All the hep cats are getting with the times

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Europe is so modern they're throwing things into reverse.


From CNBC:

The French politician who said Indian steel company ArcelorMittal should leave the country has told CNBC that his government is only acting like U.S. President Barack Obama.

Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg, a member of the governing Socialist party, caused controversy last week when he said that the Indian company, which employs close to 20,000 people in France, should leave after it said it would have to close down a factory.

The French government announced on Thursday that it could nationalize the factory in question, with backing from an unnamed businessman.

The news raised the specter of the nationalizations of the early 1980s, which were instigated by Hollande’s predecessor Francois Mitterrand.

Montebourg told CNBC after a meeting with trade unions in Paris: “Barack Obama's nationalized. The Germans are nationalizing. All countries are nationalizing. I've also noticed the British nationalized 6 banks.”

Montebourg brushed off comparisons with that era. He said: “It's a very good sign to send out (to investors). Nationalizing is a very modern step to take. Especially when you not only nationalize losses but profits as well, when you make public/private partnerships. This is our strategy.

(italics, ours)



Just an aside but the U.S. taxpayers stand to lose tens of billions of dollars as things currently stand from our most ballyhooed nationalization effort: the government-engineered bankruptcy cramdowns of Chrysler and General Motors.


Yeah, that whole nationalization trend in Europe back in the 30s worked out pretty well, didn't it? Oh, but you say, to use the term this guy does, Europe is too "modern" to let some monster like Mussolini or Hitler come to power. Perhaps, but the framework for gross abuses of power against the individual and society as a whole via a supra-legal public-private complex would be firmly entrenched serving at the behest of an unaccountable political class.

We see it here as there are no fewer than 40 lawsuits being brought against the Obama administration on the grounds of religious liberty being infringed upon by the public-private fascist union of the largest health insurers bound to the federal government which was made possible by the Affordable Care Act, or, ObamaCare.

What power you grant the federal government to grant you "rights" is the same power by which the government can take away actual rights.





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"Nationalization": It was the "modern" thing to do back in the 30s.

"Wait. We bailed out these guys, also?"

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Remember, gang, General Motor's sagging fortunes aren't just a result of weak sales here stateside; they've got an entire European operation that is an additional millstone around its neck.

Three years into their forced marriage with GM, the American taxpayers have seen the value of their investment in GM deteriorate by approximately $24 billion, largely due to continuing European losses. Exposure in Europe has contributed to crushing the value of GM's stock due to its chaotic and failing Opel unit in Germany. While government, journalists and Wall Street sympathizers have given the Obama Administration and GM leadership an almost incomprehensible pass on this value destruction and massive loss (presumably due to the macro-economic nature of the crisis), it's time to call for the accountability that this new Board was supposedly going to deliver.

At one time, General Motors had an opportunity to sell off GM Europe so they could consolidate, trim some non-essentials, focus on core competencies, you know, the stuff that corporations do when they are in bankruptcy. Didn't quite happen that way:

Overlooked is the value-destroying, cash-sucking disaster that is GM Europe was packaged and ready for sale to new European buyers in 2009 before the new Obama GM Board of Directors slammed the brakes on the deal, throwing GM into its current value free-fall. In fact, the decision to not sell the Opel operations (which has not been profitable for more than a decade) in 2009 after GM cleared bankruptcy was the very first major decision of the new Obama Board. Had Opel been sold, GM stock would be much higher than it is today.

So, we weren't merely content to bailout an under-performing U.S. manufacturer, we were going to bail out those of Europe as well.

But the "new and improved" Obama Board of Directors, working mostly at the persistent lobbying and urging of the UAW's appointee, Steve Girsky (in photo), were naively convinced that Opel was simply a rough jewel in need of some new leadership (Opel fired its third leader in as many years a few weeks ago) and TLC from the brain-trust in Detroit. With his persuasive lobbying, the union's man Girsky convinced all but two of the Board members to vote to ditch the planned sale and hold onto this "gem" that has now contributed to the loss of about $24 billion of the American taxpayers' forced investment. Beyond the sheer magnitude of the value losses, fixing Europe has become an all-consuming distraction that is draining GM of vital and scarce resources.

Linked article describes how GM CFO Dan Amman hemmed and hawed during last quarter's earnings coference call and never came clean with respect to how much American taxpayer money was going towards the failing Opel and Peugot operations.

