Is it the cramped quarters of her private jet? Jet lag? Too many haute couture dress fittings; layers of war paint? Michelle Obama elaborates on the hardships she and the Other O have endured in recent days for the good of the … kids:
“As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days, so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home. As first lady, as many of you know, I’ve made it a priority to bridge the gap between the White House and communities across D.C. and across the country…I’ve spent much of my first nine months trying to open the doors to the White House to kids who might not otherwise see themselves having access to these institutions, because that’s where I came from – communities like that where kids never dreamed that they could set foot in the White House, let alone live there… And Barack and I made a point of doing the same thing when we lived in Chicago – making the concerns of kids in all sorts of communities our own.”
[SNIP]
The stress must have caused Mrs. O to suffer some hearing loss. Everyone is saying the exact opposite about her gallivanting around the globe with the Fat One for no good at all.
When it comes to Mr. O, time away from the President’s Office is not a bad thing; it means that for a while, he get to do less damage.
I wonder when the Europeans will get sick-and-tired of the Obama dog-and-pony show. I assume they have some pride.
Richard Spencer of Taki’s: “It’s my view that Takimag readers should muster somewhere between 1.7 and 2.2 cheers for the Christian Democrats of Germany, who proved victorious this weekend in national elections. Their triumph not only secures a second chancellorship for Angela Merkel, but it will allow her to form a ruling coalition with the Free Democrats, who are much like the Club For Growth wing of the Republican Party.” …
“Though a decent and smart woman, Merkel is hardly a dynamic, risk-taking European politician in the line of Pim Fortuyn or Geert Wilders. … Though to her credit, over the past six months, she has issued forth some guarded grumblings about the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policies as well as Washington’s demand that countries with savings and trade surpluses finance Obama’s ‘stimulus’ orgy.”…
“It is certainly a good thing that after last fall’s economic downturn, Germans didn’t go running into the arms of the socialists and instead actually increased the vote totals of the ‘pro-business’ party (the FDP.) But let’s keep this in context. The Social Democrats—which is a kind of unionized, Joe Biden-like party, having dropped ‘gradualist’ Marxism—earned 23 percent of the vote; The Left Party—a breakaway from the SPD, which has picked up gradualist Marxism and looks back with fondness on the German Democratic Republic—received 12 percent; and the Greens—which combines the Baby Boomer New Left with pomo and crunchy insanities of many varieties—got 10. Put simply, half of the country either wanted some kind of retro-socialism (SPD, Left) or else a form of leftism that might actually be worse than what Obama is pursuing over here.”
Richard Spencer of Taki’s: “It’s my view that Takimag readers should muster somewhere between 1.7 and 2.2 cheers for the Christian Democrats of Germany, who proved victorious this weekend in national elections. Their triumph not only secures a second chancellorship for Angela Merkel, but it will allow her to form a ruling coalition with the Free Democrats, who are much like the Club For Growth wing of the Republican Party.” …
“Though a decent and smart woman, Merkel is hardly a dynamic, risk-taking European politician in the line of Pim Fortuyn or Geert Wilders. … Though to her credit, over the past six months, she has issued forth some guarded grumblings about the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policies as well as Washington’s demand that countries with savings and trade surpluses finance Obama’s ‘stimulus’ orgy.”…
“It is certainly a good thing that after last fall’s economic downturn, Germans didn’t go running into the arms of the socialists and instead actually increased the vote totals of the ‘pro-business’ party (the FDP.) But let’s keep this in context. The Social Democrats—which is a kind of unionized, Joe Biden-like party, having dropped ‘gradualist’ Marxism—earned 23 percent of the vote; The Left Party—a breakaway from the SPD, which has picked up gradualist Marxism and looks back with fondness on the German Democratic Republic—received 12 percent; and the Greens—which combines the Baby Boomer New Left with pomo and crunchy insanities of many varieties—got 10. Put simply, half of the country either wanted some kind of retro-socialism (SPD, Left) or else a form of leftism that might actually be worse than what Obama is pursuing over here.”
