Nobody hurt he says

Glenn Reynolds mentioned this article in the NYtimes that shows
how fewer mexicans want to go to the USA now, there are more opportunities
here in Mexico, fewer in the USA and the border region is dangerous.
(I'd bet on number 3, no matter how bad the economy I don't imagine many
suburbanites doing hard labor like picking lettuce for $2/hr)

Glenn then snarks that our employment situation is bad enough in
the USA that Americans will soon be sneaking across the border the
other way. I nearly snorted some coffee out of my nose when I realized
he was talking about me. I nearly had a job offer in the USA last
year when Macondo happened, and then the blowout killed any chance
I had. The deepwater drilling ban killed our operations offshore,
and got a lot of people fired/retired/transferred out.

When Obama implies that no one really lost their job due to his ban,
he shows his ignorance of how the world works. A minimum wage cleanup
job is not the same as technical offshore worker's wage. So thanks
Obama for keeping me an expat. (I'm not saying he shouldn't have
stopped drilling to review the licensing process, but he could have
done it like I suggested here last June)

The world turned upside down

The funny video showing Chairman Hu in washington like
the new owner was even truer than I thought. One of the
songs the piano player played at the presidential reception
is a song from a movie about the korean war.

Linked from Althouse to the paper the epoch times:

The song Lang Lang played describes how beautiful China is and then near the end has this verse, “When friends are here, there is fine wine /But if the jackal comes /What greets it is the hunting rifle.” The “jackal” in the song is the United States....

Just from reading James Clavell novels about china and the orient it's
easy to know that they have no respect for westerners, and if this happened
in china it wouldn't surprise me at all. But this was a piano player the
USA paid for, and he provided the list of songs he was going to play to
the state department and the Chinese. Our state department doesn't have
a single person who would recognize that song and squelch it. Maybe we deserve
their disrespect.

Hey, nice stealth jet

A test, Government sucks

I blogged about some recent travel woes last week
and posted by accident on my old blog url, complaining specifically
about orbitz.com and continental. Strangely enough Orbitz
posted a comment, then apologized and gave me a voucher.

I can see that my blogs have power over time and space now,
so as an experiment, I'd like to say that I think Obama is doing
a poor job as president, and the government sucks. Can I please
have a non-obama voucher?

Deepwater Horizon

Rigzone's report was wrong, the 11 missing men on the deepwater horizon

weren't found, they are still missing.

The rig finally sank as can be seen in this slideshow from the times picayune

in New orleans.

Dr Evil I presume

The Gormorgan's Notorius EV
posted a photo of Obama speaking to
Joe Biden and both wearing tuxedos
looking like James Bond villains
trying to figure out what step 2 is.

Step 1. Kill Bond
Step 2. ?
Step 3 Rule the world and get
control of ALL the healthcare.

Here's another photo showing
the president looking like he's toasting
the hatching of another evil scheme.

Bwahahahahahahahhaahah.

photo credit

do you want to kiss me?

Obama is The Man

The Czar over at the Gormogons makes a pithy summary of
Obama's problems with Fox News from a wsj article:

And kudos from the Czar to whomever first realized that President Obama’s playbook is limited to fighting the man. He does not realize that he is, now and tomorrow, the man himself.

Obama needs to add some pages to his playbook and stop playing the victim.
There are people and countries out there that are perfectly happy to really make
Obama and the USA the victim. Obama squealing like a little girl just makes him
look weak to the real sharks that are out there.

The president also keeps saying stop distracting him and let him work on the
economy and create jobs, when in fact he is creating the distraction by trying to
change healthcare and add a climate change bill. One of the big takeaways from
the book "the Forgotten Man" was that much of the depression was caused by the
government mucking around and changing the system.

People with money to invest or businesses to start tend to do less of investing and
business starting when you can't know what your costs are going to be in 6 months.
The President should delay the new health care and climate change bills until the
economy is stronger so that you don't kill the patient. He is The Man in every sense
of the phrase, now is the time to act like it.

Obama wins the heismann trophy!

I plan to vote every day for Barry Obama to win the heismann
trophy. We'll show the world that we have the real triple threat,
Nobel Peace prize, Heismann trophy and Formula F1 winner.
The real question will be is how will the secret service guys run alongside.


He does give a good speech though, If I wasn't an american I'd think
all of his policies look great.

from the acceptance speech:

But I know these challenges can be met, so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

This award is not simply about the efforts of my administration; it's about the courageous efforts of people around the world.

And that's why this award must be shared with everyone who strives for justice and dignity; for the young woman who marches silently in the streets on behalf of her right to be heard, even in the face of beatings and bullets; for the leader imprisoned in her own home because she refuses to abandon her commitment to democracy; for the soldier who sacrificed through tour after tour of duty on behalf of someone half a world away; and for all those men and women across the world who sacrifice their safety and their freedom and sometime their lives for the cause of peace.

That has always been the cause of America. That's why the world has always looked to America. And that's why I believe America will continue to lead.

