Beating down the audience is what the crudest entertainments try to do, and in this respect, and in every other, “Wanted” is nothing new.
Those are the words of New York Times film critic A. O. Scott, reviewing the new major motion picture Wanted starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Timur Bekmambetov, whom Scott describes as "a Russian filmmaker who has earned a cult following with his razzly-dazzly thrillers Day Watch and Night Watch.
While it's very unlikely that any Slavic Russian would acknowledge a person with Central Asian name like "Bekmambetov" as being "Russian" in any sense that means anything (not to long ago, Russians were rounding up people with last names like that and ejecting them from the country as spies in the latest round of ethnic cleansing), the irony of Bekmambetov is really quite extreme. Let's reflect upon a little, shall we?
But before we do, a word about Ms. Jolie. Here we have an actress who, in her private life, pretends to be all about world peace and uplifting the condition of the world's hapless minions. And yet, what kind of movies does she make? Empty-headed shoot-em-up bloodbaths that make light of violence and have nothing to say about anything, that's what. Wow, what a fraud.
And she's in good company where this "Russian" filmmaker is concerned. Anyone who knows a thing about Russian people knows how heartily they love to claim cultural superiority, to look down their noses at Hollywood movies as being devoid of emotional sensitivity or intellectual substance. And yet, if you read Scott's review you find that not only is Mr. Bekmambetov doing exactly that, he's not even being original about it. Check out this damning passage:
What does turn up looks familiar — the slowed bullets, the air that ripples like water, an underground group, here called the Fraternity — especially if you’ve seen “The Matrix.” Although Mr. Bekmambetov and his team take plenty of cues from that film, they have tried to distinguish their dystopian nightmare by borrowing from even farther afield. To that end the Fraternity practices its murderous skills on pig carcasses (much as Daniel Day-Lewis does in “Gangs of New York”) while bunkered in a sprawling factory (that looks like Hogwarts). I’m pretty sure I saw the fabulous recovery room — a concrete spa filled with sunken tubs and lighted candles where Fraternity members go for restorative soaks after a hard day of carnage — in a layout in Vogue.
So Bekmambetov is not only copying America at the superficial level, he's copying it right down to the roots, and not even doing it all that well. Scott says the movie boils down to "a grindingly repetitive rotation of bang-bang, boom-boom, knuckle sandwiches and exploding heads." His conclusion: "Things happen in Wanted, but no one cares. You could call that nihilism, but even nihilism requires commitment of a kind and this, by contrast, is a movie built on indifference."
To me, that sounds just like Russia itself, in microcosm. Things are happening (the population is shrinking, art is being stifled, journalism censored, politics castrated) but nobody cares. Instead of bringing a new sensibility to cinematic art when given its chance, Russia's contribution is to further deaden it, almost as if simply for the fun of it. Russia these days it seems has nothing to offer the world by cynicism and nihilism -- or in fact, perhaps they don't even have the energy and perseverance to raise themselves to that level.
Have a proud KGB spy as president? Why not! Start up the cold war by buzzing American with nuclear bombers and providing weapons to rogue leaders in Iran and Venezuela? Hell yeah, let's give it a go! We've already got the world's largest supply of territory? So there's nothing for it but to grab some more -- let's take the Arctic!
It's as if, some time ago, the whole nation resolved to launch itself upon a massive suicide pact, thumbing its nose at a world that somehow never managed to offer the recognition and worship it craved.
Now that would make quite a movie -- if anyone would believe it.
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer had a devastating piece last week exposing the torrent of lies issuing recently from the mouth of Barack Obama:
(1) Obama said during the primary season that he would vote to block blanket immunity for telecommunications companies in connection with post-Sept. 11 eavesdropping. Now that he got the nomination, he's announced he'll vote in favor of immunity.
(2) During the primaries, Obama said he would insist on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement to stop Mexico and Canada from abusing the system to harm the American economy. Now victorious, he supports the existing agreement.
(3) While seeking left-wing votes for the nomination, he said he would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. The nomination sewn up, he no longer has any such intention.
(4) Filled with primary fervor, he said he could "no more disown Jeremiah Wright than his own grandmother." A few months later, he disowned him.
(5) Obama pledged unconditionally that he would accept public financing during the general election while he was talking to left-wing voters who despise the "fat cats." Now that he's been anointed, he's rejected public funding.
(6) An editorial in the Post adds yet another: Obama promised during the primary season to participate in a series of inclusive town-hall meetings with his opponent John McCain. McCain is still ready to do it, but now as the front runner Obama is backing out like a cowardly and very common politician. Change you can believe in?
As Krauthammer puts it: "By the time he's finished, Obama will have made the Clintons look scrupulous."
And, just like the Clintons, he'll have the Congress and the Oval Office promptly back in Republican hands for an extended period, after enacting their agenda in a manner perhaps more effective than they ever could have dreamed.
My latest installment on the Pajamas Media mother blog reviews Vladimir Putin's liquidation of the infamous puerile tabloid The eXile and finds it has unsettling implications for an actual source of information in Russia, the Moscow Times, also published by foreigners. Did Putin shut down The eXile in order to set the precedent by which he could strike the MT as well? Will the MT see the writing on the wall and shift its coverage tone to save itself? I'm afraid it may already be happening.
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The Russian people, via Internet voting, have chosen the "seven wonders of Russia."
Well, "Russian people" is an overstatement, since the vast majority of Russians have no regular access to the Internet (and how could they, when the average salary is $4/hour while the cost of Internet access is similar to that in the West).
And wonders is a relative term, too. Most outside of Russia would never have heard of more than one or two items on the Russian list, if any, much less visited them (or even thought of doing so). Indeed, as even state-owned propaganda outfit Russia Today admits, the whole point of having the "seven wonders" voting was to convince Russians themselves, who otherwise ignore their ho-hum national treasures, to pay them more attention.
