Interesting Coincidence

On Saturday I posted Now We Find Out What’s IN It, linking to a piece entitled Obama Just Got his Private Army over at NoisyRoom.net. That piece pointed to a section of the “health care” bill that establishes a “ready reserve corps.” Wookie-suits were donned, bowcasters were charged, until the more level-headed noted in the comments that this wasn’t anything new:

Perhaps we should sit on this one a little longer. I hold a naval commission and was also “personally appointed by [GWB] without the advice and consent of the Senate.” That’s how the uniformed services work. (Promotions are approved, typically en masses, by Congress.) Without looking deeper into it, it seems like this is just a tweak of the statute that deals with the commissioned corps of the Public Health Service (who for some reason wear naval-looking uniforms and use naval ranks).

You can say what you want about the existence of the service or this apparent expansion of it, but I simply don’t see the reason to go nuts over this part of the law. We’re talking about more doctors, nurses, and civil engineers on the federal payroll here, not the creation of an SA/SS. – Xenocles

See Hot Air, this is apparently a 60-year-old program.

Guys, let’s try not to become the mirror-image of the unhinged BDS sufferers. — Mastiff

Ok, ok, I retracted. After I retracted, RobertaX had a comment though:

...So, the program is 60 years old, that makes it okay-fine? More badged bastards from the Feds is a good thing?

Nobody remembers that once upon a time, when the Constitution was still read and even, somewhat. observed, the Feds had to go roust _the_County_Sheriff_ if they wanted to arrest somebody.

It’s been grab, grab, grab ever since and as long as it was that way when _you_ popped onto the planet, why, that’s How It Should Be.

Except it ain’t. And it’s never gonna stop until we stand up and say, STOP. Liable to get squished like a bug but the way I see it, better a grease spot than another cog in the Federal nightmare.

Valid point.

Now to the coincidence.

I have a stack of books on the headboard of my bed that I’m slowly (too slowly) working my way through. I’ve had some of these books for a while now, some loaners, most I’ve purchased, a couple sent to me by authors or publishers (yes, Professor Patrick, I WILL get to yours!) One of those books is Tom Kratman’s A State of Disobedience. Now Mr. Kratman is a very interesting person. From his personal web page:

Kratman is a political refugee and defector from the People’s Republic of Massachusetts. The mechanism of his defection was enlisting into the Army in 1974 at age 17, which deeply distressed his high school (Boston Latin, founded 1635) as they thought he had “higher and better things” ahead of him. He served two years as an enlisted grunt with the 101st Airborne and one and a half with the 193rd Infantry Brigade in Panama, getting 2 years of collegedone in the process (when he wasn’t in the field he was taking courses). At that point the Army gave Kratman a scholarship and sent him off to Boston College to finish his degree and obtain a commission. Tom graduated, cum laude, in 1980 and returned to the Army as an infantry officer. Tom served another three year tour in Panama, then more schooling at Benning, then 4+ years with the 24th Infantry Division near Savannah, Georgia. Fun times then ceased for a while while he did two years in Recruiting Command.

Saddam Hussein (PBUH) saved Tom from this by invading Kuwait. He has been told that he was the only captain to actually escape from USAREC for the war. Tom arranged a transfer to Special Operations Command and went through the active part of the campaign attached to 5th Special Forces. He continued slurping at the Army trough until it became painfully clear that the bottom had dropped out of the militantly and violently aggressive anti-communism market and that he was not going to like the rather PC direction the Army (which was, arguably, the only thing he ever selflessly loved) was heading in.

Among other things, Tom earned a Combat Infantry Badge and the Ranger Tab.

Tom got out in 92 and went to law school. He hated it but was far too pig headed to quit. He became a lawyer in 95 and quickly realized that what he had felt about law school was but a pale shadow of true hate. Stayed in the Reserves and took every tour he could to avoid practicing law. And when the reserves had nothing interesting there was MPRI (“white collar mercenaries R us”).

Saddam Hussein (PBUH) once again stepped to the fore and saved Tom from the continued practice of law. In February of 2003 the Army called him up to participate in the invasion of Iraq. Still, God has a sense of humor. While awaiting a flight over Tom was informed he had a 100% blockage in his right coronary artery (imagine his chagrin) and wasn’t going anywhere fun anytime soon. Instead, he spent eight months stuck at Fort Bragg, then a few in the DC area, before finally being sent on to be on the faculty of the Army War College as Director, Rule of Law, for the US Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute. Keep in mind that divine sense of humor previously mentioned.