To condemn or not to condemn a “man [who is] behaving … just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six-year-old girl Aisha”—that is the question. An NIS News Bulletin, Via Jihad Watch, reports that the heroic Dutchman Geert Wilders—one of the few political leaders in the West to reject dhimmitude— “has compared the Islamic prophet Mohammed to a pig.” What prompted the fearless leader of the ascendant Party for Freedom (PVV) to pipe up recently?
Geert Wilders has seized on a news report from Saudi Arabia for peppery [sic] written questions to the cabinet. In these, he compares the Islamic prophet Mohammed to a pig.
Wilders has requested clarification from Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen on a marriage in Saudi Arabia between an 80-year-old man and a 10-year-old child. The child had run away from her elderly husband, but was brought back to him by her father, the English-language website Arab News reports based on a Saudi newspaper.
Wilders asks the minister if he shares the view that “this man is behaving like a pig, just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six year old girl Aisha.” The PVV leader wants Verhagen to summon the Saudi Arabian ambassador to express his repugnance.
[T]his puts those who will condemn Wilders in a peculiar position. If they take issue with his characterization of Muhammad, they will either be excusing the Muslim prophet’s marriage to a six-year-old and declining to condemn those Muslims who imitate their prophet by taking child brides, or, if they say that Muhammad didn’t actually marry a child, they’re in the position of denying evidence that is in the sources Muslims consider most reliable. Yet as this incident with the 80-year-old and his 10-year-old bride demonstrates ( “my marriage is not against Shariah,” said the codger), many Muslims take that evidence quite seriously.
Update I (August 31): JP writes: Jamie, you cannot try an Arab in his homeland based on Western Laws.
This is a point well taken and worth making. It is clear to me that unlike, say, an America leader, whose admonitions to the Arab world may carry the threat of an invasion, Wilders is merely being provocative. His intention and consistent modus operandi are to expose the West’s self-immolating left-liberalism. I believe the same is the case here. Where are the Hildebeest-type feminists on this?
My mention of Daniel Hannan, the new-found darling of American conservatives and libertarians, in this context, is only tangentially related. Nevertheless, I’ve been meaning to bring Hanna up. Here’s what he had to say about Wilders:
It’s true that Geert Wilders is a controversialist, who takes pleasure in causing offence. He needs 24-hour protection, so serious are the death-threats he has attracted from jihadis. He revels in offending liberals as well as Muslims: his call for the Koran to be banned struck me as rather inconsistent with his stated commitment to civic freedoms. I wouldn’t vote for him if I were Dutch.
My Netherlands-based family are proud supporters of the heroic Wilders, the only man to understand the stakes. Hannan here is very much in the sneering mode of Mark Steyn, who lauds the manner in which America has dealt with fractious immigrant populations, and distinguishes between the American and European melting pots. I don’t know if he is one, but neoconservatives of the deepest dye do not allow for the questioning of immigration policy with respect to the future of western liberal societies.
“When America’s news cartel woke up to one of 2005’s biggest stories—Muslims running riot across France—the response from many a neoconservative was to gloat.
The Schadenfreude was tinged with a sense of American superiority. It’s not happening here because we’re better. And why are we superior? To listen to their accounts, it’s because we’ve submerged or erased aspects of the American identity. …
Perhaps the threat to both homelands is overplayed. I sincerely hope so—for the French and for us. But even if France isn’t the proverbial canary in the coal mine, shouldn’t Americans be rooting for this once-magnificent European country?
Not according to some prominent neoconservatives, for whom the destruction of 8,400 vehicles, dozens of buildings, and at least one life by the Muslim community of France has served to focus attentions on… the ‘bigoted’ French.” …
Undeniably “exceptionally intelligent,” the man speaks a superb English, something that seduced me initially too. However, I soon discerned that even Hannan’s pronunciations about American liberties sundered under Obama were somewhat shallow, or strategically tailored to his role as a star among Republican TV hosts.
Yes, he knows well and repeats often the principles of dispersion and decentralization of power inherent in the American system. But, like so many neocons, he conveys the false idea that up until recently those principles had been respected. Hogwash. Obama is continuing on the path of his predecessor, and Bush built on the wrecking Clinton did. And before that… well you know the story.
Update II: Via Jamie. It would appear that Hannan does subscribe to the neoconservative concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.”
