Thursday, May 26, 2011

Has Obama Gone 'Full Biden' on Us?

After Barack Obama was elected, he went abroad and wowed European crowds with his teleprompter skills and youthful energy. Everyone, including the foreign media got caught up in Obamamania. Some in the press even compared the new President to a rock star.  

What a difference two years make. Looking at the record, the rock star of 2008 is looking more like a Vegas lounge act in 2011.   


Like his bumbling through the last two years, much just ignored by an adoring press, Obama's recent European trip have people scratching their heads over the President's continuing bizarre lack of protocol, or as I like to say, "Going Full Biden". While some conservative commentators  take a semi-serious approach to the issue and its impact on American foreign policy, I tend to think of it more in terms of a Rock & Roll fall from grace by the President.

When Obama was elected, people believed he would restore America to prominence in the world by taking a different approach to foreign policy than his predecessor, G. W. Bush. Gone were the days of "cowboy diplomacy" and in came the era of intellectual diplomacy. The world was going to love us again, throw flowers instead of insults and bombs. 

Then, Obama became President and we got to see his foreign policy shaping out to be...well, a freakin' disaster.  Our fearless leader has successfully alienated two of our staunchest allies, Great Britain and Israel, and our relationship with Germany is lukewarm at best.  He tried to buddy up with France (at Britain's expense), and has taken sides in Egypt and Libya that are loaded with dangerous ties to groups that don't exactly dig our way of life.

One of the biggest problems with American foreign policy over the past few decades has been we almost seem ashamed to admit we're American. We're expected to sit there and take everything any tin-horned dictator from a Third World country flings as us, truthful or otherwise, and suffer Jimmy Carter running around the universe acting a fool. Then, we're expected to pick up the damn check whenever that same Third World country needs help from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. And with Obama at the helm, that shame in America will only increase.

And that shame has translated into embarrassment for world leaders who have to deal with Obama's protocol breaches. Some might not agree, but I think this is serverly hurting Obama's image around the world because he doesn't seem to learn from his Bidenesque mistakes. All he does is make bigger, more public mistakes, leaving ally and enemy alike to mock Obama. I guess not much  diplomacy and protocol is needed on a golf course.

Perhaps we should call it the "Biden Effect".
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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Bumbling Barry's Bodaciously Bad Week

First, before leaving on vacation state visit to Europe, our continent hopping fearless leader gets a big time political wedgie from visiting Israeli Prime Minster Netanyahu in front of all the media. (excellent) 



Then while checkin' out all the redheaded cousins in Ireland, the tamales take their toll and 'The Beast' hits high center (no not the first lady, the official Limo) as they leave the embassy in Dublin. The crowds cheer. (The GM OnStar button performed flawless)



In London, while visiting Westminster Abby, Noble Laureate Obama signs the historic guest book for a grateful nation and dates it 2008? Figure that one out and get back to me. (That Ivy League education is bound to kick in soon......... right?)



And once again, our unprepared and in over his head fearless leader at a State banquet goes 'Full Biden' on the host and continues to toast the Queen of England, even after the orchestra starts to play 'God Save the Queen'. That's like yelling "screw you"in the middle of our National Anthem. Everyone stands there all British like and stares straight ahead. Jokes abound, but I'm not even going there because I'm now starting to feel a little embarrassed for this guy! (Sorry Elizabeth, we have to let stupid people vote here too.)


Lets all hope he has more success in the Eastern European part of his trip (snicker) and a safe ride home and leave it at that. (Like us, I'm sure he wishes he was out doing something safe, like golfing)


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*Thank You Larwyn for the linkage

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Bin Laden Videos Leaked

As I reported earlier about Government leaks of Osama Bid Laden computer information  and stories of a porn video stash, today inside sources leaked several videos captured in the raid on the Bin Laden compound, including a tape of the late terrorist leader watching DVDs of canceled UPN series, Moesha. According to English  translations provided with the tapes, Bin Laden asks someone off-screen why Moesha, played by Brandy Norwood, doesn't have numerous children as she appears to be 'fertile as the river Nile.' 
The series which ran from 1996 to 2001 was apparently a Bin Laden favorite along with the MSNBC prime time lineup. Bin Laden believed MSNBC was actually an Al Jazeera news parody program like the Daily Show where actors mocked and criticized former President Bush for several hours a night. Bin Laden is heard to say in one tape he actual thought that Ed Schultz's head was going to explode like a car full of suicide bombers.
 
