Chest Puffing By Proxy!

The lovely Miss Claire made an interesting side-bar comment this morning while we were having a brain storming session on how frequent updates should be now that our readership has grown like pubis on the floor of Barney Frank's shower. We also tried to think of a few ways to increase readership. Two words - Midget Wrestling!! (nah, that was my idea.)

I wondered aloud how China, who intelligence officials claim abandoned an attempt to have Kim Jong Il assassinated a few years ago, could have let North Korea stray so far off of its leash. Claire opined that maybe China was measuring the mettle of President Obama by using North Korea. The thought of an international test of will by proxy chilled me a little. This is a brutal communist police state that can't even make safe baby food, and drives otherwise peaceful monks to set themselves ablaze like s'mores over a campfire.

Remember, this is a regime that we now know watched translated videos of the overthrow of Romania's former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu as an instructional guide on how to rid themselves of the drunken Kim Jong ( I think the folks who make those "Idiot's Guide" books may have thrown it together.). Using this bizarre incident as evidence, a reasonable person can draw only one of two conclusions:

A - China orchestrated this missile test to see how dovish American foreign policy has become.

B- China knew about North Korea's plans and tolerated this brazen act of aggression and perhaps even encouraged it towards the same aim mentioned above.

Only a careful dissection of intelligence can determine which scenario more closely resembles the truth - a "post-op analysis", as a dear late reader of this blog used to call it. If evidence suggests any complicity from Beijing, President Obama should demand that China reign in their delinquent despot, and crank up the heat on holding them accountable for human rights abuses.

As Rich Lowry recently pointed out, the Somali pirate incident should serve as a helpful tutorial to President Obama on the "indispensability of American power", not it's limits. The President toured Europe, hat in hand, asking for help in Afghanistan, and was politely told to get bent. It dishonours, not emboldens, America's standing in the world when the US goes begging to a bunch of European has-been nations who are too busy quibbling over the acceptable circumference of fruit to be of any use to anybody. The EU is just a giant Monopoly game being played by errant children.

Anyway, a big welcome to all of our new readers and the kind comments that have poured in from Italy to Nova Scotia to New York. We owe this to the confidence of our friend Jonah Goldberg, and I hope we don't disappoint!

On deck for the weekend, Blogging by Numbers and Pimp My Recession Part Three! Here's our favourite song siren, Regina Spektor, to get you through the day!

Cordially

Joe