Your anger would be totally understandable given that a public-private entity is mum on how much of your scratch is being thrown around an entirely different continent let alone here in our own backyard.



So, with such dismal news for General Motors, what's in the offing? Another bailout?

President Obama is proud of his bailout of General Motors. That’s good, because, if he wins a second term, he is probably going to have to bail GM out again. The company is once again losing market share, and it seems unable to develop products that are truly competitive in the U.S. market.

This wouldn't surprise us. If their bailout efforts failed the first time around, by their reckoning, a second bailout is fully warranted. We hate to say it, but contrary to what you may have been told, these aren't terribly smart people. They just aren't. Smart people learn from their mistakes and there has been nothing in these last 3-1/2 years that has demonstrated that they have learned anything from their miserable failures in the U.S. economy.

Not grasping the concept

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What are we missing here?

The Greek parliament approved a deeply unpopular austerity bill to secure a second EU/IMF bailout and avoid national bankruptcy, as buildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country.

Cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens as black-masked protesters fought riot police outside parliament.

State television reported the violence spread to the tourist islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Shops were looted in the capital where police said 34 buildings were ablaze.

We won't pretend to know the collective Greek mind but does this represent the impulse of coddled two year-old who fully bought in to the lie of the sclerotic European social democracy model only to be told now that it isn't working or is there something more deep-seated that would cause these rioters to destroy the very wealth creators that would be able to raise them out of their debt hole?


Perhaps the two are not entirely exclusive of one another.


Then again, when in Greece (and in doubt), just do it.

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We'll be commenting on another demographic closer to home that behaves in somewhat similar fashion later today or tomorrow.

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Meanwhile, on the shores of picturesque Lake Davos...

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This from the annual confab of global redistributionists and social justice types (think U.N. glee squad on Winter break):

Economic and political elites meeting this week at the Swiss resort of Davos will be asked to urgently find ways to reform a capitalist system that has been described as "outdated and crumbling."
"We have a general morality gap, we are over-leveraged, we have neglected to invest in the future, we have undermined social coherence, and we are in danger of completely losing the confidence of future generations," said Klaus Schwab, host and founder of the annual World Economic Forum.

"Solving problems in the context of outdated and crumbling models will only dig us deeper into the hole.

"We are in an era of profound change that urgently requires new ways of thinking instead of more business-as-usual," the 73-year-old said, adding that "capitalism in its current form, has no place in the world around us."

Without us seeming impolite or untoward, allow us to make some slight course and speed corrections to the terminology employed by the gracious host Mr. Schwab: We think what he really meant was that there is no longer a place in the world for the heavily bureaucratized, centralized and cronyist social democracy model that is saddled with unsustainable entitlement obligations which is outdated, crumbling and morally corrupt.


However hopeful we may be and contrary to the evidence before them, why do we get the sneaking suspicion that whenever these well-meaning chin-strokers all get together, simply "business as usual" is all that is on the menu?

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Video clip of the day

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Morbidly obese 1 percenter Michael Moore tries to explain his way out of his capitalist success and into the "fair share" model in this interview with the Daily Caller's Nicholas Ballasy.






Invoking certain South American or European countries as the preferred socio-economic model probably is not going to gain a whole lot of traction over here at the moment. Just sayin'.

Video smack of the day

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Via W.C. Varones

Daniel Hannan, MEP of England, addressing the European Union on the current state of the Euro and the Union in general.

F-U!

"How's that working out for you, by the way?"

Nice.

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The Eurozone and #OWS

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Here's KT on the current Eurozone situation:

The Europeans are facing rising borrowing costs. In a moral sense, this is mathematics enforcing what they as a society could not - the denial of desires. They wanted socialized medicine, so they took it. The wanted plump retirements, so they took them. Like children whose parents have given up on discipline, they've grabbed everything for themselves. Now the stern hand of the market is coming down on them to restore the discipline they threw away in a frenzy of selfishness that they claimed was "compassion."

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Meanwhile, closer to home here in San Diego, here are some more charming antics by the #OWS set "occupying" a local Wal Mart on Black Friday (via B-Daddy). These flash occupies sprang up at numerous other Wal Mart's around the country and you had a case of Occupiers blocking access to an Apple store up in the Bay Area on Friday as well.





Now, ain't that a turn: The Occupiers will dictate to you just who it is you can partronize, where you can shop and what you can buy.

