"When the new Republican is sworn in, we the people would like the Churchill bust back in the oval office." UK Telegraph commenter Charlie Crenshaw. (Hey, Cameron, Up yours, signed, The Kinks.)
3/15/12, "Starstruck David Cameron's embarrassing fawning over Barack Obama and his 'beautiful words'," UK Telegraph, Toby Herndon
"Then comes what must surely be one of the most obsequious things Obama - who is well used to adulation - has ever heard. Obama, says Cameron "has pressed the reset button on the moral authority of the entire free world".
What? Pass the sickbag. Whichever way you look at it, that's ridiculous....Drone strikes have increased exponentially - it being judged easier to kill suspects than capture and interrogate them. Military trials outside the federal system continue, as does indefinite detention without trial.
Certainly, Obama has delivered some "beautiful words" around the world, starting in Berlin before he was even the Democratic nominee and continuing in Cairo. In Strasbourg, he apologised for the times when "America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive" towards its allies.
But Obama has certainly shown arrogance and dismissiveness towards the UK in a way that President George W. Bush never did. Israel considers the US an unreliable ally under Obama. Iran's green revolutionaries might question Obama's "moral authority" after he allowed them to be crushed by Tehran's theocratic regime, as might the Syrian rebels and civilians currently dying at the hands of President Bashar Assad.
Then there was this passage, in which Cameron chucks in the names of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King for no apparent reason at all - other than, presumably and patronisingly, because Obama is black: "Half a century ago, the amazing courage of Rosa Parks, the visionary leadership of Martin Luther King, and the inspirational actions of the civil rights movement led politicians to write equality into the law and make real the promise of America for all her citizens.
"But in the fight for justice and the struggle for freedom, there is no end, because there is so much more to do to ensure that every human being can fulfill their potential. That is why our generation faces a new civil rights struggle, to seek the prize of the future that is open to every child as never before. Barack has made this one of the goals of his presidency, the goal he's pursuing with enormous courage."
What on earth is Cameron talking about? Gay marriage? Obama's against that, publicly at least. Healthcare reform? Or maybe it's just what it sounds - utter vacuity....
He only added to this error by his fawning praise of the man he referred to earlier in the day as "Mr President Barack" - which only reinforces the sense that the UK the much junior partner in the much-vaunted (in the UK) "special relationship".
For a British prime minister to align himself with one side in American politics is a rookie error. To do it with the party on the opposite side (supposedly) of the political spectrum is pure folly.
And, of course, 41 of the 364 guests were - surprise, surprise - major Obama fundraisers. The White House drew up the guest list but if there's anyone with backbone in Downing Street (maybe a forlorn hope, I know) there will be a protest about the way Cameron was used to entertain Democratic donors being rewarded for their largesse in an election year.
Come next year, Cameron - assuming he is still in office - may very well find himself having to deal with a President Mitt Romney. If so, the first thing he'll have to do is mend some fences."
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"The essence of contemporary British identity is waiting two years for a hip operation."...
Jan. 2011, "Dependence Day," Mark Steyn, New Criterion
"Not so long ago, Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian and soi-disant Islamophobe, flew into London and promptly got shipped back to the Netherlands as a threat to public order. After the British Government had reconsidered its stupidity,
- he was permitted to return and give his speech at the House of Lords—
and, as foreigners often do, he quoted Winston Churchill, under the touchingly naive assumption that this would endear him to the natives. Whereas, of course, to almost all members of Britain’s governing elite, quoting Churchill approvingly only
- confirms that you’re an extremist lunatic.
I had the honor a couple of years back of visiting President Bush in the White House and seeing the bust of Churchill on display in the Oval Office. When Barack Obama moved in, he ordered Churchill’s bust be removed and returned to the British. Its present whereabouts are unclear. But, given what Sir Winston had to say about Islam in his book on the Sudanese campaign, the
- bust was almost certainly arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order.
The United Kingdom has the highest drug use in Europe, the highest incidence of sexually transmitted disease, the highest number of single mothers; marriage is all but defunct, except for toffs, upscale gays, and Muslims. For Americans, the quickest way to understand modern Britain is to look at what LBJ’s Great Society did to the black family and imagine it applied to the general population. One-fifth of British children are raised in homes in which no adult works. Just under 900,000 people have been off sick for over a decade, claiming “sick benefits,” week in, week out, for ten years and counting. “Indolence,” as Machiavelli understood, is the greatest enemy of a free society, but
- rarely has any state embraced this oldest temptation as literally as Britain.
- There is almost nothing you can’t get the government to pay for.
Plucked at random from The Daily Mail: A man of twenty-one with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers’ money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute. Why not? His social worker says
- sex is a “human right” and that his client,
being a virgin, is entitled to the support of the state in claiming said right. Fortunately, a £520 million program was set up by Her Majesty’s Government to “empower those with disabilities.” “He’s planning to do more than just have his end away,” explained the social worker."...
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Ed. note: "There's no England Anymore," 1/1/09, Michael Savage leads into the Kinks' song.
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