This is why Obama is a shoe-in for reelection

The economy was his greatest threat to reelection, now he'll go into November with more than a year's worth of fine job growth, increases in manufacturing and a strong economic outlook for the next decade.  And 200,000 jobs a month is looking more and more likely to be easily exceeded as the recovery rolls on.  Lucky for him that economic downturns rarely last four years and that even poorly thought out political choices can't keep our economy down for very long.

No matter that the unemployment rate stays above or near 8%.  People vote based on their pocketbooks and their view of the future.  The condition of both are getting better.  And so long as Obama makes skillful use of his redistributionist rhethoric -- designed to appeal even to the middle class he'll soon begin plundering, he'll sail to another term.

So without having learning anything of value about how to govern, he'll get another shot at installing his version of America.  More taxes and higher spending, with few results and a darker long term economic outlook.

China's Monroe Doctrine moment coming?

With the death of North Korea's Dear Leader, and the succession of his youngest son ( the great successor - natch!) moving forward but yet to be assured, China holds the key to what N. Korea's future will be.  Any legitimate successor to the throne must secure China's acceptance of their rule in addition to the agreement of N. Korea's military.  This should be a simple matter as China is thought to have a fair bit of influence over its southern neighbor.

However, if N. Korea's powerful military balks and proposes a powersharing arrangement, things could degenerate quickly.  And it won't take much to collapse the shaky edifice that N.K. has become.  Should that happen, the US and S. Korea have contingency plans to rush north and stabilize things as best as possible -- and to take control of any nukes the North has.  China understandably has similar plans to rush its forces south to forestall a massive refugee influx spreading chaos into China.

As N. Korea has long been China's client state -- China even fought for the North -- it's likely that China will see N. Korea as its special project and will not accept "meddling" from the US in what amounts to China's backyard.  Such a conflict could well see the emergence of an official Monroe Doctrine-like statement for N. Korea, which China will later seek to expand to more of Southeast Asia.  Any such declaration would be unassailable.  China has a huge military whereas the US has fewer than 30,000 troops stationed in S. Korea.  At the most the US and S. Korea would venture a few tens of kilometers north to set up refugee camps as well as rounding up as many WMDs as possible.  Thankfully, most WMDs are thought to be close to the DMZ, so this can be accomplished without too much interference assuming China doesn't become overly prickly.

How the US responds will be telling.  Certainly both sides will be discussing and coordinating responses to a sudden collapse of N. Korea.  Let's hope that China is fully forthcoming about its intentions.

The death throes of the new New Left

Yeah, they thought they would change the world. Now they find out they're just a side show, so what do they do? Why, riot, of course. Some things never change.

The last New Left took to the barricades in cities around the globe in the late '60s, and came astoundingly close to tipping the world into chaos. When that failed to happen, we witnessed the movement's death throes: more riots and destruction; the true believers increasingly turned to terror.

We had the inept Weather Underground, but Europe had the deadly Red Brigades, Action Directe and the Red Army Faction (which began as the Baader-Meinhof Group), while Japan had the Red Army. Most of these groups were filled with middle and upper class students and young adults protesting the banality of their life and the diminished prospects they felt they faced.

Sound familiar? Sure they put a revolutionary gloss on their actions, and liked to view themselves as the vanguard of the coming revolution and as the "redeemer class" prophesied in their revolutionary tracts, but in the end they were just morons playing at being revolutionaries.

Which is what we're witnessing again -- only on a smaller scale. This time around the morons are present, their image of themselves as vanguard revolutionaries is the same, even the barricades are back, but their movement's end won't be as spectacular or as violent. A few statement riots and marches, and then they'll disperse back to their jobs and woman's studies classes. Winter will demonstrate the hollowness of their claims of revolutionary fervor, and an improving economy will increasingly have the rest of America viewing them as spoiled brats unwilling to do an honest days work.

Obama explained

Add this to other attempts to explain Obama's meteoric rise from mildly unsuccessful community organizer through mildly ineffective (but present!) state and US senator to failed president.

This is a pretty succinct explanation of how he rose to such dizzying heights (his supporters were gulled by his narcissistic self confidence) only to fail abysmally (plain old incompetence):

Narcissists rise to the top. That's because other people think their qualities-- confidence, dominance, authority, and self-esteem -- make them good leaders.

Is that true? "Our research shows that the opposite seems to be true," says Barbora Nevicka, a PhD candidate in organizational psychology, describing a new study she undertook with University of Amsterdam colleagues Femke Ten Velden, Annebel De Hoogh, and Annelies Van Vianen. The study found that the narcissists' preoccupation with their own brilliance inhibits a crucial element of successful group decision-making and performance: the free and creative exchange of information and ideas.

Although Obama plays the part of a non-partisan advancer of worthy ideas, it often seems to be when he faces resistance that he doesn't understand and doesn't want to deal with. He may compromise too readily and duck tough decisions, but he sure does think the world of himself. Just count the number of times he refers to himself in speeches to see that not only does he think the world revolves around him, he thinks it ought to.

