Upon learning of the violent death of the United States ambassador to Libya on Wednesday, many Russians responded with variations on “I told you so.”

Russia has long argued that the West should not support popular uprisings against dictatorships in the Middle East lest Islamic fundamentalism take hold.

They just may have a pretty good point…one they say they learned the hard way…in Afghanistan.

Instead of drumming up a war to meet the needs of the political moment, B.O. is trying to drum up a fake temporary “peace(?)” or something that could pass for it to the undiscriminating.

Now, what could be the motivation for THAT? Hmmmm. Oh, here it it, right in the article:

Under the proposed deal, Israel would not attack Iran until 2013, after US elections in November this year.

Such a deal for Israel. Yeah, right!

Ever wonder how much a Tomahawk missile costs? How about 110 of them? And what effect will those prices have on GOP attemps to trim the budget? Those are the questions that many are asking as American involves itself in yet another international conflict. And the answers aren’t too settling.

Well, DUH! Fighting even a limited high-tech war is an expensive business, in any sense of the word!

The question that remains unanswered is what in the world are we really trying to accomplish with this one. There’s info out there that the best organized eastern Libyan opposition to Qaddafi is our old fave al-Qaida. Not wouldn’t THAT be an improvement to Muammar? (NOT!)

We would be better advised to husband our resources, and not be involved with this one….Like, if you’re hiking down the trail and come upon a scorpion dueling with a rattlesnake, would you choose a side and get involved? No thanks!

• Cote d’Ivoire
• Colombia
• Zimbabwe
• Iraq
• Venezuela
• Sudan
• Mexico
• Guatemala
• Haiti
• Tajikistan
• Pakistan
• Somalia
• Lebanon
• Nigeria
• Guinea
• Democratic Republic of the Congo

See the linked article for the gory or potentially gory details.

Uh…where’s North Korea?

Julian Assange poses a clear and present danger to American national security. The WikiLeaks founder is more than a reckless provocateur. He is aiding and abetting terrorists in their war against America. The administration must take care of the problem – effectively and permanently.

…the Obama administration refuses to stop Mr. Assange. His previous document dumps disclosed the names and identities of foreigners working with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq – individuals actively involved in defeating al Qaeda and the Taliban. Their exposure could lead to many of them being killed, tortured or targeted by insurgents. Mr. Assange is directly responsible for endangering their lives. He is an active, willful enabler of Islamic terrorism. He is as much a threat as Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahri. In short, Mr. Assange is not a journalist or publisher; rather, he is an enemy combatant – and should be treated as such.

Kuhner’s piece has more to say on this all, with more gory details on the damages as well as the near total fecklessness of the B.O. administration in its failures to deal with national security issues:

Mr. Obama, however, could not be bothered with any of this. For him, foreign policy is a distraction – something to be crammed into his schedule as he seeks to transform America into a multicultural social democracy.

The United States is paying a severe price for Mr. Obama’s negligence. This is the greatest diplomatic crisis since the late 1940s, when communist agents in the U.S. government provided atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The world is witnessing the absurd, almost surreal spectacle of the American superpower standing helpless in the face of a lone hacker. Her diplomatic secrets are no longer safe; her allies and friends are being betrayed; and her cyber-enemies are free to roam with impunity. America is no longer feared or respected.

Rope, hacker, tree.  Some assembly required.

U.S. President Barack Obama defended the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing dollars on Monday after China and Russia stepped up criticism ahead of this week’s Group of 20 meeting.

The G20 summit has been pitched as a chance for leaders of the countries that account for 85 percent of world output to prevent a currency row escalating into a rush to protectionism that could imperil the global recovery. [ID:nSGE6A703T]

But there is little sign of consensus.

The summit has been overshadowed by disagreements over the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) policy under which it will print money to buy $600 billion of government bonds, a move that could depress the dollar and cause a potentially destabilising flow of money into emerging economies.

So, where will be be when China decides to bail out on buying our debt, since it’s value will be diving due to the Fed’s inflationary debt monetization? We don’t really want to go there…but we might not be given a choice in the matter.

As a historical sidebar note, something somewhat similar happened to us before…where a reform-minded US president with economic difficulties told the world to shove it, that we were doing our own thing in spite of it’s impact on them.

