The new British coalition government is about to announce a programme of extensive cuts in public spending in order to reduce the UKs ballooning deficit thus essentially giving the finger to President Obama’s demand that G20 countries, especially in Western Europe, should be wary of  reducing national debt too quickly.

So here, in very simple and easy to understand language, is a basic economic FACT to help Obama (who has never run a business in his life) grasp the essential difference between government expenditure and private sector expenditure.

Spending cuts do not destroy resources. They hand the money back to the private sector, where they generate higher returns and wealth-creating jobs. As Margaret Thatcher used to say, the government doesn’t have any money of its own: it all comes from the private sector. So, in terms of reducing the deficit, a pound cut from public spending is worth more than a pound of extra taxation.

Governments of the richest industrialised nations, including Britain, are reaching the limits of their borrowing capacity. Having bailed out the banks, they have now been bailing out each other, with the crisis ricocheting back to banks that have also been lending to the same governments. We are running out of lenders of last resort. If there is another crisis, some heavily indebted countries won’t find it easy to support the European Central Bank and the IMF.

Thank you, Mr President – now you can get back to your golf…..

The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson, as usual, cuts to the chase over Obama’s dismissive perception of the Anglo-American relationship. What spurred his piece were the reports coming out of the UK of a rapidly growing disenchantment with Obama and his administration.

There have always been Brits like myself who felt in their bones that the man was an empty suit, a construct fashioned like the Edsel from a premise that customers would buy anything as long as the PR struck the right chords. But over the last few weeks a growing number of voices, once held in thrall by the Obama myth, have suddenly discovered that this latter day American Ozymandias has feet of clay.

These voices do not just come from those on the right (like Daniel Hannan and Boris Johnson) who should, by the very nature of their conservative DNA, have simply known better but also from certain elements in those bastions of leftist rectitude, the Guardian and the BBC.

The eye opener, of course, has been the odious posturing by the lightworker over the Gulf oil spill and the decision by him and his regime to deflect criticism of their own gross incompetence by demonising BP as if its executives were receiving psychic guidance from the shade of George III himself. But, as Hanson points out, this is merely the most recent manifestation of a long observed pattern of behaviour that fits neatly into the zeitgeist of Obama and the circles of the American left from which he sprang

To be fair, the miffed British are reacting to two years of both perceived and real slights from the Obama administration. Who does not know the familiar litany? There was the rude return of the magnificent Churchill bust. The asymmetrical gift exchange with Gordon Brown — at the end of a visit in which the president repeatedly snubbed the prime minister — and the banal choice of gift for the queen the following month revealed a certain symbolic spite on the administration’s part.

…………………………………

Then there was Secretary Clinton’s unnecessary preemptory announcement of American neutrality in the next round of disputes over the Falklands. All this is topped off by the constant presidential trashing of “British Petroleum” and its mess in the Gulf, with the implication that a foreign interest perhaps does not care too much for a former colony’s ecology.

There has been some suggestion that Obama’s view of Britain has been coloured by the experiences of his grandfather in colonial Kenya where he was supposedly ill treated by British agents during the Mau Mau insurgency

I don’t buy that.

I tend to agree with Hanson that, like many on the left, Obama’s only interest in history is as a reservoir of grievance myths to buttress his own belief in the progressive agenda which seeks to construct a society of “new” men and women totally disconnected from the collective cultural inheritance of ages past.

What these curiously assorted places and people have in common is disdain for the Western tradition and, again, an unspoken dislike of Britain in particular. In such a network, one might hear of the Raj, of Mossadegh, of the Mau Mau revolt, but nothing of Magna Carta, the Scottish Enlightenment, the effort to stop Bonaparte, the terrible costs of defending liberal values against Prussian nationalism, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, and Stalinism, or the largely peaceful withdrawal from empire — or the unmatched insight of Milton, Shakespeare, Gibbon, and Dickens, or the genius of Hobbes, Hume, Locke, and Burke.

I have a deep affection for the USA and, over the last eighteen months blogging at C4P and elsewhere have made many American friends. That doesn’t mean to say I slavishly support everything the USA does. As in any relationship with friends or family I am sometimes critical of and irritated by America’s attitude and actions. But the roots of true friendship lie deep and cannot be upturned by ephemeral disagreements.

Former Clinton bagman James Rubin recently appeared on the BBC blathering some cant about how we Brits needed to develop a thicker skin over Obama’s grandstanding and the vomit inducing remarks of some members of Congress.

I don’t buy that, either.

