America and Venezuela More Alike Then Folks Want To Admit

The parallels between events reported in this news story out of Venezuela and what is going on in this country under the Democrat led congress and executive branch struck me as more then a little bit ironic. The Dems are managing to make us into a third world country that will soon be the envy of the Organization of (Socialist) American States.

They were also angered when the Assembly President, Cilia Flores, accused them of obstructing the debate and ordered their microphones to be shut off.
“We decided to withdraw because they did not accept our proposals or recommendations,” said Juan Jose Molina of the Podemos party.

Do you remember this from last August when the Nancy Pelosi led congress adjourned so that she could started on her book tour aboard your taxpayer funded Gulfstream jet last year amidst the oil and gas crisis last year?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the Democrats adjourned the House, turned off the lights and killed the microphones, but Republicans are still on the floor talking gas prices.

Venezuela -

“They don’t use the word ’socialism,” said one of the protesters, “but that’s what they want to introduce in our schools.”

America -

President Obama was so miffed by repeated questions from New York Times reporters about whether his policies are "socialist" that he called the paper after their sit-down to set the record straight. "Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter—It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question," he said,

Venezuela -

After a marathon ten-hour session, the assembly — where Mr Chavez's party commands a majority — approved the Bill in the early hours of today.

America -

With the final vote coming late in the night, Congress yesterday approved a $787 billion stimulus package that aims to spur millions of jobs through massive new investments in energy, transportation, education and health-care projects, while reviving social safety-net programs that have been shrinking for nearly three decades.

Well I guess that is change we can all believe in.

King Obama Wants to Bypass Senate Ratification of U.S.-Russia Arms Treaty

Yeah, why bother with pesky little things like the Constitution? You're King Obama, you can do as you please.

I guess the Senate is too busy helping you wreck our economy to be bother with such trivial matters as arms treaties with one of our enemies.

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

"The most ideal situation would be to finish it in time that it could be submitted to the Senate so that it can be ratified," said White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control Gary Samore. "If we're not able to do that, we'll have to look at arrangements to continue some of the inspection provisions, keep them enforced in a provisional basis, while the Senate considers the treaty."

Samore said administration lawyers are exploring the "different options that are available. One option is that both sides could agree to continue the inspections by executive agreement; that would work on our side. On the Russian side, as I understand it, that would require Duma approval."

The fact that the administration is preparing for such an extraordinary measure shows just how much pressure the two administrations are under to arrive at an agreement before the 18-year-old treaty expires. While resident Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to announce progress tomorrow on a nuclear arms reduction treaty – nicknamed “New START” -- to take effect in just five short months, many sticking points that remain unresolved.

The Senate is able to write legislation in the middle of the night and vote on it without anyone reading it. Apparently, however, they can't work on this given five months notice.

So let's just ignore the Constitution!

Change!

Hilarity: Iran to Sue U.S., Great Britain Over Mosque Explosion

High comedy from those wacky Iranians. A pathetically transparent attempt at diverting attention from their activities in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere.

Iran's judiciary said on Monday it would file international lawsuits against the United States and Britain, accusing them of providing financial support to those behind a blast in a mosque that killed 14 people.

Iran's intelligence minister last week said Iran had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States who he said were involved in the explosion that also wounded 200 in the southern city of Shiraz.

Iranian officials had previously said the April 12 blast, during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric, was caused by explosives left over from an exhibition commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Judiciary spokesman Ali-Reza Jamshidi told state television the terrorists behind the bombing were agents of the U.S. and British governments in Iran.

"The relationship of those who planted the bombs in Shiraz with the U.S. and Britain was identified and they were being financially supported and in fact they acted as foreign agents in Iran," he said.

"In view of the documents obtained the judiciary in cooperation with the government and the Foreign Ministry will file lawsuits with international authorities against their supporters, who on the one hand claim to fight terrorists and on the other hand provide them with equipment," he said.

No doubt the UN will call for an investigation into alleged U.S. activities.

From the bizarro Press TV.

