Up from the Slime

Polls Like Carter

2011-11-29T12:27:00.000-08:00

(with apologies to Maroon 5)

[Barack:]
They all liked my smile
Praised my big brain
I won by a mile
Over McCain
In every debate
Two thousand and eight
It really felt great

Said "I'm like LeBron
And I got this"
Both Kos and MoveOn
said "He can't miss"
But what did I find?
Two thousand and nine
Made me lose my mind

And it goes like this:
Bad taste on my tongue
It went to Hell
And down rung by rung
Ratings all fell
To polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter

No stimulus
Or ObamaCare
Can lift me back up
From way down there
With polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter

All of my crew
Stay up late nights
Crafting appeals to
Working class whites
Bitter-clinger slobs
The English call "yobs"
Who all lost their jobs

But I've got no tricks
That can get through
To ignorant hicks
So I'll stick to
The upper-class Greens
And union machines
And Nan and Maxine

And it goes like this:
Bad taste on my tongue
It went to Hell
And down rung by rung
Ratings all fell
To polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter

No stimulus
Or ObamaCare
Can lift me back up
From way down there
With polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter

[Michelle:]
You wanna know
How to get their votes?
Take control,
Grab 'em by their scroats
And if you nationalize
Then they will rationalize:
Vote for you or get downsized

Your style grates
Cold and pedantic
Just imitate
My First Lady shtick
And if you nationalize
Then they will rationalize:
Vote for you or get downsized

[Barack:]
And it goes like this:
Bad taste on my tongue
It went to Hell
And down rung by rung
Ratings all fell
To polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter

No stimulus
Or ObamaCare
Can lift me back up
From way down there
With polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter

Bad taste on my tongue
It went to Hell
My bell will get rung
In two thousand twelve
If I poll like Carter
If I still poll like Carter
I've got the polls like Carter

The Dead End Coalition

2011-11-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

I was struck by this passage in Thomas Edsall's New York Times piece on the "Obama Coalition":

As a practical matter, the Obama campaign and, for the present, the Democratic Party, have laid to rest all consideration of reviving the coalition nurtured and cultivated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal Coalition — which included unions, city machines, blue-collar workers, farmers, blacks, people on relief, and generally non-affluent progressive intellectuals — had the advantage of economic coherence. It received support across the board from voters of all races and religions in the bottom half of the income distribution, the very coherence the current Democratic coalition lacks.

A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food.

The better-off wing, in contrast, puts at the top of its political agenda a cluster of rights related to self-expression, the environment, demilitarization, and, importantly, freedom from repressive norms — governing both sexual behavior and women’s role in society — that are promoted by the conservative movement.

This reminds me very much of the 1937 movie "Dead End," in which the urban poor live across the street from the very rich, with nothing in between. This "coalition" combines people who want to kill the golden goose (that is, the productive private sector of the economy) for welfare benefits with those who want to strangle the golden goose to eliminate its carbon footprint.

I'm guessing that the party that supports the aspirations of white working-class people for economic advancement will end up appealing to minority working-class people who want the opportunity to earn their way toward the same aspirational goals. That really does mean that the "Obama Coalition" is a dead end for the Democrats.

Of stories and narratives, mice and men

2011-10-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

James Taranto in Best of the Web notes:

Drew Westen is back. He's the psychologist and political consultant who wrote a ridiculous but revealing New York Times op-ed back in August faulting President Obama for failing to tell "a story" that would comfort "scared and angry" Americans by assuring them that the president would heroically vanquish "bad guys."

It's taken me a while, but I finally realized what story it is that Westen wanted Obama to tell us:

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to."

Lennie was delighted. "That's it - that's it. Now tell how it is with us."

George went on. " With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don't have to sit in no bar room blowin' in our jack jus' because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us."

Lennie broke in. "But not us! An' why? Because .... because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why." He laughed delightedly. "Go on now, George."

"You got it by heart. You can do it yourself."

"No, you. I forget some a' the things. Tell about how it's gonna be."

"O.K. Some day - we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs and ---"

"An' live off the fatta the lan'," Lennie shouted. "An' have rabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we're gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that, George."

"Why'n't you do it yourself. You know all of it."

"No.... you tell it. It ain't the same if I tell it. Go on..... George. How I get to tend the rabbits."

"Well," said George. "We'll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit-hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we'll just say the hell with goin' to work, and we'll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an' listen to the rain comin' down on the roof...."

The problem is that Westen and the Democrats forgot that Lennie could tell the story as good as George could, so when they heard Obama telling it back in 2004 at the DNC, they thought that Obama was George. What they are just now realizing is that THEY are George, and Obama is Lennie. See if this doesn't sound like the Democrats' current lament about their President:

"There's enough beans for four men," George said.

Lennie watched him from over the fire. He said patiently, "I like 'em with ketchup."

"Well, we ain't got any," George exploded. "Whatever we ain't got, that's what you want. God a'mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work an' no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want. Why, I could stay in a cat house all night, I could eat any damn place I want, hotel or any place, and order any damn thing I could think of. An' I could do all that every damn month.. Get a gallon of whisky, or set in a pool room and play cards or shoot pool." Lennie knelt and looked over the fire at the angry George. And Lennie's face was drawn with terror. "An' whatta I got?" George went on furiously. " I got you! You can't keep a job and you lose me ever' job I get. Jus' keep me shovin' all over the country all the time. An' that ain't the worst. You get in trouble. You do bad things and I got to get you out." His voice rose nearly to a shout. "You crazy son-of-a-bitch. You keep me in hot water all the time." He took on the elaborate manner of little girls when they are mimicking one another. "Jus' wanted to feel that little girl's dress - jus' wanted to pet it like it was a mouse -- Well, how the hell did she know you jus' wanted to feel her dress? She jerks back and you hold on like it was a mouse. She yells and we got to hide in a irrigation ditch all day with guys lookin' for us, and we got to sneak out in the dark and get outta the country. All the time somethin' like that - all the time. I wisht I could put you in a cage with about a million mice and let you have fun."

But the Democrats can no more walk away from their Lennie than George could from his. In the end, George showed Lennie mercy, but the Democrats can't even do that, though in their case they'd only need to remove Obama's name from nomination rather than use George's drastic measure.

'Nuff said.

2011-10-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

The Sister Bertrille Effect

2011-09-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

In Best of the Web today, James Taranto notes the cartoonish silliness of the latest (third? fourth?) incarnation of "anti-anti-Obama vigilance" on the Web, AttackWatch.com:

"Rick Perry's massive jobs lie." Here the source is PolitiFact.com, which said "pants on fire" to the Texas governor for the following statement: "[Obama] had $800 billion worth of stimulus in the first round of stimulus. It created zero jobs."

AttackWatch.com counters that PolitiFact "refers to four independent analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and three private assessments of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to determine that anywhere between 1.3 million and 3.6 million jobs were created or saved by the stimulus—'but certainly more than zero.' "

Let's take the Obama Administration and PolitiFact and AttackWatch.com and OFA, et al, at their word and assume that ARRA indeed saved or created 3.6 million jobs. In fact, let's take that as axiomatic.

Given that the US economy lost 0.8 million additional jobs in the wake of ARRA, the inescapable conclusion is that ARRA concurrently lost or destroyed 4.4 million jobs, causing the net loss of 0.8 million jobs. If all of the changes in US employment in one direction were due to ARRA, then all of the changes in the other direction were also due to ARRA.

In the 1960s TV show "The Flying Nun," Sister Bertrille finds out that the reason the Puerto Rican breezes loft her into the air by her exotically styled, overstarched wimple can be expressed in the formula "Lift + Thrust > Load + Drag." Obamanomics recalls this aerodynamics formula, because the Obama Administration and its Democrat allies in Congress thought that ARRA would provide lift and thrust to economic activity, but instead constructed it in such a way - and accompanied it with so much other regulation - that they added massive load and drag to the economy, sending it into further decline.

The corollary formula for Obama's employment policies is: "Saved + Created < Lost + Destroyed."

Why look for stupidity, when laziness is staring you in the face?

2011-08-25T23:15:00.000-07:00

The floodgates have opened, and there's a torrent of opinion speculating on Barack Obama's intelligence. A recent example is Noemie Emery's Examiner column: What if Barack Obama isn't so smart?

Fortunately we have such a thinker, "capable to examining" things to perfection, and that is the problem: President Obama is their ideal of a thinker. He is president, and he has been -- how to put it? -- a bomb.

Based on results, Perry has been more successful as governor of Texas than Obama has been as president, or as anything else he has ever tried being, in the entire whole course of his life.

In 2008, Obama was hailed as a genius, a "first rate intellect," the smartest man to ever be president, and we know now the first part is true. He is the political genius who shed 30 points in his first years in office.

He's the political genius who blew up his coalition in his first months in office, who led his party to annihilation in the 2010 midterms (while showing utter indifference to the fate of congressional Democrats), and gave the Republicans -- who were on the floor, in a coma -- more than they needed to come roaring back from the dead...

And if Obama is brilliant, and Bush is an imbecile, how come the genius kept most of the things the dolt set in motion: the protocols for fighting the war against terror, the surge strategy, the timetables, and even, in Robert Gates and David Petraeus, some of his main appointees? Why couldn't the genius improve on the idiot's handiwork?

Maybe he isn't that bright.

Well, there's an alternate explanation for President Obama's record in office, one that accords better with Occam's Razor. We can't measure Obama's intelligence directly -- and he won't release his college or law school transcripts, so we can't use those as a proxy for an intelligence measurement. But we can directly observe one important aspect of Obama's behavior, and definitively state that he is exceedingly lazy.

Emery correctly points out that Obama has demonstrated mediocre to poor performance in each of the jobs he's held. He doesn't exhibit the perseverance to stick with a job until he masters it; instead, his pattern is to become bored or frustrated quickly and to seek some other opportunity.

But with that mediocre performance, Obama has achieved a rapid rise to the absolute pinnacle of political office. That brings up another pattern in Obama's career: his advancement has been largely independent of performance. His editorship of the Harvard Law Review, for example, seems to have required no body of work. His run for the Illinois State Senate was made simpler when his putative mentor was disqualified from the ballot, letting Obama take the Democratic nomination. When he attempted a competitive run for Bobby Rush's seat in Congress, he failed completely. And when he ran for the U.S. Senate, his Republican opponent's divorce records were somehow unsealed, again clearing Obama's path for him.

If you're not good at doing anything but you consistently meet with advancement, you tend to attribute your success to your own inherent awesomeness and you tend to discount the importance of hard work and persistence to achievement. Obama's cocky statements "I got this" and "Just give me the ball" early in his term reflected his belief that his mere presence would be sufficient to solve the thorny problems he would face as President.

So on taking office, he chose to employ a simple two-step strategy. Step one was to give Pelosi and Reid vague outlines of what he wanted and let them handle it. Step two was to deal with the things Pelosi and Reid couldn't or wouldn't get for him by reverting to continuing Bush Administration policies. It was effortless, and as far as Obama was concerned, it was supposed to be a slam dunk: if he ran into too much resistance, he only had to give a speech and the public acclaim would ensure that everyone in Washington (everyone who mattered) would fall into line.

He assumed that the auto-pilot ARRA stimulus would cure the nation's economic ills in one shot; when it didn't, his only fallback was to wait for it to "kick in" over successive "Summers of Recovery." When he ran into real, substantive resistance, as on ObamaCare, he found that speechifying had no effect; only because nationalized health care was a cherished goal of Pelosi and Reid were they willing to go to unprecedented lengths to pass it.

And as his policies proved to be ineffectual both in substance and politically, he became frustrated, bored and disinterested in his job. He sought out ways to avoid work -- golfing, fundraising, hosting celebrities -- because he has no realistic way to find another ostensibly better and more interesting job.

This pattern isn't necessarily symptomatic of intellectual dullness. Intelligence and perseverance aren't intrinsically linked. But as one of Ricochet's favorite Presidents once said:

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

And persistence and determination are precisely the qualities President Obama lacks.

President Kludge

2011-08-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

The story goes that in WWII, a machinist's mate on a battleship fended off any work details by keeping constantly busy making a very important piece of equipment that would increase the ship's fighting efficiency. No one but he was allowed to see it.

One day, the ship's captain informed the machinist's mate that the Admiral would be inspecting the ship the following week and that he was to present his very important invention at the inspection. The mate worked feverishly to the deadline, and as the Admiral was being piped aboard, he picked up the item and rushed up to the deck.

He ran across the deck to where the Admiral was waiting, but slipped and fell, and the marvelous thing went over the side. Everyone in the crew heard it hit the water with a loud "KLUDGE!"

This is supposedly how the slang term "kludge" came into existence. It now has the connotation of something thrown together in haste, held together with chewing gum and baling wire, and just barely able to fulfill the function for which it was intended in the most inelegant and inefficient way. That's one way of looking at the Obama Administration: a huge jury-rig that's shaking itself apart.

But listening to President Obama talk about his Big Jobs Plan and how he's getting it ready for unveiling on Labor Day, it reminded me of the story of the goldbricking machinist's mate and how his fortunate stroke of bad luck ensured he'd never have to present his work for inspection.

How will "petroshekels" change the world?

2011-08-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

The standing joke among Jews is, "If we're the Chosen People, why didn't God promise us some land with OIL under it?" As it turns out, He did.

Recent discoveries -- over the past several years -- put the amount of natural gas reserves in Israeli territorial waters at as much as 26 trillion cubic feet. That's roughly triple what Israel will consume over the next 20 years, meaning much of it can be exported. But compared to Egypt's 77 tcf of gas reserves, Israel's natural gas discoveries are not quite Earth-shaking.

Currently, Israel imports coal for domestic electricity, supplemented since 2004 by natural gas from the offshore Mari-B field twenty-five miles from the southern port of Ashdod. More gas comes from Egypt, arriving near Ashdod via an undersea pipeline. Indeed, despite the excitement over the Leviathan field, Israel signed a new twenty-year gas purchase agreement with Egypt earlier in December to supply several industrial entities, including the Dead Sea Works and the Haifa refinery.

If the riches of the Leviathan field are confirmed, production could begin by 2016. In that scenario, Israel could eventually become a net energy exporter despite still needing to import oil to refine into gasoline and other products. Apart from notional energy independence, using natural gas from its own fields would save Israel $4 billion in imports annually while boosting gross national product. Plentiful indigenous hydrocarbon supplies could also prompt the development of new industries. For the time being, though, Israel must resolve a variety of problems before it can begin reaping the full benefits of the new discovery.

However, Israel sits atop another energy resource: oil shale. Up until the end of 2010, it was believed that Israel had about 4 billion barrels of oil in extractable oil shale. Given that the Saudis produce just under 10 million bbl/day, those 4 billion bbl are equivalent to about 400 days of Saudi Arabia's production.

But new discoveries of oil shale in Israel and new techniques of extraction put the latest estimates of available oil from Israeli shale at 250 billion bbl - just shy of Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of 260 billion bbl.

What is less well-known, but even more dramatic, is the work being done on this country’s oil shale. The British-based World Energy Council reported in November 2010 that Israel had oil shale from which it is possible to extract the equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil. Yet these numbers are currently undergoing a major revision internationally.

A new assessment was released late last year by Dr. Yuval Bartov, chief geologist for Israel Energy Initiatives, at the yearly symposium of the prestigious Colorado School of Mines. He presented data that our oil shale reserves are actually the equivalent of 250 billion barrels (that compares with 260 billion barrels in the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia).

Independent oil industry analysts have been carefully looking at the shale, and have not refuted these findings. As a consequence of these new estimates, we may emerge as the third largest deposit of oil shale, after the US and China.

Moreover, Israel is developing extraction techniques that take the oil out of the shale while the shale remains underground, at per-barrel costs of $20 or less.

What would it mean to the world if Israel were able to produce oil at rates similar to Saudi Arabia?

1) Lower oil prices overall. More supply would allow oil prices to fall to levels more consistent with historical patterns. Cheaper oil would help the world's industrialized economies to grow.

2) A loosening of OPEC's stranglehold on world oil markets. Any significant non-OPEC production reduces OPEC's leverage and provides a safety valve against production restrictions by one or more OPEC nations.

3) A flip in American foreign aid payments. Israel would no longer need aid from the USA and would be able to buy American military hardware for cash.

4) A revision in geopolitical and global military postures. Unlike oil from the Persian Gulf that has to transit the Suez Canal or circumnavigate Africa, Israeli oil can be delivered to tankers in the Mediterranean. Consider the way Europe reacted to the potential disruption of oil production in Libya, an unstable and hostile producer in the Mediterranean; the value of a politically stable and friendly oil source in the Mediterranean would cause the West to put more pressure on the Arab world to declare peace with Israel and cease threatening a valuable energy exporter. It would also change the calculus with respect to the threat Iran and its nuclear program pose to Israel.

5) A potential recession in global terrorism. If the West uses Israel's rise as an oil exporter as an impetus to stand up to Iran, the Iranian regime may find it too costly to continue exporting terrorism via Syria to Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups around the world. Without Iranian sponsorship, jihadist movements in many places would become too weak to stand up to more moderate movements. And to the extent that Israel's competition with Saudi Arabia in the oil markets and its new geopolitical importance made life harder on Saudi and other Gulf oil sheikhs and emirs, they would have less disposable income to spend on al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Not surprisingly, Hezbollah wants to throw a monkey wrench into Israel's plans by prodding Lebanon to claim part of Israel's territorial waters for its own. But Israel has plenty of gas for its own use in undisputed waters and has the technology to defend its claims against Hezbollah attacks by missiles or suicide boats. And Hezbollah can't make any claim over Israeli oil shale.

Let's hope this brave new world opens up soon. We will all benefit.

The Golem

2011-08-07T22:36:00.000-07:00

One of the strangest legends of Jewish mystical folklore is the story of the Golem. The best-known example is the story of the Golem of Prague, made by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel to protect the Jews of Prague from Christians incited by sermons at Eastertime. Eventually, after performing its defensive duty, the Golem stopped obeying Rabbi Judah Loew's orders and the Rabbi was forced to destroy it.

From the Hebrew word for "formless mass," golem refers to the product of a mystical procedure that turns a shapeless lump of clay or mud into a living being, capable of performing service for its maker. The procedure relies on the power of words to create and destroy: the maker imbues the golem with life by speaking or writing words related to the names of God into the formless mass, and it takes shape and gains the power of movement -- but not of speech. When its usefulness is at an end (or when it develops a dangerous will of its own), the golem's maker can destroy it by repeating the words in the reverse order or erasing their written form.

In 2006, columnist Froma Harrop noted that Barack Obama described himself in his second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views... my treatment of the issues is often partial and incomplete."

Today, in August 2011, Froma Harrop has made some interesting headlines by calling TEA Party movement members "terrorists" -- this while heading a project called Restoring Civility for the National Conference of Editorial Writers. But what's been overlooked in the kerfuffle over her name-calling is the topic of the column in which the name-calling appeared: Democrats Also Need a Presidential Primary in 2012. It concludes:

But Democrats would do themselves a huge favor if they had a living, breathing leader as their presidential candidate in 2012. Won't someone step up?

And she's hardly the only Progressive lamenting the failure of Obama to fulfill their ambitions. On Slate, Jacob Weisberg paints a lurid image of Obama as passive and ineffectual:

It has been astonishing to watch Obama's sheer unwillingness to give up on his opponents after their refusal to work with him on the stimulus package, health care reform, or the extension of the Bush tax cuts last fall. A Congress dominated by mindless cannibals is now feasting on a supine president. But surely even he now realizes there's no middle ground with antagonists whose only interest is in seeing him humiliated.

And in the New York Times, Drew Westen, professor of psychology at Emory University, writes that Obama seems passionless and even rudderless:

A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election. Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.

It seems clear that Obama was flattering himself when he described himself as a blank screen. He is a golem: a shapeless mass of unformed political opinions and feel-good slogans who animated himself into national political life with the power of words. He began with his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then followed with The Audacity of Hope (mirroring the way he used Dreams From My Father to become a statewide politician in Illinois), and finally with his campaign speeches in 2007-2008. And along the way, his formlessness allowed both Progressives and more moderate voters to believe that he was assuming the form of their faithful servant, a being that would do the heavy lifting of fixing a broken nation and creating a cross-party coalition behind his preferred solutions.

But having spoken himself into being, President Obama had no idea what he existed for. He assumed that slogans, pronouncements and speeches would be as effective in creating public policy from his shapeless mass of ideas as it was in turning him into a President-like figure. Amazingly, in thirty months in office, he hasn't learned that incantations are not sufficient to the task of negotiating policy decisions with Congress. Even very recently, his press secretary Jay Carney expressed exasperation on Obama's behalf at press suggestions that the President might be expected in the course of his job to write down comprehensive proposals to implement his policy positions.

The final evidence that Obama is no blank screen but an animated being is that the Progressives now realize that they can't change him merely by changing a channel or projecting a different image onto him. In fact, they can't control him at all -- and the fact that they are so outraged to realize that fact indicates that they indeed saw themselves, not him, as the makers of the Golem. They believed that they called him into being and thus should be able to uncreate him, but they are learning that they were merely swept along in his process of self-creation and that they are now powerless to stop him from lumbering aimlessly, crushing their Progressive ideals.

The story of the Golem was made into a so-so Roddy McDowall movie in 1967. But that was a masterpiece compared to the Obama version.

Mr. Multi-Tasker (sort of)

2011-08-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, the "hard pivot to jobs" is back, for the umpteenth time. The RNC notes that this is the 15th time that the Administration has announced its focus is shifting to job creation. Ben Smith at Politico (hat tip: The Campaign Spot) takes issue with the specific count, but has to admit that the observation is valid:

February 2009: In a speech to Congress, Obama says his economic plan will be focused on jobs.

November 2009, during the lull in health care debate: “This is my administration's overriding focus.”

January 2010: “What they can expect from this administration, and I know what they can expect from you, is that we are going to have a sustained and relentless focus over the next several months on accelerating the pace of job creation, because that's priority number one.”

April 2010: Post health-care, Obama goes on a bunch of “Main Street” tour stops to talk about jobs in April and May.

June 2010: The beginning of recovery summer.

December 2010: “And I think we are past the crisis point in the economy, but we now have to pivot and focus on jobs and growth.”

January 2011: Obama’s State of the Union focuses on jobs and afterward he makes a big jobs push (even though Egypt is taking up his, and the world's attention), launches “Startup America” initiative.

Obama's spokesman Jay Carney realized something really important about the pivot talk and tried to counter it:

Q: The President has repeatedly pivoted back to jobs, as he did again yesterday. Why is this time any different? Why should the Americans have any confidence this time?

MR. CARNEY: Well, let’s be clear. The President has been focusing on jobs and the economy since the day he was sworn into office, during a month that saw the loss of 800,000 -- nearly 800,000 American jobs in just one month. And that was the situation that he encountered when he took the oath. And that has been his focus since he became President.

