You know medical care in your country really must stink…

When the head of state flees to Cuba for treatment.

Hugo Chavez on the rocks, socialists everywhere fear-fraught.

“Now, worse, his political organization is colluding with special-interest allies across the country to demagogue reform-minded governors who are making the tough choices”

Our President is acting against a Governor. This shouldn’t be a surprise. But I’ll be damned if I’m not in awe of the bastard.

That’s John Boehner speaking of the collusion Obama’s minions are doing in Wisconsin at the President’s behest.

Am I dreaming? This is insanity.

Via Hot Air, Boehner’s remarks:

“The President of the United States has a unique opportunity and responsibility to lead this nation. President Obama has acknowledged the challenges we face, but – thus far – he has done nothing to offer solutions. Now, worse, his political organization is colluding with special-interest allies across the country to demagogue reform-minded governors who are making the tough choices that the President is avoiding.

“This is not the way to begin an ‘adult conversation’ about solutions to the big challenges facing our country. Rather than inciting protests against those who speak honestly about the challenges we face, the President and his advisers should lead.

“When the American people watched the people of Greece take to the streets to protest cuts to unsustainable government programs, they worried it might foreshadow events in our nation’s distant future – but today, we see the same sort of protests on the streets of Madison, fueled by President Obama’s own political machine”

If you had any doubts about Stanley Kurtz, Obama’s actions today should dispel them:

American politics just keeps getting more polarized. Be assured that Obama wants it that way. I argue in Radical-in-Chief that Obama’s long-term hope is to divide America along class lines (roughly speaking, tax payers versus tax beneficiaries). Obama’s attack on the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union address, his offensive against the Chamber of Commerce, his exhortation to Hispanics to punish their enemies, and several similar moves were all efforts to jump-start a populist movement of the left. Like his socialist organizing mentors, Obama believes that a country polarized along class lines will eventually realign American politics sharply to the left. Yet the entire strategy is based on the need for an activated, populist movement of the left. So far, Obama has failed to create such a movement. His expensive economic agenda has provoked a populist counter-movement of the right instead: Obama’s nightmare.

Now, however, Obama may belatedly be getting his wish. The very success of the Tea Party is calling forth an opposing movement of the left. Obama’s exhortations may have failed to polarize the country along class lines, but his policies have finally provoked the long-sought battle. The once-dormant legions of Obama’s group, Organizing for America, have now been activated. This is the moment they were created for.

Hope for riots and change the nation forever? That’s the wish.  Read the rest.

The counter-protest should be interesting. At least our folks clean up after themselves, no?

UPDATE: linked as a “Recommended Read” by Pundette. Thanks!

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Did Paul Krugman write this (drunk with China-love after the party last night)?

He could have.  From TIME magazine:

One of the great ironies revealed by the global recession that began in 2008 is that Communist Party-ruled China may be doing a better job managing capitalism’s crisis than the democratically elected U.S. government. Beijing’s stimulus spending was larger, infinitely more effective at overcoming the slowdown, and directed at laying the infrastructural tracks for further economic expansion.

Heh.  Translation: the Chinese Communists are superior to Obama! That’s why he bowed last night. More:

As Western democracies shuffle wheezily forward, China’s economy roars along at a steady clip, having lifted some half a billion people out of poverty over the past three decades and rapidly creating the world’s largest middle class to provide an engine for long-term domestic consumer demand. Sure, there’s massive social inequality, but there always is in a capitalist system. (Income inequality rates in the U.S. are some of the worst in the industrialized world, and here more people are falling into poverty than are being raised out of it – the 43 million Americans officially designated as living in poverty in 2009 was the highest number in the 51 years that records have been kept.)

It’s easier to “lift half a billion out of poverty” after starving and slaughtering 45 million, no?

Meanwhile, the taxpayers fed rather ungrateful dinner guests last night.  Michael Prell on what was published before the breaking of bread by the truly state-run Chicom press: 

”If China becomes the world’s No. 1 nation … .” That was the headline in the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, The People’s Daily, on the eve of Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Washington. The article went on to boast how “China’s emergence is increasingly shifting to debate over how the world will treat China, which is the world No. 1 and has overtaken the U.S.”

A story like this does not appear by accident in the official Chinese Communist Party newspaper on the eve of a state visit to the world’s (current) No. 1 power, the United States.

Leave it to our media buffoons to echo the communist Chinese press.

