wednesday, january 31, 2007

perception vs. reality

Barack Obama:

“The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact,” the Illinois Democrat wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” a memoir published last year. “Much of what I absorbed from the sixties was filtered through my mother, who to the end of her life would proudly proclaim herself an unreconstructed liberal.”

Remember the debate over welfare reform in 1996? Liberals ranted:

Cries from Democrats of “anti-family,” “anti-child,” “mean-spirited,” echoed through the Capitol, as did warnings of impending Third World–style poverty: “children begging for money, children begging for food, eight- and nine-year-old prostitutes,” as New Jersey senator Frank Lautenberg put it. “They are coming for the children,” Congressman John Lewis of Georgia wailed—“coming for the poor, coming for the sick, the elderly and disabled.” Congressman William Clay of Missouri demanded, “What’s next? Castration?” Senator Ted Kennedy called it “legislative child abuse,” Senator Chris Dodd, “unconscionable,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—in what may well be the lowest point of an otherwise miraculous career—“something approaching an Apocalypse.”

That was their reason and fact. 10 years later, welfare reform proved to be a huge success.

More foolishness from Barack:

“I agree with George W. Bush when in his second inaugural address he proclaimed a universal desire to be free,” Obama wrote. “But there are few examples in history in which the freedom men and women crave is delivered through outside intervention.”

The United States would not exist were it not for intervention of the French.

Look at North and South Korea: one is destitute and other prosperous. The difference? Outside intervention. Germany and Japan became what they are today because of massive "outside intervention."

no doubt bill Maher will laugh this off

Terror plots? What terror plots? Oops, the Brits prevented another one:

A ninth suspect has been arrested by police investigating an alleged Iraq-style kidnapping and beheading plot in the UK.

It follows the detention of eight people at addresses in Birmingham early today. Assistant Chief Constable David Shaw, of West Midlands Police, revealed the last suspect was stopped on a motorway near the city.

He said officers were carrying out a "very, very major investigation" that would take "days if not weeks" to complete.

It has been reported the alleged plotters intended to post a video of the hostage being tortured and killed on the internet. The target was a British Muslim soldier in his twenties who is now under police protection.

Remember the Canadian homegrown terror plot from last summer?

Frontline World devoted half its broadcast last night to that story. For those who think homegrown jihadis are just a bunch of knuckleheads (Bill Maher), this should be required viewing. If you missed it, you can catch it here.

This is the Reagan Library this morning, during a brief break in the weather. The snow capped mountains in the background are the Toa-Topas.

a sales pitch to live by

I just heard a commercial on the Rush Limbaugh show. It began by saying that [some big number] percent of Christians cannot name the Ten Commandments. Then it cut to man-on-the-street interviews with people stuttering out one or two of them.

Then came the corker:

"It's important for people to know what they believe and why they believe it."

Gee, ya think?

how many dems does it take to screw up a light bulb?

One to start. Just when you think liberals have run out of ways to stick their noses in your business, along comes another "grand idea." A California pol wants to ban incandescent light bulbs and force consumers to .

"They're cheaper for the consumer, they save the state money and they're better for the environment," Levine said of energy-efficient bulbs.

Legislation is needed because many consumers, faced with a much cheaper retail price for a traditional bulb, don't realize that an energy-efficient model can burn 10 times longer and save perhaps $55 per bulb in the long run, Levine said.

"We don't realize" = people are too dumb to make their own choices. I guess the only thing pro-choice about the Democrat party is abortion.

For what it's worth, we use the flourescent bulbs in my house wherever possible. But they are not the same.

Max Lofing, one of the owners of Lofing's Lighting in Sacramento, said the vast majority of energy-efficient, compact fluorescent bulbs provide substandard quality.

"They aren't quite up to par as far as color rendering," he said.

"They don't make them up to a standard where they provide the highest quality for decorative fixtures."