There is no question that as President you have to deal with other problems. And in this case, the debt ceiling crisis, if you will, was a manufactured crisis. It was a self-inflicted wound. It was the linkage between something that Congress absolutely has to do -- which is extend the borrowing authority of the United States government -- to specific legislation that one-half of one body of Congress wanted passed.

So Carney's claim is that Obama doesn't need to pivot back to job creation because he's always been focused on it. Good attempt... but Carney then sabotages his own spin by admitting that because Obama had to "deal with other problems," he couldn't make any headway on job creation. He reiterates it later in the briefing:

What the President is saying now, and what you will be hearing him saying, is that you, the American citizen, have heard a lot of talk in Washington about debt ceilings and deficits; and while those are important issues -- very important -- and they have -- they are important in relation to our economy, and they are important in relation to jobs if they are addressed appropriately -- there are other things we can do directly that affect jobs and economic growth.

And that’s what he’s saying. This is not a -- I think “pivot” is not an appropriate word. It’s refocusing. It’s continuing the focus that we’ve had and allowing us to focus even more intently now that we have reached the compromise that was reached with Congress a couple of days ago.

Now, I seem to recall a moment in the 2008 Presidential campaign when John McCain suspended his campaign and called for postponing a debate so that he could go back to Washington to help deal with the burgeoning financial crisis. I also recall that Obama dismissed the call to postpone the debate derisively:

“It’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess,” Mr. Obama said. “It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.”

So, riddle me this: how is it that the President who came into office knowing he had to be able to deal with more than one thing at once never seemed to be able to keep dealing with the unemployment crisis whenever some other problem arose? Where's that multi-tasking skill been for the last 30 months, Mr. President?

Maybe Obama's multi-tasking capability means he can deal with only one thing at a time in his day job as President while carrying a full fundraising schedule.

A strange juxtaposition

2011-07-08T17:05:00.000-07:00

Isn't this a strange juxtaposition of news stories? It was on the World News page of the Daily Telegraph (UK) online edition.

So on the one hand, the UN is very aggrieved that the US state of Texas would proceed with the execution of a Mexican national without taking into account that he did not have consular assistance at trial. The US Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay because US law does not recognize the lack of consular assistance as the basis for a Federal appeal.

Not that this was anything other than a stalling tactic. The condemned killer, Humberto Leal, tortured and murdered a 16-year-old girl: the physical evidence conclusively disproved his version of the events.

At the same time that the UN is deploring the execution of a particularly vicious rapist-murderer, its "peacekeeping" mission in Sudan stood idly by as Sudanese government forces attacked and murdered civilians:

Hundreds of people gathered outside a UN base for safety after Sudan's armed forces moved to crush a fresh rebellion by opposition militia in the town of Kadugli in the country's southeast.

They were refused entry to the fortified compound and instead camped outside its barbed wire perimeter with little shelter, food or water.

Reverend Barnaba Ibrahim said soldiers arrived in the middle of the night and dragged men accused of being rebel sympathisers away to be killed.

The allegations, supported by other reports from the area, again call into question the ability of the £650 million-a-year UN mission in Sudan to fulfil its mandate to protect civilians.

"I was just hiding, lying down pretending to be asleep, and they took the man next to me and beat him to death with sticks, five metres from the walls of the UN base," Rev Ibrahim said in Juba, capital of South Sudan, where he has fled for safety.

"Two other men were taken the same night. They were screaming and protesting.

The next day, we found their bodies nearby and they had been shot." Rev Barnaba, an Anglican pastor from Kadugli, said that "there is no way the peacekeepers did not know what was happening".

"There are armed guards all around that place, even at night," he said, still wearing the white shirt and grey slacks he fled in, a month ago.

"The peacekeepers are supposed to be there to protect us. They did nothing. This happened more than the one time I witnessed." Anderson Yacoub, who works with the Anglican diocese of Kadugli, said colleagues sleeping outside the same UN base, at Shaahir on the city's outskirts, had reported similar stories.

"There were other people who fled into the mountains, even though that seemed more dangerous, and they survived," he said, also in Juba.

"Those others who went seeking refuge at the UN, they were the ones who died." The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) has been plagued by allegations that it has repeatedly failed to carry out its central mandate to protect civilians, by force if necessary.

The UN protests that an American state executes a brutal killer, while the force it deploys with the mandate to stop brutal killers from brutally killing civilians simply stands by as those brutal killer brutally kill civilians. It seems to me that the UN as an organization is culpable in the deaths of the Sudanese who believed its promises of safety and protection, especially since those people flocked to the UN compound precisely because of those promises and were thus nicely arranged in a compact group for the murderers to slaughter.

And note that the UN donor countries pay $1 billion a year to have UN peacekeepers sit on their thumbs and watch civilians be murdered. I would rather have my taxes go to the costs of executing more Humberto Leals rather than to subsidizing the incompetence and cowardice of so-called "peacekeepers" whose presence actually facilitates the killing they were sent to prevent.

Clean water for the Third World: the problem isn't money

2011-07-08T16:02:00.001-07:00

From Fast Company, a report on SODIS: solar disinfection of water.

Today, at least 5 million people in about 30 countries disinfect their drinking water daily with SODIS, and 750,000 more join the ranks each year. SODIS works by exposing contaminated water to the sun's UV rays, destroying the genetic material and cellular structure of viruses, bacteria, and protozoa. PET plastic bottles work best, as they're both durable and allow much of the UV radiation to pass through them. Bottled water is left outside for at least six hours (or 48 hours if it's cloudy), and then stored for future use. Since both polluted water and plastic bottles are abundant in many developing countries, SODIS is catching on and cutting the incidence of diarrhea by more than 85% in some places.

The problem of finding safe water to drink affects a lot more than 5,000,000 people: the article puts the number at 1,200,000,000. Annually, 1.8 million children die of diarrhea related to contaminated water.

So why isn't a cheap, practical and effective solution not an instant success? Heierli rephrased the question in a more telling way in his report: "Why is it so hard to get safe water to the poor--and so profitable to sell it to the rich?"

Basically, it's a marketing problem. Even in places where SODIS training is readily available, only about half of the households trained in the technique actually adopt it. SODIS training cannot be stopped after the first year of promotion. "People need reminders to form solid habits," says Meierhofer. They also need to be convinced of its value: Families capable of spending the modest time and money for SODIS often prioritize other things (such as buying soft drinks).

Let that sink in for a minute. Families capable of making a tiny investment in time and money to save their children from a horrific slow death "often prioritize other things".

Are children so disposable in those societies that a few thousand more or fewer dying is of no consequence? Do parents in those societies place such little value on their children?

Is this the reason that the Third World remains poor and sick -- that it is unwilling to make a sufficient effort to build an infrastructure for its future if that takes away from current consumption?

US Intelligence Agencies warn of implanted bombs inside terrorists

2011-07-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

I guess they finally got around to watching The Dark Knight:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government has warned domestic and international airlines that some terrorists are considering surgically implanting explosives into humans to carry out attacks, The Associated Press has learned.

There is no intelligence pointing to a specific plot, but the U.S. shared its concerns last week with executives at domestic and international carriers.

People traveling to the U.S. from overseas may experience additional screening at airports because of the threat, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

My prediction: a pregnant woman delivers by C-section and has the empty space in her abdomen replaced with a chemical pack. After some weeks of healing, she's given the catalyst in liquid form disguised as injectable insulin and sent onto a plane.

Midflight, she goes into the lavatory to "take her insulin," injects it into her belly into the chemical pack, and....

(H/T Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Thanks, Ace, for linking this in the Headlines at Ace Of Spades HQ. And welcome, M&Ms!

Obama's recovery, part 2: not so good for native-born OR immigrant workers

2011-03-10T15:06:00.000-08:00

The Pew Hispanic Center has studied the impact of the recession and recovery on foreign-born workers in the USA (presumably including legal immigranthttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifs, temporary resident workers and illegal immigrants). In the recovery period, foreign-born workers gained jobs even as native-born workers lost them:

In the year following the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009, foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Labor data by the Pew Hispanic Center.

As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrant workers fell 0.6 percentage points during this period (from 9.3% to 8.7%) while for native-born workers it rose 0.5 percentage points (from 9.2% to 9.7%).

But this isn't unalloyed good news for anybody. It turns out that while foreign-born workers found more jobs, they haven't found enough to make up for their losses in the recession. Moreover, the jobs they have found pay less:

But the jobs recovery for immigrants is far from complete. The 656,000 jobs gained by immigrants in the first year of the recovery are not nearly sufficient to make up for the 1.1 million jobs they lost from the second quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009. Over the two-year period from 2008 to 2010, second quarter to second quarter, foreign-born workers have lost 400,000 jobs and native-born workers have lost 5.7 million jobs. The unemployment rate for http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifimmigrants is still more than double the rate prior to the recession when it stood at 4.0% in the second quarter of 2007.

Also, even as immigrants managed to gain jobs in the recovery, they experienced a sharp decline in earnings. From 2009 to 2010, the median weekly earnings of foreign-born workers decreased 4.5%, compared with a loss of less than one percent for native-born workers. Latino immigrants experienced the largest drop in wages of all.

The Obama Administration really does look like it's going to leave individual Americans - and resident non-citizens - poorer than it found them.

Hat tip: Mark Krikorian, The Corner, NRO.

Obama's recovery: working less, for lower pay

2011-03-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

It's swell how the Obama Administration's crack economic team is remaking work in America:

• Lower-wage industries -- things like retail and food preparation -- accounted for 23 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, but 49 percent of the jobs gained over the last year, a recent study (pdf) by the National Employment Law Program found. Higher-wage industries, by contrast, accounted for 40 percent of the jobs lost, but just 14 percent of the jobs gained. In other words, low paying jobs are increasing as a percentage of total jobs, while high-paying jobs are on the decline.

• Meanwhile, the percentage of those working who have part-time jobs and want full-time ones surged in mid-February to 19.6 percent -- almost as high as it was a year ago before the recovery began, according to Gallup numbers. That suggests, of course, that a large number of the new jobs created over the last year are part-time.

• And a recent Wall Street Journal analysis found that even though productivity rose 5.2 percent from mid 2009 to the end of 2010, wages increased by just 0.3 percent. That means only 6 percent of productivity gains were shared with workers. In past recoveries, that figure has averaged 58 percent. This time around, far more of the gains went to shareholders, in the form of profits, which are at record levels.

What this means is that even as the headline unemployment figure declines, the total wage base (on which income taxes are assessed and from which consumers spend the money that generates sales taxes) will not recover to its pre-recession levels. And, in turn, that means that Federal and State tax revenues will not recover along with nominal employment numbers.

To grow our way out of our fiscal problems, we'd need high-paying, full-time jobs. Since the Obama Recovery isn't producing those, we're left with the only alternative: cut government spending drastically. (Historical experience teaches that raising taxes reduces tax revenue in the long run.)

Democracy is a goal, not a starting point

2011-01-28T19:27:00.000-08:00

Praveen Swami in the UK Telegraph expresses pessimism that the anti-authoritarian protest movements in the Middle East will result in a blossoming of democracy in the region:

I’d like to believe that the rising tide of popular protest will sweep aside the region’s authoritarian kleptocracies, bring about democratisation and address the problems of its peoples.

The first of these possibilities might just be realised. The second is less likely. The third, I fear, is fantasy.

Referring to the self-immolation of a Tunisian man that set off the revolt in that country, Swami points out that the demise of authoritarian regimes is a necessary but wholly insufficient condition to create freedom and democracy:

Even if the fire Mr Bouaziz lit razes authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, though, it is unlikely to make a huge amount of difference. That’s because the real problem isn’t authoritarian or Islamism or any other -ism, which are but symptoms of a far deeper malaise: the lack of a functional political culture.

Political life in the Middle East has been narcotised by two powerful drugs: oil money and western aid. The powerful patronage networks this cash has engendered, have undermined the integrity of the polity itself. Regimes have been able to defer badly needed reforms. More important, civil society itself has had little incentive to negotiate the condition we call modernity, which demands fundamental changes of attitudes on everything from gender to knowledge.

The one thing Tunisia does have in common with other countries in the Middle East and North Africa is what demographers call a “youth bulge”. Tunisians aged between 15 and 24 made up 21 percent of the population in 2005. Elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa, the figures are even higher.

Each year, millions of young people seeking to build a life meet with frustration –the root of the rage we’re seeing on the streets. Youth unemployment ranges, across the region, at between 20 and 40 percent.

If the end of authoritarianism is necessary but insufficient, democratization in and of itself is not enough to make up the insufficiency:

The received wisdom is democracy will somehow solve the problem. This sounds good, but isn’t true. Democracy is a process, not an outcome in itself. Processes don’t guarantee outcomes.

Like people everywhere, residents of the Middle East seek peace and prosperity. But dealing with the problems confronting the region calls for cultural, political and economic transformation of an order that will dwarf Eastern Europe’s transition to a market economy. There there’s nothing to show the protest movements in the Middle East have a leadership with the vision to bring them about.

The democratic successors of today’s authoritarian regimes will find themselves hard-pressed to deliver change, for much the same reasons their predecessors did: the changes needed are too large, and the solutions too painful.

It's certainly true that processes don't guarantee outcomes. But where Swami says "democracy is a process, not an outcome in itself," I would characterize it a little differently:

The building of democracy is a process that leads ideally to the outcome of a stable and robust democracy. The process uses democracy as a tool, but it is not the most important tool nor the first tool that should be brought to bear.

Autocracies that allow the development of a middle class, a functioning economy with adequate employment opportunities, and a culture that values individual freedom can transition successfully to democracy: Taiwan, South Korea and Chile are examples. Most autocracies are prone to corruption, nepotism and suppression of individual freedom, and when they fall, they do not transition to stable democracies: they tend to fall to anarchy or to a replacement autocrat.

So I fully agree that stable democracies will not flourish in former autocracies unless and until they undergo cultural and economic transformations to match their political transformations.

President Prissy

2011-01-28T11:49:00.000-08:00

We have finally learned who Barack Obama is.

During the campaign of 2007-2008, he assured us that he was the competent chief executive with a solid plan to rein in government spending even as he revived economic growth, grew employment and initiated a raft of new policies to stop the rise of the oceans and make cars run on sunshine. His ascension to the Presidency, he claimed, would in and of itself raise America's standing in world opinion so much that our enemies would become our friends and our allies would rush to put their blood and treasure into every one of our foreign policy endeavors.

And when the financial crisis of 2008 broke, and the American people asked, "Can you fix this," Barack Obama stepped up and said, "I know everything about fixing the economy."

Now, after two full years of his Presidency, the American people cry, "Our burden of debt has become far heavier, our economic prospects are as dim as ever, more people are out of work than when you took office, our enemies are still determined to kill us -- can you fix this?"

And in his second State of the Union address, he told us clearly: "I don't know nothin' about running no country!"

President Prissy.

Frankly, a coat hanger would have been a major step forward in medical care

2011-01-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

The Grand Jury's report begins thusly:

This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.

In 1993, the State of Pennsylvania apparently decided that abortion clinics didn't need supervision or inspection. And one such clinic -- the Women's Medical Society -- found that being exempt from outside scrutiny was a license to mint money by exploiting poor women and murdering their babies.

From the Grand Jury report:

Because the real business of the “Women’s Medical Society” was not health; it was profit. There were two primary parts to the operation. By day it was a prescription mill; by night an abortion mill. A constant stream of “patients” came through during business hours and, for the proper payment, left with scripts for Oxycontin and other controlled substances, for themselves and their friends. Gosnell didn’t see these “patients”; he didn’t even show up at the office during the day. He just left behind blank, pre-signed prescription pads, and had his unskilled, unauthorized workers take care of the rest. The fake prescriptions brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. But this drug-selling operation is the subject of separate investigation by federal authorities. Our focus was on the other side of the business.

Murder in plain sight

With abortion, as with prescriptions, Gosnell’s approach was simple: keep volume high, expenses low – and break the law. That was his competitive edge. Pennsylvania, like other states, permits legal abortion within a regulatory framework. Physicians must, for example, provide counseling about the nature of the procedure. Minors must have parental or judicial consent. All women must wait 24 hours after first visiting the facility, in order to fully consider their decision. But Gosnell’s compliance with such requirements was casual at best. At the Women’s Medical Society, the only question that really mattered was whether you had the cash. Too young? No problem. Didn’t want to wait? Gosnell provided same-day service.

The real key to the business model, though, was this: Gosnell catered to the women who couldn’t get abortions elsewhere – because they were too pregnant. Most doctors won’t perform late second-trimester abortions, from approximately the 20th week of pregnancy, because of the risks involved. And late-term abortions after the 24th week of pregnancy are flatly illegal. But for Dr. Gosnell, they were an opportunity. The bigger the baby, the more he charged.

There was one small problem. The law requires a measurement of gestational age, usually done by an ultrasound. The ultrasound film would leave documentary proof that the abortion was illegal. Gosnell’s solution was simply to fudge the measurement process. Instead of hiring proper ultrasound technicians, he “trained” the staff himself, showing them how to aim the ultrasound probe at an angle to make the fetus look smaller. If one of his workers nonetheless recorded an ultrasound measurement that was too big, it would just be redone. Invariably these second ultrasounds would come in lower. In fact, almost every time a second ultrasound was taken, the gestational age would be recorded as precisely 24.5 weeks – slightly past the statutory cutoff. Apparently Gosnell thought he would get away with abortions that were just a little illegal. In reality, of course, most of these pregnancies were considerably more advanced.

But the illegal abortion business also posed an additional dilemma. Babies that big are hard to get out. Gosnell’s approach, whenever possible, was to force full labor and delivery of premature infants on ill-informed women. The women would check in during the day, make payment, and take labor-inducing drugs. The doctor wouldn’t appear until evening, often 8:00, 9:00, or 10:00 p.m., and only then deal with any of the women who were ready to deliver. Many of them gave birth before he even got there. By maximizing the pain and danger for his patients, he minimized the work, and cost, for himself and his staff. The policy, in effect, was labor without labor.

There remained, however, a final difficulty. When you perform late-term “abortions” by inducing labor, you get babies. Live, breathing, squirming babies. By 24 weeks, most babies born prematurely will survive if they receive appropriate medical care. But that was not what the Women’s Medical Society was about. Gosnell had a simple solution for the unwanted babies he delivered: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it “ensuring fetal demise.” The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that “snipping.”

Over the years, there were hundreds of “snippings.” Sometimes, if Gosnell was unavailable, the “snipping” was done by one of his fake doctors, or even by one of the administrative staff. But all the employees of the Women’s Medical Society knew. Everyone there acted as if it wasn’t murder at all.

I am sure that people who defend the practice of partial-birth abortion will point out that Gosnell didn't actually engage in that practice: he instead favored complete-birth infanticide.

The State agencies charged with protecting Pennsylvanians against his horror, the Department of Health and the Department of State, seemed singularly uninterested in doing their duty -- but are now scrambling to find legal counsel:

The first line of defense was the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The department’s job is to audit hospitals and outpatient medical facilities, like Gosnell’s, to make sure that they follow the rules and provide safe care. The department had contact with the Women’s Medical Society dating back to 1979, when it first issued approval to open an abortion clinic. It did not conduct another site review until 1989, ten years later. Numerous violations were already apparent, but Gosnell got a pass when he promised to fix them. Site reviews in 1992 and 1993 also noted various violations, but again failed to ensure they were corrected.

But at least the department had been doing something up to that point, however ineffectual. After 1993, even that pro forma effort came to an end. Not because of administrative ennui, although there had been plenty. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health abruptly decided, for political reasons, to stop inspecting abortion clinics at all. The politics in question were not anti-abortion, but pro. With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be “putting a barrier up to women” seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.

The only exception to this live-and-let-die policy was supposed to be for complaints dumped directly on the department’s doorstep. Those, at least, would be investigated. Except that there were complaints about Gosnell, repeatedly. Several different attorneys, representing women injured by Gosnell, contacted the department. A doctor from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia hand-delivered a complaint, advising the department that numerous patients he had referred for abortions came back from Gosnell with the same venereal disease. The medical examiner of Delaware County informed the department that Gosnell had performed an illegal abortion on a 14-year-old girl carrying a 30-week-old baby. And the department received official notice that a woman named Karnamaya Mongar had died at Gosnell’s hands.

Yet not one of these alarm bells – not even Mrs. Mongar’s death – prompted the department to look at Gosnell or the Women’s Medical Society. Only after the raid occurred, and the story hit the press, did the department choose to act. Suddenly there were no administrative, legal, or policy barriers; within weeks an order was issued to close the clinic. And as this grand jury investigation widened, department officials “lawyered up,” hiring a high-priced law firm to represent them at taxpayer expense. Had they spent as much effort on inspection as they did on attorneys, none of this would have happened to begin with.

But even this total abdication by the Department of Health might not have been fatal. Another agency with authority in the health field, the Pennsylvania Department of State, could have stopped Gosnell single-handedly. While the Department of Health regulates facilities, the Department of State, through its Board of Medicine, licenses and oversees individual physicians. Like their colleagues at Health, however, Department of State officials were repeatedly confronted with evidence about Gosnell, and repeatedly chose to do nothing.

Indeed, in many ways State had more damning information than anyone else. Almost a decade ago, a former employee of Gosnell presented the Board of Medicine with a complaint that laid out the whole scope of his operation: the unclean, unsterile conditions; the unlicensed workers; the unsupervised sedation; the underage abortion patients; even the over-prescribing of pain pills with high resale value on the street. The department assigned an investigator, whose investigation consisted primarily of an offsite interview with Gosnell. The investigator never inspected the facility, questioned other employees, or reviewed any records. Department attorneys chose to accept this incomplete investigation, and dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed.

Shortly thereafter the department received an even more disturbing report – about a woman, years before Karnamaya Mongar, who died of sepsis after Gosnell perforated her uterus. The woman was 22 years old. A civil suit against Gosnell was settled for almost a million dollars, and the insurance company forwarded the information to the department. That report should have been all the confirmation needed for the complaint from the former employee that was already in the department’s possession. Instead, the department attorneys dismissed this complaint too. They concluded that death was just an “inherent” risk, not something that should jeopardize a doctor’s medical license.

Apparently the bureaucrats in Health and in State may have felt that after the departure of a pro-life Democrat Governor, a pro-choice Republican Governor would be sympathetic to their unilateral easing of restrictions on abortion clinics. There is a special circle of Hell reserved for those bureaucrats, and they seem to know it.

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

As luck would have it, luck saved NYC's subway commuters

2010-12-14T16:03:00.000-08:00

The New York City subway bombing plot was just five days away from being consummated when it was discovered.

The suicide attack, planned to mark last year’s anniversary of the September 11 attacks was to be the biggest plot in the US since 2001.

Previous reports had suggested that the men were under surveillance by the FBI for some time before their planned attacks but sources now say the plot came close to success.

The plot was only foiled when one of the men emailed an al-Qaeda fixer in Pakistan to ask for advice on mixing chemicals, security sources on both sides of the Atlantic have told The Daily Telegraph.

Three men were allegedly planning to strap bombs to themselves and attack the underground with coordinated explosions planned to emulate those on London five years ago.

The lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of New York subway riders were saved by the faulty memory of a would-be jihadist and his failure to take notes.

The New York investigation began on September 6 2009 when an Afghan-born man brought up in Queen’s, New York also began emailing [the 'fixer'] Sohaib.

Najibullah Zazi was desperate to be reminded of his bomb-making instructions from a visit to Pakistan a year earlier.

He had already bought hydrogen peroxide and other bomb-making chemicals but wanted to know what proportions to use.

Luck is a good ally but a highly capricious one. Better to de-fang the Pakistani jihadi networks -- which may entail forcing their supporters in Pakistan's government and military to cut them off. As messy and difficult as that may be, it is likely a necessary precondition for stopping plots of this type at the source.

Racism, Obama and the Progressive Left

2010-12-13T13:56:00.000-08:00

In The Best of the Web blog at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto considers the proposition that criticism of Barack Obama from the Left could be racist (prompeted by a joking comment by Rush Limbaugh):

As NewsBusters.org reports, Ed Schultz of MSNBC took Limbaugh's remark personally: "[Limbaugh] is now accusing me of being a racist," the talking horse said on MSNBC's "The Mr. Ed Show."

This leads NB's Noel Sheppard to observe: "Any person with even a room temperature intelligence quotient would know that Limbaugh was claiming racism because any time anyone on the right has criticized Barack Obama since the moment he threw his hat into the presidential candidacy ring in February 2007, said person has been accused of racism by the Left." Sheppard thinks Schultz didn't get the joke, which seems unlikely. After all, Limbaugh explained the joke.

But maybe it's not entirely a joke. That thought is prompted by a pair of opinion pieces that appeared in liberal newspapers over the weekend, both by black writers: columnist Colbert King in the Washington Post on Saturday and novelist Ishmael Reed in the New York Times on Sunday. Neither man goes quite so far as to call Obama's progressive critics racist, but both travel a significant distance in that direction.

Taranto presents the kernels of the arguments by King and Reed, and concludes:

As we have argued, the leftist charge that conservative opposition to Obama is racist is in part a cynical appeal to fear, aimed at persuading blacks to continue voting Democratic. But this could backfire. If Reed and King are right, there is no reason to assume that the progressives' self-definition is widely accepted among blacks. Thus the progs' harsh attacks on Obama are likely to look as racist as the conservatives' attacks do.

In our view, progressives are largely innocent of the racism charge. As we argued Friday, they have turned against Obama because they are infantile, not because he is black. To put it more gently, their quarrel with Obama is over policy, not race--and that much they have in common with conservatives. Which of course was Limbaugh's point.

I would argue that Progressives (and others) are guilty of racism toward Obama from a different perspective. Progressives are prone to believe in the myth of the "Noble Savage" and to idealize the "Magic Negro."

Taranto summarizes Reed:

His central argument is that those who "criticize President Obama for keeping his cool"--who urge him "to 'man up' " and start "slapping people left and right"--do not understand the cultural constraints under which black men operate in America: "If President Obama behaved that way, he'd be dismissed as an angry black militant with a deep hatred of white people."

But at the same time, Progressives have their own set of cultural constraints that they impose on Black Americans. Progressives are more likely to see Barack Obama, because of his skin color, his direct African parentage and his partial upbringing in exotic Indonesia, as a being outside of the dominant American ethnocentric and nationalist culture.

Surely as a Black man born of an African Muslim father, Obama must (in their view, and the view of those less Left-leaning but equally seeking a healer for America's racial wounds) possess the power to resist the pernicious influences of American culture and history and to be able to govern differently. To them, Obama represents both the Noble Savage, untainted by inbred Americanness, and the Magic Negro, untainted by the victimhood and resentments of the African-American experience.

When Obama cuts a deal to preserve tax cuts for the "wealthiest" Americans as a response to mere political considerations, he violates the trust that Progressives put in him to be truly different from other American Presidents. Obama himself seems not to understand this: not only has he lashed out at disappointed and angry Progressives with anger and disappointment of his own, but he's fed the perception of being the "same old, same old" by relying so heavily on Bill Clinton, to the point of leaving Clinton to handle a Presidential press conference without the presence of the present President.

During the Clinton Presidency, Progressives seem to have forgiven Clinton a multitude of sins against Progressivism. They didn't necessarily expect any more from a Southern good ol' boy. But seeing Barack Obama commit some of those same offenses has sparked an outpouring of rage, and I contend it's not unfair to say that he's being held to a different standard by the Left because of his race.

Credence Calamity Survival

2010-12-09T14:50:00.001-08:00

This is the video message that President Obama sent to the Democratic Caucus meeting:

I keep the tax rates from risin'.
I see the Democrats get mad.
I see the Progressives fightin'.
I see the optics going bad.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

I hear tax deadlines a-nearin',
'Cause New year's Day is coming soon.
I fear jobs a-dissapearin'.
My Presidency gone to ruin.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

For Twenty-Twelve let's stick together,
I know this vote will be a bitch.
Help me ride out this nasty weather:
Next term, I'll help you screw the rich.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

Those Money-Grubbing Israelis vs. A Self-Hating Jew

2010-12-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

Writing on The Atlantic's website, Jeffrey Goldberg says, "Don't Give to the Jewish National Fund."

Israel's per capita GDP is nearly $30,000. Israel is a rich country. The fact that it doesn't possess adequate firefighting equipment is its own fault. The fact that the leadership of its fire service is incompetent is its own fault. At some point, the good-hearted Diaspora Jews who still think of Israel as a charity case are going to have to tell their cousins to learn to fully-fund basic services like firefighting if they want to be thought of as citizens of an advanced country.

There are a great many good causes in Israel that deserve help, and a great many causes here in America that deserve our help. It seems to me, however, that Israel's national fire service should be funded by Israel's government, not by the people of Boca Raton, Potomac and the Upper West Side.

I've e-mailed Mr. Goldberg to thank him for his insight.

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Thank you for your item, “Don’t Give to the Jewish National Fund. ” Your argument is so persuasive that I only wish you’d made it six years ago.

You see, if Israel is a rich country, the USA is still much, much richer. Since it was the Government that failed to maintain the levees in New Orleans and the Government that failed to evacuate the people of New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina, it’s the Government’s fault and sole responsibility for the havoc, loss of life and material destruction that occurred there. Now that I understand this, I feel like such a putz for sending donations for Hurricane Katrina relief. Is there some way, do you suppose, that I can get my money back?

Incidentally, it’s pretty outrageous that those schnorrers in Israel are asking for donations for disaster relief from their Jewish cousins overseas. The Israeli government wasted so much money sending medical teams and a field hospital to Haiti after the earthquake – clearly they should have used that money for firefighting equipment and personnel, and let the Haitians fend for themselves.

Best regards,

[stuiec]

The Waldorf Salad Effect

2010-09-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

Remember the 'Waldorf Salad' episode [edited: not the last episode as I originally posted] of Fawlty Towers? A hard-ass American and his English wife arrive at the hotel late, and Basil is too cheap to bribe his chef to stay and cook their dinner. It's not a hard order: screwdrivers to drink, steaks, and a Waldorf salad. Needless to say, Basil screws everything up and makes it worse by trying to make it look like someone else's fault, and the American tells his wife to get her bags -- they're leaving.

As the American gives Basil what for in the lobby, all the resident guests of the hotel line up to watch. The American tells Basil that his is the worst excuse for a hotel that he's ever had the misfortune to set foot in, and Basil asks his resident guests if they're satisfied. None say a word, and Basil starts to offer the American a refund with a supercilious sneer -- and then a voice pipes up, "I'm not satisfied."

And one by one each of the guests pours out a litany of complaints about the hotel's lousy service and shabby accommodations. The American's assessment of Fawlty Towers and its proprietor are fully vindicated.

This is what we are seeing in the American political landscape today. It's the end of what rdbrewer at Ace of Spades HQ called the Abilene Paradox: because a few individuals were pushed past their limit and spoke up about how crappy the ruling regime is, the people at large have now discovered that everyone else around them is as unhappy and fed up as they are.

The polls bear this out:

Tilted toward the GOP from the start of the year, the political environment has grown even more favorable for Republicans and rockier for President Barack Obama and his Democrats over the long primary season that just ended with a bang.

With November's matchups set and the general election campaign beginning in earnest Wednesday, an Associated Press-GfK poll found that more Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction than did before the nomination contests got under way in February. Also, more now disapprove of the job Obama is doing. And more now want to see Republicans in control of Congress rather than the Democrats who now run the House and Senate...

"I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that they're out of office," said independent voter Robbin Payton of Newport News, Va., reflecting just how toxic the environment is for the party in power.

This is why we get such perverse pleasure out of watching the floundering and flopping of Gibbs and Pelosi and Reid and Obama: they're playing the comic role of Basil Fawlty, insisting against all objective evidence that everything is fine and that any problems that might exist are definitely someone else's fault. What made Basil such an enduring character was his obvious knowledge that everything was on the verge of total collapse and only his desperate machinations could keep his entire life from falling down around his ears -- and that's what makes today's Democrat leaders and Obama Administration officials just as funny as he was.

Dirty tricks in Egypt's election campaign

2010-09-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

Mohammed El-Baradei is best known outside Egypt as the do-little head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Inside Egypt, however, he is a critic of the Mubarak regime and a putative proponent of democracy.

Apparently the Mubarak regime, which has the next generation Mubarak in the person of Gamal preparing to take over from Papa Hosni, takes El-Baradei seriously as a threat. El-Baradei thinks so, and thinks the regime is behind a dirty trick on Facebook.

The Egyptian government has been blamed for the emergence of photographs of Mr ElBaradei's daughter Laila variously dressed in swimming costumes or sitting in places were alcohol was served, in an attempt to outrage more conservative members of Egyptian society.

The photographs, apparently taken from her Facebook profile without her knowledge, were posted elsewhere on the social networking site under the title "ElBaradei's Family Secrets".

Although the creator of the group by claimed to be a friend of Laila's who was opposed to her father's activities, Mr ElBaradei told a local newspaper that he believed the government was behind the Facebook group because he had called for "democracy and economic reform" in Egypt.

"Such a campaign is the usual and only response of the regime towards whoever demands democracy," he told the independent Dustour newspaper.

Since he returned to Egypt in February, after serving 12 years as the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr ElBaradei has emerged as the most recognisable dissident in the country which has been ruled by President Hosni Mubarak for nearly three decades. Mr Mubarak, 82, is widely believed to be preparing his son Gamal for succession.

I haven't ever been to the Red Sea coast of Sinai, but I tend to think there are plenty of Egyptian women there wearing something more revealing than a "Burkini." It remains to be seen how scandalous the Egyptian public will see these photographs as being. Moreover, the Islamicist wing of Egyptian society (including the Muslim Brotherhood) are the ones most likely to find the pictures lascivious, and yet they are themselves staunch opponents of the Mubarak regime, and so may be willing to overlook Laila's immodesty in order to use her father to bring down the dynasty.

Jonathan Alter, Closet Birther?

2010-09-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

Look at Newsweek's latest cover:

THE MAKING OF A

TERRORIST-CODDLING

WARMONGERING

WALL STREET-LOVING

SOCIALISTIC

GODLESS

MUSLIM

PRESIDENT*

* who isn't actually any of these things

BY JONATHAN ALTER

Wow, Jonathan - are you telling us that Obama isn't really the President of the United States? What do YOU know that the rest of us don't?

From Bee Lo Obama's new CD, "The Economy-Killer"

2010-09-03T13:53:00.001-07:00

At Ace of Spades HQ, Ace notes that the Democrats are losing the "millennial generation" of voters. This prompted me to consider how the White House might try to counter that trend -- and, combining that with the likely result of the mid-term elections, I envisioned this Presidential Address from the Oval Office:

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

I was only too willin to spend eight hundred billion
But that didn't seem to make a dent
You love the Tea Party but I'm more of a soiree
A Kobe-eating President

I pity the fool who gets elected by you
(Oh shit they're spoiled brats)
Well
(Gave up on the Democrats)
Ooo
I got some news for you
Yeah run and tell your Sarah and Glenn

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

Now I know that I had to borrow
From China and your grandchildren
Trying to keep ya, trying to please ya
But unemployment is still pushing ten

I pity the fool who gets elected by you
(Oh shit they're spoiled brats)
Well
(Gave up on the Democrats)
Ooo
I got some news for you
Yeah run and tell your Sarah and Glenn

Now all you little voters, why you wanna hurt me so bad?
(So bad, so bad, so bad)
I thought you were sick and tired of W and his dad
(His dad, his dad, his dad)
Uh! Whyyyy? Uh! Whyyy?!?
Uh! Whyyyy, people?!?!?
Ooo, I'm the one -- oh! -- you waited for!!!
OOOOO!

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

The Left used to think triumphalism was bad

2010-08-18T13:02:00.001-07:00

Prior to the Coalition invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Left warned of a bloodbath. Saddam's army was the third-largest in the world; it had advanced weaponry, much from France and other top armament producers; its chemical weapons would rain down on the invaders. Media reports of the military ordering up 200,000 body bags for U.S. service members deepened the atmosphere of dread.

In the actual event, Iraq's military proved extremely weak. The invasion moved swiftly and Baghdad fell in just three weeks.

But rather than exult in the swift victory and express gratitude for the light loss of American and British lives, the Left instead invoked an even greater danger ahead. America, it warned, was going to fall victim to a demonic force of its own making: Triumphalism.

American triumphalism, they said, would turn the Iraqi people against us. Shi'ite triumphalism would alienate the Sunni and cause them to engage in sectarian violence. The British in Basra were held up as a model of moderation: unlike the Americans with their imposing and fearsome helmets and dark glasses, the Tommies patrolled Basra in berets and uncovered faces.

Looking back, certainly Shi'ite triumphalism stoked Sunni fear and anger, but not as much as the Sadrite Shi'ite militia or the Islamofascist influence of Al-Qaeda or the resentment of deposed Ba'ath party members did. And the British seemed early on to be winning the hearts and minds of the people of Basra -- until the city started on a downward spiral of terrorism and murder, and a few of the British soldiers turned out to be bad apples willing to torture and kill Iraqis in their custody.

But the Left had a valid point about Triumphalism: putting up monuments to act as a constant reminder to the people you defeated of their failure is much more likely to make them hate you than love you. And even if your intention and belief is that the monument should only represent respect and honor to the victors and not malice or humiliation to the vanquished, it's unlikely the vanquished will see it that way.

So who in their right mind would defend the Park51 project as a good idea for promoting respectful dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims? Even if the developers' intentions are pure, they should be now realize that a lot of non-Muslims don't see it that way.

And there are a few Muslims who go further and ascribe malicious intent to the developers. The Dubai-based general manager of Al-Arabiya television, Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, says, "I cannot imagine that Muslims want a mosque on this particular site, because it will be turned into an arena for promoters of hatred, and a symbol of those who committed the crime." Canadian Muslim writers Raheel Raza and Tarek Fatah go further:

New York currently boasts at least 30 mosques so it's not as if there is pressing need to find space for worshippers. The fact we Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel. The proposal has been made in bad faith and in Islamic parlance, such an act is referred to as "Fitna," meaning "mischief-making" that is clearly forbidden in the Koran.

The Koran commands Muslims to, "Be considerate when you debate with the People of the Book" -- i.e., Jews and Christians. Building an exclusive place of worship for Muslims at the place where Muslims killed thousands of New Yorkers is not being considerate or sensitive, it is undoubtedly an act of "fitna."

Maybe we ought to believe these people, who understand Islamic sensibilities from the inside, when they say that they understand how Park51 could be seen as triumphalist, and may indeed be intended as an expression of triumphalism.

But the Left, which used to rail against the evils of Triumphalism, now gives it their full-throated endorsement. And they turn a blind eye to the actual Muslims warning against Park51's triumphalism. Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast writes, "It’s telling that the people Republicans are turning to for their anti-mosque street cred are not 'moderate, peace-loving' Muslims, since even Muslim Republicans are disgusted by their party’s actions. The GOP’s new heroes are former Muslims like Nonie Darwish and Ayaan Hirsi Ali." Nor does he reserve his venom exclusively for Republicans: "We’re supposed to believe, we savvy, pragmatic liberals, that the Democrats fleeing the anti-Muslim stampede are mere opportunists, not actual bigots."

This isn't narrow-mindedness, it's razor-thin-mindedness, and it ignores the fact that America is in fact a far more tolerant and accepting country for Muslims than even many Muslim countries are. In the United States, Sunni or Shi'ite or Sufi or Ahmadi Muslims need not fear being murdered in their homes or mosques by the religious majority or oppressed by their government; the same cannot be said in Pakistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia.

Jonah Goldberg at National Review writes, "In any decent society, tolerance must work both ways. If the majority is expected to show respect for a minority, the minority must also show some tolerance for the values of the majority. I’m no strict majoritarian – one with right on his side is the majority as far as I’m concerned. But this isn’t a clear-cut issue of right and wrong. It’s more complicated than that. It’s about deference and decency and common sense. And one of the things common sense should tell us is that it is not only unfair but terribly ill-advised to portray 7 out of 10 Americans as bigots when they are anything but."

Common sense also tells us that anyone sincerely seeking dialogue between faiths and communities should avoid even the appearance of triumphalism -- and that anyone who persists in giving that appearance in the face of protests from a majority of his neighbors isn't at all sincere about peace and harmony.

"A stubborn man without conviction"

2010-08-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web points out that President Obama’s nearly-instantaneous pivot on the issue of the “Ground Zero mosque” (the Park51 Islamic cultural center) shows that “Barack Obama is a stubborn man without conviction.” While this latest episode is a very stark and visible example, the insight it offers into Obama’s character and political modus operandi is hardly new.

Obama’s long had the habit of saying something to pander to an audience and then “explaining” to a different audience how he didn’t really say what he said. The only thing that’s changed is that the mainstream media is unwilling to cover for Obama when he contradicts himself.

One of the best examples is his 2008 speech to AIPAC.

“Let me be clear. Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper — but any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

It took very little time for that last sentence to be “clarified” by the candidate’s campaign.

“…Barack Obama did not rule out Palestinian sovereignty over parts of Jerusalem when he called for Israel’s capital to remain “undivided,” his campaign told The Jerusalem Post Thursday.

“‘Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,’ Obama declared Wednesday, to rousing applause from the 7,000-plus attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference.

“But a campaign adviser clarified Thursday that Obama believes ‘Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties” as part of “an agreement that they both can live with.’

“‘Two principles should apply to any outcome,’ which the adviser gave as: ‘Jerusalem remains Israel’s capital and it’s not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967’.”

It is pretty clear that Obama operates on the principle that voters’ memories are short and that he will therefore not be held to account for any position he takes or promise he makes that later gets “clarified” into its diametric opposite.

Will Bill Clinton drive Barack Obama to forgo re-election?

2010-08-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

This could be the event that drives Obama not to seek a second term: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton back different Colorado candidates.

Barack Obama's influence over the Democrat party is under threat after Bill Clinton backed a rival candidate to that favoured by the President in a key US Senate seat.

The former president recorded a telephone message for voters backing Andrew Romanoff, who is hoping to be the Democrat senator for Colorado, a key state in the forthcoming midterm elections.

The intervention of Mr Clinton threatens to undermine Mr Obama, who has been a prominent support of Michael Bennet, the incumbent Democrat senator who is also fighting to contest the seat.

Obama has already had to turn to Bill Clinton for political help, both in the 2008 campaign and in office. If this midterm election demonstrates that the past President and not the sitting one has the most influence in the Democratic Party, Obama may decide that living as a past President is a pretty sweet deal compared to the meat grinder he'd face in his re-election campaign... especially if Bill manages to persuade Hillary to run again.

UPDATE: Bennet wins with 60% of the primary vote, allowing the Democrat Party establishment to claim that Obama is still politically relevant.

The leak was in Obama's Presidency, not just the Gulf

2010-07-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

At the NRO Campaign Spot blog, Jim Geraghty asks who benefits from the capping of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico:

On Obama, clearly it’s better for him that the oil stop leaking than that it continue leaking, as it is for everyone else. But I think the damage has been done, and in fact the likelihood of additional political damage to the president from the slow spill response was pretty minimal. The second month of this mess was when the public began concluding Obama wasn’t moving with much urgency or improving the situation; in the third month, disapproval of how Obama handles this issue increased by only four points. That’s about 1 percentage point for every eight days. For Obama’s approval rating, I suspect the issue of the spill is now baked in the cake.

If the cap holds, it’s not likely that voters will see Obama’s response as any quicker or more effective; most will continue to wonder why the federal government creaked and groaned and took so long to respond to Louisiana’s plans and requests and why skimmers sat in port for Coast Guard inspections. Obama ripped his predecessor’s response to Katrina and repeatedly promised a more effective, more efficient, more confident and active federal government. In the spill response, many Americans saw the same old, same old. Of course, the fact that the president seems to be on the golf course more frequently than Tiger doesn’t help.

I think the political damage to Barack Obama from the Gulf oil spill goes far beyond the voters' reaction to his Administration's lackluster, even lackadaisical, response.

Until the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Obama was managing to make the "I inherited it from Bush" ploy work. Around half of the electorate bought the idea that whatever the problem, since Obama inherited it from Bush, they needed to cut him more slack in solving it -- maybe it was bigger than he thought, maybe Bush had set him up somehow to make a solution more difficult.

But the Deepwater Horizon happened on Obama's watch, and as such, he owned it. His effort to blame it on the Bush-era holdovers at the Minerals Management Service fell flat. The electorate watched to see how he would handle this disaster, the first one of his Presidency that they felt was in no way Bush's fault, and he failed. One might say he failed spectacularly; though he didn't order a specific effort that crashed and burned, like Kennedy's Bay of Pigs or Carter's Desert One, he did something even worse: he demonstrated total impotence, combined with incompetence and inattentiveness.

That gave voters a reason to reflect back and reevaluate the "Bush did it" excuses of the prior year and a half. No longer could they take it as given that a competent, powerful Obama was overmatched by problems created and amplified by an ineffectual or even diabolical Bush. They were faced squarely with the possibility that Obama had been unequal to the challenge of being President from the start.

And now we see that even those polls with the strongest Democrat sampling bias are showing Obama's disapproval above his approval -- in some instances, above 50 percent -- with large numbers of those polled expressing little or no confidence in his leadership on the economy, the most important issue on which Obama drew a contrast with the "policies that got us into this mess." This isn't just dissatisfaction with a three-month-long oil spill, it's a fundamental reevaluation of his entire Presidency.

Legislator + Regulator + Disaster = Quagmire

2010-06-29T22:32:00.001-07:00

In the two months since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and sank, the ruptured wellhead has been spewing crude oil and gas at a terrifying rate. At the same time, news reports about the Obama Administration's response to the spill have more resembled water torture: they've come out in a slow dribble. But we've finally seen enough to detect a pattern:

Despite early offers of help from the Netherlands and other nations, the Jones Act prevents foreign-flagged and foreign-crewed ships from joining the containment and cleanup effort in the early days of the disaster.

