Right Wing Nut House

Very bad situation in Yemen. In what may be the only realistic chance of democratic change in all the “Arab Spring” countries, President Saleh has gone all Bashar Assad on us and begun to shell and shoot down civilians at will in the street.

My FPM article today recounts the horrors of this past weekend:

Violence exploded across Yemen over the weekend and through Monday, as protesters throughout the country were met with live fire from military units loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The number of dead in just three days is at least 75, with 26 killed and more than 350 wounded in the capital city of Sanaa alone. Hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets in several cities, demonstrating as they have for eight months against the oppressive Saleh regime, while rebel military units fought pitched battles in the streets with regime forces. Major General Ali Mohsin Saleh Ahmar’s 1st Armored Division, an opposition mainstay since he defected in March, exchanged artillery fire with Saleh’s Republican Guard in the streets of Sanaa, causing many casualties among the protesters.

Yemen has been placed on the backburner for the last several months by the US and its allies, as first the Libyan operation and then the violence in Syria overshadowed the struggle in Yemen for political change that has dragged on since the early months of 2011. The chaos has opened the door for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to dig in and strengthen its hold in the south. The terrorists have also been able to expand their operations outside of Yemen, thanks to the lack of  control in the region by the government. And there is no end in sight to the conflict despite efforts by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to find a political solution that would satisfy President Saleh, the protesters in the streets, and the largest opposition bloc, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP).

Some of the demonstrators want the rebel army to stop shooting because it is mostly civilians who are getting caught in the crossfire. One young revolutionary said, “I am upset and angry. My friend has been severely injured. I curse Ahmar’s soldiers and I curse the troops of the regime.” He added, “The demonstrators wanted this revolution to be peaceful, but the soldiers on both sides want this to turn into a civil war.”

Snipers took aim at the civilians from rooftops near Change Square, the epicenter of the revolt, gunning down children as young as 4 years old and exacting a fearful toll on the unarmed demonstrators.

Satisfying Saleh appears to be a near impossibility. Three times since the outbreak of the “Arab Spring” began last February, Saleh has promised to step down and make way for a transitional government. And three times he has reneged, or the opposition has objected to his conditions. His ploy to delay and muddy the waters of any deal that has been proposed has worked — Yemen has fallen out of the headlines and the US moved on to deal with other crises. This has left Saudi Arabia to try and work out a deal that would be acceptable to both sides.

But, as Marc Lynch points out in his blog at Foreign Policy, Saudi interests are definitely not those of the protesters. The US and the international community “essentially delegated the Yemen file to Saudi Arabia and the GCC, which quickly proved that it was either not up to the task or not interested in finding a real solution.” The last thing that King Abdullah wants to see is a democratic revolution on his doorstep. Instead, he has sought to guide the two parties to reach an agreement that would leave Saleh in power for a period of time, while elections were scheduled. Saleh has deputized his vice president to negotiate a deal with the JMP using the GCC framework as a basis for an agreement. But significantly, he is refusing to step down until elections could be held. And the way his negotiators are talking, it could be six months or more before that eventuality occurs.

The US hasn’t covered itself in glory with regards to pushing for Saleh to leave. In fact, we’re talking out of both sides of our mouth. While we give lip service to the protestors, we are working very closely with Saleh’s government to battle Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Penninsula. Obama has increased drone strikes on AQAP  targets and the CIA is constructing a base to better facilitate our attacks.

Not a satisfying turn of events.

I really have to stop reading about Greece and the coming Euro-catastrophe. It’s spoiling my appetite and giving me major league writer’s block.

So I shall leave worldly things behind this morning and concentrate on more ethereal pursuits; such as bemoaning the loss of summer and plunging into the pit of depression over the coming change of season.

Fall begins officially on September 23 but here in my little corner of the Heartland, it’s been here for about a week already. Overnight temps have hovered at 40 or below and  Jack Frost has already come a’nipping, spreading a glaze over the lawn like an artist would wash a landscape. Even with bright sunshine during the day, there is a bite to the wind — little fingers of cold that penetrate your not-quite-fall clothing all the way to the bone, issuing a a warning to take heed the auguries of Fall and dress more warmly next time out.

