Achtung! Nice Guys Finish Last

Ouch! You know your foreign policy strategy is in dire straits when the Europeans accuse you of being too much of wimp. First it was the French President Sarkozy saying Obama was being soft on Iran, now the Germans are saying Obama is Jimmy Carter II. From Der Spiegel:

The mood in Obama's foreign policy team is tense following an extended Asia trip that produced no palpable results. The "first Pacific president," as Obama called himself, came as a friend and returned as a stranger. The Asians smiled but made no concessions.

No word yet on whether or not MSNBC is going to condescendingly criticize our German allies like they usually do for Obama's detractors. But, in defense of President Obama, there's really not much he could do to influence the Chinese on anything, since they are effectively financing our over-consumption and we the people will not elect politicians who will get our fiscal house in order. Perhaps Der Spiegel is just saying welcome to the club of nation-states that are burdened with a massive entitlement complex and a geezerly population. At least we'll ride out the Decline of Western Civilization in solidarity.

UN Continues to Make a Mockery of Itself

NYC: Downgraded to Totalitarian Backwater

Not that there's anything wrong with the UN Millennium Development Goals, I mean, who doesn't support ending poverty and world hunger? It's just a bit odd about how the entire organization takes its approach. After the UN Human Rights Council recognized "exceptions" to freedom of speech to appease Islamic dictators, and thinking that letting a thug like Ahmadinejad have the podium would be a swell idea, they now have their sights set on that miserable, hellhole of humanity...New York City. From NY Times:

The United Nations Human Rights Council appoints a rapporteur, or independent experts, to investigate human rights conditions around the world. In the case of Ms. Rolnik, a professor of urban planning at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, her “mission” is to tour New York City and six other places in the United States and to report back to the United Nations General Assembly about housing rights violations and advances.

After that, “We send off letters to governments to ask, ‘Is this true? What’s going on?’ and to please intervene,” she said.

This is a great use of my tax dollars. Yes, NYC is expensive, as any American could tell you. Maybe they can ask why I had to pay $20 for a wireless connection at a hotel in Manhattan that was already $250 a night for a wedding I went to last year. They could even appoint Muammar Qaddafi to preside over the investigation instead of looking into human rights abuses like child soldiers, refugees being brutally killed, and other minor issues.

Must Have Been a Slow Year in the Peace Business

Uh, aren't you supposed to actually do something to win the Nobel Peace Prize (see the 2006 Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, who actually accomplished quite a bit besides running a presidential campaign). Shit, at least Al Gore made a half-ass documentary. Politico cites the reason:

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

But what major foreign policy breakthroughs has he accomplished, not just promised to accomplish? If these are the standards for winning the award, then Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas" should've won it every year. And, yes, this post obviously means I hate America.

Please Mr. President, No Amateur Hour at the UN

Our President's liberal domestic agenda may be loathsome, but I would at least hope that he's good at the whole grip-n'-grin thing with international leaders (like Clinton was). Something that has been important for American heads of state since our Founding Fathers had to ham it up in France to get support for the Revolutionary War. He already has the media, unions, and Wall Street lining up to kiss his ass, how hard can it be to schmooze a few people with hard-to-pronounce last names?

Apparently though, it's pretty tough. Obama is heading off to the UN this week, and Politico has an interesting article about all the work the White House staff has to do to make sure nothing gets fucked up. From Politico:

But avoiding an insistent suitor at the bustling U.N. headquarters can be difficult – despite the painstaking efforts aides sometimes take to send a U.S. president down a different hallway, or into a different corner of a meeting hall to avoid unwelcome diplomatic advances.

“It’s inevitable that you’re going to be in the same room with people,” said John Bolton, U.N. Ambassador under President George W. Bush. “It’s not like the Secret Service controls the floor of the Security Council. If Ahmadinejad just comes up to Obama and talks to him, who’s going to stand in the way?”

Sure, keeping the President away from Ahmadinejad might prevent dickheads like me on the internet from posting funny pictures, and avoiding a few Middle Eastern thugs-in-chief might be no problem. But, I think the real trick will be avoiding the Chinese delegation. After the trade war Obama seems to have kicked off with tariffs on tires and our dollar sucking ass, I'd spend more time thinking up clever excuses.