The Environmental Protection Agency decrees that when skimmer ships fill with oily water and allow the oil to float to the top, they cannot discharge the cleaned water into the ocean because it doesn't meet EPA standards for discharge water purity.

The national inventory of skimming equipment, pre-positioned around the country in case of oil spills, stays largely where it is because of the regulations that call for it to be available for potential disasters rather than redirected to a single catastrophic spill.

The State of Louisiana is prohibited from building temporary sand berms between offshore barrier islands to block the oil from reaching coastal wetlands because proper environmental impact analysis of the sand dredging and alteration of coastal current hadn't been done. When the Administration relents, it does so reluctantly and only partially, and when Louisiana finally begins constructing berms, regulators shut down the sand dredging essential to supplying the construction, again due to environmental impact concerns.

The Coast Guard inspects skimming barges operating off the Louisiana coast and shuts them down for a day due to insufficient fire extinguishers and life preservers on board.

The pattern, of course, is the slavish adherence to regulatory regimes during this catastrophic spill without regard to the scale and nature of the disaster.

The question has been asked widely: why didn't President Obama issue an executive order waiving the Jones Act restrictions, as President Bush did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina? Some speculate that he's been reluctant to offend the maritime unions due to his reliance on support from organized labor.

But that doesn't explain why he has also failed to issue executive orders to waive EPA restrictions and other regulations. After all, doing so would facilitate workers getting onto containment and cleanup jobs, even if it would potentially dismay environmentalists. And even environmentalists must be at a loss to understand why the regulations that protect wetlands and coastal ecosystems in normal times should prevent defensive measures against a massive flood of oil.

Maybe it's not his obligations to special interest groups that make President Obama reluctant to waive these regulations. Maybe he just likes regulations.

President Obama had little executive experience before ascending to the Presidency. His public service was as a legislator. Legislators create laws, which become regulations. That's as far as legislators go: the implementation of laws and regulations fall to the executive.

So a politician with legislative experience but no executive experience becomes conditioned to believe that all you need to solve any problem is a law and the regulations that translate that law into specific instructions. The legislator isn't tasked with implementing that law in the real world, nor is he directly exposed to the direct results of the law and the measures of its success or failure -- there may be many years and obfuscating factors separating the passage of the law and the first election after its failure becomes evident, so the verdict of the ballot box is an inefficient tool for teaching legislators how to craft laws that work.

So here is President Obama and his coterie, trained up in the belief that laws and regulations solve problems. The idea that solving a problem might require waiving regulations never enters their minds.

And here's David Axelrod on The Daily Show, confronting Jon Stewart's question about whether the Obama Administration has demonstrated sufficient competence to be trusted with ever more regulation of Americans' lives:

JON STEWART, HOST: It's clear that this administration believes that government can have a stronger hand in regulating Wall Street, in regulating energy, in doing these things. But, has government during this time proved itself competent? And are our only two choices sort of an incompetent bureaucracy that doesn't quite regulate properly or free market anarchy? Before you can make the case that this administration and government can effectively regulate shouldn't they, you know, the MMS case makes a pretty clear point that the regulatory system is somewhat broken, and you guys had a chance to...

DAVID AXELROD, SENIOR OBAMA ADVISOR: The answer Jon is not to abandon the notion that there have to be rules and oversight. The answer is to make it, to make it work better. There's a long legacy there at MMS, and frankly at other agencies of government because the last administration wasn't really interested in regulating.

STEWART: But why then, why not then go in and really, with the urgency? You know, the fear is the government is not agile enough, is not urgent enough to deal with things like a catastrophic oil spill.

AXELROD: There is, there is no doubt that in retrospect we would have liked to move faster on the MMS situation, but understand that we were also dealing with the economic crisis, and, and, and, and, and the wars, and a whole range of issues, and we, that was, that was a defect that we're correcting and moving aggressively to correct now. But the answer isn't to walk away from it. I think we tested the proposition of what no regulation means. What you get, you get the leak, you get the mine disaster in West Virginia, and you get an economic crisis. And everybody recognizes that government has to play a role. It shouldn't be an oppressive role, but there has to be some firm oversight and some rules of people respond to. These, you know, it's pretty clear the oil industry is not going to regulate itself.

STEWART: But do you think, I guess my point is before you have the opportunity, before you can earn the ability to go in and, and, and do that, don't, don't we have to show a certain baseline level of competence.

Note that Axelrod mentions both the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the West Virginia mine disaster as "what no regulation means." But here's the thing: there were and are plenty of regulations on offshore oil drilling rigs and on coal mines. The problem was not the absence of regulation, but the Obama Administration's blind belief that merely having regulations in place ensures that those regulations will be followed properly.

So have a little sympathy for President Obama. When he refuses to waive Federal regulations in order to allow an all-out effort to contain and clean this ever-burgeoning catastrophe, it may just be because he doesn't know any better.

Too bad I can't draw.

2010-05-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

(image by buzzsawmonkey)

Being that it's Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.

However, I can repost.

It wasn't always haram to display images of Mohammed.

A Persian depiction of Mohammed preaching to his followers.

An Uzbek depiction of Mohammed on his flying steed Buraq on his Night Journey to (what has been interpreted as) Jerusalem. [Note: why would he have gone to the Temple in Jerusalem if, as modern Muslim fanatics suggest, there was no Temple in Jerusalem?]

But somehow we are now supposed to believe that Islam prohibits depictions of Mohammed on pain of death.

Screw that.

One of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons that set off the current assault on free speech.

And an image composed by one "tadpole" that pretty much illustrates the same idea of a religious figure being perverted into an excuse for murderous oppression.

But here may be the most provocative image generated for Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, by Day-By-Day cartoonist Chris Muir. Do you see a man of peace, a religious fanatic, an object of idol worship, or perhaps the death struggle of Western freedoms against medieval religio-political values?

Why the Truth Will Only Make the AGW Cult Stronger

2010-02-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

James Taranto notes in Best of the Web that the AGW "settled science" is rapidly unsettling, and that Warmerists are facing a crisis of faith:

For an amusing example, listen to this New Yorker podcast on Climategate, featuring writers Elizabeth Kolbert and Peter J. Boyer. Boyer acknowledges that the emails raise serious questions about Climate science, but Kolbert denies it. Listen, though, to Kolbert's tone of voice: She sounds extremely defensive, as if she feels personally threatened by questions about global-warmist doctrine.

And maybe she does. There are, no doubt, lots of true believers in global warming--not scientists, but people, including many journalists, who have embraced global warmism as a political and quasireligious doctrine based, they have been led to believe, on the authority of science.

Even Phil Jones acknowledges climate science is rife with uncertainty, but global warmism's popularizers refuse to brook any doubt or acknowledge that the "consensus" they have touted is a sham.

And they used to call us deniers.

Dr. Robert Cialdini wrote a very good primer called "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion." One of its chapters deals with the reason that millenial cults often survive the failure of their founders' predictions of world destruction -- and indeed why it's often the case that the failures drive the cult followers to intensify their belief in the cult.

Warmerists NEED AGW to be real in order to give their lives meaning in the larger context of being the vanguard of the planet's saviors. To them, the failure of the science doesn't mean that the science is wrong, but that it needs deeper exploration -- backed by more fervent belief -- to reach the underlying truth that proves that mankind is the controlling factor in the biosphere's condition and future. The alternative, that humankind is at the mercy of an unthinking, uncaring and implacable Nature, is too horrible for them to comprehend, because it means that at any moment, the Earth can shake humankind off its skin like a dog flinging off its fleas.

(Of course, I am speaking of the garden-variety Warmerists, not the cynical manipulators who know AGW to be a fiction but whose intent has been to use that fiction to start a worldwide cult that would demand an end to capitalist freedoms in the name of ecological survival. Those hucksters will simply move on to the next scam that promises to let them panic the masses into giving them political control.)

Moron Misses Mitt's Mug

2010-02-16T13:58:00.000-08:00

Hey, someone took a swing at Mitt Romney!

http://tinyurl.com/y97umma

Mr Romney, 62, was sitting in the economy section of an Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Los Angeles on Monday when he asked a man sitting in front of his wife, Ann, to raise his seat back.

A spokesman for the former Massachusetts governor said the passenger became enraged and tried to hit him.

Mr Romney did not retaliate and his assailant was removed from the flight by police after the pilot returned to the gate, said the spokesman.

Uncharacteristically impolite Canuck? Or characteristically psycho American moonbat? Inquiring minds want to know.

President Barack Hussein Shepherd

2010-01-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

Commenter Bill R. at Ace of Spades HQ notes that in President Obama's visit with the Congressional Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore, he said something familiar:

OBAMA: No -- no, but here's my point.

If the main question is going to be what do we do about Medicare costs, any proposal that Paul makes will be painted factually from the perspective of those who disagree with it as cutting benefits over the long term.

Paul, I don't think you disagree with that -- that -- that there is a political vulnerability to doing anything that tinkers with Medicare. And that's probably the biggest savings that are obtained through Paul's plan.

And I raise that not because we shouldn't have a serious discussion about it. I raise that because we're not going to be able to do anything about any of these entitlements if what we do is characterize whatever proposals are put out there as, "Well, you know, that's -- the other party's being irresponsible. The other party is trying to hurt our senior citizens. That the other party is doing X, Y, Z."

That's why I say if we're going to frame these debates in ways that allow us to solve them, then we can't start off by figuring out, A, who's to blame; B, how can we make the American people afraid of the other side.

Bill R. recognized that last line. It's from the movie The American President, written by Aaron Sorkin:

President Andrew Shepherd: For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character, and although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I've been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character. For the record: yes, I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU. But the more important question is why aren't you, Bob? Now, this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question: Why would a senator, his party's most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the Constitution? If you can answer that question, folks, then you're smarter than I am, because I didn't understand it until a few hours ago. America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free". I've known Bob Rumson for years, and I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character. And wave an old photo of the President's girlfriend and you scream about patriotism and you tell them, she's to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call her a whore. Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through school, represent the interests of public school teachers, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, 'cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.

I am old enough to recall the kerfuffle over President Reagan's remarks at Hickam Air Force Base in 1984:

You know, many years ago in one of the four wars in my lifetime, an admiral stood on the bridge of a carrier watching the planes take off and out into the darkness, bent on a night combat mission, and then found himself asking with no one there to answer, just himself, to hear his own voice, he said, "Where do we find such men?" A decade or so ago, after spending an evening with the first returning POW's from Vietnam, Nancy and I found ourselves -- as the evening ended, having heard the stories of horror and brutality by men who had been confined as prisoners of war longer than any other fighting men in America's history -- found ourselves asking that same question, ``Where do we find such men?'' We find them where we've always found them when we need them. We find them where we found you -- on the main streets and the farms of America.

Of course, no one at the time recalled that Reagan had used that quotation before:

In James Michener's book "The Bridges at Toko-Ri," he writes of an officer waiting through the night for the return of planes to a carrier as dawn is coming on. And he asks, "Where do we find such men?" Well, we find them where we've always found them. They are the product of the freest society man has ever known. They make a commitment to the military—make it freely, because the birthright we share as Americans is worth defending. God bless America.

Exit question: is it really authenticity if you crib your lines from Hollywood movies without attribution?

Barack Obama cares nothing for the safety of Americans

2010-01-26T23:20:00.000-08:00

A harsh blanket statement, to be sure.

But what other conclusion can one draw when the President puts a premium on closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay -- and is willing to entrust the "rehabilitation" of its current residents to YEMEN?!?

Yemen 'to host Guantanamo rehab centre'
Yemen and Washington are in talks to set up a rehabilitation centre in the Arab state for Guantanamo detainees.

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Published: 12:23AM GMT 27 Jan 2010

The move would help President Barack Obama achieve his elusive goal of closing the controversial US prison.

The issue will be raised for the first time in an international setting on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting in London on Wednesday...

A source close to the Obama administration said the Yemenis had agreed in principle to the establishment of a Reintegration and Risk Reduction Initiative, which would be internationally funded and monitored.

Aimed at steering detainees back into society, it would be modeled on previous efforts in Northern Ireland, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Let's recall that the Christmas Pantybomber (the "Fruit of Kaboom Bomber," as Rush Limbaugh dubbed him) was dispatched to the USA by Yemeni handlers that included past graduates of the Saudi version of this rehabilitation program. So of course to the Obama Administration, it only makes sense to quintuple down on this approach: after all, the guy's underwear didn't actually detonate, so it's all cool, right?

I note that this stupidity has the tacit approval of Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State:

The project has support from within the US state department and is gaining ground among White House advisers, said the source, because it would help the president dig himself out of a large hole created by his pledge to close the prison while trying to avoid releasing terror suspects back into the militant fold. Having missed his Jan 22 deadline to close the detention centre, as things stand Guantanamo is unlikely to shut this year.

God protect us from idiots such as this:

"If Guantanamo was a recruitment tool before, it will be a super-recruitment tool once Yemenis are the majority there," said Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington that has helped draft the proposal.

"Obviously we don't want a situation where former detainees could just leave or where they simply faced indefinite detention in Yemen rather than in a US facility," she added. "But programmes that include job skills, family support and carefully watched re-integration have been shown to work."

If the Obama Administration goes forward with this suicidal insanity, it should at least condition the program on Ms. Mandelson going to Yemen to work directly with the "retrainees." After all, she should have nothing to fear from them, right?

Bin Laden tried to assassinate Clinton - why didn't Bill return the favor?

2009-12-22T16:37:00.001-08:00

We know learn that in 1996, Osama bin Laden came within minutes of killing Bill Clinton.

Former President Bill Clinton came within minutes of being assassinated in the Philippines by terrorists controlled by Osama bin Laden, a new book has revealed.

The US leader was saved shortly before his car was due to drive over a bridge in Manila where a bomb had been planted.

The foiled attack came during Mr Clinton's visit to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the city in 1996.

You'd think a guy might hold a grudge for something like that.

But throughout the rest of his term, President Clinton seemed unable to muster the necessary will and military resources to take out Bin Laden.

In the fall of 2000, in Afghanistan, unmanned, unarmed spy planes called Predators flew over known al-Qaida training camps. The pictures that were transmitted live to CIA headquarters show al-Qaida terrorists firing at targets, conducting military drills and then scattering on cue through the desert.

Also, that fall, the Predator captured even more extraordinary pictures — a tall figure in flowing white robes. Many intelligence analysts believed then and now it is bin Laden.

Why does U.S. intelligence believe it was bin Laden? NBC showed the video to William Arkin, a former intelligence officer and now military analyst for NBC. “You see a tall man…. You see him surrounded by or at least protected by a group of guards.”

Bin Laden is 6 foot 5. The man in the video clearly towers over those around him and seems to be treated with great deference.

Another clue: The video was shot at Tarnak Farm, the walled compound where bin Laden is known to live. The layout of the buildings in the Predator video perfectly matches secret U.S. intelligence photos and diagrams of Tarnak Farm obtained by NBC.

“It’s dynamite. It’s putting together all of the pieces, and that doesn’t happen every day.… I guess you could say we’ve done it once, and this is it,” Arkin added.

The tape proves the Clinton administration was aggressively tracking al-Qaida a year before 9/11. But that also raises one enormous question: If the U.S. government had bin Laden and the camps in its sights in real time, why was no action taken against them?

“We were not prepared to take the military action necessary,” said retired Gen. Wayne Downing, who ran counter-terror efforts for the current Bush administration and is now an NBC analyst.

“We should have had strike forces prepared to go in and react to this intelligence, certainly cruise missiles — either air- or sea-launched — very, very accurate, could have gone in and hit those targets,” Downing added.

Gary Schroen, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, says the White House required the CIA to attempt to capture bin Laden alive, rather than kill him.

Can anyone explain why Clinton didn't think Bin Laden deserved exactly what Bin Laden had planned to do to Clinton?

Failing to take out Bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of the 1996 assassination attempt left him free to plot the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa and the 2000 USS Cole bombing. Either of those should have been a casus belli for killing Bin Laden on sight. Clinton seems to have been more interested in sexual stimulation than in national defense, or indeed even basic self-preservation.

Gotta love that L.A. Times

2009-12-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles Times published a transcript of President Obama's speech at West Point laying out his Afghanistan strategy v3.0. Here are the photos that the Times chose to illustrate the article.

Hmm... I wonder if they're trying to say something with those choices.

As opposed to, say:

Or:

But of course, there's no such thing as a liberal bias in the antique media. Whatever would give you such an idea?

Happy Eid al-Adha

2009-11-25T14:40:00.000-08:00

I wonder, now that Obama has pardoned our national Thanksgiving turkey, will he personally slaughter our national Eid al-Adha sacrifice?

Eid al-Adha: Muslims around the world choose animals for the Festival of Sacrifice

Note the caption at image #2 in the series: “Muslims around the world celebrate Eid al-Adha to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismael.” Observant readers of the Judaeo-Christian tradition may scratch their heads — surely they must mean “his son Isaac”?

No – the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) saw fit to rewrite the Old Testament to fit his propaganda purpose of making the Ishmaelites, not the Israelites, God’s chosen people. Is it any wonder that there is so little room for understanding between Islam and the Judaeo-Christian West? Anyone casting a critical eye over the text of the Koran is accused of the capital crime of insulting Islam; yet the Koran outright contradicts and rewrites the Old and New Testament. (And that’s nothing compared to Islam’s attitude toward people who are not “of the Book.”)

The Telefon Rings

2009-11-16T15:54:00.000-08:00

In his Best of the Web blog at OpinionJournal.com, James Taranto comments that the decision to try KSM and other enemy combatants in New York returns 9/11 to the forefront of America's consciousness.

In addition, the more dramatically the Obama administration departs from past antiterror policies, the more the public will be inclined to blame it should there be another terrorist attack--especially if, God forbid, terrorists use the trial as an occasion to hit New York.

“…should there be another terrorist attack…” With respect to the massacre at Ft. Hood, allow me to direct you to a movie from the Cold War era: the Charles Bronson spy actioner Telefon.

During the Cold War of the 1950s, the Soviet Union planted a number of long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents all over the United States, spies so thoroughly brainwashed that even they didn't know they were agents; they could only be activated by a special code phrase (a line from Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" followed by their real given names). Their mission was to sabotage crucial parts of the civil and military infrastructure in the event of nuclear war.
Over twenty years pass, and the Cold War gradually gives way to détente. Nikolai Dalchimsky (Donald Pleasence), a rogue KGB officer, defects to America, taking with him the Telefon Book, which contains the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all the agents. He starts activating them one by one. American counterintelligence is thrown into confusion when seemingly-ordinary citizens (even a clergyman) start blowing up what are, in some cases, long-abandoned facilities and commit suicide right afterwards.

Seems that the actions of Maj. Hasan conform to the outlines of the Telefon plot: he was essentially programmed to commit traitorous mass murder, triggered by key verses fed to him by an enemy agent. It’s pretty clear that Maj. Hasan’s massacre was a terrorist attack, as well as an act of sabotage by a traitor.

President Obama has exhausted any benefit of the doubt on this issue. The next mass-casualty attack by an extremist Muslim on American soil, whether it kills 10 or 10,000, will demonstrate that he's unable to match the Bush Administration's record of preventing another terrorist attack on the American homeland from 9/11 on.

And those in the media and in official government positions who are desperately trying to deny that the Ft. Hood massacre was a terrorist act committed to support the extremist Islamic jihad against America are only making that next attack more likely. They're making it more difficult for law enforcement and counter-terrorism agents to identify who's the next sleeper likely to get a call on the telefon.

What worries me is that I don't know which he'll choose

2009-11-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a message for Barack Obama: "It's us or Israel."

Ahmadinejad said that for a real change in relations to take place, a choice must be made.

Speaking in Istanbul at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Iranian president said that it was up to US President Barack Obmaa to illustrate his motto of "Change."

"The support of both Israel and Iran can't go hand in hand," he was quoted as saying by IRNA. "No change is made unless great choices are made."

Does anyone else think that President Obama will have as much trouble coming to a decision on this question as he's had in coming to a decision on Gen. McChrystal's troop request for Afghanistan?

The terrorist nexus

2009-11-07T13:06:00.000-08:00

Meet Anwar al-Awlaki:

Within an hour of the shootings at Ft. Hood on Nov. 5, the FBI announced that there was "no known nexus to terrorism" behind Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan's murderous rampage. Guess they never heard of al-Awlaki.

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.

Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.

As investigators look at Hasan's motives and mindset, his attendance at the mosque could be an important piece of the jigsaw. Al-Awlaki moved to Dar al-Hijrah as imam in January, 2001, from the west coast, and three months later the September 11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour began attending his services. A third hijacker attended his services in California.

Hasan was praying at Dar al-Hijrah at about the same time, and the FBI will now want to investigate whether he met the two terrorists.

Gee, ya think?

No doubt he is now saying, "See what I mean?"

2009-10-18T18:36:00.001-07:00

News from Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi woman is seeking a divorce after she found out that her husband had nicknamed her 'Guantanamo' on his mobile phone.

The woman made the discovery while examining the list of contacts in her husband's phone when he left it at home one day, the Al-Watan newspaper reported.

The Riyadh newspaper did not name the woman or her husband, whose comparison between life with his wife and life within the detention centre at the US naval base in Cuba may have proved ill judged.

His wife has since decided to end their 17-year marriage and is seeking a divorce.

But the newspaper suggested she might settle for "substantial" financial compensation from her husband and stay married to him.

I am sure that if he pays her off and stays married to her, he will have to change her cell phone nickname to Evin.

Why losing in Afghanistan is not an option

2009-10-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

For those who think that the most important consideration for President Obama in deciding on Afghanistan war policy is its domestic political implications or simple containment, Wazhma Frogh has a reminder of what is really at stake for Afghanistan and the world:

As an Afghan woman who for many years lived a life deprived of the most basic human rights, I find unbearable the thought of what will happen to the women of my country if it once again falls under the control of the insurgents and militants who now threaten it.

In 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, the liberation of Afghan women was one of the most important justifications for military intervention. Has the world now changed its mind about Afghan women? Is it ready to let them once again be killed and tortured by militants? Does the world no longer believe in the principles it supported in 2001?

Handing over Afghanistan to those who intend to keep the country centuries behind most of the world -- to men who do not view women as human beings -- would not only call into doubt the global commitment to human rights, it would also raise questions about the commitment of Western democracies to such rights and to democratic values. Bearing in mind how fragile the Afghan government is at this moment, it will not take long for the country's women to come under attack again. The consequences will be even more bitter this time because no matter how limited our success, we have at least managed to act in the forefront of public life in Afghanistan. We have had a taste of what it's like to have rights.

Vice President Joe Biden is not only wrong on this, he's reaffirmed his status as a dolt and an inhuman ignorer of basic human rights and dignity.

(Hat tip: Hot Air.)

Poetry Corner

2009-10-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

Over at the zombietime zomblog, commenter buzzsawmonkey has outdone himself with this ode to a LunGFish.

