Blogging still slow…5th week on the road, with a few short interludes back home. At least the end of the road trips is near, and life will return to what (at times laughably!) passes for normal.

Furious President Obama summons Gen. Stanley McChrystal to D.C.

The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been summoned to the White House to explain biting and unflattering remarks he made to a freelance writer about President Barack Obama and others in the Obama administration.

The face-to-face comes as pundits are already calling for McChrystal to resign for insubordination.

McChrystal has been instructed to fly from Kabul to Washington today to attend Obama’s regular monthly security team meeting tomorrow at the White House.

An administration official says McChrystal was asked to attend in person rather than by secure video teleconference, “where he will have to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes about his colleagues in the piece.”

Ooops! Anyone else recall the final resolution of the differences between another general “Mac” and his CinC – Truman in that case.

The similarity hasn’t escaped notice among the Brits, one of whom is predicting an early and similar demise for McChristal:
I confidently predict Obama will sack General Stanley McChrystal for his Rolling Stone outburst

Oh dear, I fear General Stanley McChrystal will be making a one-day trip to Washington after U.S. President Barack Obama summoned him to Washington to explain his less than flattering remarks about the Obama administration that are due to appear in this week’s edition of Rolling Stone magazine.

Gen McChrystal has already apologised for the remarks, but that has not saved him from Mr Obama’s rage. There are many misguided souls in this world who still believe that the American president who is fundamentally a nice guy, who doesn’t get involved in petty political in-fighting.

Well, they are about to have a rude awakening. You don’t get to be elected President of the United States simply for a being a nice guy. You need to be a ruthless, political opportunist, and Mr Obama has these qualities in abundance.

Adding some additional context highlights the current situation…or not?

The Obama administration gave serious consideration to dismissing McChrystal last autumn after his outspoken comments at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, in which he openly called on the Obama White House to back his surge strategy for Afghanistan.

Mr Obama thought better of sacking him then, but the hapless American general has now given Mr Obama all the ammunition he needs to fire him. Which is why I rate the chances of Gen McChrystal surviving his latest showdown with Mr Obama as zero.

Either way, we won;t have long to wait to see if there is blood accompanying the broken glass in the Pentagon.

Gibbs Evades Question About Obama’s Use Of “Teabagger”

Video clip of the following at the above link to Real Clear Politics.

REPORTER: Are you able to get an answer on Fred’s question about the teabagger quote, if the President is aware that people are offended? GIBBS: Again, I have not seen the book. I can’t imagine I’m going to ask the President that, but I will — I will entertain it. I will check. [ABC News reports President Obama used the derogatory term in a new book.]

Don’t hold your breath waiting for an answer. C.A.H. could give Gibbs lessons on being forthcoming.

Sniper kills Qaeda-from 1½ mi. away

A British sniper set a world sharpshooting record by taking out two Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan from more than a mile and a half away — a distance so great, experts say the terrorists wouldn’t have even heard the shots.

Craig Harrison killed the two insurgents from an astounding distance of 8,120 feet — or 1.54 miles — in Helmand Province last November firing an Accuracy International L11583 long-range rifle.

“The first round hit a machine-gunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a corporal of horse in the British Army’s Household Cavalry, the equivalent of a sergeant in the American military.

“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too,” Harrison told the Sunday Times of London.

The shots — measured via GPS — surpassed the previous record held by Canadian Army Cpl. Rob Furlong, who killed an al Qaeda gunman from 7,972 feet in 2002.

Now THAT can be called “balling the jack”!

Consent of the governed – and the lack thereof By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Our Declaration of Independence observes: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” “Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This is boilerplate American history, and something that Americans — and, in particular, America’s political class — have long taken for granted. But now things are looking a bit dicey. According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the “political class” believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.

Taking note of the glaring disconnect between us and our self-conflated “rulers”, Glenn goes on to amplify and extend the point:

…only 63 percent…still less than two-thirds of the political class — regard the federal government as legitimate by the standards of America’s founding document. The remainder, [the other 33%] presumably, are comfortable being tyrants.[!]

