The only surprise about Obama's Falklands betrayal is that he doesn't openly side with Argentina

Nile Gardiner has a good piece at the The Telegraph on the Obama administration's continuing betrayal of Britain over the Falkland Islands.

Washington fully understands that Britain will never negotiate away the sovereignty of the Falkland islanders, over 90 per cent of whom are British. Yet it still continues to call for a “diplomatic solution” to the sovereignty question when there is nothing at all to negotiate. It also fails to express any support whatsoever for the UK, and remains silent about the increasingly aggressive approach taken by Argentina, including its threats to blockade the islands and strangle them economically.

At the heart of the Obama administration’s approach is its abject failure to distinguish between America’s most important ally and an increasingly anti-American regime in Latin America, which is closely allied with Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. There is a fundamental difference between Great Britain, which has fought alongside the United States in almost every major war involving the US since World War Two, and Argentina, a minor player on the world stage, that barely lifts a finger to help the Americans with anything. The Special Relationship is hugely important to the United States, from the battlefields of Afghanistan and the wider war against Islamist terrorism to US-led efforts to halt the rise of a nuclear-armed Iran. On almost every major international issue, the United States looks to Britain for support. Yet inexplicably this current administration continues to knife London in the back over the Falklands.

Gardiner's anger is understandable, but it should come as no surprise that Obama should make no distinction between a freedom-respecting Western ally and a country ruled by a left-wing populist who's busy turning her country into another South American economic basket case.

The Russian Spies: Mission Accomplished?

So let's see. These Russian Spies were tasked, among other things, with influencing US policy at high levels. And...

1. America now has as president a man who counts a member of the US Communist Party as a mentor, who hung around with communists at college, who has appointed admitted Marxists such as Van Jones and others with Maoist/communist sympathies, such as Anita Dunn, to influential positions in his administration, and who counts domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn as friends.

2. That president is driving the US economy into a ditch.

3. That president is at best refusing to confront America's enemies abroad (Iran, North Korea), and at worse cosying up to them (China, Russia) and enabling them to expand their spheres of influence.

4. That president wants to pursue an energy policy that will make the US more dependent on unreliable and potentially hostile foreign providers: specifically, cutting back on domestic oil and coal exploration and production while spending billions on 'green' alternatives that range from the unproven to the not-even-invented-yet (see also point 2).

5. That president and his administration officials rarely miss an opportunity to downplay notions of 'American exceptionalism', and are always ready to blame the US for everything from global warming to racism.

I would imagine they're hanging up the 'Mission Accomplished' banner at FIS headquarters.

Come to think of it, if they're still looking for more suspects, maybe they should try the Oval Office.

Thanks to Kate for the link.

How McCain should respond to Obama's "he can't use a computer" jibe

How should John McCain respond to Obama's misleading and grossly offensive ad that claims McCain doesn't know how to send email or use a computer? We now know that in fact McCain can use a computer, but doesn't find it easy because of the injuries he suffered while a PoW in Vietnam.

Of course, if the McCain campaign points this out they'll be accused of 'playing the PoW card', and apparently McCain doesn't want to make a big deal about his disability. But I don't think they should let such a nasty and unsubstantiated jibe go without responding.

Allahpundit asks: Why doesn’t McCain want people writing about this? Is the perception of a president slightly limited by injuries he suffered heroically at war more damaging than the perception of a president who’s not incapacitated at all but chooses not to go online because he’s old and wholly removed from the culture? I don’t get it.

I don't get it either. And I'd add that creating the perception of Obama as either insensitive, too dumb to check his facts or both could do him some real damage.

I think the McCain campaign could respond to this by making it another style versus substance issue, and by hammering the judgement theme again. They can mention why McCain finds it hard to use a computer in passing – the public can work out for themselves what an egregious slight the Obama ad was.

Here's a suggestion for a McCain ad, which would be accompanied by headlines referencing the Obama ad and other appropriate images. I'd also love to see Palin say something along these lines in speeches – it makes sense not to have McCain talk about it, but let Palin come to his defence:

“Barack Obama thinks John McCain isn’t fit to be president because he can’t use a computer or send email. Apparently he thinks that’s pretty funny.

Actually, Senator McCain CAN use computers. He just can’t use them as easily as most people, because of injuries suffered years ago in the service of his country.

But he’s never let that hold him back. Because John McCain believes that it's not how you get your information that's important, it’s what you do with that information; it’s not how you communicate, it’s what you say.

Barack Obama may have his own Facebook page, but that doesn’t qualify him to be president.