Tom retired in 2006, bored out of his gourd and finally ready to admit his love affair with the Army was over. He’s returned to Virginia and, instead of practicing law, writes full time for Baen.

Now that you have some feel for the author, let me excerpt just a bit from A State of Disobedience – a book, I’ll remind you, that was first published in 2003. The setting: 2009. America’s first female president has just been elected. She’s a Democrat, über-liberal, and committed to power at any cost (the Department of Redundancy Department, I know). Not only that, but the majorities of both houses of Congress are also Democrat, and the Supreme Court is, for the moment, perfectly split. The President, Wilhelmina Rottemeyer (no, Kratman is not subtle) addresses a joint session of Congress – excerpts:

“We stand poised on the brink,” she began. “We can either go forward, to a new era of peace, progress, and prosperity, or backwards to the dark age of old, to the days when women were kept barefoot and pregnant, when blacks were lynched in the streets of the south, backwards to ignorance, want and filth.

“My administration is pledged to work with Congress to go forward, into the future, rather than backwards to the Republican age of deficits, doubt, debt and decline; recession, repossession and retrenchment.

“We must go forward into the future . . . and we cannot afford to leave anybody behind in the past.

“We are going to invest in America. We are going to invest in a very large way. No more tax cuts for the rich. No more crimping away social security. Instead we are going to make the rich — and the corporations they control — pay their fair share for the first time. We are going to expand social security to ensure that every American can enjoy a comfortable and secure retirement.”

Rottemeyer paused, thinking, It still amazes me that anyone falls for that “soak the rich” crap.

“The people have spoken clearly of the kind of investment in the future they demand. We are going to a national health care system and we are going to do so very quickly indeed. The people demand and deserve nothing less.

“The people demand and deserve a national public education system that is second to none. They will have it. Among the other measures that will be sent to Congress for legislative action is a plan for rigorous testing of schools for quality of education, and national assumption of authority over any schools that fail that test. In short, we will shut down those schools and reopen them under our guidance, funding them directly through bypassing the state bureaucracies.”

“We are also going to put one million new teachers in our classrooms, many of them to go to staff ‘Opportunity Academies’ to help prepare disadvantaged youths for college. In those academies and in nationally funded and run charter schools.

“We are going to ensure that college education becomes as universal as high school education is today.”

“Moreover, along with one million new teachers, I intend to see one million new law enforcement officers, Federal law enforcement officers, to clean up he streets and make our communities livable again.”

I’ve edited out a lot of stuff, but that’s the gist of what I wanted to hit from that speech.

After the speech, the President meets with members of her Cabinet in the Oval Office:

“It’s the expansion of the federal law enforcement capability I have problems with,” said her new attorney general Jesse Vega. “There’s a limit on how fast any organization can expand. It’s not just a question of funding the money and recruiting the bodies. We’ve limited training facilities, limited numbers of people trained for upper management, limited number of administrative people to take care of everything from pay to promotions. The U.S. Marshal Service, DEA, FBI and Treasury can only . . .”

“Who said anything about limiting the expansion to only the existing agencies?” demanded Rottemeyer

“What?” asked Vega, incredulously. “You want to create . . . oh . . . the Surgeon General’s Riot Control Police?”

“Tell me why not, Jesse? Does the Surgeon General’s office not have an interest in controlling demonstrations that get out of hand at, say, abortion clinics? Do they have a bureaucracy capable of administering an additional force of several hundred men, or even a thousand? Can they hire people to train the new officers? Yes to all. So why not?

“Well,” she continued contemplatively, “there has been a certain amount of expansion of federal law enforcement in places you would not expect. Maybe that’s the way I intend to go. I mean, we already do have armed turkey inspectors with the Food and Drug Administration, armed agents of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Shotgun-toting members of the Department of Education . . .

I read that on Sunday.

Interesting coincidence, no?

Primum, Non Nocere

The t-shirt is available. As with Kalashnikitty, I have no fiduciary involvement, I just like the idea and am providing advertising gratis:


(Click for shirt link)

“First, do no harm.”

They seem to have forgotten that one.

I hope you make a mint on the shirts, Gregory.

