A Tuesday Post

Watch "The Thrilla on the Hilla" this Saturday.

Well, this must be embarrassing:

Because she’s Sarah Palin and incredibly right about this:

Whoever chooses to merely dismiss the significance of today’s exchange between our President and Russia’s President should have their intelligence and patriotism questioned. Let this exchange be a warning to voters: President Obama will have “more flexibility” to weaken us if he’s re-elected in November. He was caught speaking candidly to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev before a “hot mic” today (and surely one must believe he didn’t know the mics were still on; surely he’s not so audacious as to purposefully broadcast his intentions)…

Let’s consider what this “flexibility” might mean. We know that he has repeatedly conceded to foreign demands and backed down on missile defense. I pointed this out as Governor of Alaska when he proposed reducing Alaska’s missile defense system capabilities. I explained then that the President’s proposed military cuts would diminish Alaska’s opportunity to defend the union with our strategic location’s defense infrastructure. We also know that in 2009, as part of his “reset” with Russia, President Obama turned his back on our Eastern European allies by abandoning past promises for a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

We can’t know for certain what this newly revealed “flexibility” means, but considering President Obama’s past actions, be sure it won’t involve a position of strength for America and our allies. Russia has been thwarting us on one issue after another, including the rushed-through New START Treaty that many of us questioned after Obama insisted America ratify it first, then allow Russia to sit on it – unratified on their end – until it suited that foreign power’s needs.

Meanwhile, North Korea is planning another long-range missile launch, and the United States and our allies are still vulnerable to the threat of ballistic missiles. Our president has done nothing to alleviate this vulnerability; in fact, he’s done just the opposite. He has consistently taken a position of weakness and naïve trust in Putin’s Russia. Consider that one-sided New START Treaty as an example of this. Or consider those cuts to Alaska’s missile defense system, which leaves us much more vulnerable in the face of a nuclear North Korea. Now consider the state of our national defense under a President who whispers to a foreign power that he needs even “more flexibility” to weaken us further.

Obama has undercut his nation’s defense, his eastern European allies’ defenses and has pretty much made a deal with Russia, the backer of such regimes as Syria and North Korea.

The man cannot remain in office.

Medvedev, embarrassed at being caught, attacked Mitt Romney for rightly pointing out how his deal with Obama is against American interests:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Mitt Romney on Tuesday to use his head and stop reverting to Hollywood stereotypes after the US presidential hopeful branded Moscow as Washington's top foe.

"I recommend that all US presidential candidates, including the candidate you mention (Romney), do at least two things," Medvedev told Russian reporters on the sidelines of a nuclear security conference in Seoul.

"That they use their head and consult their reason when they formulate their positions, and that they check the time -- it is now 2012, not the mid-1970s," said the outgoing Russian president in comments broadcast on state television.

Medvedev said Romney's quip "smelled of Hollywood" because it typecast Moscow as Washington's main enemy from the Cold War era just like in the popular spy movie thrillers of the time.

"As for ideological cliches, I always get nervous when one side or the other starts using phrases such as 'enemy number one' and so on," Medvedev said.

Romney had roundly criticised Obama on Monday for getting caught by an open mike making a controversial promise to Medvedev about missile defence.

Obama appeared to suggest at the Seoul meeting that he was ready to make a concession on the issue if he wins the November presidential election.

Romney told CNN in a transcript released by the station that Obama should understand that "Russia is not a friendly character on the world stage" because it has old ties to the governments of Syria and Iran.

Russia "is without question our number one geopolitical foe," Romney said.

It is unusual for world leaders to get involved in a foreign state's elections and the foreign ministry quickly moved to make light of Romney's "emotional statement."

Romney is absolutely correct in pointing out Russia's animosity towards the US.  Accusing him of stereotyping Russia as a Cold War enemy is only valid if Russia didn't back Iran, Syria and North Korea, threaten eastern Europe or not live up to the START treaty.

Japan brings up what everyone else is afraid to:

Japan steered off the agenda at a nuclear security summit on Tuesday to hit out at North Korea's plans for a rocket launch next month, as U.S. President Barack Obama cautioned against complacency in dealing with the threat of nuclear terrorism.

North Korea and Iran's nuclear weapons programs are not on the agenda at the summit in the South Korean capital, Seoul, and neither country was invited to the forum involving some 50 world leaders tasked with improving security at nuclear facilities.

