While The World Chatters About Obama And Greece, Israel's Credit Rating Goes UP

It's too good not to mention on a Friday.

International credit rating agency Standard & Poor's announced on Friday that it has raised Israel's credit rating from A to A+. The company said that the decision reflects the government's responsible economic policy. Company officials said they do not believe the national budget will explode despite the mass social justice protests demanding reformed economic policies. Standard & Poor's is the same company which, in August, lowered the credit rating of the United States.

The news is full of Greece's meltdown--how'd you like to have to borrow money at 80% interest for one year, just to keep the lights on?

Lots of chatter about Himself, including this bit from Doug Mataconis, who is no fire-breathing conservative.

The mosques in Syria will conclude services in a few minutes, and the bloodshed will pick up where it left off last Friday after prayers and wing-nut sermons, and more mothers will bury more of their children on Sunday. Nothing new here.

Libya is now being divided up amongst its various tribal warlords, including some very interesting-looking jihadist types. Are we surprised? Egypt is choatic, no news here. Gold is spiking, as is silver, but OS has decided to get out of the way of all the oncoming freight trains proceeding through the tunnel in his direction.

The world is so busy chattering about the turmoil, that they will barely notice this nugget of good news. The logical question is, of course, 'What are the Israelis doing right that we aren't?' it's a dangerous question, but it is the logical question.

The weather is lovely. The migration of mourning doves from points north has begun, and OS is cheerily leaving them cracked corn in abundance, to welcome them back. There is a very nice roosting area on an abandoned farm property behind OS's house, and ponds, and gravel roads for craw.

OS played a fun round with an old friend at an unfamiliar course yesterday. Luckily, his order of new golf balls was in his mailbox when he returned home. It's the weekend. OS has time, Mrs. OS, a few things to get done, and an immense sense of gratitude for his life. He will be looking for Israeli bond funds during the day, though.

Memo To Future Presidents And Prime Ministers: The Libyan Civil War

If'n yer gunna start a war with a nutter blood-stained dictator, check to see how deep his pockets are.

Gadhafi has over seven billion dollars in gold to turn to, sitting in his own private vaults, according to Bloomberg.

That'll buy yew a whole slew of Malian mercenaries, tanks to replace the ones the French blew up, and trainloads of munitions, which can be bought with cash and trucked in across the southern border. He's just begun the killing, raping and maiming.

So, next time, give a thought before you 'go kinetic' on someone. You might not call it a war, but he sure does, and people like Gadhafi stay in power by playing to win. Public opinion pollsters don't do a good trade in places like Libya, know-whud-i-mean?

Kucinich Statement March 30, 2011: The Libyan Intervention Is Unconstitutional

This is yesterday's opening salvo, recorded on C-SPAN.

Dennis Kucinich Complete Statement on Libyan Civil War, 31 March 2011

As promised, OS posts the entire presentation for his hordes of readers to view.

Kucinich, a Lion of the Left, and one of the more colorful characters in Congress, presented a well-written, documented, sober, well-thought-out case.

This is trouble for Obama, no doubt about it.

Now, as a conservative, and as a citizen, OS has one question: Where are the Republicans? Why are they not lining up behind him? Will they leave him hung out to dry? At least Speaker Boehner cleared the way for him to have his hour on the floor.
Can you imagine a Speaker Pelosi allowing this? Elections have consequences.

He details the secret order signed by Obama weeks before the bombing began, authorizing the CIA to support the Libyan opposition.

He takes the whole enterprise apart, piece by piece by piece by piece...

Ya'll--if you are an American citizen, left/right/center/neutral, this is something that cannot be ignored. If Obama is allowed to get away with this, we drift toward a world where any future President of the United States can start wars in our name, with our resources, and our children, and never even glance at the Constitution. Unless it is honored and enforced, that document becomes just another historical document, supplanted by something else much more sinister.

Obama and Hilary cannot be allowed to simply ignore this--and they will attempt to pretend today never happened, that Kucinich is just some nutter (wait for it, the stories about him will be floated far-and-wide), that opposition is unpatriotic (an old chestnut tactic), that the Founders could never have anticipated such a situation (thus the Constitution doesn't apply, except that bit about the President as Commander-in-Chief...).

Listen in, pay attention. So many lives are on the line. This sort of thing can set tragic sequences of events into motion.

Kucinich Throws Down The Gauntlet In Today's One-Minute Speeches

Video's not available yet, but OS was beavering away at his desk when The Dennis strode up to the mic about forty-five minutes ago, looked into the camera, and declared the US's role in the Libyan civil war to be illegal and unconstitutional, and announced he would have an hour's presentation tomorrow.

Listening to him, one would think we were listening to a Tea Partier, not someone on the left side of the Democratic Party.

He had that tone of 'I've had enough. I don't give a shit anymore what Nancy Pelosi does to me for wandering off the plantation.' And the look he gave the camera at the end was essentially to say, 'Go on, Obama, just try to fuck with me. I'm too old to care, and you don't have a leg to stand on'.

