Headline: “Saudis ask for aid if world cuts dependence on oil:

There are plenty of needy countries at the U.N. climate talks in Bangkok that make the case they need financial assistance to adapt to the impacts of global warming. Then there are the Saudis.Saudi Arabia has led a quiet campaign during these and other negotiations — demanding behind closed doors that oil-producing nations get special financial assistance if a new climate pact calls for substantial reductions in the use of fossil fuels.

That campaign comes despite an International Energy Agency report released this week showing that OPEC revenues would still increase $23 trillion between 2008 and 2030 — a fourfold increase compared to the period from 1985 to 2007 — if countries agree to significantly slash emissions and thereby cut their use of oil. That is the limit most countries agree is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Subsidies for the Saudis.

Call it “Cash for Monarchs”.

…is a jilted, pissed off President, with a bent for Socialism, who can now refocus on bringing our nation to the brink of insolvency.

South America gets its first games: The 2016 Olympics are going to Rio de Janeiro

Chicago was knocked out in the first round — in one of the most shocking defeats ever [emphasis happily mine-JR] in International Olympic Committee voting. Even Tokyo, which had trailed throughout the race, did better — eliminated after Chicago in the second round.

I feel bad for Chicago. Nonetheless, Mr. President, and with all due respect:  In your face!

You will have to find other less public forms of payback to your cronies in Illinois…and you would be well advised to brace for impact as more “shocking defeats” are almost certainly in the offing for you, sir.

Because I’d probably be pretty dangerous in the White House…to our most conspicuous enemies.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s continued overt threats to wipe Israel (or any other country for that matter) off the planet coupled with recent intelligence revealing a new nuclear facility would be met with a different tact than our Hippy-Wimp-in-Chief has chosen.

President Barack Obama is offering Iran “a serious, meaningful dialogue” over its disputed nuclear program, while warning Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front.

“Iran’s leaders must now choose – they can live up to their responsibilities and achieve integration with the community of nations. Or they will face increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people,” Obama said in his radio and Internet address Saturday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is like a young unmedicated schoolchild.

Continued rhetoric without consequences, without punishment, has emboldened him. Just like a young child, repeatedly told “No” but without limits and punishment will turn into a spoiled maladjusted kid, Iran has given the rest of the world the bird.

The fact that the same party that let Osama Bin Laden slip through their fingers occupies Congress and the White House no doubt further stokes the fires of insanity; an opportunity to bully the other school kids while the Principal is on sabbatical.

Jimmy II recently informed Ahmadinejad he’s “breaking the rules” and later this week ratcheted up his teleprompter which in turn threatened Iran’s President with the dark storm clouds of “serious dialogue.”

Chilling.

Does that mean Michelle’s husband will have his publicist produce words with more syllables? That he’ll enlist multiple teleprompters? Employ a laser pointer or a PowerPoint presentation?

Iran’s current leadership has been directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of many of our young men and women in Iraq, extending already excruciatingly long tours of duty for our brave young soldiers. Ahmadinejad represents a faction that resents Western freedoms and prosperity and will stop at nothing to destroy us to level the playing field and will not be bargained with or swayed by chit chat.

They have threatened peaceful nations and have shown time and again that they are not to be trusted and at the same time hold their ostensibly peaceful citizens hostage while exposing them to future military retaliation. Every week that goes by they grow in their ability to wreak havoc across much of Europe – and that’s based on what we know.

If I were President, that nuclear facility would be gone today. By lunch. On a Saturday. I’d make a call on the Batline and warn the weekend Janitor. The smoke would be clear by Monday morning.

It’s called a cruise missile, Mr. President, and his ass, up put, should be one.

So it’s a good thing, for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that I’m not President, and am armed only with a laptop whose battery has 19% charge left.

…that, while the US can screw our firm allies and friends the Poles, and can send the Iranian demonstrators barely a word of moral support, that the Obama Administration can be bothered to put its full faith and credit behind this guy:

It’s been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He’s sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and “Israeli mercenaries” are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.

“We are being threatened with death,” he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him.