Great Britain Goes to the Bums

If you would've said 100 years ago that the country responsible for most of the modern world's ideas on everything from democracy to military tradition to the world's international language would be some second-tier socialist backwater, it would've been bullocks. But it seems the once great nation is having some very serious problems apart from their Prime Minister getting caught up in a "Blood for Oil" scandal. Newsweek pinned the decline of Great Britain on the economic crisis, but the Sunday Times notes a dangerous entitlement mentality that is dragging down the country from within:

Those cautionary words haunt us now as we discover that 5m adults have not worked since Labour came to power 12 years ago. Even excluding those who are in education or have only recently completed it, and discounting those who have left the labour market through age or ill health, 2.5m have been jobless since 1997 at least. There are now 3.3m households — one in six — with no one over the age of 16 in employment and 1.9m children living in families without a parent in work.

While the recession is increasing the numbers, it clearly did not cause the problem. Those millions remained idle during 10 years of boom when the economy created many jobs that immigrants happily filled. The workless have been immune to programmes of training and mentoring. No reform in our education system has dented their numbers and repeated efforts to tighten the criteria for invalidity benefits or “sharpen” claimants’ contact with the labour market have failed.

Why would you work if you could sit around playing Xbox all day and collecting paychecks from the government? Sure, society should do something to help the poor, but at what point does it become a dangerous cycle of dependence? These are questions I don't think politicians think about as they buy votes by sending their respective country's deeper into debt.

Will Hillary Clinton Embarrass America in Thailand?

So Far, So Good! (photo of Hillary Clinton with Thai PM Abhisit from BP)

It's pretty tough to fuck up diplomatic relations with a country that is generally welcoming of foreigners and has had friendly ties with the US for over 100 years. About the only way to do it would be to insult the King, knock over a Buddha statue during a drunken bender, or con your way out of a bar fine. And I'm proud to say our country's top diplomat has not done any of these losing-face gaffes as of 8:30pm in Bangkok. Uh, U-S-A, U-S-A. From Wall Street Journal:

Total trade between the U.S. and Asean exceeded $178 billion in 2008, and, in an opinion piece Mrs. Clinton wrote that was published in Bangkok newspapers Tuesday, she said "there is no doubt that our economies' fortunes and our nations' futures are more intertwined than ever before."

Some regional analysts see the Asean grouping as the kernel of a broader free trade bloc spanning the Pacific and also encompassing China, Japan, South Korea. Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to sign a non-aggression pact with Asean in Phuket, as China did in 2003, which diplomats say could enable the U.S. to later enmesh itself within the so-called East Asia Summit group, which includes the ten Asean members plus trade partners China, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and Australia.

The free trade stuff with Southeast Asia is all well and good, and she's trying to get the ASEAN countries to put the squeeze on the usual suspects (Islamic terrorists, North Korea, Burma), which is good as well. I'll give her bonus points if she can calm the country down about this CIA black site business.

Believe it or not, besides her scary offical cabinet photo, I have a lot of confidence in Hillary as the Secretary of State. IMHO of a good diplomat, you need someone smart, well-educated, and the ability to be conniving and manipulative while putting on a bullshit smile, something Hillary Clinton has in droves.

Sausage Fest in China Has Huge Unintended Consequences

Sausage Parties May Be Hazardous to your Wallet

It's no secret that China's infamous "one-child policy", which favored the male child-births through the humanitarian procedure of infanticide, resulted in a male-female ratio worse than a RPG gamer convention. Unsurprising to any dude who has ever been immersed in a mostly male profession, lovelorn guys are getting easily ripped off by con-artist ladies. Dowries paid by rural gents in China to the brides family are turning out be a worse investment than GM stock. WSJ reports:

He proposed marriage. She agreed, with one proviso: cai li of 38,000 yuan, or roughly five years' worth of farm income. The Zhous agreed, but took the precaution of running a quick background check. Tang Yunshou, Xin'an's Communist Party secretary, said Ms. Cai's identity and residential papers checked.

Three days later the couple registered their union at the local registrar's office. They posed for studio shots, with the bride in a creamy satin gown, the groom in a tuxedo. In one shot, they wear traditional garb, the bride pretending to light a string of firecrackers. Mr. Zhou mugs a grimace, hands to his ears.

They held the wedding banquet a week later, on Jan. 4, where Mr Zhou's mother formally handed over the dowry -- half of it loans from family members -- to a woman she believed to be Ms. Cai's cousin.

The new bride took up residence with her in-laws, and quickly found favor with her diligent and respectful ways, said Mrs. Zhou. "I treated her better than my own daughter," she said. A red electric scooter, with ribbons on the handles, sits in the living room, a wedding present for Ms. Cai.

