Well, it looks like Uhhhbama has found a debt he wants to tackle: that of Greece.

President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged European countries and bondholders to prevent a “disastrous” default by Greece and pledged U.S. support to help tackle the country’s debt crisis.

Par for the course for him (and considering his golf addiction, there was actually no pun intended).  He won’t address our energy problems, but he’ll help Brazil get oil.  He won’t address our fiscal crisis, but he’ll help Greece try to get their fiscal house in order.

You know, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the guy friggin’ hates America and wants to see us weakened as much as possible before his sorry #ss gets kicked to the curb next November.

When Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero took power seven years ago, he and his Socialist Workers’ Party set out to perfect the welfare state in Spain. The goal was to equal— or even surpass — lavish social protections that have long been the rule for Spain’s Western European neighbors.

True to his Socialist principles and riding an economic boom, Zapatero raised the minimum wage and extended health insurance to cover everything from sniffles to sex changes. He made scholarships available to all. Young adults got rent subsidies called “emancipation” money. Mothers got $3,500 for the birth of a child, toddlers attended free nurseries and the elderly got stipends for nursing care.

How times have changed. With a U.S.-style real estate bubble having burst and the 2008 global economic crisis having unfurled like a tsunami from Wall Street to Plaza de Espana, Zapatero’s main concern in his second term has become hacking away at government spending to preserve Spain’s credit rating. The icon of socialism recently concluded a pact with labor unions and business leaders to freeze pensions, push back the retirement age from 65 to 67, trim union bargaining rights, cut civil servants’ pay by 5 percent (including his own) and suspend the childbirth bonus. The alternative, he warned, was bankruptcy.

So how has unemployment fared in socialist Spain?

The financial crisis has forced deep cuts and left Spain burdened with 21.3 percent unemployment, the highest of any nation using the Euro as its currency. The jobless rate among the young stands at 40 percent and a total of 4.9 million people are out of work in Spain, the highest number since 1997.

And how did the electorate respond?

With 91% of municipal votes counted, the centre-right Popular Party (PP) had almost a 10-percentage point lead, the interior ministry said.

Voting took place amid mass protests against high unemployment and the government’s handling of the economy.

Demonstrators holding sit-ins in Madrid and other cities said rallies would continue for another week.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero conceded his party had been resoundingly defeated but said he had no intention of calling early general elections.

He said three years of economic crisis had taken their toll.

Huh.  Go figure.

We may have escaped the Apocalypse this past weekend, but only time will tell if they can escape socialism’s apocalypse.

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation – at her own hospital.

Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.
But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.

Well, better late than never! Actually…no, “late” and “never” are pretty much the same here, no?

Hey, I’ve got an awesome idea!  How’s about we let our federal government take over our health care system here?  I mean, stuff like this from the UK could never happen here…could it?

Let us be honest. The US is still trapped in depression a full 18 months into zero interest rates, quantitative easing (QE), and fiscal stimulus that has pushed the budget deficit above 10pc of GDP.

The share of the US working-age population with jobs in June actually fell from 58.7% to 58.5%. This is the real stress indicator. The ratio was 63% three years ago. Eight million jobs have been lost.

The average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks. Nothing like this has been seen before in the post-war era. Jeff Weninger, of Harris Private Bank, said this compares with a peak of 21.2 weeks in the Volcker recession of the early 1980s.

Where are our MSM sources in reporting this inconvenient truth?  Nope…no liberal media bias!

Analysts warned, however, that the emergency bailout fund would do nothing to reverse Europe’s soaring public debt — and could even worsen it.

“The last thing you give a drunk is another drink,” said Jeremy Batstone-Carr of Charles Stanley stockbrokers.
…
Even EU president Van Rompuy warned that the bloc risks irrelevance and the end of its expensive welfare programs if it can’t speed up economic growth, forecast to expand by just 1 percent this year.