Shut up Max, the Democrats have a planet to save.

how to decorate your jag

...with 14,000 Post-It notes.

tuesday, january 30, 2007

pressing questions about the jesus pancake

A fellow finds the image of Jesus on a pancake, eats it, then offers the spatula for sale on eBay. The questions from members are pretty funny, as are his answers.

blood for oil redux

During Saddam's reign, Europeans cheated on the sanctions regime, trading blood for oil. Of course, the dopey American Left fawned over socialist Europe and condemned the USA as immoral capitalists.

The same story is being replayed over Iran, where the Europeans don't want to give up their profitable commerce with the mullahcracy.

European governments are resisting Bush administration demands that they curtail support for exports to Iran and that they block transactions and freeze assets of some Iranian companies, officials on both sides say. The resistance threatens to open a new rift between Europe and the United States over Iran.

Administration officials say a new American drive to reduce exports to Iran and cut off its financial transactions is intended to further isolate Iran commercially amid the first signs that global pressure has hurt Iran’s oil production and its economy. There are also reports of rising political dissent in Iran.

Bush is asking them to pitch in and support this most multilateral cause:

Europe has more commercial and economic ties with Iran than does the United States, which severed relations with Iran after the revolution and seizure of hostages in 1979.

The administration says that European governments provided $18 billion in government loan guarantees for Iran in 2005. The numbers have gone down in the last year, but not by much, American and European officials say.

American officials say that European governments may have facilitated illicit business and that European governments must do more to stop such transactions. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. has said the United States has shared with Europeans the names of at least 30 front companies involved in terrorism or weapons programs.

“They’ve told us they don’t have the tools,” said a senior American official. “Our answer is: get them.”

“We want to squeeze the Iranians,” said a European official. “But there are varying degrees of political will in Europe about turning the thumbscrews. It’s not straightforward for the European Union to do what the United States wants.”

Another European official said: “We are going to be very cautious about what the Treasury Department wants us to do. We can see that banks are slowing their business with Iran. But because there are huge European business interests involved, we have to be very careful.”

In short, blood for oil. Blood for profits. No matter that trading with the Iranian outlaw regime gets them closer to a nuclear weapon. Or that once said weapon is obtained, Europe will be in the crosshairs and Israel will face an existential threat.

For those who fret about America's "lost prestige" in the world, remember who "the world" is. Much of it consists of petty pantywaists whose depravity is only exceeded by their moral vanity.

teen repellant

Sometimes they're worse than skeeters. This gizmo shoos them off .

it's the profits, stupid!

David's Medienkritik busts German hypocrites (again):

Remember Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking's holier-than-you attitude vis-a-vis the US? Wiedeking's position - which is probably held by a majority of German managers and certainly by practically all German journalists - is that "anglo-saxon" capitalism is an inferior economic strategy as compared to the German "social market economy".

Then, of course, is the Kyoto debate in Germany, with wild accusations against supposedly anti-environmental policies of Bush and his neo-cons. How admirably and favorably the German philosophy of sustainability compares to these stinking non-caring Americans! Think Schroeder.

And now this:

Porsche warns of emissions war

Porsche's chief executive on Friday warned of an impending business war between Germany on one side and France and Italy when he said plans by the European Commission to limit carbon dioxide emissions were an attack on German luxury carmakers.

The outspoken comments by Wendelin Wiedeking at the sports carmaker's annual meeting underline the nervousness of German carmakers, all of which are a long way above the proposed limits and are much more threatened than the likes of France's Renault and Peugeot and Italy's Fiat.

"It is an attack on BMW, Mercedes, Audi and ourselves ... This is a business war in Europe. We will fight," Mr Wiedeking told shareholders.

Read on and learn that "the leading German luxury car maker sells cleaner and more fuel efficient models in the U.S. than in Germany!"

rabbi, tear down this wall!

OAK PARK - It seemed like a real mitzvah.

Chabad of the Conejo's 120 families would spend $20,000 on a religious structure that would benefit all local Jews.

