I don’t think so, personally….first off, I’ve seen lots better and that one wouldn’t have made me turn my head.

What I do find rather amusing is the way the American MSM is trying so hard to defend Obama on this – as if it really matters. But they are determined to protect their man – even from the rather common male act of being distracted by an attractive female form. Now, as for me, I routinely assure my wife when we’re walking through a casino that the “stacked” waitress in the skimpy outfit did not distract my full attention from my devotion to my wife…for which statement I’m likely going to have to spend some time in Purgatory.

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: When Obama’s not staring at a minor’s rear, he’s bashing and apologizing for the United States again…

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Ass-Gate gets the Zapruder treatment.

ROFL from Iowahawk…

“If it wasn’t for California, I wouldn’t be where I am today,” said Arizona of Westside 3, the popular sunbelt trio who recently benefited from the late state’s generous gift of fleeing taxpayers and businesses. As a tribute to their mentor, Arizona vowed the group would start spending money “like crack-addled hip hop stars.”

“California’s financial and musical legacy will never die,” said band mates Nevada and Oregon…

You’d figure after they got burned in California, they’d have learned their lesson about court challenges to laws enacted with popular support – but, no, they haven’t:

The federal complaint in Commonwealth v. HHS was filed yesterday by Massachusetts, which is asking for federal recognition of its same-sex marriages, not for the invalidation of all state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. Massachusetts makes two federalism-based constitutional claims against Section 3 of DOMA, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman for purposes of federal law…

…Massachusetts also appears to rely on a case called New York v. United States to argue that Congress is “commandeering” it to administer a discriminatory federal program. But there’s nothing unusual about Congress’s decision to set up a federal benefits program and then define the limits of eligibility. A state might want the retirement age to be 55, but Congress can make it 62 or 65 or 105. A state might want to make the middle class eligible for assistance in obtaining health benefits, but Congress can limit federal eligibility to poor people — as it defines “poor.” All of these things might increase a state’s administrative costs, discourage experimentation, and be terribly unfair to people left out. But that doesn’t make them unconstitutional…

…In that respect, Massachusetts’ lawsuit is a cousin to the existing DOMA challenges. Success for Massachusetts would likely help advance a result it expressly disclaims: the invalidation of all laws excluding gay couples from marriage. The upshot, then, is that a lawsuit to protect state power against a one-size-fits-all federal definition of marriage would hasten a one-size-fits-all federal definition of marriage.

In the linked article there is a great discussion of the grounds for the suit, as a thing, and the various plus and minus things about it – I do recommend reading the whole thing. But I wish to discuss the politics of this.

To step back in time for a moment – when gay marriage was first brought into the larger public square, I went over the argument in favor and while I believed it was a wrong thing to do, I didn’t see how defenders of traditional marriage had a chance. With the gay-rights people enjoying entirely positive Old Media coverage and the ability of gay-rights people to call upon the best propagandists in America, I figured we were going to get rolled and in State after State, there would be close fought elections which would, in the end, turn on the propaganda story of sweet, long-suffering gay couple vs narrow-minded, fundamentalist bigot…and thus gay marriage would become law.

Man, was I wrong about that…

My first clue that I was wrong was a discussion I had on the subject with a woman of decidedly liberal views who was just viscerally opposed to the very concept of gay marriage. Call it what you will, it turned out that my liberal friend was legion – people don’t want gay marriage. Period. End of argument. In vote after vote, the proponents of gay marriage – benefiting from practically unlimited funding and enthusiastic support from the elite power structure – have failed to win the day…while some votes were narrow, most were 10 point or more wipe outs at the polls. And while proponents of gay marriage keep trying to talk themselves into believing that as the younger generation rises, gay marriage becomes a certainty, the fact that half a generation of young people have grown up since gay marriage became an issue with no alteration in the electoral reality shows that this is a pipe dream.

Clearly, if there ever is to be gay marriage in America – under whatever form – it will have to be a slow, incremental change carefully in tune with popular desires…naturally, gay marriage proponents look at what has happened and come to the conclusion that if they can’t immediately get it by votes, they’ll ram it through by judicial fiat. This is the definition of “stuck on stupid”. Its not time to file new law suits, guys, but to work out programs to provide ease for gay couples in joining up their lives…legislation to make it easier to combine incomes, property, etc; that is where your efforts should be. You know, providing practical assistance to those gay couples who are in long term relationships. But, no – off to the courts we’ll go – and just in time for it to wend its way through the courts to become an issue for the 2010 mid terms. Are you liberals out there entirely sure the Massachusetts AG isn’t a secret, GOP mole? She’s handing us House seats on a platter.