Matrimony was catching. Two neighbors sought Ms. Cai out, and asked her to act as matchmaker for their sons. Ms. Cai recommended two girls within a few days. The neighbors each paid 40,000 yuan in cai li.

On Jan. 28, all these brides vanished, leaving the villagers reeling.

If you can't trust the Xin'an Communist Secretary to run a simple background check on your fiancee, who can you trust?!?

I'd suggest to Mr. Zhou to come to Bangkok's seedier areas, where you see hundreds of bored women sitting around waiting for foreign men to spend money on them (yes, the recession seems to have really hit everybody). But that would imply that people actually had the money to travel in our new world-wide, economic malaise.

President Obvious Realizes Diplomacy With a Psychopathic Despot Might Not Work

With North Korea testing nukes and short range missiles, as well as threatening a military strike against South Korea, the President is comprehending that the "Strongly worded UN Resolution" with all bite and no bark might not be the way to go. From Bloomberg:

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said yesterday that the U.S. wants North Korea to “pay a price” for its “reckless behavior.” The U.S. is working within the UN Security Council to toughen sanctions on Kim’s regime. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, due in Singapore later in the week for a regional conference, will confer with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts on the North Korean threat.

SECSTATE Clinton is certainly swinging more to the "stick" approach, and even Japan is talking about drawing up plans for a preemptive strike.

Al-Jazeera talks about what motivates the most oppressive and delusional regime in the modern world:

But that is not all North Korea wants - it also wants to survive.

North Korea's leaders and its most senior military commanders have too much at stake to risk the collapse of the secretive, highly militarised, and deeply paranoid state over which they rule.

North Korea is a country built on illusion, lies, half truths and propaganda - reality comes a long way down the list.

But that does not mean it is not a danger.

The more belligerent it becomes, the more agreements it scraps, the more talks it walks away from, the less likely it is that the process of peaceful disarmament remains an option.

Sort of like the white trash guy at the end of the block who can't feed his own kids but always has the most impressive fireworks on July 4th.

Is Obama Turning Us Euro?

(From the Famous Website Gay? or Eurotrash?)

Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting read at PJs about how Obama is turning America into some lame, over-regulated nanny-state like our cousins across the pond, and we don't even have millenia of artsy civilization and a Love Parade to fall back on. From Pajamas Media:

What worries me about Obama is not the specifics of the nationalization of GM and Chrysler, the government rescue of the United Auto Workers, the effort to take over college financing, proposed universal health care, massive deficits and tax increases, although they are worrisome and only the beginning, but the attendant culture of ‘inflate your tires’ and ‘wash your hands’ paternalism. I think we are entering an age in which the federal government will increasingly guide our thoughts into what is deemed correct-the sort of car we must drive, the type of salary we should make, the sort of job we should have, even the type of thoughts we are to express, and all in the name of collective brotherhood.

Some esteemed European commenters say they appreciate the way things are set up over there. But, you only need to look to the failures of our nation's biggest state for an explanation of why big government spending is disastrous in America. Frankly, American society seems to be degenerating from one that had valued innovation and individual achievement into a society of "Dude, where's my unemployment check?" Nothing showed that decline more than the results of the recent election of the Obama administration with its promises of government goodies for the middle class. Sure, we still have our guaranteed personal freedoms, but even those are being encroached upon for the "greater good" on all fronts.

Hell, if Professor Hanson wants to see progress, he only needs to come to Asia. I see all sorts of cranes perched over Bangkok, and Thailand is supposedly the country that can never get its shit together. I would visit the fast-growing and modernizing countries of China and India, but it might be too depressing to have that moment where I realize that my own country is on the outs of history.

Chinese Bureaunerds Shut Down Sex-Themed Park

Since China is coming up on its 20-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, it should heed the true test of a free society, which is allowing a saucy sex-themed park to open to the public. Unfortunately, Chinese officials have decided to nix plans for the deliciously raunchy "Love Land" in Chongqing. From The Guardian (h/t Weird Asia News):

Developers billed the attraction in Chongqing as tasteful and socially beneficial. But senior officials conducted an emergency tour of Love Land last weekend after it attracted worldwide publicity, state media reported today.

"The investigation determined the park's content was vulgar and that it was neither healthy nor educational. It had had an evil influence on society and had to be torn down immediately," a municipal publicity official told the Global Times newspaper.

She added that the owners of the attraction were "interested only in profiting from sensationalism".