UPDATE: Generally the quote is “Primum Non Nocere,” but Gregory replies in an email:

Although “non” is considered proper, both are actually acceptable. My use of the “nil” variant was due to the essay linked below by Dr. Milton R Wolf, a cousin of Barack Obama, who utilized the “nil” variant while addressing the health care reform bill.

http://citizenwells.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/dr-milton-r-wolf-obama-cousin-obama-health-care-bill-primum-nil-nocere-first-do-no-harm-fixing-price-at-any-cost-wolf-blasts-obamacare-america-has-the-finest-health-care-delivery-system-in-the/

There is madness to my method 🙂

And he adds a new version of the Caduceus as requested by my readers:

Batwings and fangs, oh my!

Symbology

Our President has used a lot of symbology both in the run-up to the election, and after. There’s his well-known “O” –

There was, of course, the iconic “Ché” poster:

Then there was the “Office of the President-Elect” symbol:

And more recently the “Obama Health-Care” symbol:

Now there’s a new symbol out there that, at least as far as the “Health-care bill” is concerned, says it all:

All it needs is that Obama on top instead of the ball.

(h/t to Alan)

UPDATE2 – Here we go:

Reader Gregory generated that image. I think he’s going to offer it on a t-shirt.

I’ve Never Heard of This Guy

But I LIKE HIM. Reader DJ DC pointed to this YouTube clip in comments:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Pte_2vEnX8&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

Here’s the text of the speech:

So this is what change looks like. If he were here, Mr. Speaker, in this time of momentous national distress, I would remind the President of the United States that he is not the leader of a party or an ideology; he is the leader of our country—one founded, not to emulate others, but to inspire the world.

As families lose their jobs, their homes, and their dreams for their children; as our troops fight and sacrifice in foreign fields for our liberty and security, President Obama’s obsessive-compulsive pursuit of an abominable government takeover of health care has defied the public’s objections, despoiled this, “The People’s House,” and further alienated Americans from their representative government.

As President Obama’s campaign mantra of “hope and change” has degenerated into “tax and hate,” reputable surveys prior to this vote report: the public overwhelmingly thinks that the U.S. Government is broken. Only 21 percent of the public thinks it is being governed with its consent. Only 26 percent of the public trusts the Federal Government most of the time or always; 56 percent of Americans think the Federal Government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedom of ordinary citizens; 70 percent believe the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors; and 71 percent of Americans think the Federal Government is a special interest.

In the wake of this health care debate’s despicable, dysfunctional process and product, it is clear: The most dangerous special interest is Big Government and President Obama is its lobbyist.

In contrast to Americans’ faith in themselves, every major piece of legislation proffered by the President and his Democratic Congress expands and empowers Big Government at the expense of the people. Possessed of a smug, cynical, patronizing view of Americans as dependents desiring State benefits, this arrogant administration and its enablers have defied the American people and bi-partisan opposition in Congress to unilaterally jam through a trillion-dollar government takeover of health care.

Why? For so many Americans, the answer is that this President and his Democratic Congress think they are smarter than you; want to run your life; and want to make government your ruler, not your servant.

Such hubris threatens not only our health care system but it tears the social fabric and political contract of our Nation. Instead of working for a more perfect Union, the President’s ideological obstinacy exacerbated the disorder and divisions within our Nation, and wrought a crisis of consent—one that puts America’s exceptional experiment in human freedom and self-government on the precipice of implosion.

To do so the President has the power, but not the right. Thus he has merely scored a Pyrrhic victory over the American people. Ultimately, his government-run medicine scheme will be repealed and replaced with free- market, patient-centered wellness, because America’s strength and salvation remains her free people, not a person.

And this November, America’s sovereign citizens will remind the President and his Democratic Congress that We the People do not work for government; the government works for us.

No, the President and his Democratic Congress will not break us beneath Big Government. Devoted to our freedom and a more perfect Union, we will keep the faith, trust the public, calm the times, and heal our country.

Edited to add:

Here is Rep. McCotter’s one-minute on the floor of the House during discussion of the bill – another winner:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXvxzkyFtp8&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

The Democratic Party believes that you can take an imperfect health-care system and fix it by putting it under the most dysfunctional and broken entity in the United States today: It’s called the Federal Government.

That proposition is insane.

