Will get you a cup of coffee;

Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities. But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.

I bet it takes some of you back to the fantabulous oraculator’s dazzling international ally-appreciating touch and go on Canadian tarmack. (And Greg Whats-his-name is declared American Disrespecter In Chief?)
From the comments – “I thought it was called ‘man caused disasters’ now.”

Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?

So let me see if I’ve got this right. The Democrats helped cause the crisis through bad policy, fanned the flames of outrage against CEOs and Wall Street and are now saying they’re the only ones who can protect the CEOs from all of those angry people out there. All the CEOs have to do is whatever Obama wants.
That’s a pretty sweet little operation Obama’s got going.

More – bankers as human shields?

Daily Mail… “Mr Obama uttered a sentence. Mr Brown nodded. Mr Obama paused. Mr Brown froze, frowning. Mr Obama made a very slight joke. Mr Brown gassed himself, laughing for a good 30 seconds, eyelids fluttering like the wings of a soft-flapping Cabbage White.”

The Telegraph…

“Yes We Can. And yes, we would. He’s so lithe and handsome and funny and smart and he bestrides the free world like a Colossus and will buy us each a puppy.”

And the Times …

“This is how the Second Coming will be, if the Lord chooses to make His appearance in a VH-3D helicopter fitted with anti-missile flares…”

The British press is putting on a clinic for their Yank counterparts.
h/t’s to Fox News and “Chuck”

The days of knuckledraggers running America seem a lifetime ago.
It’s things like presenting the Queen with an iPod loaded with his own speeches that puts the “staggering incompetence” side a few more points up on the “sinister plot” faction.
Sinister, manipulative plotters excel at presenting exquisitely personalized and appropriate gifts. Your cousin from Carrot River who likes jumping ditch-to-ditch on his Arctic Cat – not so much.

I live in Vegas, and I see people by the side of the road with cardboard signs who seem like they might have tried that spending their way out of debt thing. Or maybe they tried the all too intuitive “crack will make me feel healthy again” thing. I don’t know.

Meanwhile, the MoveOn.org wing of the administration is targeting budget-wary members of their own party in ads.
That’s the sort of thing that always ends well.

He liked engineering Detroit so much he bought the industry.

What does it mean if a President can force the resignation of a CEO that still answers to shareholders?

Or force a merger?
The rationale was drawn from the infinite corporate experience that President Obama brings to the table …

[Wagoner] is considered responsible for increasing GM’s focus on trucks and SUVs—at the expense of the hybrids and fuel efficient cars that have become more popular in the last couple of years.

In other auto news: American hybrid sales fall off a cliff

Is there nothing that Obama can’t do? – “RUSH’S RATINGS BONANZA: Surge As White House Campaign Began, Could Go Higher”
Hey, he promised to spread the wealth around!

*

… and all they got was the lousy Green Shift.
I’ve searched their websites and Google News. If the CBC or Globe&Mail managed to squeeze this little item between the Shock!! and Outrage!! coverage of Fox News late-late-night, and the religious beliefs of Canada’s science minister, I can’t find it.
But that’s why you have blogs – to do the jobs Canadian media won’t do.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Tuesday advocated adjusting trade duties as a “weapon” to protect U.S. manufacturing, just a day after one of China’s top climate envoys warned of a trade war if developed countries impose tariffs on carbon-intensive imports.
Mr. Chu, speaking before a House science panel, said establishing a carbon tariff would help “level the playing field” if other countries haven’t imposed greenhouse-gas-reduction mandates similar to the one President Barack Obama plans to implement over the next couple of years. It is the first time the Obama administration has made public its view on the issue.
“If other countries don’t impose a cost on carbon, then we will be at a disadvantage…[and] we would look at considering perhaps duties that would offset that cost,” Mr. Chu said.

So, everything old is new again…

Contrary to popular belief, Herbert Hoover was no fan of the free market or small government. After the stock market crashed in 1929, Hoover engaged in unprecedented peacetime deficit spending and other measures that increased the role of the federal government in the economy. Arguably, the most detrimental of his actions was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which sharply hiked taxes on thousands of imports.

