Laura Bush Holds Press Conference on Myramarr Deaths And Jenna’s Wedding!
A White House press conference given by First Lady Laura Bush took a bizarre and insensitive twist when the focus of the conference, the devastation wrought by a powerful cyclone in Myanmar,
FOCUS | Iraq: Will We Ever Get Out?
Thomas Powers writes in The New York Review of Books: “There is a working assumption among the American people that a new president enters the White House free of responsibility for the errors of the past, free to set a new course in any program or policy, and therefore free – at the very least in constitutional theory, and perhaps even really and truly free – to call off a war begun by a predecessor. No one would expect something so dramatic on the first day of a new administration but it remains a fact that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, and the power that allowed one president to invade Iraq would allow another to bring the troops home.”
Obama’s women reveal his secret
By Spengler Page 1 of 2
“Cherchez la femme,” advised Alexander Dumas in: “When you want to uncover an unspecified secret, look for the woman.” In the case of Barack Obama, we have two: his late mother, the went-native anthropologist Ann Dunham, and his rancorous wife Michelle. Obama’s women reveal his secret: he hates America.
We know less about Senator Obama than about any prospective president in American history. His uplifting rhetoric is empty, as Hillary Clinton helplessly protests. His career bears no trace of his own character, not an article for the Harvard Law Review he edited, or a single piece of legislation. He appears to be an empty vessel filled with the wishful thinking of those around him. But there is a real Barack Obama. No man – least of all one abandoned in infancy by his father – can conceal the imprint of an impassioned mother, or the influence of a brilliant wife.
America is not the embodiment of hope, but the abandonment of one kind of hope in return for another. America is the spirit of creative destruction, selecting immigrants willing to turn their back on the tragedy of their own failing culture in return for a new start. Its creative success is so enormous that its global influence hastens the decline of other cultures. For those on the destruction side of the trade, America is a monster. Between half and nine-tenths of the world’s 6,700 spoken languages will become extinct in the next century, and the anguish of dying peoples rises up in a global cry of despair. Some of those who listen to this cry become anthropologists, the curators of soon-to-be extinct cultures; anthropologists who really identify with their subjects marry them. Obama’s mother, the University of Hawaii anthropologist Ann Dunham, did so twice.
Obama profiles Americans the way anthropologists interact with primitive peoples. He holds his own view in reserve and emphatically draws out the feelings of others; that is how friends and colleagues describe his modus operandi since his days at the Harvard Law Review, through his years as a community activist in Chicago, and in national politics. Anthropologists, though, proceed from resentment against the devouring culture of America and sympathy with the endangered cultures of the primitive world. Obama inverts the anthropological model: he applies the tools of cultural manipulation out of resentment against America. The probable next president of the United States is a mother’s revenge against the America she despised.
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The Tattlesnake – Another Scene from the Neocon Paradise Edition
Where Government is Tiny, Everything is Privatized, and the Free Market rules…
“Hello, this is the Little Big National Neighborhood Bank that really cares about you! How can I help you?”
“Well, first of all, you could ‘care about me’ by not making me wait through 30 minutes of canned music to talk to a real person.”
“Sorry, sir, but we’re very busy here taking care of all our happy customers!”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not one of them.”
“What can I do to make you one?”
“Last night I took out $60 bucks from one of your ATM’s and I noticed I was charged $1.50 for the withdrawal.”
“That’s right, sir, that’s our standard ATM transaction fee.”
“But fifteen years ago when you converted to the ATM machines, you said it would cut costs for the bank and the savings and convenience would be passed on to the customer. Back then, all transactions at any ATM were free!”
“That’s right, sir. Aren’t the ATM’s so much more convenient than coming into the bank to withdraw cash?”
“But wait a minute here — about eight years ago you said you were going to start charging an ATM transaction fee of a dollar, but only at other banks’ machines; your ATM’s would stay free.”
“Yes, sir – what’s the problem with that?”
“Aside from the fact that the fee to use an ATM from any other bank has steadily risen so it’s up to $3.00 a pop, now I’m getting charged $1.50 a transaction from your own ATM’s that used to be free!” “Yes, sir, well, our fees have to keep up with inflation.”
“But I just read that your bank made a record profit last year! Why not take a little less profit and show how much you ‘care’ about your customers by keeping the ATM transactions free?! I’ve been putting my money in your bank for twenty years!”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir. We want to keep you as our customer, but if you’re so dissatisfied with our service, perhaps you can find another bank that does not charge this ATM fee. After all, it’s a free market and that guarantees competitive prices!”
“I’ve already called around to every bank in the area – they’re ALL charging $1.50 to use their ATM’s. What do you guys do, get into a room and decide how much you’re going to shear us sheep?”
(more…)