Your Last Posting
(Los Angeles)

–apologies to Robert Browning and “My Last Duchess”

That’s your last posting ever on this blog, 
And henceforth your account is blocked. You’ll dog 
My site no further with your words; your nic
 Is banished, and I gave your posts the stick. 
You know I’ll call your banning here a “flounce”
Though I’ve been waiting for some time to pounce
On your account, and with prevarications
Distort and demonize your observations.
The Toad Hall where you reveled, if you please’ll
Be given entire to the stoats and weasels,
 My countenance beaming on each one that
Comes to me bearing tales of Mole or Rat, 
Or Badger, or…sockpuppet. No, ‘t was not 
This writing only, placed you on the spot 
And caused me to invoke the ban: perhaps 
You chanced to differ with my own claptrap
And stick to your position, or dispute
Conventional wisdoms to which repute 
I’ve lately granted. Don’t you dare to say 
That I or my site might have lost their way
Obsessing on my personal vendettas;
 I am neither forgiving nor forgetter, 
And will not brook a failure of obesiance 
By anyone I feel owes me allegiance.
Yes, I took Rather down, on grounds that he
Could not support what he claimed factually;
But now I set my sights at lower bar
(On personalities, not things that are)
While I squat ‘midst the wreckage I have made
Like mad Kurtz ruling from his bush stockade,
Ringed ’round with skulls. For I no longer deign
To weigh a fact itself; instead, maintain 
That source determines truth, and to that end
The nature of veracity I bend,
Citing to midden-heaps of rankness such 
That I would not long since have scorned to touch. 
A turtle is a lizard in a shell,
And I, lord of my self-created hell 
Remain King Yertle of the Turtle Stack
 Exalted on my Posting Turtles’ backs–
Yet conscious, as I proclaim my renown
 It’s just posting turtles, all the way down,
 Which is why I respond with rage and fear 
Should anyone mouth what I deem a sneer 
Or contradiction. So I flip a switch,
And all posts stop together, with a bitch 
Given reign of my elegant designs. 
Yet, if I still retained but half a spine 
I would despise appearing to be led 
As I now seem to, by the lesser head. 
Hark! Look you! See how Glenn Beck weeps! 
Do you not loathe the company he keeps
Regardless of whatever he might say?
Here is the global warming word today;  
Do not dissent, the banning stick is toward
I care for no voice save that of accord!

Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs: Women love Sharia law

2009-10-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

I wonder what Obama's Women's Issues Czar will have to say about this? Daily Telegraph: Barack Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood.

President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.

Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice".

The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.

The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.

Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir's national women's officer, Nazreen Nawaz.

During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".

They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".

Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that "promiscuity" and the "breakdown of traditional values" were what Muslims admired least about the West.

Nice litotes there: "what Muslims admired least about the West." Doesn't she mean, what Muslim extremists despise most, and what motivates them most to destroy the West?

What an unexpected honor!

2009-10-02T21:07:00.000-07:00

Protein Wisdom has made its selections for an impromptu caption contest.

screenshot from Drudge

Horizontal stripes. Dude.
***********************
In no particular order, here are my very subjective five favorites:

stuiec “If I’d grown up in Cuba, I’d be thin and good-looking! Thanks for NOTHING, Capitalism!”

maggie katzen “YOU CALL THIS A #$(t%*#@ MENU!?”

BJTexs “Planet of the Plates!!”

JD “Don’t knock deep-fried bacon.”

Blake “Michael Moore making his case that he deserves both latitude and longitude lines.”

Thanks, guys and gals, you make this fun!

I'm humbled. (And I'm totally down with the "no particular order" *wink* thing.)

The Day Chicago Lost

2009-10-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

With Apologies to Paper Lace

On a Scandinavian day
In the land of the fairy tale
When the town of Chicago lost
And it was an epic fail

When a hero named Barack
Tried to make that meeting rock
And he called upon his wife
For the struggle of her life

What did Obama cost
To join the bid the day Chicago lost?
Wonder who the blame will hit because
What a stupid shame it really was
Glory be

Chicago's bid got tossed
Michelle was pissed the day Chicago lost
Brother what a waste of time and bucks
Obama got a taste of how he sucks
Yes indeed

And Michelle brought up the kids
In the slums of the old South Side
But the first vote on the bids
Meant Chicago's hopes had died

There was silence in the street
The crowd shuffling its feet
And I asked someone who said
The Obama magic's dead

What did Obama cost
To join the bid the day Chicago lost?
Wonder who the blame will hit because
What a stupid shame it really was
Glory be

Chicago's bid got tossed
Michelle was pissed the day Chicago lost
Brother what a waste of time and bucks
Obama got a taste of how he sucks
Yes indeed

All was still on Air Force One
But the spinning had begun
David Axelrod told lies
The defeat to minimize
And that moron Robert Gibbs
Gave the talking points to libs

What did Obama cost
To join the bid the day Chicago lost?
Wonder who the blame will hit because
What a stupid shame it really was
Glory be

Chicago's bid got tossed
Michelle was pissed the day Chicago lost
Brother what a waste of time and bucks
Obama got a taste of how he sucks
Yes indeed

Chicago's bid got tossed
Michelle was pissed the day Chicago lost
Brother what a waste of time and bucks
Obama got a taste of how he sucks
Yes indeed

And to think he even pronounces "Pakistan" correctly

2009-09-30T23:02:00.001-07:00

President Barack "Pah-kee-stan" Obama seems to be having trouble convincing the leaders and people of Pakistan that he knows what's best for them.

Three stories:

NY Times: Pakistanis Continue to Reject U.S. Partnership

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Even with the arrival of the Obama administration and the prospect of substantially increased aid, more Pakistanis — an overwhelming majority — continued to reject the United States as a partner to fight militancy in their country, a new poll finds.

NY Times: Militant Group Is Intact After Mumbai Siege

KARACHI, Pakistan — Ten months after the devastating attacks in Mumbai by Pakistan-based militants, the group behind the assault remains largely intact and determined to strike India again, according to current and former members of the group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and intelligence officials.

Despite pledges from Pakistan to dismantle militant groups operating on its soil, and the arrest of a handful of operatives, Lashkar has persisted, even flourished, since 10 recruits killed 163 people in a rampage through Mumbai, India’s financial capital, last November.

Daily Telegraph (UK): Pakistan warns United States against drone attacks

Pakistan has warned the United States that it will not allow drone attacks on suspected Taliban bases in its troubled Balochistan province, military sources have said.

The army chief's warning was disclosed amid growing tension over American claims that Islamabad was refusing to target the Taliban's 'Quetta Shura' – the leadership council of former Afghan ruler Mullah Omar.

Washington believes the 'shura' is plotting attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan from 'safe havens' in South-West Pakistan.

American State Department and intelligence officials are believed to have warned Pakistan President Asif Zardari that they will launch their own drone attacks on the shura if the Pakistan Army fails to target its bases.

Gosh, you'd think it was like Pakistan was an independent country or something.

The inevitable evolution of suicide bombing

2009-09-30T22:45:00.000-07:00

There's been much mirth and merriment over the "butt bomb" used by a terrorist in an assassination (ass-ass-ination?) attempt on a Saudi prince.

However, as some have observed, this guy got past the checkpoints and security inspections meant to keep the prince safe.

And we have to recall the scene in The Dark Knight, in which the screenwriter suggested an even more nefarious hidden bomb.

So here is the question: how long before a woman undergoes a Caesarean section and has the baby and her uterus replaced with a fairly sizeable bomb, with a mechanical trigger (the kind she can set off by punching herself in the stomach)? With no electrical or electronic components and little or no metal in its construction, it would be undetectable, assuming that any airport screener would even think to check a pregnant woman that closely.

400 Miles

2009-09-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

With apologies to West, Bare and Wiliams.

If you miss the bus I'm under
It keeps rolling like the thunder
You can see my bloody trail
A hundred miles.
A hundred miles, a hundred miles,
A hundred miles, a hundred miles,
Oh, my blood and guts are smeared
A hundred miles.

Who knew such a silly dork
Could be Gov'nor of New York?
At least I was, 'til I was dragged
Four hundred miles.
Four hundred miles, five hundred miles,
Four hundred miles, five hundred miles,
To D.C. from Albany is
Four hundred miles.

Lord, I'm Black, Lord, I'm blind
And Barack left me behind
Lord, I can't get re-elected
This a-way.
This a-way, this a-way,
This a-way, this a-way,
Lord, I can't get re-elected
This a-way.

If you miss the bus I'm under
It keeps rolling like the thunder
You can see my bloody trail
A hundred miles.
A hundred miles, a hundred miles,
A hundred miles, a hundred miles,
Oh, my blood and guts are smeared
A hundred miles.

Really? This is the most urgent item of the people's business?

2009-09-16T16:18:00.000-07:00

Unemployment still pushing 10 percent? Check.

Iran still developing nuclear weapons, and North Korea restarting its own nuclear program? Check.

Major terror plot uncovered in New York and Denver? Check.

How does a President choose which competing priority to tackle next?

Maybe he just punts.

Barack Obama has been pictured playing with a lightsaber on the lawn of the White House.

Watched by his wife, Michelle, Mr Obama used a Star Wars lightsaber to "attack" Tim Morehouse, the American Olympic fencer who won a silver medal in men's sabre fencing in Beijing.

Mr Obama's "lunge" took place on the South Lawn during an event supporting Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics.

The President said that the whole of America was rooting for his hometown of Chicago in its efforts to host the 2016 Summer Games.

Well, at least he's doing something good: he's sending Michelle Obama away for a little while.

The International Olympic Committee will choose a host city during an Oct 2 meeting in Copenhagen. Mr Obama will not attend the meetings, instead sending first Lady Michelle Obama to lead the US delegation.

Chicago is in a tough competition with Rio de Janeiro, Madrid and Tokyo. In recent years, national leaders have travelled to the IOC meetings to help seal the deal – such as Tony Blair for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and Vladimir Putin for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

"I would make the case in Copenhagen personally," Mr Obama said, noting he's busy seeking a health care overhaul. "But the good news is I'm sending a more compelling superstar to represent the city and country we love, and that is our first lady, Michelle Obama."

Mrs Obama joked: "You should have seen the President in there fencing," she said to laughter as Mr Obama stuck out his arm in a mock fencing move. "It was pathetic. But he passed the baton really well."

Pakistan foils cross-dressing terrorists

2009-09-15T11:32:00.001-07:00

Western societies are fussing over the wearing of burqas and "burqinis" - here, here and here. But it seems like the burqa is a bad idea in Islamic societies, too: Pakistan Police Thwart Attack on Karachi Oil Facility.

ISLAMABAD -- Islamic militants clad head-to-toe in women's burqas attempted to attack an oil storage facility in Karachi, raising fears that insurgents are fleeing northwestern Pakistan and infiltrating the nation's main business hub.

Three gunmen, disguised as women, tried to enter the high security facility used by oil companies, late Monday night, Waseem Ahmed, the city police chief, told Pakistani television on Tuesday. When stopped by security guards, militants opened fire, killing one of the guards. The assailants fled during a gun battle, leaving behind their burqas, purses and hand grenades.

"We suspect they wanted to carry out a big terrorist attack which our prompt police action thwarted," said Mr. Ahmed, the police chief, in an interview with the Geo TV Pakistan.

Pakistan imports foreign oil through the Karachi port, and stores it there before transporting it throughout the country. An attack on the port facility could have threatened fuel supply for the country's industry and transport, just as Pakistan's economy is struggling to recover from a global downturn and security woes at home.

Later Tuesday, police arrested four men suspected to have been involved in the attack. During a house raid in Karachi, Mr. Ahmed said in the television interview that police found additional burqas, women's handbags and weapons. Police suspected the assailants disguised themselves as women to try to slip past security check points.

The arrested men were suspected to have been linked to the militant group led by Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader who was killed last month in a U.S. missile attack in South Waziristan. A large number of militants from Waziristan and other areas fleeing army attacks have been taking sanctuary in Karachi, according to Zulfikar Mirza, the Sindh provincial home minister.

Here's an idea: these terrorists wanted to be women so badly, let them have their wish. A few quick strokes with a (perhaps not-so-sharp) knife, and they'll be fully burqa-worthy... if you know what I mean (and I think you do).

While British ministers were worrying about protestors on the Right...

2009-09-13T22:47:00.000-07:00

While the British government and the Left side of the British media have been focused on the perceived threat posed by the English Defence League, something else has been going on: Rashid Rauf 'training dozens of British terrorist recruits in Pakistan.'

Pakistani officials have warned that Rashid Rauf, the terrorist linked to the trans-Atlantic airline bomb plot, bas been involved in grooming two dozen British recruits to carry out new attacks.

Pakistan intelligence said that Rauf, who mysteriously escaped from police custody and was then reported killed by a missile fired by US drone last November, used the name Khalid to recruit fellow Britons for training at a camp in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

One official said that Rauf was involved with a group of Arab and Uzbek terrorists in a camp in Matta Cheena village in south Waziristan.

Rauf is said to be a key lieutenant of the group's leader, explosives expert, Abu Nasir. "He is an explosive expert who has effectively devised methods of explosives using easy-to-get ingredients that are virtually undetectable or can raise no alarms for authorities," said the intelligence source.

"We know that they are planning a very serious attack and it is very important for us to arrest all of them.

"If they are able to strike it is going to give a bad name to Pakistan once again for no reason."

Intercepted emails and text messages between Pakistan and the UK had indicated Rauf's involvement under the name Khalid after the authorities decrypted the communications.

British security and intelligence officials have said they believe Rauf may have survived the missile strike and could be planning further attacks.

A US informant called Bryant Neal Vinas, who has admitted planning a suicide attack, was arrested by the Pakistanis last November and said he had met Rauf shortly before the missile strike.

He gave information that has led to the arrest of two cells allegedly planning attacks during a European summit in Brussels and last Easter in Manchester.

Yep, sure sounds like those folks protesting Islamofascist extremism in Britain are the real problem, all right.

I just hope that security on the planes, trains and buses in Britain is as tight as the security forces say it is. Oh, and that they've managed to out-think Al-Qaeda with respect to what other targets terrorists might choose that haven't been given such tight security up until now.

The UK, a haven for (some) terrorists

2009-09-12T15:55:00.001-07:00

Some people want you to believe that the worst threat facing Britain are the people pointing out the Islamofascists in their midst: Communities Secretary John Denham has likened far right groups mounting street protests against Islam to Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts.

The minister's comments came as he announced a drive to prevent white working class people being "exploited" by extremists.

But he later backtracked by stressing that today's situation was "nothing like the 1930s". He said:"All we are facing at the moment is small.

"But I think we need to take it seriously enough to say that there are obviously people who would like to be provocative, hope that there is not just a reaction but there is an overreaction, then people blame the people who overreact and the situation gets out of control."

Mr Denham singled out protests being organised by the English Defence League, some of which have turned violent over recent months.

Except perhaps it wasn't that the English Defence League wanted an overreaction, but that any expression of displeasure with Islamofascists in Britain faces an organized overreaction: Violent race riot flared after mosque chief urged Muslims to confront right-wing 'English Defence League' protesters.

The most influential Muslim leader in the West Midlands urged his followers to 'vent their feelings' against Right-wing protesters during a Birmingham rally that ended in violent clashes and 90 arrests.

Birmingham Central Mosque chairman Dr Mohammad Naseem encouraged Muslims to counter-demonstrate during Saturday's anti-Islamic protest by the English Defence League (EDL).

The police had advised community leaders to stop people from attending, reported The Times.

Last month there were also clashes when the English Defence League - formed after British soldiers were abused by Islamic radicals at a homecoming parade in Luton - held a rally on the same day as the Unite Against Fascism group.

The latest disorder involved around 200 people and spilled on to Bennetts Hill, a street popular with shoppers and lined with a number of pubs.

English Defence League marchers were involved in running disturbances which lasted all afternoon before the Right-wing protesters were taken to another part of the city by bus.

Witnesses claimed the English Defence League marchers, many of whom had been drinking since the morning, ripped up seats on the journey away from the city centre.

But some members slipped away from the police, clashing with more than 30 socialist protesters amid cries of 'Racist scum, out of Brum'. After an hour of angry skirmishes in the city centre, the situation deteriorated further after a group of Asian men also joined in.

Sarah Edwards had to duck into a cafe to avoid being caught in the violence.

She said: 'We suddenly saw what seemed to be about 200 Asian men running down the street, throwing bricks.

'They had bandanas over their faces and were shouting and screaming. We were so scared, we feared for our lives and had to run into the cafe so we wouldn't get hurt. It is so shocking to see this on our streets'

The English Defence League has claimed it is not racist, even saying it did not want any violence to happen at the pre-planned protest.

This picture is a bit inconsistent with the accusation of neo-Fascist skinhead racism: the haircuts look right, but what's up with that flag?

English Defence League supporters hold aloft the flag of Israel and gesture to police as they are corralled into a subway following the demonstration

However, it seems that there really are Islamofascists, known terror suspects, roaming free in the UK. In fact, some of them are even living on the public dole, courtesy of the British taxpayer: Suspects named on United Nations terror list living free in Britain.

The revelation that the men are being allowed to live in Britain without the prospect of being arrested or deported has prompted calls for an urgent change in the law.

Among the 12 suspects named on the UN list are a number of men accused of raising funds for a violent jihadist group with alleged links to Osama bin Laden....

One of the men named on the UN Consolidated List is Mohammed al Ghabra, a 29-year-old British citizen suspected of being a key figure in the plot to blow up passenger airliners over the Atlantic.

Also on the list is Khalid Abd Al-Rahman Hamd Al-Fawaz, 44, a Kuwaiti living in London, who has been accused by the FBI of involvement in bombing American embassies, and Hani al Sayyid al Sebai, a 46-year-old Egyptian also living in London.

Other individuals on the UN list include Ghuma Abd'rabbah, 52, a Libyan-born British citizen who is suspected of raising funds for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihadist organisation opposed to the Gadaffi regime, and accused of having links with al Qaeda. He is understood to be living in the Birmingham area, along with Libyan-born Abd Al-Rahman Al Faqih, 50, who is also on the UN list....

Individuals are placed on the list on the basis of evidence about their links with al Qaeda or the Taliban submitted by members states of the United Nations. Once their inclusion has been endorsed by the UN Security Council, banking and treasury officials in the individual's country of residence are instructed to freeze their financial assets.

David Davies, Conservative MP for Monmouth and a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "It's quite outrageous for these people to carry on living here, many of them on benefits. The Home Secretary should have the right to either lock them up or throw them out of the country, but for that to happen requires a change in the Human Rights Act."

A spokesman for the Home Office said: "These individuals are here legally. If they breach any laws they will be prosecuted. We cannot comment on any security operations regarding individuals."

One would think that if the Communities Secretary really wants to damp down fear and resentment toward Islamic extremism in Britain, a good place to start would be to arrest or expel the most extreme of the Islamic extremists.

Joe Biden wants to keep his boss firmly in the quagmire

2009-09-12T13:31:00.001-07:00

After the November election, Vice-President Elect Joe Biden told ABC's George Stephanopolous that Obama would do nothing until he heard from Joe:

"I think we should restore the balance here. The role of the Vice President of the United States as I see it is to give the President of the United States the best, sagest, most accurate, most insightful advice and recommendations he or she can make to a President to help them make some of the very, very important decisions that have to be made.

"When Barack Obama, Senator Barack Obama then talked to me about being his Vice President I said we have to – let’s talk and we spent three and a half hours talking and one of the things I asked was, I said I don’t want to be picked unless you’re picking me for my judgment. I don’t want to be the guy that goes out and has a specific assignment – an important assignment to reinvent government, which Al Gore did a great job of. Dealing with some specific discrete item. I said I want a commitment from you that in every important decision you’ll make, every critical decision, economic and political as well as foreign policy, I’ll get to be in the room."

Well, now we get a specific example of how that's working out for the two of them.

President Barack Obama's administration is sharply divided over whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan, with Vice-President Joe Biden and other senior figures arguing that it would be folly to escalate the fighting.

On this vital question, Mr Biden is sharply at odds with Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state.. He strongly opposes any large increase in US combat forces in Afghanistan, while Mrs Clinton has called for reinforcements, with the support of the Pentagon.

Mr Biden argues that escalating the fight against the Taliban using US troops would play into al-Qaeda's hands by stirring popular resentment and destabilising neighbouring Pakistan. It would also be politically damaging at home, where the American public is increasingly unwilling to tolerate high casualties....

Mr Biden, whose long experience of foreign policy is one of his key qualifications for the post, has long been critical of President Hamid Karzai's leadership in Afghanistan. His position has been boosted by the mounting evidence of widespread fraud in the recent presidential election.

So "the best, sagest, most accurate, most insightful advice and recommendation" foreign policy expert Joe Biden can offer his President is to let the NATO mission in Afghanistan die a slow death from neglect?

General Stanley McChrystal, the new American commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, has submitted his classified assessment of the war to the White House. This is understood to lay out future options, ranging from sending 10,000 to 40,000 additional soldiers.

Gen McChrystal has privately made clear that he believes the greatest risk attaches to holding back on the reinforcements. What he considers the minimal option of sending between 10,000 and 15,000 more troops is also the riskiest choice, he argues.

Maybe Biden is thinking that he can work with the French to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan the way he and they drove Hizbollah out of Lebanon.

I feel sooooo much better about America's security knowing that Hole-in-the-Head Joe is giving our Commander-in-Chief his wise counsel.

Ode to Barry O

2009-09-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

It was 09 September in the House of Representatives
They had invited the Senate and everybody said, "What gives?
Barack Obama's coming and I want to know what he will say,
And will his hundredth speech on health care matter anyway?"
I was about to go and grab a cold one from out the fridge
When I heard Obama talk about the man from Chappaquiddick Bridge.

Barry said to the Congress, "You know, it don't seem right;
Ted was working four decades and he never once gave up the fight.
He could get McCain and Hatch and Grassley lined up on his side,
But he couldn't get health care reform through Congress before he died.
None of his passion and conviction made the cause advance a single smidge,
Not since the day that Teddy Kennedy drove off the Chappaquiddick Bridge."

Now the hours have come and gone since Obama made that fateful speech:
The Congress members from the GOP made fun of him for overreach,
While Democrats cheered on his call to get his healthcare plan passed right now --
Though none of them could even tell you what was in it anyhow.
The hopes for Barry-pleasin' health reform from Hawaii to the Blue Ridge
Have fallen in to the muddy water off the Chappaquiddick Bridge.

The rare but (not endangered) Alaskan Black Swan

2009-09-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

Great book: The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Among other things, he mentions that no one builds monuments to the leaders who prevent terror attacks, because we forget that those attacks were probable in the absence of that leadership.

The title of the book comes from the syllogism, "All swans are white. This bird is a swan. Therefore, this bird is white." That was irrefutably true for Europeans... right up until the time of Captain Cook's voyage to Australia. Australia has a native species of swan that is jet black. Taleb's point is that, just because you've never seen something, you can't assume it doesn't exist.