The National Post caught it, though. “Smoot-Hawley on steroids”

The term “weapon” is entirely appropriate because such a policy would not “level the playing field,” as Mr. Chu seems to imagine, but bomb it. Carbon tariffs have been lurking like Somali pirates on the policy horizon for quite a while, and “carbon equivalency fees” for imports were part of the climate change bill introduced by President Obama last week in Congress.”

Ironic, isn’t it? Stéphane Dion ran in Canada, got elected in the US.

“Both under our estimates and under the CBO estimates, both — the most conservative estimates out there, we drive down the deficit over the first five years of our budget. The deficit is cut in half. And folks aren’t disputing that. “

More, at the Heritage Foundation
Pejman Yousefzadeh;

At some point, blather about the fiscal problems “inherited” by Team Obama must give way to the serious realization that the Administration has done nothing to ameliorate the fiscal challenges the country faces. Instead, it has come out swinging for the fences with a budget replete with programs designed to fulfill the fantasies of just about any Democrat, regardless of the fiscal consequences. Responding to the bleak CBO numbers, the President argued that growth in the out years would be higher than what CBO claims. Perhaps it will. But when it comes to budgeting–and not just budgeting–the Administration, while hoping for the best, must prepare for the worst. Instead, President Obama and his team have opted to prepare for the best, and hope really, really, really, really, really hard that their fondest fiscal and economic dreams come true.

Busload of Crazies to Tour Homes of AIG Executives This Weekend*

The Connecticut Working Families Party this weekend has organized a bus store that will make stops at Wilton, Connecticut, AIG office as well as the security-patrolled homes of AIG execs who are fearing for their lives.

And why shouldn’t they? Their President has compared them to suicide bombers.

“We’re going to be peaceful and lawful in everything we do,” said Jon Green, the director of Connecticut Working Families. “I know there’s a lot of anger and a lot of rage about what’s happened. We’re not looking to foment that unnecessarily, but what we want to do is give folks in Bridgeport and Hartford and other parts of Connecticut who are struggling and losing their homes and their jobs and their health insurance an opportunity to see what kinds of lifestyle billions of dollars in credit-default swaps can buy.”
Right, they’re not fomenting rage, they’re just encouraging it. So if you happen to record someone’s address so you can return in the dead of night, it’s not like Working Families told you to!

Who are Connecticut Working Families? Just a front group for ACORN – America’s leading force in voter fraud. (link fixed)

… Obama trained its local leaders, represented the organization in court, and worked to funnel funds to the organization. The Obama campaign also donated $800,000 this year to an ACORN affiliate.

The same Barack Obama who helped ACORN fuel the subprime mortgage mess by suing banks for “rejecting loan applications of minority applicants”. (And the same Barack Obama whose US Census Bureau is about to name ACORN an “official partner”. )
It’s not a “populist rage bus”. It’s an ACORN victory lap.
Related: “Sold out” at at AIG
*h/t Maz2
Update, and a number to call for our US readers – “If this passes, its death knell. If Congress suddenly discovers that it can take away money that they decide that someone doesn’t deserve, if we let them get away with that, there’ll be no stopping them.”
You know, we don’t have property rights in Canada. A couple of swell guys named Roy Romanow and PIerre Trudeau made sure of that. Don’t let them do it to you. As much as you may despise AIG, make your legislators understand that you despise them even more.