Common in Los Angeles and most big American cities, the eruv - a thin monofilament line strung from light pole to light pole to symbolically extend a Jew's private domain to everything within the loop - would enable Jews to carry keys and push strollers on the Sabbath without violating Halacha, or Jewish law.

But the eruv, constructed in late December, was met by public disgust.

"Is it me or am I the only one that finds this strange?" Carlos Bernal of Oak Park wrote in an e-mail to local officials. "Why don't we install a crucifix at every stoplight? Or the picture of Muhammad at every pedestrian crossing?

Apparently fishing line strung up along the light poles constitutes a wall.

The concept of enclosing a community so Jews can behave on the Sabbath as if they were within their own home stems from the 40 years Israelites spent wandering the desert after the Exodus. Jewish rabbis developed the rules when forming the Talmud centuries later.

Running a monofilament wire from post to post creates a series of "door frames" that, according to Jewish law, act like a wall.

Without it, Orthodox Jews cannot take a bottle of wine to a friend's house on the Sabbath, and those with small children have trouble attending synagogue. Driving a car is prohibited, regardless.

Though only Orthodox Jews follow the laws regarding an eruv, they say that all Jews - Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist and secular - benefit from having one in the community because it helps them subconsciously follow a stricter interpretation of God's law.

Subconscious religion? Hmm.

"It is not some biblical thing that says, `Hang some fishing line.' It's an arbitrary man-made work-a-round," said Susan Flores, a Reform Jew.

One might argue that it's all a manmade thing, which is not an atheistic position: it is quite possible to believe in god but not in church.

top ten myths about iraq war

From StrategyPage:

1-No Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Several hundred chemical weapons were found, and Saddam had all his WMD scientists and technicians ready. Just end the sanctions and add money, and the weapons would be back in production within a year. At the time of the invasion, all intelligence agencies, world-wide, believed Saddam still had a functioning WMD program. Saddam had shut them down because of the cost, but created the illusion that the program was still operating in order to fool the Iranians. The Iranians wanted revenge on Saddam because of the Iraq invasion of Iran in 1980, and the eight year war that followed.

2-The 2003 Invasion was Illegal. Only according to some in the UN. By that standard, the invasion of Kosovo and bombing of Serbia in 1999 was also illegal. Saddam was already at war with the U.S. and Britain, because Iraq had not carried out the terms of the 1991 ceasefire, and was trying to shoot down coalition aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone.

3-Sanctions were working. The sanctions worked for Saddam, not for Iraq. Saddam used the sanctions as an excuse to punish the Shia majority for their 1991 uprising, and help prevent a new one. The "Oil For Food" program was corrupted with the help of bribed UN officials, and mass media outlets that believed Iraqi propaganda. Saddam was waiting out the sanctions, and bribing France, Russia and China, with promises of oil contracts and debt repayments, to convince the UN to lift the sanctions.

Read them all.

monday, january 29, 2007

will they apologize?

In the wake of the first week of the Libby Trial, Patrick Fitzgerald's soufflé has turned into a pancake. Of course, if you are getting your news of the trial from the press you're certain to believe Libby is in trouble. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reporting is as bad as I've ever seen (Matt Apuzzo of AP being the rare exception of a reporter who's getting it mostly right).

dirty harry (reid)

Culture of corruption, yeah yeah yeah.

It's hard to buy undeveloped land in booming northern Arizona for $166 an acre. But now-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively did just that when a longtime friend decided to sell property owned by the employee pension fund that he controlled.

In 2002, Reid (D-Nev.) paid $10,000 to a pension fund controlled by Clair Haycock, a Las Vegas lubricants distributor and his friend for 50 years. The payment gave the senator full control of a 160-acre parcel in Bullhead City that Reid and the pension fund had jointly owned. Reid's price for the equivalent of 60 acres of undeveloped desert was less than one-tenth of the value the assessor placed on it at the time.

