FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
ReasonTV YouTube video: Sweden: A Supermodel for America? Reason's Ted Balaker adroitly explains how Sweden's embrace of individual choice and competition -and free-market reforms- have created a better economic system for them, even while many in the U.S. remain resistant to many of the same free-market policies. Uploaded June 22, 2010. http://youtu.be/tDAQWJbEl9U
The Stockholm Syndrome, Part I on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Above and below, two short but humorous videos that aired on U.S. TV in April of 2009 during the public policy debate over Obamacare, which as most of you regular readers of the blog know, I opposed.
In them, comedian and Daily Show talk show host Jon Stewart and the show's correspondent Wyatt Cenactweaks the U.S. by toying with 1960's-era cliches about most Americans general understanding of Sweden and its culture, society and political system.
This only serves to prove what most people know -nobody laughs at cliches about American stereotypes as much as other Americans.
The Stockholm Syndrome, Part II on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Comedy Central video:Daily Show host Jon Stewart discusses the bombing in Libya with Aasif Mandvi and muse over President Obama's efforts to proceed without Sen. Richard Lugar's say-so. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-21-2011/odyssey-dawn---unconstitutional-war
Stanley Kurtzrecounts the role ofpresent-day National Security Council advisor Samantha Power on Candidate Obama in the National Review Online, and how we now have gotten to the present point where our foreign policy seems to include what I can only call "Meals on wheels -with guns." But it's likely that the Irish-born Power, given her own background, probably doesn't know too many of the delivery drivers -the instruments of that policy she has helped formulate.
My guess is thatPower probably doesn't care that many of the military personnel involved there DON'T KNOW why they are there, how long they'll be there, or even how they'll even know whether or not they are successful in their mission. Seems like I recall someone once saying THAT sort of situation would never ever exist if he were in charge.
I guess Power will just email them the details later, after she's gotten a bite to eat after work, since she's clearly a 'Big Picture' woman who doesn't want to get bogged down in the minutia.
And when are we going to hear what George Clooney thinks after Obama has ignored what's taken place in The Sudan?
ABC News video: George Clooney Hopes Satellites Will Shed Light on Sudan, January 2, 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/george-clooney-hopes-satellites-shed-light-sudan/story?id=12523421
Stanley Kurtz's closer is classic:
As with health care, Obama’s talk isn’t working because he cannot afford to specify broader ideological motivations he knows the public won’t buy.
Precisely!
National Review Online President Reticent By Stanley Kurtz March 22, 2011 10:26 A.M.
Obama doesn’t tell you what he’s thinking. He keeps his motives to himself. Cherished long-term ideological goals are advanced as pragmatic fixes to concrete problems in the present. Now we’re seeing the familiar domestic pattern in foreign policy as well.
Few Americans realize that Obama has had a longstanding interest in multilateral efforts to combat war crimes and genocide. Obama would like to see a more constraining international legal regime on war crimes, even at the cost of national sovereignty, not to mention the blood and treasure of the countries doing the enforcing. Read the rest of the post at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/262725/president-reticent-stanley-kurtz
Meanwhile, almost nine years ago... Audio of Samantha Power discussing her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "A Problem From Hell" on NPR/WAMU-FM's Diane Rehm Show, March 27, 2002 http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2002-03-27/samantha-power-problem-hell-basic
Audio of Power on NPR's Fresh Air, which I heard at the time, June 5, 2003, when I was still living up in the Washington area: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1287149 Fort Wayne Journal Gazette Lugar calls for debate on U.S. role in Libya
Brian Francisco, Washington editor
March 22, 2011 3:00 a.m. http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110322/NEWS04/303229937