Ah, well, we’ll gladly take the seats, and thanks very much. Perhaps after you’re burned the 20th or so time in 2010, you’ll learn your lesson. Then again, you’re liberals – you still think that Bismarck’s 19th idea of social security it a good idea. “Stuck on stupid” is not a new thing for you.

That is the per-capita ratio of Spendulus funds between Obama counties and McCain counties:

Billions of dollars in federal aid delivered directly to the local level to help revive the economy have gone overwhelmingly to places that supported President Obama in last year’s presidential election.

That aid — about $17 billion — is the first piece of the administration’s massive stimulus package that can be tracked locally. Much of it has followed a well-worn path to places that regularly collect a bigger share of federal grants and contracts, guided by formulas that have been in place for decades and leave little room for manipulation…

…The reports show the 872 counties that supported Obama received about $69 per person, on average. The 2,234 that supported McCain received about $34.

“Little room” doesn’t, of course, mean “no room” – and that leaves out the fact of pre-manipulation done over the years to ensure that government funds go heavily to liberal, Democrat areas of the country because that, dear friends, is how liberals get and retain power – by using our tax dollars to buy votes.

Be that as it may, the fact that the funds are going to Obama areas indicates the raw, disgusting truth of the matter…Democrats have diligently created a large class of people dependent upon government and this ensures them, right out the gate, 40% or so of the votes in national elections. These people voted Obama not so much for “hope and change” (that worked with the independents who were just amazingly turned off by McCain) but for “welfare State as usual”. A large portion of Americans have been turned in to government dependents and they simply will not bite the hand which feeds them – and the key to understanding Obama’s massive expansion of government is that he hopes to get 50% or more of the voters permanently dependent upon government for their economic well-being…do that, and liberalism has a permanent majority, and thus the time to sculpt our nation into what liberals wish it were…a duplicate of France, or Canada (as an aside, liberals, when you keep harping on how much of GDP is coming out of blue areas and thus how you are supporting us rednecks…a very large portion of your GDP is government spending…cut you off from that, and you dry up and blow away…unless, that is, you sip a few less lattes and start making, mining and growing things).

Its going to be hard and its going to be a near run thing, if we can even pull it off – by working hard and putting ourselves on the line, we have to accrue enough power to our side to first stop Obamunism in its tracks before it subverts a majority, and then roll it back and return to the values of hard work and self sacrifice which made this nation great.

Seeing as we are in the Second Afghan War:

Every influence, every motive, that provokes the spirit of murder among men, impels these mountaineers to deeds of treachery and violence. The strong aboriginal propensity to kill, inherent in all human beings, has in these valleys been preserved in unexampled strength and vigour. That religion, which above all others was founded and propagated by the sword – the tenets and principles of which are instinct with incentives to slaughter and which in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men – stimulates a wild and merciless fanaticism. The love of plunder, always a characteristic of hill tribes, is fostered by a spectacle of opulence and luxury which, to their eyes, the cities and plains of the south display. A code of honor not less punctilious than that of old Spain, is supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica. – Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, 1897

I don’t think its changed too much in the last 112 years.

Top the GOP list for 2012:

When it comes to which Republican candidate should take on pro-abortion President Barack Obama in 2012, GOP voters are essentially evenly split between three former candidates. Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee are within just a few percentage points of one another.

In a new Rasmussen poll released today, the former Massachusetts governor tops all Republican candidates with the backing of 25 percent of GOP voters.

Palin, who recently announced she would resign her position as Alaska’s governor, follows Romney in second place with the backing of 24 percent. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, received the support of 22 percent of Republicans.

We seem to be turning from the “party which can’t shoot straight” to “the party which can’t miss”. This is an immense pool of talent to draw on, and the secondary players (ie, Pawlenty, etc) are also a good crop. All the Donks will have in 2012 is what they’ve got now…a President who is failing miserably, and a VP who is a national embarrassment.

