Obama is really wimping out.

• First, President Obama's hand-picked point man for nationalizing health care, former Senator Tom Daschle, is revealed to have been a humiliatingly bad nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Daschle has already withdrawn his nomination, and Obama himself has personally admitted that this was a screw-up.



• Obama has also caved to the EU's demand that the "Buy American" provisions be scrapped from the ongoing stimulus bill. Now Obama is in a double-bind: we supposedly need a stimulus bill to save the economy from slipping into a depression, but it's also hard to see how throwing money at foreign corporations will do much to stimulate the American economy.



• Then, despite practically begging the Iranian government to be our friend, Obama is humiliated yet again when Iran decides to launch a satellite into orbit with an Iran rocket. Obama's response is utterly unconvincing:

  The United States will use "all elements of our national power" to deal with Iran, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday after Tehran said it had launched a satellite into orbit.

  Yeah, right!



• North Korea is also planning a long-range ballistic missile test. Gee, you'd think that this kind of thing would stop now that mean ol' bully George W. Bush was no longer in power...



• Oh, and now that the nuclear arrivista powers are flexing their muscles, Obama wants to sign a treaty with Russia to slash their mutual nuclear arsenals by 80%.



• Even India, in a sign of its friendship for the United States, is publically warning Obama not to do anything stupid:

  India has warned US President Barack Obama that he risks “barking up the wrong tree” if he seeks to broker a settlement between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
  
  MK Narayanan, India’s national security advisor, said that the new US administration was in danger of dredging up out of date Clinton administration-era strategies in a bid to bring about improved ties between the two nuclear armed neighbours.