The secretive North has been widely criticized on the sidelines of the meeting, including by main ally China, but host Seoul has explicitly stated Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction programs were off the table during the summit itself.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda used his opening speech at the summit to say the international community strongly demands North Korea exercise self-restraint on next month's planned rocket launch.

"The planned missile launch North Korea recently announced would go against the international community's nuclear non-proliferation effort and violate U.N. Security Council resolutions," Noda said.

No other major leaders mentioned North Korea's nuclear ambitions or the ballistic missile launch which the Pyongyang says will carry a weather satellite into orbit. The West says the launch is a disguised test of a long-range missile designed to reach the American mainland.

North Korea said last week it would consider it a "provocation" if its "nuclear issue is placed on the agenda at the Seoul summit" and if any statement is issued against the North for pursuing such a program.

On Tuesday, it said there was no reason to fire a missile after February's agreement to suspend nuclear tests in return for food aid with the United States.

Obama has said the destitute North could be hit with tighter sanctions if it goes ahead with the rocket launch, but experts doubt China will back another U.N. Security Council resolution against it.

Why shouldn’t Japan give a very restrained warning to a nation that most likely strike it? South Korea walks on egg-shells, China will continue protecting its North Korean lapdog and the US doesn’t want to rock the boat. North Korea’s planned launch is a clear violation of its promise (nothing it hasn’t done before) and anything anyone does is a “provocation”.

Japan should get the Bomb. What have they got to lose?

Because then old broads with riding crops couldn’t look ridiculous in front of cameras. That’s why no one will ban this wretched trade:

The naïveté of the Court of Appeal is this regard is astonishing. The learned justices have a vision of professionally accomplished, commercially savvy young women, contemplating careers either as hookers or graphic designers, and concerned about the enforceability of contracts and provision of benefits. A few high-end prostitutes would benefit from no longer having to disguise their “escort” services, but prostitution in Canada is not a high-end occupation. It preys upon the desperately poor, the drug addicted, the homeless, the mentally ill and other vulnerable women in the dark corners of society.

Our prostitution laws are a mess, but the prohibition on operating a brothel was one of the few tools that law enforcement and social services could use to pry women out from a life that precious few of them would ever choose. In the euphemisms employed by the plaintiffs, prostitutes are “sex workers,” as if they were selling real estate or peddling cosmetics. A more accurate term would be “sex slaves” — women forced to turn tricks by their drug dealers, the violent gang culture of the streets, or even abusive boyfriends.

Now the Ontario Court of Appeal has said it be would better for these (mostly) men if prostitutes are able to ply their trade more openly. The upshot is that, after these laws take effect, Ontario will have more prostitutes. It’s simple economics: Reduce the barriers to entry and more firms will enter. As a public policy matter, it is also simple. At the margin, this judgment will ensnare women in prostitution who otherwise would not have been.

Jonathan Kay argues persuasively that the underworld culture of prostitution is a brutal and dangerous place for women. He thinks, along with the Court of Appeal, that the solution is to get it out from the underworld. But what if prostitution is inherently brutal and dangerous, the inevitable consequence of a trade that invites people of repellant moral character to degrade the poor and vulnerable for depraved pleasure or commercial gain? The solution then is not to bring the brothels out of the darkness and into the strip malls, but rather to use creative public policy to flush out the underworld.

The "religion of peace" has a junior-sized lone wolf:

The suicide bomber behind the first Australian civilian casualty in Afghanistan was a boy of about 12, apparently drafted into a chilling new Taliban campaign to use children as weapons.

The injured man is frontline veteran David Savage, whose role with the Australian Federal Police as a peacekeeper in East Timor inspired a TV mini-series.

Mr Savage, 49, of Canberra, whose condition is serious but stable, was treated at the Australian base at nearby Tarin Kowt before being flown to Kandahar, then Germany.

The bomber attacked as Mr Savage was with a group of soldiers and staff outside a bazaar in the Chora Valley, Uruzgan, where he was working with local communities on development activities.

The head of Afghanistan's Counter-Criminal Department General Gulab Khan said three NATO soldiers and an Afghan National Army soldier were also injured in the blast.

A Taliban spokesman claimed the attack was payback for the alleged massacre of villagers by a US soldier.

The suicide bombing follows a series of "insider" attacks by Afghan soldiers on foreign troops, including separate attacks on Monday that killed two British servicemen and a US soldier.

Proceed to bury head in the sand.



And now, a cat and a bald eagle enjoy some tense moments on a snowy porch: