Inside the Asylum

Today Obama pledged

"The United States will continue to support a sovereign and independent Lebanon."

It's a slap in the face for Biden who said the following during the election campaign:

BIDEN: When we kicked — along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, “Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t know — if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Obama administration: are you paying attention to what other countries are doing with their health insurance programs?

THE Rudd Government is opening the way for the possible sale of Medibank Private with the Labor Party set to delete from its policy platform a clause opposing the sale of the health fund. The draft platform... calls on governments to "support and strengthen private health care" but not the words from the 2007 platform which declared: "Labor is opposed to the sale of Medibank Private."

They also seem to think that a bit of free market capitalism will improve things

While the new draft platform omits mention of Medibank, it contains 10 points dealing with support for private health care, including the need to encourage competition in the public and private system.

Well, it seems that within the Obama Administration, both the Defense and State Departments are starting to talk sense, much to the surprise of some of us. The NYT reports (hat tip to Drudge):

The Obama administration signaled Sunday that it was seeking a way to interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology.

“I’m tired of buying the same horse twice,” Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said last week while touring an antimissile site in Alaska that the Bush administration built to demonstrate its preparedness to destroy North Korean missiles headed toward the United States.

“Clinton bought it once, Bush bought it again, and we’re not going to buy it a third time,” one of Mr. Obama’s chief strategists said last week, referring to the Yongbyon plant, where the North reprocesses spent nuclear fuel into bomb-grade plutonium.

While I'll believe it when I see it, at least they're talking a good game.

Meanwhile, the Pharaoh of Upper Korea has had the two American journalists (I use the term loosely, as Al Gore founded what is being called their "news outlet") sentenced to 12 years of prison labor. I think we can expect their eventual release to be (a) part of the package deal the North will try to sell the U.S., along with some previously purchased horses, or (b) played as a show of faux magnanimity, to be used to score cheap theatrical points among those nations pretending to believe that North Korea is a normal country.

I'm not sure about how much tea is actually in China, but I think this is good enough to finally quantify the age-old saying with a concrete number.

China exported 297,000 tonnes of tea valued at 682 million U.S. dollars in 2008, accounting for a fifth of the total international tea trade.

So the next time someone says "I wouldn't do it for all the tea in China" you can ask them, "ah, but would you do it for six hundred and eighty three million?"

The emperor has no clothes, the emperor has no clothes, the emperor has no clothes ... cried the Taliban.

Obama's speech to the Muslim world was full of "deceptive slogans" and did nothing to change relations between America and Muslims... The speech, which Obama delivered at Cairo University on Thursday, "had nothing substantial in terms of content..."

Why are the Taliban more sensible than the entire MSM? That was his entire election campaign. Seriously, has any journalist actually listened to a whole Obama speech? I already know I like motherhood and home cooking.

In related news

Egypt's opposition Muslim Brotherhood, a group that renounced violence decades ago, said the speech was mainly for public relations.

So Taliban + Muslim Brotherhood 2, main stream media nil. Go figure.

This sounds like a lot of fun. KCNA (North Korean News) reports

The "Metropolitan Motorized Infantry Division" of the south Korean puppet army frantically staged air-ground joint military exercises under the simulated conditions of invasion of the north... They were busy with the exercise for occupying positions, frantically firing missiles and machine gun bullets and shells in the air and on the ground.

An unnamed Reuters journalist writes

While reaching out to Iran, Obama has generally avoided repeating Bush's mantra that "all options are on the table", meaning a US assault on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Back in May

Obama made it clear that he did not take any options off the table. “I’ve been very clear that I don’t take any options off the table with respect to Iran. I don’t take options off the table when it comes to US security, period,” said Obama.

Great work Reuters. I guess you can claim that you've avoided being at fault with the word "generally" but come on guys ... lift your game before you go bankrupt along with the rest of the MSM.