Rumors that MoveOn.org is collecting tinfoil to send to Zelaya’s party are strictly unconfirmed.

Hundreds of years of vassaldom to the Russians, Germans and Austro-Hungarians.

6-7 years under the Nazi jackboot, with millions – millions – dead as they served as a battlefield, a killing field, a death factory, and finally a battlefield again.

Two generations as slaves of the Soviets.

Just saying, all you Obama supporters – P Obama isn’t bringing Eastern Europe the change they were hoping for:

Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.

“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

And the Poles’ experiences with being in “gray zones” – like when the Brits and French crossed their fingers behind their backs when promising to protect them from the Germans – isn’t all that good.

Recent events in the region have rattled nerves throughout central and eastern Europe, a region controlled by Moscow during the Cold War, including the war last summer between Russia and Georgia and ongoing efforts by Russia to regain influence in Ukraine. A Russian cutoff of gas to Ukraine last winter left many Europeans without heat.

The Bush administration‘s plan would have been “a major step in preventing various disturbing trends in our region of the world,” Kaczynski said in a guest editorial in the daily Fakt and also carried on his presidential Web site.

There’s a reason many Czechs and Hungarians and Georgians keep photos of Ronald Reagan in their houses; in not a few Polish houses, Reagan’s photo is next to Pope John Paul II’s on the mantelpiece.

And I’m thinking they’re in no danger of moving.

Maybe Kerry was right; we could learn a lot from the Europeans…

Not only did Obama sell America’s allies in Eastern Europe down the river, he did it on the seventieth anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, which completed the final parting-out of Poland’s fledgling democracy in 1939.

There are many areas where I’m willing to chalk Obama’s actions up to stupidity, and the invincible ignorance that follows whenever you put a bunch of Ivy Leaguers in the same place.

But I’m sorry – there was no way in hell Obama and his staff didn’t know the signifiance of 9/17 in Poland.  No f****ng way.

All things considered, I’m happy that Polish prime minister Tusk snubbed Hillary.

Obama promised to improve the US’ image around the world.

Little did we know that he meant to do it by making the US appear weak and inconsequential:

A weakened United States could start retreating from the world stage without help from its allies abroad, an international strategic affairs think tank said Tuesday.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said President Barack Obama would increasingly turn to others for help dealing with the world’s problems — in part because he has no alternative.

“Domestically Obama may have campaigned on the theme ‘yes we can’; internationally he may increasingly have to argue ‘no we can’t’,” the institute said in its annual review of world affairs.

The report said the U.S. struggles against insurgent groups in Iraq and Afghanistan had exposed the limits of the country’s military muscle, while the near-collapse of the world financial markets had sapped the economic base on which that muscle relied.

The report also claimed that the U.S. had lost traction in its efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program and bring peace to the Middle East.

“Clearly the U.S. share of ‘global power,’ however measured, is in decline,” the report said.

Of course, it’s not the first time “think tanks” have claimed the US’ significance was fading under Democrat rule; they said all the same things during the Carter years.

And while there’s a good traditional conservative case to be made for staying uninvolved overseas, Franklin Roosevelt let that genie out of the bottle three generations ago; anyway, it should be a matter of national consensus, not because administration-induced decay makes it impossible.

For the past decade or so, socialism has been advancing in Latin America.

But perhaps Hugo Chavez and his statist ilk have gone too far; Latin Americans are pushing back:

Thousands of opponents of Hugo Chavez marched against the Venezuelan president across Latin America on Friday, accusing him of everything from authoritarianism to international meddling.

The protests, coordinated through Twitter and Facebook, drew more than 5,000 people in Bogota, and thousands more in the capitals of Venezuela and Honduras. Smaller demonstrations were held in other Latin American capitals, as well as New York and Madrid.

The Honduras march was led by Roberto Micheletti, who became president when Chavez ally Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a June coup.

“Any politician who tries to stay in power by hitching up with a dictator like Hugo Chavez, he won’t achieve it,” Micheletti said. “We’ll stop him.”

From their lips to the American voters’ ears.

Today is “Canada Day”, the 142nd anniversary of Canada finally getting permission from the UK to get its own place.