March 6th : CHAVEZ CALLS ON OBAMA TO FOLLOW PATH OF SOCIALISM
Drudge Report:

Obama will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of ‘sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation’, NY TIMES reporting Sunday, newsroom sources tell DRUDGE… Developing…

Providing there’s anyone left to regulate. Or anything left to pay them with.
Update – the Drudge sources were dead on;

The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said.
The outlines of the plan are expected to be unveiled this week in preparation for President Obama’s first foreign summit meeting in early April.
Increasing oversight of executive pay has been under consideration for some time, but the decision was made in recent days as public fury over bonuses has spilled into the regulatory effort.
The officials said that the administration was still debating the details of its plan, including how broadly it should be applied and how far it could range beyond simple reporting requirements. Depending on the outcome of the discussions, the administration could seek to put the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.
One proposal could impose greater requirements on the boards of companies to tie executive compensation more closely to corporate performance and to take other steps to assure that outsize bonuses are not paid before meeting financial goals.
The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving federal bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Related: Obama tweets Putin on missile shield treaty … developing
From the comments, RFC notices that the “Persian version has that nasty little American flag edited out.”

Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?

California, an important supplier of fresh fruits, dried fruits and nuts to Mexico, will be hit hard. Table grapes will face a 45% duty at the Mexican border; wine, almonds and juices among other agricultural products will pay 20%. Some 90% of Christmas-tree exports from California and 65% from Oregon go to Mexico. It’s doubtful volumes will hold up beneath a 20% tariff.
Alongside Oregon, Washington state will pay dearly to protect the Teamsters. Four out of 10 pears that the U.S. exports go to Mexico and half of those come from Washington. Under the new rules, American pears now face a 20% tariff, as do a host of paper products from the Pacific Northwest and Wisconsin.
Wisconsin’s scrap battery industry, which exports $128 million annually to Mexico, won’t be as competitive after it pays a 20% tariff. Nor will New York’s $24 million annual exports in personal hygiene products or its exports of $250 million in precious-metals jewelry. President Obama’s home state of Illinois can’t be happy to learn it will lose competitiveness under a 20% tariff on its plastic tableware and kitchenware exports to Mexico ($57 million annually) and on its printed leaflets and brochures ($68.7 million).
North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan sponsored the amendment that closed the border and his constituents will pay. North Dakota only exports $1 million in oil seeds annually but 80% of that goes to Mexico. They now face a 15% tariff.

At first glance, this last point looks like good news for us.
h/t Michele.

Already stinging over DVDgate, White House officials called a hastily arranged news conference Thursday evening to announce that the doors of the White House bowling alley had been thrown open to the DC Chapter of the American Quadriplegic Association.
Update: Lay off, you stupid right-wingers! Get a sense of humour.

Upperdate! SDA gets results premonitions! – “Before the taped interview had even aired, the president telephoned the Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver from Air Force One to apologise and invite some of the association’s bowlers to the White House to show him how it was done.”

T.O.T.U.S.

March 6th : – CHAVEZ CALLS ON OBAMA TO FOLLOW PATH OF SOCIALISM
March 19th : – House Passes 90% Bonus Tax
A must read, at the Wall Street Journal – “AIG’s managers may be this week’s political target of choice, but the message to every banker in America, indeed every business in America, is that you could be next. At least we haven’t yet seen the resolution that was proposed in the English parliament, in 1720 in the aftermath of the South Sea bubble, that bankers be tied in sacks filled with snakes and tipped into the Thames. But it’s still early days.”
(BTW – AIG donations to lawmakers “include Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), $103,100;then-Senator, now President Barack Obama(D-Ill.), $101,332 …”)

Heh!

I don’t think I’m breaking any confidences here by saying that things are a bit tense around here. Ever since the White House announced that Big Boy was going to do another prime time presser next week, people have been waiting for the backlash. Sure, we could’ve done it during the day, but then we wouldn’t get any attention. We couldn’t do it on Thursday night, because that would cut into our watching the NCAA tourney. So instead we cut into “American Idol.” If you ask me that sucks … me needs what only Ryan Seacrest can bring.

This also marks the first time a blogspot site has been linked by Drudge…. developing…
Flashback! (h/t JackM)

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Feb.11, 2009 – Obama: Caterpillar to rehire if stimulus passes
March 17, 2009 – Caterpillar to lay off 2,454 workers in 3 states

Now is the time at SDA when we juxtapose!
Globe and Mail: Ontario corporate tax revenues plummet
Toronto Star: City of Toronto hopes to hire 1,300