Because nothing says "power to the people" and sticking it to The Man like denying other people their freedom to enter into a voluntary contract with the provider of their choice and access to inexpensive yet quality goods and merchandise. Isn't WalMart precisely the type of equalizer and money- stretcher these goons should be championing if they were truly serious about doing something about income inequality?


And you would not be mistaken if you sense a familiar theme running through the disgruntled and rioting Eurozone masses and the #OWS set. It's a theme of entitlement. Entitlement to manufactured "rights" and entitlement to other people's goods, services and property.

A consistent demand we hear from #OWS is student loan forgiveness and home loand debt forgiveness. They essentially are demanding free education and free housing. What these economic illiterates do not realize or do not care to realize is that nothing is free. Someone had to pay for that college to be built. Someone had to pay the professor to lecture on the worthless, unemployable degree that the school will be handing out and someone had pay for the material and labor that built the houses that are now under-water.

Just as the Occupiers do not realize the ridiculous irony of preventing consumer choice by shutting down retailers on Black Friday, they also do not realize that the cost of a free education (via student loan debt forgiveness) and/or free housing (via home loan debt forgiveness) will just be passed along to the 99% they claim to represent in the form of higher taxes, fees and housing prices of future sales.

Nothing is free. Not health care, not housing, not education, nor plump retirement plans. Nothing. The actions and logic employed by #OWS and Eurozone citizenry running contrary to this set of facts prove a deep-seated immaturity and a childish unwillingness to confront reality. It's all completely selfish moral preening in the name of "justice"


Math wins. Math always wins.

Germany: accomplishing in peace what two world wars could not*

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Via KT

Here's Brit, Nigel Farage, addressing the European Parliament this past week.





That was some epic smack.


For those of you scoring at home: 1) re-opening some old European geo-political wounds, 2) taking a stand for basic Western democratic principles and 3) re-asserting a sense of national sovereignty that the Euro-socialistm model was supposed to kill off... all in just a little over two minutes.

Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all.


* As is the statist model in this country, it's not a sudden revolution rather a long slow slog through this nation's institutions will victory be achieved without a concerted and vigorous pushback.

News item of the day

Greek cartoonist and newspaper editors: German-driven austerity measures totally like the Nazis in WW II or something.

The dark shadow of German-driven austerity measures squeezing Greece has revived historical enmities and evoked comparisons to the massive destruction of the Mediterranean country at the hands of Nazi Germany over 65 years ago.

Decades of social democracy will warp your brain into this standard line of thinking.

Right address, wrong person

Dude



Totally related:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said European governments need to get their “fiscal house” in order and provide a financial backstop for economies under pressure.

“What Europe needs to do is to make sure that there’s an unequivocal financial backstop,” Geithner said, according to the transcript of an interview with NBC and CNBC television today. “So there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that those countries have the ability and the will to meet their obligations. That’s essential to managing crises.”

It remains one of life's great mysteries that Geithner is able to get out and about laboring with the basketball-sized set of cajones that quote obviously proves he has.

The NYSE doesn't open for another 15 minutes (0600 PDT) so we won't be able to comment until later just how the markets will have reacted to all the "order" we have restored to our fiscal house. Suffice to say, we're not looking forward to it.

Quote of the day

Against the backdrop of an unwarranted and unnecessary release of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve and a troop draw-down in Afghanistan informed, in part, because of "waning domestic political support" , Victor Davis Hanson wonders just who are the socialists?:

All this raises some questions. The strangest things about the global statist crack-up are socialists’ unhappiness with their socialist utopia, and their subsequent efforts to avoid the consequences of the very redistributive state that they themselves once so gladly crafted.

This discussion is, of course, a belabored example of why and how socialists do not like socialism. Indeed, statism is not a desired outcome, but rather more a strategy for obtaining power or winning acclaim as one of the caring, by offering the narcotic of promising millions something free at the expense of others who must be seen as culpable and obligated to fund it — entitlements fueled by someone else’s money that enfeebled the state, but in the process extended power, influence, and money to a technocratic class of overseers who are exempt from the very system that they have advocated.

Who are socialists?

There are none. Only technocratic overseers who wish to give someone else’s money to others as a means of winning capitalist-style lifestyles and power for themselves — in a penultimate cycle of unsustainable spending. When this latest attempt at statism is over, Barack Obama will enjoy a sort of Clintonism, a globe-trotting post officium lifestyle of multimillion dollar honoraria to fund a lifestyle analogous to “two Americas” John Edwards, “earth in the balance” Al Gore, a tax-exempt yachting John Kerry, a revolving-door Citibank grandee like Peter Orszag, or a socialist Strauss-Kahn in $20,000 suits doling out billions to the “poor.”