I imagine that if asked, he would publically downplay the great man theory of history, but privately sees himself as one of the select few tapped to alter his nation's destiny.

The take away from the study? I leave it one of the co-authors: "You have to ask: Are the competencies they project valid, or are they merely in the eyes of the beholder?"

In this case, the beholders were duped, but hopefully not lastingly.

Bad news for the Obama household

Oops, Bo, the supposedly hypoallergenic dog brought in to the Whitehouse with great fanfare, and subsequently largely abandoned, may not be so allergy friendly after all.

From Science Daily:

[...] "We found no scientific basis to the claim hypoallergenic dogs have less allergen," says Christine Cole Johnson, Ph.D., MPH, chair of Henry Ford's Department of Public Health Sciences and senior author of the study.

"Based on previous allergy studies conducted here at Henry Ford,
exposure to a dog early in life provides protection against dog allergy
development. But the idea that you can buy a certain breed of dog and think it
will cause less allergy problems for a person already dog-allergic is not borne
out by our study." [....]

Will Bo see the underside of the bus? Probably not as he's still a pretty good stage prop. But extended banishment from The Obama's presence seems a given.

Shades of Russia 1917 as Muslim Brotherhood moves into vacuum

After having sat on their hands during the February revolution that overthrew the Czar, Russia's Bolsheviks were not going to let another opportunity slip by when October brought renewed strikes and unrest to Petersburg. They took over in a largely bloodless coup with relatively few men.

Seen what's happening in Egypt? The NYT has the details:

In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.

During the movement to topple Mubarak, the Brotherhood were nowhere to be found. Now they are on the cusp of capturing power in a followup revolution.

Well, done, President Present. Way to use America's influence. Those last minute phone calls to Mubarak were doubtless expected to sway him with your charm (which worked so well with your own electorate), but sadly failed to set Egypt on a course of moderization and political freedom.

So we see history being made by a foolish president. The way things are going, it is not surprising that he launched an attack on Libya. At least there he can produce the bloody head of Col. Crazy as a sort of trophy (and make no mistake, now that he's attacked, leaving Kaddafy in power would be to invite another Lockerbie, only this time on a grander scale. Kaddafy's head on a pike will forestall that outcome). Kaddafy is literally a dead dictator walking unless he leaves for exile.

Saw the article first at Hot Air

This is what happens when you vote present as president

Famous for voting present during his time in the state legislature and US Senate, Obama is discovering that doing so as president has consequences.

Now we have the Muslim Brotherhood and El ("I've been mandated by the people") Baradei declaring themselves the new rulers of Egypt. Of course, this may never happen, but that the situation has gotten so far out of hand is in itself alarming.

Overly cautious in everything other than his campaign promises and homages to himself, Obama has missed the boat in the Middle East. Tunisia is small potatoes, but Egypt is a linchpin nation in the region, and his dithering -- notwithstanding his protestations of having implored Mubarak to straighten up and fly right (Mubarak's evident refusal to be charmed by our very own Nobel laureate must have stung)-- has thrown the region into chaos. Obama had every opportunity to make his feelings known by leveraging our economic aid, but instead chose to gin up his re-election machine.

Time to join Carter in the statecraft school of hard knocks, Obama. And take plenty of notes while there; the world can't afford too many more votes of "present".

German Chancellor Merkel: Multiculti has failed

Make that it has "utterly failed".

The left's most cherished dream and its solution to human conflict was multiculturism. Under this plan everyone would live together in peace and harmony so long as they would acknowledge and accept one another's cultural differences and quirks. The lion would lie down with the lamb and the rose would grow without thorn.

Well, not quite. Somehow they didn't anticipate that when immigrants are encouraged to keep their culture, it often means that the new country's culture must change to accomodate the newcomers -- especially if avoiding conflict is held to be more important than asking anything of the immigrants in return. Things like learning your new country's language, customs and laws.

Well, the Germans have had enough. They've long been known to bend over backwards in their desire to not demand anything from immigrants -- lest their history be thrown in their face. Now, though, the tide has turned. Europe as a whole is busy imposing laws designed to restrict how immigrants can behave (e.g., France's new anti burqa law) and requiring their places of worship conform to local standards (e.g., the Swiss law against building minarets).

Much of that is induced by anti-immigrant feeling, and won't do much to resolve the problems Europe's embrace of multiculti ushered in. What is truly needed is for Europe to demand that immigrants fully assimilate. And that means more than showing movies on how the locals behave (as has been done in the Netherlands and for potential immigrants).

What it requires is a drastic rollback of economic subsidies to immigrants. Only the prospect of economic failure will motivate immigrants to assimilate. This is how America -- the country with the most experience in successfully turning immigrants into productive citizens has done it for generations. Immigrants show up in American and in just a couple of generations they are doctors, lawyers and engineers and, most importantly, Americans.

Until Europe can take that all important step to force immigrants to fight for economic survival, the immigrant problem will continue to fester.