† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: German weekly Der Spiegel thinks so, at least on the issue of global warming (which, in case you haven’t noticed, is now called “climate change” since the planet has actually been cooling over the past 11 years):

Barack Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world" when he delivered his well-received campaign speech in Berlin in the summer of 2008. … Since then, Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely, his country's addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change. … He was either unwilling or unable to convince skeptics in his own ranks and potential defectors from the ranks of the Republicans to support him, for example, by promising alternative investments as a compensation for states with large coal reserves.

Obama's announcement at the APEC summit that it was no longer possible to secure a binding treaty in Copenhagen is the result of his own negligence. …

Obama was quite happy to make the trip to Copenhagen in October to support his hometown Chicago's bid to host the Olympic Games. But he is currently leaving open the question of whether he will come to the Danish capital in December for the UN Climate Change Conference. In doing so, he has given other world leaders the signal that they do not need to attend. If the Copenhagen summit, which energy strategists and environmentalists have been preparing for two years, is a failure, then it will mainly be Obama's fault. …

The Nobel Committee should postpone the award ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize from Dec. 10 to Dec. 20. Only if Obama has achieved a convincing deal at the Copenhagen conference will there be a real reason to honor him.

[Hat Tip: Steve Milloy’s Green Hell Blog]

† Nationalized Healthcare Always Leads To Rationing: In a harbinger of things to come, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force - which makes preventive and primary care recommendations to doctors, insurance companies and policy makers - has reversed its position of just seven years ago and now advises that women without a family history of breast cancer start getting mammograms at age 50, not 40, and that screening occur every two years rather than annually between the ages of 50 to 74.

The Washington Post notes that the about-face on routine mammograms “[c]oming amid a highly charged national debate over health-care reform and simmering suspicions about the possibility of rationing medical services, the recommendations immediately became enveloped in controversy” and The Wall Street Journal points out that the new reccomendations “raise concerns that health insurers will curtail coverage and reimbursements for screenings that fall outside the guidelines.” For it’s part, The New York Times frets that “[r]esearchers worry the new report will be interpreted as a political effort by the Obama administration to save money on health care costs.”

The WaPo and The Journal also quote doctors who vehemently oppose the relaxed screening guidelines - one calls them, “crazy” and “unethical” and another says he is "shocked"- whereas The Times quotes only those who support them.

† Is Biden Qualified To Be A Heartbeat Away From The Presidency?: Discussing the Obama administration’s collective propensity for gaffes, The Stiletto noted: “[W]e have a president who speaks without thinking things through, a vice president who doesn’t know when to shut up, and a secretary of state who is not conversant with the language of diplomacy.”

More on Hillary Clinton’s diplomatic gaffes (or, as The New Republic’s Michael Crowley refers to them, “verbal burps”):

Secretary of state is a job that demands extreme dedication and diligence, requiring its occupant to learn the fine details of everything from the Kashmir dispute to Taiwanese independence - and to articulate U.S. policy with flawless precision. Who could be better for this task than Clinton? As a senator, after all, she had made her name as a policy wonk who actually enjoyed reading to the end of her briefing books - and one who, moreover, was known for an almost animatronic ability to stay on message. …

A year later, Obama might be rethinking that assumption. The hallmark of Hillary’s tenure as America’s top diplomat has hardly been robotic precision. It has instead been a curious propensity for public statements that require amendment, clarification, and implicit retraction - as illustrated, most recently, by comments she made about Israeli settlement policy that reportedly baffled even her own aides. Perhaps because she is a smart and independent-minded woman, Hillary has taken a self-consciously blunt-speaking approach to her job and shows no sign of apologizing for it. … But it’s not a style in keeping with a White House that generally demands complete message control. For a president who hates drama, Barack Obama has installed a secretary of state who keeps creating it.

While many people think of Clinton as scripted and cautious, other facets of her personality - temper, self-assurance, sarcasm - have always broken through her robotic façade.