Only John McCain has the experience, the knowledge and the judgement to lead.”

I'm Monkey Tennis Center, and I approve this message.

The BBC and GlobeScan: The Ben and Jerry's of international public opinion

A new BBC poll shows – big surprise – that pretty much the whole world wants to see Barack Obama elected President of the United States.

Allahpundit speculates that such findings might help McCain more than Obama, given how big a hit The One's performance in Germany proved to be with the folks back home, and points out that, either way, being rated unfavourably in a BBC poll should be seen as something of a badge of honour.

I wrote about the highly dubious polling produced by the BBC/GlobeScan partnership with regards to global warming climate change last year. GlobeScan and its fellow-travellers at the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes and World Public Opinion are focused almost exclusively on promoting leftist talking points, which of course chimes nicely with the BBC's own worldview.

In case you're in any doubt as to where their sympathies lie, here are a few other BBC/GlobeScan polls we've known and loved:

Iran is probably developing nuclear weapons, but we can talk them out of it, and anyway this isn’t about Iran, it’s a global problem

Pakistanis: Without Musharraf, Pakistan would look a lot like Rhode Island

Loss of innocent life generally preferable to torture

Too much free trade globalisation a bad thing

You can almost smell the funding from some Soros-linked operation. As for methodology, I'm guessing they sample roughly 50/50 from college campuses and slums.

Here's a message from GlobeScan president Doug Miller.

'At the same time, we consider ourselves part of the democratic process, "letting the people speak" to decision-makers on matters that affect them - at meetings of world leaders, expert forums, and the boardrooms of major companies.'

It's Saul Alinksy and community organising on a global scale. And we all know who the world's biggest and bestest community organiser is, don't we?

Update: A guy from GlobeScan has left a comment, and I've replied.

Empty T-shirts for an empty suit

The vapidity of Obama's 'youth appeal' is splashed across two pages in the Review section of today's UK Observer newspaper. The piece is online here.

The main article, by Amy Larocca of New York magazine, rehashes all the well-worn points about Obama's popularity among young people – the endorsements by pop and movie stars, the 'cool' factor, his mastery of the internet and so on (although Larocca neglects to mention that the McCain campaign has recently enjoyed great success with its web video ads).

Nothing new there, even for British readers. Lines such as 'Obama understood from the start how to use the net' aren't exactly piercing political insight.

Accompanying the article are photos of seven suitably hip young Americans, wearing Obama T-shirts and photographed against authentically 'grungy' urban backdrops. And beside the photos are 'vox pops' in which they explain why Obama appeals to them.

The interviews are littered with the usual references to hope'n'change, and the vaguely articulated belief that Obama is, and will be, 'different' in some way. (Interestingly, the only one of the seven who's slightly skeptical about Obama says that, while he's supportive of his candidacy he's actually voting for Ralph Nader.)

Facts, and an acknowledgment of reality, are conspicuously absent from the testimonials. Jordana, 24, says: "For America to be this beacon of democracy it always says it is, it needs to acknowledge its flaws, look to other countries as models and build up from there."

Viola, 23, thinks Obama "has a new way of dealing with other countries without looking only at American self-interest". Sei, 18, says: "I saw Obama on television saying that you don't necessarily need experience if you have belief, and that sometimes experience can cloud your vision. I thought that was interesting and cool."

But my favourite Obamaniac is Tony, a 30-year-old… wait for it… community organiser! Tony is a Che Guevara wannabe who, in his peak cap and combat jacket, could also pass for an Obama action figure, and here's what he has to say about the man who's clearly his role model:

"I wear the T-shirt because I admire Obama's forthright and genuine rhetoric; he is just cut from a different cloth from most politicians. After everything that went down in Florida in 2001 I was very cynical about the whole political process. He has revived hope in me as well as others."

Got that? Tony, who professes to be 'cynical' about politics, admires Obama's forthright and genuine rhetoric. It's clearly lost on Tony that rhetoric is, by its very nature, anything but forthright and genuine. Tony is also frightened by the 'threat' from people who might be resistant to the 'change' Obama would bring about.

Tony wears his ignorance like a badge of honour.

Read the whole thing, and shudder at the naivety, and outright stupidity, of some of the people who will be voting for Obama in November.

Update: Thanks to Ace and JWF for linking. Also Dan, who highlights a few more examples of youthful ignorance.

Terry in the comments points out another howler from Tony that I missed – he thinks the Great Stolen Election was in 2001. Or perhaps he turned up, stoned, at the polling station in November 2001 and was told there was no election – it might explain why he's so cynical.