Six months after the deal closed, Reid introduced legislation to address the plight of lubricants dealers who had their supplies disrupted by the decisions of big oil companies. It was an issue the Haycock family had brought to Reid's attention in 1994, according to a source familiar with the events.

If Reid were to sell the property for any of the various estimates of its value, his gain on the $10,000 investment could range from $50,000 to $290,000.

dirty nancy, dirty rahm, dirty evan

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and two other prominent Democrats have failed to disclose they are officers of family charities, in violation of a law requiring members of Congress to report non-profit leadership roles.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, and Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana also did not report they serve as family foundation directors, according to financial disclosure reports examined by USA TODAY.

All three foundations are funded and controlled by the lawmakers and their spouses, and do not solicit donations from outside sources.

in to africa

Kerry recently damned Bush for inaction on African AIDS. This story from the Washington Post on New Years's Eve was headlined:

Bush Has Quietly Tripled Aid to Africa

How "quiet" this news is is the decision of editors at the WaPo, New York Times etc. Nonetheless, it notes:

President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa.

The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion.

The moves have surprised -- and pleased -- longtime supporters of assistance for Africa, who note that because Bush has received little support from African American voters, he has little obvious political incentive for his interest.

"I think the Bush administration deserves pretty high marks in terms of increasing aid to Africa," said Steve Radelet, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development.

Bush has increased direct development and humanitarian aid to Africa to more than $4 billion a year from $1.4 billion in 2001, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And four African nations -- Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt and Uganda -- rank among the world's top 10 recipients in aid from the United States.

Beyond increasing aid to Africa, Bush has met with nearly three dozen African heads of state during his six years in office. He visited Africa in his first term, and aides say he hopes to make a return visit next year.

Although some activists criticize Bush for not doing more to end the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, others credit him for playing a role in ending deadly conflicts in Liberia, the Congo and other parts of Sudan. Meanwhile, Bush has overseen a steady rise in U.S. trade with Africa, which has doubled since 2001.

going on offense

This sounds like a lot of good news.

Iraqi security forces, backed by American tanks and air support, attacked what appears to be a mixed group of Sunni insurgents and a Shia end-times cult known as the "Soldiers of Heaven." The battle occurred in the suburbs and orchards north of Najaf. "Police Colonel Ali Nomas said 250 militants had been killed," reported Reuters. "The political source said up to 1,000 had been involved. An army source said they wore camouflage and appeared well organised." They were also believed to have possessed anti-arircraft missiles.

Later counts put the number of enemy fighters killed at up to 350, with a minimal loss to Iraqi and U.S. troops. Three Iraqi soldiers were killed and 21 wounded, five police were killed and 19 wounded, and two U.S. soldiers were killed when their helicopter was downed.

The leader of the Shia cult, Ahmed Hassani al-Yemeni "who claimed to be the Mahdi, a messiah-like figure in Islam," was killed during the fighting, which lasted over 24 hours. The Iraqi Army fought what appears to be a well armed, well trained and organized force on its own turf, and deal the enemy serious casualties, while beheading the leadership.

Early reports indicated there were both Sunni terrorists and Shia cultist involved in the fighting. "Governor Asaad Abu Gilel as saying that the militants, who included foreign fighters, had arrived in the city disguised as pilgrims in recent days and based themselves in the orchards, which he said had been bought three or four months ago by supporters of Saddam Hussain."

jimmy carter: too many jews

sunday, january 28, 2007

besides, polio was cured by jews

A leading Islamic doctor is urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps, and rubella because they contain substances making them unlawful for Muslims to take.

Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, says almost all vaccines contain un-Islamic "haram" derivatives of animal or human tissue, and that Muslim parents are better off letting childrens' immune systems develop on their own.

back in the u.s.s.r.