The decision to kill Love Land may have not had to do with moral outrage but rather economic growth, because the sex biz in nearby Thailand has been in trouble along with the rest of the tourist industry. Perhaps China will resort to alternate tourist attractions to bring in foreigner money like "Whack a Tibetan Monk Land" or the "Sell Your Kidneys Adventure Park".

China Needs More Smokers

This is one way to deal with an economic crisis. Get a bunch of people hooked on one of the most addictive substances around and tax the bejeezus out of it. From FOX:

Officials in China have reportedly been told to puff their way through four and a half million cigarettes a year.

Staff at local government offices in Hubei province were given the order in a move intended to set an example for the rest of the nation, according to state media.

And if they fail to smoke their way through 230,000 packs of locally-produced cigarettes, the officials could face fines.

Brands such as Huanghelou have been earmarked as part of the official quota.

"The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax," local official Chen Nianzu told the Global Times.

Smokers tend to kick the bucket earlier as well, thereby costing less to the state-run health industry. The U.S. could probably adopt a similar policy of "smoke 'em if you got 'em" with Obama as the spokesman since a whole array of social programs are funded through smokers and that tax-paying base is dying off. But since we live in a democracy, you have to give the appearance that you "care" about the people or some crap.

Let's Drop the Anti-French Schtick and Turn Our Ire Towards the Dutch

More Amsterdam Weirdness Here

So 6 years after "Freedom Fries" came into the American lexicon as a symbol of our disdain for all things euro-weenie, we're seeing the French Navy defying all stereotypes and really kicking pirate ass . From Fox (by way of TSO):

When the boats were close enough, Lt. Commander Jean-Marc le Quilliec sent his commandos out on outboards, with a helicopter to provide air support.

The helicopter fired two warning shots to stop the three boats from fleeing and within minutes the 11 pirates had surrendered.

Two of the attack boats were small skiffs which the pirates used as attack vessels and the third was a 30-foot mothership, used to transport supplies such as petrol, water and food.

I also recently visited Yorktown, where if the French weren't helping us out, we might still be under the rule of the hated British. So, perhaps we were all a bit hasty in castigating the French earlier this decade, showing our boorish and uncouth nature as Americans.

But, let's not spare any mercy for those commies in the Netherlands! The New York Times Magazine has an extensive article about the pros and cons of a writer living under the social safety net of the Dutch:

Geert Mak, the Dutch author, insisted that happiness is tied directly to the social system. We were sitting at his favorite cafe, a hangout of Dutch journalists since the end of World War II, and the genial, old-wood setting of the place, as well as its location, around the corner from the Dam and the center of the city’s history, added a bit of luster to his words and reminded me, for the thousandth time, why I’m still here, despite the downside. “One problem with the American system,” he said, “is that if you lose your job and are without an income, that’s not just bad for you but for the economy. Our system has more security. And I think it makes our quality of life better. My American friends say they live in the best country in the world, and in a lot of ways they are right. But they always have to worry: ‘What happens to my family if I have a heart attack? What happens when I turn 65 or 70?’ America is the land of the free. But I think we are freer.”

Hmm, I'm curious from any commenters across the pond. It seems that the state ultimately has you "over a barrel" from cradle to grave by getting you wrapped up into various social programs. We have too many as it is in the States and the culture of entitlement has led to some notable decay in otherwise once prosperous cities (e.g. Detroit). Also, the pro side of a large safety net assumes that the purpose of life is "happiness", but then you run into this Eloi-like culture of frolicking and doing it in the streets just waiting for some Morlock to come eat you. But that's just my dumb opinion, what's yours?

Idiotic UN Racism Conference Turns Into an Actual Clown Show

Who Would've Thought This Guy Would Say Something Stupid?

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for the U.N. No one explicitly likes having kids in poverty, genocide, or racism in the modern world. But it's not very hard to predict that Ahmadinejad, whose stranglehold on power in Iran lies largely by feeding the uninformed masses his anti-Zionist nonsense, would level a bunch of a propaganda when he was given a platform to speak. From WaPo:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad argued before a U.N. anti-racism conference Monday that Israel is a "paragon of racism" founded on "the pretext of Jewish sufferings" during World War II..."Following World War II," he continued, according to an official English-language text of his remarks, "they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless, on the pretext of Jewish sufferings and the ambiguous and dubious question" of the Holocaust.

