Remembering back to all their previous encounters, where President Obama displayed all the spine of a Democratic planarian, I really haven't expected much from him on the foreign policy front. In particular, I imagined that he'd continue to be pushed around by the Chinese, who have been using North Korea as a distraction from their own activities. This President has always valued his verbiage too highly, and his confidence in using it to achieve foreign policy goals has been completely misplaced. So I must say that this was completely unexpected, and very, very welcome (if true):
	2009: Backbone check Fail!! Will 2011 be different?
The New York Times said Obama warned his Chinese counterpart that if Beijing did not step up pressure on North Korea, Washington would redeploy its forces in Asia to protect itself from a potential North Korean strike on U.S. soil.

Wow - the old iron fist in a velvet glove. I expected the velvet glove, but the iron fist? Quite a pleasant surprise.

The Chinese reaction so far has been exactly what you'd expect - vague threats to test our resolve:

Wang Dong of Peking University's School of International Studies said Washington's reported warning to Beijing was a slap in the face for the Chinese leader, who has urged the two Koreas to resolve their differences through dialogue.

"Playing tough like this, it might just backfire, I'm afraid," Wang said. "If this article represents the real thinking by American leaders, the danger of war on the peninsula can never be dismissed."

Posted by: Geoff at 03:46 AM | Comments (198)
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Even bad men love their mamas.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:45 AM | Comments (108)
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It was on this day thirty years ago that Ronald Reagan was sworn in as our 40th President. When he took office the inflation rate was well north of 10%, unemployment over 7% and the top marginal tax rate was 70%.

Fifty two U.S. citizens had been held hostage by an Iranian theocrat for four hundred and forty four days. Each day of the crisis was an embarrassing public reminder of American timidity and weakness.

We were a little over five years removed from the collapse of South Vietnam.
The Soviet's had invaded Afghanistan and were actively involved in installing puppet governments and allies in Sub Saharan Africa, the Horn of Africa, South East Asia, South America, and one of the Senate seats in Massachusetts.

Preceding Reagan was Carter, Ford, Nixon, and LBJ. Each had handed off an America that was in far worse shape than what they had inherited.

To many citizens the 1970s seemed like a slow motion decline of American power, prestige, and pride. However, on November 2, 1980 America managed to halt to this seemingly inevitable decline with the election of Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Here are some of my favorite videos and speeches of Reagan.

1/20/1981 First Inaugural Address

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:23 PM | Comments (86)
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Thursday all. I was completely tied up all day until just 17 minutes ago so tonight's ONT will be the best I could produce in the 6 minutes remaining after hitting the head and changing into my ONT gear.

Oh and blog accounting is banging on me because we're behind in this quarter's kitteh quota. Which leads to tonight's topic...

Kittehs in Spaaace

The early years of the space program weren't just German scientists spinning monkeys in centrifuges - kittehs also played a key role. Plus the Air Force researchers really wanted to answer questions like 'Do cats always land on their feet in zero gee?' and 'Can they maintain this orientation while re-entering the atmosphere?'.

And don't forget about 2011: A Kitteh Odyssey. more...

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:23 PM | Comments (526)
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Alternate headline: Creepiest Person In World Fired.

Last December, in an interview with CNBC, he addressed concerns about privacy and Google's retention of personal information by saying, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

From the Washington Post:

Google announced Thursday afternoon that chief executive Eric Schmidt will step aside and be succeeded by Larry Page, one of the search giantÂ’s co-founders.

Schmidt, who joined Google as chief executive in 2001, said in a statement that the decision was aimed at simplifying the companyÂ’s management structure.

“As Google has grown, managing the business has become more complicated,” he said. “[W]e decided now was the right moment to make some changes to the way we are structured.”

Posted by: rdbrewer at 03:58 PM | Comments (151)
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They don't want you deriving the wrong conclusions from the facts so they'll just have to keep the facts from you, too.

They have become rather open about being Stalinist in this fashion. They used to slant stories; now, when they realize a story would be too difficult to slant, they simply refuse to cover it at all.

Time Is Game, Though: Hey, they cover the story not as politics and not as front-page material -- no way -- but as an aside in their "HealthLand" blog, as if this is a health issue and not, say, a grand jury's indictment of an entire liberal political establishment.

That's where they cover the story. Just in "HealthLand." I looked in this blog for a reference to the full story which must, I thought, be found somewhere in Time; but no, no link to Time. This blogger has to recount the story itself-- as a "health" issue, of course.

