Everything the aspiring terrorist needs to bring the filthy infidels to their quivering knees, just a click or a phone call away!:

Annnnnd, in case the picture wasn't worth a thousand words....:

A Russian company is marketing a devastating new cruise missile system which can be hidden inside a shipping container, giving any merchant vessel the capability to wipe out an aircraft carrier.

Potential customers for the formidable Club-K system include Kremlin allies Iran and Venezuela, say defense experts.  They worry that countries could pass on the satellite-guided missiles, which are very hard to detect, to terrorist groups....

Gee, YA THINK?!?

...."At a stroke, the Club-K gives a long-range precision strike capability to ordinary vehicles that can be moved to almost any place on earth without attracting attention," said Robert Hewson of Jane's Defense Weekly, who first disclosed its existence.

A promotional video for the Club-K on the website of Moscow-based makers Kontsern-Morinformsistema-Agat shows an imaginary tropical country facing a land, sea and air attack from a hostile neighbor.

It fights back by loading three shipping containers concealing Club-Ks onto a truck, a train and a ship, disperses them, and then launches a devastating strike on its enemy, destroying its warships, tanks and airfields.

"The idea that you can hide a missile system in a box and drive it around without anyone knowing is pretty new," said Hewson, who is editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons.

"Nobody's ever done that before."

The nightmare scenarios write themselves - think the mullahs wouldn't want to have these babies handy when they try to blockade the Strait of Hormuz?  Or al Qaeda, perhaps after Iran fitted them with nuclear warheads, letting fly from in a U.S. port or even just outside U.S. territorial waters?

And it's our good, close, personal tovarisches, the Russians - you know, the "ally" whom Red Barry is grovelingly desperate to "persuade" (through removing anti-ICBM batteries from Eastern Europe aimed at....IRAN) to cooperate on sanctions purportedly intended to pressure the denuclearization of....IRAN - who're all set to sell a ton of Club-Ks to their good, loyal customers....IRAN.  And Uncle Hugo, who'd have a merry old time stationing them in Cuba to pick off, say, U.S.-bound oil tankers, or whatever other targets of interest they could find.

Nothing like "smart power," is there?  Oh, but don't worry, folks - Godbama will have a treaty for that too, just as soon as we divest ourselves of all of OUR cruise missiles first.  Besides, it's all still Bush's fault, right?

A Planned Parenthood poobah suffers an attack of conscience?  Reminds me of this Old Testament passage:

¹⁸Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him."

Are there more PPers like Abby Johnson?

According to Johnson, the non-profit was struggling under the weight of a tough economy, and changing its business model from one that pushed prevention, to one that focused on abortion.

“It seemed like maybe that’s not what a lot of people were believing any more because that’s not where the money was. The money wasn’t in family planning, the money wasn’t in prevention, the money was in abortion and so I had a problem with that,” said Johnson.

Johnson said she was told to bring in more women who wanted abortions, something the Episcopalian church goer recently became convicted about. …

Johnson now supports the Coalition For Life, the pro-life group with a building down the street from Planned Parenthood. Coalition volunteers can regularly be seen praying on the sidewalk in front of Planned Parenthood. Johnson has been meeting with the coalition’s executive director, Shawn Carney, and has prayed with volunteers outside Planned Parenthood.

Just goes to show that nobody - NOBODY is beyond the reach of God's grace and forgiveness.  And, on the dark side, that in tough economic times, every business must "go back to basics" and focus on their "core product".

If PP doesn't have enough of a cap-ex budget for new dumpsters, do they feed the fetal corpses down their disposals instead?  If any of their facilities have cafeterias, I'd be especially aware of the "mystery meat".

~  ~  ~

Guess who's trying to get the band back together?:

Russia has provoked outrage in Poland by simulating an air and sea attack on the country during military exercises.

The armed forces are said to have carried out “war games” in which nuclear missiles were fired and troops practised an amphibious landing on the country’s coast.

Documents obtained by Wprost, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, said the exercise was carried out in conjunction with soldiers from Belarus.

