Category Archives: United Kingdom
Beheaders Beware
Last year two homegrown Islamists beheaded a soldier on a London street. The beheaders then lectured the gathered crowd until the bobbies finally arrived and shot them. A week ago Australian authorities broke up a plot to carry out beheadings on the streets of Australia.
Beheaders
Americans are armed to the teeth. Will that deter beheaders here? Maybe not. Last week a recent Muslim convert beheaded a coworker in a case of “workplace violence” in Oklahoma.
While he was in the act of stabbing another colleague he was shot by the firm’s COO.
Update:
Dick Morris says Obama is in denial over terrorism, for political reasons as usual. He claims the purpose of the ISIS beheading videos is to inspire lone wolf acts of terror here. Rather than alert the public, the president wants to bury the public’s head in the sand before the midterm elections. Morris says Obama successfully used the same strategy when he blamed the Benghazi terror attacks on a movie before his 2012 re-election.
Scotland Yes or NO
The clock is ticking down for a yes or no vote on Scotland’s break with Britain, and things are getting ugly. Hope the clock’s not attached to a bomb. English politicians are pulling out all the stops in Scotland to buy no votes.
Keeping the Scotch in Scotland
Even Bill Clinton got into the act to say a yes vote could be financially risky. Big banks and businesses have threatened to leave Scotland if the yes voters win. On the bright side, that’s not an option for Scotch makers.
How would Braveheart Vote on Scotland?
Actually Mel Gibson, and even William Wallace, were minor figures in Scottish independence. Robert the Bruce (click the WSJ Michael Penman book review) was the real Braveheart in 1320.
Scotland eventually joined the UK in a merger of equals. In fact the Scots ruled England when King James King IV inherited the throne in 1603.
Nial Ferguson was born in Scotland and he doesn’t get the 21st century independence movement. He thinks it will be an economic disaster.
The economic risks are so glaring that even Paul Krugman and I agree it’s a terrible idea. What currency will Scotland use? The pound? The euro? No one knows. What share of North Sea oil revenues will go to Edinburgh? What about Scotland’s share of Britain’s enormous national debt?
American Braveheart
King James wasn’t the only ruler with Scottish breeding. Gordon Brown is a Scotsman and, according to Wesley Pruden, most American presidents have had Scottish blood.
Three-fourths of the presidents, including Washington, Jefferson and Madison, were of Scottish descent. So have been half of the secretaries of the Treasury, a third of the secretaries of State. Both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, like Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant, were of Scottish blood. So, too, Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart and Ambrose Burnside, and later John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton. America would not have a military tradition but for the sons of Scotland the Brave.
The Great Mandela Selfie
I wasn’t that upset by the Great Mandela Memorial Selfie. In fact it was a relief to see the president finally getting along well with others.
World leaders haven’t been so relaxed together since W rubbed down Angela Merkel.
Bystander President
The NYT has called President Obama the bystander president because he’s deluged by events that seem to have nothing to do with him – unless they’re good. Like the U.S. oil boom which he fought against tooth and nail and now takes credit for.
Here’s a Dana Milbank Washington Post column pondering the problem.
Bystander Protector
Obama is fond of Czars. Could Valerie Jarrett be his protective Rasputin? John Fund thinks so. He quotes her appraisal of the president:
“I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. . . . He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. . . . So what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. . . . He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Says Fund, “As a court flatterer of that caliber it’s no surprise that Jarrett has outlasted almost everyone who was in Obama’s original White House team”