Inevitably, your next excursion out of doors results in over compensating and dressing as if it’s mid-winter thus discomfiting oneself  when your wardrobe malfunction leads to overheating and an abundance of sweat. Fall always takes a while to get used to as far as finding the optimal balance between freezing and roasting.

Actually, we have it all over the ancients as far as being comfortable during Fall. They basically had a skins-no skins wardrobe. We should feel their pain at not being blessed with having polyester and nylon which, among other modern materials, are shaped into windbreakers, light jackets, and long sleeve shirts in order to ward off the chill and make being outdoors during the Fall a less onerous experience.

Of course, the ancients had other advantages to make up for their lack of appropriate outer wear. They got to sit around campfires every night, eat meat off the bone, fool around on their mates without having to worry about divorce, and go hunting every day. For a man, it sounds idyllic. Except for the lack of indoor plumbing and the fact that their clothes probably smelled like a three week old dead Moose, I’d jump at the chance to live that kind of life.

Cro-Magnon man had fire to keep himself warm and so do we — except the fire is in our gas heaters which leads to another Fall tradition; the ceremonial Lighting of the Sacred Furnace.

No amount of sacred dancing or sacrifices offered to non-existent deities will ever result in being able to light the burner on the first try. This is partly due to me not reading the directions very closely (every year) but also because manufacturers deliberately make it difficult to light the beast so that one is forced to call –  in order to get life giving warmth into the house — the High Priest of Fall.

The Furnace Repairman.

He arrives and the second he walks in the door, your wallet is lighter by $75.  This is the offering he demands in order for him to deign to look at the Holy Cinerator. He takes apart the contraption piece by piece, laying the innards on the basement floor in no discernible pattern, thus assuring however long it takes him to fix the problem, it will take twice as long to put the infernal machine back together. In this way, the High Priest is able to become a Tycoon as well - sort of like being a TV Evangelist only without the gay sex scandals.

His last incantation finished, he presents his bill. What was it that I failed to do to get it started I ask, blinking back tears after confusing his invoice with the national debt and realizing I am in the wrong business. “Might help if you turn the gas on before trying to light it,” he says casually.

I can think of better ways to spend a Fall Saturday afternoon.

No matter. The sun rises later and sets earlier every day, something that must have terrified the ancients. Being quite clever (despite ludicrous theories about ancient astronauts helping them figure everything out), our ancestors discerned the notion that an offering to the gods was good insurance, just in case the sun decided not to come up one day or take it on the lamb and hightail it out of town permanently. They hadn;t a clue about our heliocentric solar system or even that the sun was a heavenly body. All they knew was that warmth was going out of their lives and appeasing a deity was in order.

So on the equinox - -when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth’s equator — our ancestors held religious ceremonies and offered sacrifices to assure the sun’s return to its former warmth. It shows how truly practical early man was and how science and faith played a role in their lives.

For me, I have no such practical thoughts despite knowing that the sun will once again shine warmly down upon us. It is the interregnum that depresses me. The long nights, the way that time nearly comes to a standstill (as opposed to the way it flies by during the summer), the endless, life draining battle with snow and ice, and finally, the realization that one more winter means there is one less winter before the end.

Irish fatalism? To be sure, I inherited that quality. But someday, I will knock the snow and ice off my boots and live in a place where snow is only seen on travel shows, and ice is what you put into a cocktail glass.

Of course, I will find something else to complain about. Maybe I’ll even miss the change of seasons.

Naw.

Here’s my latest up at FPM: Israel’s carefully wrought diplomacy has fallen apart over the last few months.

A sample:

It is surprising how quickly Israel’s relations with Turkey have gone south. They had been slowly deteriorating since Prime Minister Erdogan’s Islamist party took over the government in 2003. But the Mavi Marmara incident last year, where Turkish radicals tried to run the Gaza blockade by sea and 9 activists were killed, has accelerated the decline dramatically. A UN report released last week blamed Israel for actions that were “excessive and unreasonable,” while also blaming Turkey and organizers of the blockade runners for the deaths. The report also called the blockade “legitimate,” while criticizing Ankara for not warning activists of the consequences of trying to run the blockade.