Tell me again what Red Barry got for backstabbing the Poles after they stuck their necks out to accept our anti-missile battery?  This makes it pretty damned clear what Warsaw received for their trouble.  Doubly ironic that this puts The One in almost the exact same position as Neville Chamberlain and Eduard Daladier were seventy years ago: weighing whether to guarantee Poland's security against the aggressive intentions of a large neighboring enemy.  The difference being that the latter two actually made the guarantee, even if they didn't meaningfully back it up.  Obamlet won't even get around to doing that much.

~  ~  ~

Not-news flash: Jim Moran's a prick:

At a get-out-the-vote rally in Fairfax County, Moran said: “I mean, if the Republicans were running in Afghanistan, they’d be running on the Taliban ticket as far as I can see.”

Moran was talking about Republicans Robert F. McDonnell for governor, Lieutenant-Governor Bill Bolling and state Senator Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, who is running for attorney general. By some accounts, the three represent the most conservative Republican ticket to run in Virginia in many years. Moran’s comments clearly were aimed to motivate Democratic voters to turn out on Tuesday and vote blue.

According to WAMU, McDonnell spokeswoman Crystal Cameron called Moran’s remarks “negative” and “vicious.”

I pass this along for several reasons:

1) This is just more of the same insane slander that vomited forth from the Dems in a tsunami of bile throughout August, when they came face to face with their intended victims, but under no circumstances should we EVER "get used to it."  Not if we want to sacrifice our honor and self-respect.

2) Moran is confused, since his god himself has already declared the Afghan Taliban to be our "partners in peace."

3) It is symptomatic of Donk fear, panic, and answerlessness - especially in "coming home" Virginia, where the GOP is poised to administer the mother of all electoral massacres - and equally as indicative of the kind of scorched earth defensive campaign they'll run in next year's midterms, most likely with very similar results.

4) What does it say about a political party and its core supporters when vile hatemongering is its principal means of motivating and energizing its base?  What's next, anti-GOP lynchings, kidnappings, and general domestic terrorism?  And they call US "extremists" and "haters"?

From Barack Obama's perspective, at least:

Denting President Obama’s hopes for a powerful ally in his campaign to press Iran on its nuclear program, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday that threatening Tehran now with harsh new sanctions would be “counterproductive.”

The minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said after meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton here that diplomacy should be given a chance to work, particularly after a meeting in Geneva this month in which the Iranian government said it would allow United Nations inspectors to visit its clandestine nuclear enrichment site near the holy city of Qum.

“At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process,” he said. “Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive.”

Mr. Lavrov’s resistance was striking given that, just three weeks before, President Dmitri A. Medvedev said that “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable.” American officials had hailed that statement as a sign that Russia was finally coming around to the Obama administration’s view that Iran is best handled with diplomacy backed by a credible threat of sanctions.

It also came after the Obama administration announced that it would retool a European missile defense system fiercely opposed by Russia. That move was thought to have paid dividends for the White House when Mr. Medvedev appeared to throw his support behind Mr. Obama on Iran, though American officials say the Russian president was also likely to have been reacting to the disclosure of the secret nuclear site near Qum.

Back in the real world, of course, this was not a "double cross" at all.  Russia does, indeed, act in its own interests, every bit as much as Barack Obama is acting against America's.  And Russia's interests turned against hours several years ago (at least).  Which, logically, makes The One an ally of Czar Putin against the country he's supposed to represent.

Nor, from the Russians' point of view, is this anything remotely new.  They've been the Iranians' nuclear patron since the days of Boris Yeltsin a decade and a half ago.  The reason are financial and geostrategic.  Moscow is in chronic need of hard cash, and the only commodities they have that anybody wants are oil, natural gas, and nuclear know-how.  The mullahs want nukes.  Kind of a no-brainer.  Figure in that Putinical Russia views the U.S. as a rival, if not full-fledged enemy, and benefits immensely from using Iran as a catspaw to tie us down in the Middle East while Vlad rebuilds his country's former eastern European empire, and the question is why ANY Western leader has EVER deluded themselves into thinking that Russia would or could EVER be an ally in disarming Iran.