One of Russia's top seven choices, from a list of 50, was "The Valley of the Geysers" (shown above in happier times, and even then to me it looks more like a wasteland than a natural wonder, much less a tourist attraction) in the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, which would be Russia's version of America's famous Yellowstone National Park. Good luck if you want to visit. Even before last year, the place was virtually inaccessible -- meaning the vast majority of Russians had never seen it. Then last year it was totally wiped out by a massive landslide. Perhaps state-owned Russian TV forgot to mention it.
And even more good luck visiting another of the top seven, Mt. Elbrus, the Russian Everest. It's practically in Georgia and surrounded by a seething cauldron of terrorism and Russian imperialism. Wikipedia notes: "It is said to be home to the 'world's nastiest' outhouse which is close to being the highest privy in Europe. The title was conferred by Outside Magazine following a 1993 search and article. The outhouse is surrounded by and covered in ice, perched off the end of a rock, and with a pipe pouring effluvia onto the mountain."
Then there's the Motherland Statue, Russia's version of the Statute of Liberty (except that it carries a sword instead of torch, pretty apropos for Russia), located in the city formerly named after mass murderer Josef Stalin that was totally wiped out in World War II. In essence, it's a monument to the Soviet Union's "victory" over Nazi Germany. The only thing is, the Soviet government murdered millions of its own citizens, more than the Nazis, and then imploded spectacularly. An argument could be made that Russia would have been better of losing World War II (France did, and today it's a prosperous world leader).
Even if Russia had world-leading attractions that were physically accessible, that wouldn't mean foreign tourists could safely glimpse them. In its 2007 report on travel and tourism competitiveness, Booz Allen rated Russia #119 in the world out of 124 countries under review in terms of how inclined to welcome tourists the national population is (page 443).
Russia miserably failed basic criteria like whether you're likely to get out alive after your trip. Only 31 countries in the world, out of 124 reviewed, had a higher incidence of AIDS than Russia (p. 437). Only 40 countries had a higher incidence of tuberculosis (p. 439). Only 35 had a lower life expectancy (p. 440). In terms of national wonders, Russia doesn't rank in the top 50 nations of the world in share of national territory protected from development (the U.S. ranks #10 with over 25% protected; Russia is #53 with just 8%, see page 448) and it ranked #113 in terms of business concern for the ecology (p. 449).
Russia ranked #114 in terms of respecting tourist property rights (p. 313) and #106 in terms of the burdensomeness of its visa regime. It ranked #105 in terms of the reliability of police protection and #108 in terms of health and hygiene. It was #103 in terms of road infrastructure quality.
Only four governments on the planet placed lower emphasis on travel and tourism than the regime of Vladimir Putin.
So, welcome to Russia! And if you wouldn't mind too terribly much, would you please get the hell out!
When you think of Russia's company, you think of Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah. You think of George Bush, apparently one of the world's most hated figures, looking into Vladimir "Pooty-Poot" Putin's eyes, glimpsing his soul and finding him "trustworthy." When you think of the United States you think of NATO, Germany, France, Britain and Japan.
Where Russia's allies are not actually evil, they are the ragtag flotsam and jetsam of the world, struggling for continued relevance in a world that would simply like to put them out to pasture. In this category we can place the likes of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former British Premier Tony Blair, who were both in Russia this week helpfully parroting the Kremlin's propaganda line designed to get the West to drop its guard so dictatorship can achieve final consolidation.
Kissinger will be forever associated with the corrupt administration of Richard Nixon, the only U.S. president ever forced to resign from office in disgrace, and with his inability to speak the English language without a foreign accent. Accused by some of being a war criminal, he won the Nobel Peace prize, just like Yasir Arafat and Jimmy Carter. He was Time magazine's person of the year in 1972, just like Stalin was and the dictator Putin would become. Blair's Labor Party is in the throes of utter collapse in Britain. Both have long ago passed from the limelight, and seem to want it back. In Kissenger's case, senility appears to be creeping in.
Kissinger stated to Medvedev: "I have followed with great interest your becoming president and the plans you have put forward in some of your speeches. I wish you every success. It is important for Russia and important for the world." God only knows what that gibberish is supposed to mean, but the fact that Kissinger didn't say a word of public criticism about Medvedev, much less mention either the mind-blowing sham of his rigged election combined with his "predecessor" remaining in office as prime minister, and was photographed smiling and chatting with Medvedev, is being used by the Kremlin to score propaganda points and offset criticism over human rights violations recently raised by many countries' actual leaders.
Kissinger is the U.S. chair of the panel called "Russia-USA: A Look Into the Future" which was formed last year and is also co-chaired by Russia's former Prime Minister and KGB spymaster Yevgeny Primakov. While in Moscow he stated: "If supply is limited and demand increases, if countries compete for access to energy on a purely national basis, we are bound to see a repetition of the colonial conflicts of 19th century." Marshal Goldman responded: "At the present time, Russia is not in a position to worry there won't be enough for Russia. If anything, it might make Russia even more aware of the fact that they are in a very commanding position."
In other words, Kissinger is a crazy old man who is doing the Kremlin's bidding, not really so different that Germany ex-leader Gerhard Schroeder. Blair, in Moscow to attend a private investor's conference, continued this line, stating: "Power is shifting east, and it's shifting fast, not just to China and, in time, to India, but also to the Middle East and to Russia. They have a pride in Russia today they didn't have ten years ago. We, in countries like mine, have to understand that change in psyche."