While Liu Xiaobo sits in a prison cell, Obama fetes Hu with lobster and steak.

In case you’ve forgotten, Xiaobo received the Nobel Peace Prize* last fall.   Unlike the previous winner, since he sits in a Chinese prison, he was unable to claim the prize.  Via wikipedia, a choice Xiaobo quote:

Modernization means whole-sale westernization, choosing a human life is choosing Western way of life. Difference between Western and Chinese governing system is humane vs in-humane, there’s no middle ground… Westernization is not a choice of a nation, but a choice for the human race.

No wonder the Chinese government hates him, no?  Xiaobo has said it would take 300 years for China to catch up to the Western world.

So while the head of Chinese government sit at the White House tonight, eating Maine Lobster, rib eye and “the best of America,” I will think of Xiaobo and wonder if he’s lucky enough to have fish heads in his rice porridge tonight courtesy Hu and his minions.

Jay Nordlinger calls this state dinner a “stain” upon our honor.  (H/t: Pundette, who asks, “And we’re giving a dictator a state dinner why?”).  Nordlinger:

… America is a nation that’s supposed to stand for something — for freedom, and human dignity, above all. We’re not supposed to be like every other nation. We’re supposed to be exceptional. Different. A beacon unto man.

[…]

American honor has been stained this week. A degree of shame rests upon this nation. We should hope that the prisoners and the strugglers — who want nothing more than what you and I are damn lucky to have — forgive us.

I hope someone chokes on the damn apple pie.

Related: Pundette on the wizard of smart Senate majority leader’s blooper: Hu is a dictator.  (I only wish it had been Biden.) 

Also, if you’ve ever wondered why you’ve never met an adopted Chinese boy, read this.

Multiple Michelle ice cream cracks, Black Panthers, and ol’ Fidel: it’s Monday laundry!

Good thing the Michelle hasn’t taken away his ice cream (yet): Poll: Rocky road seen ahead for Obama.

Only 38 percent of respondents said Obama deserves to be reelected, even though a majority of voters hold a favorable view of him on a personal level. Forty-four percent said they will vote to oust him, and 13 percent said they will consider voting for someone else.

It’s Obama’s policies that are hurting him right now. By a 13-point margin, voters are down on the health care law. In an especially troubling sign, more than half of self-identified independents — 54 percent — have an unfavorable opinion of the law, compared with just 38 percent who have a favorable opinion.

Sucks when you govern against the will of the people, no? 

 

Ed Morrissey highlights another impressive number from the poll, one that inspires confidence: Among cable-news networks, MSNBC trusted by … 12%.   There is hope for our country yet.

 

The promised second serving of snark, Pundette on fire this morning:

Has Michelle Obama been placed in charge of the diets of Gitmo detainees? Perhaps that’s the explanation behind the latest Guantanamo human rights violation scandal: Gitmo Horrors Continue: Detainees Limited to One Ice Cream.

Heh.  The horror, the horror!  Maybe Michelle will be named as a defendent in the next civil-rights violation charge, a la Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush?  He only let me have one new prayer rug, but she took away my ice cream!   

 

Jen-Ru explores the bombshell testimony of Chris Coates, the DOJ head of the Black Panther trial team and wonders how the Obama administration will be able to sidestep the coming wave of supoenas.  The media can no longer ignore the story.  She writes:

Try as Democrats might to ignore the blockbuster evidence, Coates’s testimony was a game changer. Granted, the testimony contained information already revealed in conservative outlets and by former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams. But Coates confirmed these facts and added a wealth of new details. An African American attorney and his mother (who also works for DOJ) were harassed for working on a voting case brought against an African American defendant. Obama’s deputy assistant general for civil rights, Julie Fernandez, repeatedly told attorneys not to enforce Section 8 or bring cases against minority defendants. Coates’s supervisor, who directly ordered the case’s dismissal, told him to stop asking applicants if they could enforce laws in a race-neutral fashion. Coates briefed civil rights chief Thomas Perez on the hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of voting laws — before Perez feigned ignorance of such sentiments in sworn testimony. In sum, Coates’s appearance was the scandal’s tipping point.

To borrow the meme from Instapundit: They told me if I voted for John McCain, everyone wouldn’t be protected under the law…

 

Line of the day courtesy Mary O’Grady at the WSJ:

At most marine parks in the world the animals provide the entertainment. But at the Havana aquarium last month, Fidel Castro had a couple of humans eating out of his hand and clapping like trained seals.