While Taleb is concerned mostly with rare economic events and rare political events, his admonition applies to Sarah Palin. No one had ever seen a strong, common-sense, good-looking female politician who rose from the middle middle class before. Many people who were locked into the "all swans are white" old reality therefore tried to dismiss black swan Sarah Palin as not real, not genuine, an impostor, a white swan painted black.

That explains why in the run-up to his health care address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama released talking points that mentioned Sarah Palin (and no other Republican) by name. Palin had pre-empted Obama's speech with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal addressing the foreseeable failures of government bureaucratic control of America's health care.

On Gov. Palin's Attacks

Every non-partisan organization that has looked at her claims say they are false. And the ideas in her op-ed are both scary and risky. Eliminating Medicare and giving our seniors vouchers instead is a bad idea that we shouldn't adopt.

The wonderful thing is that Liberals (up to and including Obama) and faux Conservatives are locked in a futile effort to find the white down under Sarah's black feathers, and as a consequence their attention is drawn away from the efforts of others to expose the Red underbelly of the Liberal/Progressive/Democrat enterprise.

Teach the Controversy!

2009-09-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

Funny, isn't it, how the Left had been developing all throughout 2008 the meme that Creationists were turning the GOP into the Anti-Science Party. Typical is this attack by Chris Matthews on Rep. Mike Pence:

The cry of Creationists who want to get Biblical Creation or at least Intelligent Design into school curricula has been, "Teach the Controversy!" They claim they don't want their beliefs taught as settled fact, but they say that they want them taught alongside evolutionary science, the notion being that evolutionary science has gaps and leaps that allow for alternative explanations.

In my view, evolutionary science is what belongs in public school curricula because it can be tested by experiment and observation. Parents who want to teach Biblical Creation and Intelligent Design as plausible alternatives have the right to do so in the home or the house of worship.

But now the cry of "Teach the Controversy" is being taken up by the very people who try to use Creationism as a blunt instrument to bludgeon the Republican Party. Progressives, Liberals and Democrats on the Left of their party now want Americans to consider alternative explanations and theories... for the events of 9/11.

In their frenzy to characterize the expose of Van Jones's views as a "Right-wing smear," a number of folks on the Left defended outright his signing a 9/11 Truth petition that called for investigating the charge that the Bush Administration orchestrated the 9/11 attacks as a "false-flag operation" in order to create a pre-text for war.

John McWhorter writes in The New Republic:

Jones was wrong, actually, in disavowing his support for 9/11 conspiracy theory. He signed the document, which can only mean that he supports the idea that 9/11 was planned, or that the Bushies knew something more than they have said, or at least that the charge is plausible enough to require investigation.

But support for that idea is hardly unknown among people of the left – and often gestural in its own way; look one of these types in the eye and ask “Do you really think George Bush and his cabinet engineered the murder of thousands and have kept the secret for eight years?” and watch the nervous pause and the look off into the distance. Speculations in this vein hardly meant that Jones was not sincerely committed to working within the government to do good. (Hat tip: Hot Air.)

Jane Hamsher writes on the FireDogLake blog:

I first met Van Jones when he was honored last year by the Campaign for America's Future at their gala dinner. He was being swarmed by all of the liberal institutional elite, who just could not be more full of praise for the impressive environmental leader and prison reform organizer. Everybody wanted Van Jones on their board. Everyone wanted him at their fundraisers. Everyone wanted a piece of his formidable limelight.

Now he's been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11. Well, that and calling Republicans "assholes." I'm pretty sure that if you search through the histories of every single liberal leader at the CAF dinner that night, they have publicly said that and worse.

So where are all the statements defending Van Jones by those who were willing to exploit him when it served their purpose? Why aren't they standing up and defending one of their own, who has done nothing that probably the majority of people in the Democratic party haven't done at one time or another? Is he no longer "one of their own?" (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.

And blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs joins the chorus, in this exchange with the investigative blogger "zombie":

zombie: But what about this document released by the Ella Baker Center when Jones was the head honcho there and giving quotes from Jones' group STORM, calling 9/11 a "bombing" with the statement

"No matter who ultimately is to blame for these bombings..."

...right below a quote from Jones.

It certainly pouts his in the Truther-Zone -- flirting with Truthism.

(And the was released nearly two months after 9/11, when it was well-known who did it - -at the very beginning of the truther movement.)

Johnson: That statement from STORM was released weeks after 9/11, when no one knew the full story. Lots of people were talking about the "bombing" of the World Trade Center then. That is not any kind of support for the contention that Van Jones is a Truther -- in fact, if that's all you can come up with, it reinforces my point that there is no evidence.

As someone who was in New York City on 9/11 and the days following, I know that there was no doubt about what happened to the Twin Towers that day: they were felled by the impact and fire damage from two jet airliners carrying full fuel loads. No one in New York that night or the next day had questions about bombs in the buildings -- no rational person, anyway. But hey, Johnson is all for the spirit of investigation when it's a Van Jones asking the questions.

In other words, "Teach The Controversy!"

These Left-Democrats aren't saying Bush did order the attacks, or that he did wilfully ignore warnings of the attacks to allow them to happen. They just want the questions put up for debate.

I know from experience that it is too much to ask Progressives and Leftists to be intellectually honest or even logically consistent with their own stated beliefs. But with the speed at which information flows today, and with the access to extensive archives of statements and pronouncements and news reports, you'd think they'd realize just how easy it is to juxtapose their conflicting words and actions.

"Teach the Controversy" isn't good policy regarding Creationism in public schools. It's far worse policy and politics in running one of America's two major political parties.

Barack Obama to America's schoolchildren: "Stop being bad kids"

2009-09-08T11:34:00.000-07:00

Nice of the President to tell America's schoolchildren to stop cutting class, bullying their peers, intimidating their teachers and dropping out to lead a life of crime.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life -- what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home -- none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.

Great message - for kids in trouble. There are more than a few, no doubt:

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.

Know what, Mr. President? It might have been a better plan to target your speech to kids in those circumstances. On the other hand, did kids who are failing in school and at risk of gang activity and dropout even stay awake through the speech? Wouldn't they be more likely to be daydreaming about other things?

I know that sometimes you get that sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star. Chances are you're not going to be any of those things.

Sure sounds better than doing what the vast majority of American school kids are already doing:

That's why today I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education -- and do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending some time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all young people deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, by the way, I hope all of you are washing your hands a lot, and that you stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Here's a thought: if the first person to tell a child to do these things is President Obama, that's really far too little, far too late. Fortunately, most kids have parents who actually have bothered to instill these values in them.

Of course, there are rotten little buggers in almost every school, even if gangs and poverty and crime and drugs aren't lapping at the schoolhouse door. President Obama's speech could be part of the disciplinary process for them: get sent to the Principal's office and you get strapped to a chair with the full-on Clockwork Orange cranial fixator and eyelid clamps, and then have the privilege of watching the President of the United States tell you to take responsibility. I bet after two sessions, three tops, the little miscreant would straighten up and fly right, if only to avoid having to sit through Obama's presentation ever again.

Jacob Weisberg calls for abolition of inheritance tax in Slate

2009-08-29T12:50:00.000-07:00

Wow. Jacob Weisberg of Slate now comes down hard in favor of permanent repeal of the inheritance tax.

The Republican Death Machine
Who's really pulling the plug on Grandma?
By Jacob Weisberg

Posted Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009, at 7:11 AM ET

Republicans charge that Democratic health care reform would, in Sen. Charles Grassley's words, "pull the plug on Grandma." According to Sen. Jon Kyl, the bills before Congress would ration medical treatment by age. Rep. John Boehner says they promote euthanasia. Alaskan abdicate Sarah Palin has raised the specter of "death panels." Such fears are understandable. It's not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make a timely exit. After all, that's been Republican policy for years.

It was Sen. Grassley himself who rammed the GOP's most astonishing pro-death policy through the Senate in 2001. The estate-tax revision he championed reduces the estate tax to zero next year. But when the law expires at year's end, the tax will jump back up to its previous level of 55 percent. Grassley's exploding offer has an entirely foreseen if unintended consequence: It's going to encourage those whose parents and grandparents are worth anything more than a million bucks to get them dead by midnight on Dec. 31, 2010. This would be a great plot for a P.D. James novel if it weren't an actual piece of legislation.

As economists will tell you, when you don't tax something, you get more of it. Various studies have shown that this logic applies to life and death, as well as to more modest behavioral choices. In a 2001 paper titled "Dying To Save Taxes," Wojciech Kopczuk and Joel Slemrod examined 13 tax changes since 1917 and concluded that "for individuals dying within two weeks of a tax reform, a $10,000 potential tax savings … increases the probability of dying in the lower-tax regime by 1.6 percent." A 2006 study done in Australia, which abolished its inheritance tax in 1979, reached the same conclusion: "a statistically significant effect of the abolition of inheritance taxes on the number of deaths." More than half the people who, according to statistics, ordinarily would have paid the Aussie inheritance tax in its final week managed to evade it by living a bit longer. Here, Congress has created an incentive for Grandma to stick around through Jan. 1, 2010, then snuff it before the end of next year.

Obviously, if Mr. Weisberg believes what he wrote here, then he must regard it as a moral imperative that this death incentive be removed from tax policy once and for all.

But I bet what he means by this argument is that Republicans are just as bad as Obama Democrats in wanting Grandma to die. That in itself is an admission that Obama Democrats do, in fact, want Grandma to die.

The rest of the Weisberg piece is standard liberal Democrat tripe. For example, he says that wanting to privatize Social Security means wanting Gramps and Nana to kick it, since they’d obviously have lost their Social Security nest eggs in the recent stock market collapse. Of course, the privatization plan would have had no impact on anyone nearing retirement, applying only to younger workers. But if Mr. Weisberg wants to look retroactively, he might ask how much a current retiree might be getting today had his Social Security taxes paid over the last 40 years (age 25 to 65) had been invested in the S&P 500 over that span.

It’s wonderful that liberals believe they are so much smarter than the rest of the populace that they don’t think twice about blurting out the very arguments that completely undermine their own stated positions.

The Profiling Prof, the Pandering President, and the Poisonous Precedent

2009-07-24T15:32:00.000-07:00

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal writes in his Best of the Web blog of the kerfuffle between Prof. Gates and the Cambridge Police:

We still think, as we wrote yesterday, that in the incident itself, Crowley was more in the wrong than Gates. In a confrontation between a policeman and a private citizen, the former has far more power, and concomitantly more responsibility. But in a public debate over race, the black Harvard professor is the one with authority. Neither Gates’s social status nor his race absolves him from the responsibility of acknowledging and working to overcome his own prejudices.

I disagree with Mr. Taranto and I believe his criticism of Prof. Gates seriously underestimates the harm the professor's behavior has done.

About 15 years ago, Animal Control officers in Oakland, California, called on the home of a young Black man who owned a pit bull accused of biting a neighbor, and when the owner could not produce a current certificate of rabies vaccination, the Animal Control officers were obliged to take the dog in for quarantine. When the owner resisted, the officers called for backup. The responding officers were unable to get the young man to calm down once his dog was in custody, and so had to arrest him for disorderly conduct and interfering with a police officer.

But as OPD Officer William Grijalva attempted to handcuff the owner, he became violent. Though the officers used pepper spray, they were unable to subdue him, and he ran into his home, where his father kept a loaded shotgun behind the front door. When Officer Grijalva saw the shotgun leveled at him, he turned to find cover, and the shotgun pellets hit him in the side, where his bulletproof vest didn't provide protection. Despite his mortal wound, Officer Grijalva returned fire through the front door, as did his partner: the dog's owner was killed, but so was his disabled father, who was in a wheelchair behind the door.

As a leading scholar in African-American studies, Prof. Gates serves as a role model for Black American men. His behavior toward the police who responded to a call to protect his property appears from all accounts -- including the professor's -- to have been driven by his resentment of how police in the United States have treated Black men in the past. He chose to behave in a provocative and belligerent fashion toward the police officers in order to make them fully aware that he put his pride as an African-American man above his obligation as a citizen to allow the police to carry out their legitimate and necessary duties.

Prof. Gates's behavior, especially with President Obama's implicit endorsement, is likely to encourage young Black men to emulate him and "stand up to police racism" with belligerence and defiance. As Officer Grijalva's family can attest, that can easily lead to an escalation with consequences far more dire than mere charges of disorderly conduct. Prof. Gates and President Obama should both consider how their high dudgeon may well lead to unnecessary deaths of young Black men and police officers who encounter them in situations that otherwise could easily be defused.

UNIFIL (allegedly) demonstrates grasp of the obvious

2009-07-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

A house full of short-range rockets and small arms blew up in southern Lebanon and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon apparently noticed the fireworks.

A day after Israel cried foul over an explosion that uncovered a hidden Hizbullah arms cache in southern Lebanon, the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon said Wednesday that storing the ammunition was a "serious violation" of the UN-brokered ceasefire that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

According to estimates in the IDF's Northern Command, Hizbullah has turned hundreds of homes in southern Lebanese villages into warehouses to store short- and medium-range Katyusha rockets.

The IDF released video footage taken from an Israeli aircraft, showing a home that had exploded on Tuesday in the village of Hirbet Selm - located some 20 kilometers north of the Lebanese border. The roof is seen in the footage with dozens of holes, which IDF ballistic experts said were the size of 122-mm. Katyusha rockets.

Given that a house blowing up is pretty obvious (especially since Israeli surveillance aircraft were watching the area), it would have been difficult for UNIFIL to deny that the incident took place. And since they had to admit that it took place, they also had to admit that it was a blatant violation of Security Council Resolution 1701.

UNIFIL seems to find a lot of blatant violations of UNSC Res. 1701, like the 20 Katyusha rockets set up and ready to fire it discovered last month:

In an effort to prevent a flare-up along the northern border, UNIFIL has increased its operations in southern Lebanon and has begun entering villages in search of Hizbullah weapons caches, according to information obtained recently by Israel.

In one recent successful operation in the eastern sector of southern Lebanon, UNIFIL peacekeepers uncovered close to 20 Katyusha rockets that were ready for launch.

UNIFIL operates under Security Council Resolution 1701, passed following the Second Lebanon War in 2006. Operations in villages have been a point of contention between UNIFIL and Israel, which said over the past three years that the peacekeeping force was failing to prevent Hizbullah's military buildup in southern Lebanon since it refrained from entering villages.

Hizbullah, the IDF believes, has deployed most of its forces and weaponry - including Katyusha rockets - inside homes in the villages. Until now, UNIFIL and the Lebanese army have mostly operated in open areas.

According to information obtained by Israel, UNIFIL has also succeeded recently in thwarting attacks that were planned against its own personnel.

Is UNIFIL actually taking on Hizbullah's arms caches south of the Litani River, or is it only reacting to each individual "serious breach" as if it were an isolated incident?

Best photo caption EVER!!!1!

2009-05-22T17:32:00.000-07:00

"President Obama enjoys his new Steelers jersey after making children cry"

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcwashington.com/video.

Ken Loach: anti-Semite or Left looney?

2009-05-19T00:06:00.001-07:00

Five hundred bucks is apparently the going rate to perpetuate the blood libel. At least, that amount of money -- donated to the Edinburgh International Film Festival by the Israeli Embassy to the UK -- that film director Ken Loach believes makes the EIFF complicit in Israeli "massacres and state terrorism in Gaza."

A donation – believed to be in the region of £300 – was to have been used to pay travel costs to the capital for Tali Shalom Ezer, a graduate of the film and television department at Tel Aviv University, who directed a short feature film, Surrogate.

SPSC, which campaigns in Scotland against Israel's attacks on Gaza, orchestrated a torrent of e-mail protests from people opposed to the move. But festival organisers refused to budge. EIFF managing director Ginnie Atkinson said not accepting support from one particular country "would set a dangerous precedent by politicising a cultural and artistic mission".

The SPSC then enlisted the support of Mr Loach, well known for his support of Palestinian human rights.

Mr Loach released a statement through the SPSC which read: "I'm sure many film-makers will be as horrified as I am to learn the Edinburgh International Film Festival is accepting money from Israel. The massacres and state terrorism in Gaza make this money unacceptable. With regret, I must urge all who might consider visiting the festival to show their support for the Palestinian nation and stay away."

The following day the EIFF – which has since been in talks with Mr Loach – did a U-turn. It said: "The EIFF are firm believers in free cultural exchange and do not wish to restrict film-makers' abilities to communicate artistically with international audiences on the basis that they come from a troubled regime.

"Although the festival is considered wholly cultural and apolitical, we consider the opinions of the film industry as a whole and, as such, accept that one film-maker's recent statement speaks on behalf of the film community, therefore we will be returning the funding issued by the Israeli embassy."

One hopes that Tali Shalom Ezer will get the money directly for travel expenses, and will show up at the EIFF to spit in Ken Loach's eye (figuratively, of course).

Assumptions, linkage, priority

2009-05-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

From their meeting at the White House, it's clear that Barack Obama has one set, Binyamin Netanyahu has another.

Iran is Netanyahu's priority, on the assumption that it is determined to develop nuclear weapons with which to annihilate Israel. The Palestinian state is Obama's priority, on the assumption that the Muslim world will become pacific once there is peace between Israel and the Palestinians (and that a Palestinian state would necessarily be at peace with Israel).

On Iran:

Following four hours of talks with Obama, Netanyahu told Israeli reporters gathered across from the White House that there are no green, red or yellow lights from the US but rather a shared sense that Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapons capacity.

Speaking side by side at the Oval Office earlier in the day, Obama stressed the importance the US places on Israeli security and its recognition of how the Jewish state perceives the threat from Teheran, even as he defended his policy of engagement.

Obama rejected the notion of "artificial timelines" in negotiations with Iran, which he indicated he expected would begin in earnest after the Iranian election on June 12 and could subsequently expand to include direct talks between Washington and the Islamic republic.

At the same time, he stressed that "we're not going to have talk forever" and allow Teheran to develop a nuclear weapon while negotiations go on, offering that "we'll probably be able to gauge and do a reassessment by the end of the year."

He also noted that "we are not foreclosing a range of steps, including much stronger international sanctions, in assuring that Iran understands that we are serious."

Israel has been pushing for a timeline on the United States's diplomatic efforts out of concern that Iran could use the talks to run out the clock. The notion of a timeline was just one subject where differences were expected to emerge between the two leaders as they sat down for their first meeting as respective heads of government in a visit deemed crucial for determining the contours of their relationship and personal rapport.

On a Palestinian state:

Asked about reports in the media that Israel felt progress on Iran needed to be linked to progress with the Palestinians, Obama explicitly rejected the formulation, saying, "If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way: To the extent that we can make peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with the potential Iranian threat."

But he added that both issues needed to be addressed independently on their own merits.

And Netanyahu, with Obama nodding along, said each issue could be helpful in reaching a positive conclusion on the other, but that there was no "policy linkage." Netanyahu also thanked Obama for his willingness to keep all options on the table when it comes to Iran.

And following the meeting with Obama, he told the Israeli media that he sensed a seriousness in the new American administration to push the Arab states to take meaningful steps toward peace with Israel that he had not seen before.

In his remarks to the press, Obama said "there is a recognition that the Palestinians are going to have to do a better job providing the kinds of security assurances that Israelis would need to achieve a two-state solution, [and] gain additional legitimacy and credibility with their own people, and delivering services."

He also said, "The other Arab states have to be more supportive and be bolder in seeking potential normalization with Israel."

But he cautioned Israel that it would have to make difficult steps, too, including improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, and stressed that "there is a clear understanding that we have to make progress on settlements; that settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward."

Each regards the other as basing policy on flawed assumptions: Obama regards Iran as a problem but not an immediate existential threat to Israel, and Netanyahu regards a prematurely-born Palestinian state as a breeding and staging ground for war against Israel. It seems that Netanyahu's assumptions are more grounded in real-life experience and knowledge of the Middle East.

Although the meeting seemed friendly and fruitful, the deep differences in how they see the exigencies of the situation are likely to lead to severe tensions between Israel and the United States. Where Israel sees immediate action against Iran as vital to its own survival, the United States will put pressure on Israel to make immediate concessions to the Palestinians. The inevitable clash of assumptions, priorities and linkage will sorely test the US-Israeli relationship.

I blame science shows on TV

2009-05-15T16:01:00.000-07:00

For the first time since the Gallup Poll began asking the question in 1995, more Americans identify themselves as pro-life than pro-choice.

A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

The new results, obtained from Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, represent a significant shift from a year ago, when 50% were pro-choice and 44% pro-life. Prior to now, the highest percentage identifying as pro-life was 46%, in both August 2001 and May 2002.

The May 2009 survey documents comparable changes in public views about the legality of abortion. In answer to a question providing three options for the extent to which abortion should be legal, about as many Americans now say the procedure should be illegal in all circumstances (23%) as say it should be legal under any circumstances (22%). This contrasts with the last four years, when Gallup found a strong tilt of public attitudes in favor of unrestricted abortion.

You know, with all of those shows on TLC and the Discovery Channel showing how fetal viability is being pushed earlier and earlier, not to mention showing the simple images of fetal development, it's not surprising that more and more Americans are thinking of unborn children as people with rights, rather than clumps of cells akin to tumors or parasites.

It seems that the people who think that the GOP is swinging too far right for the American people on social issues are the ones who are out of touch with the pulse of the people. They seem to be bitter and clinging to their 1970s attitudes.

Is Paris burning? Not yet, but...

2009-05-12T12:05:00.000-07:00

Two men in an Italian prison were overheard plotting to blow up Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Oh, and British targets, too.

Italian police on Tuesday arrested two alleged al-Qaeda terrorists suspected of planning attacks on Britain and France from inside prison as part of a Europe-wide network.

During wiretapped conversations the men discussed an attack on Charles De Gaulle airport outside Paris and spoke of the need to "strike at the British", Italian police said.

Bassam Ayachi, 62, a Syrian imam with French citizenship, and Raphael Frederic Gendron, 33, a Frenchman who converted to Islam, were allegedly part of an al-Qaeda cell operating in Europe.

They have been in prison in Bari, a port town in southern Italy, since November, when they were arrested on suspicion of smuggling five illegal immigrants into Italy aboard a camping trailer.

Ayachi is a well-known extremist preacher based in Belgium and mentor to Malika el-Aroud, a leading female figure in al-Qaeda whose first husband was killed in an attack against Ahmed Shah Massoud, then leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

El-Aroud was arrested in Belgium a month after Ayachi and accused of planning a suicide attack while Prime Minister Gordon Brown was attending a meeting of European leaders in Brussels.

Italian officers placed a listening device in the cell shared by Ayachi and Gendron.

In one bugged conversation, the pair discussed "striking the British" and launching a Sept 11-style attack using an aircraft, although the target was not specified.

"They are key figures in al-Qaeda's European organisation," said Giorgio Manari, the chief of police in Bari. The wiretap evidence had enabled investigators to "nip the plot in the bud", he said.

The men were served warrants charging them with criminal association linked to international terrorism and will remain in custody.