These numbers should raise deep worries about the future of our republic. A nation whose government does not rest on the consent of the governed is a nation whose government holds sway only by inertia, or by force. It is a nation vulnerable to political shocks, usurpation, or perhaps even political collapse or civil war. It is a body politic suffering from a serious illness. Those who care about America should be very worried.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: it’s well worth the read…and if it doesn’t give you some real concerns…then IMHO you aren’t worthy of having the privilege of living in a democratic republic…stay home on election day so you don’t screw it up for the rest of us who want to. The alternative?

Well, the Declaration of Independence allows for the prospect of altering or abolishing the government we have in order to get a government that’s closer to what we want. That needn’t involve anything as violent as the American Revolution or the Civil War, but the need for change — real, structural change as opposed to campaign-slogan “change” — is becoming more obvious.

In the past, America has managed to reinvent itself without transformations as wrenching as the Civil War or the Revolution. As the legitimacy of our current arrangements becomes increasingly threadbare, it is perhaps worth thinking about how this might be accomplished again.

Islamic radicals ‘infiltrate’ the Labour Party

A Labour minister says his party has been infiltrated by a fundamentalist Muslim group that wants to create an “Islamic social and political order” in Britain.
The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE)…

Hmmmm. Sounds like the Euro version of C.A.I.R. (Congress on American-Islamic Relations) which afflicts us with their own version of Islamisms.

…which believes in jihad and sharia law, and wants to turn Britain and Europe into an Islamic state — has placed sympathisers in elected office and claims, correctly, to be able to achieve “mass mobilisation” of voters.

It’s not so bad here yet…most of OUR immigration influx comes from more-or-less Catholic Latin America, which may turn out to be part of our salvation in the end.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Jim Fitzpatrick, the Environment Minister, said the IFE had become, in effect, a secret party within Labour and other political parties.

“They are acting almost as an entryist organisation, placing people within the political parties, recruiting members to those political parties, trying to get individuals selected and elected so they can exercise political influence and power, whether it’s at local government level or national level,” he said.

“They are completely at odds with Labour’s programme, with our support for secularism.”

Of course the Islamos deny any sort of ulterior agenda whatsoever…maybe because it’s no longer ulterior…it’s right out in front: “We want your world for dar es salaam, and we want it NOW!”

OK.  This has caught my attention.  The Iranian “Twelvers” are crazy enough for most anything.

Khamenei: Iran Set to Deliver ‘Punch’ to Stun West on Anniversary

Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran is set to deliver a “punch” that will stun world powers during this week’s 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution, AFP reported.

“The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman, February 11, in a way that will leave them stunned,” Khamenei, who is also Iran’s commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel according to AFP.

This promise has somewhat more possibilities of being significant than does December 21, 2012…but the Chief wouldn’t bet the farm making predictions one way or the other on either “threatening” calendar date.

As always, time will tell.

How to lose friends for little gain

Rarely has a cowboy castrated himself in public like Ben Nelson, the senator from Nebraska, who becomes an object lesson in how a United States senator easily trades his “convictions” and “principles” for perfectly legal bribes from cynical party leaders.

When the inevitable howling erupted in Nebraska, all the senator could come up with was a variation on the oldest excuse in Washington: “I didn’t do it, and maybe I won’t do it again.”

Huh?   That’s got to go right up there with “I voted against it before I voted for it”, and “It depends what the meaning of is, is” in the political doublespeak hall of fame.

Every president mirrors in ways large and small the politics he learned back home, and the administration’s use of the battering ram in behalf of a scheme that grows more unpopular day by day reflects the down-and-dirty politics of Chicago. Richard Daley the Original lives and breathes on Capitol Hill.

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the senator’s colleagues can be grateful for the diversion of attention from the actual outrage. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told the Senate that ObamaCare is so convoluted that no one (not even the dozens of lawyers who wrote it) actually understands it. The president insists that the change nobody believes in will reduce costs for everybody….