Obama and the olympics

Bill Whittle has a good column at ejectejecteject, I like it a lot more than
his videos on pjtv just because I really don't like video on the internet yet,
too slow, too choppy and if you're watching a video on your pc everyone knows
you're not working. If you're reading a blog, who can say?

Anyhoo. He makes a great point that Obama's loss at the olympics
could be a good teaching moment for him at only a small cost to the
country. or in his own words:

This Olympic fiasco, I hoped, would be embarrassing enough and pointed enough to provide a clear data point that this is not always the case, and this lesson, had it sunk in, would come at very small cost to America. After all, the loss of the Olympics in a city is considerably less painful than losing the city itself… which is where this kind of naive ego-centrism can lead us when dealing with ruthlessly self-interested regimes like Iran, Russia and North Korea — expanding nuclear powers all.

I think it's interesting that after 9 months in office the Obama administration is
still floundering around looking like a bunch of monkeys flirting with a football. (nothing
racist intended) I am thinking thank goodness that nothing like 9/11 has happened to
this guy yet and I hope that the evil Joe Biden will step into the Cheney role soon.
("what do you mean ol' joe's not an evil genius, I've never heard of an evil twit before")

I remember after 9/11 there were a bunch of shrieking leftards shrieking that george
bush wasn't ready after 9 months in office, he hadn't picked up the signals and captured
bin laden when all the indications were there to stop 9/11. Right now I would imagine
that bin laden could be building a missile launch facility next to the reflecting pool and
our genius' in charge wouldn't notice.

Strong king, weak king or Strong Horse, Weak Horse

From the telegraph:

Barack Obama’s chances of re-election in three and a half years’ time may be evaporating at unprecedented speed, but his presidential ambitions could still be realised in another direction. He would be a shoo-in to win the next Russian presidential election, so high is his popularity now running in the land of the bear and the knout. Obama has done more to restore Russia’s hegemonial potential in Eastern and Central Europe than even Vladimir Putin.

His latest achievement has been to restore the former satellite states to dependency on Moscow, by wimping out of the missile defence shield plan. This follows on his surrender last July when he voluntarily sacrificed around a third of America’s nuclear capability for no perceptible benefit beyond a grim smile from Putin. If there is one thing that fans the fires of aggression it is appeasement.

We've already seen the jihadi response to what they perceive as a weak horse, now
what we'll see is the Russian response to that same problem. One history class I took in school was a history of England to the to the glorious revolution of 1688. A point that was
repeated several times during the class was that England did better as a country
when there was a strong king. Strong kings (or queens) hammered the scots, or welsh or irish,
weak kings lost land to the french or powers to the parliament or to the protestants.

History will tell us which presidents were strong kings or weak kings. Clinton
was lucky in that history took a vacation when he was there. Bush did the best
he could and was strong at times, but I think truly strong kings delegate less than he
did. Obama is starting off looking like a weak king who doesn't care much about
foreign policy. I'm afraid that we're going to find out that if you don't care about
foreign policy, sometimes foreign policy cares about you.

Obama speaking in Strasburg

I'm watching obama's speech at the nato meeting in Strasburg.
It looks like he's using a teleprompter, but it's still a painful speech to
watch. he pauses and stops sometimes as if he's forgotten his place.
I know how he feels, if I'm giving a presentation and I forget what I'm supposed
to say with a particular slide, that is one of the worst feelings in the world

The idea that he's a great speaker is a load of crap.

Now he's doing a town hall. Why? what freaking office is he running for
in Germany. Stop running for office and appoint people to all the spots in
government then govern!
First question seemed to be what are his goals.
-make globalization good for all
-reduce nuclear stockpiles
-reliable health care system for the usa
- usa to take the lead on a new approach to energy...you cannot expect poor countries
to be partners on climate change if our carbon footprint is many times bigger than the average indian person. we have to lead by example.

[one of the things I truly dislike about obama, he constantly denigrates the usa]

next question - all children around the world without rights and are hungry, what is your
strategy to deal with this situation?
-feeding the hunger(sic) and educating the children isn't charity, a pandemic (sic) can get on a plane and go to the west, we have to provide health care, we have to increase our commitments.
we should promote democracy everyplace we can and civil societies that will allow countries to be successful.

is this crises an opportunity to restructure industry in an ecological way ?

- we passed a large stimulus package, we doubled the amount of renewable energy,
retrofitted government buildings, high speed rail...I'm jealous of european high speed rail.
reduce our carbon footprint and achieve our goals.

what do you expect from the french and european countries on the war on terror?
- In the last 7 or 8 years we 've had a lot of tension with our european allies and I want
to work much more effectively, yada yada. after 911 europe responded as true friends saying
'we are all americans'. all of us had an interest in preventing that kind of vicious act. but
after that initial nato engagement we got sidetracked by iraq. Even though i'm now president
and w. is no longer president, al queda is still a threat. ....

it is true that we have to change our behavior and show the muslim world more respect and
change our policies towards the isreal-palestinian conflict.
- usa is changing plan in afganistan, not just a military strategy in afganistan, offer basic services and uphold the rule of law.
"europe should not expect the usa to shoulder the burden alone, this a joint problem and requires a joint effort". in dealing with terrorism we have to uphold our values, that's why I closed guantanomo. abu graib wasn't a good policy.

last question "your name in hungarian means Peach, have you regreted running for president?"
- some times during the campaign and some times during the last few months it was heavy.