They were also suspected of recruiting militants for suicide attacks in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Police said the pair had for years lived in Belgium, where Bassam was an imam at an extremist Islamic centre and one of al-Qaeda's "spiritual guides", while Gendron, a computer expert, was the "media propaganda point man, via the internet, for the French-speaking community."

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that these aren't the only two Islamic terror plotters in Europe. What with the totally botched raid on the Easter bombing plotters in Manchester, UK,, it seems that it's only a matter of time before the luck of European law enforcement runs out. It makes one wonder how much luck is left in the reservoir of American law enforcement....

All's well that ends well, right?

2009-05-10T18:35:00.000-07:00

Except the ending of Roxana Saberi's story hasn't yet been written, and there is no assurance whatsoever that it will end well: Iran hears appeal of jailed American journalist.

Iranian judges yesterday heard the appeal of the American-Iranian journalist whose eight-year jail sentence for spying has threatened to derail attempts to improve relations between the two countries.

Roxana Saberi was taken to court from Tehran's Evin prison early on Sunday morning wearing blue chador and looking pale and gaunt, according to witnesses.

But her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khoramshahi, said the case was heard in a "good atmosphere" and that he was hopeful that the sentence would be changed. He also said the verdict would probably be handed down later this week.

"They gave us enough time... to present our defence," he said. "They also gave enough time to my client to defend herself."

The court is expected to deliver its verdict this week.

Miss Saberi was born to an Iranian father and Japanese mother and grew up in the United States with dual nationality. She was at first charged with buying alcohol and with continuing to report from Iran after her press accreditation expired, but at the trial she was accused of espionage.

She was sentenced not long after President Barack Obama had made an online video address to the Iranian people arguing for a new start in relations between the two long-standing diplomatic adversaries.

While President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton wait for Iran to unclench its fist, they might reflect on the fact that said fist is clenched around Roxana Saberi's throat. It's unclear why her safety and freedom are any less of a concern than that of Capt. Phillips: the only difference in the cases is the nature of the pirates who seized the captives.

UPDATE: Roxana Saberi has been released from Evin Prison, her 8-year sentence commuted to 2 years, suspended. She has yet to leave Iran, however, and is likely not safe until she does. Interestingly, President Obama made more note of her release than he did of her captivity.

The release of Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi from Tehran's infamous Evin prison has been welcomed by rights groups and Western governments, including U.S. President Barack Obama, who called it a "humanitarian gesture."

Yet many questions remain about how Saberi's initial detention on a relatively minor charge evolved into a conviction for espionage and an eight-year prison sentence.

While analysts might not agree on the reasons behind Iran's decision to free Saberi, there is broad agreement that the case was politically motivated.

The rapid escalation of the charges against the 32-year-old journalist, followed by a fast-track appeals process that resulted in a lesser sentence, hint at the political nature behind the case.

The initial charges leveled against Saberi in late January related to the purchase of a bottle of wine, which is illegal in Iran. Those charges quickly widened into charges of spying for the United States, which in turn resulted in a guilty verdict and an eight-year prison sentence handed down by a revolutionary court.

Finally, amid international outcry over Saberi's imprisonment, an appeals court ruled on the case within 24 hours of hearing it, resulting in a two-year suspended sentence that leaves Saberi free to leave the country.

The revolutionary side of Pete Seeger

2009-05-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

Mark Newgent in The Examiner (Baltimore edition) comments on the 90th birthday celebration for Pete Seeger.

Iconic folk singer Pete Seeger turned 90 last week and the occasion was marked by a concert at Madison Square Garden featuring musical luminaries Bruce Springsteen, Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Joan Baez and Ani DiFranco, and even a letter from President Barack Obama delivered to thousands of adoring fans.

Newgent points out that Seeger has been a lifelong Communist, as in member of the Communist Party USA. Like all CPUSA members, in the late 1930s, Seeger vehemently opposed U.S. involvement in Europe's mounting preparations for war against Hitler - because of the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact that made Hitler and Stalin formal allies in the partition of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union. However, when Hitler turned on Stalin, Seeger became a gung ho proponent of the U.S. joining the war against Nazi Germany.

It wasn't until many years later than Seeger realized that Stalin was a monster who destroyed many of his people. But it's hard to admit that you've been that wrong for that long, as evidenced in Seeger's apology:

I'll apologize for a number of things, such as thinking that Stalin was simply a 'hard driver' and not a supremely cruel misleader. I guess anyone who calls himself or herself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition, the burning of heretics by Protestants, the slaughter of Jews and Moslems by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. could consider apologizing for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests, Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza, of Southern white Democrats, of Franco Spain, for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps.

Pete Seeger was and is a great admirer of Mao Zhedong. He has for many, many years performed a bit called "The Three Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points of Attention," in which he recites the rules for revolution postulated by Mao in 1928 and used as Red Army doctrine in the overthrow of China's government. Seeger recites the Three Rules and Eight Points, then whistles a happy tune. Seeger recites the People's Daily translation:

The Three Main Rules of Discipline:

* Obey orders in all your actions.
* Do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the masses.
* Turn in everything captured.

The Eight Points for Attention:

* Speak politely.
* Pay fairly for what you buy.
* Return everything you borrow.
* Pay for anything you damage.
* Do not hit or swear at people.
* Do not damage crops.
* Do not take liberties with women.
* Do not ill-treat captives.

Certainly the respect Mao's army showed to the peasantry helped him gain popular support over the Kuomintang and eventually victory in his revolution. However, as ruler, Mao presided over the mass famines of the Great Leaps Forward and the mass murders and brutal oppression of the Cultural Revolution.

Seeger recorded The Three Rules on one of his hit albums of a live concert with Arlo Guthrie - in 1975, when the horrors of the Cultural Revolution and the various Great Leaps Forward were well known. As opposed to his regret for Stalin's excesses, Seeger has no apologies for his love of Mao, one of the greatest mass murderers of all time.

They know how it plays in Madrid, London and DC - if not Peoria

2009-05-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

The Taliban in Afghanistan are accused of using hand grenades to ensure that there were civilian casualties to show to the media in the wake of an American air strike: Taliban blamed for 'air strike' deaths.

The claim, based on the account of US special forces involved in the fighting, comes the day after the Red Cross and Afghan officials blamed American warplanes for killing more than 100 people in Bala Balak, a Taliban-held district in Farah province.

The top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, expressed doubt about whether the civilians were killed by American air strikes.

"We have some other information that leads us to distinctly different conclusions about the cause of the civilian casualties," McKiernan said.

US Marine special operations forces, embedded with Afghan soldiers when the fighting erupted, claim the Taliban lobbed hand grenades into civilian houses before pretending the dead were victims of an American air strike, a United Nations official said.

One can hardly blame the Taliban for murdering civilians in this way (if it proves that the allegations are true). After all, they know how willing the press and European public opinion (as well as American public opinion on the two coasts) are to believe that American forces wantonly target civilians. From the Taliban's perspective, it would be a waste not to exploit that propaganda tool.

Another slice of life from southern Africa

2009-05-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

Quite literally, a slice that offers hope of life: Botswana to circumcise half a million men in Aids fight.

The southern African country, which has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates, plans to circumcise 460,000 men over the next five years, after a series of studies found that circumcised men were two to three times less likely to contract HIV than uncircumcised men.

"For the public health benefits of the preventive effect of circumcision to be realised, the Ministry of Health is supposed to cover 80 per cent of eligible males in Botswana," said Janet Mwambona, a public health specialist in charge of the project.

Botswana has already benefited from the introduction of anti-retroviral drugs. Botswana's HIV prevalence among pregnant women between the ages of 15 and 24 has stayed between 35 and 37 per cent since 2001. The rate among older pregnant women was 43 per cent in 2003.

Through this latest campaign, Botswana expects to cut that rate further.

"Where you stand depends on where you sit"

2009-05-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

For example, there's where you stood when you sat on a stool at a campaign town hall meeting.

And then there's the view from the Big Chair in the Oval Office, which apparently can make you stand in a very different place: U.S. May Revive Guantánamo Military Courts.

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.

Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

Continuing the military commissions in any form would probably prompt sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as some of Mr. Obama’s political allies because the troubled system became an emblem of the effort to use Guantánamo to avoid the American legal system.

Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies.

Civil liberties and human rights groups accuse President Obama of betraying a key campaign promise.

Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that Mr. Obama had pledged to return the country to the rule of law and that “continuing with the military commission system would be a retreat from that promise.”

Gabor Rona, the international legal director of Human Rights First, said military commissions would only be necessary if the administration wanted to assure convictions that might not otherwise be certain.

“The administration is making a huge mistake,” Mr. Rona said, “if they believe getting convictions through suspect methods is more valuable than letting justice take its course.”

I hope that these groups hold President Obama's feet to the fire, unflinchingly and unrelentingly, on this issue. President Obama needs to pay the full political price -- not for continuing a policy necessary to the security of the United States and its citizens, but for opposing it out of ignorance and political pandering in the first place.

Iran rushes a woman to the gallows

2009-05-03T23:37:00.000-07:00

In case you hadn't noticed, the ruling regime in Iran is a throwback to barbarism. Latest case in point: Delara Darabi.

The prison authorities hanged Miss Darabi, 23, even though the head of Iran's judiciary granted her a two-month stay of execution on April 19 amid international outrage over her case. They also did not give her lawyer the required 48 hours notice.

Horrific new details have emerged of her last desperate plea for help from Rasht prison as jail guards came to lead her away.

Miss Darabi made a tearful call early on Friday to her parents to say she could see the gallows and noose, according to media reports from Tehran.

"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she pleaded. But a prison official then grabbed the phone and told her distraught mother: "We are going to execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it."

Apart from the rank cruelty of taunting her parents by telephone as they dragged her to the gallows, the regime's treatment of Ms. Darabi has other dark implications.

The execution of a young woman whose case has become an international cause célèbre is a further damaging blow to President Barack Obama's attempts to thaw US relations with the Islamic regime. Roxana Saberi, an American-Iranian journalist, is on hunger strike in a Tehran prison after being convicted of espionage in a show trial last month.

Miss Darabi's case gained widespread attention after moving paintings and drawings that she made in her prison cell were shown around the world. She developed her talent as a painter behind bars.

Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen are the only countries to execute people for crimes committed when they are under 18. Miss Darabi was 17 when she admitted killing her 58-year-old uncle in a burglary in 2003 but she quickly retracted the confession, saying she had taken the blame to save her boyfriend.

I am a firm believer in capital punishment in the USA, and even disagree with the ban here on executing minors -- I think a 16-year-old has the capacity to act as an adult and should be punished as one if he or she is guilty of capital murder.

But I don't support executing a person whose guilt is not conclusively proven, whose due process in the judicial system has not been taken to its conclusion and whose execution violates all of the standards and safeguards that a society places on its own criminal justice system. It's plain that the execution of Ms. Darabi was a political demonstration that the Iranians will do with their citizens and their policies whatever they wish, without regard to outside influence... other than the military kind, that is.

As the article notes, that bodes ill for the American journalist Roxana Saberi. It also bodes ill for the prospect of a peaceful negotiated resolution to the dispute over Iran's nuclear programs. (But I hear tell the Israeli Air Force is practicing long-range air-to-air refueling.)

Brooks on Obama

2009-04-30T23:25:00.001-07:00

No, not David Brooks.

Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal mentions an anecdote from Harry Reid's upcoming book.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in a book out next week, tells of congratulating freshman Sen. Obama on a phenomenal speech. Without a hint of conceit, Mr. Obama replied, "Harry, I have a gift."

And, of course, one immediately recalls Mel Brooks.

What the Manhattan overflight fiasco really means

2009-04-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/video.

I was in New York on a business trip on 9/11/2001. I was on a shuttle to LaGuardia that went into the Midtown tunnel at 8:45 AM - when we came out, the bus driver told us to look at the WTC because the radio news said a plane hit it. We saw the tower burning. A few minutes later, we reached a point on the expressway where we could see the WTC again -- and both towers were burning. Couldn't figure that one out -- until later, at the airport, when we heard about the second plane, and saw the towers collapse on CNN.

My trip took me back INTO Manhattan the next afternoon. The streets were deserted, except for some taxis and emergency vehicles, and ash particles wafted through the air, even up at 57th St. Everyone at dinner and at the hotel was on the edge of panic - rumors of more bombs at the Empire State Building, worries about friends and colleagues and loved ones...

And for months after, on return trips to Manhattan, I'd be walking through the city and enjoying the fine weather -- and then come across the "Have You Seen This Person" flyers on a bus shelter, or the children's drawings sent from Iowa to a NYFD fire station.

My colleague who worked across the street from the WTC arrived at the Canal St. subway station at 8:45 AM and saw everything. He still can't talk about just what he witnessed.

I am deeply grateful to the men and women of the Bush Administration who ensured that my home state of California didn't suffer a similar attack, and that my family and friends and neighbors were spared the horror and grief that the people of New York experienced -- and still feel to this day. What this latest fiasco tells us in the starkest and most definitive terms is that President Obama has a total "9/10" mindset, and no personal understanding of the magnitude and significance of the 9/11 attacks and what they meant to the people who were directly affected.

Three American women

2009-04-27T18:56:00.000-07:00

Funny how everyone thought that pirates taking an American ship captain hostage was huge news and a national security crisis, and President Obama received plaudits for ordering Navy SEALs onto the scene with a brief to use deadly force to rescue the hostage -- yet there's next to no attention being paid to THREE American journalists, all women, being held hostage by far more dangerous criminals.

American journalists Laura Ling, rigtht, and Euna Lee. Photo: AP

April 18, 2009: Roxana Saberi, a 31-year-old dual American-Iranian citizen. Photo: AP

Euna Lee and Laura Ling are being held by the criminal regime of Kim Jong-Il in North Korea.

The two women journalists Euna Lee, a Korean-American, and Laura Ling, a Chinese-American, were arrested two weeks ago after straying across North Korea’s northwestern border with China while on assignment.

They now appear to be caught up in the middle of a high-stakes game of “diplomatic blackmail” as tensions rise over North Korea’s plans to conduct a missile-test in defiance of UN resolutions.

That report was from April 1st. The missile test has come and gone, but the women remain hostages.

North Korea is proceeding with a trial against two Korean-American journalists from California, despite witnesses claiming they were detained when North Korean border guards entered Chinese territory to seize them while their cameras were rolling. The trial will be held behind closed doors, and foreign governments have expressed concern the process will not allow the journalists a fair hearing or even a defense.

Ling and Lee were reportedly interviewing women who lived in the border area about their treatment under the Communist regime. At least one witness has said they were filming from Chinese territory when one or more North Korean border guards crossed into Chinese territory and seized them and their equipment at gunpoint.

The two American journalists have reportedly been allowed consular access, in accord with international law, and a Swedish delegation has visited with them to check on their condition and their needs. The American government is saying their detention is unfounded and requests have been made for China to intervene, on grounds its sovereign territory was violated by the border guards.

To be clear: an eyewitness account says that the North Koreans took two American journalists hostage in a criminal cross-border raid, just as Hamas took Gilad Schalit hostage and Hezbollah took Regev and Goldwasser hostage (well, in the latter case, took their bodies hostage, as the two Israelis were murdered in the kidnap attempt).

In Iran, another American has been taken hostage -- in this case, the sham trial has already concluded, and the woman is in an Iranian prison.

An American journalist jailed by Iran on charges of spying for the United States "is in bad condition," her father said Monday [April 27], almost a week after she went on hunger strike.

Reza Saberi said he and his wife Akiko visited their daughter Roxana in Tehran's Evin jail on Sunday, taking flowers for her 32nd birthday.

"She is very, very weak and frail ... she is in a bad condition. She can hardly stand up," he told Reuters. "I'm worried about her health. I'm worried about her life."

The 68-year-old said he pleaded with her to stop the hunger strike, but she resisted during the 20-minute visit.

Roxana Saberi, a dual American-Iranian citizen, was convicted more than a week ago and sentenced to eight years in prison after a swift, one-day trial behind closed doors. She began her hunger strike Tuesday to protest her imprisonment, her father said.

"She said that she has started a hunger strike and this is the fifth day and that she will continue until she is free. I tried to tell her that this can be dangerous, but she didn't give me any time to protest," her father, Reza Saberi, told The Associated Press.

What is President Obama's response? At the recent Summit of the Americas, he at least acknowledged the case of Roxana Saberi:

"I am gravely concerned with her safety and well-being," Obama said of Roxana Saberi.

"I have complete confidence that she was not engaging in any sort of espionage," he added. "She is an Iranian-American who was interested in the country which her family came from. And it is appropriate for her to be treated as such and to be released."

Wow! Strong words, indeed. It is appropriate for her to be released.

Well, that's more than he's said on behalf of Euna Lee and Laura Ling. For them, not a word has passed the President's lips -- not that's been reported publicly, anyway.

So it seems that the inauguration of our new President was also a declaration of open season on Americans for all rogue states. Not only are those regimes not unclenching their fists, they're closing them tighter around the throats of three American women.

Chinese "hack" Iranian fruit stands

2009-04-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

The nefarious and unscrupulous Chinese have attacked the revolutionary purity of the Islamic republic with counterfeit Israeli citrus.

Here's a juicy story: Panic erupted over the weekend in Teheran after Iranian authorities were horrified to discover that citrus fruit being snatched up by buyers across the capital were marked as Israeli-grown Jaffa sweeties.
Israeli-grown Jaffa sweeties.

It was later discovered, however, that the "sweeties" were likely Chinese fruit fraudulently marketed as the prestigious Israeli product.

Two Iranian press agencies reported Sunday that citrus with stickers bearing the words "Jaffa sweetie Israel PO" had appeared in Teheran, but that the suspicious fruit had been packed in boxes that clearly said "Product of China."

Nevertheless, Teheran immediately responded to the "Zionist" infiltration.

According to Iran-based Press TV, Hossen Safaie, the head of the Fruit and Vegetable Distribution Center of Teheran, expressed his hope that the lawbreakers would be brought to justice and that "his organization will not allow those who want to make a profit ignore the Iranian citizens' religious and revolutionary learning."

In case you were wondering, "The Jaffa sweetie, a pomelo-grapefruit hybrid, is popular in world markets due to its taste, low seed count and easy-to-remove peel."

Apparently rather a lot of Israeli produce makes its way to Arab countries that technically have a boycott against Israeli products. Naturally -- where else in the region do growers produce avocados, persimmons and other similar fruit?

A glimmer of hope

2009-04-26T19:36:00.000-07:00

Underscoring the difference between Gaza and the West Bank:

Palestinian security forces on Sunday gave the IDF an explosive belt found in the West Bank town of Salfit.

Palestinian sources said that belt contained eight kilograms of TNT and that it was ready for detonation.

A Hamas operative arrested by the Palestinian Authority some two weeks ago led the security forces to the belt's hiding place.

A Palestinian official quoted by Israel Radio said the explosive belt was prepared by Samar Dawarhaka, a Hamas operative killed by the IDF some four years ago.

After 3,000 years, still strangers in a strange land

2009-04-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

Jews have lived on the Arabian Peninsula since well before the birth of Mohammed and the rise of Islam. A remnant still do in a few places -- but perhaps one of those places, Yemen, will be Judenrein soon.

KHARIF, Yemen – In this village in northern Yemen, where a kosher butcher slaughters chickens and the school bus carries young boys in side curls along a dirt track to their Hebrew studies, one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Arab world is fighting for its survival.

Yemen's Jews, here and elsewhere in the country, are thought to have roots dating back nearly 3,000 years to King Solomon. The community used to number 60,000 but shrank dramatically when most left for the newborn state of Israel.

Those remaining, variously estimated to number 250 to 400, are feeling new and sometimes violent pressure from Yemeni Muslims, lately inflamed by Israel's fierce offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza that cost over 1,000 Palestinian lives.

They face a Yemeni government that is ambivalent — publicly supportive but also lax in keeping its promises — in an Arab world where Islamic extremism and hostility to minorities are generally on the rise.

"There is hardly a mosque sermon that's free of bigotry. The government's own political rhetoric marginalizes the Jews, and civil society is too weak to protect them," says Mansour Hayel, a Muslim Yemeni and human rights activist who is an expert on Yemen's Jewry.

One can clearly see whether the Arab and Muslim world has become a better or worse place -- even in terms of the welfare of its Muslim citizens -- since it expelled the bulk of its Jewish population.

Taliban booby-traps children's toys

2009-04-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

In a time-honored form of war crime, the Taliban in Pakistan are booby-trapping toys in an effort to terrorize families by putting bombs in children's toys. The latest example is a soccer ball bomb outside a girls' school.

The football explosion happened in a village in the mountains of Lower Dir. The children, five of them girls, found the ball as they were returning from school. Seven victims belonged to the same family.

Pakistan's Interior Ministry chief, Rehman Malik, blamed the Taliban saying: "The Taliban have exposed their real face by killing innocent children."

He said investigators would check whether the children were targeted because their families had refused to let the Taliban take them for training, including as suicide attackers.

He also appealed to parents across North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to stop children accepting food or toys from strangers.

And they say that American airstrikes drive civilians into the arms of the Taliban? Anyone who seeks the shelter of their embrace deserves whatever they get.

Remember the Spanish flu?

2009-04-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

Of course you don't. It killed 50 million people in 1918-1919.

Now the swine flu outbreak in Mexico has some parallels:

"This is an animal strain of the H1N1 virus, and it has pandemic potential because it is infecting people," said the WHO's director-general, Margaret Chan, as public health experts gathered in emergency session in Geneva to discuss the outbreak.

The mutant vaccine-resistant strain - a previously unseen combination of pig, bird and human and viruses - is causing panic in Mexico's capital, one of the world's biggest cities where most of the victims have died.

Mexico City's mayor has cancelled all public events for 10 days and school, colleges and museums have been closed. Alarmed residents are stockpiling food to hole up at home or packing bags and leaving the city - an exodus that could spread the disease.

Most of the victims have been aged 25 to 45 and the disease is thought to have been passed from person-to-person, heightening fears that the virus could be the beginning of a pandemic. Men and women in their prime were the greatest casualties of the so-called Spanish flu that wiped out about 50 million people after the First World War.

More than 1,000 people have fallen ill in Mexico with suspected flu, while eight people in the bordering US states of California and Texas have also been infected. In New York, 75 children from a private school in Queens who fell sick with flu-like symptoms last week were being tested for the disease after it emerged that some pupils recently visited Mexico.

Miss Chan said the strain is still poorly understood and the situation is evolving quickly. "We do not yet have a complete picture of the epidemiology or the risk, including possible spread beyond the currently affected areas," she said. "Nonetheless, in the assessment of WHO, this is a serious situation."

Good news: Tamiflu works to reduce the symptoms of those infected with this new strain. Bad news: there ain't nearly enough Tamiflu to help everyone if this becomes a pandemic.

Wash your hands often. Avoid crowds. Consider a face mask if going to an area with an outbreak.

Is this mass murderer now in custody?

2009-04-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

On a day when at least 75 Iraqis were murdered in suicide bombings in Baghdad and at a Shia shrine in Diyala, the Iraqi security forces announced the arrest of the mastermind of the bombings, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq.

