics is trumping science because we can’t get the Czar to come here and testify. Everything will be done in secret, behind closed doors, out of the view of the American people.We need not look much farther than Energy and Climate Czar Browner’s actions over the last few months.

Want an example of how untransparent the czar process is? Barrosso provided a gem:

The New York Times ran an article in May entitled “Vow of silence key to White House-California Fuel Economy Talks.” The article stated that there was a simple rule for negotiations between the White House and California on vehicle fuel economy – “Put nothing in writing.” Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, stated that Browner “quietly orchestrated private discussions from the White House with auto industry officials.” The paper said Nichols and Browner “decided to keep their discussions as quiet as possible, holding no group meetings and taking care to not leak updates to the press.” Nichols was quoted as saying “We put nothing in writing, ever.” This is unacceptable Madame Chairman.

How are we, the oversight committee, able to do our job with Administration officials putting nothing in writing, holding secret meetings in the dark of night without other officials present. All of this occurring outside the prying eyes of the people. This is not transparency. This is not good government. This threatens scientific integrity.

I wonder how that Times story would have run if it had occurred during the Bush admin and they caught an uncomfirmed Bush appointee saying “put nothing in writing.” We’ll never know.

The good senator concluded by repeating his longstanding request for committee hearings into Browner’s role as energy czar, a request committee chair Babs Boxer ignored. Fat chance any such hearings will happen any sooner than January 2013, when, hopefully, a new Republican majority will rule the Senate.

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henever George Bush mentioned God during his presidency, the mainly marginalized media and the leftist babblers all launched into a great fear of a Bush-imposed theocracy (the Church of Halliburton?), giving us a moment of comic relief from their fears of martial law, of shredding the constitution, and of global warming meltdowns.

But now that The One is in office, theocracy is A-OK with the loons, as NewsBusters reports:

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas brought adulation over President Obama’s Cairo speech to a whole new level on Friday, declaring on MSNBC: “I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

Thanks to Okie for bringing this to my attention (I was sick all weekend and read nothing and posted nothing), and also for posting this killer comment on this development from The Anchoress:

Evan Thomas, that bellweather of media obsequiousness … has declared that President Obama is “sort of god”. Chris Matthews, who would suckle Obama’s manboobs, if only Obama would lactate for him, can be heard saying “yeah,” in the background.

I’ve always told you they thought Obama a godling. Now, they’ve admitted it.

Our press is not only not free, it is completely nuts; mad in its teen-fan lust, lost in the misty aphrodisiac of Obama’s power.

{…}

Even Vanity Fair understands that the press is nothing to the man they love, but a bunch of useful idiots.

Obama will suckle them while he must. Then he will eat them. And they’ll have it coming.

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“It’s a sad evening for social democracy in Europe. We are particularly disappointed, [it is] a bitter evening for us.” Martin Schultz, European Socialist

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enter-right parties showed strongly in elections across Europe over the weekend, winning in England, Spain, Germany, France, Portugal and Poland, as more hard-right parties gained seats in Britain, Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Slovakia and Hungary.  Baring the brunt of European frustration with immigration and economic policies, leftist and socialist parties took a beating.

In an economic downturn, the Europeans are making the right choices, voting for parties that promise to cut government expenses, tighten immigration policies and trim social welfare.  Here in America, we’re stuck with a president who is plunging in the opposite direction, promising more than 600,000 taxpayer- or debt-funded jobs, fast-tracking healthcare “reform,” and buying huge stakes in our industrial and economic sectors.

It’s a crazy world.  Just a year ago, we lampooned the Left for wanting to be like Europe.  Now American conservatives can only look enviously across the pond and shake their heads enviously.

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o political choice is ever a 0/100 or a 100/0 affair.  We balance, sift and finally settle, selecting the candidates we will reject and the ones we will vote for.

