The REAL reason the Islamic extremists hate us…

THIS.

And the George Bush, and the Dick Cheney, and the Sarah Palin Climate of Hate™.

But mostly, THIS.

via @TheH2

Conundrum

There is perhaps no better example out there of such. Bush is making one last ditch effort to make some kind of progress on the North Korea conundrum before leaving office – mainly what to do about the North’s nuclear program. But let’s face it, not much will come of it. Here you have a country, total population perhaps hovering around the 23 million mark with a combined active and reserve military force of about nine million. And it would take their missiles just 12 minutes to reach downtown Seoul. The Seoul National Capital Area is the second largest metropolitan area in the world with a population of almost 25 million.

Best of luck with that chit chat, Obama.

(PS … and you wonder why I live in the deep south of the country next to an airport…)

PPS Here’s a documentary on North Korea. It’s a few years old but I highly recommend you watch it.

PPPS But are we, in a necessary yet still tragic cross-cultural irony, witnessing death by a 1000 cuts?

But what other ’solution’ is there?

What would China do?

Comments open.

It’s time to talk about why we’re at where we’re at.

“The Patriotism Problem” By JOE KLEIN

But there was still something missing. I noticed it during Obama’s response to a young man who remembered how the country had come together after Sept. 11 and lamented “the dangerously low levels of patriotism and pride in our country, the loss of faith in our elected officials.” Obama used this, understandably, to go after George W. Bush. “Cynicism has become the hot stock,” he said, “the growth industry during the Bush Administration.” He talked about the Administration’s mendacity, its incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, its lack of transparency. But he never returned to the question of patriotism. He never said, “But hey, look, we’re Americans. This is the greatest country on earth. We’ll rise to the occasion.”

This is a chronic disease among Democrats, who tend to talk more about what’s wrong with America than what’s right. When Ronald Reagan touted “Morning in America” in the 1980s, Dick Gephardt famously countered that it was near midnight “and getting darker all the time.” This is ironic and weirdly self-defeating, since the liberal message of national improvement is profoundly more optimistic, and patriotic, than the innate conservative pessimism about the perfectibility of human nature. Obama’s hopemongering is about as American as a message can get — although, in the end, it is mostly about our ability to transcend our imperfections rather than the effortless brilliance of our diversity, informality and freedom-propelled creativity.

Patriotism is, sadly, a crucial challenge for Obama now. His aides believe that the Wright controversy was more about anti-Americanism than it was about race. Michelle Obama’s unfortunate comment that the success of the campaign had made her proud of America “for the first time” in her adult life and the Senator’s own decision to stow his American-flag lapel pin — plus his Islamic-sounding name — have fed a scurrilous undercurrent of doubt about whether he is “American” enough.

Time/Real Clear Politics

Ukraine and Georgia face uphill battle on NATO. Here ya go Um…Wed Apr 2, 2008 2:42am EDT

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Ukraine and Georgia faced an uphill battle on Wednesday to persuade NATO nations to put the two ex-Soviet states on the path to membership, with Germany and France leading resistance to their U.S.-backed bids.

President George W. Bush vowed on the eve of a NATO summit in Bucharest, starting later on Wednesday, to press their case. But a core of European states say the duo are not ready for a step which could exacerbate tensions with Russia.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was quoted as saying NATO should not strain ties with Moscow beyond “the limit of the manageable” by supporting their request for a Membership Action Plan (MAP), a gateway to eventual membership.

Reuters

Germany and France, in agreement? Surely you jest. Pussies! “Strain ties”? Think “Cold War”, what is Russia going to do? Lauch missiles? At whom? “Strain ties”, indeed. (“Indeed” is a word often used by Instapundit and since Instapundit has the word “indeed” ©, I guess I better give a “h/t”, huh?)

Sick But Funny

This is sick, yet somewhat funny. You have been warned.

2008: Year of the Moonbat?

South Australian Premier Mike Rann has called for David Hicks to apologize for his Taliban training and terrorist sympathies. In response, here are some words of wisdom from a commenter at abc.net

Hicks never trained with al-Qaeda, there was no al-Qaeda until 9/11.The term al-Qaeda was thought up by the CIA, who has subsequently admitted doing so. The falsehood was started in January 2001 by Jamal al Fadl, a Sudanese who had been with Bin Laden in the early 1990s. Jamal al Fadl stole money from Bin Laden, and then sought protection in the USA. The FBI and CIA paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars to create the al-Qaeda fiction. In fact, al Fadl invented the name al-Qaeda.Osama Bin Laden never used the term al-Qaeda until after 9/11, when he realized that al-Qaeda was the term the Americans had invented for him.

This is all about oil, a consortium represented by George W Bush’s father met with the Taliban to discuss the construction of a pipeline through Afghanistan to convey oil from Azerbaijan to a port in Pakistan, where it was to be tankered directly to the US. This consortium’s proposal was rejected by the Taliban, who gave the rights to the pipeline to Brazil. Thus the Taliban became the world’s enemy #1 according to the US.

If the Taliban had agreed to Bush snr’s proposal Hicks would have been a friend of the US, not an enemy. The invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq would never have happened, and life as we know it would not have changed in any way.