But the strangest tape showed Bin Laden arguing with a camera operator as they seemed to be attempting to film an infomercial for something called The Beard Club for Men. Bin Laden holds up an unlabeled plastic tube filled of liquid. The camera operator complains that without a label the liquid, thought to be a beard thickener, won't 'read.' Bin Laden is seen arguing they need the close up for a split screen image. They'll show both the liquid and Osama sporting a rich luxuriant beard fluttering like a flag. Bin Laden explains he'll then voice over, 'I'm not just the Beard Club president, but I'm also a client by the will of Allah, may the prophet be praised. Now shoot it the way I want or you're scorpion meat.'
 
Other tapes consist of short vignettes including one of Bin Laden laughing maniacally while playing a joke on a guard by putting goat turds in his boots. 

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 Image: Mad,Mad World
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Friday, May 20, 2011

Picture of the Week


Publius Minimus to Diogenes......"With every passing day, Barack Obama makes Jimmy Carter look more and more like a latter-day Pericles, Cicero, William Penn, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, all rolled up into one. Sad ain't it!"
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Katie Couric multi Obamagasmic highlight reel

Shamelessly stolen from Will Profit @ Capitalist Preservation 
"Katie has lost her terminally ill gig at CBS as of today. Family and friends mourn the firing of the most blatant leftist cheer leader the mainstream media has inflicted upon the general public since...the disgraceful exit of her predecessor, Dan Rather, who stepped down after he reported (PUSHED and kept pushing) the patently false story regarding G. Bush's National Guard service.
Will anyone except Barack Obama notice Katie's departure from the anchorette throne?
Would anyone notice if CBS fired its entire "newstainment" division and used that time slot to air reruns of the old sitcom, "The Cosby Show."?
Cause as Katie said not to long ago, I'm paraphrasing but she honest to God let these words slip past her perkily idiotic lips "Maybe we need a Muslim version of the Cosby Show."
 Good by Katie, we hardly watched thee...and for good reason."

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So to You Katie, a Classic Diogenes' Farewell.


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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Is Bin Laden's "Porn Stash" Story CIA PsyOp?

Did Reuters get Punked?

Rumors of an alleged discovery of “a stash of pornography” in Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan have spread like wildfire since Friday, when Reuters published an “exclusive” report   on the subject. The report, written by Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria, cites “current and former US officials [...] who discussed the discovery [...] on condition of anonymity”. 

According to the allegations, “the pornography recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive”. The report was almost immediately picked up by several news outlets, including The New York Times, which notes that the disclosure “will be welcomed by counter-terrorism officials because it could tarnish the al-Qaeda founder's legacy and erode his appeal”. Indeed. It appears that only Danger Room‘s Spencer Ackerman thought it wise to air a brief disclaimer to the effect that the “welcomed disclosure” may in fact be “a CIA information operation”. He has a point.

‘Information operations’ is a technical term that includes a variety of tactics, such as psychological and deception operations, aimed at distorting enemy information and information systems. The history of information operations is as long as spying itself. Spreading rumors of alleged sexual impropriety to encourage disillusion among adherents of adversary ideologies was used by the Allies and the Axis alike during World War II —most effectively by Nazi media propagandist Julius Streicher. Soon afterwards, it was turned into a science by the Cold War’s principal adversaries. After the Sino-Soviet split, the Soviet KGB circulated countless stories about Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong’s alleged preference for underage virgins from the Chinese countryside, supposedly delivered to him every evening by his trusted advisers. According to the Mitrokhin Archive, the Soviets were also instrumental in encouraging rumors about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s alleged homosexuality.

In more recent times, allegations of sexual impropriety have been used extensively against North Korean strongman Kim Il Sung by South Korean intelligence, as well as by the Malaysian secret services against the country’s former Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, in an attempt to sabotage his political career. The history of American secret services, particularly as revealed in the post-Watergate investigations of the Church and Pike Congressional committees, reveals that they frequently employ information operations in the pursuit of strategic goals. Observers of such methods can point to several post-9/11 “news stories” of alleged sexual impropriety by members of al-Qaeda and other militant Islamist groups. In one recent example, a news report alleged that “Islamic terrorists rape young men as a means of recruitment for suicide bombings”. According to that highly improbable story, which first surfaced in British tabloid newspaper The Sun, “[r]ape creates a social stigma and fear [...] that leave Muslims prepared to die”.