That is just the way it has been and will always be.

So, Marx had it wrong. It has turned out that statist-inspired entitlements are the opiate of the masses.

Apparently, no one took away any lessons from the Cold War. That wasn't just the global brand of the Soviet Union that was defeated. One of the take-aways should've been the acknowledgement of the unsustainable nature of over-regultated, top-down, command and control economies that guarantee a "right" to work, housing, health care and pensions.

Some 20 years on, looks like we're playing some catch-up on the lesson plan.

Funny yet downright scary

Via W.C. Varones: World collapse explained in 3 minutes.

Rejoice...

... because it's America here every day of the year including that one 67 years ago today.

June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. General Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 Ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and by day’s end on June 6, the Allies gained a foot- hold in Normandy. The D-Day cost was high -more than 9,000 Allied Soldiers were killed or wounded — but more than 100,000 Soldiers began the march across Europe to defeat Hitler. — US Army.mil

At our blog buddy Harrison's D-Day post, commenter Jack C. offered up the following:

When you stop to think that 5,000 men gave their lives on an operation that took only a few days, and then compare that to the 8,000 men and women who’ve given their lives over the span of a 10 year campaign, it should give you pause as to what sacrifice meant then and now.

I don’t think that any of us who didn’t live WWII can imagine what it would be like to wake up the next morning to hear that thousands had died in a campaign that lasted 3 days. We wake up at the end of the month to hear that 30 people died that month.

We responded:

Jack, you’re right. Our perspective on what constitutes acceptable levels of loss has changed over the years.

Sir Edmund Burke said: “Life is nasty, brutish and short”. Modern technology and medical advancements are betraying that statement but those same advancements also contribute to an aversion to discomfort and the harsh realities of life our forebearers faced on a daily basis.

God bless the men and women of our armed forces who are not so averse as the rest of us.

Wait, what?

One in an series that takes a look at some rather incredulous and/or ridiculous goings-ons in our world of late.



We all understand that Greece is a bit of a hot mess right now as they are being crushed under the weight of the unfunded obligations of their statist utopia. Perhaps what might best illustrate how it is that they got there would be to be informed of some of the reforms that are being undertaken currently there in Greece.

The Finance Ministry has made public a list of 136 professions that will be liberalized from July 2 as part of the economic reforms Greece has been encouraged to make by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The reform means that those seeking to enter these professions can do so freely, without restrictions on the number of people in the sector or limits on where they can set up their businesses.

The professions in the list published on Monday range from taxi drivers to beauticians but do not include some of the key so-called closed professions.

(italics, ours)

Wait, what?


You mean to tell us that someone, somewhere and somehow was telling Greek citizens that they couldn't enter the construction market, that they couldn't open a retail business or that they couldn't become an engineer?


Rioting in the streets, however, appears to be an open shop gig.


Well, this all would explain a few things about the Greek death spiral. KT has more on the subject, here.

Quickies

A round-up of new items, articles and columns that caught our eye this past week or so.



The opening to the most awkward front door conversation evah:

“I don’t know how else to say this, but the fogged glass in your shower window isn’t as fogged as you might think it is.”

Short conversation. Seriously, what do you say after being confronted with that? "And, what do you think?"





David Harsanyi: If Washington is so great, let's all pay for it.

Many conservatives argued that lowering the tax burden would free up capital and induce job creation. "Washington would likely see increased revenues as prosperity grows," they claimed. This must be a fact, as economists I choose to believe say it is. It's unfortunate, though, that most Republicans won't go further and argue that everyone, even the rich -- even the super-filthy rich! -- deserves to be treated equally by the government.

That post-OBL snuff buzz is going to wear off pretty quickly and we'll be back to the drudgery of trying to close our spending deficits and solve the looming entitlement crisis but unfortunately, as per the President's Big Idea, that also means we're back to the predictable drudgery of statist class warfare as the solution.





Bob Seeger, Rush and Jackson Browne: one of these artists/bands is not like the other.

How is it that Rush is not in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame and the other two are?

Because, in reality it's the Hall of Lame, that's why?

Red meat alert. But then again, maybe not.