With Obama, it isn't delusion, it's deliberate choice.  He's an ally of Putin and an enemy of the Czar's intended victims.  Whether the Russian strongman realizes it or not is of little practical value, as I imagine Vlad is indifferent to False Messiah's groveling friendship.  Particularly seeing as how the latter is coughing up one crippling, humiliating concession after another without the former having to lift a finger.  Hey, if your foe doesn't even have to be coerced into Finlandization and capitulating to your every whim and desire, why not let him?  Who knows when the American people will be so foolish as to elect such a Fifth Columnist again?

All the Russians care about is that they have a golden window of opportunity to regain immense chunks of strategic ground at our expense all around the world, and they're going to press that advantage as hard and fast as they can:

In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.”

What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.”

Gulp. If I were in Georgia — or in any other country Russia considers part of its sphere of influence — that formulation would make me pretty anxious…

In the interview, he takes a swipe at the United States and NATO, saying that the alliance “continues to press for the admission of new members to NATO, the military activities of the bloc are intensifying, and U.S. strategic forces are conducting intensive exercises to improve the management of strategic nuclear weapons.”

"After Obama just pulled long-range missile defense out of Poland and the Czech Republic?"  Yes, indeed.  This is what is also known as "pushing against an open door".  If B.O. will voluntarily toss away a big bargaining chip by throwing the Poles and Czechs under the bus on missile defense, who knows what else Moscow can extort out of him if they start pushing in the same direction he's retreating?  Maybe they can get Ukraine and the Baltics gift-wrapped and stashed under Vlad's tree in time for Christmas.  And, contrary to AP's over-machiavellianizing, who in the blue hell would take an Obama "hawk" turn seriously, especially after witnessing his cut & run reflex revving up on Afghanistan by the day?  Did anybody take Jimmy Carter's seriously thirty years ago?

If my fellow Americans ever wanted to know what it's like to live on death row, guess what, folks?  You're doing it right now - in bipartisan fashion (via Newsmax Insider):

A meeting in London between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ended with the announcement that the U.S. and Russia will seek to further reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

But Newsmax has learned that progress toward arms reduction was set in motion by a little-publicized meeting last month involving Russian strong man Valdmir Putin and the two American elder statesmen, Henry Kissinger and George Shultz.

Kissinger, who served as Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Schultz, President Reagan’s Secretary of State, traveled to Moscow along with former Senator Sam Nunn and former [Clinton] Defense Secretary William Perry.

They were acting as private citizens and not on an official visit, but Obama was using the statesmen to sound out the Russians on arm reduction.

A source revealed that Obama and Schulz spoke by telephone before the Russian meeting, and that Obama voiced his strong support for their nuclear initiative. Obama reportedly said the matter was a priority for his new administration, though economic issues were taking center stage for the moment.

Kissinger told the Los Angeles Times that after meeting with Putin he had found ample grounds for cooperation.

“I’m happy to report that the differences were not so remarkable and the agreements were considerable,” he said.

Kissinger, Shultz, Nunn and Perry made their views on arms reduction clear in an article that was published in the Wall Street Journal in January.

The four statesmen advocate “reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally as a vital contribution to preventing their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world.”

They argue that the end of the Cold War made the doctrine of mutual deterrence obsolete, but warn that the world is now “on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era” in which North Korea and Iran could become nuclear powers and terrorists might obtain nuclear weapons.

To deal with the threat, what is needed is “intensive work with leaders of the countries in possession of nuclear weapons to turn the goal of a world without nuclear weapons into a joint enterprise,” the Kissinger team wrote in the Journal.

“Such a joint enterprise, by involving changes in the disposition of the states possessing nuclear weapons, would lend additional weight to efforts already under way to avoid the emergence of a nuclear-armed North Korea and Iran.”

Among the steps the statesmen suggest are “continuing to reduce substantially the size of nuclear forces in all states that possess them.”

That is precisely what Obama and Medvedev discussed in London. In a statement released after their meeting, the two leaders announced talks aimed at replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which is set to expire in December.