Congratulations, Canada!

To honor the holiday, I plan on being nice and innocuous, cranking some Gordon Lightfoot, Rush or Triumph (but not Loverboy; ew), complaining about the price of beer, and getting into a hockey brawl.

Happy Birthday!

…so that world leaders would credit the US with making a clean break with the past eight years, and for trying to make amends.

Yep.  Our image in the world is gonna zoom!

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama on Thursday of behaving like his predecessor toward Iran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologized.

Good thing they don’t hate us anymore.

Huh.  The North Koreans are going to annihilate us again:

North Korea threatened Wednesday to wipe the United States off the map as Washington and its allies watched for signs the regime will launch a series of missiles in the coming days.

I don’t know if this is the “test” Biden mentioned for the Administration before the inauguration or not.  But it’ll be interesting to see how Obama treats this threat:

1. Taking Michelle and the kids to Disneyworld
2. Going to Pyongyang and bowing to Kim Jong Il
3. Focusing on the real problem, Mark Sandford
4. Declaring that troops will be “home by Christmas”, launching a land war in Korea.

Votes?

“…could only have been coined by someone who never had to bet his life on it”.

Fouad Ajami on the folly of trying to expect “diplomacy” in the traditional sense from the Mullahs:

But in truth Iran had never wanted an opening to the U.S. For the length of three decades, the custodians of the theocracy have had precisely the level of enmity toward the U.S. they have wanted — just enough to be an ideological glue for the regime but not enough to be a threat to their power. Iran’s rulers have made their way in the world with relative ease.

The US – whether ruled by benign neglectors like Clinton, dithering dilettantes like Obama, or, within limits, Wilsonian firebrands like Bush II – always serves as any enemy (that’s not actually in the process of conquering you) serves to dictators; providing a boogieman to wave at the people to justify your power:

The Cold War and oil bailed them out. So did the false hope that the revolution would mellow and make its peace with the world.

Mr. Obama may believe that his offer to Iran is a break with a hard-line American policy. But nothing could be further from the truth. In 1989, in his inaugural, George H.W. Bush extended an offer to Iran: “Good will begets good will,” he said. A decade later, in a typically Clintonian spirit of penance and contrition, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright came forth with a full apology for America’s role in the 1953 coup that ousted nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.

Iran’s rulers scoffed.

Ajami goes on to explain why; you really do need to read the whole thing.
Conclusion:

That ambivalence at the heart of the Obama diplomacy about freedom has not served American policy well in this crisis. We had tried to “cheat” — an opening to the regime with an obligatory wink to those who took to the streets appalled by their rulers’ cynicism and utter disregard for their people’s intelligence and common sense — and we were caught at it. Mr. Obama’s statement that “the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as had been advertised” put on cruel display the administration’s incoherence. For once, there was an acknowledgment by this young president of history’s burden: “Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons.” No Wilsonianism on offer here.

Well, actually, I believe there is.

Remember:  Wilson is known today for his aggressive foreign policy toward US ends; it’s why Bush and the Neocons were called “Wilsonian” after all (like you couldn’t see that coming?).

But there was an earlier Wilson, the one that was in power as the US slid toward war; given to issuing grandiloquent statements and waving around what a “smart guy” he was compared with his predecessor (he’d been president of Princeton, you dumb peasants!) but not really doing a whole lot, trying to keep the US above the war in Europe but getting us inextricably entangled with it, and finally into it (at a time when we were almost comically unprepared for war of any kind)…

I’m seeing plenty of that Wilson on offer.

Obama finally talks, at least, serious about Iran:

Obama condemned the “threats, beatings and imprisonments of the last few days. ”

“I strongly condemn these unjust actions,” Obama said in a news conference at the White House that lasted slightly less than an hour.

Well, good.  Strong condemnation is better, at least morally, than nudging, winking acquiescence.  As invested as Obama has always seemed (by his standards) in treating governments as equals lest he they be riled by the “ugly pushy American” stereotype he cultivated during the campaign, I gotta confess I’m surprised.