The Cemetery of the Innocents at Clarion University in Clarion, PA is supposed to commemorate the millions of babies lost to abortion. But last week, the quaint memorial with 350 wooden crosses resembled a satanic ritual scene after it was vandalized during the campus’s Life Week, which also happened to be Holy Week.

Students for Life of America (SLA) explains the vandalism:

In a breathtaking public display of anti-Christian and anti-Life motivations, 350 crosses were pulled up and re-inserted in inverted fashion, a well-known anti-Christian symbol. Additionally, red paint was splattered on crosses and signs. Even eerier was the mock bloody footprints of an infant painted in front of the display.

Pretty bad, huh?

We're not sure, however, what is more disturbing? These sick acts of vandalism or the fact that this college allows themselves to be victimized year after year. If it's really that important to them then hire some security or post student watches. Dammit. C'mon people!





For a city that can least afford it: Hundreds show up for bogus jobs fair in Detroit.

As Pops would say, "T'ain't cool, McGee."

It's come to this:

A Hamburg judge has filed a criminal complaint against Chancellor Angela Merkel for “endorsing a crime” after she stated she was “glad” that Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces. Meanwhile a new poll reveals that a majority of Germans do not see the terrorist’s death as a reason to celebrate…

Politicians, including those within her own center-right coalition, said that no death was cause for celebration, and reproved the remark as un-Christian and vengeful.

Un-Christian?
Considering it's Europe, should that not have been un-post-Christian?

Or as Jim Treacher put it: Deutschland über ball-less.




And finally, Steven Tyler and post-abortion trauma.

That is, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fame. Or perhaps, more relevantly these days, Steven Tyler of American Idol fame.

Follower blog post of the day

We've been slacking of late on getting out on the interwebs and seeing what our much-appreciated followers have been up to.

That was the end stage of socialist compassion. That was what "collapse the country’s pensions system" looked like once it had happened. There was nothing kind or charitable about it and the only thing it's proponents had left was their smug self-assurance that they had been "compassionate."

Socialists are notoriously bad at math. Always have been and because it's engrained in their DNA, they probably always will be. Too bad because math wins. Math always wins.


KT talks more about math and true compassion here.

Video clip of the day

Via the Blaze, 4 and a half minutes of simultaneous lefty hand-wringing/cheerleading regarding the revolution of the underclass.



As we were watching this a few things crosssed our mind. Despite the breathless promotion of this clip (we've seen it on FaceBook two-three times now), isn't this what these Marxist always say? Aren't they always warning against/goading a revolution which can only be prevented by a revolution or something.

We're not saying the overall fiscal conditions of this state, our country and many countries in southern and northern Europe are not in dire circumstances but the solution to these coming "food stamp riots" always seems to be... more food stamps.

In watching this, something else with respect to public perception, at least that in the political class, struck us. Reality has set in over in Europe and when the government attempts to install even modest austerity measures, thousands of people take to the streets rioting and destroying the properties and businesses of the very people, the producers, who have made their heretofore Euro-lifestyles possible. They want their free lunch, dammit! And the reaction over here is a general shoulder-shrug. Yep, that's what those Euros do when faced with the prospect of having to work an extra couple of years. They riot.

Meanwhile, over here, a few hundred people gathering peaceably in public places throughout the country demanding No more free lunch! - well then, that's an entirely different story. It's a sign of the decline of the Republic. Fiscal responsibility and fidelity to the Constitution are now just dog-whistle terms for the bigots and racists out there.

And what has the political class clearly freaked-out by these amiable flag-wavers is that they don't riot but they sure do vote and what this past November will hopefully prove is that change can be effected via the ballot box. And if the new leadership can govern in a manner that leads to a robust economy while also reforming/revising the structural budget burdens faced both at the state and federal level, then that will do more to restore this nation's standing with other nations than any manner of speechifying.

Of snow storms, debts and tipping points

Via Left Coast Rebel, a time-lapsed photo-log of the storm that hit the East Coast last week.

From Belmar, New Jersey:





And in other related news, KT has a fine post regarding the conflation of politics, public grants and the agendas of the faith-based AGW crowd and the resulting house of canards, here. KT wraps up his post with the following:

The end result of all of this will be cynicism from the press, the politicians and the public. Anyone standing with the global warming alarmists will end up looking like a fool, just like the UK MET Office.

This raised eyebrows in the comment section as some were wondering if the public was not standing alone in its skepticism of the mess the AGW crowd has left themselves.

