George Rebane

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.  Today everyone is hyper-ventilating on the portents of Sarah Palin’s resignation, President Obama making nice with the Russians, the Dems are on the air talking down the abject failure of stimulation, Iran is confirming it’s a totalitarian state, Madman Kim Jong Il is cutting back North Korea’s economy and rattling its bent saber, and the Chinese are starting to kill the Moslem Uyghurs in wholesale.  And that’s just a start.

Many think that Palin will somehow co-opt the Tea Party movement into a new political party that she will head for her 2012 presidential bid.  That will require a lot of ducks to line up just about perfectly.  Right now this little burp in her political career serves to fill column inches, blogs (like this), and minutes of air time.  As I said on NC MediaWatch ,  ‘She has some work to do before she can readily claim all Tea Party supporters as members of a new political party. The TP is now the standard bearer for a strong sentiment about governance that is drawing a lot of conservative support. But a sentiment – especially a sentiment with no focused leadership – is not by itself a political party. Let’s first see how she sets her sails, and then what wind will fill them.’

Obama’s trip to Russia seems to have no clear purpose that serves US interests.  Putin is on track to re-exert USSR-style influence in Russia’s “near abroad”, and is showing Obama its respect by holding the largest war games since the Cold War right next to Georgia (where it still has troops from its recent invasion) while Obama is drinking tea with Medvedev.  They’re supposed to be talking about a new SALT treaty, as if that will make a difference?? A hell of a way to push the vaunted ‘Reset Button’ that Hillary earlier delivered to Moscow as an apology for the Bush years.

And the Chinese are getting a real taste of multi-culturalism from their western Uyghurs.  The Uyghurs have been second class citizens forever in China, and their proximity to the central Asian Islamic countries is exerting what is now the worldwide pull on such ethnic groups to militate for their own homelands.  Beijing has responded in its traditional way by killing about 150 demonstrators in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.  Stand by for more deaths in more cities.  We have a problem responding to this new human rights travesty – they make our stuff, and we owe them a lot of money.  And, oh yes, as part of the hopeful change sweeping the country, we hope to owe them a lot more money before they catch on.

Meanwhile Kim Jong Il has fired his short-range ballistic missiles into the sea to show that they’re ready to rumble after once more abrogating the 1953 armistice that called for a time out in the Korean War.  So are we now again on a war footing with North Korea?  It seems that we are according Krazy Kim.  If so, then we shouldn’t hesitate to interdict enemy shipping, especially that suspected of containing WMD components for the other bad guys in the world.  But Washington is silent on this, and is instead busy towing a huge floating radar platform around in the waters off Hawaii to “defend” our island state.  And neither our sheeple nor the MSM have any idea of the comical content of this PR stunt.

The funny stuff continues with Il’s announcement that only women over 50 will be allowed to sell produce for four hours a day.  He’s pulling back on the economy to put the country on a war footing – no more lavish consumer goods ‘made in China’ for those hardy folks.  They will become “self-sufficient” for the coming crisis by being forced to work more in the factories and train in their massive army, instead of frittering away hours shopping for foreign-made luxury goods.  This economy has been against the wall for so long, I had no idea that there was any room left for a pullback.  We should, however, keep a keen eye on how a minor tyrant can keep millions in the most obvious conditions of slavery by the classic tactic of no guns in the hands of the people.  Mao was right.

To Obama’s credit on Iran, one of his people did say over the weekend that the US would not stand in the way of Israel – as a sovereign country defending itself – attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.  But we’re still not selling them our best bunker busters, since that may look like we’re leaning too far forward in our saddles.  The Saudis, bless their little twisted hearts, have told Israel that they will do nothing to hinder Israeli jets if they have to fly over the Arabian peninsula on their way to bomb Iran.  (BTW, the Israeli Debkafile.com is a tremendous source of real news, worth a peek now and then.)

Finally, we come to our once mighty Sec State Hillary – she of the ‘Reset Button’ fame, and now with a boo-boo on her elbow who has apparently been put on extended sick leave by Dr Obama.  Today she’s limited to handling in-house swearing in (or at) ceremonies.  I keep expecting her to be on the airplane doing all the traditional sec state jobs that usually precede summits and attend crises.  She would have been a great presence in Israel with Netanyahu viz the west bank settlements dispute, or on a hop down to Tegucigalpa or the OAS meeting viz the ouster of Honduras’s Zelaya, or … ,  you get the idea.  But Hillary is on ice at Foggy Bottom while her new short leash is being fashioned in the White house.

I think the big news of the summer will be what Hillary will do when her cast comes off.  This lady’s stash of Clinton political capital is drying up in the summer sun faster than the fruit in California’s water-starved central valley.  And she told us long ago that baking cookies was not her long suit – she will be back.  Obama’s got a tigress by the tail who will not end her career in a gilded political backwater.  I predict she will tender her resignation before this year is out.  How and when she does it will tell the tale.  Obama is setting up a lot of fiscal sand castles that will not stand up when it starts raining on his parade.  Not only does Hillary hold some of the clouds, but she’s the natural Plan B for the Dems when the need again arises.  Here’s a 2012 vision – Hillary and Sarah, ‘The Battle of the Broads’.

[update] And while all this nonsense is going on, there is a German businessman who is giving the consumer an alternative to the funny money that all governments are now inflating in the worldwide Printing Press Derby.  The NYT reports that “Thomas Geissler may have invented the ultimate vending machine.”  He’s letting anyone with inflating euros in their pocket walk up to his machines and trade them in for little bars of bullion and gold coins.  The article goes on –

After creating an online platform for trading precious metals this year, his small company has hit on a frontier beyond the Internet: the seemingly endless line of devices at airports and train stations that spit out cigarettes, condoms, toothpaste and candy bars in exchange for a little cash. But his machines will allow customers to buy small chunks of gold.

You can visit Herr Geissler’s site here and see a Fox News video interview here.  Look for one of these at a street corner or shopping mall near you.  As I said at the start – curiouser and curiouser.  (H/T to RR reader Mike McD for this.)