As a prelude to his minute of eloquence today, he posted this at HuffPost yesterday.

Last night the President said it took one month to put together a response to the situation in Libya. During that time the President consulted with 28 member nations of NATO, 22 member nations of the Arab league and 15 members of the UN Security Council, ten of whom approved the resolution. There was also time for extensive coordination with France and Great Britain. The President had time to consult with the international community, but had no time to come to the United States Congress?

There is no question that the administration should have followed the Constitution and received the approval of Congress before starting a war. Consulting with a few members is not the same thing as following the Constitutional requirements of Article 1, Section 8.

Further complicating the administration's failure to come to Congress prior to ordering an attack is the fact that our primary partners in the war against Libya, France and Great Britain, had, according to a French military website, planned certain war games which now may have significance.

On November 2, 2010 France and Great Britain signed a mutual defense treaty, which paved the way for joint participation in a military exercise called 'Southern Mistral'. While war games are not uncommon, the similarities between 'Southern Mistral' and 'Operation Odyssey Dawn' highlight just how many unanswered questions remain regarding our own military planning for Libya.

The 'Southern Mistral' war games called for Great Britain-French air strikes against an unnamed dictator of a fictional country, "Southland." The pretend attack was authorized by a pretend United Nations Security Council Resolution. The 'Southern Mistral' war games were set for March 21-25, 2011.

On March 19, 2011, the United States joined France and Great Britain in an air attack against Muammar Gaddafi's Libya pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1973.

Scheduling a joint military exercise that ends up resembling real military action could be seen as remarkable planning by the French and British, but it also highlights questions regarding the United States' role in planning for the war. We don't know how long the attack on Libya has been in preparation, but Congress must find out. We don't know who the rebels really represent and how they became armed, but Congress must find out.

With so many unknowns, Congress' only path to protect both the Constitution and the institution of government of the people is to cut off funds for the war in Libya. A cutoff of funds would require the president to follow the Constitutional process with respect to going to war. He would have to seek Congressional approval.

Otherwise, we will have given our tacit consent to a policy that undercuts Congress' constitutionally-mandated role as a coequal branch of government. Moreover, since the Founders established Congress under Article 1 and the Executive under Article 2, Congress is first among equals, unless we refuse to be.

That is why I will propose an amendment to the next continuing resolution or omnibus appropriations bill that would prevent any U.S. funds from being used for the war in Libya.

This will get interesting, 'cuz the deadline for the gubbermint shutdown looms next week.

Betcha Miz Nancy and Missah Harry wish they had actually passed a budget last year, when they had a majority, and the Constitutional responsibility to do so.

The blackmailing and threatening of Democrat members of both houses is likely underway in earnest. If a significant number of Dems escape the plantation, Obama will find himself in deep deep deep doo-doo.

Sense of Events: "Hope is not a method, and wishes are not plans."

Plan? What Plan? There is no Plan A, or B, or C.

Donald Sensing says it best.

This was the president's speech in a nutshell: There is no Plan C, no Plan B, and for that matter, there is no Plan A, either. He knows what he wants to happen, but shrinks definitively and certainly away from making it happen. He hopes Qaddafi will play nice and beat feet outta there, and wishes Libya the best in the meantime. Or as Josh Trevino tweeted after the speech,

This is the first time in American history that a President has simultaneously set a war aim and disavowed means to obtain it.

Think the Balkans from 1912-1914, all of Europe in the 1930's, Lyndon Johnson and his Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, our successful efforts to arm the Taliban in the 1980's.

Hope is not a method, and wishes are not plans.

Wow, It's Great To Know No Ground Troops From The US Will Be In Libya

...so that's why the Marines are packing up for a ten-month stint.


To Libya.



Whew, he had me worried there for a bit...

The Claims Don't Fit The Facts: What The Brits Know That Obama Assumes Americans Don't Know

It is breathaking to listen to Barack Obama, as OS did yesterday, in the parking lot of the grocery in his old pick-em-up truck. He didn't mean to, but as he was doing his Honey-Do errand after golf, here came the speech. OS just could not garner the moral courage to just dismiss it, and go buy milk and juice.

He kept listening for one word or phrase, which Himself (as President of The United States) never bothered to utter: The Constitution, or Constitutional Authority, or Congressional Approval Under The Law, or...well, you get the drift.

That's becuz, as the person who placed his hand upon the Bible and swore to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of The United States', he has no-zero-nil-nada-nichts authority under the Constitution (that he swore on the Bible to 'preserve, protect and defend, against all enemies, foreign and domestic'). It is of no consequence to him. He himself is a domestic enemy of the Constitution, as he has demonstrated again and again and again--from the illegal bailouts of car companies, to the unconstitutional health care 'reform' (so ruled by a Federal court, whose ruling he ignores and refuses to appeal), to the shutdown of the oil industry along the Gulf Coast (again, ignoring a Federal court order). On and on it goes, the slow creep of rule by diktat.