The press and the pols may not be there yet but it's only a matter of time. Take this 60 Minutes piece (please!)
from a couple weeks back featuring New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, talking about the fiscal disasters awaiting the states.







Would we have seen something like this 10 years ago? Hell, would we have seen it 2 years ago? The flagship magazine program of the Tiffany Network acknowledging that we have a debt crisis?... a spending problem?

Every situation or crisis has its tipping point where no longer can an agenda or bias obscure the truth of the matter.

And strange as it seems, in our humble opinion, it was not even the run-away spending at the federal level that was cause for this sudden state-side awareness but rather the debt crisis in the EuroZone where the "California = Greece" narrative took hold.

No matter. By whatever impetus, the gig is up for the big spending days of the states and the faith-based AGW zealots' days are numbered as well.

Wikileakspalooza

Much ado about nothing...

After all the ballyhoo before the fact, the Wikileaks revelations thus far are pretty underwhelming. Although we’ve been seeing figures like 2.7 million and 251,287 for the number of documents released, so far there have been, er, 220 posted on the Wikileaks site.

Overall though, there is little to justify the screaming headlines of American foreign policy in crisis or being turned upside down. Instead, it’s a case of so far, so blah.

But you can see here the tantalising dates, subjects and places of origin of tens of thousands of other cables.

It seems to me that Assange is teasing Obama. Whereas the Afghanistan and Iraq war logs could be largely dismissed as Bush era material that didn’t really reflect on Obama, the State Department cables are different.

They go up to 28 February 2010, offering a potential window on Obama’s foreign policy which may well not show it in the sainted light he would prefer. It seems to me that Assange is teasing Obama, letting him know what WikiLeaks has and making him sweat.

Today was round one and the action was pretty tame. But there are plenty more rounds to come and Obama is on the back foot.

Or...

What action did the Obama administration take to prevent the impending release of such volatile information? State Department legal adviser Harold Koh sent a strongly worded letter urging WikiLeaks to cease publishing classified materials. I'm sure that made Assange think twice.

Is the Obama administration going to do anything - anything at all - to stop these serial disclosures of our nation's most closely guarded secrets? Just this past week, the federal government took decisive action to shut down more than 70 Web sites that were disseminating pirated music and movies. Hollywood is safe, but WikiLeaks is free to disseminate classified documents without consequence.

With this latest release, Assange may now have illegally disclosed more classified information than anyone in American history. He is in likely violation of the Espionage Act and arguably is providing material support for terrorism. But unlike leakers who came before him, Assange has done more than release information; he has created a virtual system for the ongoing collection and dissemination of America's secrets. The very existence of WikiLeaks is a threat to national security. Unless something is done, WikiLeaks will only grow more brazen - and our unwillingness to stop it will embolden others to reveal classified information using the unlawful medium Assange has built.

WikiLeaks' first disclosures caught the Obama administration by surprise. But how does the administration explain its inaction in the face of WikiLeaks' two subsequent, and increasingly dangerous, releases? In both cases, it had fair warning: Assange announced what kinds of documents he possessed, and he made clear his intention to release them.

The Obama administration has the ability to bring Assange to justice and to put WikiLeaks out of business. The new U.S. Cyber Command could shut down WilkiLeaks' servers and prevent them from releasing more classified information on President Obama's orders. But, as The Post reported this month, the Obama administration has been paralyzed by infighting over how, and when, it might use these new offensive capabilities in cyberspace. One objection: "The State Department is concerned about diplomatic backlash" from any offensive actions in cyberspace, The Post reported. Well, now the State Department can deal with the "diplomatic backlash" that comes from standing by helplessly, while WikiLeaks releases hundreds of thousands of its most sensitive diplomatic cables.

Because of its failure to act, responsibility for the damage done by these most recent disclosures now rests with the Obama administration. Perhaps this latest release crosses a line that will finally spur the administration to action. After all, the previous disclosures harmed only our war efforts. But this latest disclosure is a blow to a cause Democrats really care about - our diplomatic efforts. Maybe now, finally, the gloves will come off. Or is posting mournful tweets about the damage done to our national security the best this administration can do?

Plus, Spiegel Online International has a cool interactive global map that shows the quantities of dispatches being generated from U.S. embassies around the world with respect to time frames, here.

Link of the day

"...social programs that weren't investments, they were wish fulfillments."


Or why socialism fails again and again.


KT has more on Ireland and the EuroZone crisis, here.