Pride indeed. They've learned to be proud of the murder of Politkovskaya and the jailing of Khodorkovsky. They revel in the fact that their men don't live to reach age 60. They beam over their lack of news reporting, political opposition and local government. They strut and preen over their $4/hour average wage, their AIDS epidemic, their fatalities by fire, their smoking apocalypse. They glow with satisfaction over the exclusion from the WTO and members Georgia/Ukraine heading for NATO. And they do all this much as Germans did when Hitler restored lost German pride after World War I.
The strange thing is that Mr. Blair isn't planning to move to Russia right away! Well, he's only British, so by his own terms he's probably a bit slow on the uptake. He'll figure it out sooner or later.
A book review in the Telegraph points out that when Ronald Reagan dealt with the USSR, he ridiculed its leaders to their faces rather than enabling their victim mentality as Blair would seek to do. One could say that, since he didn't patronize, Reagan showed far more respect. The Telegraph relates:
Poor Mr Gorbachev. Every time he met Ronald Reagan at a summit, he was subjected by the American President to a stream of Russian jokes. Or rather, to be precise, Soviet jokes - the point of which was always to satirise some aspect of life under communism. What made it worse was that some of them really were very funny. I like the one, for example, about the man who goes to buy a car in Moscow, pays for it, and is told by the salesman that he can collect it on a particular date in 10 years' time. The buyer thinks for a moment and then asks: 'Morning or afternoon?' The salesman, astonished by the question, asks: 'What difference does it make?' And the buyer answers: 'Well, the plumber is coming in the morning.'
America had a foreign policy then, and a real leader to enact it. Perhaps, come November, we will again.
So, Barack Obama makes his first visit to a church over the weekend after throwing his old church (of two decades) under the bus when it became politically inconvenient. One must wonder, of course, what else he'll be prepared to throw under the bus when it suits him -- our country, for instance? Does he, in fact, actually believe anything at all, other than that (just like Bill Clinton) he really wants to be president?
And while speaking at this church in Chicago, he declares that black fathers are "missing from too many lives and too many homes, they have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it."
I'd be genuinely interested in being educated by readers who are more expert in Obama's past than I am:
(1) In his pre-presidential career, what has he done for black folks? What, specifically, has he done to improve the lives of American blacks, either on a local or, more importantly, on a national scale? Because, if it's nothing, that would imply that black people are voting for him based on the color of his skin -- and as far as I'm concerned, that's racism.
(2) Has Obama ever said anything about negative about black fathers before he decided he wanted to be president? Has he ever said it to a room full of black voters during a campaign? More important, has he actually done anything to crack down on these irresponsible fathers? Because if he hasn't, that would imply he's only making this remark because he hopes it will play well among white voters -- a group he has substantial trouble with.
(3) Do black people take Obama seriously when he says things like this? Because if Obama really believes what he said, that should mean any number of people will come forward now to attack him as an "Uncle Tom" selling out to "whitey," the way they attacked Bill Cosby for saying similar things, the way they attack personages like Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas and J.C. Watts. Is that happening? Because if not, that would imply Obama is so sure of his black constituency that he believes they will blindly vote for him no matter what he says. In that case, see (1) above, and it would make his statement seem like a cosmic joke of truly epic proportions.
PART II: Mr. Obama Steps in it . . . Again!
Recently I reported on the fact that Obama's very first act in setting his presidential campaign in motion had been a total disaster leading to a humiliating resignation, and that this was pretty damning since Obama had specifically told us that, since he lacks executive experience, we must judge him by the quality of his campaign.
Again, leave aside how simply insane this position is. It means that, in Obama's view, anyone who manages to get elected president is therefore qualified to be president.
Amazingly, in his second major decision, he's blown it again. This time he has attempted to appoint a former campaign manager of Hillary Clinton's to chair his vice presidential nominee's staff before that nominee has even been selected. In other words, Obama is denying his own nominee the chance to have input as to who will lead the nominee's own staff! Even the Daily Kos, fanatically pro-Obama, is dumbfounded by this outrageous and arrogant misstep.
Two pitches, two strikes. Need we say more? PART III: They Call Him Mr. Smear
The Chicago Sun Times reports that Obama has formed a new website to fight "smears" against his campaign. And how does he start things off? By smearing Rush Limbaugh with an utterly false accusation. Obama also claims that conservative bloggers started the rumor that his wife had used a racist term for whites while at church with Jeremiah Wright, a rumor Limbaugh specifically questioned. In fact, that's also totally false. A liberal blogger started the rumor, and left-wing journalists then turned around and blamed it on conservatives. Time magazine's Jay Carney was forced to apologize, but Obama still hasn't said a word.
Seems that rather than fighting smears with truth, Obama prefers to fight the truth with smears. how ironic!
Sometimes I really wonder whether any actual editor reads the pablum generated by New York Times "reporters" before it gets into print.
Take, for instance, a recent story about Russia headlined "Unshackled and Flush, Russians Venture Abroad" and bearing the above photograph. It seems that virtually every word, starting with the headline, is coming straight from the Kremlin's propaganda machine.
The article claims that "wide swaths of the citizenry are being exposed to life in far-off lands" but its own data (which apparently no editor deigned to actually read and think about) shows that less than 5% of Russians leave Russia each year, and nearly one-third of those who do only get as far as Turkey, just across the Black Sea and hardly a bastion of liberal Western values (the Wall Street Journal recently called the country's ruler "Turkey's Putin"). Moreover, I believe the 5% is likely a significant overstatement, since it almost certainly includes multiple visits abroad by the same wealthy individuals. How is it possible that the nation's so-called "paper of record" could print a statement that is so ludicrous on its face, in its own context? One grew accustomed to this type of thing from Soviet propagandists.
Flush? The average Russian citizen only earns a wage of $4/hour, so the $800 cost of a trip to Turkey the article cites represents more than a full month's wages to the average Russian. With general inflation raging in double digits, and inflation on basic items roaring even higher, it's not an expense the average Russian person can even consider. As for experiencing "different" cultures, the paper's own photograph shows Russians flocking to a resort in Turkey made to look just like Red Square, hardly much change at all.
Now put all these basic facts aside and answer me this: If Russians are so interested in widening their perspectives, how is it that they elected and reelected a proud KGB spy to be their leader, then allowed him to appoint a hand-picked successor and remain prime minster, in essence ruling for life? If their minds are so open to change, why did they allow that spy to abolish local government, independent media and opposition politics? Anyone casually aware of these facts understands the true extent to which Russians are willing to consider other options.
It really does seem that it's time to put the Old Gray Lady out to pasture. This is just getting plain embarrassing. I know enough about Russia to spot red herrings like this immediately, but I'm not an expert in any other region. Who knows how many bogus statements about other countries I've swallowed whole, unknowingly?
Sheesh. Give me a break!
NOTE: If this post had been written about and linked to a story in the Washington Post, then a sidebar item in that paper's web page would have shown the link, allowing readers to find this post and see its criticism. That's because WaPo proudly stands by its content. The same is not true of the Gray Lady, which cowers in the shadows. I've written a letter to the editor raising the concerns set forth in this post, but odds are the NYT won't have the guts to run it.
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This chart shows the results of a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.
On page 26 of the report, it states that of the nearly two dozen countries surveyed only Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordon, Egypt, China and Pakistan had a larger group of respondents say the U.S. was an enemy rather than a partner. Of those, in only Turkey and Pakistan was the larger group a majority.
70% of the people in Turkey see the U.S. as an enemy. In the chart, they prefer Obama to become president by a margin of 4-1. 60% of Pakistanis say the U.S. is an enemy, and they prefer Obama nearly 2-1. 39% of Egyptians view America as a foe, and they preferred Obama by a 3-2 margin. 34% of Russians and Chinese respondents said the U.S. was an enemy, and Russians preferred Obama 39-22 while Chinese liked him slightly less well, 36-31. Obama has also been endorsed by the America-loathing terrorists of Hamas and the U.S.-despising Fidel Castro of Cuba.
So it's absolutely clear what America's enemies want: They want Barack Obama to be the next U.S. president. Now there are two ways of looking at this fact. One is that they "really want to be our friend" and just want us to give them the chance to be so. The other is that they want to destroy us.
Imagine if you will how the people of Russia would respond if told that 75% more Americans preferred them to elect Garry Kasparov president as compared to Vladimir Putin. Think they'd say: "Well, if Americans want that, it's probably because they really want to be friends, but Putin is standing in the way. So let's pick Kasparov, shall we?"
The Pew poll also shows that the countries who overwhelmingly view the U.S. as a partner (Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Australia, Japan and, surprisingly, South Korea and Nigeria) also want Obama to be the next president. Again, there are two ways of looking at it. One is that these countries want America to become even greater, to rise to new heights. The other is that when they say partner, they mean junior partner who knows his place, not a leader.
Americans, by the way, prefer John McCain.
Needless to say, I am not given to a Pollyanish view of the world, so those first variants hold no attraction for me. Thus, the question is whether we want to please our friends by becoming their junior partner, while exposing ourselves to our foes and destruction, by choosing Barack Obama. Or do we want to continue to lead the world, and continue to incur its wrath, as all great towering figures always do. Gandhi and King, after all, were assassinated.
It's something to think about this election season. Reader thoughts are welcome.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday handed down its decision in the Boumediene case. With a 5-4 vote, just one unelected Supreme Court judge, the moderate Anthony Kennedy (shown above, he wrote the decision), who sided with the court's four left-wing liberals, suddenly discovered, after more than 200 years of the U.S. Constitution's existence, that it applies to people who are neither (a) American citizens nor (b) even located on American soil. The court's four conservative judges harshly rejected the decision.
The case involves prisoners of war who are housed at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The court ruled that they have the right to invoke the "writ of habeas corpus" provision in the Constitution that lets a court set someone free from illegal arrest prior to trial. Writing in opposition to the decision another judge, Antonin Scalia, stated: "Today, for the first time in our Nation's history, the court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad. The writ of habeas corpus does not, and never has, run in favor of aliens abroad." Scalia notes five incidents of radical Islamic terror against the U.S. that have cost 3,434 American lives in just the past few years.
Scalia condemns "the game of bait and switch that today's opinion plays upon the Nation's Commander in Chief" and warns that it will make the war on terrorism "harder on us" and "almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed" since they will be less able to defend themselves. He says that the decision "warps our Constitution" and "blatantly misdescribes important precedents" to "break a chain of precedents as old as the common law that prohibits judicial inquiry into detentions of aliens abroad absent statutory authorization."
And he warns: "Most tragically, it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner."
The world should be shocked and outraged by this decision, for two reasons.
First, it implies that the U.S. Constitution applies to the whole world. It follows that American governance does too.
Second, it tells the U.S. military in no uncertain terms that it should not take prisoners. It should simply kill all enemy combatants on sight, or face bankruptcy trying to prove their need to be imprisoned -- and face barbaric terrorism if forced to free them into our midst.
This is the result of so-called liberalism. The world seems not to understand that it is the party of the right in America which favors governmental restraint, and the party of the left which favors unbridled governmental ambition. If George Bush took an action like this, the mootbats of the Daily Kos for instance would condemn it, but when it comes from "their" judges apparently it's just fine and dandy.
Unelected judges, even nine in agreement, can't make military policy. When just a single judge tries to do so, the result can only be catastrophe. First the California Supreme Court legalizes gay marriage, and now the U.S. Supreme Court extends the U.S. Constitution to the whole world. It seems America's courts are doing all they can to assure Republican victory in November.
If you want to understand national governmental power in the United States, one word is far more important to know than any other. That word is "filibuster."
The president of the U.S. can do nothing unless a law is passed authorizing him to take executive action.
A law cannot be passed by Congress unless both of its constituent bodies, the House and the Senate, agree.
And the Senate cannot agree unless it can vote. As long as there are 41 votes against voting, the Senate can be stopped from voting (and hence agreeing) even if there are 59 votes in favor of the substantive topic, because any individual senator is permitted to speak on any topic as long as he likes -- meaning he can decide to speak forever and stop all business unless a specific proposal is rejected. That's called a filibuster.
What this means is simple. No matter what happens in the presidential election this fall, no aspect of any Democratic Party agenda will be enacted unless the Democrats can muster 60 votes in the Senate. If the Republicans can muster 41 votes, then they can use the "filibuster" to block any legislative action and bring the legislative process to a halt.
The Democrats currently have 51 seats in the Sentate. You might think, then, that they need to pick up 9 seats in the November elections in order to block the Republican filibuster. But you'd be wrong to think that.
Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Robert Novak explains why. When the Democrats tried to put forth a proposal to address global warming and impose a windfall profit tax on the oil companies, their proposal went down in flames. Why? Novak writes: "Though [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid blamed Republican intransigence, 10 Democratic senators -- including five-term liberal stalwart Carl Levin of Michigan -- had written Reid last Friday telling him they could not 'support final passage of the bill' because of the economic impact it would have on their states." The same thing happened yesterday when the Democrats tried to extend unemployment benefits.
In other words, winning nine seats wouldn't be enough. To reach 60 votes on the global warming bill, the Democrats would have needed at least 70 seats -- and there's no chance they'll get anywhere near that total in this fall's elections. The Dumbocrats just can't seem to remember how many conservatives there are in their midst who simply don't support the left-wing agenda.
Though they have a larger majority in the House of Representatives, the Dumbocrats fortunes there have been no better. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has totally failed to enact any significant Democratic Party agenda items during her tenure as the first female speaker.
In other words, if the Dumbocrats somehow imagine that by winning the White House and expanding their congressional majority in November they can then move forward to actual govern the nation, they are deluding themselves. The last time they won such a victory, in 1976, their attempt to govern resulted in such a fiasco that they lost both the presidency and the Senate just four years later. Even if they win and hold on to power longer, that will mean nothing if they fail to enact their agenda.
During the presidency of Democrat Bill Clinton, Republicans nonetheless managed to enact free trade, a balanced budget and the abolition of federal welfare -- and they blocked the only serious Democrat agenda item that Clinton dared put forth, namely national healthcare. Viewed in hindsight, since the Republicans were also able to seize control of the House of Representatives for the first time in half a century, the presidency of "Democrat" Bill Clinton could easily be mistaken for one of the great Republican periods of governance in the nation's history.
Even as we speak, Obama and McCain are arguing about who will give the American people a bigger tax cut. Obama stated: "Both John McCain and I favor tax cuts. No matter what he says, both of us favor tax cuts. The difference is that Senator McCain wants to continue the Bush tax code that rewards wealth and I want to reform our tax code so it rewards work."
Maybe Obama hasn't noticed, as Clinton didn't, but cutting taxes is a Republican agenda point. It seems that the Dumbocrats would prefer to have a nominal president who enacts Republican policies than to have a Republican president who furthers the Democrat agenda. That’s just plain crazy, egomania of the highest order, and explains why the Dumbocrats have been so unsuccessful for so many years in actually governing the nation.
My latest installment on Pajamas Media details the malignant misadventures of Republican congressman Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, who in the best-case scenario was suckered by the Kremlin and in the worst case scenario was serving the interests of Russia against those of the United States. The party of Reagan has some deep soul searching to do on Russia! Thank goodness we have the clear-eyed John McCain at the top of the ticket!
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Even judged by his own insanely low standards, presumptive Democratic Party nominee Barack Obama, who admits that he has no executive experience of any kind, and hence lacks a fundamental qualification to be president, is a total failure from the word "go."
In fact, all the most recent presidents (Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Nixon) have had not only substantial executive experience but significant elected executive experience (they'd either been governor or vice president).
But Mr. Obama sets us a challenge: Look, he says, running a national campaign for president is a great executive challenge. So, if I show you I can do that well, you should be willing to give me a chance in the Oval Office.
Let's put aside for the moment the fact that this is total nonsense, and take him at his word.
Today, the New York Times reports that no sooner had Obama secured the Democratic nomination and named the head of a committee to recommend a vice presidential running mate then he was forced to accept the resignation of that choice, James A. Johnson, due to charges of corruption. The Times reports:
Mr. Johnson, who also directed Senator John Kerry's vice presidential search when he was the Democratic nominee in 2004, had come under fierce scrutiny in recent days after disclosures that he had received mortgage loans on favorable terms from Countrywide Financial, the beleaguered mortgage lender. His large paychecks and bonuses while president of Fannie Mae, the quasi-public government mortgage agency, also drew heavy Republican criticism. Mr. Obama had defended Mr. Johnson as recently as Tuesday, saying that he had only a "tangential" role in his campaign and that he was not troubled by his business activities. He said he had not inquired about his mortgages and would not hire people to, as he put it, "vet the vetters."
In other words, Obama was a total failure at the very first thing he tried to do in order to begin his campaign. And when his mistake was pointed out, he didn't immediately correct it, but continued making it in bull-headed fashion -- just the same thing he did when confronted with the outrageous conduct of his freakishly racist preacher Jeremiah Wright.