None of This Should Be a Surprise

Well, OK, maybe Stupidak, but not Obama and his part in this. Even Al Sharpton knows socialism when he sees it. (The surprising part is that he’s willing to say it:)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqojWrtnieI&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

But long before that, the evidence was out there. Before the election, Bill Whittle tried to call attention to it, using evidence dredged up by the New Media:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

I doubt many heard it, though.

Now, given Obama’s understanding of the Constitution as expressed in that last clip, and the fact that his oath of office requires him to swear to uphold and defend that document, can it not be argued that his advocacy through legislation for “redistribution of wealth” violates that oath?

If it doesn’t, what would?

He understands what the Constitution means. It doesn’t matter to him. In fact, it’s an obstacle to be overcome. He has stated so in plain language, and now we have incontrovertible evidence that he has acted on his beliefs. He is in violation of his oath of office, and, I’d argue, so are the majority of the members of Congress who voted for this abortion bill.

Actually, I pulled this post so I could edit it and add to it. As usual, I have more to say. Back before the election even, it was pretty obvious what was coming:

But really that’s not the case. This is true, though:

And it began before Obama was elected. In October of 2008 Syd at Front Sight, Press wrote The Suicide of Capitalism, which began:

A coup d’état took place in this country during the past two weeks. If you didn’t notice, perhaps you were distracted by the Dolphins whipping the Chargers, or Tina Fey’s grotesque parodies of Sarah Palin, or perhaps you were immersed in blogs trying to prove that Barak Obama is a domestic terrorist. Regardless of the distraction, while our attention was diverted, a revolution took place. No shots were fired, but plenty of blood was shed. The United States ceased to be a capitalist economy and became a managed socialist state. The nation’s financial system has been nationalized. The government now calls the shots on who sinks or swims, who will have credit, where money is to go, and how much the robber barons of Wall Street will be compensated for their tender ministrations. The odds are good that the government owns the mortgage to your house. If you receive a paycheck a month from now, it will likely be possible only because the government insured the business loan that allowed your employer to cut your check.

The coup d’état began with the Fed-managed fire sale of Bear Stearns. Then came the collapse of Lehman Bros., and the liquidation of Merrill Lynch. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government. AIG was bailed out with a massive guarantee program. Washington Mutual fell to another Fed-orchestrated fire sale. Wachovia went down in flames, and Citigroup and Wells Fargo are fighting over the corpse. Then came “The Bailout” — $800 BILLION worth of government purchases and guarantees of “illiquid” loan baskets, with boatloads of pork to buy the votes of recalcitrant legislators. Today, the Federal Reserve began buying commercial paper, again to pump “liquidity” into the system. This amounts to a nationalization of the American financial system. There is no significant area of the financial markets that is not currently under the management of the federal government.

The supreme irony here is that capitalism has committed suicide.

When that Newsweek issue came out, though, Michael Ledeen of Faster, Please! wasn’t afraid to, well, call a spade a spade. In his essay We Are All Fascists Now, he hit the nail on the head (and affirmed what Jonah Goldberg had been saying since January of ’08 in Liberal Fascism) when he wrote:

There’s a element of truth to the basic theme (although not to the headline): the state is getting more and more deeply involved in business, even taking controlling interests in some private companies. And the state is even trying to “make policy” for private companies they do not control, but merely “help” with “infusions of capital,” as in the recent call for salary caps for certain CEOs. So state power is growing at the expense of corporations.

But that’s not socialism. Socialism rests on a firm theoretical bedrock: the abolition of private property. I haven’t heard anyone this side of Barney Frank calling for any such thing. What is happening now – and Newsweek is honest enough to say so down in the body of the article – is an expansion of the state’s role, an increase in public/private joint ventures and partnerships, and much more state regulation of business. Yes, it’s very “European,” and some of the Europeans even call it “social democracy,” but it isn’t.

It’s fascism. Nobody calls it by its proper name, for two basic reasons: first, because “fascism” has long since lost its actual, historical, content; it’s been a pure epithet for many decades. Lots of the people writing about current events like what Obama et. al. are doing, and wouldn’t want to stigmatize it with that “f” epithet.