Her headline? She's game to slant it:

Why the Pa. Abortion Doc's Case Is About Poverty, Not Roe v. Wade

Ah, the old "women, minorities most hurt" gambit. Well played.

Well, it is about poverty, too, but it is mostly, per the grand ury's report, about a political and medical culture which decided to not investigate why women kept showing up in other hospital's emergency rooms almost dead, and they made that decision -- again, per the grand jury report -- based upon pro-abortion politics and not wishing to give a storyline to the pro-life right.

They figured a bunch of murders and a negligent death and several more near negligent deaths were a small price to pay for keeping abortion safe, legal, and rarely mentioned in a negative headline.

True, the fact that minority women and minority children were largely being murdered in this fashion made it an easier call; but to say this wasn't about abortion is to, well, join the reality-based community in its continued flight from reality.

Note to Time: This isn't a "health" story. It's a murder story, and in fact a murder story in which high government officals have "lawyered up" (quoting the grand jury) rather than answer questions about their complicity in the murders.

So here is, finally, a real story about mass-murder directly caused by the negligence and malice of high public officials, and of course the Motherfucking Media takes no interest.

Except as a "health" story. Oh, those poor minority women forced to seek their illegal late-term abortions from shabby, unprofessional backroom illegal abortiionists, rather than from the professional, careful illegal late-term abortionists that white girls have access to.

Posted by: Ace at 01:31 PM | Comments (210)
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Yay.

Over the past two years, as U.S. unemployment remained near double-digit levels and the economy shed jobs in the wake of the financial crisis, over a million foreign-born arrivals to America found work, many illegally.

Those are among the findings of a review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Bureau data conducted exclusively for Reuters by researchers at the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston.

...

With a national unemployment rate of 9.4 percent, domestic job creation is at the top of President Barack Obama's agenda and such findings could add to calls to tighten up on illegal immigration. But much of it is Hispanic and the growing Latino vote is a key base for Obama's Democratic Party.

Many of the new arrivals, according to employers, brought with them skills required of the building trade and found work in sectors such as construction, where jobless rates are high.

If only there were some sort of line of demarcation -- let us call this a "border" for convenience -- which we could use to distinguish between fellow citizens and the rest of the world, and give preferential treatment, such as employment opportunities, only to fellow citizens.

I know, it's silly. I'm talking like science-fiction or something.

Posted by: Ace at 01:24 PM | Comments (146)
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So annouceth Republican leaders.

Here's Monty's take:

Many states, especially California and Illinois, are still depending
on the "deux ex machina" method of dealing with their fiscal problems.
And as I've said on many occasions, when your fiscal plans depend on
"then a miracle happens!" as a cornerstone, you are well and truly
boned.

Note to the reality-based community: Miracles don't happen.*

* Okay, if you're religious, I'll concede they might happen. But not with state finances, I think you'll agree. Although the Democrats' Miracle of the Double-Counted $500 Billion might be considered as one down in their quest for sainthood.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (306)
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I'm totally kidding about the "dirty whore" part. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, and this time, I seriously mean it.) But JeffB. points out something important I want to ramble on about.

I think his girlfriend and mom are on to something here -- and it's something that bothers me about Palin too. Which is a real shame, because this is such an easy fix.

Ace - one problem with your theory....educated conservative women really dislike Palin too.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (591)
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I mention that high school bit because he does. I didn't know that; wouldn't have guessed. But he recently got a sneer from a leftist writer about that -- despite the fact that the leftist writer in question writes for some minor regional paper (which I'm guessing is free and exists mainly as a vehicle for coupons for all-male burlesque shows) and Taranto is one of the most influential and important voices at what is one of the most influential and important newspapers in the world.

But, you know: This writer went to a good school so...

Keep livin' on that early promise that turned out to be a cruel lie, dude. I know I do. It gets me through the day.

That's the beginning of essay, noting that sort of unearned-snobbery is a major part of Palin hate, but then he hits a theme that my friend not_steve_in_hb has been hitting for years: Liberal women hate Sarah Palin because they hate their own lives and especially their disappointing husbands.

Okay, Taranto doesn't say that, exactly, but he's talking nearby that hot-button. A liberal female friend of his, whom he quotes, comes closer to saying that.

