UNITED NATIONS — In a stirring and heartfelt tribute to the United States and its people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington DC and outlined the post-war relationship between the United States and a politically free, and now united, Germany. Speaking to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, Chancellor Merkel underscored the close political partnership between Germany and the USA.
Angela Merkel, who herself grew up in former communist East Germany and was a Professor of Physics, offered unequivocal praise for the role American administrations played in the long fight to bring democracy and freedom not only to divided Germany but to Eastern Europe as a whole.
Citing the historic iconography of the Cold War era, Merkel praised the pivotal role played by the allied Berlin Airlift in 1948-49, the long-term American security and the political commitments made; “I think of John F. Kennedy who won the hearts of despairing Berliners during his 1961 visit after the construction of the Berlin Wall when he called out to them “Ich bin ein Berliner….Ronald Reagan, far earlier than others saw and recognized the sign of the times when, standing before the Brandenburg Gate in 1987, he demanded, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.’ This appeal is something that will never be forgotten.”
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Neither Barack Obama nor Nancy Pelosi can be as clueless as they want us to think they are. The White House said the president was so uninterested in the results on election night that he watched a documentary on the '08 presidential campaign, no doubt eager to see who won. Mzz Pelosi, as oblivious of the scoreboard as a ditzy cheerleader unaware of which team has the ball, insists her side won the night.
Mr. Obama continues to campaign for the job the rest of us thought we gave him a year ago. The day after the Republicans sent wake-up calls from Virginia and New Jersey, he was back on the stump, working up a sweat -- or at least a gentlemanly perspiration -- and breathing hard against George W. Bush.
"One year ago," he told voters in Wisconsin who probably knew it already, "Americans all across this country went to the polls and cast ballots for the future they wanted to see."
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President Obama is degrading the Oval Office. In recent months, his administration has engaged in puerile, partisan attacks on his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Nearly every problem in America - the economy, health care, financial regulatory reform, Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo - is being blamed on Mr. Bush.
For example, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently hinted on CNN that Mr. Obama's indecision regarding sending more troops to Afghanistan was caused by his predecessor's inept policies. "It's clear that basically we had a war for eight years that was going on, that's adrift," Mr. Emanuel said. "That we're beginning at scratch, and just from the starting point, after eight years."
Benjamin Disraeli's most famous advice to aspiring politicians was: "Never complain and never explain." For the greatest orator of our time, a man who makes Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Henry V at Agincourt look like first-round rejects on "Orating With The Stars," President Obama seems to have pretty much given up on the explaining side.
Mr. Obama tried explaining health care with speech after speech after exclusive interview for months on end, and the more he explained, the more unpopular the whole racket got. So he declared that the time for explaining is over, and it's time to sign on or else.
Meanwhile, to take the other half of the Disraeli equation, Mr. Obama and his officials and their beleaguered band of surrogates never stop complaining.
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The most recent whine - the anti-Fox campaign - is, apart from anything else, unbecoming to the office. Mr. Obama is the chief of state of one of the oldest free societies in the world, but his official White House Web site runs teasers such as: "For even more Fox lies, check out the latest 'Truth-O-Meter.' " It gives off the air of somebody only marginally less paranoid than this week's president-for-life in some basket-case banana republic ranting on the palace balcony because his interior-security chief isn't doing a fast enough job of disappearing his enemies.
Lev Navrozov l
Thursday, October 22, 2009
An adequate defense of a free country requires an adequate government. In the United States, the British system of electing a Prime Minister was replaced by the direct election of a U.S. President by a majority of voters, which opens the possibility of electing a mentally average mind, for the more minds think about complex problems in the same way and with a stereotypical simplicity, the lower is their mental level, while Einstein, who in 1939 explained to Roosevelt the immediate need to begin to develop the “atom bomb,” used to say that he was understood by seven people in the world.
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A telling event occurred on Sept. 15, Day 6 of the drip, drip, drip ACORN video rollout. President Obama met for lunch with former President Bill Clinton at trendy Il Mulino in New York City.
For the second consecutive day, the New York Post featured the ACORN scandal on its cover - complete with James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles in their outrageous "pimp and ho" costumes.
Does anyone think the president and the former president were unaware that the city in which they were dining was mesmerized by the ACORN scandal - especially since ACORN had bragged that its employees had kicked Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Giles out of their New York office?
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The time was the mid-60s in Saigon, in many ways the nadir of the American effort in Vietnam, in its way worse than the Embassy rooftop depaftures of 1975.
Washington had staged a military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem, the only anti-Communist leader with credentials, then had him murdered. There was a revolving door of politically incompetent military trying to run a country the Americans were also trying to micromanage.
There was the media, not exactly informed but egotistical enough for some their veterans to gloat over their "victory" over Diem. It would still be a few months before they played their second hand in misinterpreting the Tet Offensive.
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