This is, to put it bluntly, exactly what you would expect from someone with no executive experience. He's never done anything like this before, so he's going to make plenty of mistakes. Is that really the person you want negotiating on your behalf with demonic liars like Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
Obama refuses to release his birth certificate, fueling rumors that it contains embarrassing facts about his given name.
A key financial supporter from Illinois, Tony Rezko, has just been sent to prison for corruption.
He's out of touch with reality and can't even control his own campaign workers.
He's not qualified to be president, and he shouldn't be. If he becomes president anyway and turns into a disaster, he could set the cause of black civil rights back twenty years.
Last Friday's edition of the Moscow Times contained an op-ed essay by Russian pundit Georgy Bovt. In it, Bovt highlighted the total lack of morality that pervades Russian government today, and ridicules that Dimitri Medvedev is qualified, much less inclined, to do anything about it. As for Vladimir Putin, he's a proud KGB spy.
The column was buried by the MT editors under its shockingly boring new format, and might easily have been missed by many readers. It stood in stark contrast to the column the MT editors chose to highlight, from one Bruce Bean (pictured, left), identified as a lawyer who lived in Moscow from 1995 to 2003 and now teaches at Michigan State University Law School.
It looks for all the world as if the Moscow Times is slowly selling out to Kremlin pressure.
Other than a one-sentence item in a newswire blurb, it didn't report on Oleg Kozlovsky's recent two-week stint in prison, a preemptive arrest that was manifestly illegal -- nor did it's website republish Kozlovsky's op-ed in the Washington Post which came out while he was in prison. Instead, it published a ridiculous screed from Kremlin apologist Edward Lozansky, who in turn was publishing a Kremlin propaganda festival he was hosting in Washington DC (check out our sidebar to read more about Lozansky). It's still publishing some Kremlin-critical coverage, but it's staying away from the hot button issues and it's trying to minimize the impact of what it does publish. And while we've written its editor three letters challenging these practiced, none of them has been published.
Professor Bean, yet one more person who'd like to get rich selling out Western values to the malignant little troll who prowls the Kremlin's parapets, trots out the same ridiculous screed of lies and misdirections that we've seen emanating from the USSR and from neo-Soviet Russia for time out of mind, in the most predictable and embarrassingly lame manner possible. It really is as if the stooges in the Kremlin wrote this column themselves as part of a giant do-over of the USSR's collapse, as if it was all due to nothing more than a freak incidence of bad luck. He mocks the idea that Putin's KGB past (and present, he has filled the halls of government with spies) could be remotely relevant to understanding his governance.
In May, Russia experienced the worst uptick in consumer price inflation in more than five years. Prices skyrocketed from a 14.3% annualized rate in April to a shocking 15.1% in May, an increase of 5.6% in just one month. Food prices rose at an annualized 22.1% rate. Vladimir Putin's only response to this nightmare (earning $4/hour on average, ordinary Russians can ill afford any inflation, much less this kind of apocalypse) has been a promise to raise wages -- the same thing as throwing gasoline on a grease fire in your kitchen. What the country needs is more production, not more money, and even a kindergartener should be able to understand that. Russia's KGB leadership, however, doesn't.
All they understand is propaganda, just like their Soviet forbears. Sweep the problem under the carpet, and hope people don't notice the mountain of debris already sitting there. This kind of "thinking" made the the USSR the laughing stock of the world and laid it low. Russia under Medvedev is following exactly the same course.
Bean writes that "after President Dmitry Medvedev's inauguration on May 7, Russia has successfully concluded its first "normal" presidential succession cycle, in which a healthy outgoing president voluntarily turned over power to a new popularly elected one. " He ignores the conclusive evidence that the election results were rigged. If Vladimir Putin were writing this propaganda tract, we dare you to explain how his remarks would have been any different.
Bean writes of Putin that "it was precisely this treacherous spook who abided by the 15-year Constitution and left office -- something he promised to do for many years leading up to the election." He claims that it simply means nothing that Putin sat in the presidential chair, one the nation has grown accustomed to associating with the seat of power, and asks us to ignore it because Russia isn't the USSR and is no longer mysterious. Apparently, he's saying that if Putin really were going to secretly retain the reins of power, he'd simply tell us openly. Only a true Kremlin stooge can make statements as outrageous as that.
And then top it. Bean writes: "Whether he deserved better or not, during his 100 months in office, Putin never had more than a few weeks of fair treatment from the international media. The reforms of the first years of Putin's administration introduced a 13 percent personal income tax, low corporate taxes, new labor and land laws, and, most significant, major reforms of the judiciary. Boris Yeltsin was unable to persuade the State Duma to enact any of these." Apparently, he's suggesting that if only the "international media" had been fairer to Putin, he wouldn't have wiped out the domestic media, local government and opposition political parties. The truth is that the international media weren't nearly tough enough on Putin, allowing him to wipe out civil society and achieve a permanent dictatorship without raising a finger to stop it.
Bean writes: "Many complain about Russia's corruption and lack of judicial independence. The progress the country's judicial system has achieved under Putin is not familiar outside Russia, since it has been consistently ignored in favor of stories that are more sensational." Then he doesn't give one single example to back up this ludicrously false statement, and claims that since Medvedev is law professor like him, the rule of law is safe in Russia. He claims that because recently a corrupt judge was exposed and another complained about lobbying from the Kremlin, this proves Medvedev is committed to the rule of law. But Medvedev hasn't said a single word about these events, much less did he instigate them, and they are meaningless drops in the bucket of corruption that has been documented repeatedly by international surveys. As the Moscow Times states in an editorial:
Prosecutors have shown no interest in looking into the allegations. Three weeks after [the judge's] statements, there have been no reports of an investigation. In answer to written questions, the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor General's Office advised The Moscow Times to contact the Prosecutor General's Office itself. Written questions to the Prosecutor General's Office went unanswered. If the rule of law that Medvedev has been talking about is to have a chance at taking root, then allegations like those made in court against Boyev will have to be pursued to the end. As the prosecutor general reports directly to the president, Medvedev should be able to get the investigators moving.