Obama accepted Medvedev’s invitation to visit Moscow in July to assess negotiators’ progress on arms reduction, which would give the U.S. Senate enough time to debate and approve a new treaty before the December expiration date.

Get that?  The only way to keep North Korea and Iran and al Qaeda from going nuclear (or, rather, amassing more nukes than they have already) is for the United States to...shrink its nuclear deterrent - which, of course, Red Barry is already doing unilaterally by attrition - and hope our "partner in peace," Czar Vlad, will follow suit.

That's the same neoRussian Empire that is "completing the process of making Iran a nuclear power, and protecting North Korea's nuclear armaments as well as rebuilding their former empire by subterfuge and force," as well as militarizing the Western Hemisphere, "repeatedly blocking] and threaten[ing to block gas supplies to the West, often in the middle of winter, [and]pressur[ing] Kyrgyzstan into closing a U.S. base vital to supplying U.S. troops in Afghanistan," forcing our supply routes to that theater of the War on Terror to go through....Russia.  Meaning that they can, if they so choose, hold our very war effort hostage to extort God only knows what appalling magnitude of concessions from a Hussein White House that is proving itself all too happy to offer them up without being coerced in the slightest.

And, of course, Putin is moving toward the very rebuilding and modernizing his strategic nuclear forces that B.O. has specifically and publicly rejected, all the while mouthing the empty bromides of "detente" and "arms control" as well or better than his Soviet-era predecessors ever did.

If I wasn't convinced that Kissinger and Schultz were lost in the throes of senile dementia, I'd wander if they were pulling a rib on King Hussein akin to sticking a "kick me" sign on the back of the new kid at school.

And speaking of North Korea, they just took another giant step toward nuclear big-stick-dom:

North Korea fired a long-range rocket on Sunday, provoking international outrage and prompting the U.N. Security Council to call an emergency meeting.

The reclusive communist state said a satellite was launched into orbit and circled Earth transmitting revolutionary songs. But both the U.S. military and South Korea said it had failed to enter orbit.

Analysts say the launch was effectively a test of a ballistic missile designed to carry a warhead potentially as far as Alaska.

It was the first big challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama in dealing with the North, whose efforts to build a nuclear arsenal have long plagued ties with Washington.

“With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations,” Obama said, speaking on a European tour.

I don't know what's more pathetic, the NoKo's alibi or False Messiah's bland bromide diplobatory response.  No, I take that back, I do know which was the more pathetic - Pyongyang was sneering its contempt for the West in general and Barack Obama in particular.  Generalissimo Hopeandchange thinks his pumping of words into the ether actually matters.  As if Kim jong-IL gives a frog's fat leg about "international obligations, unequivocal calls for restraint, and international isolation."  Ooooooh, THAT'll intimidate him - until he remembers that he can bombard Hawaii, Alaska, and the U.S. West Coast (all within range of the Taepodong-2) with nuclear weapons.  Then he'll feel MUCH better.

Well, that and the fact that he can blackmail us into submission with his capability of flattening South Korea with conventional artillery alone, and he's under the protection of the combined Sino-Russian strategic nuclear arsenals.  The perqs of being the ChiComms' "bad cop," and all that.

For those who value, if not obsess over, multilateral alliances, this particular crisis makes Japan a vitally important strategic cog in any "containment" scheme (for geostrategic as well as cultural reasons, a far more realistic option than with the apocalyptic theocrats in Iran).  So it comes as utterly no surprise that the Li'l President's witless pacifism flipped the bird at our erstwhile allies in Tokyo:

But Tokyo harbored doubts about how Washington would react. While the U.S. also readied warships and missile-defense systems, it made clear that it would not intercept the missile. The Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy J. Keating, asserted that Washington has the capability to shoot down the missile. But before the launch, Secretary of Defense Gates stated the U.S. would not shoot it down unless it was headed towards U.S. territory. The message to Japan was clear: We will protect our territory but not yours.