Professional jealousy and intellectual snobbery, however, only scratch the surface of the left's bizarre attitude toward Palin. They explain the intensity of the disdain, but not the outright hatred--not why some people whose grasp of reality is sufficient to function in society made the insane inference that she was to blame for a madman's attempt to murder Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

This unhinged hatred of Palin comes mostly from women. That is an awkward observation for us to offer, because a man risks sounding sexist or unchivalrous when he makes unflattering generalizations about women. Therefore, we are going to hide behind the skirts of our friend Jessica Faller, a New Yorker in her 30s of generally liberal politics. Over the weekend, she wrote us this analysis of Palin-hatred, which she has generously given us permission to quote:

I am starting out with a guess that this stems from her abrupt appearance on the national scene during the McCain-Obama race. She appeared out of nowhere and landed squarely in a position of extreme attention and media power. Her sex appeal might not have been as much of an issue had she been a known entity with a tremendous, watertight political résumé.
Even lacking that, her sex appeal might not have been such an issue if her demeanor on the campaign trail had been more, well, conservative. But here is this comely woman, in a curvy red suit, giving "shout-outs" during the debate with Joe Biden, giving controversial interviews without apology, basically driving in there, parking the car, and walking in like she owned the place.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But she couldn't have pulled it off if she were a gray mouse in a pantsuit, and because the devil in the red dress wasn't orating like a professor, it roused an unquenchable forest fire of rage and loathing in the breasts of many women, perhaps of the toiling gray mouse variety, who projected onto her their own career resentments and personal frustrations.

I am amazed at how people still abhor her. I personally do not. I don't feel she would be a good choice to run this country, but she does not deserve the horrific treatment she gets. I can tell you, being privy to the endless, incendiary rants this past week about her, coming from hordes of liberal women--age demo 25 to 45--they rip her to pieces, they blame her for everything, and the jealousy/resentment factor is so clear and primal. I've never seen anything like it.

We'd say this goes beyond mere jealousy. For many liberal women, Palin threatens their sexual identity, which is bound up with their politics in a way that it is not for any other group...

He then goes on to hang his thesis on the question of abortion, and Bristol's carrying her baby to term, which is certainly lurking somewhere in this cloud of red hate, but actually, I'm inclined to agree more with his friend and my own friend: No, really, a lot of this is resentment by a bunch of humiliated hens who have a large vested interest in making certain that only the credentialed, sanctioned path to success is permitted (because that's the track they're on) and they're frustrated that they themselves aren't successful, and here's this brash, sexy-librarian type succeeding outside the system that's so precious to them (because the system is of course stacked with advantages for their type and disadvantages for all others) and putting their own limited accomplishments rather to shame.

Although that analysis is somewhat crude, and doesn't really implicate policy or intellectual-level policy preferences, it must be borne in mind that hatred is a rather crude emotion, and certainly not intellectual in genesis, so explanations rooted in primal pecking-order alpha-grrl urges and neurotic fears and psychological shame are probably much closer to the mark than Taranto's thesis that "They hate her because she's the embodiment of the pro-life spirit."

Yes, maybe that's there too, but that's an intellectual, abstract sort of motivation. When you're seeking to explain something primal, psychological, and fundamentally personal, I think you're better off passing over intellectual explanations and looking at people's fears and inadequacies.

By the way, Taranto doesn't let liberal men off the hook, either:

What about male Palin-hatred? It seems to us that it is of decidedly secondary importance. Liberal men put down Palin as a cheap way to score points with the women in their lives, or they use her as an outlet for more-general misogynistic impulses that would otherwise be socially unacceptable to express.

Not sure that's right, for similar reasons -- I think again this is largely anger about someone they don't understand from a place they never heard of trumping their private schools and meticulously cultivated social networks with something they simply don't possess -- vital spirit -- and rejecting that pathway because it threatens them.

Oh: My other guess is that this is rooted in an emotional response they felt when they first saw her -- panic. Remember, up until Palin's nomination, Barack Obama was cruising easily towards victory. No poll ever showed McCain ahead, and few polls showed him even within 6 points.

But Palin changed that -- suddenly Obama wasn't a sure thing, but was behind, at least for two wonderful weeks.

I am thinking that the panic and fear they felt over that stayed with them, the same way that if you're eating a peppermint Jolly Roger when your doctor tells you you might have a deadly illness, you will probably never again wish to taste a peppermint Jolly Roger. That stimulus becomes locked by association with the fear of death. It becomes the taste of death.

So that's Sarah Palin -- the taste of death for unhinged liberals who thought Barack Obama was an unstoppable god.

Posted by: Ace at 08:26 AM | Comments (364)
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