Uncle Jimbo over at Blackfive gives a short, excellent run-down of what we’re doing there:

There are signs that our military leaders have learned lessons from both our 7 years of operations in Afghanistan and our successes in Iraq. They have begun a major shift in strategy and tactics to reflect that. We have discussed some aspects of it here including the decision announced to limit bombing of residential dwellings even if we are receiving fire from them. While this decision may seem counter-intuitive at first. when examined in the framework of a larger shift toward safeguarding populations v. killing bad guys it becomes very understandable.

This same change in Iraq, to take territory and then stay there alongside the populace, was instrumental in shifting public opinion in Iraq. In conjunction with increased security from local forces it led to our ability to let the Iraqis take care of themselves. A similar strategy is now being employed in Afghanistan, but faces many more challenges. The Afghan security forces are near useless as currently constituted. Tribal issues make it almost impossible for any national forces to be used in an area where they are not native. Our training efforts have focused on attempting to put together Afghan police and military units but the problem is that other than perhaps Hamid Karzai there are no Afghans. There are a patchwork of tribes and villages and cliques that speak different languages, hold centuries long beefs and don’t see themselves as part of this larger, artificial thing we call Afghanistan.

That last bit is important – and provides a clue on what we should be shooting for in Afghanistan. Now, we don’t want to bulldoze into Afghan’s decisions, but we can encourage – and I believe we should encourage a Canton system such as that which exists in Switzerland. Keep in mind that the Swiss kept it together – by keeping a bit apart, internally – when Europe was riven by sectarian strife during the Reformation. Swiss Protestants and Catholics yet managed to remain in the same country while elsewhere bitter civil war was the order of the day – and the religious divide was only one of several within the country. A common currency, free internal trade, a common foreign policy, a common national army (the trickiest part, but it can be done – if the army remains small and highly professionalized)…but within each Canton, a maximum amount of local control with no interference from the central government. Allow time to ease the sectarian and tribal strife until, as in Switzerland today, the prospect of a split in the country is just unthinkable (and keep in mind, it took centuries for the Swiss to reach this condition).

One way or another, Afghanistan must not be allowed to slide back into chaos and/or Taliban-al Qaeda control. Take ten years, take 100,000 more troops – whatever the price to be paid, victory is worth it because defeat would be a catastrophe for the United States and the whole world…imagine Islamo-fascism sweeping into Pakistan and central Asia, armed with nuclear weapons and convinced that victory over the US is assured. Its not something we want to contemplate.

Now, will President Obama have the courage to carry on? The wisdom to pick out the right policy?

Time will tell.

The story of the family attacked on the 4th of July by a gang of young toughs – a white family attacked by a swarm of black youngsters shouting racial epithets? You don’t want to ignore it, but you don’t want to give an open sesame to racists to make hay over – its a terrible symptom of our societal breakdown and a clear result of racial grievance-mongering for decades.

The best I can do right now is to issue a blanket condemnation of all those in our society who propagate lies – such as, for instance, the lie that racism still keeps a black person down. Racism there is, but no racist can stop a black person from achieving whatever he wishes…but race-baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton keep hate alive, and then young fools soak it up and, God help us, some times act out on the idiotic lies. Young black men instructed to take pride in the achievements of black Americans would be unlikely to do what this group does – but young black men instructed that being educated is “acting white” or that they still can’t get ahead because Whitey is keeping them down will do precisely what this group did.

Keep this in mind – tell the truth, all the time and every where. About things great and small. Do your utmost to allow not the slightest untruth pass your lips or, worse, settle in your heart. We live in an Age of Lies and we are seeing the ever more terrible results they bring. Its time to bring a halt to this.

…and Obama’s approval dives…

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –8. The President’s Approval Index rating has fallen six points since release of a disappointing jobs report last week (see trends).

This is very encouraging because it is clear now that no matter how much Obama tries to erroneously pass the buck, people are going to expect results, and blame him when he fails to perform as promised. Remember, Obama said the stimulus would keep unemployment in check. It wouldn’t go above 8 percent, he claimed. Well, so much for that. He keeps talking up these bogus “jobs saved” figures which are completely meaningless and have no credibility.

At this rate, especially with the rampant spending that is only going to make the economy worse, Obama’s coattails won’t be worth dog excrement in the midterm elections, and Obama will have to prepare to move out of the White House in 2013… Not that someone so inexperienced should have been put there in the first place… After this horrible mistake, Americans may realize that the ability to read off a teleprompter hardly makes you ready and able for the highest office in the land. Sadly, we have to learn that the hard way.