Nor, alas, can the whole of this abominable state of affairs be laid entirely at the Chosen One's cowardly feet:

This is just a further indication of a growing split in the American-Japanese perception of the threat from North Korea. During the latest round of multilateral North Korean disarmament negotiations, termed the Six Party Talks, in 2007, the U.S. broke from Japan by removing Pyongyang from the list of state sponsors of terror, never made North Korean missiles an issue for negotiation, and appeared ready to settle for a freeze of plutonium production at one known nuclear site, Yongbyon. Japan is still very concerned about other nuclear production sites and the highly-enriched-uranium program North Korea claimed it had in 2003. Essentially Washington’s policy amounts to accepting North Korea as a nuclear state, trying to deter it from proliferating, and defending the American homeland. This is not an altogether acceptable policy for a Japan that sits within range of North Korea’s short- and medium-range missile force and is usually the main recipient of North Korea’s rhetorical bellicosity.

Not unlike the callous backhandings we keep giving Israel, really.  Like the Jews, the Japanese are a lot closer to a dire national security threat than we are, and do not have the luxury of indulging in criminally negligent fantasism.  They can't afford to dally in delusions when the consequences of being wrong are quite literally lethal.  It's easy for the Obamunists - and the Bushies before them - to settle for half-measures that are no-measures, and sit meekly by while the NoKos flagrantly renege on the Six Party Agreement to shutdown Yongbyon right in front of us.  This "you're on your own" under-the-bus-throwing tells Japan, right along with Dear Leader, that they cannot trust the Obamericans to stand by them when it matters the most.

Likely end result?  A nuclear and missile arms race in Northeast Asia.  The Japanese will have no choice what with Barry O shutting down anti-ICBM development, dismantling our existing anti-missile defenses, and canceling "fifth-generation" weapons platforms like the F-22 Raptor with which NoKo missile sites, launching platforms, and nuclear facilities could be effectively targeted and attacked.  And betraying Tokyo into charting an independent foreign policy course away from our orbit could produce new alignments with adverse consequences easily avoided by showing a modicum of loyalty now.

The irony is that with the demonstrated NoKo ability to hit American territory, we really are in the same boat as the Japanese, just as we are in the same crosshairs with Israel vis-a-vie Iran.  Yet even during a time of war Barack Obama carries on as if the conflict with Islamic Fundamentalism, and the growing strategic encirclement of the U.S. from Red China and North Korea through Venezuela to Syria and Iran, with Putinical Russia linking them all together, did not exist.  Or at the very least, like the only enemies we have are those that he hasn't had a chance to grovel into becoming our friends yet.  I find myself seriously wondering if any of us are even going to live long enough to oust Red Barry once and for all in 2012.

Hence, the death row lede above.

But perhaps it is this passage of Dan Blumenthal's & Leslie Forgach's in the Corner at NRO that most directly captures the terrible predicament in which we find ourselves:

The U.S.-Japanese alliance is the cornerstone of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, grounded in the joint promotion of democratic values and free-market principles. [emphasis added] 

If Barack Obama's first ten weeks in office has taught us anything, it is that he himself does not believe in either one.  Indeed, his worldview is far closer to that of our enemies - the ones that he can't wait to extend the hand of friendship.

Maybe that NoKo "satellite" was playing B.O.'s Greatest Hits.

That'd be almost as deadly as the warheads earmarked for an American city near you.

The historical parallel between Czar Vlad Putin's neoRussian Empire and Imperial Japan of the 1930s grows ever more alarmingly closer (via Newsmax Insider):

The Russian economy is collapsing after “years of criminal mismanagement” and the regime of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin could be doomed, according to Russian dissident Garry Kasparov.

The former world chess champion, who was a candidate in the 2008 Russian presidential race, wrote in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that “there is ample evidence suggesting that the Putin regime is teetering toward collapse. One sign: Russia is beefing up its federal security forces in order to violently repress public protests.”

Those protests are increasing in Russia because “many voters didn't care that their elections were rigged until inflation started squeezing them,” said Kasparov, leader of The Other Russia, an anti-Putin coalition. “Time has run out on the illusion of economic prosperity for the average Russian.”