With Barack Obama, I quickly felt that his leftist voting record and his transparently disingenuous rhetoric was bad news for America and I hoped Hillary would win the Dem nomination – not so much because I thought that would make it easier for the GOP nominee to win, but because it meant that no matter who won, America would be in better hands than it would be if it was in Obama’s.

Still, he wasn’t 0/100 with me.  I thought that his unique heritage could play well on the foreign policy stage, even if I didn’t trust his own policies.  When gaps are huge – as they are between radical Islam and us – bridging has to come first, with policies following.  Obama could be a bridge, and even if there are downsides to bridging, there is an upside (again not a 100/0 or 0/100 thing).  The upside was that Obama might spark a “moderate revolution” in Islam, creating the opportunity for the religion’s worst elements to be censored – eliminated – from within, instead of by us.

Today in Cairo this was either going to happen or not happen.  And none of us know, now that the speech has been given, whether sparking the moderation of Islam will be Obama’s legacy or not.  But we do know, and have to admit, that he was uniquely qualified by his heritage and life story to give this speech. I have read no commentaries or news reports.  I don’t know how it was received in Cairo, Tehran, Dearborn or either the right or left side of the blogosphere.  I just read the transcript on Real Clear Politics, and this is what I think.

Structurally, the speech is very basic.  It defines seven issues and introduces each by finding and celebrating our common ground in that area before detailing our differences and the Obama vision for resolution.  In the seven issues, he covered everything I wanted him to cover, including in #5 the one with the most potential power: women’s rights. If the women of Islam begin to demand rights, it will be a great force toward moderation and economic development, and I hope that Islamic women and men will be inspired by those words. 

The speech strained credulity and history at times trying to find common ground, as was the case early on when he cited the Treaty of Tripoli as evidence of a long, normal history between America and Islam:

I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.”

“Recognize” is a unique way to put the relationship characterized by this treaty, which was all about war and piracy and slavery and extortion – hardly the basis for Islam always being a positive part of America’s story.  And it wasn’t John Adams that drafted the very controversial Article 11he quotes from, it was the diplomat Joel Barlow, who negotiated the treaty.

These oratorical stretches at the beginning of each of its seven sections are the points of the speech that are the must vulnerable, and surely will be the target of criticism.  I get it; he wants to show the connection, but the very fact that the connction is sometimes so hard to find reveals the difficulty of the challenge.

It is naive to think that one speech would transform the world; that’s the “magic bullet” theory that Obama seems to believe in but simply is not true.  Certain of his statements will stick in certain peoples’ craws and certain nations’ collective craws and will become their point of focus, building gaps, not bridges.   

On policy, a few things jumped out at me, most of all that he did not say unequivocally that Iran cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons.  The closest he came to making a horrifying apology was in this section, when he appeared to apologize for our nuclear capabilities:

I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons. That is why I strongly reaffirmed America’s commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons.

Is he saying it was wrong for America to make the choice to become a nuclear nation?  It certainly seems so, and if that’s his belief, he’s got a lot of historical explaining to do, looking back, and he’s created a diplomatic quagmire, looking forward.

He satisfied me with his basic statements of support for Israel and surprised me in an extremely positive way with his frank condemnation of antisemitism and his statement – in Egypt, where antisemitism and Holocaust denial is a state-run business – that denying the Holocaust “is baseless, ignorant, and hateful.” I was less thrilled with his seeming acceptance of Hamas as a legitimate party going forward and his condemnation of Israeli settlements – but I loved that Holocaust talk!  How will it play in the Muslim world? We’ll see, but it certainly did no harm.

The other thing that troubled me is the promises he made to American Muslims, and the commitments he made on behalf of we non-Muslims.  He promised to make it easier for Muslims to fulfill the zakat – Islam’s charitable giving mandates – under U.S. tax law.  I wasn’t aware this was a problem, and I hope he’s not talking about making it easier for American Muslims to give to Hamas and other terrorist groups.

I’m also not sure which Americans, exactly, he was talking about here: 

Americans are ready to join with citizens and governments; community organizations, religious leaders, and businesses in Muslim communities around the world to help our people pursue a better life.

I know a few Americans who are doing that.  They’re called “missionaries,” and they have to live almost underground, fearful of religious persecution at any turn.  I fear Obama is calling for something akin to the radical Americans who went to Cuba in the 60s to harvest sugar cane – will there be troops of progressives trekking to Libya now, coming back with Islamic doctrination rather than leaving behind American ideals?

Then there was the ludicrous.  There always has to be the ludicrous in an Obama speech.

We will open centers of scientific excellence in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and appoint new Science Envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops.

Barry, Barry, Barry.  These people are living with intermittent electric power, water they can’t drink, and they use dangerously over-crowded public transportation or motorbikes or even donkeys and camels to get around.  Digitizing medical records when you’re going to clinics that wash and re-use wound dressings?  Green jobs when any job will do, thank you?  Leave the appeasing of the U.S. Greenies at home!

Still, I go back to the beginning and say this was a speech only Barack Obama could have given, and I have to say he did it well.  His audience wasn’t us, it was them, and he did not come off as either weak or arrogant, the two directions that would have sunk this initiative.  He positioned – perhaps too subtly for some – his country as a force for good, and held us up as an economic and human rights ideal.  He will be the source of many, many conversations in the Muslim world for some time to come, many of them focusing on this, the big question:

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

My guess:  As is the case now, most of us will work toward common ground, a good future for our children and respect for others.  And a few radical Islamists will continue to focus on destroying all things not Islamic and creating a new caliphate.

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ay LaHood has caught Obama fever and it’s wracked him so badly that you’d never know our new Transportation Secretary is (was?) a Republican, or that he once understood, quite literally, what plays in Peoria, the congressional district he represented until the One gave  him the Nod.  Now suddenly a righteous evangelist for bikes over cars, he’s no longer interested in keeping government out of our lives; instead, he’s working to use government to, as he puts it, “change our behavior.”

I prefer a different spin:  He’s using government to force change on us.  As George Will lamented recently,

But LaHood is a Republican, for Pete’s sake, the party (before it lost its bearings) of “No, we can’t” and “Actually, we shouldn’t” and “Not so fast” and “Let’s think this through.” Now he is in full “Yes we can!” mode. Et tu, Ray?

Will sat down for lunch with LaHood a while back to ask him about his newfound love of transformational government, and LaHood was not about to cover up his newfound giddyness over having the power to rip people out of the cars they love and stick them on bicycles:

Indeed, about three bites into lunch, the T word lands with a thump: He says he has joined a “transformational” administration: “I think we can change people’s behavior.” Government “promoted driving” by building the Interstate Highway System—”you talk about changing behavior.” He says, “People are getting out of their cars, they are biking to work.” High-speed intercity rail, such as the proposed bullet train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, is “the wave of the future.”

Yes, my fellow Americans, one day you’ll take a train or your bike to the soccer game, riding the inherently inferior transportion of the future to the inherently boring game of the future. Sigh. I remember when the transportation of the future was the Jetson-mobile, larking its way through the clear, clean skies. Now the car of the future is the bicycle?! A mode of transportation that went out of style in 1910?

The DC press corps apparently read Will’s column, so when LaHood appeared a few days later at the National Press Club, they pounced, according to CNS:

At the National Press Club on Thursday he attempted to respond to George Will’s column and to explain his vision for using the power of government to change people’s transportation behavior and to change the nature of American residential communities.

“We want to really–and notwithstanding the fact that George Will doesn’t like this idea–the idea of creating opportunities for people to get out of their cars–and we’re working with the secretary of HUD, Shaun Donovan, on opportunities for housing, walking paths, biking paths,” said LaHood. “If somebody wants to ride their bike, if–to work or to the place of employment or to other places–mass transit, light rail–creating opportunities for what we call livable communities.”

The moderator of the press club event asked LaHood: “Some in the highway-supporters motorist groups have been concerned by your livability initiative. Is this an effort to make driving more torturous and to coerce people out of their cars?”