Hail to the Chief

from Mike Moody linked from Ace of spades.

With Toasts to Ron Region

It's depressing to watch how incompetent the obamacons are.
From the big things to the small things. They gave the british
pm a boxed set of 25 movies (estimated value $250, could be way
more if they bought it at barnes and nobles), but the movies are
for the usa region. I'm no supergenius educated at harvard, but
I know enough that if I'm buying a cartload of dvd's to stop off and
buy a $40 dvd player that will play them.

Mark Steyn snarks what the results will be when Obama has dinner
with the Queen at the G20:

When the President and his Teleprompter visit London for the G20 summit in a couple of weeks, it would be a tragedy were Barack Oprompta to rise for his big speech to find nothing but the words "Wrong Region" flashing on his screen (although I'm sure the Queen would be very polite and string along and make all the swells stand up and join the toast to "Ron Region", whoever he is).

Unsinkable ship rolls over and sinks

When Katrina hit I was working in Barbados and I watched from afar
as the city I grew up and loved seemed to vanish below the water. I have
a similar feeling now that Obama has passed his stimulus and I'm just watching
from over here. I didn't think it would be so bad, I thought a few hundred billion
would get wasted and we'd move on to the next battle. Instead there is all kinds
of crap that just overtopped and broke through the levee and will slowly flood
the country, filling the bowl with hopelessness and pork. I don't see how any
program that obama starts will ever be stopped if they couldn't stop or even
slow down a bill that no one has read. We'll just have stormwave after stormwave
of crap with no fema or coastguard to come and rescue us. If I was there
in the usa there'd be nothing I could do either, so I'll just use my last resort:

Obama takes over the helm

Bush only has a few more hours to pull off a coup if he's going to do it. Maybe right now

tanks are stuck in traffic all over washington as angry fists are shaken out of windows,

"get out of my way you piece of crap rebuilt tank, I'm late for work!" Somehow, I doubt it.

Bush may be seen as an idiot around the world, but he looks to me like the most relieved

person in the country, and the people that think he would use force to stay in power

have to be the stupidest, blindest on the planet. I don't think he'd submit to a reverse coup where

someone would hold a gun to his head to make him stay president.

I'd like to think that long term history will be kind to Bush, but the people that write history

are 10:1 the same people that use the NYtimes as their number one resource. The things that

go well in Iraq will be now attributed to obama as he waves his magic life-giving hands over the globe

and the angry waters retreat, all the bad things that have happened over the past 8 years and the next

8 years will be packaged up as "due to bush". Levees in New Orleans mismanaged over 40 years,

bush did it. Congress requiring banks to lend to poor people, then banks repackaging those loans

into bonds over the past 20 years, bush did it. The usa shipping off it's manufacturing base since the

70's and importing too much plastic crep from china, you guessed it. bush did it.

Bush could have done a better job, less delegation and more followup could have limited the bad

results in Iraq and Katrina. If his administration had made an effort to sell what they were trying to do, instead of depending on the kindness of strangers to report the truth, the results would have been better. On the other hand, 75% of the hatred for bush was formed in the last 2 months of 2000, and he could have personnaly shot bin laden and

used his body to plug a hole in the levee in New Orleans, and he would still be disliked.

Now it's the new guy's turn in the barrel. I wish him all the luck in the world and I hope he is as good as

some people say he is. Before the election I might have said that I thought he was a commie bastard,

but now he's my commie bastard president and I don't want any foreigner to say anything bad about him.

Joe Biden?

Obama just picked Joe Biden for his VP and I really can't see
why he'd pick him. Biden has already been given the taste test
and rejected by voters a few times. The google test looks just as
bad, if you type "joe biden" into the google toolbar then type almost
any other letter, the type-ahead will pop up something pretty negative,
from "joe biden plagiarize" to "joe biden bullshit".

We're in bergen norway now, while all the hopeful democrats are still
in their beds with dreams of Al Gore still in their heads, I've already seen
the announcement that bodes ill for demos, and almost guarantees mccain
will win. Thanks Obama.

Obama could be much tougher than bush

I read over on Micheal Totten's blog that Obama's father was a muslim and that
supposedly makes obama a muslim too.

Since Obama will probably be seen as an apostate of islam he'll probably turn out to be much tougher than bush on the islamofacists. I'm guessing that if he gets elected some radical mullah will quickly declare that obama has to be killed because he has left his father's religion and is apostate...and the penalty is death.
(or is it chocolate cake?)

After the first couple of attempts on his life, Obama will get the message. You don't negotiate with crazy people. Or maybe just Obama telling the islamofacists a cool pickup line will turn them all into obamamaniacs ("yeah baby, you're the one you've been waiting for" said obama as ahmadinijads beard began to quiver with nervous anticipation. Queue the saxaphone music.)