On the heels of the report’s release, Prime Minister Erdogan demanded that Israel apologize. Prime Minister Netanyahu, while offering his regrets at the loss of life, refused, saying that Israel would never apologize for defending itself.

This was not good enough for Erdogan, who expelled the Israeli ambassador and cut military ties with the Jewish state. And in an interview with Al Jazeera television, Erdogan stated that the Gaza flotilla raid was “a cause for war” and that future Gaza-bound aid ships would be accompanied by Turkish war ships. He has since walked back from that last statement, saying that Turkey would not deploy its ships as long as Israel did not intercept the aid vessels in international waters. But the threat is there, and a clash between the Israeli and Turkish navies is a possibility if Erdogan carries through on his threat.

Erdogan’s government has now completely turned away from the West and is facing toward Iran and the Middle East. Some observers believe Erdogan wishes to supplant President Ahmadinejad of Iran as the number one champion of the Palestinians in the region. To that end, Erdogan has embarked on a tour of Arab nations, including Egypt, where he arrived to cheering throngs who chanted “Egypt-Turkey: one fist” and “brave Erdogan welcome to your second home.” His goal is to isolate Israel even further by developing a strategic partnership with Egypt, Tunisia, and other Arab countries. Given his anti-Israeli stance, he has become very popular on the Arab street and especially in Egypt, where the Israeli embassy was overrun by a mob of protesters over the weekend, forcing a harrowing evacuation of embassy personnel, including the ambassador.

The attack on the embassy was the second in less than a month. The first incident occurred following a terrorist attack in Israel that killed seven civilians and two soldiers. The attackers infiltrated into Israel from the Egyptian side of the Sinai border crossing, and in hot pursuit of the terrorists - who were reportedly dressed in Egyptian police uniforms - three members of Egyptian security were accidentally killed by the IDF. The incident resulted in a crowd of several thousand besieging the Israeli embassy, with one man ascending to the roof of the building and tearing down the Israeli flag and replacing it with the Egyptian standard, while police and military members stood by and watched.

The second incident occurred on Friday, when thousands of Egyptians broke through the wall surrounding the embassy, trapping the ambassador and other personnel inside the building while the mob vandalized several rooms. Repeated calls to the Egyptian head of state, Field Marshal Tantawi, by US defense secretary Leon Panetta went for naught when the authorities claimed the field marshal couldn’t be found. Panetta wanted to urge the Egyptians to launch an immediate rescue operation, but Tantawi’s mysterious disappearance intensified speculation that Egypt’s generals had deliberately failed to protect the embassy for political gain.

Eventually, Egyptian commandos rescued the Israelis, but only after Panetta warned the Egyptian government of “serious consequences” if any Israelis were killed.

There are some analysts who believe that a general Middle East war is becoming more possible as a result of Israel’s growing isolation and her enemies becoming emboldened because of it. There is also the question of instability in Egypt, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen that is throwing up leaders who are not only hostile to the Jewish state, but lead populations that wish to destroy her. Many of those leaders are going to be Islamists or beholden to the radicals for their election victories. This spells nothing but trouble for Israel.

This is going to put Israel on a hair trigger defense posture. It is not inconceivable that conflict could break out in any number of areas as new leadership in the Arab world is driven to war by populations that desire Israel’s destruction.

A dangerous couple of years are ahead for Israel and its Arab neighbors.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative political talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Jazz Shaw of Hot Air, Doug Mataconis of Outside the Beltway, and Fausta Wertz of Fausta’s Blog. We’ll discuss last night’s GOP debate, the Republican race for the nomination, and the new poverty statistics that came out today.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

A troubling disconnect between Assad’s brutality and the Arab League’s “peace plan” and the Red Cross efforts to visit detainees as I point out in my latest at FPM.

A sample:

Despite the Red Cross finally being allowed to visit some detainees held in an Interior Ministry prison outside of Damascus, there appears to be a disconnect between the brutal actions of the Syrian government, and the efforts by the Arab League and Red Cross to deal with the crackdown. In statements made by the representative of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger, it appears that the pacifist organization is unable to grasp the enormity of the crimes against humanity being committed by Assad and his generals.