Second, not one person in a thousand knows what fascist political economy was. Yet during the great economic crisis of the 1930s, fascism was widely regarded as a possible solution, indeed as the only acceptable solution to a spasm that had shaken the entire First World, and beyond. It was hailed as a “third way” between two failed systems (communism and capitalism), retaining the best of each. Private property was preserved, as the role of the state was expanded.

But Jonah had already identified the problem with Fascism:

Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore is defined as the enemy.

This has been the liberal enterprise ever since: to transform a democratic republic into an enormous tribal community, to give every member of society from Key West, Florida, to Fairbanks, Alaska, that same sense of belonging – “we’re all in it together!” – that we allegedly feel in a close-knit community. The yearning for community is deep and human and decent. But these yearnings are often misplaced when channeled through the federal government and imposed across a diverse nation with a republican constitution. This was the debate at the heart of the Constitutional Convention and one that the progressives sought to settle permanently in their favor. The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good. And yet ever since the New Deal, liberals have been unable to shake this fundamental dogma that the state can be the instrument for a politics of meaning that transforms the entire nation into a village.

That work now proceeds apace. As evidence, read this piece at Moneynews.com:

One of the nation’s largest labor unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is promoting a plan that will centralize all retirement plans for American workers, including private 401(k) plans, under one new “retirement system” for the United States.

In effect, government pensions for everyone, not unlike the European system and regardless of personal choice.

The SEIU, which was integral to the election of Barack Obama as president, is working with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, on SEIU’s plan, called “the Retirement USA Initiative.”

The proposed retirement system would be operated under the following parameters:

• Benefits that move with you, even if you change jobs

• Payouts only at retirement

• Shared responsibility among employers, the government and employees

• Pooled assets, controlled by professional investment managers

“The financial crisis and the economic recession have shone a spotlight on the inadequacies of today’s system,” said Stephen Albrecht, director of benefits for SEIU.

And we all know that you should never let a crisis go to waste, right? The head of SEIU is Andy Stern, one of the most frequent guests of the White House since the election. I seriously doubt they spend their time together playing Parcheesi. And we’ve already heard rumblings of the .gov wanting our 401(k) money.

I am more and more convinced that Rev. Donald Sensing was prophetic when he said back in 2003:

I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free.

When I asked him if his outlook had changed in October of 2008, he responded:

Yes, most definitely it has. The demise of freedom in this country has accelerated even faster than I imagined back in 2003.

And on Sunday it accelerated faster still.

Socialism, fascism, either way we no longer have anything even resembling capitalism in this country. The Constitution is toilet paper for our elected officials, their oaths mean nothing. Both parties have been active participants in this, and now we have proof that at least the Democrats aren’t adverse to defying their constituents now that they think they can get away with it.

Where is my country, and what have they done to it?

For Breda

I buy a lot of books. I far prefer to own them, rather than borrow them. But books tend to be expensive, so I buy used a lot. Plus, some of the stuff I buy is out of print, so I have no other option. Because of this, I use ABEBooks.com, an online resource to used book stores all over the world. They, of course, send me emails from time to time. Today’s was quite interesting, or would be if I were a librarian:

Librarian Literature: Top 10 Books Written by Librarians

AbeBooks loves librarians. Librarians love AbeBooks. (And we think everyone else loves librarians too aside from the bean-counters who keep cutting their budgets.) This email salutes those great lovers of books, literacy and reading – the world’s librarian community – and we’re highlighting some wonderful books written by librarians themselves.

Who but a person surrounded by books could be better qualified to write? Many an author has been born and developed in the stacks. The list does not feature the following librarian/writers – John Braine, Lewis Carroll, Archibald MacLeish, Nancy Pearl, Kit Pearson, Benjamin Franklin, Christopher Okigbo, Marcel Proust, and Ina Coolbrith – but we could easily have included their books.

The Less Deceived The Less Deceived

Philip Larkin
The 1955 poetry collection that made his name – Larkin was a librarian at the University of Hull.

A Wrinkle in Time A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L’Engle

Her 1962 sci-fi/fantasy classic (rejected by many publishers) – L’Engle worked as a librarian in New York.

The Aleph and Other Stories The Aleph and Other Stories
Jorge Luis Borges

The Nobel Prize winner was a municipal librarian in Argentina – this 1949 collection is one of his best.

Little Big Man Little Big Man
Thomas Berger

This 1964 novel became a movie in 1970. Berger worked as a librarian and journalist.