“With 1 percent growth we can’t finance our social model any more. With 1 percent structural growth we can’t play a role in the world,” he told the World Economic Forum in Brussels. “We need to double the economic growth potential that we now have.”

Many are skeptical that can be achieved.

So as the Euros are figuring out that it takes real money to run a bloated welfare state, and that pilfering the fruits of the producers to hand over to the non-producers doesn’t work has put them into a real craphole, American liberals are determined to emulate that failure here.  Friggin’ wonderful.

Patients were routinely neglected or left “sobbing and humiliated” by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.

An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs. …

Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses “left a lot to be desired”.
…
The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that “unimaginable” suffering had been caused.

Hey, I’ve got an awesome idea!  How about we let the government run our health care system the way that the Limeys are running theirs?  What could possibly go wrong, right?

Oh, wait.

After initially denying that they had received British intelligence, senior American sources confirmed last night that they were “reviewing” what British information had been received on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The admission is embarrassing for the White House and threatens to provoke a rift with Gordon Brown. The conflicting briefing over the shared intelligence also suggests that the transatlantic relationship may have weakened in recent months.

I’m thoroughly confused.  Didn’t the left and the MSM (pardon the redundancy) tell us all throughout 2008 and even into 2009 that only The One could heal the international wounds inflicted by Dubya the Terrible?  Why, just a touch of His robe (or a big ol’ collective group hug…tomato, to-mah-to) would send a message to the world that all was well and peace in our time had finally arrived!

Funny, that.

President Barack Obama’s decision to break with tradition and not follow the lead of past Nobel Peace Prize winners bewildered some Norwegians. Others thought he was being impolite.

Obama had quite a whirlwind day Thursday – he signed the Nobel guest book, huddled with Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, met with King Harald V and Queen Sonja, and delivered an acceptance speech after he was formally presented with the prize. He also joined the king and queen at an evening banquet.

But he skipped out on several other activities, including lunch with the king, a news conference at Oslo’s Grand Hotel, CNN’s traditional interview with the prize winner and a “Save the Children” benefit concert, …

So how did the Norwegians deal with the B.O. snub?  Heh…

…where organizers replaced him with an Obama cardboard cutout.

Well, if it’s any consolation to you Uhhhh-bama fans, the cardboard replica did manage to accomplish in one day the same things that B.O. has accomplished all year: jack and squat.

Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea!  How about, oh I dunno, not dumping 40k tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere that is supposedly baking due to these greenhouse gases?  Free advice.  You’re welcome.

…Think the Times is making this up? Think again, for here’s the announcement at VisitCopenhagen.com:

Have you ever shaken hands with an American vice president? If not, now is your chance. Meet Al Gore in Copenhagen during the UN Climate Change Conference in December 2009. [...]

VIP meeting with Al Gore

This is the book, on which Al Gore will base his lecture, when he invites Copenhageners and visitors to hear him speak about what can be done to solve the serious problems of climate change.

Tickets are available in different price ranges for the event. If you want it all, you can purchase a VIP ticket, where you get a chance to shake hands with Al Gore, get a copy of Our Choice and have your picture taken with him. The VIP event costs DKK 5,999 and includes drinks and a light snack.

If you do not want to spend that much money, but still want to hear Al Gore speak about his latest book about climate challenges, you can purchase general tickets, ranging in price from DKK 199 – 1,499 depending on where in the room you want to sit. There will be large screens, so that everyone will get a good view.

How much is DKK 5,999?

Well, according to TheMoneyConverter.com, a Danish Krone is currently worth 20.22 cents.

That means 5,999 Krones is about $1,213. …

Obviously, B.O. isn’t the only one who thinks highly of himself.

The video was played after German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in the state of Brandenburg in communist East Germany, led leaders including Russian President Dmitry Medvedev through the Gate.

“Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it,” Obama said.

Yeah, I’m sure as the wall was tumbling down 20 years ago, the very first thought that free Germans had was “You know, now that we’re free, maybe our friends over in America will…um…elect a black man for their president one day!”