After expressing the hope that the Red Cross would be able to visit other prisoners being detained by the regime, Kellenberger said of the ICRC’s visit, “This is an important step forward for our humanitarian activities in Syria.” He also met with President Assad and discussed “the rules governing the use of force by security forces in the current situation and the obligation to respect the physical and psychological well-being and human dignity of detainees.”

For five months Assad has been using tanks against civilians and the Red Cross bureaucrat is lecturing Assad about “rules” and “obligations?”

Nobody has any idea how many Syrian civilians have been detained so far. Human rights groups put the number of detainees in the “tens of thousands.” Desperate families have no idea where their loved ones are being held, or even if they are still alive. Those few who have been released have told stories of torture and murder in the prisons. Amnesty International recently released a report detailing the deaths of 88 civilians who were detained by the army. Fifty-two of the bodies showed signs of torture. Amnesty International researcher Neil Sammonds said, “The accounts of torture we have received are horrific.” He added, “We believe the Syrian government to be systematically persecuting its own people on a vast scale.”

Meanwhile, the plan created by the Arab League is completely unacceptable to the protestors, never mind it being heavily criticized by the Syrian government. According to AFP, the document asks Assad to hold elections within three years, move toward a pluralistic government, and immediately halt the crackdown. SG al-Arabi said it was necessary “to carry a clear message to the Syrian authorities about the situation in Syria and the need to stop the violence and launch immediate reforms.” The League’s proposal also includes a requirement that most of their own governments don’t even follow: Assad must “separate the military from political and civil life.”

What makes this statement so surreal – and the effort behind it – is that opposition to the Assad regime has moved far beyond these paltry efforts to “reform” the political process. The protestors want Assad gone one way or another. One activist expressed the hope that the army would take the initiative and overthrow the dictator. “We think the army will one day make a coup. It would make the situation much easier,” he said. So far, that seems a forlorn hope. And the prospect of allowing Assad to serve another three years waiting for elections is a total non-starter with the opposition. In short, most elements in the plan are not based on the reality of what is happening in the streets.

The Arab League’s plan is not only unacceptable to the opposition, the Syrian government has all but rejected it out of hand. Hence, the request that SG al-Arabi cool his heels in Egypt and wait for a more propitious time to make his pitch. The semi-official Syrian news agency SANA reports that Damascus told al-Arabi, that the delay was necessary “due to circumstances beyond our control.” The agency added, “He [al-Arabi] has been informed of those circumstances and a new date will be set for his visit.”

Given the vagueness of the Syrian government’s statement about when that might be, one could assume that an invitation will be a long time coming.

The Arab League is a joke - always has been - but this effort is just gobsmackingly dumb. None of them really want to do anything because someday, they might be forced into the same situation as Assad and want to keep their options open as far as slaughtering their own citizens. They don’t want to intervene in Syria, just as they didn’t want to intervene in Libya. But the conscience of the world shamed them into supporting (or at least giving lip service) to the NATO mission.

The Red Cross seems truly oblivious to the manifestation of evil found in Assad’s Syria. To believe that Assad cares what they think about “rules” of behavior or “obligations” to respect the “dignity” of detainees is just plain weird. I suppose an organization like the ICRC is necessary but they make fools of themselves when injecting themselves into tragedies they simply can’t understand.

The Security Council is being blocked from extending sanctions by Russia and China who don’t think the game is up for Assad quite yet and are hedging their bets that he will find a way to survive. Those are pretty long odds from where I’m sitting. The protestors aren’t going away, the opposition is getting better organized by the week, and the military is becoming less reliable with every killing in the streets. There’s nothing Assad can do to “reform” the political process that would put the genie back in the bottle and stop the demonstrations, so he’s going to have to continue trying to suppress the revolt using terror tactics.

How long that can continue before the world, the Syrian army, or his own inner circle move to stop him is anyone’s guess.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative political talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Jazz Shaw of Hot Air, Rich Baehr of the American Thinker, and Jeff Dunetz of the Lid. We’ll discuss the latest round of polls and the prospects for the president’s reelection. We’ll also have some personal remembrances of 9/11.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

So it’s Labor Day - one of those quaint, old fashioned holidays that once meant something to people but is now just another excuse for a barbecue or a ballgame.