The occasion was during the early days of the FDR administration in 1933. Roosevelt set the stage in his first inaugural address by stating that “our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy.” He went on in June 1933, to instruct the Secretary of State who was attending the London World Economic Conference that “…far too much importance is attached to exchange stability…”

AS the Conference continued, he sent what has become known as the “bombshell message” July 3, 1933 in which he told the Conference delegates that the U.S. would NOT be a party to efforts at exchange-rate stabilization while declaring that “old fetishes of so-called international bankers are being replaced by efforts to plan national currencies”.

THe ultimate take-away message to the world was that the U.S. was going to be focusing on its own situation, and was not willing to extend itself to take part in concerted international efforts to avert danger. The lesson was not missed by Hitler, who saw a green light to his own nationalistic plans for “problem solving”.

(ref: Freedom from Fear; David M. Kennedy; Oxford Univ. Press, 1999)

So we REALLY want to give a similar impression to such luminaries of international peace and enlightenment as the Chicoms, and Putin’s Russia? REALLY?

Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as “the circle of commitment” – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.

Combined with the ignoring of the evidence of cooking the books from the Climategate, this is not exactly anything to inspire confidence in the rationality of the Great and Obaminable Church of Glowbull Warming in all it’s various denominations and iterations.

Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Communist Party, Russia’s rulers have hit upon a model for future success: the Communist Party.

Or at least, the one that reigns next door.

Like an envious underachiever, Vladimir V. Putin’s party, United Russia, is increasingly examining how it can emulate the Chinese Communist Party, especially its skill in shepherding China through the financial crisis relatively unbowed.

United Russia’s leaders even convened a special meeting this month with senior Chinese Communist Party officials to hear firsthand how they wield power.

In the words of Rod Stewart:  “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”

A police state is a police state – whether you call it the “Communist Party of (insert country here)”, “United Russia”, or the “National Socialist German Workers Party”, it’s just different sides of the same coin.

In a direct challenge to President Barack Obama’s commitment to rejuvenate moribund Mideast peace talks, Israel on Thursday dismissed American-led efforts to establish a Palestinian state and laid out new conditions for renewed negotiations.

What! Not genuflecting before the White House! Shocking!

Leaders of Israel’s hawkish new government told former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, the special U.S. envoy, that they aren’t going to rush into peace talks with their Palestinian neighbors.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he’d require Palestinians to accept Israel as a Jewish state in any future negotiations — a demand that Palestinians have up to now rejected — Israeli government officials said.

What a concept! Paleswinians accept Israel as being JEWISH? Doubly Shocking!

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Obama’s envoy that past Israeli concessions led to war, not peace.

The grand champion of all “DUH!” statements, but nevertheless, with meaning beyond the ken of the B.O., his administration, and especially the State Department’s “Foggy Bottom Boys”.

How unfriendly for Israel not to be willing to set itself up for being erased from the planet in agony, in order to meet the wishes of the Islamofascists and their claques in D.C. and elsewhere.

A rare bit of good judgment from B.O.’s administration.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad smiled as European diplomats left in protest over his opening address to a controversial UN summit to fight racism.

President Ahmadinejad, speaking as Israelis prepares to commemorate the Holocaust on Tuesday, described Jews and Israel’s creation as the “ugly face” of a Western conspiracy.

“They sent migrants from Europe, the United States in order to establish a racist government in the occupied Palestine,” he said.

“The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces.”

Of course no spewage from Ahmadinejad I’m-mad-on-a-jihad would be complete without his trademark holocaust denial rant, which in this event was the unbearable straw from the Iranian camel’s backside, that even the Eurabians couldn’t abide:

EU diplomats launched a walk out when Mr Ahmadinejad claimed that the “pretext of Jewish suffering”, a reference to the Holocaust, had been used to create Israel.

The US did NOT walk out of the conference…we (fortunately) never even showed up to be there TO walk out, knowing in advance which way this UN stench was going to blow…an example of all-too-rare good judgment from the B.O. administration:

The United States, Israel, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand boycotted the conference because of fears that Mr Ahmadinejad would use the event to equate Zionism with racism.

The real question left standing regarding the B.O. administration stance is who in their right mind can hold out hopes for a positive result from negotiating with this latter-day Iranian Nazi?