Professor Bean simply chooses to ignore these facts (or else he doesn't even read the paper he's writing in), and doesn't call upon Medvedev to take any specific action. Martin Luther King always said he had much more fear of pseudo-liberals than he did of the KKK. How right he was!
Let's be clear: What Professor Bean is doing now is exactly what many did when Putin came to power, the exact opposite of what he claims occurred. When Yeltsin named Putin, instead of immediately opposing him the world listened to those like Professor Bean who said that Putin was a new kind of leader for Russia, that as soon as he got a grip on Russia's economic problems he would move to protect civil society. Khodorkovsky's arrest was justified on this basis, as were all of Putin's toxic moves towards dictatorship. We were induced by traitors like Professor Bean (whether they are motivated by mere ignorance, cowardliness or complicity makes no difference) to drop our guard and let Putin consolidate his power -- exactly what happened with Stalin and Hitler as well. And how they're doing it all over again, this time in regard to Medvedev. They want us to wait until he's firmly entrenched before we even consider recognizing the threat we face.
It means nothing to Professor Bean that Medvedev participated in an election where (a) all the viable opponents were liquidated and (b) the ballot box was horrifically stuffed, to the point where he won with over 90% of the vote in some regions. In exactly the same way, it meant nothing to the collaborators that Vladimir Putin was a proud KGB spy, and still doesn't. As they would have it, once given power some magical transformation occurs and these individuals suddenly become stalwart defenders of the rule of law. That's neo-Soviet propaganda, pure and simple. It's what destroyed the USSR, preventing it from implementing real reform (or even calling for it) and it will do the same thing to Russia.
To say nothing of the contents of this blog, just read through out current issue today. If you can do that and then read Professor Bean's revolting nonsense with losing your lunch, you may have what it takes to report for duty at Vladimir Putin's Kremlin. It's a well paying position, as long as you don't count the collateral damage to your soul.
There is an easy way of testing whether a nasty little troll like Professor Bean is speaking in good faith or not. He says we needn't fear Putin based on his current record. OK, fine. But what would Putin have to do to make Professor Bean believe that the time had come to fear him. If he tells us, he lays down a benchmark he can be held to later, and we should respect his opinion. If he doesn't, the no matter what Putin ever does Professor Bean can always move the goalposts, just as Chamberlain did with Hitler.
Read his column for yourself, and see whether he offers any benchmarks of any kind. Then treat his views accordingly.
At a ridiculous charade called the "St. Petersburg Economic Forum" over the weekend Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Economist Jim "Mr. Bric" O'Neill stunned the host nation by laying Russia low.
O'Neill said: "Oil prices will definitely not do what they've done the past 10 years, and that's not going to be great news for Russia" because it "doesn't have the same advantages over the next decade' as China and India, which will benefit from larger workforces and greater productivity. Russia's gross domestic product will likely grow 3.3 percent a year from 2010 to 2015 and 2.9 percent a year during the following five years."
It would actually be even worse for Russia if oil prices did continue to rise just as they have over the past decade. If that happened, crude oil would become far to expensive for the market to support, and the market would be obliterated, as would the global economy. But left on it's own, with no help from world oil prices, the Russian economy is quite simply doomed to failure, because Vladimir Putin has done nothing to reform or improve it. Instead, just like his Soviet ancestors, he's chosen to devote Russia's resources to a new cold war with the hated United States, hoping to get it right this time. This was illustrated nicely over the weekend when Sberbank head German Gref stated that "Russia's lack of infrastructure, high income growth and shortage of skilled labor indicated the economy is already in the process of overheating." Medvedev's Economics Minister quickly denounced this statement. And demographics are not the only problem. The Russian workforce has always been far less efficient on a per capita basis than those in the West, and this is due not only to laziness but also to corruption. A senior Russian prosecutor claimed last week that corrupt government officials steal as much as $120 billion from the Russian budget each year. So much for Russian patriotism!
A story in the New York Times about the Forum began: "The lineup told it all about Russia's importance today. There, on one stage, sat the leaders of BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, Total, Schlumberger and Dow Chemical, as well as the chairman of the Russian energy giant Gazprom and the president of the Russian oil company Lukoil." Indeed, it does tell all. And "all" is that Western oil companies have lots of ready cash due to the spike in oil prices, and they're looking for any means possible to expand capacity -- including even plonking some money down in the gambling casino known as the Russian economy. Not one of these views Russia as being a responsible economy or political system. Each one knows, like any casino gambler, that at any moment they can lose their entire investment to any manner of bizarre arbitrary political event. But the simply don't care. An economy that takes pride in generating investment of this kind is an economy not long for this world.
The Times also reports:
In a speech on Sunday that was keenly awaited by liberals in Russia's business elite, a first deputy prime minister, Igor Shuvalov, listed the "many hurdles" on this path: an over-reliance on energy exports, a falling population, a lack of modern skills, an unhealthy way of life and a state apparatus with a tendency to meddle. "Russia should be a country that people want to live in," Mr. Shuvalov said in remarks that seemed uncharacteristically self-deprecating for a top Russian official these days.
Mr. Shuvalov's audience filled less than half of the hall. It had been packed on Saturday when the new president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, took subtle aim at the United States, suggesting that the world might be in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and that a revived Russia could offer solutions to problems that have underscored America's shortcomings.
So let's see if we understand. Medvedev, a so-called liberal, uses his first major exposure to the West to attack it. And an actual liberal speaks to half-empty room. That pretty much sums up the value of what we've heard from the Russophile collaborators, that Russia now has new leadership we can make progress with, now doesn't it?