Nevermind. The president has the reform that does less and costs more. Earl Long, the late governor of Louisiana, once boasted that he could take a hundred-dollar bill and get anything through his legislature “and buy you a steak dinner with what I’ll have left over.”

President Obama goes that one better. He did it with a bribe of somebody else’s money.

It’s not change that the Chief can believe in.

Sixty is the New Thirty:

Dirty Harry & Donkey Party to Country:
“Merry Christmas, suckers!“

To My Democrat Friends:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010 , but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wish.

To My Republican Friends:

Merry Christmas and have a Happy and Prosperous New Year!

Rising costs predicted in health care bill

Dealing an unexpected blow to Senate Democrat’s health care bill, administration economists on Friday predicted the overhaul would accelerate rising costs of health insurance and medical services, and that its proposed Medicare cuts could reduce care for senior citizens.

A report by analysts at the Health and Human Services Department said the bill would increase the nation’s annual spending on health care beyond the current $2.5 trillion at a slightly faster rate than if Congress did nothing. It concluded that new taxes on drugs, medical devices and health insurance plans would trigger higher insurance premiums for consumers.

Like this should be a surprise to anyone…massive expansion of government programs will actually cost more!

Who’d of thought it?

Lieberman Digs In on Public Option

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, speaking in that trademark sonorous baritone, utters a simple statement that translates into real trouble for Democratic leaders: “I’m going to be stubborn on this.”

Stubborn, he means, in opposing any health-care overhaul that includes a “public option,” or government-run health-insurance plan, as the current bill does. His opposition is strong enough that Mr. Lieberman says he won’t vote to let a bill come to a final vote if a public option is included.

Probe for a catch or caveat in that opposition, and none is visible. Can he support a public option if states could opt out of the plan, as the current bill provides? “The answer is no,” he says in an interview from his Senate office. “I feel very strongly about this.” How about a trigger, a mechanism for including a public option along with a provision saying it won’t be used unless private insurance plans aren’t spreading coverage far and fast enough? No again.

So any version of a public option will compel Mr. Lieberman to vote against bringing a bill to a final vote? “Correct,” he says.

Sounds pretty definite.

More in the London Telegraph:

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming’?

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

There’s more in the linked piece specifically noting cases involving:

Manipulation of evidence
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up
Suppression of evidence
Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists
Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)
how best to squeeze dissenting scientists out of the peer review process. How, in other words, to create a scientific climate in which anyone who disagrees with AGW can be written off as a crank, whose views do not have a scrap of authority

Throw another AlGore log on the fire!

Payments to Taliban widespread

Yet ANOTHER sign of the fecklessness of the age of B.O.’s role as the so-called leader of the NATO alliance.

NATO officially denies that any of its members pay insurgents in Afghanistan for peace, but military sources said yesterday the practice is widespread among foreign forces fighting the Taliban….

The Times newspaper said 10 French troops killed in Sarobi, near Kabul, last year had not properly assessed the risks, because their Italian predecessors failed to inform them they had paid the Taliban not to attack them.

The Italian government described the British newspaper’s report as “totally baseless” and said it had “never authorised any kind of money payment to members of the Taliban insurrection in Afghanistan”.

No, of COURSE not. They are SHOCKED at such a thought!

But a senior Afghan official suggested otherwise. “I certainly can confirm that we were aware that the Italian forces were paying the opposition in Sarobi not to attack them,” he said….

I can tell you that lots of countries under the NATO umbrella operating out in rural parts of Afghanistan do pay the militants for not attacking them,” the senior Afghan official said.He added that it “seems to be the practice with military forces from some NATO countries, excluding the US forces under NATO, the British forces and the whole coalition forces” under the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom.

“I think more than 50 per cent of NATO forces deployed in rural Afghanistan have such deals or at least have struck such deals” to ensure peace, the official said.

At least the U.S. isn’t yet sucked into this deal, nor apparently is the U.K.  (Perhaps they still remember the original Danes!)  One wonders why B.O. can’t call upon his worshipful Euro friends to buck up and take care of the business at hand.