Fortunately, the investigation into this case is complete and there is ample evidence that different governments, especially that of the United States and Britain, supported the bombers, Jamshidi said on state television.

Iran's Intelligence Minister Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said on Thursday that the terrorist group had plans to carry out similar attacks in other cities.

Sovereignty Reigns

Poland against permanent Russian presence at U.S. missile base
Poland will not agree to the permanent presence of Russian military observers at a proposed U.S. missile base on its territory, the foreign minister said on Wednesday.

The idea of allowing Russians to monitor proposed U.S. missile defense bases in Central Europe was one of the proposals put forward by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates during their talks in Moscow on March 18 with Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"We will not allow the permanent presence of Russian military officers at a U.S. missile base [in Poland], but they will be able to conduct temporary inspections and monitoring," Radoslaw Sikorski said in an interview with the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.

The minister reiterated that Poland has not yet decided whether to allow the placement of a U.S. missile interceptor base on its territory, despite rumors circulated in Polish media.

"We are ready to expedite this process, but only after reaching a consensus [with the U.S.] on some conditions that I am not going to divulge," he said.

The George W. Bush administration earlier said it backed Warsaw's request for aid in modernizing its missile defenses.

The U.S. plans to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic citing a threat from Iran and other "rogue states," while Russia views these plans as a destabilizing factor for Europe and a threat to its national security.

Poland's new government led by Donald Tusk, which came to power in November last year, has taken a more cautious approach to the U.S. proposal than former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's cabinet, which fully supported the plan.

Sikorski said Poland will not share the cost of the construction of a missile base with the U.S.

In his 2009 budget proposal, President Bush requested $96 million for the development of missile shield elements, $382.6 million for the actual deployment of the complexes in Poland and the Czech Republic, and $241.2 million for construction works.

However, U.S. Congress said it would not allow the Bush administration to spend the allocated budget for the construction of the missile defense infrastructure in Poland and the Czech Republic in 2008, unless Washington signed bilateral agreements with these countries.

The neocoMs are seething.

Via RIA Novosti, Russian News & Information Agency

See also: U.S.-Czech treaty on radar base may be announced at NATO summit

Putin Begging for a Smackdown

Poor little Vlad.

Feels so irrelevant.

Maybe it's time we played some hardball.

U.S. fighter planes intercepted two Russian bombers, including one that buzzed an American aircraft carrier in the western Pacific during the weekend, The Associated Press has learned.

A U.S. military official says that one Russian Tupolev 95 flew directly over the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz twice, at a low altitude of about 2,000 feet, while another bomber circled about 58 miles out. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because the reports on the flights were classified as secret.

The Saturday incident, which never escalated beyond the flyover, comes amid heightened tensions between the United States and Russia over U.S. plans for a missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Such Russian bomber flights were common during the Cold War, but have been rare since.

The bombers were among four Russian Tupolev 95s launched from Ukrainka in the middle of the night, including one that Japanese officials say violated their country's airspace over an uninhabited island south of Tokyo.

U.S. officials tracked and monitored the bombers as two flew south along the Japanese coast, and two others flew farther east, coming closer to the Nimitz and the guided missile cruiser USS Princeton.

As the bombers got about 500 miles out from the U.S. ships, four F/A-18 fighters were launched from the Nimitz, the official said. The fighters intercepted the Russian bombers about 50 miles south of the Nimitz.

At least two U.S. F/A-18 Hornets trailed the bomber as it came in low over the Nimitz twice, while one or two of the other U.S. fighters followed the second bomber as it circled.

The official said there were no verbal communications between the U.S. and the Russians, and the Pentagon has not heard of any protests being filed by the United States. Historically, diplomatic protests were not filed in such incidents because they were so common during the Cold War era.

Iran: U.S. Navy Video and Audio a Fake

For sheer comic relief alone, the Iranian news outlet Press TV is a hoot. It comes off as a version of The Onion for mad mullahs.

Today, Ron Paul's biggest supporters veer off into fantasy-land by claiming the video and audio taken by the U.S. Navy in the Straits of Hormuz the other day is a fabrication.