I feel offended by Obama’s posturing as I read today how more British soldiers have died in Afghanistan fighting alongside Americans in a war that we entered without question after the bloody attack on the USA on 9/11. I take comfort from the assurances of American friends that Obama is not the voice of Real America, only of an alienated segment.

Above all Hanson’s final words brought me great comfort. I only hope and pray he is right.

Obamaism is, however, not quite yet typical of American thinking.

Most Americans, across racial and cultural lines, still revere our British connection. It is what helps to explain why we are more like successful Canada than failing Mexico, why we look back at our own sacrifices at the side of Britain in two world wars with pride rather than regret, and why, for all the petty squabbling and rivalries, we usually think we are doing something wrong when Britain is not our partner.

What explains the way American Revolution unfolded and the success that followed is not just the courage and brilliance of our Founding Fathers but also the fact that we were revolting against Britain and not an Ottoman Empire, Russia, or China. Americans usually understand that, and so we blend our pride in American exceptionalism with acknowledgment that its font was British law, government, and culture.

Even as America becomes an increasingly diverse society, even as our schools turn away from traditional learning, nevertheless millions of Americans still grasp why we owe so much to Britain — and why we must never endanger our singular friendship with it, the cornerstone of American foreign policy. Our president’s cavalier indifference to Britain reflects a strain in American life, but not American life per se. We may too often take Britain for granted, but we do so because our unspoken debt to it and our appreciation for it are part of our national fiber. Barack Obama cannot change that — as we will relearn either when he shows contrition, or at such time as he leaves office.

Amen to that…..

Today President Sarkozy visited London to mark the moment 70 years ago when General de Gaulle made his defiant broadcast to the French nation from the BBC. The new French government under Marshal Petain had signed an armistice with Nazi Germany and ordered all French service personnel to lay down their arms. De Gaulles refusal was an act of mutiny as far as Petain was concerned and seen as an act of war against the new regime.

In the stirring radio appeal Gen de Gaulle declared himself leader of the “Free French”, spawning the French Resistance, which went on to play a crucial role in defeating the Germans.

He told his nation that “the flame of the French resistance must not and will not be extinguished”.

Winston Churchill also broadcast a speech from the BBC on that day, June 18^th 1940..

However matters may go in France or with the French Government or with another French Government, we in this island and in the British Empire will never lose our sense of comradeship with the French people. If we are now called upon to endure what they have suffered we shall emulate their courage, and if final victory rewards our toils they shall share the gains, aye. And freedom shall be restored to all. We abate nothing of our just demands — Czechs, Poles, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, all who have joined their causes to our own shall be restored.

What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour.

My parents listened to that broadcast sitting in their home in London. They never forgot it for the rest of their lives. Suddenly, they recalled, years later, Churchill’s stirring rhetoric at a time when things seemed totally lost, gave people a new sense of confidence – a feeling that, at last, after decades of weakness, the nation and its leader were at one with each other.

Transocean (a US company registered in Switzerland) owned and ran the rig and also the failed blow out preventer (manufactured by Cameron International of Houston)

BP owns 65% of the lease of Mississippi Canyon Block252, in partnership with Japanese company MOEX (10%) and US company Anardarko of Houston (25%)

There is also another US company involved with the operation – Halliburton – contracted to cement the well head

The BP title was adopted in 1998 when British Petroleum merged with US oil giant Amoco so,I suppose, it could  be called BP Amoco.

BP’s board has 12 directors, 6 British, 6 American. 23000 of it’s employees are American, 10000 British and, interestingly enough, shareholdings are more or less evenly split between Americans and Brits (approx 40% each) so US investors and US pensions will be hit as hard as Brits over this.

Above all nobody yet knows what actually caused the April 20th explosion so, until we do, any blame game must, by default, remain purely speculative.

Guido Fawkes is one of Britain’s most widely read political bloggers. Last month (May2010) he got 3 million hits. He is a must read for any American conservative who wants to keep in touch with UK politics because he is a robust and mischievous destroyer of political and media reputations.

He has often been accused of being a Tory since he delights in deflating pompous and opinionated Labour and Lib Dem politicians and their servile groupies in the BBC, The Guardian and other self righteous organs of the chattering classes. In truth, however, he describes himself as a Libertarian and is equally happy sticking the knife into errant right wingers.

He is a scurrilous rascal with a colourful history and rather jagged at the edges but he is insightful as well as entertaining and always willing to go rogue – which is probably why he is the only leading UK blogger to take an interest in Sarah Palin…..

