the beginning of the end of Europe

Actually, it is probably way past the beginning... maybe more like the start of the second of three acts. Anyway, I'm referring to a post at the Corner by Mark Steyn where he has several noteworthy news items: first, that radical imams are able to take their welfare money from the UK and set themselves up in relative luxury in the Middle East. According to an article that Steyn cites, such "welfare imams" are probably accelerating the fall of the European welfare state:

"... the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive, and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad."

He then cites the leader of Norway's Independent Labour Party- Ghufoor Butt (does it blow anyone else's mind that the leader of a political party in Norway is a Muslim?) who is pushing for segregation of Norweigans and immigrants when it comes to health care. In Steyn's book, he was talking about the end of Europe and I think we're seeing it's demise come even faster than we might have thought.

Cap and tax

Let's hope the "cap and trade" legislation fails otherwise we'll all be a lot poorer. Even Democrat John Dingell has said “nobody in this country realizes that cap-and-trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one.” Article on this and GOP proposed alternatives including building more nuclear power plants (which we urgently need) here.

When Bush did this kind of thing he was an "idiot"; I suppose with Obama it's an "honest mistake"

Obama has trouble with his teleprompter today and is flustered at a talk at the National Academy of Sciences. Like I said in the subject line, when this kind of thing happened with Bush it was "proof" that he was an "idiot". I suppose with Obama it is just an "honest mistake".

the threat of the Taliban gaining control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal

This article tries to whitewash the threat a bit but I think everyone should be concerned that the Taliban are now within about 60 miles of Pakistan's capital and there seems to be a real risk of their taking control of the country. The article talks about U.S. military plans to go in there and spirit away the nuclear weapons, but does anyone really think that Barry Obama would have the guts to order such a thing? I sure don't.

the witch hunt is on

Hugh Hewitt, on his radio show, used the phrase "the witch hunt is on" to describe Obama's statement that he is open to prosecuting people from the Bush administration with regards to their decisions on war on terror. That is what it is and will become. It is just outrageous. The Bush administration officials were doing their best to protect this country and now they might be prosecuted for it? Unbelievable. I'm really fearful for the future of our country under this buffoon's "leadership".

ready to scream about so-called "torture" memos

I'm watching the Sunday interview shows and I'm about ready to scream about the discussion of the so-called "torture" memos. Let me get this straight... we water-boarded all of three of these guys. With some of the others we made them stay up past their bed time and made one stay in a room with a caterpillar (and we told him before-hand the caterpillar couldn't hurt him) OH THE HORROR!!!! I'm shocked that this is all we did to these guys. Christopher Buckley has a good column on this. I think we're headed towards the Monty Python "torture" that he cites:

"Remember the Monty Python “Spanish Inquisition” skit, where the lads torture the sweet old lady with such cruel techniques as “The Comfy Chair!” and “The Extra Pillow!”? Or the Spanish Inquisition musical number in Mel Brooks’ “History of the World”?

Auto-da-fé? What’s an auto-da-fé?

It’s what ya oughtn’t to do, but ya do any-way!"

Great rally today at the Denver Tax Day Tea Party

I went to the Denver Tax Day Tea Party at the state capital today. It was a great event. Everybody there seemed really fired up. There were some really creative signs there too. Most of the speakers were really good too. I had thought that radio host Gunny Bob Newman would be on fire, but he was kind of sedate. In contrast, Jon Caldara, who on the radio seems kind of sedate, seemed pretty fired up. I just hope all this translates into something positive in terms of people getting involved and Republicans taking back state offices and congressional seats. One of the speakers was Tom Lucero who is apparently going to be taking on Betsy Markey in the 4th Congressional District. He gave a good talk... hope he can knock Markey out of that congressional seat.

Oh no! I actually agree with Obama's science advisor on NASA

Obama's science advisor had some comments on NASA in an interview with Nature. I actually agree with him when he says:

"

What the president said is our space programme has been drifting. What we had in the last administration was the articulation of a grand vision for going back to the moon and going back to Mars, but no budget to go with it. The consequences of that for NASA have been quite devastating, in terms of decimating the Earth sciences programme at NASA, decimating the aeronautics programme at NASA and putting at risk the constellation of Earth observation satellites.

Clearly we need to reconcile NASA's missions and budgets. We need to think about how we manage the right balance between manned space exploration and robotic space exploration. We need to manage the balance between looking up and looking down, the Earth observation part versus the space exploration part. We need to balance the aeronautics and the astronautics. That's going to have to involve a new NASA administrator."