IRGC says the US video of Sunday's incident in Hormuz Strait involving Iran patrol boats and US ships is archive footage and the audio is fake.

A member of the Navy Forces of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) told Press TV on Wednesday that the footage released by the US Navy had been compiled using file pictures and the audio had been fabricated.

Earlier Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said the incident was a normal identification request by the Iranian side.

Outside of the far-left fringe in this country and assorted Koolaid drinkers around the world, I don't see how anyone can think this is staged.

A bit of projection though, since they know all about fake videos.

See for yourself.

UPDATE: More from Jules Crittenden.

Hamas: Gaza Worse Than Warsaw Ghetto

Sure looks like Gaza

Nothing like a proper historical analogy.

THE Hamas rulers of Gaza have implored the US to bring an end to the crippling boycott of the Gaza Strip, which they have likened to the World War II siege of Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto.

In the militant group's first public appeal to the US since it won democratic elections in the Palestinian Territories in January last year Hamas said yesterday it did not have "any ideological arguments with the West".

Really? To say that strains credulity would be the understatement of the decade.

Hamas spokesman, Ahmed Yousef, said the group had tried unsuccessfully many times to directly contact US and European Union officials. Israeli Government sources also claim that deposed Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya attempted to contact officials in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office in the weeks following his poll win.

However, in an open letter to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice released yesterday, Hamas made public its bid for dialogue, underscoring the increasingly desperate predicament of the leadership and of Gaza's 1.4 million residents.

Now it gets really amusing.

After its emphatic electoral win, Hamas embarked on a law-and-order program, vowing to end corruption and turn the attention of the administration towards domestic affairs. But the US, the UN, the EU and Russia then launched a boycott of the new government that has intensified ever since.

In the letter to Dr Rice, Mr Yousef said: "It is hard to get across the appalling level of (hardship) that the Palestinian people, and in particular the 1.3 million Palestinians who live in Gaza, currently suffer from.

A law-and-order program?

Huh?

This, however, is really sickening.

"Our isolation is complete, confining us in a ghetto (worse than the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw) where our sewage, power and water systems have been destroyed, all normal supplies constrained and even humanitarian aid withheld. Many people have not been paid for nearly two years, over 75 per cent are unemployed and now the Israelis are threatening to cut off fuel and power and invade us once again.

Whose fault is this? Sure as hell isn't Israel's. Sure isn't the United States.

How about looking at youself, Mr. Yousef.

For good measure, they then play the race card. May as well insult everybody while you're at it.

"You cannot preach about exporting democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan and ignore the democratic process in Palestine," the letter continues.

"On a personal note, we found it amusing that a black person empathises with Israeli deaths on the one hand and Palestinian segregation on the other - if media reports are accurate. It is a military occupation, Dr Rice.

"Their citizens face insecurity and death because that is the situation they have created for themselves ... If you were even-handed in this conflict, if you engaged with us openly, then the chances of peace would dramatically increase.

Mongolia Joins American Empire

Yes, Mongolia.

Boy, did this U.S. expansion ever fly under the radar.

Wait until the left finds out.

You can already see the protest signs, but I'll fix the inevitable misspellings in advance:

U.S. Out of Mongolia Now!

The Midnight Sun reports:

Quick, what are Mongolia’s three geographic neighbors? There’s Russia to the North, China to the South—and then, of course, there is ... America?

In an odd geopolitical move, Mongolia has volunteered to join America’s global empire, designating the United States as its “third neighbor”—I am not making that up—and adopting English as its official second language, even though the nearest English-speaking nation is thousands of miles away.

More here.

THE US$285 million Millennium Challenge compact assistance program to reduce poverty through economic growth in Mongolia was signed on October 22. President N.Enkhbayar and President George W. Bush signed the five-year agreement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in a sober ceremony marked with quiet but confident optimism. The Mongolian head of state began his US visit on Monday.