Russia isn't immune from the business cycle, nor is it immune from the consequences of being governed by a clan of KGB spies with no more idea of economics or how to run a business than of brain surgery. Russians routinely claim that their nation can't be governed as a democracy, but the example of India proves how ridiculous that claim really is. With nearly ten times as many people and a much more vibrant and diverse socioeconomic landscape, India nonetheless manages to maintain democracy and promote a vibrant economy -- even stepping all over Russia in the area of computer science, where Russians supposedly excel. With its massive workforce and willingness to embrace pluralism and hard work, India is on track to rocket past Russia in terms of development and obliterate it as an economic competitor on the world stage.
And yet it is Russia, not India, that sits on the G-8. History will view this outrage -- which not only slights India but encourages a crazed regime in Russia to maintain the malignant status quo -- as one of the great errors of this century. Republican John McCain is precisely correct to call for Russia’s ouster and replacement by India. One can only hope he prevails in the fall, or that his rival Barack Obama will adopt the same policy.
In 1976, because of a two-term Republican president (Richard Nixon) who had become extremely unpopular -- much more so than the current Republican president George Bush, as seen in the fact that Nixon was forced to resign from office in 1974 (the only such incident in all of American history) -- the Dumbocrats won a huge electoral victory.
The Republicans were ousted from office and Jimmy Carter, hailed as a "new kind of leader," was ushered into the Oval Office with a majority of the popular vote. The Democrats held 67.1% of the House of Representatives and 62% of the Senate -- overwhelming dominance in Congress, and the presidency. They spoke of "realignment," the end of the Republican Party, conservatism, etc., yadda, yadda.
What happened next?
Well, four years later Carter lost his bid for reelection to Ronald Reagan by 8 million votes, taking only 41% of those cast. Republicans had a net gain of 12 seats in the Senate, gaining control of the body. Reagan was reelected in a landslide in 1984, then, after serving two complete terms, his vice president was elected to succeed him -- something that hadn't happened since Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson in 1837.
Carter was so emphatically rejected because it turned out that his total lack of experience (he was a peanut farmer) made him far too soft on America's enemies, especially Russia, and totally unable to carry out foreign policy. Reagan was elected with a mandate to get tough on the USSR, and his escalation of the arms race bankrupted it and drove it into the dustbin of history. Soon thereafter, Republicans recaptured control of the House of Representatives.
Those who are celebrating the possibility that Barack Obama will win the White House this year, backed up by a Democratic Congress, would do well to remember a little history. They might also consider the fact that they've been claiming the country is about to plunge headlong into a horrible recession; if it does, Democrats will get the blame, just as they did for the nation's economic woes under Carter (which he famously referred to as "malaise").
It's striking how many unsettling similarities there are between Carter and Obama, except that of course Carter didn't have an incendiary religious background tied to racism and extremism the way Obama does with Jeremiah Wright, something that only adds more fuel to his potential funeral pyre.
But the left doesn't seem to care, and is settling into an orgy of arrogance and hatred over the prospect of an Obama victory. I'm always amazed at the way liberals can attack Republicans for being unwilling to speak reasonably to and think reasonably about America's foes, seeking rather instant, hostile and arrogant confrontation, and yet adopt exactly the same attitude towards those on the right when they deal with them. Rather hypocritical, isn't it?
Perhaps this general obliviousness to history is why the Dumbocrats haven't reelected a president with a majority of the popular vote since World War II. It's true that Republicans have less to talk about than Dumbocrats these days -- but that's because the vast majority of their agenda has already been enacted, often by Dumocrats themselves (like Bill Clinton balancing the budget, abolishing welfare and enacting free trade). If this is defeat, we'll have more of the same every day of the week!
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You know how those on the left scoff at religion, as if anyone who believes it isn't a fully evolved human? Suddenly, it seems, they're changing their minds, and deciding that Barack Obama is a "lightworker." He became so studying racism at the feet of Jeremiah Wright, I guess.
Here are a few choice bits of their analysis:
JFK wasn't assassinated for any typical reason you can name. It's because he was just this kind of high-vibration being, a peacemaker, at odds with the war machine, the CIA, the dark side.
Umm, OK. But didn't JFK launch the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam war.
I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy.
Err, maybe. But when conservatives said that about Reagan, liberals called him the "Teflon president" who was elevating form over substance, and they said they despised that. Moreover, apparently, none of these people were in California, Texas or New York, the nation's three largest electoral powerhouses. Obama lost them all.
Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.
That's for sure. The integrity of Obama's racism runs deep indeed. And, um, just for the record, when Bill Clinton "won" the presidency in 1992, 57% of the country voted against him. And, unlike Obama, Clinton won California, Texas and New York -- then went on to "win" the presidency with just 43% of the popular vote, one of the narrowest shares in U.S. electoral history, and then got impeached.
Liberals say the country is headed for a massive recession, yet they are rejoicing about the idea of being in power when it happens. They say they favor "democracy" and yet they are rejoicing about the end of the Republican Party.
Kinda scary, isn't it?
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"What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame."
Those are the words of Russian Communist Party member Victor Petrov, quoted in a story reported last week about the Russian reaction to the new Indiana Jones movie. It seems Mr. Petrov is miffed because the movie depicts Russians as being the evil enemies of freedom and democracy during the Cold War. Apparently,
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This chart shows the results of a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. 
The column was buried by the MT editors under its shockingly boring new format, and might easily have been missed by many readers. It stood in stark contrast to the column the MT editors chose to highlight, from one Bruce Bean (pictured, left), identified as a lawyer who lived in Moscow from 1995 to 2003 and now teaches at Michigan State University Law School.