I do hope though that when he stresses the "looking down" / Earth science part of the NASA budget that that is not just code for pumping dollars into that area as part of the whole "fighting global warming" business. Earth observations and Earth science does have a definite place in NASA though.

Mark Steyn on Obama's "distractions"

Once again Mark Steyn is dead on target with a column about Obama and the "distractions" he faces... you know... little things like North Korea demonstrating the capability to launch nukes towards Hawaii or Alaska... little things like that. Some good bits from Steyn:

"No doubt when the Iranians nuke Israel, that, too, will be an unwelcome distraction from the administration's plans for federally subsidized day care"

and a pretty amazing fact demonstrating how the media loves Obama and hated Bush:

"Tom Blumer of Newsbusters notes that in the past 30 days there have been some 2,500 stories featuring Obama and "distractions," as opposed to about 800 "distractions" for Bush in his entire second term."

You know it is bad when France is more hard line than the U.S.

Wow. So here is a story that France sent commandos to rescue a yacht held by Somali pirates while the Obama administration dithers and doesn't know what to do to rescue the captain of the freighter held by the Somalis. It is really bad when the French are tougher on terrorists than we are.

What do you believe? your own eyes or what the Obama White House tells you?

It is really almost beyond belief. One can clearly see Obama bowing to the Saudi King Abdullah in the video and pictures from their meeting... yet the White House says he didn't bow??? How dumb do they think we are? By the way, it really turns my stomach that Obama bowed to King Abdullah. No president has ever bowed to a foreign monarch before... are we to be that weak in the Obama administration that we have to bow and go on our knees to foreign leaders? Disgusting.

Obama's outreach to the moderate pirate community

Hilarious post on the exurbanleague blog with a made-up statement by Obama on the actions of the Somali pirates. What turns the laughter to tears though is that it is almost something that the guy would say.

Ralph Peters on Obama's blunders in Turkey

Wow, Ralph Peters really tears to shreds Obama's Turkey visit. Some especially good bits:

"Which brings us to the even bigger problem: Obama has no idea what's going on in Turkey. By going to Ankara on his knees, he gave his seal of approval to a pungently anti-American Islamist government bent on overturning Mustapha Kemal's legacy of the separation of mosque and state.

...

What was Obama thinking? He wasn't. He relied on advice from State Department appeasement artists who understand neither Turkey, Islam nor the crises raging between the Bosporus and the Indus. State's answer is always "More love, more humility, more aid."

and with regards to the Europe portion of Obama's trip, Peters writes:

"He told the Europeans that the global economic crisis is all our fault. No mention of European greed, overleveraged governments, destructive Euro-loans or Chinese currency manipulation. We did it. Whip us, please.

In return, the Europeans gave him . . . nothing."

Rich Lowry on Obama's "Excuse Me" diplomacy

Good column here by Rich Lowry and Obama's ridiculous "no nukes" speech and his general penchant to blame America first for all the world's ills.

Obama's fantasy foreign policy

We live in a dangerous world and we have a president who lives in a fantasy world. While North Korea is launching a long-range missile, Obama is in Europe talking about the elimination of nuclear weapons. Newt Gingrich was on Fox News Sunday and he had it exactly right when he called Obama's plans for nuclear disarmament a "fantasy foreign policy". It is all very disturbing...

Arianna Huffington is a moron

I'm watching the round table discussion on This Week and they have Arianna Huffington on the panel. What a delusional and totally out-to-lunch person she is! She was putting forward the ridiculous idea that the success we've had in Iraq had nothing to do with the Surge, but was totally due to the Sunni "awakening". Ridiculous! Then she is becrying the suspending of the mark-to-market accounting practices (I hadn't heard that they'd done that). I know very little about such things but everything I've heard suggests that that mark-to-market accounting helped get us into this economic mess. So it is a bad thing and, of course, Arianna is for it! We really do live in a Bizarro world where the things that make sense are put down and things that are bad are promoted and people like Arianna have helped make it a Bizarro world.

The alternative GOP budget

Here is a column by Representative Paul Ryan outlining the alternative GOP budget. Just check out the graph in Rep. Ryan's article: skyrocketing debt and government spending under Obama's plan and stable budgets under the GOP plan... seems like a straightforward choice to me.