Mark Steyn, funny as usual:

Tom Blumer of Newsbusters notes that in the last 30 days there have been some 2,500 stories featuring Obama and “distractions,” as opposed to about 800 “distractions” for Bush in his entire second term. The sub-headline of the Reuters story suggests the unprecedented pace at which the mountain of distractions is piling up: “First North Korea, Iran — now Somali pirates.”

Er, okay. So the North Korean test is a “distraction,” the Iranian nuclear program is a “distraction,” and the seizure of a U.S.-flagged vessel in international waters is a “distraction.” Maybe it would be easier just to have the official State Department maps reprinted with the Rest of the World relabeled “Distractions.” Oh, to be sure, you could still have occasional oases of presidential photo-opportunities — Buckingham Palace, that square in Prague — but with the land beyond the edge of the Queen’s gardens ominously marked “Here be distractions . . . ”

[Washington Post] Senior Obama administration officials are debating how to address a potential terrorist threat to U.S. interests from a Somali extremist group, with some in the military advocating strikes against its training camps. But many officials maintain that uncertainty about the intentions of the al-Shabab organization dictates a more patient, nonmilitary approach.

Al-Shabab, whose fighters have battled Ethiopian occupiers and the tenuous Somali government, poses a dilemma for the administration, according to several senior national security officials who outlined the debate only on the condition of anonymity.

The organization’s rapid expansion, ties between its leaders and al-Qaeda, and the presence of Americans and Europeans in its camps have raised the question of whether a preemptive strike is warranted. Yet the group’s objectives have thus far been domestic, and officials say that U.S. intelligence has no evidence it is planning attacks outside Somalia.

Gee, isn’t international waters “outside Somalia?” No matter. Team Obama is “mulling” their response. We can all take comfort in that. As can the families of victims terrorized and captured by Somali pirates. By “mulling” of course I mean weakness, which only encourages more acts of piracy. Obama is making Jimmy Carter look down right hawkish.

“The shores of Tripoli” isn’t just a rhyme in a patriotic song, it’s a solution President Thomas Jefferson offered his era’s piracy problems.

Wonder over what other events the Obama team is mulling?

Iran perhaps?

“Today, with the grace of God, Iran is a country controlling the entire nuclear fuel cycle,” proclaimed Iranian “President” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Iran now controls the entire cycle for producing nuclear fuel with the opening of a new facility to produce uranium fuel pellets,” according to the Associated Press. It’s reportedly the last step in creating nuclear fuel.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia successfully test-fired a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday as part of checks needed to extend its service life for up to 22 years, Russian media reported.

So much for Obama’s new arms control era.

And of course North Korea. It’s recent missile launching is “turning into an early test of the Obama administration’s U.N.-focused multilateralism.” In other words, Team Obama isn’t getting any further along with U.N. cooperation than Bush before him (or Clinton before him, and so on), did.

Just a few months ago Obama ridiculed his presidential opponent for needed to do more than one thing at a time. It’s a little harder when one is president though.

There’s a lot of talk of “energy independence” coming from the Obama administration. It’s a perennial red herring. Of it, Holman Jenkins stated earlier this week it was “a favorite of Tojo and Hitler, was debunked by Churchill, who reasoned that true energy security came from a diversity of suppliers, not the foolish pursuit of self-sufficiency.”

Even so, note the hypocrisy here, in Obama’s tax plan:

$5.3 billion – excise tax on Gulf of Mexico oil and gas
$3.4 billion – repeal expensing of tangible drilling costs
$49 million – repeal passive loss exception for working interests in oil and natural gas properties
$13 billion – repeal manufacturing tax deduction for oil and natural gas companies

In other words, in order to promote energy independence Mr. Obama is going to make it more difficult, more expensive, and thus less likely that American energy companies can drill here, drill now.

The key word above, of course, is “American” — Obama has no power whatsoever on the biggest and most powerful global oil companies, to whom we will turn to get our energy even more than before. (Those pie-in-the-sky notions of “clean” and “green” alternative energies won’t help you power your car to work — only oil and gas will). For all our demonization of the Exxons and Chevrons, et. al., they are puny players in the global market — ranked at #17 and higher in terms of global energy conglomerates, the top spots belonging to the state-owned companies in Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Nigeria, etc. 94% of the worlds oil is already controlled by non-US companies.

