From last night’s “All-Stars.”
On the conclusion of the G-20 summit:
Well, the communique wasn’t bad. It had the stimulus provisions were useless. The regulatory stuff looked as if it would restrict us, but I think not. It’s all words.
What is really important here is protectionism. And you would have expected words against protectionism, but, as you said, there was action. They pumped a quarter of a trillion into the IMF for trade credits and three quarters of a trillion into the developing countries, which will help them purchase stuff in this recession. So that’s going to help.
But there’s always an amusing event in any of these, and my favorite today was when Obama met with the president of South Korea, and afterwards, the South Koreans issued a statement that the presidents agreed that if the North Koreans launch a missile, which will happen probably on Saturday– the two countries will come together with a, quote, “stern and united response,” which means there will be a useless Security Council resolution with six adjectives instead of the usual two.
But that wasn’t the hilarious part. The hilarious part is that the U.S. communique left out the word “stern.” So it looks as if our position will be that we if the missile is launched we are going to have a flabby united resolution at the U.N.
On a federal judge ruling that terror suspects held in Afghanistan can sue in U.S courts:
The Obama people, liberals in general, supported the Guantanamo ruling a year ago and cheered it. But this ruling today, which the Obama administration opposes, is an inevitable outcome of the Guantanamo ruling.
Guantanamo was radical because it overturned a 60-year precedent, which said that if you’re a foreign prisoner in a foreign place, Germans under our control in occupied Germany in the late ’40’s, you do not have access to American courts.
So Guantanamo overturned that, the ruling on Guantanamo did, and this is an inevitable outcome. But it is entirely insane. You cannot conduct a war under these circumstances. That’s why Obama is fighting it.