The Russian National Welfare Fund, which was created to back up the state pension system, is being “raided” to prop up monopolistic industries belonging to Putin's closest allies, and that money is going to service debt instead of developing industry, according to Kasparov.

He noted that Russia recently agreed to a deal with [Red] China to send Russian oil to [Red] China at rock-bottom prices for twenty years in exchange for $25 billion in loans, and observed: “Powerful countries don't cut such deals unless they are desperate for cash. What's happening in Russia is that we are witnessing the survival gambit of a corrupt regime. The question is whether the West will bail out the Russian dictatorship or let it fall.”

Kasparov added that Putin relies heavily on oil revenues to maintain his grip on power, so “it is in his interest to increase tensions in the Middle East as a way of driving up global oil prices. There is no deal the U.S. can cut to stop Putin's Russia from arming Mideast terrorists and helping Iran's nuclear program.”

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was also highly critical of Putin in a recent interview, likening his United Russia party to the worst of the communists he once led and helped bring down, and saying Russia is now a country where the parliament and the judiciary are not fully free. [emphasis added]

Okay, there is more than a passing parallel between Putin's Russia and the future toward which Barack Obama is trying to drag America as well.  But in the mean time I think you can pretty much guarantee that Red Barry and his party will have a bailout package whipped up for Vlad and friends as well, sold to the American people as the means to the "peaceful" end which Mr. Kasparov has already warned will never happen.

In that sense Putin's regime also bears a striking resemblance to its Iranian client.  Just as the mullahgarchy wants nuclear weapons with which to wipe out Israel, bring the U.S. to its knees, and dominate the Middle East, so Vlad dreams of a re-born Evil Empire and will not be bribed out of single-minded pursuit of that goal.  He'll pocket any and all concessions and gifts False Messiah offers, and give nothing meaningful in return.  And B.O. will keep flogging diplomacy right up until World War IV escalates once again.

The above context lends this story a great deal of sense:

Russia could use bases for its strategic bombers on the doorstep of the United States in Cuba and Venezuela to underpin long-distance patrols in the region, a senior air force officer said Saturday.

“This is possible in Cuba,” General Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of the Russian air force’s strategic aviation staff, told the Interfax-AVN military news agency.

The comments were the latest signal that Moscow intends to project its military capability in far-flung corners of the globe despite a tight defence budget and hardware that experts consider in many respects outdated.

Zhikharev indicated that Russia was looking only at occasional use of the facilities — not setting up permanent bases in the region.

Translation: This is the first step toward making Russian bases in Cuba and Venezuela permanent.  And don't forget that Uncle Hugo is also tight with the mullahs and ChiComms as well.

I don't want to say that all four of these enemies of America are colluding with each other in a sustained effort to cripple the United States while it languishes under the rule of an unworthy fool, but that is surely the way to bet.

I know the Russians have a reputation for looking at geopolitics like chess and planning many moves ahead, but this is ridiculous (via Newsmax Insider):

Russia's decision to cut the flow of natural gas to Europe could be linked to reports that the planet is entering a new ice age, a leading weather expert says.

AccuWeather's chief hurricane and long-range forecaster Joe Bastardi said on Glenn Beck's radio program, "My theory . . . is that [Russian Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin knows what's going to happen, or he believes the same way I do about the overall climate pattern.

"So if you control the pipeline into Europe, you literally can control Europe without firing a shot — if you control the energy."

Russia supplies about one-quarter of the European Union's gas, 80% of it shipped through Ukraine's vast pipeline network. Russia cut off gas supplies to Europe on January 7 just as the continent was gripped by freezing temperatures, possibly instigating a new "Cold" War.

One report published by the Russian news source Pravda Online stated, "Earth is now on the brink of entering another Ice Age, according to a large and compelling body of evidence from within the field of climate science.

"Many sources of data which provide our knowledge base of long-term climate change indicate that the warm, 12,000-year-long Holocene period will rather soon be coming to an end, and then the earth will return to Ice Age conditions for the next 100,000 years."