Read the rest.  She takes Jeffery Goldberg to task for swallowing Fidel’s lures hook, line and …:

Castro again has an urgent need to put a smiley face on his dictatorship. The economy is in dire straits. Food is scarce, electricity is a rarity, and soap and toilet paper are luxuries. Cuba produces almost nothing and this makes it difficult to get hard currency—aka real money—which in turn makes it tough to buy from abroad. Lending sources have dried up.

If the regime is to stay in power, it needs a new source of income to pay the secret police and keep the masses in rice. The best bet is the American tourist, last seen circa 1950 exploiting the locals, according to revolutionary lore, but now needed by the regime. It wants the U.S. travel ban lifted. To prevail, Castro needs to counteract rumors that he is a dictator. Solution: a makeover in the Atlantic. In Mr. Goldberg, he no doubt recognized the perfect candidate for the job.

More:

It never seems to cross Mr. Goldberg’s mind that he is being used in a manner Communists first learned at Lenin’s knee. Or perhaps he is happy to be useful. In a follow-up post he explains that since Fidel is not as bad as Pol Pot, Cubans should stop complaining. And to demonstrate further how little he knows about the plight of the Cuban people, he says that the “release” of political prisoners “is currently being negotiated.” Wrong. Some have been exiled; some others may receive conditional parole meaning that they can be returned to prison at any time if the regime disapproves of their activities.

Mr. Goldberg is peddling his Castro interviews as serious journalism. But while he was “curious” to get a “glimpse of the great man,” he was ill-prepared for the job. Presumably he knew this, which is why he allowed Ms. Sweig to lead him around Havana by the nose.

Ouch.  You can lead a liberal to kool-aid and give him a Che t-shirt, but show him nefarious reasons for Fidel’s change of heart and he won’t see logic.  Such is life.

 

More later.

 

 

Castro on the Cuban model: Eh, not so much (SHHH, don’t tell Obama!)

Dude.  From Jeffery Goldberg:

I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” he said.

This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, “Never mind”?

I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, “He wasn’t rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under ‘the Cuban model’ the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country.”

Ya think?

In case you need a refresher, the AP handily summarizes the extent of “the state” in Cuba:

The state controls well over 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in return for free health care and education, and nearly free transportation and housing. At least a portion of every citizen’s food needs are sold to them through ration books at heavily subsidized prices.

In other words: an Obama wet dream.

Trouble in paradise:

President Raul Castro and others have instituted a series of limited economic reforms, and have warned Cubans that they need to start working harder and expecting less from the government.

Americans would do well with the same message, eh?

Allahpundit posits the theory that maybe this is ol’ Fidel’s way of reaching out and hinting that a few well-placed American dollars wouldn’t be a bad idea, i.e. loosening the embargo, and wonders if Rubio could advance the idea further.  Something to consider, no?

UPDATE:

The comment thread at Hot Air is too good to pass up.  Selected gems:

Reagan Smiles down from the clouds.

Hollywood collectively craps its pants.

And millions of unwashed asses in Che t-shirts are too stoned to notice.

“How Obama can avoid Neville Chamberlin’s fate”

Wishful thinking, perhaps, but more people are waking up to read the tea leaves. 

H/T: Mark Tapscott @ Washington Examiner

60

Days, that is.

Unbelievable pictures here, h/t Instapundit.

Meanwhile, Dear Leader kicks ass on the golf course for five hours.  Of course, yachting is out. 

Michael Barone: Obama’s thuggery useless in fighting spill.  He writes:

Then there is Obama’s decision to impose a six-month moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf. This penalizes companies with better safety records than BP’s and will result in many advanced drilling rigs being sent to offshore oil fields abroad.

The justification offered was an Interior Department report supposedly “peer reviewed” by “experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” But it turned out the drafts the experts saw didn’t include any recommendation for a moratorium. Eight of the cited experts have said they oppose the moratorium as more economically devastating than the oil spill and “counterproductive” to safety.

This was blatant dishonesty by the administration, on an Orwellian scale. In defense of a policy that has all the earmarks of mindless panic, that penalizes firms and individuals guilty of no wrongdoing and that will worsen rather than improve our energy situation. Ineffective thuggery.