Thus will it ever be so; America changes and we slough off the old and embrace (or at least tolerate) the new. But Labor Day should be a time to call to mind the triumphs and tragedies that built the labor movement and through the efforts of a precious few courageous men and women, forged the modern America that we live in today.

The modern concept of “work” was largely created by organized labor. The story of how that came about is a fascinating one that has everything a good drama should have; heroes, villains, damsels in distress, and ultimate tragedy as unions first corrupted themselves, then were taken over in many cases by organized crime, and now have atrophied to become caricatures of themselves.

Go back 125 years and you will find that “work” meant something entirely different than it does today. Work was getting up at the crack of dawn and going to a factory where it was a crap shoot as to whether you’d leave at dusk that day with all your fingers, toes, hands, arms, legs, feet, and eyes - not to mention coming home at all. Safety regimens, workers’ compensation, and work rules that put safety first were all invented by industrial unions.

Too smart to work at a factory? How about working as an accountant at the turn of the 20th century. You would likely work 10-12 hours a day in poor light, 6 days a week, with no paid sick leave or paid vacation, and arbitrariness in hiring and firing. It wasn’t until unions came along  and literally fought for these benefits, that these things we take for granted today in all industries became common in the workplace.

The very concept of “leisure time” came about because unions and workers fought bloody battles with hired company goons (and, in some cases, local police) for a 5 day, 40 hour workweek. They fought for a living wage. Their agitation created a large middle class that had the purchasing power to change the face of American retail businesses. The consumer society was born because unions fought for the ability of their members to buy more than the necessities of life.  Living a middle class life came to mean the ability to buy  “luxury” goods like cars, washing machines, refrigerators (”ice boxes”), and other products that were made by other unionized workers.

Far from declining, profits of industrial companies soared. While there may have been grumbling from management, the labor unrest that occurred prior to unions taking on the task of negotiating contracts largely receded. It seems strange, but unions back then recognized that they were stakeholders in assuring that a company remained profitable and competitive. American unions, unlike their European counterparts, participated in the capitalist system and eschewed Communism and socialism - although there were always agitators who tried to alter that equation.

So what happened? Unions became victims of their own success. The depression radicalized some. Organized crime recognized the potentially huge opportunity to skim cash from welfare and pension funds. But beyond that, small minded men replaced the original giants in organized labor and saw to it that the union feathered their nest, rather than working for its members.

By the early 1970’s at the height of their power, unions had been sowing the seeds of their own destruction for decades. The business landscape was altered by history and government; history, because both the victorious and defeated powers who fought World War II had finally rebuilt their industrial capacity and were challenging America for supremacy. And government, because the necessary by products of industrial production - pollution, toxic waste, poisoning ground water — needed to be reined in or we would have killed ourselves.

Rather than recognize the changed environment, unions acted as if the party would go on forever. Alas, it was not to be. Industry by industry went bankrupt or were forced to cut back precipitously. Fewer workers, less power; the snowball was rolling downhill until today, fewer than 12% of the workforce is unionized, down from a high of 35% in post war America.

Have we gained more than we lost in this exchange? I think it depends on the industry. Some industries have probably been helped by a loss of union membership while others could use more union representation. There is also the matter of specific unions and how they are run. The Teamsters have been purged of mobsters for the most part and is a reasonably well run outfit. The leadership of the UAW, on the other hand, could use some radical reformation given the goodies they take for themselves at the expense of their members.

Questions about whether unions are necessary are usually asked by those who don’t work in a job like the home health care field where workers are paid barely minimum wage and whose hours are brutal. Other service workers might do better if they organized. The question isn’t whether unions are necessary, but rather where they would improve the workforce and increase profits. Unions and profits are not incompatible as long as both sides recognize their common interests. That’s a tall order for some unions and most management today. But it is not inconceivable going forward.