If they ever introduce a basic intelligence test as a prerequisite for being allowed to vote, the Dems will be truly screwed.

Obama is now the only obstacle to victory

Matthew Continetti has a piece up at The Weekly Standard on the clear signs of progress being made in the War on Terror, and he rightly gives much of the credit to the policies of President Bush. And it's not just the jihadists that are being defeated – it's also those who opposed the President for political expediency. Continetti writes:

The left's analysis of jihadism has been proved incorrect at every turn. It argued military power would be ineffective against the terrorists. Wrong. It argued that intervention in Iraq would energize bin Laden's movement. That movement is in shambles. The left argued Iraq was a lost cause. It isn't. The left argues that a "war on terrorism" is futile, that defeat is inevitable, because terrorism is a "tactic," not an enemy. Nonsense. President Bush has demonstrated through perseverance and (more often than not) sound policy that the war on terror can be won. And right now we're winning it.

A Barack Obama presidency, however, could still enable the jihadists to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and would also encourage Iran to step up its efforts to cause mayhem in Iraq. Lebanon and elsewhere. With the help of his supporters in the media, Obama is already attempting to airbrush his record of defeatism and misjudgment over both Iraq and Iran (see this piece, by Danielle Pletka, also at The Weekly Standard, for an account of Obama's evolving Iran position).

He may not be allowed to get away with it. As Jennifer Rubin, discussing Obama's U-turn on Iran at Commentary magazine's Contentions blog writes:

In short, the road back to the middle of the road will be treacherous for Obama. As he tries to moderate his views, on Iran most clearly, he will, it seems, face frequent reminders from the McCain camp that the new positions seem adopted especially for the general election. In a world of YouTube and Google, not to mention campaign websites, the job of the McCain camp is made much easier.

The left, unfortunately, will likely prove more resolute than the jihadists. While Islamic extremists can be killed, their bases destroyed and their ideology discredited in the Muslim world, the left will simply fine-tune its tactics in its relentless war on America and the West. And seizing the White House would be the first step on the road to victory.

Hugh Hewitt on Obama's rhetorical style

Hugh Hewitt recently did a wonderful takedown of Obama's rhetorical style which you really ought to listen to. It's funny, but also extremely incisive. Bottom line: most of the time Obama has no idea what he's talking about.

Go here. The clip you want is number 29, hour 2 of the May 20 show (clip number 28, which is hour 3, is titled 'Obama audio' but it's clip 29, 'Dean Barnett', that you want).

The essence of Hugh's analysis starts at around 7 minutes and lasts about 3 minutes, but you should listen from the start to get the context, and listen to the rest of the hour, and hour 3, if you have the time.

Someone with more time and expertise than me needs to put this on YouTube, with a slideshow of shots from Obama rallies.

Remote Amazonian tribes for Obama

Talk about getting your message across…

These guys have had no contact with civilisation, they've never heard of electricity or television, and they certainly can't speak English.

Yet somehow, they just know…






Things were going great until the plane made a low pass, and the locals spotted the 'Hillary '08' sticker on the cockpit…


Update: Thanks to Ace for linking. Also Jim, who has a fine take of his own on the story. Those poor hicks, clinging bitterly to bows and arrows and human sacrifice…

Also Rob at Say Anything (don't worry Rob, only liberals could possibly find a race angle in this, and we're long past caring what they think).

Jules Crittenden looks at the eco-angle…

I don’t know how big a carbon footprint these guys have, but the message here is pretty clear. If you want to save the planet and you aren’t living in a grass hut in Amazonia shooting arrows at passing airplanes, then you’re a chickengreenie.

I have a nightmare: Obama to give 'major' speech on race

Barack Obama is to give a speech on 'the larger issue of race' in the primary campaign tomorrow. Among other things he'll apparently attempt to defend the inflammatory preaching of Pastor Wright. Jim at Gateway Pundit has the details.

Clearly Obama thinks it's time for some damage limitation, but he'll need to choose his words carefully, particularly with regard to Wright. JammieWearingFool reports that the pastor of disaster has an approval record of just 8% with voters nationally. The good news is that as Wright has never had a national approval rating before, this is a record high figure.

I wonder if he'll be taking questions afterwards?

Ace has a post on the MSM airbrushing Wright's comments, and lots more Wright stuff.

Rezko: This guy really IS bad news

Barack Obama endured his first truly hostile press conference yesterday, and he didn't care for it much.

MSNBC's First Read reports:

Questions centered on why his campaign had denied that a meeting occurred between his chief economic advisor and Canadian officials as well as questions on his relationship with Tony Rezko, a Chicago land developer and fast food magnate, now on trial for corruption charges.

This is interesting stuff. Not before time, Obama is beginning to face serious scrutiny about…

Whoaaa! Back up there!

Tony Rezko is a fast food magnate? That's a new one on me. And it's probably a new one on many of Obama's supporters.

The Democrats seem happy to overlook the fact that Obama has links to a property developer with a shady past, despite that fact that many of them are signed up to a system of political thought which holds that all property is theft (they don't have a problem with the shadiness).

It doesn't bother them that Obama may have been taking tainted money. Hell, they'd be happy for him to take money from Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and probably the Devil himself if it gets their man into the White House.

But now it looks like he's been taking fast food money - and for the left, fast food epitomises all that's wrong with America. It's where corporate greed meets physical greed. It's poisoning the children, polluting the air and it entails the deaths of animals. Animals with big eyes.

The evils of fast food are a favourite subject for everyone from elitist culture columnists to shock-doc film-makers - but that's not to say that all Democrats are anti-burger. If the beef in question has been humanely reared (ideally the restaurant should be able to tell you the name of the cow it came from, and the date it attained nirvana), doesn't have an unacceptably high carbon footprint and is served to you by a French waiter, then you're in the clear.

But what I've seen of Rezko suggests to me that the meat for his burgers is unlikely to be locally sourced from 100% organically reared cattle. More likely it arrives by tanker from wherever it can be cheaply acquired - possibly from the developing world - and is pumped into the kitchens of his restaurants through a hose.

Rezko has the blood of innocent livestock, and the elevated insulin levels of a generation of young Americans, on his hands. It's time for Obama to quit stalling, and tell the voters whether or not he's ever knowingly eaten a Rezkoburger.

HT Instapundit. Protein Wisdom has a good round-up of slightly more serious reaction, and Sister Toldjah has an even bigger round-up.

Thanks to Don Surber and JammieWearingFool for linking

Obama will divide, not unite, says UK equality chief

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, is likely to stir up a hornet’s nest after claiming that Barack Obama might prolong racial divisions in the US, rather than heal them, if he becomes President.

In an article entitled ‘Healing postponed’, which appears in the new issue of the UK current affairs magazine Prospect, Phillips - who is black - suggests more forcefully than many US commentators have that Obama’s success is in large part due to white guilt (they'll vote for him 'so long as they don't have to live next door to him'), and goes so far as to suggest that he’s taking advantage of racial divisions.

Phillips, whose observations on the failure of multiculturalism in Britain have drawn criticism from white ‘progressives’ such as odious London mayor Ken Livingstone, draws on many of the arguments put forward by Shelby Steele in his book on Obama, A Bound Man, in which he divides America’s black leaders into ‘challengers’ (Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson) whose power derives from real or imagined black victimhood, and bargainers (Cosby, Oprah).

Phillips, like Steel, portrays Obama as the quintessential bargainer, and claims that Obama is more Bill Clinton that JFK, writing:

Both challengers and bargainers offer a strategy that needs the racial divide to stay at the centre of US life. In truth, Obama may be helping to postpone the arrival of a post-racial America, and I think he knows it. If he wins, the cynicism may be worth it to him and his party.

But he takes issue with Steele’s assertion that underachievement by blacks is primarily the result of a lack of responsibility, characterised by violent rappers and feckless fathers, pointing to factors such as the effects of globalisation on poor communities.

And he also suggests (although not very convincingly) that domestic issues of race may have become less of an issue since 9/11, with Osama bin Laden representing a ‘new other’ for both blacks and whites.

Phillips writes that Britain hasn’t produced an Obama-like figure partly because it has proportionally much smaller black population, but also because ‘At a personal level, few people are as charismatic, capable and ruthless as this mixed-race political phenomenon.’

Read the whole thing. It's a serious contribution to the analysis of Obama-mania from a man who hasn’t been afraid to address difficult issues about race in his own country.

Thanks to Dan for linking.

BBC's US chief thinks al-Qaeda is rooting for McCain

I want to thank Justin Webb, the BBC's North America editor, for helping to shift the blogger's block/laziness/crisis of confidence I've been experiencing for the past couple of months. What got the juices flowing again was a post by Webb on his blog entitled Al-Qaeda's Choice. In the post Webb is commenting on an article in the London Times, in which William Rees-Mogg suggests that al-Qaeda would rather see Barack Obama become the next President of the US than John McCain.