Meanwhile, Max Schultz noted that Obama’s alternative energies are simply too expensive, and no bang for the buck:

The subsidies involved are considerable. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in early 2008 that the government subsidizes solar energy at $24.34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and wind power at $23.37 per MWh. Yet even with decades of these massive handouts, as well as numerous state-level mandates for utilities to use green power, wind and solar energy contribute less than 1% of our nation’s electricity.

Compare the subsidies to renewables with those extended to natural gas (25 cents per MWh in subsidies), coal (44 cents), hydroelectricity (67 cents), and nuclear power ($1.59). These are the energy sources (along with oil, which undergirds transportation) that do the heavy lifting in our energy economy.

No matter. In the guise of “saving” our environment from warming that (1) isn’t a problem, and (2) is not even man-made, the Democrats are going to shove a massive $646 billion that will cost every American consumer, not just those hated “richest 2%.” They may as well tax you for every breath you exhale.

CF-18s intercepted Russian plane before Obama visit

CTV.ca News Staff
As security officials worked to secure Ottawa on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit, Canadian fighter jets were scrambling to intercept a Russian bomber plane in the Arctic skies.

That’s a huge story! I mean who knew that Canada had an air force! ; )

Here’s Matthew Continetti:

Barack Obama’s running mate, Joe the Gaffe Machine, recently predicted that an international crisis will occur sometime during a President Obama’s first year in office. What will it be? Trouble in Iraq? Tension between China and Taiwan? State collapse in North Korea? Crisis in the Straits of Hormuz? War in central Africa? There are so many options. How about a Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said Tuesday that Moscow had been issuing Russian passports in Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based. “We all know that they are handing out Russian passports over there,” Mr. Kouchner said in an interview with Kommersant, a Russian online newspaper. The government of Ukraine has said it wants the fleet to leave the Crimean base in Sevastopol when its lease runs out in 2017. But the Russian naval authorities have indicated that they want to retain the base. Mr. Kouchner said Russia might try to make advances in Crimea after the success of its military operations in Georgia in August.

When you talk to Obama supporters, in particular the younger ones, you get the sense that they believe all the world’s problems will disappear if Obama becomes president. Newsflash: They won’t.

Arthur Herman makes an interesting point:

To understand the nature of this challenge, consider that the distance between Baghdad and Tbilisi is barely 578 miles, less than the distance between New York City and Chicago. Iraq and Georgia, both of which have democratic governments, are sandwiched between Iran and Russia, two of the most authoritarian governments in the world. Russia has been collaborating with Iran to strengthen the latter’s nuclear program and its military. It is also steadily arming Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia came exactly one month after Iran test-fired its Shahab III intermediate ballistic missile in order to intimidate neighbors like Israel and Iraq, and two weeks after Mr. Chávez traveled to Moscow to formalize a “Strategic Alliance” with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev. Meanwhile, Iran’s proxies remain the principal threat to peace in Iraq — while on the other side of the world, evidence mounts of Mr. Chávez’s links to the terrorist group FARC, which threatens neighboring Colombia.

Coincidence? Iraq, Georgia and Colombia are battlegrounds in a new kind of international conflict that will define our geopolitical future. This conflict pits the U.S. and the West against an emerging axis of oil-rich dictatorships who are working together to push back against the liberalizing trends of globalization. One of their prime objectives is toppling or undermining neighboring, pro-Western democracies.

The term “axis” has been overused in recent years, and in misleading contexts. But Russia, Iran and Venezuela are acting very much as Japan, Italy and Germany did in the 1930s, when each took advantage of each other’s aggressive moves to extend their own regional power at the expense of liberal democracy — and, as a result, propelling the world to the brink of war.

RUSTAVI, Georgia, Aug. 23 — Georgian civilians captured and recently freed by Russian and South Ossetian forces on Saturday described beatings, forced labor and miserable living conditions in prison.