A flurry of articles this morning have picked up on Sarah Palin’s very excitable Facebook declaration that she was coming to London meet “one of my political heroines, the “Iron Lady,” Margaret Thatcher.” The Guardian is predictably sneering. The Mail on Sunday had the scoop first and raised the question of whether Cameron would meet the former Vice-Presidential nominee and potential Presidential candidate of the American sister party.

Guido, like any gossip, takes great delight in seeing who gets splashed when this particularly heavy stone gets lobbed into the UK political/media pond especially as his sources might be indicating an October visit – slap bang in the middle of the Conservative Party Conference

In Downing Street you can imagine the battle lines being drawn already. This is the stuff that Steve Hilton’s nightmares are made of, yet Palin has an obvious glitzy appeal to the right of the party and tabloid media, something Andy Coulson will know instinctively. As PM it would be extremely discourteous for Dave not to meet and be photographed with Palin if she was in town, a courtesy British PMs have extended to lesser known American politicians.

Hilton is Cameron’s Director of Strategy, rather lofty and the archetypal blue sky thinker. Coulson is Director of Communications, more concerned with tactics, a street fighter never unwilling to strike a low blow for a right cause, a former tabloid editor……

The timing might also be interesting seeing it could well link up with the activities of a certain British pol much admired by Glenn Beck

Guido’s transatlantic sources indicate that she could be over on this side of the pond in the autumn, perhaps around the time of Conservative Party conference, just when Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell will be launching their Direct Democracy version of the American Tea Party movement.

…and if Hannan and Carswell were minded to invite a certain lady who happens to be popular with American Tea Partiers to address their meeting how many people would be trying to get into that room……mmmmm….

As Guido himself might well say – the plot thickens……

Daniel Hannan

I admit it: I was wrong to have supported Barack Obama

“Oh my” as they are inclined to say at Hot Air. The American Right’s favourite UK conservative Daniel Hannan slips into the Daily Telegraph confessional box and intones his mea culpa for supporting Barack Obama in 2008 – and Allahpundit’s heart sings.

Sweet music to Hannan’s many admirers in the US who swooned when he eviscerated Gordon Brown in the European Parliament and was subsequently officially enthroned on conservatism’s mount Olympus by Glenn Beck himself. However the rather sour reactions to Allahpundit’s celebratory post from the Hot Air hoi polloi appear to indicate a selective amnesia about the Beck/Hannan courtship (which post dated the 2008 election, folks…)

“You got what you wanted, Limey” seems to be the leitmotif running through the comments, a common reaction to other criticisms of the Cook County Presidency emanating from these sceptred isles as if Obama was some ermine robed viceroy imposed upon the fifty colonies by King George III himself rather than the candidate preferred by a clear majority of American voters in 2008.

So, bearing this in mind, I give you another offering of red meat from the abattoir of the Daily Telegraph, this time from Damian Thompson, Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a journalist specialising in religion who was once described by The Church Times as a “blood-crazed ferret” – I like him already!!

Barack Obama’s analogy between the Gulf oil spill and 9/11: dirty politics from the Chicago school

No Hannan type rapier thrust here – this is more the heavy cavalry sword made famous by Bernard Cornwell’s heroic Richard Sharpe who wields this relatively cumbersome weapon with ruthless efficiency.

Barack Obama is easily clever enough to understand the effect of his comparison between the environmental challenge facing America after the Gulf oil spill and the terrorist challenge it faced after 9/11: a subliminal equation of heartless British oil executives with homicidal Islamists. But he’s also unscrupulous enough not to care.

And then – to the jugular

But if there were any doubt about where Obama served his apprenticeship, then today’s little elision between a terrible accident and meticulously plotted mass murder clears it up.

Thompson suggests that if you want answers to the Obama enigma don’t expect to find them in David Remnick’s recent hagiography which he dismisses as an authorised puff piece penned by a servile magazine editor. Instead he would point you in the direction of John R. MacArthur and his lacerating review of Remnick’s book in the UK Spectator

Forget the conspiracy theories about Barack Obama. Who needs confected mysteries involving birth certificates when there’s a real one – namely, how did an expensively educated kid from Hawaii plunge into the filthy pool of Chicago machine politics and emerge smelling so sweet that America elected him president?

I kind of guessed that I wouldn’t find the answer in New Yorker editor David Remnick’s biography The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama. And now I know I needn’t bother ploughing through it to find out, thanks to a savage review in the current Spectator by John R MacArthur – headed, rather daringly, “Under false colours”.

MacArthur believes that the true nature of Obama can only be comprehended by looking at the questions Remnick didn’t ask.

