joyfulchristian

An excellent question

Dan McLaughlin poses a very good question: If Obama is such a rousing success as a diplomat, then why can't I think of any world leaders he's particularly close to?

It's an excellent question, I think. Obama has insulted our allies repeatedly and without reason while making worthless overtures to our enemies.  What have we gotten for this? Nothing I can think of. The man flies around the world with his hat in his hand. He apologizes for our country and everyone applauds him. When he actually asks them to do something for him though, the answer is almost always no. 

Then of course there's the failure of his diplomatic team who has repeatedly allowed our President to fly off to meetings to ask for things without any assurance that he'll be able to get them. Isn't the first rule of politics that the President shouldn't become involved until success is virtually assured? Certainly there can be exceptions, but it seems to be the rule in this administration that Obama shows up at the table early on and fails as a result.

To the guy in NC passing himself off as my wife with her debit card

... time to find someone else to rob.

California is stupid

Just got this e-mail from a partner in our firm:

I just received a phone call from a client who was notified that California is requiring all employers to automatically increase withholding on all employees by 10% over the existing amounts beginning November 1st.  Speculation is they will require another 10% next month for a combine 20% increase in withholdings for all employees.

Note that they aren't actually increasing taxes (yet). They're playing an accounting game to force people to pay more of their taxes earlier to improve their short-term cash flow. In the long-term, a lot of this money will have to be given back. (Assuming they don't just send you an IOU.)

Heard on an ad for the local news

"Would you pay an atheist for post-rapture pet care?"

Found in the medicine cabinet at work

... Advil PM.

Seriously? Wish I was joking.

Of course ...

... this only works if we sue them first.

Times like these

I read this Smitty riff:

When creating various advertising and propaganda, there seems to be a drive to narrow the focus of thought in the audience. All is emotional, all is now. Fear and the unknown loom.

"In times like these" seems both to allude to prior, similar times, and to retire them from consideration. You know, "these times". You wouldn't want to look dumb in public by asking "To what specific time to you refer?" of the speaker. That would be rude. Everyone else is shaking their heads knowingly.

It got me thinking. I've seen much the same thing in other contexts. I teach several accounting classes. I eventually had to institute a virtual ban on the words Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen. The reason for this is that both in classroom discussions and in papers I found that students thought they could explain almost anything by mentioning one of these things.  Things like, "With scandals like Enron it's obvious we must ..." were practically every where.

Students almost never felt the need to actually explain what Enron had to do anything with they were talking about. It was a convenient crutch. I finally put out a notice in my syllabus that these companies could not be mentioned unless the student could explain the relevance with specificity. Almost immediately all references to these companies disappeared. The papers got much better too.

Yeah, right

A report in Scotland suggests that lots of lives can be saved if they ban advertisements for alcohol and institute minimum prices.

Apparently, people in Scotland are unaware of booze unless they see it on TV. Also, they've apparently never heard of bootlegging.

Zelaya the fool

This BBC article repeatedly mentions the horrible conditions Zelaya is experiencing while holed up in the Brazillian embassy.  From this article you'd be hard pressed to realize that he's suffering these horrible conditions entirely by choice. They make a big deal about having no change of clothes, for instance. You can't bring clothes while slipping into the country?

No mention of the death rays either. 

Yet again

... Scott at Powerline issues an apology to Britain for Obama's absurd behavior. I second that.

I have no real use for Gordon Brown, but the UK has been our staunchest ally for a long time. Our President's repeated affronts to the representatives of that country are reprehensible.