It didn't take a crystal ball for President Obama to know we were best to boycott this turd of a conference in the first place. What is pathetic, is that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, just yesterday, expressed "shock" and was upset that the US withdrew from the Durban conference because the atrocities of the Holocaust was adequately factored into the program. But later today, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, had to issue a press release saying he was appalled by madman Ahmadinejad's comments. Once again, the UN looks like a bunch of embarrassing imbeciles at their utter Uncompetence.

However, the saving grace of the racism conference was these protesters dressed as clowns, who by screaming loudly and being escorted from the room, provided the most coherent message of the day (h/t Gateway Pundit for the video):

The U.S.A. is Still Teh Awesome (Somali Pirate Version)

Now with a Special Easter Edition!

While news of late regarding America's declining economy and political corruption has been truly upsetting, it is comforting to know that the U.S.A. can still place three well-aimed shots into Somali brain matter from a Destroyer and still have time for the Easter egg hunt.

The Awesome: North Korean Satellite To Provide 24/7 Edu-Tainment on Dear Leader!

The Pentagon says North Korea's little bottle rocket plunked in the drink somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, but don't believe their IMPERIALI$T LIES! Danger Room dug up a statement that is much closer to the truth from the ever-reliable Korean Central News Agency:

"The satellite is transmitting the melodies of the immortal revolutionary paeans 'Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung' and 'Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il' as well as measurement data back to Earth," KCNA said, referring to North Korea's founder and his successor.

Some friends and I were watching Garth Marenghi recently, and I hope Kim Jong Il does a Karaoke version of One Track Lover:

It'd definitely be an improvement over most of what passes for television these days.

Germans Aren't Buying This Stimulus Nonsense

The President's car-salesman abilities might be put to the test in trying to convince the G20 that they have to pump a bunch of stimulus Euros into their economies. Germany's chancellor is saying "nein" to any prospect of government intervention for Europe's largest economy. From CSM:

But Merkel, diplomats say, has combined a profound German instinct against debt – and its accompanying inflation – with a widely held sentiment here that the US and Wall Street are to blame for creating the global crisis. Ahead of German elections in September, the chancellor is also arguing that Europe's social safety net already constitutes enough of a stimulus and a higher percentage of debt than what's been offered by the US and Britain.

"We were living beyond our means," Ms. Merkel said at a meeting March 28. "After the Asian crisis and after 9/11, governments encouraged risk taking in order to boost growth. We cannot repeat this mistake."

Seeing how hyperinflation and overspending brought down the Weimar Republic and led to the rise of the Third Reich, which didn't work out so well, the German Chancellor seems knowledgeable of history repeating itself. But CSM notes that the Germans might be trying to sandbag their stimulus in the hopes that other countries do it and they can live off the exports. Since American TARP funds going to AIG payed off billions to German banks, I'd say the Germans have a pretty crafty strategy going.

U.N. Rolls Back Civilization to the Dark Ages By Banning Free Speech

Uh, that's not change we can believe in. The dog and pony show known as the U.N. Human Rights Council has passed a resolution saying criticizing religion is a human rights violation. From Reuters:

A United Nations forum on Thursday passed a resolution condemning "defamation of religion" as a human rights violation, despite wide concerns that it could be used to justify curbs on free speech in Muslim countries.

The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the non-binding text, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states, with a vote of 23 states in favour and 11 against, with 13 abstentions.

Freedom of Speech has been a bedrock to modern society for centuries, so it's beyond the scope of this blog to argue why silencing dissent might be problematic. But, Jules Crittenden explains how it's a MoToon thing. Congressman Franks (R-AZ) urged against the ban, and the U.S. does not have a vote since it withdrew in protest from the council back in 2008.

You could start burying ammo in the back yard because you fear dudes in blue helmets are coming to take you away, but, then again, you could realize that the UN is completely fucking incapable of doing anything. Still, it's a slap in the face to individuals forced to live under tyrannical regimes that the UN Human Rights council is supposedly trying to help.

Jihad Chic in London

An Afghan reporter from Newsweek highlights some troubling extremist trends in the international community. However, it's not from Peshawar, Tehran, or Medina, but...London?!? From Newsweek:

In fact, during my three-month stay in England I met a surprising number of Muslims who shared Jan's fascination with the Taliban. The older generation, urbane and relatively well educated, had little love for the extremists. But among some younger men, frustrated and marginalized in British society, I discovered a fury that was depressingly familiar. I met many immigrants who were blatant, vocal and unquestioning in their support for what they imagined to be "jihad." Few seemed troubled by the brutality that characterized Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's reign, or by his banning of music or girls' education. Indeed, many looked back on Omar's rule as a kind of Islamic utopia, and they eagerly snapped up the Islamist leaflets handed out after Friday prayers at various mosques around town.