But nobody gets ahead in Chicago’s brutal, one-party political oligarchy without a sponsor — known in pre-PC days as a ‘Chinaman’ — and all the evidence suggests that Obama was spotted as talent by two important members of the Chicago establishment, a white lawyer named Newton Minow, and a key black aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley, Valerie Jarrett. Minow, a bien pensant liberal of the most hypocritical sort (he helped Rupert Murdoch buy the once enlightened Chicago Sun-Times), provides the white lakefront money and corporate connections, and Jarrett introduces Obama (as well as his future wife, Michelle, whom Jarrett hired) to her important friends at City Hall and around town.

But where were the AP Fact Checkers? Why wasn’t ace investigative reporter Joe McGinniss on the case? Why didn’t Arianna Huffington unleash her feral bloodhound Geoffrey Dunn onto the mean streets of The Windy City? Why wasn’t Sherlock Holmes contacted and asked to look into the strange case of Forrest Claypool and “The 2006 endorsement that never was”?

Aw – gee, that’s a tough question…

With the US broadsheets and networks MIA over Obama’s Chicago connections you can’t really blame Hannan and other Brits for buying into the myth of The Man Who Rose Without Trace when Americans themselves were mesmerised by the snake oil salesman’s spiel. Instead be glad that his histrionic posturing over the oil spill has drawn the scales from quite a few UK eyes and rejoice in any sinner who repenteth.

I’ll leave the last words to Thompson for a couple more savage hacks from that heavy cavalry sword.

Mayor Richard Daley – the father, not the son – would have been proud of Obama. It may be windy in Chicago, but if there’s one thing the boys from the Democratic machine learn it’s how to blow a dog whistle loud enough for the right people to hear.

And this, which, if you read it in the light of Sarah Palin’s Styrofoam columns remark and her Facebook broadsides, gives a fascinating insight into the flaws embedded deep in the core of Obama’s political DNA.

I don’t know whether there’s any personal animosity between MacArthur and Remnick; there will be once the latter has read this review, I guess. But it’s not attack on a servile magazine editor, except indirectly; it’s a piece aimed chiefly at Barack Obama, whom MacArthur describes as a “made man within the Chicago Democratic organisation”.

“Made man”, eh? What on earth can he mean by that?

cross posted from C4P

The recent 1-1 draw between England and the USA in the World Cup surprised and disappointed English fans. England started well but nerves and poor finishing opened the game for the Americans who gradually grew in confidence.

However it was never a David and Goliath match. Most of the 2010 US team are seasoned professionals playing in the top flight of European football – unlike their predecessors in 1950 when the US and England last played each other in the World Cup.

The 1950 Americans were all semi-professionals who had to supplement their earnings with other jobs, including the captain Walter Bahr.

Bahr said at the time of the 1950 match, playing was a part-time gig where they had to supplement their incomes with other jobs. He recollects making $50 a week as a Philadelphia high school teacher and $25 per week for a match. Other teammates worked as mail carriers and dishwashers to earn money.

All the England team were full time professionals and were still perceived as one of the world’s leading football nations – 3/1 to win the cup. The USA were rank outsiders – 500/1 – and not even their coach felt they had any chance at all. In 1950 it really was David v Goliath.

The result, a 1-0 win for the Americans, was totally unexpected, a real shocker yet, strangely enough, the news had almost zero impact in the USA where, for the media, “soccer” was very much a minority sport.

The American goal was scored by Joe Gaetjens. Joe was from Haiti but was studying accountancy at Columbia University and played  semi professional football in New York to earn some extra cash. He came to the attention of US coaches and joined the  World Cup squad headed for Brazil. Although he was not an American citizen he promised to take up US nationality after the competition.

Joe Gaetjens scores for USA v England 1950

After the World Cup, however, he went, instead to France, where he played in top flight football until 1954 when he returned to Haiti and went into business. Unfortunately his family got on the wrong side of Haiti’s dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier who proclaimed himself “President for Life” in 1964.

Most of Joe’s relatives fled from Haiti but he had never considered himself a “political” and didn’t think Duvalier’s secret police, the notorious Tonton Macoutes ,would be concerned with an ordinary businessman.

How wrong he was.

Within days he was arrested and never seen again. It is rumoured that he had been taken, with hundreds of other “suspects” to the feared Fort Dimanche prison in Port-au-Prince. Soon afterwards they were all executed and their bodies buried in secret in mass graves that have never been found.

Thus perished America’s 1950 “soccer hero”, the victim of one of the world’s most vicious political regimes – his only memorial a 1976 induction into the US National Soccer Hall of Fame…

h/t   cudaforever

General David Petraeus reminded us yesterday that the Afghan war cannot be won without Britain’s military contribution. Our shared history is less rosy than we care to admit, but the best of our young men and women are dying daily alongside Americans in distant places. That is where the special relationship that really matters is forged.

