Little Egypt: Slip Slidin’ Away

Lady M is still busy going through all the seed catalogues in advance of the planting season, so I’ll take this opportunity to update you a bit on the Middle East situation.

First, we can all relax because former President Jimmy Carter said we have nothing to worry about:

"I think the Muslim Brotherhood is not anything to be afraid of in the upcoming (Egyptian) political situation and the evolution I see as most likely," Carter said. "They will be subsumed in the overwhelming demonstration of desire for freedom and true democracy."

And after all, he did nail it on Iran.

Secondly, if you were worried that Big Guy hadn’t been keeping his finger on the pulse of the Middle East, the New York Times today has explained that he ordered his advisers last summer to produce a secret report:

 President Obama ordered his advisers last August to produce a secret report on unrest in the Arab world, which concluded that without sweeping political changes, countries from Bahrain to Yemen were ripe for popular revolt, administration officials said Wednesday.

Apparently neither CIA Director Leon Panetta nor National Intelligence Director James Clapper got a copy of the memo (although they did know as much as we did). I wonder if rebuilding those Chinese firewalls that we tore down after 9/11were part of our “shovel ready” stimulus program?

From a Senate hearing yesterday:

“Frankly, Tunisia was probably not up there in our top 10 countries we were watching closely,” Clapper said. “So there is the aspect of the spread, the balance of our collection priorities. Obviously, we’re going to work on that. ... We’re going to pay a lot more attention to social media and what we can do to extract warning.”

Butt rest assured, Big Guy was on top of the situation:

“There’s no question Egypt was very much on the mind of the president”

 

So I hope you feel better now. It’s apparent that we’ve got everything under control.

So finally – and since it is still technically New York Fashion Week  – I found this little video of a runway show, posted by BigFurHat, for you. The young lady is not just modeling the designer’s “I Dream of Genie” homage to the Arab world. Butt she also demonstrates, inadvertently, Big Guy’s Middle East policy. Warning: video depicts the graphic result of the danger involved in depending on platforms that don’t fit properly.

h/t IOTW