As Crowley notes, “loose talk in diplomacy can make it hard for enemies and allies alike to know what’s coming off the cuff and what represents official U.S. policy.”

† Service – Or An Approximation Of It – With A Smile: In his New York Times blog “Think Again,” Stanley Fish writes about several pet peeves he shares with The Stiletto:

There is a class of utterances that, when encountered, produces irritation, distress and, in some cases, the desire to kill. You hear or read one of these and your heart sinks. Everyone will have his or her (non)favorites. Mine is a three-word announcement on the TV screen, “To Be Continued,” which says, “I know that you have become invested in this story and are eager to find out how it ends, but you’re going to have to wait for a few days or a week or a month or forever.”  

In the same category are “Sold Out,” when you’ve been been waiting in line at a movie theater for 30 minutes (I know you can get tickets online, but sometimes you’ve decided to go out on the spur of the moment); “Closed for Private Party,” when you’ve been looking forward to a meal at your favorite restaurant all day; “Back in an Hour,” when you’ve come crosstown to buy something you need to have immediately; “Not in Service,” when you’ve been counting on using an A.T.M. or getting a Coke; “Use Other Door,” when you’ve gone around a long block to get to what you thought was the main entrance; “Register Closed,” when you’ve been waiting not-so-patiently behind a fellow customer with 25 items; and “The role of Violetta will be sung by the understudy,” when you’ve spent hundreds of dollars to see Renée Fleming.

As it happens, the headline of his piece is The Stiletto’s Number One telephone-related pet peeve (she has so many pet peeves, she can categorize them and sort the categories alphabetically, so be warned). Don’t you just hate it when - at the very second your call is connected and before you have had a chance to state your name and why you are calling - a receptionist or customer service agent chirps, “Can I put you on hold?” and immediately proceeds to do so without waiting for your assent?

It’s just basic politeness to wait until you have received the permission you are putatively seeking. Plus, if the receptionist or representative waited long enough to find out the reason for the call and then put the customer on hold, it leaves the impression that (s)he is trying to find the best person to whom the customer’s inquiry should be directed, even (s)he is just jumping from one line to the next to ask six other callers whether they can be put on hold.

† Updates To Previous Posts (Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much Foreign Policy): Jake Tapper, ANC News Senior White House correspondent, relates the contents of a note sent to him by “an old friend” who is “an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire” and – despite being “in general a supporter” of President Barack Hussein Obama, describes the president’s show of obsequiousness as “Karate Kid-level knowledge of Japanese customs”:

"At their 1971 meeting in Alaska, the first visit of a Japanese Emperor to America, President Nixon bowed and referred to Emperor Hirohito and his wife repeatedly as 'Your Imperial Majesties.'"

"Yet, (and?) Nixon gets the bow right. Slight arch from the waist hands at his side. …

"The bow [Obama] performed did not just display weakness in Red State terms, but evoked weakness in Japanese terms. ...The last thing the Japanese want or need is a weak looking American president and, again, in all ways, he unintentionally played that part.

The Stiletto stands by her deeply-held belief that no red-blooded American should ever bow to a monarch. Having said that, there is another difference between Nixon’s bow and Obama’s bow that the learned college professor failed to notice: 
 

Clearly, both presidents are much taller than the diminutive emperors. Nixon’s head remains higher than Emperor Hirohito’s, whereas Obama lowers his head far below both Emperor Akihito’s and King Abdullah’s. Nixon comes off as dignified, Obama comes off as a bootlicker (literally). We fought for freedom from monarchical tyranny and Obama is dishonoring the sacrifices of those who died to create and keep our republic. 

