Category Archives: Barack Obama

UPDATED: ‘The Three Sisters’ War’ (US Hubris)

Africa, Barack Obama, Feminism, Foreign Policy, Gender, Middle East, Military, Old Right, UN, War

Estrogen driven paternalism: That’s the impetus behind Obama’s offensive in Libya. Patrick J. Buchanan sums it up:

“Why are we in Libya? Why are U.S. pilots bombing and killing Libyan soldiers who have done nothing to us?

These soldiers are simply doing their sworn duty to protect their country from attack and defend the only government they have known from what they are told is an insurgency backed by al-Qaida and supported by Western powers after their country’s oil.

Why did Obama launch this unconstitutional war?

Moral, humanitarian and ideological reasons.

Though Robert Gates and the Pentagon had thrown ice water on the idea of intervening in a third war in the Islamic world – in a sandbox on the northern coast of Africa – Obama somersaulted and ordered the attack, for three reasons.

The Arab League gave him permission to impose a no-fly zone. He feared that Moammar Gadhafi would do to Benghazi what Scipio Africanus did to Carthage. And Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power conveyed to Obama their terrible guilt feelings about America’s failure to stop what happened in Rwanda and Darfur.

This is the three sisters’ war.

But why was it America’s moral duty to stop the Tutsi slaughter of Hutus in Burundi in 1972 or the Hutu counter-slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Why was that not the duty of their closest African neighbors, Zaire (Congo), Uganda and Tanzania?

These African countries have been independent for a half-century. When are they going to man up?

The slaughter in Darfur is the work of an Arab League member, Sudan. Egypt, the largest and most powerful Arab nation, is just down the Nile. Why didn’t the Egyptian army march to Khartoum, a la Kitchener, throw that miserable regime out, and stop the genocide?

Why doesn’t Egypt, whose 450,000-man army has gotten billions from us, roll into Tobruk and Benghazi and protect those Arabs from being killed by fellow Arabs? Why is this America’s responsibility?”

Read “How killing Libyans became a moral imperative.”

UPDATE (March 27): USA=GOD.

Myron Robert Pauli on my Facebook page: “Another great column from Diana West on the strategic hooey of the War in Libya (a no fly zone imposed on Israel by the US-NATO-UN-Arab-League could occur one day) http://jewishworldreview.com/0311/west.php3

My reply: M., all the obligatory stuff about it “never being a bad notion to rid the planet of Gaddafi”: as if there aren’t a few fellows here in the US one could easily live without.

The idea that the US decides who the world can do without and who can remain boggles my mind. Still, after years in this country.

I love West, but, as far as I know, Diana supported the Iraq adventure, at first.

UPDATED: “Are We Running Out of Resources?” Hell, No!

Barack Obama, Economy, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Markets

Most “resources” in nature are useless lumps of nothing. If not for man’s ingenuity, iron, aluminum, coal and oil would lie purposeless and pristine in the wildernesses; the matter and energy abundant on earth would come to naught. The ability to discover and transform natural resources into usable goods, and continue to develop “resource-enhancing and sustaining technologies,” is, after all, unique to man. At least to some men.

Watch this wonderful YouTube clip courtesy of economist Steve Horwitz, who demonstrates that, provided we allow profits and prices to serve as the street signs of the economy, we will not run out of resources. If only the “brilliant” Barack Obama, who keeps looking for ways to curtail production, would watch with you (or, at least, read Henry Hazllit’s Economics In One Lesson, which even BHO could grasp):

And this from “THE GOODS ON GAS”:

Purchasing patterns drive prices up or down. Through their “competitive bidding” people raise the price of a commodity. In an unhampered market, rising prices would have signaled to established oil companies and other entrepreneurs and investors that there are profits to be made in the industry.
Absent legislative barriers to exploration, enterprising capitalists would have defied central planners and turned from tinkering with ethanol to drilling for—and refining—oil. Forecasted profits would guarantee accelerated production. Had Exxon and the others been allowed to satisfy their only overlords, consumers, they’d have long since increased the production of oil. Increased supply would have brought down prices—and profits, eventually.
The much–maligned price system works not only to secure supply but to conserve. The price system—rising prices in this case—signals to consumers to adjust their consumption. …

UPDATE: Hybrid hypocrites. Yes, “State-sponsored ‘sexy’ technologies in the West have decidedly ugly outcomes for worker bees in the East. The Copenhagen Crowd’s cravings must be sated, but not by despoiling California, if you know what I mean. Enter the Chinese worker. Read “NIMBYs: Not-In-My-Backyard Environmentalists” for what’s involved in the screwy, skewed Prius production line.

As for the gaseous Bill O’s Theory of Oil, which Bob below alludes to by way of the reference to the cartel: Purchasing patterns drive prices up or down. The particular price of fuel, concomitantly, is determined by supply and demand. The general trend of price increases is a consequence of government-generated inflation. I understand that Bill O’Reilly believes otherwise, but the natural laws of economics cannot be suspended, not even by “Bill O.”

Defined By Debt

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Political Economy

By Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, reports the Washington Times, the debt will have increased by $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion, thereby constituting 102.6 percent of GDP (admittedly an iffy measure of economic Brownian Motion/expenditure). The Panglossian among us will counter that we’ve been there before and recovered (World War II). However, arguably, the economic fundamentals today are worse than they were during the Great Depression, since this country has never before been so deeply in hock as it currently is. Debt-—micro and macro; public and private—is now one of America’s defining characteristic. By Vox Day’s account, “U.S. households, corporations and various levels of government” owe fifty three trillion dollars! (“The Return of the Great Depression.”)

More: “Federal deficit on track for a record this fiscal year
Government debt to exceed U.S. economy”

Oh, Barack Obama said something really stupid yesterday (for a change): If the federal government shuts down — it would have an “adverse effect” on the economic recovery.

Au contraire, Mr. President. It might be worth while paying this guy not to come to work.

Barack’s Budget

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Media, Uncategorized

The man with the revere-Midas touch has submitted his $3.7 trillion budget, which he, age-appropriately, justified before a suburban Baltimore middle school, this morning. Barack Obama’s definition of fiscal conservatism is guarding the status quo. Obama’s budget is the same budget as last year’s. The tax proposals are the same. Entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and Defense) remain untouched, an exemption that included the new healthcare monstrosity. Discretionary spending Obama has vowed to freeze for five years at a very high rate, but, as Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, reminded the Obama adoring Norah O’Donell, the president has a (short and savage) history of ferociously fighting the enforcement of the very freezes he proposes.

Holtz-Eakin: This budget is “a political documented oriented to getting him reelected. The American worker needs jobs. There is no greater threat to the economy than the accumulation of deb this budget promises. This budget is good political positioning,” which guarantees the continued issuance of debt at a rate of $50,000 a minute (the median income of the average American), or $12,000 per family.

With a flick of his forked tongue, Obama once beguiled media groupies such as MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell. No longer. She seems persuaded by the warnings of former CBOaf to big spender President George W. Bush.