LaHood answered: “It is a way to coerce people out of their cars.

“Yeah,” he continued, “I mean, look, people don’t like spending an hour and a half getting to work. And people don’t like spending an hour going to the grocery store. And all of you who live around here know exactly what I’m talking about. You know, the dreaded thing is to have to run an errand on a weekend around here or to try and get home at 3:00 in the afternoon or even 5:00 in the afternoon.

Someone tell LaHood people don’t like having to ride a bike through rain, snow or dark of night to work.  Or having to go to the grocery store every day because the trunk on the ol’ Schwinn just isn’t all that big.  Or having to get shoved into a crowded subway, where the pervert du jour can rub up against you. Or having to pay $75 for a cab because the boss kept you late and you missed the last train. 

Someone tell LaHood that the minute streetcars, then cars, made it possible to get out of the idealized planners’ vision of a compact urban core, we did, fleeing by the millions to suburbs, where we continue to live because we don’t like crack dealers on the street corner, gangstas in our kids’ schools, and car alarms going off at 3 a.m.

One reporter asked LaHood to respond to conservative concerns that he’s just another fascist know-it-all loon he’s supporting government intrusion into our lives.  His response?

“About everything we do around here is government intrusion in people’s lives,” said LaHood. “So have at it.”

Meanwhile, GM bond-holders did not respond warmly to government mandated depreciation of their bonds, forcing the automaker to the brink of bankruptcy.  The GM that emerges could be as much as 70 percent government-owned.  And who, then, would become a pivotal decision-maker for GM’s future?  Roy LaHood, the man who lives to make cars less attractive than bikes and subways.

It’s a brave new world.  Full speed backwards! 

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“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” – Sonia Sotomayor, SCOTUS Nominee

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his quote, reported by the NY Times, explains why Sonia Sotomayor is Barack Obama’s choice for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court:  She’s anti-old white guy, she doesn’t care about the white experience, she’s racist and sexist, and she’s cut from whole liberal cloth.  What a perfect choice for the new, improved Supreme Court, where policy is to be made, not judged!

I’m sure Sotomayor has learned much from her uniquely American experience, from poor Bronx childhood to the peak of her profession.  But whatever her experience, it was no richer than any of our experiences – it’s just a life that has been lived.  So she experienced want and challenge and success … is that so unique?  Does it inherently make her a better judge than someone whose experiences were different – say, wealth, athletic competition and, oh, the loss of a parent at a young age?  Or someone from the middle class who saw a father who slogged for a just-so living, who was ridiculed by jealous classmates for his intelligence, and became a great judge despite having to go to a middle-tier law school, where he incurred big student loan debt?

Sorry, Sonia. There’s nothing about being a Latina that makes you inherently better for the job than a gringo guy.  But there’s definitely something troubling about a Supreme Court nominee who would say such a thing, since her rise to the top is something that could only happen in America, a country that just happened to be designed by white men.  Those men also had a rich life experience, grown out of a classical education and an intellectual quest for the best for of government man could devise, with guidance from God, even though they never experienced being brown-skinned women from the Bronx.

To her credit, she mentioned the Founding Fathers in her remarks upon receiving the nomination:

For as long as I can remember, I have been inspired by the achievement of our founding fathers. They set forth principles that have endured for than more two centuries. Those principles are as meaningful and relevant in each generation as the generation before.

Let’s hope she really believes that.  If so, she could start showing it by not mouthing more junk like today’s quote of the day, which I’m sure the Founding Fathers would find curious, if not offensive.

As a white guy in his 50s, I’m offended by Sotomayer … and I think that’s exactly the point of her appointment.

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ou would think our diplomatic corps would be above petty, Obama-esque snittiness when representing our country to overseas populations, but this is the Obama era, folks, the era of ingratiousness, self-absorption and intolerance.  You can see it playing out now at our embassy in London.