For once, I’m actually speechless.

Denver temps in the teens (record lows), coupled with snow and ice, have postponed the Rockies-Phillies baseball playoff game.

While the Goreacle was blathering on about how the Senate will pass cap-and-tax (they won’t), an attendee had the temerity to question errors in “An Inconvenient Truth”.  This attendee had his mike cut off.  Apparently, when the left says “the debate is over”, they really mean it…and they won’t listen to inconvenient truths to the contrary.

The Beeb asks: “What happened to global warming?”  Dude…the Beeb is asking the question!

ABC: Global warming is helping Al Qaida and the Taliban, or something.

As with global “cooling” in the late 1970′s, this junk science fad will similarly die a humiliating death.

Californiastan, meanwhile, has seen its leftist utopia wither away over the last decade or so.  The state is about to go bankrupt, after having run off individuals and businesses that succeed by way of punishing tax rates, all while inviting welfare leeches and criminal aliens.  However, RINO Gov. Arnie is thinking that maybe a flat tax is the way to go, instead of a “soak the rich” tax that has hastened the exodus of achievers to more tax friendly states like neighboring Nevada.  Heck, CA is even considering canning its welfare program!  But while CA is thinking about not pounding the rich so hard anymore, B.O. is thinking that the same thing (punishing achievers to subsidize non-achievers) that has driven Californiastan to the brink of insolvency is a darned fine idea for the country.

To add to the craziness, we now live in a society that has a media that is no better or different than Pravda during the Soviet days, Castro’s Granma, or publications that you would expect to find in Chavez’, Ahmanutjob’s, or Mugabe’s countries.  They are propaganda mouthpieces for the administration, telling us that black is white and night is day.  Case in point: the MSM keeps spinning further job losses as “sure, jobs were lost, but not as many as we thought…so that’s good, right”?  There’s a problem with that, though: the job losses are worse than B.O. expected!

Did you ever think you would see the day where American media would fail to take their role seriously in policing government?  Journalists are now comparing the Obamessiah to God (but there’s no “Obama as Messiah” thing going on, is there, Andrew?)!  Instead of scrutinizing his Marxist agenda, his ties to domestic terrorists, his frequent apologies to the world for the crappy country he governs, or anything like that, the MSM delves instead to more pressing matters in B.O.’s “impossibly elegant” life:  his date night with his wife.  By the way, such an “objective” piece of news and not opinion was found in the National News section of the fishwrap.  The MSM also tells us that while Uhhh-bama has flip-flopped considerably (some might say “lie”, but why quibble over semantics?), his “flip-flops are for the common good“!  Then, of course, there’s MSNBC’s Brian Williams bowing before The One.

I mean, media bias has always been around, but we’ve gone way over the cliff and into the abyss here!  If Jon Stewart is making fun of you for kissing Oprompter’s behind too much, and if a leftist magazine like Vanity Fair admits to the pervasive media bias, then it’s safe to say that you’ve jumped the shark.

With apologies to John Lennon: Strange days, indeed.

Barack Obama: “I, I, would say that, er … pause [I HAVEN'T A CLUE] … if you look at … pause [WHO IS THIS NICK ROBINSON JERK?] … the, the sources of this crisis … pause [JUST KEEP GOING, BUDDY] … the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . . pause [I'M IN WAY TOO DEEP HERE] … a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system … pause, close eyes [THIS IS GOING TO GO DOWN LIKE A CROCK OF SH#T BACK HOME. HELP]. I think what is also true is that … pause [I WANT NICK ROBINSON TO DISAPPEAR] … here in Great Britain … pause [SH#T, GORDY'S THE HOST, DON'T LAND HIM IN IT] … here in continental Europe … pause [DAMN IT, BLAME EVERYONE.] … around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er … pause [I'VE LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT AGAIN] …

Heh.

Thanks for the tip, Kanaka Girl.

Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, church leaders have said.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want facilities in schools for Islamic pre-prayer washing rituals.
…
The recommendations were made in a document, Catholic Schools, Children of Other Faiths and Community Cohesion.