Gordon Chang takes a stab at it in Forbes:

…the riots of the last few days show just how vulnerable that Chinese state is, even in the face of apparently weak opponents. For one thing, according to one report, the disturbances came completely out of the blue for many. “There were no warning signs about the riots,” said Tang Yan, a 21-year-old drug store employee who fled rampaging Uighurs in Urumqi. “No one expected it.” What started as a silent, peaceful demonstration–over the failure of authorities to investigate the murders of Uighur factory workers in faraway Guangdong province–somehow turned into savagery in the streets of Urumqi’s capital.

The chronology of events on Sunday is unclear, but it appears the gathering became a riot when police began to beat the protesters, even girls. There are, at this moment, so many grievances against the central government and the Communist Party that almost anything can spark an insurrection. And that’s especially true when security forces overreact, as they appeared to do on Sunday…

…The Chinese regime can fail because, as we are seeing in Xinjiang, the Party is losing hearts and minds, and, as Havel suggests, a ruling organization is vulnerable when that happens. In most other parts of China, ethnic tensions are not a factor, but the Communist Party has other problems. Almost nobody believes in its ideology, and everyone can see its failings as a ruling organization. Outside of minority-inhabited areas, few actively oppose it, but few anywhere enthusiastically support it. The Party stays in place largely due to apathy, fear and a failure to imagine that China can be better.

So this is a dangerous time for the one-party state. For three decades, its primary basis of legitimacy has been the continual delivery of prosperity. In the current economic downturn, however, it has been arguing that it deserves to remain in power for other reasons. As the Party tries to change the basis of its support, it puts its future at risk.

That last bit is the most important – the sole claim to legitimacy on the part of the Chinese government is the de-facto deal struck in 1989: “leave us in power, and we’ll make you rich”. Official predictions are for 8% growth in 2009 and the word is that China is doing just peachy keen swell hunky dory no problem at all…while exports fell by 26% in May. If you believe that China’s economy is strong or that any of the figures published by the Chinese are factual, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. Its a house of cards, and its probably already come tumbling down – kept quiet by the determination of the Chinese authorities to hide the bad news combined with a strong desire by Western institutions heavily invested in China to keep up the pretense that their Chinese assets are still valuable. I don’t quite view things as the author does – or, perhaps, I’m just take a step further back.

The sight of one of your countrymen being savaged by a hated, foreign oppressor is an excellent spark to civil unrest, but my view always is that people who feel their basic needs are cared for will not revolt. The importation of Han Chinese in to Xinjiang which is close to making the Uighurs a minority in their own land isn’t likely being done at all fairly. I know, how do you “fairly” destroy a society – well, of course, you don’t. But the “unfair” part of this is that the Hans are likely taking the best jobs and the best places to live – with, to be sure, provision made for the locals. But now that the global economy is imploding and China’s economy teeters on the verge of complete meltdown, I’ll bet there are far less jobs in Xinjiang than there used to be…and the people keeping them are likely to be Han. And thus you’ve got Uighurs about who have nothing to lose and who start a fight, which results in an over-reaction, which results in a nearly revolutionary situation spreading like wildfire.

This is all supposition on my part – but supposition based upon a clear knowledge of the way these things have worked throughout history. The “social contract” has broken down in Xinjiang – the Chinese government is no longer able to deliver the goods…and the goods are naturally being withheld from the outlying areas first in order that Peking and the major Chinese coastal cities (where all those prying foreigners live) are spared any great impoverishment and resultant political instability. Curiously enough, we’re partly to blame for this – our borrowing binge is forcing China to buy more of our bonds lest the bonds they have in hand become devalued…but China isn’t really making any money, so they have to take it from somewhere…and if the Chinese apparatchik has a choice between taking it from Big Party Boss or Despised Minority, where do you think the axe will fall?

How long can China keep afloat? Naturally, the Chinese government hopes it can keep a lid on things until the economy turns around…if the economy turns around. While I still see plenty of cheer leading in business reporting, the facts remain grim and even those predicting an end to the recession at the end of this year are stating that US unemployment will go to and remain above 10% for some time. That many unemployed Americans just can’t buy a lot of Chinese exports. The race is on – will China’s cash run out or will the recession end first? If the recession ends first, then China can weather the storm…if the cash runs out, then all bets are off.