An otherwise lovely story there has been dirtied by the blind dismissal of all things not Democrat, not Obama, as you will see in this Times report:

An interior designer from Chelsea who is a leading light in the Thatcherite Conservative Way Forward group has won approval for a statue of the great American conservative Ronald Reagan to be erected outside the US Embassy in London. The project was given the nod on Thursday night by Westminster City Council’s planning sub-committee in a break with its policy of allowing memorials only to people who have been dead for at least ten years. The former US President died in 2004 aged 93.

The 10ft bronze statue of the man hailed by Margaret Thatcher for winning the Cold War without firing a shot will be placed on a 6ft plinth of Portland stone outside the embassy building in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, near an existing statue of Dwight D Eisenhower, the war hero President, unveiled by Mrs Thatcher in 1989.

The architects behind the project, the same firm responsible for the statues of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square and the Queen Mother near Buckingham Palace, say that it was enthusiastically backed by the former ambassador, Robert Tuttle, who left office in February. It was also supported by the Ronald Reagan Foundation in California, which chose the sculptor Chas Fagan to create the statue.

Isn’t that great?  The legendary American hot war fighter joined by the legendary cold war fighter, all at the behest of a British citizen who understands the man’s greatness.  But enter the Obamites and it’s suddenly not so pretty anymore:

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the current inhabitants of the embassy — who are still waiting for President Obama to confirm Mr Tuttle’s replacement — appear less keen to have a larger-than-life statue of the darling of the American Right on their doorstep.

“This is not something that we have requested or actively tried to get brought about,” an embassy spokesman said yesterday. “We’re happy to have our presidents honoured but this statue was not a US Government initiative.”

Asked whether the mission would take the statue with it when it leaves Grosvenor Square for its new head-quarters in Nine Elms, south of the Thames, he replied: “It’s not our statue.”

How hard would it have been to say “Thank you” and let it go?  Could you imagine Bush’s ambassador, Tuttle, behaving in such a boorish manner if London planned to put a statue of FDR outside the embassy?  Of course not!  He would have mentioned FDR’s efforts to defend England during World War II and would have diplomatically avoided comments about how he pushed America down the road to big government.

There was plenty juvenile about the Dem-dip’s response, but nothing diplomatic.  I’ll let Bookworm close this out, with a hat-tip:

[I]s it me, or is there something deeply disturbing about the new administration’s bone deep hatred and disrespect for those past administrations that don’t comport with its statist, Leftist view of the world?

Now, I freely admit that I’ve probably said a few unkind things in the past about that idiotic, antisemitic fool, Jimmy Carter, but I’m a private citizen.  I’m not the representative of all of the people of the United States of America, nor of the continuity of American government in England, dating back to John Adams’ first appearance there.  I can afford low standards; the official American administration can’t. 

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axman-Markey, the bill that would euthanize our sick economy in a Quixotic quest to save the planet, has passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and GE/NBC honcho Jeff Immelt couldn’t be happier.

The bill, presumably watered down to secure the votes of Dems wanting to appear less than full-bore loon, proposes to radically change America’s energy infrastructure and economy. It would impose an Obama-draconian 17 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2020 – just 10 years from when it’s likely to go into effect. Then it gets much, much worse: a 42 percent cut in the next ten years, and an 83 percent cut from 2005 levels in the next ten.

The only way to accomplish that is to tax cheap, abundant fuel out of existence in favor of unproven, unreliable, more expensive alternative fuels – or to go nuke big-time. But as currently written, Waxman-Moxley includes not a single incentive for nuclear power.

Surveying this mess, frequent commenter Francis came up with a Q&A for this bill, its authors, and the 32 Dems and 1 Republican (Sunny Bono’s former wife Mary, RINO-CA):

A reduction in greenhouse gases? No.

Stable global climate? No.

Reductions in sea level rise? No.

A robust new “green” economy? That’s debatable, but I would argue “no.”

Payback to GE/NBC for all-positive news coverage of Obama? Absolutely.

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