So writes Benedict Brogan in the Daily Telegraph. He points out, correctly, that Anglo-American relationships have not always been sweetness and light

In the last century, the narrative of a shared effort against fascism obscured America’s initial indifference to British pleading for support, the financial cost of its help, and the galvanising effect of Pearl Harbour. Washington did much to wind down the British Empire, and pulled the plug on the Aden adventure in 1956. In more recent memory, the Reagan administration initially hedged over Argentina and the Falklands, then omitted to tell London about plans to invade Grenada, while Bill Clinton showed an enthusiasm for giving visas to IRA terrorists.

He claims that Obama wants to repair relationships with the UK now that Cameron is PM.

Iain Martin at the WSJ is less sure

In the Foreign Office it is said that the incoming Tory team are disappointed by the lack of serious attention behind the scenes from the U.S. administration. Despite Foreign Secretary Hague rushing to Washington after he took office, there’s been no love being received back beyond the usual platitudinous statements about the special relationship that American leaders feel the Brits need to hear and the Brits actually find somewhat patronizing.

The UK media is generally still in full ObamaLove mode and there is little awareness of the degree of disenchantment that has developed in the US over their President who is now seen in some quarters as nothing more than a Chicago political hack whose total lack of executive experience has left him floundering in the White House.

He has been damaged by accusations of a lack of leadership over the Gulf oil spill and his reaction has been classic Chicago style – shunt the blame onto BP or “British Petroleum” as he has now decided to call the oil giant.

It’s true that BP has many questions to answer and the public performance of CEO Tom Hayward has left much to be desired. But the bullying, hectoring manner adopted by Obama – talking of kicking ass, saying he would sack Hayward, vague threats of suspending the shareholders dividend etc – are the familiar manifestations of a weak man aware of being out of his depth.

His actions are threatening to undermine the stability of BP. It’s share price has collapsed and this could have repercussions on British pension funds which, until now, have regarded the oil giant as a blue chip investment. There is a growing feeling in the UK that David Cameron, while sympathising with the problems caused by the spill, needs to act a little more robustly and suggest Obama ratchets down the rhetoric.

Tony Blair was constantly being mocked for being George Bush’s poodle. One gets the feeling that many UK pols were mesmerised by the styrofoam pillars and want to be Obama’s poodle. It’s time for a reality check. Obama’s political star in the US is beginning to wane. He might even be facing a Republican controlled Congress after the November elections, robbing him of his massive 2008 mandate.

So it’s time for Cameron to go a little Chicago himself and maybe point out that if BP is attacked much further an outside predator might see the company as ripe for plucking – PetroChina, anyone?

Having already mortgaged the US economy by getting China to finance the US deficit the image of PetroChina drilling in the Gulf and Alaska might not go down all that well with America – even the New York Times would find that a difficult idea to sell…..

As Greeks finally face up to reality after decades of ostrich economics and systemic corruption other “miracle” states like Portugal, Spain and Ireland  are also staggering out of the party with massive financial hangovers. They, with others, chose to ignore Micawber’s Golden Rule

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

The spectacle has had quite an impact on European electorates in Britain, Czechoslovakia and, now, Holland. In each case the voters have ignored the sweet, seductive notes tumbling out of left wing flutes conjuring up images of Big Government riding to the rescue with shiploads of cash squeezed out of taxpayers and/or borrowed from China.

The parties that have caught the public mood have emphasised austerity, public sector cuts and transparent accounting. They have also attempted (as far as any politician can for, like estate agents and care salesmen the bald, unvarnished truth is rarely detectable in their DNA) to be honest with the voters by admitting there will be some pain ahead.

It’s as if everybody has suddenly grown up and realised that promises of a world full of rainbows and butterflies peddled for so long by the dream weavers of the left is something just for the under fives.

Coincidentally voters have also begun to question the sanity of allowing unrestricted access for millions of immigrants from all corners of the earth. For the first time in Britain and Holland there was a degree of honest and open debate about this issue. The model of the multi-cultural society so beloved by those who are wealthy enough to reside in areas where property values insulate them from it’s negative impact is, at last, being subjected to critical analysis.

The cracks have begun to appear in the consensus. Can this brave new era of  realism survive or will those promises of rainbows and butterflies seduce us once more. Only time can tell.

But for now it would appear that the voters of Europe are saying Farewell Father Christmas, Hello Mr Scrooge…….