…The detainees, many of them elderly fruit farmers from villages along Georgia’s northern border, said male inmates were forced to clean streets and bury the war dead, and occasionally endured beatings that left them with bruises and welts. More than 100 men and women were packed into a cell with a single toilet, they said.

“I thought they would kill us. I was very much afraid,” said Manuna Gogidze, 48.

Gogidze said she and 15 others were forced out of her neighbor’s cellar on Aug. 8 and lined up against a wall. A South Ossetian militiaman was pointing a cocked rifle at them when another fighter intervened, she said. They were then loaded into a truck and taken north.

The inmates’ stories could not be independently verified, though people interviewed separately gave consistent accounts. South Ossetian and Russian officials have in the past denied abusing Georgian detainees. A Kremlin spokesman, who would not give his name, said only that prisoners held by the South Ossetians were treated according to “acceptable standards.” A spokesman for the South Ossetian government could not be reached for comment.

Meanwhile people are attacking officials at Guantanamo for “lax” conditions. Yep, we live in Bizarro World.

[ABC News] The latest threat came after a top Russian general said Poland would risk a military strike if it allowed the base and as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dismissed Russia’s saber rattling, saying the threats “border on the bizarre.”

“When you threaten Poland, you perhaps forget that it is not 1988,” Rice said, according to The Associated Press. “It’s 2008 and the United States has a … firm treaty guarantee to defend Poland’s territory as if it was the territory of the United States. So it’s probably not wise to throw these threats around.”

Condi’s defense of Poland is both an important line in the sand and message of solidarity to other Eastern European allies. But it also seems to validate the quote of appeasement by Richard Holbrooke posted earlier today.

The U.S. seems to be saying, “You can have Georgia, but don’t go after Poland.” I recall similar messages regarding Czechoslovakia in 1938…

[WSJ] Georgian authorities, meanwhile, said Russian forces are building what appears to be a permanent checkpoint outside the strategically important Black Sea port of Poti.

Georgian Deputy Defense Minister Batu Kutelia called Russia’s buffer-zone plans a “totally illegal and illegitimate move” that would violate a French-sponsored peace plan Russia and Georgia signed last week.

“What they are striving to do is by military means to achieve a political goal — to paralyze and asphyxiate the country,” he said. “This is not a military or peacekeeping move, it’s about destroying the sovereignty of a neighboring country.”

This isn’t peacekeeping, it’s just what the Georgian defense minister said: strangulation of their economy and government.

Conversely, when U.S. troops were in the Balkans or Iraq or Afghanistan, they don’t splatter posters of the American president all over town, as the Russians are putting up Putin posters throughout Georgia. It is 1968 all over again.

[WSJ] Georgian officials say they were surprised by the strength of [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel’s show of solidarity last Sunday when she visited Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital.

She promised that Georgia would one day join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, despite Russian opposition, and proposed NATO help rebuild Georgia’s military and infrastructure. NATO foreign ministers agreed on an aid package at a meeting Tuesday in Brussels.

The German leader didn’t get on well with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in previous encounters, partly because Mr. Saakashvili lectured her on economics, according to people familiar with those meetings. And Ms. Merkel was instrumental in blocking Georgia’s U.S.-backed bid to start NATO membership talks at the alliance’s April summit in Bucharest. She said a country with unresolved territorial disputes wasn’t ready to join NATO.

German officials at the time said she also wanted to give Russia’s incoming president, Dmitry Medvedev, room to deliver on promises of liberal changes. At a terse meeting Friday in Sochi, Russia, Ms. Merkel told Mr. Medvedev that Russia’s image in Europe was worsening every day Russian tanks remained in Georgia, according to German officials.

Germany’s business lobby opposes political moves that could offend Moscow. The German economy relies heavily on exports, which make up 47% of gross domestic product, and Russia is one of Germany’s fastest-growing markets. Germany also gets 37% of its natural gas and 31% of its crude oil from Russia.

Ms. Merkel is the first German leader to grow up in Communist East Germany, an experience that left her instinctively suspicious of Russian power, unlike many politicians from Germany’s capitalist West who have long tried to act as a diplomatic bridge between Washington and Moscow.