There is thuggishness. There is featherbedding. There is corruption and criminal activity. There is all that and worse in the modern organized labor movement. But whatever you think about unions today should not obscure the real benefits and achievements of unions in the past. Along with some visionary companies, they had a great deal to do with inventing the America we live in today.

So honor that effort. And recognize that there is dignity and worth in every worker who participates in our capitalist economy.

This is a below the radar story that is getting some traction in the western press, but not much here in the US. Black sub-Saharan migrant workers - as well as black Libyans who make up about a quarter of the population - are suffering what has the makings of a real tragedy as rebel soldiers (and anyone with a gun) is terrorizing just about anyone with a black face.

There have been massive roundups of black males in Tripoli and they are being held in primitive, unsanitary conditions. There are reports that some of the prisoners have been brutalized while others have been shot dead.

The NTC is saying all the right words but it is doubtful if they have much control of the situation.

From my piece at FPM this morning:

There is no firm number of blacks being held in Tripoli, but one rebel commander said that about 5,000 prisoners were being detained in several locations around the city. Human rights groups believe the number is much higher and have raised the alarm about the conditions in which prisoners are being held, as well as concern over the safety of all blacks in Libya. The African Union has withheld recognition of the National Transitional Council, taking them to task for what they view as a racist detention policy. And the NTC has rejected a UN offer of peacekeeping troops to “monitor” the situation.

The NTC has called on its soldiers not to abuse the prisoners, saying those charged with crimes will be given a fair trial. But there are many young men with guns roaming the streets, some of them robbing and beating innocents, with many reports of summary executions. Amnesty International has documented one gruesome atrocity outside of a hospital where 30 bodies, all of them black, were found to have been massacred.

And the rebels’ racism is not confined to black Africans. PJ Media’s John Rosenthal documented dozens of examples of anti-Semetic graffiti in Benghazi after that city fell into rebel hands, as well as many examples of black Africans being singled out for brutal treatment.

“Libyan people don’t like people with dark skins,” one militiaman said in reference to the arrests of blacks. That is certainly one reason for the indiscriminate nature of the round ups. But the rumors — apparently overblown, or downright false — that Gaddafi had hired black African mercenaries from Chad and elsewhere to act as executioners of Libyan civilians, gunning them down in cold blood during protests, has particularly poisoned the minds of many Libyans and has contributed to the racial tensions in the post-Gaddafi era. Representatives from both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say they have investigated the claims by rebels of African mercenaries committing atrocities and have been unable to verify any of the rumors about them. This may be a case of rebel propaganda blowing back and putting thousands of innocents in danger.

There is also an historical context to be considered when talking about racism in Libya. As Stephen Brown pointed out in FPM last April, since the 7th century, 14 million blacks have been sold into slavery in Arab countries. This has resulted in a kind of racism not seen in America for decades, where blacks are considered sub-human and not fit for any task except those that an Arab considers beneath him. One African columnist writes, “In Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Mauritania and the rest of the Arab world, Africans are treated like scum.” In marketplaces, Arabs throw stones at blacks, while preventing them from achieving any positions of authority in Arab countries. “There are hardly any Africans in high government positions in Arab governed countries…It is simply a way of life that’s all. Blacks do not really exist or at best are not human.”

With history — both recent and ancient — working against the black African workers that Gaddafi exploited and discriminated against, the mass arrests have angered the African Union to the point that they are refusing to recognize the NTC until they are assured that their citizens are protected by the new government. “NTC seems to confuse black people with mercenaries,” AU chairman Jean Ping said.”All blacks are mercenaries. If you do that, it means [that the] one-third of the population of Libya, which is black, is also mercenaries. They are killing people, normal workers, mistreating them,” he said.

The AU has also not withdrawn its “roadmap” that called for Gaddafi to remain in power while a transition to a new government was undertaken. This has not enamored the organization with rebel leaders who deny claims of mass roundups and racially motivated killings.

But several western news organizations would disagree with those denials. Reuters reports on a camp that desperate black Africans have set up along the sea shore where refugees tell grim stories of murder, robbery, and beatings at the hands of young Libyans who accost any male with a black face and are likely to haul them off to one of dozens of detention centers in the Libyan capitol.