Speaking before the ceremony, Enkhbayar termed the approval of the agreement by the MCC Board of Directors as “one of the most significant events” for Mongolia this year. “All Mongolian people are excited about the agreement and its subsequent implementation,” he said.

Wait, what have we got here? Just as we suspected. A business interest.

Polo Resources Ltd said its Polo Resources LLC unit has acquired a 100 pct interest in a large coal exploration license in the South Gobi Coal Basin in Mongolia for 350,000 usd.

The natural resources investment and mining company said the project covers 550 square kilometres of Permian sediments known to host some of the region's better coal deposits.

There we go again. Cold, heartless Western capitalists raping another country's natural resources.

Mwuhahaha.

H/T Daphne.

UPDATE: The Mongolian Movement has gained traction at Instapundit.

Thanks for the link!

Repeating the Obvious

It appears Iran is going at full speed to get nukes, and most people just don't seem to care.

It's climate change, stupid!

The mind boggles at the naivete.

'Time running out for Iran strike'

"For significant sanctions to be effective the world needs to at the same time threaten the use of military force," he said. "Iran needs to be made to understand that if the sanctions won't work, the world is prepared to use military force to stop the nuclear program."

He said Iran was preparing for the possibility of war, but that deep down the Islamic leadership did not believe that either the United States or Israel were in a position of strength that would enable them to launch such a complicated military operation. Iran, he said, was purchasing Russian air defense systems and was fortifying its nuclear facilities and moving key elements to underground bunkers in preparation for the possibility that its assessments were wrong and it would in the end be attacked.

"The Iranians are working around the clock on improving military capabilities and they are also moving centrifuges to underground facilities," he said.

Kuperwasser said that a real threat of military action - backed up by credible threats by world leaders as well as the deployment of a large military force to the region - could have the right effect in deterring Iranian leaders from continuing with their nuclear program.

A credible military threat combined with economic leverage had a chance at preventing the need for a future clash with a nuclear Iran and perhaps could also make it unnecessary to deal today with an Iran that is close to nuclearization, he said.

Obviously, the Democrats, due to the Islamic-Leftist convergence, have no use for taking on Iran, which may well leave it up to Israel to act unilaterally. I have to believe President Bush, despite low poll numbers, will use common sense and order strikes on these facilities. His legacy may already be tarnished enough, but he cannot leave office with a nuclear Iran threatening the rest of the civilized world.

Delusions of Dialogue

Rich Lowry nails it on the absurd efforts to have a dialogue with Iran.

Where are the human-rights groups expressing their outrage? The liberal filmmakers readying their scathing documentaries? The European opinionmakers condescendingly tut-tutting? Nowhere to be found, because they never want to give up their pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Engagement.

If talking with the Iranians doesn't work, it is because we aren't talking to them enough; or the wrong people (i.e., not the United States) are talking to them; or when we're talking to them, we aren't saying the right things; or we haven't talked to them long enough - or maybe they don't realize just how very sincere we are in our talking. But, surely, sometime soon, if we just keep talking and offering to talk, all these "misunderstandings" will fade away.

Read it all.

More Money Down the Rathole

Will we ever learn?

U.S. to vet Abbas's forces before training begins

Members of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard eligible for U.S.-funded training and equipment will be screened in advance for militant ties, U.S. documents showed on Wednesday.

The Bush administration is trying to allay concerns raised by some U.S. lawmakers and Israeli officials that a portion of the $59.4 million program for the presidential guard could inadvertently benefit militants from al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, which is linked to Abbas's Fatah faction, or Hamas.

The groups are considered "terrorist organizations" by the United States and
Israel.

Under the program, the United States will provide $14.5 million for "basic and advanced training" for the presidential guard and $23 million for non-lethal equipment.

Another $2.9 million in U.S. funds will be used to upgrade the presidential guard's training facilities, including a sprawling new base being build in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank.

A U.S. government document, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, said members of the presidential guard will undergo a series of local background checks before receiving any U.S.-funded training.

Giving our enemies free money is not sound policy, to put it mildly.