This comes on the heels of an incident in early March where members of the fundamentalist Islamic community were seen protesting (Westboro Baptist Church-style) a military parade honoring some fallen British soldiers in Iraq. These clowns have vowed to continue their disgraceful demagoguery.

The Newsweek report from our allies in England is indeed disturbing, and you have to ask why the Muslim community in the U.S. is so much different than in Europe. Is it because they are less affluent and less educated across the pond? Does America's melting pot and "love it or leave it" mentality do a better job of assimilation? Following 9/11, I was at UCLA which has a large Arabic/Persian student body, and the sentiment seemed to be why we weren't immediately bombing those "Taliban pieces of shit" into the stone age on 9/12. This one liquor store I used to buy booze at in the Valley (owned by an Arabic gentleman) had American flags and patriotic stickers that would rival a Toby Keith concert. It was practically comical like the Simpsons episode where Apu pretends he's not an immigrant. While this is all observational evidence on my own part, it has been proven with extensive polling that the broad majority of American Muslims do not hold these bullshit extremist views. Why are things so different in Europe?

Any insight from a European on this issue would be much appreciated.

America's Repo Man (China) Getting Upset With Treasury Bonds

Great News: Loan Shark China Might Came After Our Knee Caps

China holds over $700B worth of U.S. Treasury bonds, so when their leadership starts getting anxious about the U.S. pissing money away, we should probably listen up. Kind of like when your parents threaten to cut off your allowance when you spent all your cash buying up Magic the Gathering cards and 2 Liter bottles of Shasta (don't judge me). So Premier Wen had this to say on Friday [UPI]:

Wen told Friday's session of the National People's Congress in Beijing he was "definitely a little worried" about China's investments in the United States.

"China is indeed the largest creditor of the United States, which is the world's biggest economy. We are extremely interested in developments in the U.S. economy," Wen said, according to a report from China's official Xinhua news agency.

"The Obama administration has adopted a series of measures to counter the international financial crisis. We are expecting these measures to take effect," Wen said. He stressed what he called China's principle of guaranteeing the "safety, liquidity and good value" of the nation's foreign exchange reserves -- the largest of any nation in the world -- and the importance of cautiously investing the reserves and diversifying in many different places.

Indeed, the Obama administration has tried all sorts of spending frenzies to fix the banking crisis, titillate the economy, and pay off friendly congressional districts with pork projects. But financial leaders admitted today at the G20 conference that the government intrusion into the market has not had the desired effect of stabilizing the worldwide economy. I'm not sure what else world governments can attempt to give the recession another shot in the arm, because they've tried damn near everything. We'll just have to accept the fact that, like the famous commercial, we are in debt up to our eyeballs. Sucks to be in a weakened position, and incidents like the USNS Impeccable getting harassed on the high seas are going to be the new norm.

Obama Gives PM Gordon Brown a Crummy Box of DVDs

Maybe They Could've Sweetened the Deal with a Used VHS Copy of Mac and Me

It pretty much goes without say that the Brits have been one of our best allies ever since that whole unpleasant War of 1812 business. World War I, World War II, standing united against communist expansion, fighting side by side against terrorism, and other "minor" mutual understandings to name a few. But Obama's staff neglected to pull out the stops when PM Gordon Brown was in town and gave him what looks like a box of used DVDs from a Virginia flea market. Not exactly the V.I.P. treatment for a Prime Minister. Perhaps Obama should've screened his staff for protocol experience instead of whether or not they ever owned a firearm. From Daily Mail (h/t Flopping Aces):

Perhaps pertinently, given Britain is floundering in an economic slump, the DVD collection was thought to feature the movie of John Steinbeck's Great Depression novel, 'The Grapes Of Wrath'.

The gift also included the Oscar-winning boxing biopic 'Raging Bull' starring Robert Di Nero and Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho - maybe a comment on the PM's notorious short fuse?

And he will hope that at a General Election the British public do not shun his imploration for another term in office by thinking at the ballot box of the famous line from another of the movies, Casblanca: 'Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.'

Obviously, the Brits, big on the whole pomp and circumstance thing, were bloody-well pissed. Obama is set to meet the Queen of England in the near future. Let's hope that some boneheaded staffer doesn't diarrhea all over the toilet seat in Buckingham Palace further embarrassing America.