Great news, if true:

The Islamic State of Iraq is an umbrella group of militant Sunni factions which is said to be dominated by Baghdadi's al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is affiliated to "core" al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

His arrest, which could not be confirmed, and even his death have been reported before. Security experts have speculated in the past that Baghdadi was a character invented by some extremist groups rather than a real person.

Let's cross our fingers and hope that this mass murderer is now out of commission. The early indications, though, aren't bright: Suicide bombers killed 60 people in an attack at a Shia Muslim shrine in Baghdad, the deadliest single terrorist strike in Iraq in almost a year.

The bombing brought the toll from suicide attacks in the country to almost 150 deaths in just 24 hours.

Two terrorists wearing vests packed with explosives approached separate entrances to the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in the Shia district of Kadhimiya. One blew himself up at the gates, while the second entered a courtyard before detonating his explosives.

Police said that at least 20 of those killed at the shrine - a frequent target of Sunni Muslim insurgents - were Iranian pilgrims.

A further 125 people were reported to have been injured in the attack.

It was the bloodiest terrorist operation in Iraq since 63 people died in a truck bombing in Baghdad on June 17 last year.

The shrine attack came a day after 89 people were killed in two suicide bombings, which targeted police and civilians in a square in central Baghdad and Shia pilgrims from Iran at a restaurant in Diyala province, north of the capital.

They followed the arrest on Thursday of a man who police in Baghdad claimed was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Missing link to the pinnipeds

2009-04-22T23:36:00.000-07:00

From Nature magazine, via Scientific Blogging, news of a missing link in the fossil record of the evolution of pinnipeds: Puijila Darwini - 'Missing Link' In Evolution Of Seals, Sea Lions And Walruses.

Modern seals, sea lions, and walruses all have flippers—limb adaptations for swimming in water. These adaptations evolved over time, as some terrestrial animals moved to a semi-aquatic lifestyle. Until now, the morphological evidence for this transition from land to water was weak.

Skeletal illustration of Puijila darwini. Credit: Mark A. Klingler/Carnegie
Museum of Natural History

"The remarkably preserved skeleton of Puijila had heavy limbs, indicative of well developed muscles, and flattened phalanges which suggests that the feet were webbed, but not flippers. This animal was likely adept at both swimming and walking on land. For swimming it paddled with both front and hind limbs. Puijila is the evolutionary evidence we have been lacking for so long," says Mary Dawson, curator emeritus of Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Portions of the Puijila darwini specimen were found in 2007 in deposits that accumulated in what was a crater lake in coastal Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada. A subsequent visit in 2008 yielded the basicranium, an important structure for determining taxonomic relationships.

Gee, is there any connection?

2009-04-22T23:10:00.000-07:00

So the American Nazis decided to go to Skokie on April 19 to join in the celebration at the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

Meanwhile, back in the Fatherland, Germany's Interior Minister reports that Neo-Nazi crimes in Germany soared last year by 16 per cent, according to new government figures:

The number of far-Right attacks rose to 20,422, with violent crimes up 5.6 per cent at 1,113 cases, including two killings.

Far-Right crimes accounted for two thirds of all "politically motivated" crimes last year, which reached 31,801 -- an increase of 11.4 percent and the highest level since 2001.

Wolfgang Schauble, the German interior minister, said the rise in politically motivated crime was disturbing. He swore that the Berlin government would counter it with a variety of "measures against extremism, racism and intolerance".

Mr Schauble said that the current grim economic conditions faced by Germany were "chillingly similar" to the desperate days of the 1920s and 30s which propelled the Nazis to power on the back of popular despair at mainstream politicians. These conditions, he feared, were luring more and more young people into the far-Right scene.

"They are attracting young people to a greater extent than the conventional far-Right scene has been able to so far," said Mr Schauble.

Hmmm... maybe these two stories are connected somehow.

Ya think?

Monty Python's Scotland Yard

2009-04-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

So, like, a couple of days before Easter, the whole of British law enforcement swoops down and arrests 11 Pakistani nationals and one British citizen in what the police call a "major terrorist plot." The police had to advance the timetable for their arrests because the Metropolitan Police's counterterrorism chief accidentally held a report on the plot in a way that let a press photographer get a clear and readable picture of it.

And now? 12 arrested after alleged 'Easter bomb plot' released without charge.

Eleven of the men - all Pakistani nationals - now face being deported after they were transferred into the custody of the UK Borders Agency.

They were released after investigators spent 13 days searching for evidence following the arrests from a number of addresses in Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire under the Terrorism Act.

Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith had previously claimed the operation had uncovered a "very big plot" against the UK, and police chiefs defended their actions yesterday.

However, questions are being asked as to the timing of the raids and the basis for the alleged intelligence of a plot given that no evidence was found.

The operation was run by Greater Manchester Police, together with MI5, but it was ultimately authorised by the then natonal head of counter-terrorism, Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick.

The raids led to his resignation, after he inadvertently allowed details of the operation to be photographed.

So the police believe that these men are a clear and present danger to Britain's security, but after 13 days of searching, they can't come up with concrete evidence to support that belief. Of course, Muslim advocacy groups in Britain are quick to point out that this is just more official harassment of their co-religionists:

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Instead of releasing them with good grace and making clear a mistake has been made, the government is seeking to deport them, citing a very vague national security threat. That is a very dishonourable way of proceeding."

Turn a terrorist plot into a propaganda victory against British counterterrorist operations. Brilliant.

It almost has me expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

The Jihadi Workout, or, Buns of Semtex

2009-04-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

Jane Fonda tapes being haram, the jihad has developed its own workout program: Workout tips for jihad offered by al-Qaeda supporting magazine.

Complete with photographs of men in white robes with scarves covering their faces performing a variety of squats and sit-ups, it advises supporters to keep in shape so that they can "strike hard" against their enemies.

There is also a warning against visiting "un-Islamic" western gyms including LA Fitness with their "music, semi-naked women, free mixing and the danger of showing off".

That last bit could explain this pose (it does get lonely on the North West Frontier):

Barack Obama and the Democratic Socialists of America - a contractual relationship

2008-10-09T00:53:00.000-07:00

So I was looking around for links to help someone connect the dots between Barack Obama and the Democratic Socialists of America, and what do I find (via the blog New Zeal) but this gem:

Chicago New Party Update
by Bruce Bentley

About 50 activists attended the Chicago New Party membership meeting in July. The purpose of the meeting was to update members on local activities and to hear appeals for NP support from four potential political candidates. The NP is being very active in organization building and politics. There are 300 members in Chicago. In order to build an organizational and financial base the NP is sponsoring house parties. Locally it has been successful both fiscally and in building a grassroots base. Nationwide it has resulted in 1000 people committed to monthly contributions. The NP's political strategy is to support progressive candidates in elections only if they have a concrete chance to "win". This has resulted in a winning ratio of 77 of 110 elections. Candidates must be approved via a NP political committee. Once approved, candidates must sign a contract with the NP. The contract mandates that they must have a visible and active relationship with the NP.

The political entourage included Alderman Michael Chandler, William Delgado, chief of staff for State Rep Miguel del Valle, and spokespersons for State Sen. Alice Palmer, Sonya Sanchez, chief of staff for State Sen. Jesse Garcia, who is running for State Rep in Garcia's District; and Barack Obama, chief of staff for State Sen. Alice Palmer. Obama is running for Palmer's vacant seat.

Michael Chandler thanked the NP for its support in his electoral victory. His achievements to date included obtaining an increase of 30 police in the 24th Ward, citizen involvement in street clean-up and establishment of a 24th Ward Organization. William Delgado is exploring whether to run for State Rep in the 3rd District. He is a former social worker and spoke with compassion and dynamism. He considers himself a community activist who wants to be an advocate for change in the community. His presence in political office would be a benefit to the democratic left.

Indeed it was an exciting evening because the NP has two crucial components. First, the NP is a true "Rainbow Coalition" consisting of both young and aged African-Americans, Hispanics and Caucasians. Although ACORN and SEIU Local 880 were the harbingers of the NP there was a strong presence of CoC and DSA (15% DSA). Moreover a good 8% were younger Generation X'ers who are critically needed. A more diverse representation of Labor is missing. Secondly, the NP is taking "action." Four political candidates were "there" seeking NP support. The NP is strategically organizing via house parties and tactically entering only elections that they can win. Furthermore they are organizing a campaign on the "Living Wage Ordinance" in the Chicago City Council.

The NP has the following working committees: political, membership/fund-raising, public relations, and legal/finance. If you would be interested in participating in one of these committees or in helping out with any other New Party activities, contact Jeff Caveney at (312) 939-7490.

You put that together with the later endorsement by the New Party of Barack Obama for State Senate, and you have the inescapable conclusion that Obama signed up for a “visible and active relationship with the NP.”

Leave it to a Kiwi to do the investigative reporting America's mainstream media won't do....

Another candidate voice

2008-09-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

A commenter at Ace of Spades blog says:

My husband does voice-over work. He's got a really good ear. He says it's Anne Gartlan. Differences in signal compression explain some slight differences, but both ads are the same woman. She pitches up, she slightly alters her accent across all her work, but the core of her voice is the same. A resonance and timbre that is clear in everyone of her spots, and you can pick her out.

Posted by: SarahW at September 22, 2008 06:57 PM

Listen to her political demo reel (QuickTime download). Sure sounds like her, and the political client list is solidly Democratic.

From a June 2006 article in Campaigns & Elections:

An accomplished voiceover artist, Gartlan has done work for many Democratic candidates including Al Gore, Jon Corzine, Leonard Boswell and a number of New York state candidates. Gartlan's non-political work includes a commercial for a laxative (which is among her favorite commercials because of the tone of voice she uses in it). She said the voice she uses in this commercial is a party hit. One of the most challenging projects she has ever done was an audio book that required her to voice five different Southern women of the same age from the same town.

Is this the voice?

2008-09-22T20:47:00.000-07:00

So, McCain DID pitch a curveball -- and what a curveball! Sarah Palin has the Democrats tying themselves in knots, and resorting to slimy tactics that make me want to gag.

As a sidelight on the story at The Jawa Report about how David Axelrod seems to be 'astroturfing' smears of Sarah Palin all over the Internet, I was curious to see if one could find the name of the announcer Obama uses for his regular video ads. I think it's Cedering Fox.

Cedering Fox was the voice actor who did the in-hall announcing at the Pepsi Center during the DNC Convention this year. She's also a longtime voice-over talent on Democratic Party and candidate spots through her affiliation with Greer, Margolis, Mitchell, Burns and Associates (GMMB), a political consulting and advocacy advertising agency.

Listen to her voice demo and then listen to the Palin smear video. Note in both cases the deep timbre of the voice, the sibilant 's' sounds, and how on the demo reel she varies her voice characterization just as the actor on the Palin video uses a different voice for the Alaskan Independence quote compared to the rest of the ad.

Promo Reel

Not that this is Earth-shattering, just interesting.

John McCain just might pitch a curveball

2008-08-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

Apparently John McCain's campaign has floated the trial balloon of a Jewish running mate -- and not the boring-as-plain-matzah Joe Lieberman: A young Jewish congressman from the battleground state of Virginia has joined the shortlist to be John McCain's vice-presidential running mate.

With strong backing from hard-line conservatives, Eric Cantor [right] would shore up many of John McCain's weaknesses Photo: AP

Eric Cantor, 45, would be a dramatic choice for Mr McCain, who is running almost level with Barack Obama in national polls but whose aides believe he needs to shake-up the White House race if he is to prevail in November's general election.

Aides to Mr McCain revealed that Mr Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives, had been asked to submit documents as part of a rigorous vetting process to hunt out any closet skeletons.

He joins a shortlist believed to include Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and Mr McCain's bitter rival during the Republican primaries, Tim Pawlenty, Minnesota governor, and Rob Portman, a former Ohio congressman and budget director in the Bush administration.

Of the four, Mr Cantor would be by far the most exiting - though potentially risky - choice. A prodigious fundraiser with a young, photogenic family, support from evangelical Christians and strong backing from hard-line conservatives, he would shore up many of Mr McCain's weaknesses.

Mr Cantor would be the first Jewish vice-president, an historic milestone that Senator Joe Lieberman just missed in 2000 when Al Gore lost to George W Bush by 567 votes.

It was probably Mr Lieberman's presence on the ticket that enabled Mr Gore to get so close in Florida, where Jewish voters are an important factor. Mr Lieberman has since left the Democratic party and joined forces with Mr McCain. Campaigning by both Mr Lieberman for a McCain-Cantor ticket in Florida could give the Republican a powerful advantage in the swing state.

Virginia has been a traditionally Republican state but is very much in play in 2008 after a steady trend towards Democrats. Mr Obama is strongly considering choosing Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia, as his running mate.

It might be a good move: it would throw a monkey wrench into Obama's efforts to reassure the Jewish community that he's good for Israel. It also makes it tough to paint McCain as in the pocket of the Christian Right.

Boy, that Abbas sure is brave -- with other people's lives

2008-08-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

So Hamas is sweeping through Gaza City and rounding up or wiping out Fatah-affiliated clans and fighters. In a fit of humanitarianism, Israel admitted almost 200 of the fleeing Fatah fighters to save them from being massacred, sending some of their wounded to Israeli hospitals.

Now Israel wants to move along the able-bodied among these refugees. You'd think they'd be welcome in the West Bank, which is the only area that's secure for Fatah members.

You'd be wrong: Watchdog petitions court against return of Fatah refugees.

The Association for Civil Right in Israel petitioned the High Court of Justice on Sunday to prevent the state from returning Fatah refugees to Gaza after they fled the territory on Saturday.

The petitioners stated that forcing the Fatah loyalists to return to the Strip could endanger their lives and called it a serious violation of human rights and of Israeli law.

The court ordered the state to respond to the petition by Monday.

Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to grant West Bank asylum to dozens of supporters who fled Hamas-ruled Gaza to Israel under fire, during fierce factional fighting.

Abbas stood his ground, with aides explaining that he felt his embattled Fatah group must maintain a presence in Gaza. The escape posed a dilemma for Abbas. After the Hamas takeover of Gaza last summer, he had agreed to resettle some 250 of his Gaza loyalists in the West Bank.

It's been a costly arrangement - the refugees each get $350 a month, in addition to government salaries, and Abbas's cash-strapped government covers rent for dozens of the most senior among them. The 2007 exodus also sent a message that Fatah is abandoning Gaza to Hamas.

Abbas wanted to send a different message this time, aides said.

"Fatah officials in Gaza should stay in their posts and should not leave Gaza to Hamas," Fahmi Zaghrir, a West Bank spokesman for Fatah, said Sunday. An exception would be made for those wanted by Hamas, added Nimr Hamad, an Abbas adviser.

However, there were concerns that the returnees could face mistreatment by Hamas.

Hamas confirmed it detained the first group of 32 who were sent back to Gaza on Sunday. The organization said it released all but five in that group.

Gee, it's sure brave of Abbas to insist that his Fatah members go back to the Gaza Strip unarmed to face up to Hamas. Wonder how many of them will decide that Hamas membership offers a better career path -- or even just a better chance of survival -- than sticking with the pathetically weak Fatah Party.

We can't have nuclear POWER, but we can have nuclear TOURISM?

2008-07-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

This is a bizarre bit of news from Washington State: Manhattan Project reactor nears landmark status.

YAKIMA, Wash. - The National Park Service's advisory board on Tuesday recommended designating the world's first full-scale nuclear reactor, which produced plutonium for one of two bombs dropped on Japan during World War II, as a national historic landmark.

The unanimous vote Tuesday brings former weapons workers and local residents one step closer to preserving the historic B Reactor at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation. A final decision on the reactor rests with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

"This is a great step toward preserving both the B Reactor and an important chapter of our nation's history," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement announcing the decision. "The B Reactor will give future generations a chance to learn about the important contribution this region made to the World War II effort and the service and sacrifice of the Hanford community."

I support the development of new nuclear power generation plants -- new ones, based on technologies far safer than the ones used at the Hanford Reservation. I don't think anyone should go near Hanford if they don't absolutely have to.

The government shut down B Reactor in 1968 and decommissioned it.

Eight other reactors were built at Hanford to produce plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The remnants of that effort today make Hanford the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup costs expected to top $50 billion.

Five reactors at the site already have been dismantled and cocooned, which involves removing extra buildings around the reactors, demolishing all but the shield walls surrounding the reactor cores and sealing them in concrete.

But I have to ask: since Sen. Murray thinks that obsolete nuclear reactors are safe enough for vacationing families, does she support a large-scale program to replace fossil-fuel-based electricity generating plants with nuclear plants? And building enough extra nuke plants to generate sufficient hydrogen to replace petroleum-based fuels for transportation? With its long coastline, Washington State is an ideal place to build clusters of nukes for hydrogen production. Aside from its benefits in reducing petroleum dependence and pollution, that would be a much bigger boost to Washington's economy than Hanford nuclear tourism.

Sequel to Segway is a bigger deal to a smaller audience

2008-05-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

The inventor of the Segway may not yet have changed how everybody gets around, but his team has invented something that is making a dramatic improvement in the lives of some special people: Dean Kamen, Creator of Segway, Unveils New Invention.

Famed inventor Dean Kamen is back in front among the tech elite this week with a new invention. The last time we heard from Kamen, he was unveiling the Segway, a product he hoped would revolutionize human transportation, and solve problems like pollution and urban congestion. But unlike the Segway, Kamen hopes his new product never reaches a mass market.

It’s a prosthetic arm that weighs as much as a human arm. It boasts the same range of motion, and the same tactile sensitivity. When the government called on him two years ago to build it, even Kamen wasn't sure his team could build it. In this video he tells us about the experience, what it meant for his career, and what he learned from the Segway experience.

The law of unintended consequences - again

2008-05-29T22:20:00.000-07:00

So the Arab media thought it would show how evil and corrupt the Jews are by highlighting the legal troubles of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert over monies he received from an American contributor. I bet they never expected the reaction of the Arab street to the story: 'No one is above the law in Israel.'

The corruption case against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has earned Israel tremendous respect throughout the Arab world, where many have called on their leaders to benefit from Israel's democratic system and independent judicial system.

Even some Arabs who describe themselves as "sworn enemies of the Zionist entity" have begun singing praise for Israel.

Over the past week, the corruption case against Olmert received wide coverage in the mainstream Arab media, prompting an outcry about the need for transparency and accountability in the Arab world.

"Show me one Arab or Islamic country where a prime minister or a senior government official was ever questioned for financial corruption or bribery," said a reader who identified himself only as Majed.

Majed, like many others, was responding to a news story on an Arab Web site about the testimony in court of American philanthropist Morris Talansky, who told police he had given Olmert more than $150,000 in cash over the course of some 14 years.

Another reader, Sami, commented: "The Israeli regime with all its defects is better than all the Arab 'democracies' and still changes ministers and governments every few years."

A Saudi national named Abdel Karim urged his Arab brethren to stop criticizing Israel and learn something about its democracy. "Before we curse Israel, we must learn from the democratic and judicial system in Israel, where no one is above the law," he wrote.

Khaled, another Saudi national, chimed in: "Although we are talking about Israel, which I have always hated very much, there is still no one above the law there."

Mahmoud al-Bakili of Yemen posted the following response on one of the Web sites: "We want this kind of accountability and transparency in the Arab and Islamic world."

Apparently this episode is inadvertently helping Israel fulfill its Biblical obligation to act as "a light unto the nations." Certainly it's tapped into a deep longing in some Arab hearts.

Mohammed in Lebanon: "Can you imagine if there was an investigation against an Arab or Muslim leader? Do you know how much money they would discover?"

Abu Yusef in Egypt: "Unfortunately, this is the real democracy. Our enemies are very good in practicing democracy. In the Arab world, our leaders steal everything and no one ever dares to ask a question."

Rashid in Saudi Arabia: "Despite all our problems with the Jews, they are much better than us in fighting corruption and revealing the truth."

Israel Lover in Saudi Arabia: "Israel is a state that deserves to exist. It deserves our profound respect. I wish I were a citizen of this state."

Hani in Ramallah: "This is democracy at its best! Enough of dictatorship in the Arab world! Let's learn from the Israeli example. Let's benefit from Israel's democracy."

Rashid Bohairi in Kuwait: "I swear Israel is a state that will succeed. They are prosecuting their prime minister because of tens of thousands of dollars. What about the millions of dollars that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority stole? How come the Palestinian people are still hungry?"

Why didn't I see it before? It's BRILLIANT!

2008-04-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

The Democrats' war strategy, that is. From the AP: Democratic leaders wrote to President Bush on Friday that it's not too late to change course in Iraq and pleaded with him not to hand the war off to the next president.

Democrats signaled on Friday that they don't see much hope in ending the Iraq war this year so long as President Bush insists U.S. troops remain committed there in large numbers.

But party leaders wrote to Bush on Friday anyhow, telling him it's not too late to change course and pleading with him not to leave the war for the next president to handle.

"We are deeply concerned that you and the congressional Republican leadership are intent on staying the current course throughout your administration and then handing the Iraq war off to future presidents," the Democrats wrote.

They have a much better plan than the one the military has been floundering under.

Democrats are engaged in a full-court press against Bush's Iraq policy in advance of next week's testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador there. Petraeus and Crocker are expected to say the recent buildup in troops has succeeded in improving security. But, they also will say that a period of assessment is needed this summer before officials can decide whether troop withdrawals can continue.

Democrats called this approach unacceptable and said they would pursue an alternative policy through legislation. They said their focus will be on restoring the strength of the Army and Marines and refocusing the nation's resources on fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.

The Democrats propose a strategy that is brilliant on two levels. First, consistent with their own experience as legislators, they have hit on the simple idea that we can end the conflict in Iraq simply by picking up all of our marbles and going home. The Bush Administration, the Maliki government in Iraq, and most Republicans are mired in the paradigm that leaving a battlefield during a war means that the enemy wins, dismissing the Democrats' bold and innovative reframing of that tactic and deriding it as "retreat," "surrender," or even "defeat." But the Democrats understand that we wouldn't be surrendering or losing, provided they don't ask the enemy for any input into the decision. By focusing solely on President Bush, they can't be accused of offering the enemy anything.

They take their strategic brilliance to a new and higher plane by redefining America's mission as going after the terrorists in Afghanistan. Once the U.S. has fully withdrawn its forces from Iraq, the terrorists now in Afghanistan will face little opposition in relocating to Iraq. Thus, Afghanistan will be free of terrorists and the Democrats will be able to claim success for their strategy. Of course, the terrorists will quickly assume control of Iraq, its oilfields, and their vast revenues, but the Democrats will be able to blame that on the Bush Administration's failure to fulfill a flawed mission in Iraq.

With such brilliant thinking on display, it's no wonder the Democrat Party is now enjoying the exquisite agony of choosing between the two Smartest People In The World(tm) for its Presidential candidate. But really, with those two on tap to become the next President, why worry about whether one or the other inherits the Iraq war? It's a cinch that either one of them could solve it as one of their six impossible thoughts before breakfast on Inauguration Day.