In Western history this has been tried repeatedly, going back to the days of the Saxon Kings of Britain (up to and including Alfred the Great) who learned a sad lesson:

DANEGELD

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation,
To call upon a neighbour and to say:
“We invaded you last night – we are quite prepared to fight,
Unless you pay us cash to go away.”

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you’ve only to pay ’em the Dane-geld
And then you’ll get rid of the Dane!

It is always a temptation to a rich and lazy nation,
To puff and look important and to say:
“Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you.
We will therefore pay you cash to go away.”

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray,
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:

“We never pay any one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost,
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”

– Rudyard Kipling

The U.S. itself historically confronted this lesson early in the Republic’s history when the North African Islamic states demanded “tribute” money to protect merchant ships from government-sponsored piracy.  In response Congress proclaimed “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!”, they went on and voted to build a real Navy, and then sent the ships to the Mediterranean to FORCE the Pirates of Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli to refrain from attacking U.S. ships any more. This provided the setting for the line in the US Marine Hymn: “…to the shores of Tripoli.”

Of course now, with the enervated state of the Western powers, including the U.S., no one can muster the intestinal fortitude to deal with the Somali piracy, either. It’s comparable to the sometimes encountered inner city phenomena called the “known crack-house”. Everyone knows who and where the bad guys are, but no one with the power to act has the cojones to pull the chain on them, for whatever reason….

The barbarians are through the gates!

One of the big things that B.O. promised during his campaign was that a new style of engaging diplomacy would absolutely get us positive results. This of course was supposed to be contrasted with the alleged failures and lack of respect that resulted from Bush’s harder line policies (which the Chief doesn’t really consider to any too consistent in their own right).

So, here’s how impressed Ahmadinejad “Ah’m-mad-on-a-jihad” is with this form of “Change” that HE believes in:

Ahmadinejad: Iran’s Enemies a ‘Mosquito’

Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday compared the power of Iran’s enemies to a “mosquito,” saying Iran now deals with the West over its nuclear activities from a position of power. The comment from Ahmadinejad came as Iran is negotiating with the West over a U.N.-backed proposal to ship its uranium abroad for further enrichment….

“While enemies have used all their capacities … the Iranian nation is standing powerfully and they are like a mosquito,” a government Web site quoted Ahmadinejad early Sunday as saying.

Ahmadinejad also said Iran doesn’t trust the West when it sits for talks. “Given the negative record of Western powers, the Iranian government … looks at the talks with no trust. But realities dictate to them to interact with the Iranian nation,” he said according to the site.

Did you get that last bit? “Realities DICTATE to them…” – in other words we are in a position where we are now FORCED to deal with Iran due to Iran’s successful exercise of power!

So much for the results of B.O.’s and Hilary’s “new” diplomatic attitude. Appeasement works every time…from the point of view of the appeased.

Iran threatens to invade Pakistan, “crushing response” for US, UK

The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafary, Monday, Oct. 19, threatened “crushing” retaliation against the US, UK and Pakistan including the invasion of its eastern neighbor.

Ooooooh! They sound MAD!

Apparently turn-about ISN’T fair play to the Revolutionary Guard

Tehran links all three to the suicide bombing attack in Sistan-Baluchistan Sunday, Oct. 18, which killed 42 people including seven senior Guards officers. One was Gen. Nur Ali Shoustari, Jafari’s deputy, who was identified by DEBKAfile‘s counter-terror sources as commander of the al Qods clandestine terror bases in Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

So, whay are they treatening us, along with the others?

Jafary said: “Behind this scene are the American and British intelligence apparatus and there will have to be retaliatory measures to punish them.”

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources note that is the first time in Iran’s 30-year Islamic revolution that a military leader has gone to the extreme lengths of threatening to strike US and British military targets, a measure of the damage the regime and Guards suffered from the suicide attack, which has since been condemned and denied by Washington.

Like they’re REALLY going to believe ANYTHING we have to say about it.
How serious is the threat?
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that Tehran will have to make good on its threats without too much delay or lose face among the political and ethnic minority dissidents plaguing on the regime, especially those who rose up in protest against the tainted June 20 presidential election. Hesitation will be seen as weakness.