The NTC won’t even allow UN observers to help, much less peacekeepers. And no one knows what’s happening in the hinterlands where there are few western reporters and even fewer human rights watchers.

It appears that unless the NTC can somehow get a grip on the security situation that something very ugly is going to happen in Libya that will expose western pretensions about how “successful” the “Responsibility to Protect” mission in Libya actually was.

Let me get this straight. We have 9% unemployment, an obscenely high deficit of $1.4 trillion, a national debt that is exploding, the real possibility of a double dip recession, the loss of our gold plated debt rating, financial markets poised to repeat the meltdown of 2008, the Euro-zone facing its own financial catastrophe, two wars, and a restless, dispirited population.

And the president pulls a juvenile political stunt by knowingly and deliberately scheduling his speech on how he plans to assist business in creating jobs on the same day and time as a nationally televised GOP candidate debate?

James Carville:

“I do think this is a really big debate and I think the White House was out of bounds…in trying to schedule a speech during a debate,” Carville said on “GMA.”

This will be Gov. Rick Perry’s first debate, and as Carville said this morning the stakes are high.

“Given a choice between watching a debate and the speech I would have watched the debate and I’m not even a Republican or even close to being a Republican,” he said, adding it will be a “barn burner.”

This is the kind of stunt that Donald Segretti would have pulled at USC - or the Nixon White House where every cockamamie scheme to damage Democrats received a serious airing and some were even adopted. Segretti would send out flyers announcing a campaign appearance by a Democratic candidate only he’d give the wrong place and time.

Obama’s handlers thought that the GOP would acquiesce and move their debate because of the scheduling conflict and Obama would have made his point; the jobs speech is more important than the opposition political debate. He would have also scored points with his base for sticking it to the GOP.

But Boehner blew it up in his face, making his campaign team look clueless in the process. They managed to reschedule the speech on the same night that the NFL season kicks off with a game between the last two Super Bowl winners - Green Bay and New Orleans. Any bets on which event pulls in more TV viewers?

It isn’t so much the inept gamesmanship that is so bothersome. It’s the petty nature of the entire affair. The attempt at upstaging the GOP makes the president look small, indeed. Any time a president brings himself down to the level of his opposition, he comes off badly by comparison. It makes one wonder if these are the same guys who ran a brilliant campaign back in 2008 that ended up an electoral landslide.

Now they’re the gang that can’t shoot straight. Cenq Unger on Obama’s “Rope-a-dope” strategy:

Here is what all voters, and especially independents, despise and disdain in a politician — weakness. Nobody wants to see their leader get beat to a pulp every night and then bow his head again.

There is no secret, brilliant strategy. This White House is in a bubble. They think they’re winning when the roof is about to cave in.

I am forced to agree. If this is an example of their idea of strategy, the GOP could nominate a pie-eyed prostitute and probably win. They don’t have a clue on jobs, the economy, or most importantly, projecting an image of Obama’s leadership that would invite the public to support him. The picture most people are getting in their minds of the president is, contrary to what Unger says, a partisan, petulant, whining politician who blames everyone else for the nation’s problems and grumbles about how hard the challenges are. Democrats are finding it harder and harder to defend him and his policies. Soon, they won’t even bother and it will be every Democrat for themselves.

It’s not Obama’s willingness to “compromise” (?) or his efforts at “bi-partisanship” (?) that have him in trouble with the voters. Its that we have enormous problems and his policies are not helping. Trillions in “stimulus” spending and the best the White House can do is claim that all that cash “saved” jobs. Massive health insurance reform that we were told would “bend the curve” on health care costs that has done the opposite. More hundreds of billions spent on plans to prop up mortgages from underwater homeowners failing miserably. The list is endless - and depressing.

The speech ploy demonstrates that the president is not serious about getting the economy moving again and creating jobs. He is intent on getting re-elected while allowing things to drift, hoping that things don’t get much worse and that his efforts to blame the GOP for all the horrors in the world succeeds.

It’s not what we need from a president now. But it’s all we’ve got.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative political talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, I welcome Jazz Shaw and Tina Korbe of Hot Air, and Monica Showalter of Investors Business Daily. We’ll discuss the hot stories and important events making news today.

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