And what about the decision not to waive the Jones Act, which bars foreign-flag vessels from coming to the aid of the Gulf cleanup? The Bush administration promptly waived it after Katrina in 2005. The Obama administration hasn’t and claims unconvincingly that, gee, there aren’t really any foreign vessels that could help.

The more plausible explanation is that this is a sop to the maritime unions, part of the union movement that gave Obama and other Democrats $400 million in the 2008 campaign cycle. It’s the Chicago way: Dance with the girl that brung ya.

Or the decision to deny Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s proposal to deploy barges to skim oil from the Gulf’s surface. Can’t do that until we see if they’ve got enough life preservers and fire equipment. That inspired blogger Rand Simberg to write a blog post he dated June 1, 1940: “The evacuation of British and French troops from the besieged French city of Dunkirk was halted today, over concerns that many of the private vessels that had been deployed for the task were unsafe for troop transport.”

Finally, the $20 billion escrow fund that Obama pried out of the BP treasury at the White House when he talked for the first time, 57 days after the rig exploded, with BP Chairman Tony Hayward. It’s pleasing to think that those injured by BP will be paid off speedily, but House Republican Joe Barton had a point, though an impolitic one, when he called this a “shakedown.”

For there already are laws in place that insure that BP will be held responsible for damages and the company has said it will comply. So what we have is government transferring property from one party, an admittedly unattractive one, to others, not based on pre-existing laws but on decisions by one man, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg.

Feinberg gets good reviews from everyone. But the Constitution does not command “no person . . . shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law except by the decision of a person as wise and capable as Kenneth Feinberg.” The Framers stopped at “due process of law.”

Obama doesn’t. “If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so,” write the editors of the Economist, who then suggest that markets see Obama as “an American version of Vladimir Putin.” Except that Putin is an effective thug.

Never in my life could I have imagined someone comparing our President to a Russian thug.  But thug is as thug does. 

 

(Next thing you know, Obama will pose à la Putin with hunted tigers to show how good at kicking asses other than his own he truly is.)

 

And that trifling detail–due process, or the lack thereof in Obama’s shakedown of BP–begs investigation.  Thomas Sowell wonders if we’re on the road to tyranny.

Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere.

And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

But what the hell, right?  I’m sure Putin would approve.

 

“We con the world, we con the people.” UPDATED

Steel yourself.  This is incredibly funny.  I only wish the Israeli government didn’t apologize for sending the press a link to the video.  H/T: pjHusband

Youtube has pulled the viral video, citing copyright concerns when none exist.  Go watch at Hot Air: Ed Morrissey uploaded the video to his eyeblast account and posted an explanation of ever-pc youtube’s decision.

Of Punji sticks, flotillas of cash, and warning labels

From the UK Sun: 

Taliban fighters are burying dirty needles with their bombs in a bid to infect British troops with HIV, The Sun can reveal. Hypodermic syringes are hidden below the surface pointing upwards to prick bomb squad experts as they hunt for devices. The heroin needles are feared to be contaminated with hepatitis and HIV. And if the bomb goes off, the needles become deadly flying shrapnel. 

The tactic, used in the Afghan badlands of Helmand, was exposed by Tory MP and ex-Army officer Patrick Mercer. Senior backbencher Mr Mercer said yesterday: “Are there no depths to which these people will stoop? This is the definition of a dirty war.” Razor blades are also being used. All Royal Engineer and Royal Logistic Corps bomb search teams have been issued with protective Kevlar gloves.

Andy McCarthy echoes my sentiments:

No, there are no depths.

Speaking of Islamic terrorists, Pundette highlights the, um, flotilla o’ cash Obama plans on sending his best buds in Palestine.  Yes, really.  A 400 million dollar flotilla.  Courtesy taxpayers, of course.   She asks:

Money is fungible. Is anyone pretending we have assurances that our money will not be spent on terrorism and missiles?

I hate to say it, but at this point, I’m surprised we’re not shipping Hamas more missiles.  Maybe that’s what Obama means when he says disarmament: send ours to our enemies.

Pundette notes that Ed Driscoll called it the Terrorist Stimulus Package.  Heh. Apt, ain’t it?

Other craziness for the day:

Warning labels on the Constitution.   The argument?  The writers weren’t hip and with it in regard to the politics of race/class/gender:

Wilder Publications warns readers of its reprints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, among others, that “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.”

The disclaimer goes on to tell parents that they “might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

So Shakespeare should have a warning, too?   H/T Val Prieto at Michelle Malkin.