Past Iranian reprisals were usually carried against the US or Britain indirectly in the Persian Gulf or by local Islamic surrogates like Hizballah in Iraq. Jafari’s words point to a more direct showdown this time by the IRGC or its terrorist arm the al Qods Brigade.

Take it for what it’s worth.

A new mommy tax

When Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus proposed taxing medical devices to raise $40 billion over the next 10 years for his health care plan, opponents started digging in and looking at what would be taxed. It turned out feminine products, like tampons, were classified as class I medical devices and thus, the “tampon tax” was born.

The backlash was quick and severe enough against the idea that the committee quickly drafted new language that would exempt those necessities from the tax, along with all other class I devices, like tongue depressors, and decided to only tax class II medical devices and higher that cost less than $100.

But, just wait for the revolt to start again because women will still pay a price under the new structure. Particularly new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies. Those devices, labeled class II, typically retails for more than $100.

And, all the rest of the more expensive, higher-class medical devices used by both men an women — such as pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles — will be taxed, too.

Tampons exempt, breast pumps, pacemakers,  and wheelchairs are fair game. Sort of brings to the chief’s mind the old Beatles song, “Taxman”:

Let me tell you how it will be,
There’s one for you, nineteen for me,
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah yeah, I’m the Taxman.

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,
If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat,
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman.

‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for
If you don’t want to pay some more
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeeeah, I’m the Taxman.

Now my advice for those who die, (Taxman!)
Declare the pennies on your eyes, (Taxman!)
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
And you’re working for no-one but me,
Taxman.
[Yeah, I know…I took the liberty of deleting the names of the Brit’s party leaders in the mid-60’s.   So what.  It dessn’t change the point.]

Back to the bill: nothing there about middle class (and below) exemptions, either, is there?
Surprise, surprise, surprise!

Meeting pretty women makes men feel good

Flirting with an attractive woman really does make men feel good, scientists find, as they discover it causes a surge in health-giving hormones.

Psychologists found that just a five minute talk with an attractive women raised the levels of testosterone by 14 per cent Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Researchers found that just being in the presence of a pretty member of the opposite sex causes a temporary boost in levels of testosterone and cortisol – both hormones associated with alertness and wellbeing.

However hanging around with other men has the opposite affect – reducing the levels of both substances in the body.

DUH!

Extremists banned from Britain named by Home Office

A total of 101 individuals – including dozens of radical Muslim clerics, such as Omar Bakri – have been excluded in the past four years, using new powers introduced after the July 7 bombings in 2005.

Two thirds of them have been banned for “fomenting, justifying or glorifying terrorist violence” and provoking others to carry out terrorist atrocities.

The 16 named today, who have been excluded in the past six months, include six militant Muslims, four men who front Neo-Nazi groups, a Sri-Lankan Tamil Tiger leader, a former member of the Palestine Liberation Front and a right-wing American radio chat show host [emphasis added]. Six others banned since October are not named because it is not considered “in the public interest”.

Who could THAT be?

Michael Savage banned in Britain

Talk radio host Michael Savage is considering legal action against Britain’s top homeland security official after she released today a list grouping him with terrorists and neo-Nazi murderers banned from entry because the government believes their views might provoke violence.

In a telephone interview with WND, Savage said he is still waiting to hear back from attorneys, but he noted Britain has very strict anti-defamation laws.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to publicize the list of 16 people banned since October to show the type of behavior Britain will not tolerate, according to U.K. news reports.

Savage’s immediate reaction upon hearing the news was typically wry.

“Darn! And I was just planning a trip to England for their superior dental work and cuisine,” he recalled thinking.

“Then it sank in,” he told WND, “and I said, ‘She said this is the kind of behavior we won’t tolerate? She’s linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?'”

Savage shouldn’t feel TOO bad…the Brits chased Thomas Paine across the channel for HIS offensive speech. Good company to be in.