The report dismisses assertions that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide are causing global warming, noting: "Global temperatures precede or cause global CO2 changes, and not the reverse.

In other words, increasing atmospheric CO2 is not causing global temperatures to rise; instead the natural cycle increase in global temperature is causing global CO2 to rise."

Bastardi said in an interview with the Business and Media Institute cited by NewsBusters.com, "If you look at those Russian scientists, where a lot of these studies on it getting cold come from . . . what makes you think that Putin doesn't have some knowledge of that?"

Or, rather, what does he know that Al Gore doesn't?  Answer: quite a bit, if he's willing to bet future Russian global domination on it.  And to think that Putin's intended prey - Europe and now Obamerika - are bent upon destroying their own economic vitality in the face of this power play, essentially saving Czar Vlad the trouble of softening them up, by a full-scale face-planting descent into pagan global warming superstition.

By the time Red Barry and friends get finished "saving the planet," we'll have already reverted to hunting & gathering, living in caves, and otherwise embraced the lifestyle of the ape-men in the opening scenes of 2001: A Space Odyessy long before the ice sheets force it on us (or else).  At that point, whether our ruler is an indigenous communist tyrant or a former KGB hack will almost be irrelevant.

Either way, you can be that THEY will never be left out in the cold.

As in "Eurasian Treaty Organization".  That sure sounds like what Czar Vladimir is "proposing":

The President of Russia has called on Europe’s leaders to create a new world order that would minimise the role of the United States.

Confident that a row with Europe prompted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August was over, Dmitry Medvedev arrived in the French spa town of Evian on Wednesday determined to woo his fellow leaders into creating an anti-US front. …

In a speech delivered to European leaders at a conference hosted by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, to discuss the international financial crisis, Mr Medvedev sought to show that the US was at the root of all the world’s problems. He blamed Washington’s “economic egotism” for the world’s financial woes and then accused the Bush Administration of taking Europe to the brink of a new cold war by pursuing a deliberately divisive foreign policy.

He also maintained that the US was once again trying to return to a policy of containing Russia.

Somebody needs to tell Medvedev and his superior Putin that Barack Obama already locked up the Democrat presidential nomination a month and a half ago.  Just as somebody needs to remind the EUnuchs that we didn't exactly "contain" the Russians in Georgia and aren't any better poised to do so anywhere else given how tied up we are with finishing the job in Iraq, keeping al Qaeda from conquering Pakistan, and preventing a nuclear Iran.  All of which will go out the window starting next January 20th anyway.  Perhaps we should call this typically crass Russian attempt to bully Europe into submission their "anti-McCain hedge".

I'm actually of two minds as to which hypothesis this "EATO" proposal better substantiates.  On the one hand, it could be indicative of Kremlin arrogance borne of the more or less blanket totality of their humiliation of the West in general and the U.S. in particular in their unopposed invasion of Georgia (though it should be noted that they have not YET taken the remainder of that country and finally retreated to South Ossetia and Abkhazia just recently).  In essence, "Look at the lesson we taught the upstart Georgians: You're at our mercy, we can take you any time we want, and your American friends can't do a damn thing about it.  The same is true of all of you, so we 'advise' you to take stock of where your true national interests lie - to say nothing of where you get most of your energy supplies - and come to terms with us.  Or else."  Contrariwise, it might be a tacit admission of weakness in that they're floating the flipping of Europe's century-old alliegance as a trial balloon rather than simply handing the EU an ultimatum.

The middle ground between the two is probably closest to the pin: Moscow really can't muscle the Euros into their orbit, particularly with the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb having impacted the Russians even harder than either the U.S. or E.U., but they're banking on the intimidation factor from their Georgian adventure coupled with that famed European pacifist, post-modernist, leftophilic gullibility to dupe them into submission.

It sure would be interesting to see Bob Schiefer ask Barack Hoover Obama what he thinks of the Russian "EATO" proposal in the final debate, wouldn't it?  Somehow, I don't think he'd really have a problem with it, other than Putin and Medvedev having beaten him to it.