‘If practicable, a room (or rooms) might be made available for the use of pupils and staff from other faiths for prayer,’ the bishops said.

‘Existing toilet facilities might be adapted to accommodate individual ritual cleansing which is sometimes part of religious lifestyle and worship.

At least one sane person was quoted in this article:

Daphne McLeod, a former Catholic head teacher from south London, said it would be ‘terribly expensive’ for the country’s 2,300 Catholic primary and secondary schools to provide ritual cleansing facilities.

She said: ‘If Muslim parents choose a Catholic school then they accept that it is going to be a Catholic school and there will not be facilities for ritual cleansing and prayer rooms.

‘They do their ritual cleansing before they go to a mosque, but they are not going to a mosque.

‘I don’t think the bishops should go looking for problems. Where will it stop?’ 

How’s about a chortle at this poor schlub’s naivete?

But Majid Khatme, a Muslim who sent his children to a London Catholic school, said he was delighted by the gesture.

‘It is very kind of the bishops if they give this facility for Muslims to pray,’ he said.

‘I would love to send a letter of thanks to the bishops, really. If they do this all Muslims in Britain will be thankful to the Catholic Church to have facilities to pray. It is very, very encouraging.’ 

Oh, I see.  Allow Muslims to pray in Catholic schools and the jihadist weirdbeards will suddenly stop self-detonating and screaming “Death to Infidels!” in light of their newfound respect for British dhimmis!  Yeah, good luck with that.

It seems like only yesterday that the UK was a respectable, awe-inspiring nation.  Now, it is a pathetic caricature.

An NHS trust has spent more than £12,000 on private treatment for hospital staff because its own waiting times are too long. The money was used to bring in physiotherapists to help workers recover from muscular-skeletal injuries at West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds.

Bosses said it prevented them from leapfrogging NHS patients and enabled them to return to work more quickly.

However, the private treatment, which amounted to £12,116 for 271 appointments over the past year, was described by critics as “shocking”.

Mark Wallace of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “Their staff should have to wait like everybody else.  Perhaps if they experienced it as their customers – that is the taxpayer – experienced it, they might be a little keener to improve their waiting times.”

Wow!  Let that sink in for a second.  “Our system sucks so badly that we need to go outside of our own system to make sure that we get the quick and efficient care that we need.  That way, our employees can get back to the business of providing slow and inefficient care to everyone else.”  Only to Euros would that explanation make sense.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  From Eurabia:
Although the European Commission has said it wants to cut greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, business leaders oppose the use of fines to oblige industry to reduce its emissions — especially in the current economic crisis.

The cost to industry is estimated at some 44 billion euros per year between 2013 and 2020, with a tonne (1.1 US tons) of C02 costing 30 euros.

Business leaders have denounced the policy as a “tax” (probably because that’s exactly what it is! – Ed.), threatening to take their investments elsewhere and move their more polluting activities out of Europe.
…
A number of European politicians are now speaking openly about diluting, or even abandoning the project.

“This plan is garbage. It’s politically correct, but it won’t happen,” former Italian prime minister Giuliano Amato said at the end of August.

Renato Brunetta, Italy’s minister for innovation, has been equally blunt.

“If it happens, it would kill the economic upturn. No one needs to kill themselves,” said Brunetta, a trained economist.

I seem to recall a bunch of folks who, about a dozen years ago or so, foresaw the economic ruin that would result in subscribing to this destructive Kyoto Treaty.  If I’m not mistaken, these folks were known affectionately in many circles as “economists”!

The Kyoto Treaty was nothing more than a mechanism to wreck the economy of the West, all under the guise of “climate protection”!  Why else would India and China have been exempted from the treaty?  The Euros are beginning to reap what they have sown, and many of them (at least in the business community) are beginning to realize their folly.

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.
…
In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.

Congrats, Brits.  Your dhimmitude is unparallelled.