Smart power: You're doing it wrong

When Barack Obama went hat in hand to his European pals this week, I'll bet he was sure he'd get nothing but eager agreement to his requests for European countries to contribute more to the effort in Afghanistan. He found out pretty quickly that while Europeans might love him and hate Bush, they still don't like us very much. And, collectively speaking, I don't think a plurality of Europeans ever have.

The above cartoon, which I lifted from Theo's place, refers to the economic issues but can just as easily be applied to any other global problem Obama might ask for help with.

Which reminded me of some lyrics from that old George Thorogood song, One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer:

So I go down the streets,
down to my good friend's house
I said "Look man I'm outdoors you know,
can I stay with you maybe a couple days?"
He said "Uh, Let me go and ask my wife"
He come out of the house,
I could see in his face
I know that was no
He said "I don't know man, ah she kinda funny, you know"
I said "I know, everybody funny, now you funny too"

It begins: Leftists demonizing Obama at G20

I'm pretty sure it took George W. Bush more than 70-odd days to be depicted as a fiendish demon by the loony left. But a G20 summit in the midst of economic chaos has a way of accelerating and escalating things, I guess.

All the President's men

When Barack Obama heads to the G20 summit in London this week, he'll be accompanied by an entourage of 500 of his minions. Yes...500. Now to be fair, I have no idea how many staffers and secret service agents previous presidents brought along on such trips, but I'm pretty sure that if that number was typical, we'd have heard about it long ago. There's no way the media would have let Bush get away with it.

Anyway, the Evening Standard couldn't resist this little bit of snark:

Accompanying the party will be a total of 500 officials including kitchen staff, 35 vehicles in all, four speech writers and 12 teleprompters.

Heh.

Location is everything

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

The Excel Center in London is a massive convention and exposition complex in London's Docklands area, and I note this morning that it's the venue for the upcoming G20 meeting. I attended an event there a couple years ago, and I can't think of a place in London I'd rather not be. It's truly one of those places best seen in the rear-view mirror.

The complex is in the right half of the picture above. Don't be fooled by the snazzy yacht parked out front...the place is bleak. Not so much the complex itself, but the surroundings. One might think that a convention center of this size would be surrounded by great restaurants and bars, fine hotels, shopping and the like. One would be dead wrong. There's one pub nearby that catches a fair after-work crowd. But by nightfall the place is desolate.

When I was at the Excel Center (for three long, forlorn days), there were two hotels convenient to the center; the "Premier Travel Inn", which was anything but "premier" and another hotel - Novotel - which was a step or two up. I got stuck at the PTI, which my fellow travelers and I took to calling "pity".

The "pity": Bleak, forlorn, desolate...take your pick

I bring all this up because the sheer soul-crushing, energy-sapping desolation of the area might just be enough to diminish the impact of the demonstrations at the G20 meeting. When the average fun-loving anarchist finds out he has to go to the Excel Center to vent his anger he'll probably just say "fuck it, I'm not goin' there". Those who do show up are likely to take one look around, have their spirits crushed, and go home.