Star Man’s Son Star Man’s Son
Alice Mary Norton

A post-apocalyptic tale from 1952 – Norton was a librarian in Cleveland and the Library of Congress.

Out Stealing Horses Out Stealing Horses

Per Petterson

An ex-librarian AND bookseller, Petterson’s novel was one of the NY Times’ books of the year in 2007.

The Accidental Tourist The Accidental Tourist

Anne Tyler

This former librarian won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1985 with this novel.

The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot
Angus Wilson

A librarian in the British Museum, Wilson’s 1958 novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

At Mrs Lippincote’s At Mrs Lippincote’s
Elizabeth Taylor

Taylor was a governess, teacher and librarian – At Mrs Lippincotes was her debut novel in 1945.

Eagle in the Snow Eagle in the Snow
Wallace Breem

Breem was a legal manuscripts librarian in London – a Roman General is the hero of this historical novel.

(PS – if you work as a librarian, please email your recommendation for the best book written by a fellow librarian to [email protected])

This one’s for you, Breda.

Phil B. Finds Another Gem

Reader and UK expat Phil B. (now living in Middle Earth – aka: New Zealand) sent me a link to an interesting piece in the Daily Mail‘s online edition, from one Mary Ellen Synon, an Irish-American living in Brussels. Ms. Synon’s Mail-sponsored blog Euroseptic (catchy name, that) apparently serves the same function over there as Ann Coulter’s writings do here (there was a bit of a flap over Ms. Synon’s take on the Paralympics a while back, for example.)

Yesterday’s piece, Barack Hussein Obama and Indonesia: there’s no place like home, will, I’m assured, have certain parties over here coming unglued. A taste:

One of the reasons a lot of Americans find Obama oddly foreign is that he had an oddly foreign childhood: his formative years were spent in Indonesia. His half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born there. The rest of Obama’s childhood was spent in Honolulu, a Pacific Ocean capital soaked in East Asian culture.

What’s this got to do with Britain, or indeed with Europe? Plenty. Obama is the first US president who was raised without cultural or emotional or intellectual ties to either Britain or Europe. The British and the Europeans have been so enchanted with ‘America’s first black president’ that they haven’t been able to see what he really is: America’s first Third World president.

If you doubt it, remember the kick in the teeth he gave Britain over the Falklands just a few weeks ago. Obama had his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, fly to Buenos Aires to give American support to President Kirchner’s call for international negotiations over the Falklands. Amazing. What was more amazing is that all we’ve heard out of Number 10 and the Foreign Office since then is that it doesn’t mean anything.

Oh, yes it does, and Washington insiders know it does.

Like that? Here’s a little more:

What we have shaping up, but what the British Government doesn’t yet grasp, is that Obama has a conscious policy of down-grading America’s relationship with, first, Britain and then with the rest of Europe.

He believes that the US — yes, his own country — and Britain, and the leading European countries, too, for that matter, are imperial powers who ruthlessly exploited the Third World for their own profit.

And Obama is America’s first Third World president.

Forget Obama’s Chicago black cadence. It is a fake. He copied from the kind of black preachers that were unknown to him until he was a grown man and inventing his political image.

What the Obama administration has near-wiped from the president’s personal history is that his only childhood links with America were as a schoolboy in a fashionable private school in Asia-dominated Hawaii, where he was raised by his white, bank executive grandmother.

Chicago is not Obama’s homeland. It never was his formative influence. The president’s world view is more aligned with that of Indonesia.

You can be sure the gift Obama gives the President of Indonesia will be something more than the dvd box-set of old Hollywood movies he gave to Gordon Brown. The US president’s manner on the trip to Indonesia will be more the manner he showed to the King of Saudi Arabia last year. The king received a deep bow, something never done by any US president before. Obama also kow-towed to the Emperor of Japan and to the Chinese premier.

Give it a read.

And then reflect on the fact that no American flags fly over the American disaster-relief facilities in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Why?

The Obama administration says flying the flag could give Haiti the wrong idea.

“We are not here as an occupation force, but as an international partner committed to supporting the government of Haiti on the road to recovery,” the U.S. government’s Haiti Joint Information Center said in response to a query about the flag.

Hey, that’s change you can BELIEVE IN!

UPDATE: Gerard finds further evidence that Obama’s audacityofhopenchange is wearing thin with our allies.