† Updates To Previous Posts (When Healthcare Is Rationed, Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others): USA Today profiles 9-year-old T.J. Berndsen, an asthmatic, who contracted swine flu the day before Halloween and a week later “was straining to breathe in the emergency room at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center because of complications”: 

While H1N1's effects in a healthy child can range anywhere from mild congestion and sore throat to serious respiratory illness, and even death, the 7 million American kids who have asthma are at a higher risk for complications and death if they contract the novel flu virus, says Tom Skinner of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We're seeing underlying health problems, including asthma, in about two-thirds of the estimated 540 children who have died from H1N1 complications," he says. …

"In children with asthma, the key issue is anticipation rather than reacting," says Erwin Gelfand, chair of pediatrics at National Jewish Health in Denver, a hospital that specializes in treating children with respiratory conditions.

Gelfand says a parent can ensure two things: vaccination and making sure a child's asthma is in control. …

[T]he CDC recommends that children with breathing issues get the shot form of the vaccine - two doses spread out by a month in those under age 9 - instead of the nasal mist.

The problem is, just like tens of millions of other parents of high-risk children, T.J.’s parents were not able to get him vaccinated – although President Barack Hussein Obama’s two healthy daughters were vaccinated in mid-October. Wanna bet the Obama girls will get their second dose of vaccine before most high-risk children can get their first dose – or have already been infected with H1N1?

When the rules that health officials put into place to triage within high risk groups – in this case, T.J. should have been vaccinated before Obama’s children – do not apply to the wealthy or elite, then it adds insult to the injury of rationing a needed treatment.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Why We Need Gitmo): Writing in Politico’s “Arena,” New America Foundation fellow and FOX “News Watch” panelist Jim Pinkerton offers this take on Pat Buchanan’s assertion that President Barack Hussein Obama is betting his presidency on the outcome of  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s criminal trial (emphasis in the original):

It's not so much that Obama has bet his presidency on the outcome of the KSM terror trial, it's that Obama is betting his presidency on being more politically correct than George W. Bush. And that's risky, as all those p.c. pieties are now crashing down amidst an ongoing clash of civilizations, as shots and bombs go off in Fort Hood and Kabul - and all across the "bloody borders" of Islam, as the late Samuel Huntington described them.

[I]t was Bush, not Obama, who declared, back in 2001, that "Islam is peace." …

Such p.c. not only clouded our understanding of the world, it also seeped back into the home front; that's why all the rest of us had to take our shoes off when we got on airplanes. The obvious tools of good security, such as profiling, were off-limits in the Bush era, at least officially. …

[I]t was under Bush's reign that Admiral Mullen got to be chairman of the JCS under Bush 43, declaring that diversity was a "strategic priority," and Gen. Casey got to lead the Army, saying, in the wake of Fort Hood, that it would be a tragedy if we lost our diversity.

Never mind that the strategic priority of Islamofascists is to destroy diversity wherever they find it, and if they succeed we will all be either be Muslim converts or dead Infidels.

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on a real-life example of American exceptionalism.

In the wake of “Soldier of Allah” Nidal Malik Hassan’s anti-Infidel assault that killed 13 troops at Ft. Hood and the unborn child of one of his victims, the MSM and groups like the Hamas-linked (fifth item) Council on American-Islamic Relations warned about an “anti-Muslim backlash.”

Not only there was no violent backlash - not even in TX – but the residents of Granite Falls, WA, which The Associated Press describes as a “rugged, blue-collar mining town,” just elected Pakistani-born Muslim Haroon Saleem mayor with 61 percent of the vote:

Saleem said he was nervous about being accepted, and hired a white assistant manager to ease local concerns when he opened his bar in 2000.

"I was kind of scared, you know," he says.

But he was embraced virtually from the start.

"That tells you how good and great of a community Granite Falls is," he says with a slight accent. "They didn't care ... I am who I am, and people love me for that, and I just love people. People know that I am smart, I am a businessman. In the big scheme of things, all these qualities have made me, got me to where I am today."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Saleem said community members reached out, letting him know he was one of them. No one seems to notice that his wife, Bushra, attends social events in a traditional shalwar dress. …

"To minorities, America's a great place, you can achieve whatever you want to. That's the American dream. That's why millions of people have come here and want to come here," Saleem says.