Of course, the allegations about bin Laden’s “porn stash” may well prove to be true. However, considering the nature and mission of the CIA and other US intelligence agencies involved in the “war on terrorism”, news outlets must exercise caution in swallowing every “anonymous revelation” about the intelligence ramifications of Osama bin Laden’s assassination. This is indeed a “wilderness of mirrors”, and news reporters ought to know better by now.

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Sunday, May 15, 2011

May 21, the end of the world?

From Lunatic's Asylum 

The ad reads: "Global Earthquake! The Greatest Ever Judgment Day: May 21," above a photo of night over Jerusalem and a clock about to strike midnight.

Robert Fitzpatrick, a retired MTA employee from Staten Island N.Y. believes the world is coming to an end next Saturday and has shelled out $140,000 on a NYC Transit ad campaign in an attempt to warn mankind of its pending doom, according to the New York Daily News.  His doomsday warning has appeared on 1,000 placards on subway cars, at a cost of $90,000, and at bus shelters around the city, for $50,000 more. 
  
I'm certain there's really nothing extraordinary about our Mr. Fitzpatrick. His millennial mania began after he retired in 2006 and began listening to California evangelist Harold Camping's "end of days" predictions.

The fact that he's managed to find a special brand of stupidity that mixes religion and numerology tells me that this is probably someone who spent his life searching for something...anything...that might take him out of his preoccupation with an unfulfilled life. He quite probably bounced around from one philosophy to another, and never showed any sort of constancy in his lifetime until someone came along and consolidated the disparate threads of his thinking and personal philosophies and wove them into a tapestry that would guide him through the rest of his life. I know plenty of people like this, scatter-shot thinkers with no self-esteem, absorbed by astrology, numerology, and "the healing properties of crystals", and they almost invariably, always wind up in a Church somewhere. Now, whether they wind up there because religion makes some sort of sense to them, or because they have no place left to go, is open to debate.

The fact that it's Jerusalem which appears in the center of Mr. Fitzpatrick's apocalyptic poster tells you all you need to know. Not London, not New York, Ankara, Beijing or Tokyo, only Jerusalem. Even when these ultra-Evangelicals support Israel, it's only because Israel is a necessary ingredient in the formula that will bring about there version of the Rapture. Under different circumstances, Mr. Fitzpatrick could have probably become a suicide bomber, or would have poured gasoline over his head and ignited it on a public sidewalk. If he had tits, he would have become a 'Feminist Scholar'. Fifty years ago, this sort of soft-headed mindset and single-mindedness of purpose would have made Mr. Fitzpatrick the perfect Leftist Revolutionary. Instead, his twisted understanding of Christianity just tells him to waste his money, which I guess makes him harmless enough.

I can't prove to you that God exist, or prove that his "Evangelical Numerology" is an invalid predictor of the End of Times.  They're "matters of faith" after all. Prophecy is a double-edged sword. If you don't believe me, consider this: how many self-professed Nostradamus scholars do you know that became millionaires utilizing his prophecies, rather than by selling books about their opinions on Nostradamus?  What do you reckon is the percentage chance on any given day when a prediction given to you by a medium you called on your telephone and paid $1.99 a minute to turns out to be correct? How often does your horoscope make any freakin' sense, let alone give you any useful information?
 
Matthew 24:36  - "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."  

I was taught to let prophecy reveal itself to me, not to go looking for an answer to it's meaning. When Jesus says of the Temple in Jerusalem "not one stone will stand upon another..." it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that his real meaning is that "nothing is permanent". It doesn't take a slide rule or a numerologist to tell me.

But in Mr. Fitzpatrick's defense, at least his money didn't go to another one of those destructive charlatans that society pays way too much attention to: the psychiatrist. Somewhere there's a pill-pusher with an M.D. who won't be able to get the leather upholstery in the new Mercedes this year. 

Edited by Diogenes Sarcastica 
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Friday, May 13, 2011

Publius Minimus to Diogenes......."I ask you my friend,  don't you find it a bit ironic that with all the pressure the government is putting on big oil about their 7 cent a gallon profit,  politicians  never mention how much of the pump price of gas is actually the government's obscenely high tax on each and every gallon sold?
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