Webb concludes:

Islamic terrorists want war. They want suffering - among others and their own people alike.

They would surely surmise that McCain will give them what they want. Bin Laden himself intervened with what many thought was the effect of keeping President Bush in power in 2004 with that weird tape just before the poll.

I think al-Qaeda would back McCain - that is not an argument for or against America backing him, but it seems to me that the vague assumption that the terrorists would back a lefty is lazy thinking...

There's certainly some lazy thinking going on here, but it's not on the part of Rees-Mogg. Assuming that Webb is serious, it's alarming that a person with such a simplistic view of such an important issue plays a significant part in shaping the way in which people around the world view America and its politics.

Webb foolishly suggests that al-Qaeda would rather see McCain as president than Obama because McCain will ‘give them what they want’ – ie continuing war. He overlooks a fact that should be obvious to anyone who takes an interest in these things: war for al-Qaeda is not an end in itself but a means to an end, and Obama’s policies of retreat and appeasement will help them to achieve their goals.

I posted a comment on Webb's piece. It hasn't appeared yet, although it may do in due course. I reproduce it below, partly in case it doesn't appear on Webb's blog, but mostly because much of what I wrote is stuff I've been meaning to post here for a while…

Justin,

Either you're being disingenuous, or what I've been mistaking for anti-American bias for so long is in fact naivety.

Who do you really think al-Qaeda wants to win the election?

McCain, who was one of the biggest supporters of a policy that has seen al-Qaeda pushed to the brink of defeat in Iraq, with key leaders being killed there and elsewhere; who has pledged to continue the fight for as long as is necessary; and who isn't afraid to call the threat of Islamic extremism by its true name?

Or Obama, who has promised to withdraw US troops from Iraq despite knowing that it will enable al-Qaeda to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and turn Iraq into a terror state – Afghanistan with oil wealth; who refuses to even talk about the threat from Islamic extremism; and who has pledged to meet with the leaders of the world's most dangerous terrorist states within weeks of taking office?

Do you seriously think for one moment that a US withdrawal from Iraq will mean an end to the wider war that Islamic extremists are waging against us? It won't. It will simply mean that instead of being driven from Iraq and suffering a crushing propaganda defeat, al-Qaeda will be able to retake enough of that country to establish bases (and no, Obama, those bases won't take the form of rows of tents and assault courses in the middle of the desert, with the flag of al- Qaeda flying above the parade ground, which you'll be able to bomb with impunity from Kuwait; they'll be blended invisibly and inextricably into re-subjugated Sunni communities who will be pushed back into the arms of the extremists as a result of their betrayal by the US). It will be free to intensify its efforts to topple the fragile government in Afghanistan, from where Obama is also likely to retreat, just as soon as he's picked up his Nobel Peace Prize for withdrawing from Iraq. And al-Qaeda will be free to launch attacks throughout the Middle East and Europe, and of course against the US.

How long do you think it will be before a gloating bin Laden films his first video message to the world inside a 'liberated' Iraq? And what lessons, and how much inspiration, do you think other terrorist organisations and their state sponsors will draw from a US defeat?

You're absolutely right about one thing however, obvious though it is. You wrote:

Islamic terrorists want war. They want suffering - among others and their own people alike.

I can't believe I'm hearing that from you; your bête noir, President Bush, couldn't have put it better himself. It's just a shame that you and your colleagues don't make this point more forcefully and more often, and in an environment rather more public than your blog – on the 6 o'clock or 10 o'clock news bulletins on BBC1 for example, or on the front page of your news website that's read by millions around the globe. Or would that be frowned on as 'editorialising'?

Instead, along with the mainstream US media, the BBC too often passes off acts of terrorism as some kind of unfortunate and inexplicable natural disaster, or actually makes excuses for it (most egregiously in Gaza, but in Iraq and Afghanistan too), while seizing with something approaching glee on every mistake made or perceived transgression committed by the US, and every setback that it suffers. I can understand this attitude from the utterly defeated hard left, but why is it that even among the 'soft left' (who of course don't see themselves as taking sides at all, but as fair-minded spokespeople for some imagined global 'consensus'), the desire to see Bush's America humiliated appears to trump the desire to see genuine evil defeated?

Yes, Islamic terrorists want war. But they know they can't win on the battlefields of Anbar or Helmand without first winning on the battlefield of public opinion. It's a strategy that succeeded spectacularly in Spain four years ago, and an Obama victory will be a sure sign of further progress on that front.