Only this time, ya'll, he has led the United States into war, against someone who is not an imminent threat to our shores or interests, without a shred of legal authority.

Tom McClintock's letter to the President states the problem clearly, and remains unanswered.

From the other side of the pond, and much more within reach of any mayhem Gadhafi may wish to create, the Brits know better. Little wonder they are so cynical about their American cousins.

Just a sample:

OBAMA: "Our most effective alliance, Nato, has taken command of the enforcement of the arms embargo and no-fly zone. ... In that effort, the United States will play a supporting role."

THE FACTS: The US is, and always has been, the pre-eminent player in Nato. The United States supplies 22 per cent of NATO'S budget, almost as much as the next largest contributors – Britain and France – combined. A Canadian three-star general was selected to be in charge of all Nato operations in Libya. His boss, the commander of NATO'S Allied Joint Force Command Naples, is an American admiral, and the admiral's boss is the supreme allied Commander Europe, a post always held by an American.

They know, and they know that he knows he is deliberately obscuring the truth of the situation, confident that he can fool enough of his own electorate, focused as they are on survival in The New Normal, and otherwise preoccupied with American Idol, The Final Four and the NFL labor lockout.

If he gets away with it, this will be the first of many more. How long does the laundry list of places to invade run? On what pretext? By what legal right? It is a slippery slope, a bloody and ghastly slippery slope.

Yes, Gadhafi's a blood-soaked tyrant, and needs to be killed, ASAP. Let's do that, without killing off our rule of law in the process, and killing millions more as an unintended consequence.

The Best Business Model Ever Invented: European Arms Sales To Libya

(Sound of hand slapping forehead...'Damn, why didn't I think of that!')

It's ingenious, really! Sell all sorts of military hardware to mad despots, wait for the serfs to rebel, watch him use his toys to murder the citizenry, then in a fit of righteous indignation (with UN approval of course of course of course), go blow all that stuff to kingdom come.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

From Deutsche Welle-just a sample of the tale:

Could European-made arms technology have been used by authoritarian regimes to silence their own citizens? Analysts say that's hard to prove but reports that governments both in Bahrain and Libya may have done just that have sparked angry debates and accusations of double standards in some European countries.

In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron this week revoked licenses for arms sales to Libya and Bahrain after fears surfaced that British tear gas or riot equipment may have been used against political demonstrators.

In Belgium, YouTube footage showing alleged semi-automatic FN 303 anti-riot guns recently seized by anti-Gadhafi protesters has sparked a political controversy. Belgian defense company FN Herstal is said to have sold Libya arms worth 11.5 million euros. That included rifles, pistols, rifle grenades and ammunition cartridges.

In Germany, there are worries that its electronic exports to Libya could have possibly been used by the regime to jam internet and GPS services.

Of course, the good news is: If somehow Gadhafi and his homeboyz are sent on their way, then the tribal despots that succeed him will need new toys. And building materials and architects and engineers to rebuild all those cities blown up the last time around.

(Sound of hand slapping forehead...'Damn, why didn't I think of that!')

HT Miller-McCune

The Libyan Intervention: The Ground Shifts Under Our Feet

The Huff Post headline says it well: This could take awhile. No kidding? Really?


There's a good live blog stream running there, for those who wish to follow.

The announcement of the beginning of hostilities came during Saturday afternoon during one of the NCAA basketball tournament games. The WinnerOfThe2010NobelPeacePrize just started hisself a war, without consulting Congress. TheOne ordered our Navy and Air Force to bomb the bejeezus out of a country that has not attacked us, just because its leader is a murderous thug, and the UN sez it's OK.

He then boarded the plane to Brazil. Sweet.

This is patently in contravention of the US Constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973. Congress never never never ever ceded to the President the power to make war in our name, just because it suits him.
The ground has shifted under our feet. We're now at war with Libya, 'cuz staging air raids and missile attacks on a sovereign nation, even if the leader is a thug, is an Act of War.

Kucinich and his posse and the Tea Party GOP freshmen now have common cause--it is now time to introduce and debate a resolution to impeach Barack Obama.

It's also time for the GOP freshmen to stage a ComeToJeeeeezus meeting with John Boehner, to see if he thinks the Constitution is a good idea or not.

OS has a question: If it's OK to bomb the bejeezus out of countries we disapprove of, howz-about we flatten the bits of Havana that Castro hangs out in? How about a cruise missle or two, fired from Florida, at Chavez's pad outside Caracas? Or a B-2 raid from Missouri on Zimbabwe? Or Mynamar? Or North Korea? If we don't need to check in with Congress, or declare war, or need any other reason than our own disapproval of a particular regime at a particular moment, why not?

Moral Hazard/Shmoral Hazard!! We know better than them, so let's get to it, ya'll.

Or, perhaps, the framers of the Constitution had a better idea, to constrain the actions of a President posessing unlimited ego and no conscience.