Obama said his message has been consistent, and he shot back at Republican critics who are calling him timid: “Only I’m the president of the United States.”

“Obama” and “Consistent Message” are like “north end of magnet” and “north end of magnet”.

When asked if his strong language on Tuesday was influenced by pressure from such Republicans as Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Obama scoffed: “What do you think?”

Heh.  It’s not literally a lie.  And I suspect that there’s a poll showing the American people are pretty nauseated by the mullahs, somewhere, that just might be motivating him more than Lindsey Graham.
Look; it’s better than nothing.  Even if it’s all he musters to support the demonstrators Sending aid to Iranian labor unions would be a good step…

…except that Obama is cutting that funding.

…that I, a young liberal who believed in the left in my adolescent way (but was starting to sour on Jimmy Carter) was mortified that Margaret Thatcher had become the Prime Minister in the UK.

And then came Reagan.

Now, I don’t believe history repeats.  But after a couple of years when Europe has moved to the right with elections in Germany, France and Italy showing a center-right swing (by Euro standards, naturally), and a likely big conservative pickup in the next elections in the UK, it’s good to see the trend picking up speed across the continent:

Conservatives raced toward victory in some of Europe’s largest economies Sunday as initial results and exit polls showed voters punishing left-leaning parties in European parliament elections in France, Germany and elsewhere.Some right-leaning parties said the results vindicated their reluctance to spend more on company bailouts and fiscal stimulus amid the global economic crisis.

First projections by the European Union showed center-right parties would have the most seats — between 263 and 273 — in the 736-member parliament. Center-left parties were expected to get between 155 to 165 seats.

Of course, there are no real parallels with the seventies just yet; America was ready to come out of the miasma of post-Vietnam trauma, Watergate and stagflation when Reagan came on the scene; I don’t know that America’s really woken up to the hangover from it’s last electoral tantrum yet.

But give it time.

Just about the last news I personally needed, as daughter Bun gets ready for her first solo air trip; an Air France jet is feared lost at sea, possibly due to a lightning strike:

An Air France passenger jet traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris disappeared after its electrical systems malfunctioned during a storm with heavy turbulence on Sunday evening, and officials said Monday that a search had begun for the wreckage near a small archipelago off the Brazilian coast.

Prayers, hopes and wishes, karmic imprecations, or pleas to the implacable laws of physics as your worldview may dictate for (one hopes) the passengers and (one fears) their families.

How bad our country’s balance sheet must be that we are sending our Secretary of State and Treasury Secretary to China…to beg…to promise…we’ll behave?

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner arrived in Beijing with a pledge that the Obama administration will control its borrowing, seeking to reassure China that its Treasury holdings are safe.

“No one is going to be more concerned about future deficits than we are,” Geithner told reporters en route to two days of meetings that start tomorrow in China’s capital.

Interesting word choice: “No one is going to be more concerned about future deficits than we are.” In the mean time, being liberals, the only thing this administration knows how to do is spend more and tax more – under the guise of economic “rescue” this time.

The Chinese however, who hold more of our debt than anyone else, can do math, and they too have noticed that every time Brack O. Bomba opens his mouth, another trillion dollars is stolen from our children.

A Chinese state media report today said that 17 out of 23 Chinese economists polled in connection with Geithner’s visit said that holdings of Treasuries are a “great risk” for the nation’s economy.

Let me pause to underscore the notion that the Chinese feel our economy poses a great risk to theirs.

Geithner needs to show how the U.S. can prevent the value of China’s debt holdings being eroded by a weaker dollar or by inflation driven by the stimulus money being pumped into the U.S. economy, according to Yu.

“It will be helpful if Geithner can show us some arithmetic,” he said.

Uh oh. That’s trouble. Math is no friend of the Obama administration.

There aren’t arithmetic or historic data depicting successful outcomes of huge government borrowing to fund huge government spending to counter a crisis caused by huge government, corporate and consumer borrowing. Rather, the arithmetic will show catastrophic devaluation of the dollar – the very inflation the Chinese are fearful of.

How do you say “Oops” in Chinese?

A commentator at Pravda says that Marxism has finally triumphed – right here in the USA:

The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

The irony – a Russian chattering about people giving up their freedom, practically a Great Russian genetic trait – only partly counterbalances the fact that he’s got a point.

If someone were to develop an education system to create a generations-deep supply of ignorant, impotent sheeple, how would they actually change our system?

Today is the 104th anniversary of the Norske Revolusjon – when Norwegian patriots rebelled, casting off the brutal, authoritarian hand of the Swedish monarchy in an epic cataclysm that ended with a titanic battle in the hills outside Oslo, ending in a crushing Norwegian victory that sent the demoraized Swedes into a panicked retreat in the short term, and a social tailspin in the long run.

After the battle, and when the treaty was signed that granted Norway its hard=earned independence, General Olaf Haraldsson proclaimed:

Med allmektige Gud som vitne i dag, jeg sverger før du at fra i dag fram til slutten av tid og norsk skal noensinne baugen ned før en svenske. Det er bare galt

Words we cal all live by?  I think we can all agree on this.

So happy birthday, Norway!

(more…)

The good news?  Roxana Saberi, Fargo native, former Miss NoDak and NPR reporter, held for three months in an Iranian prison on apparently-bogus espionage charges, will be released soon:

Saberi, a 31-year-old who was born in the United States and who has reported for the BBC, National Public Radio and other media, was detained in the Islamic state more than a month ago.

The perhaps not so good news?  She may have been released because the Obama Administration gave the Iranians what they wanted (emphasis added):

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded that Tehran immediately release the journalist during a news conference on Thursday at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

She earlier said the United States planned to invite Tehran to a conference on Afghanistan, in a first overture to Iran.

The United States is reviewing its isolation policy on the Islamic Republic, including whether to open up a low-level diplomatic office there.

On the one hand, good thing that Saberi’s been released.

On other other; if indeed the release was accompanied by big concessions from the US, that’s probably not a great precedent.

UPDATE:  My NARN cohost Ed Morrissey at Hot Air (thanks for the link!) notes:

The Bush administration also made overtures towards Iran on Afghanistan on a similar basis; the holdup wasn’t a lack of US invitation, but Iranian recalcitrance on accepting a more public connection with the US on the issue.  The Bush administration had conducted talks with Iranian representatives on Iraqi security on several occasions over the last few years, so this isn’t exactly a new concept, and wouldn’t have triggered Saberi’s release.

There may still be a stinking concession at the heart of this, but the Afghanistan conference won’t be it.

I could have written more clearly. 

The US and Iran have been talking – on some low, diplomatic level or another – for years.  Every administration has had some sort of dealing with Teheran.  And Ed notes correctly that we have worked with Iran on things like Afghanistan in the recent past, and that the Afganistan meetings aren’t a quid pro quo for releasing Saberi.

My biggest concern – let me write it clearly this time – is this: given that Tehran’s mullas have always acted (as any government normally will) in Iran’s government’s interest, and that the Iranians have just gotten away with kidnapping an American (ten days after Obama’s inauguration, in fact), is the old ’70s-’80s tactic of grabbing Americans back on the table as a means of exacting concessions from a weak, inexperienced president?  Just like 30 years ago?

Time will tell.  But I don’t think this is a good start.

Americans that lived through The Great Recession of “Ought Nine” will not soon forget the lessons learned and in fact US savings rates are up; consumer debt has fallen like a rock.

In the end, history will point an impeaching finger at liberals whose “high-mindedness” led to the most catastrophic and costly financial crisis in American history.

And yet…

Grants of as much as [$16,000] to first-time buyers and the lowest interest rates in 49 years have emboldened more than 40,000 young [home buyers] to take out home loans since October, stoking demand for properties that cost less than [$385,000].

These buyers may be vulnerable when interest rates begin rising, potentially triggering a jump in foreclosures that will drive down property prices, cut profits at banks and damp household spending, which accounts for half the economy. A surge in defaults in America was a key trigger for the financial crisis that pushed the global economy into its worst recession since World War II.

History repeats itself indeed, only this is in Australia, where the toilet swirls the other way and lessons are apparently learned the hard way.

“We’re mirroring what happened to the U.S. three years ago, when people who shouldn’t have been in the market bought houses,” said Martin North, managing director of Fujitsu Australia, a Sydney-based property-consulting company. “It’s a strategy set for an unfortunate outcome.”

G’Luck, mate!

Young Israelis Ydon’t trust Barack Obama as far as they can throw him, according to an Israeli public opinion poll.

“This poll has revealed that Israelis make a distinction between the United States and President Obama and his policies. They have less fondness for him than they have for the US, and display a certain degree of mistrust in him,” the professor said.  

 

Gilboa said the poll largely resembled a similar survey carried out in 2007 during former President George Bush’s tenure. Only 38% of the respondents in the new poll said they believe that Obama’s attitude towards Israel is a friendly one, compared to 73% in the 2007 poll regarding Bush.

Good to know that our staunchest ally is nervous about Obama’s commitment to them, huh?

…where our new ruling class (by acclamation!) stands:

Madeline Albright: “Islam is maybe the most democratic religion because there is nobody between you and God. So I do not think that is something that can be used as reason not to have Muslim democracies.

Albright – Jewish, as I recall, not that it matters – must have missed that whole “Protestant Reformation” bit.

At any rate – it seems Islam is  used for exactly that reason – there is exactly one stable Moslem democracy (Turkey), two deeply flawed democracies with huge numbers of Moslems (India and Indonesia), and a few more that show signs of promise (Senegal and, to an extent, Mali).

The return to prominence of Madeline Albright, who under Clinton (eww) was the worst Secretary of State since Warren Christopher, a woman who’s always treated American Exceptionalism as an inconvenient hurdle, is one of the great tragedies of Obama’s win.

…The One was going to fix our image around the world; he was going to rescue the US’ reputation, especially with the world’s legitimate powers, Russia and Germany and France.

Do I remember that correctly?  It seems so long ago:

Mr Sarkozy is pouring cold water on President Obama’s efforts to recast American leadership on the world stage, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and overrated. Behind leaks and briefings from the Elysée Palace lies Mr Sarkozy’s irritation at the rock-star welcome that Europe gave Mr Obama on his Europan tour earlier this month.

The American President’s call “to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare” was hot air, Mr Sarkozy’s diplomatic staff told him in a report. “It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States,” they said. Most of Mr Obama’s proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, the leaked report said.

Of course, there’s a domestic French motivation, too:

On the personal side, the French President is needled by the adulation for an unproven US leader whose stardom has eclipsed what he sees as his established record as a world troubleshooter. “The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naivety and the herd mentality of the media,” said a journalist who is privy to Elysée thinking.

The other reason?  France craves a more prominent place on the world stage; it left empire rather grudgingly.  On those occasions where the US has left a vaccuum, the French have moved in.

And there’d seem to be a vaccuum.

Somali pirates have presented President Obama with a shining chance for reaching out:

Somali pirates on Wednesday hijacked a U.S.-flagged cargo ship with 21 crew members aboard, a diplomat and a U.S. Navy spokesman said.The Kenya-based diplomat identified the vessel as the 17,000-ton Maersk Alabama and said all the crew members are American. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

After the Abdullah flap last week, if I were the leader of the Somali pirates I’d quickly publicize that it’s proper protocol for a head of state to kiss a pirate’ bare butt, and see what happens.

Barack Obama was going to fix America’s image to the rest of the planet.

After insulting European democracies, giving the Soviets Joe Biden.

Really, just saying the name is all you need. On a trip to Spain, Biden thanked Prime Minister Zapatero for his “help” in Iraq:

As everybody knows, the first decision Zapatero made after his unexpected win in 2004, right after the Madrid train terrorist attacks, was to abruptly and unilaterally pull out from Iraq.

Of course, as with all things in the current administration, there is a rational explanation:

So either Biden made a gaffe, or he was thanking Zapatero for angering Bush…

What do you think Robert Gibbs’ll say?

CORRECTION:  My bad.  Gibbs will never be asked.