Mark Steyn:

John O'Sullivan's new book The President, The Pope And The Prime Minister has a marvelous account of the funeral of Yuri Andropov. In case you've forgotten, he was one of those late-period Soviet leaders who looked like he'd been plucked in haste from the local embalmer's and propped up against the balcony for the May Day parade. When he was eventually pronounced (officially) dead in 1984, Margaret Thatcher was prevailed upon by an aide to stop at a shoe store en route to the airport and get some fleece-lined boots for the chilly February burial. She grumbled about the cost all the way to Moscow. There she met Andropov's successor, Konstantin Chernenko, whom the Politburo had anointed as the next cadaver-in-chief. And, after shaking hands with him, she stopped complaining about the cost of her Kremlin boots. "They were a prudent long-term investment," she told her aide.

More like short-term. Vice President George H. W. Bush was nearer to the mark when he said goodbye to the U.S. Embassy staff after the Andropov funeral: "Next year, same time, same place." Close enough. Chernenko died 13 months later.

The decrepitude of the Politburo waxworks and their Eastern European clients embodied the ideological health of communism: Andropov and Chernenko were the sclerosis of the regime made wan flesh. With democracies, decrepitude is harder to spot. Our leaders are younger, and even in the U.S. Senate -- the nearest the Western world has to a Brezhnevite politburo -- new blood occasionally shows up: Barack Obama is hot, hip, happening, even if none of his political ideas are.

But old whines in new bottles sell better than old whines in old bottles, as John Kerry evidently concluded. Last week, the senator took to the floor and reduced himself to tears as he announced that he'd regretfully decided not to run for president again. John Edwards shoveled him into the landfill oistory with some oleaginous boilerplate about Kerry's readiness to "respond to any call to serve his country." Was anybody calling? And why would they? What does Senator Kerry weep for other than his own thwarted ambition? What did he stand for? What was his vision other than a belief in his own indispensability?

...

The only energy displayed by Nancy Pelosi was the spectacular leap to her feet within a nano-second of the president mentioning Darfur. Up went Madam Speaker and the entire Democratic caucus like enthusiastic loons on a gameshow. Darfur! We're all in favor of Darfur. People are being murdered! Hundreds of thousands! We oughtta do something! Like, er, jump up and down when it's mentioned in a speech. And, er, call for the international community to mobilize. Maybe one of those leathery old '60s rockers could organize an all-star concert or something. If Darfur were indeed a game show, the Sudanese would quickly discover it's one of those ones where you come on down to discover you've missed out on all the big prizes but you're not going away empty-handed: No, sir, here's your very own SAVE DARFUR! T-shirt autographed by Nancy Pelosi and George Clooney.

Darfur is an apt symbol of early 21st century liberalism: What matters is that you urge action rather than take any. On Iraq, meanwhile, the president declared: "Let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory." And the Dems sat on their hands.

The American left has long deplored Bush's rhetorical reliance on such vulgar conceits as "good" and "evil." But it seems even "victory" is a problematic concept, and right now the momentum is all for defeat of one kind or another. America is talking itself into willing a defeat that has not (yet) occurred on the ground, and would be fatally damaging to this nation's credibility if it did.

the democrats' botched joke is john kerry

Kerry hands the Islamo-nutters a propaganda freebie.

Kerry was asked about whether the U.S. government had failed to adequately engage Iran’s government before the election of hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.

Kerry said the Bush administration has failed in addressing a number of foreign policy issues.

“When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don’t advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy,” Kerry said.

“So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East — in the world, really. I’ve never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today.”…

Kerry criticized what he called the “unfortunate habit” of Americans to see the world “exclusively through an American lens.”

He said this while seated next to the former CEO of one of the world’s foremost terrorist states, which as we speak is working on building nuclear weapons, bankrolling Hezbollah’s efforts to foment civil war in Lebanon and Hamas’s exterminationist jihad against Israel, and supplying Shiite militias with IEDs to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

Whose current leadership, lest we forget, Kerry has previously signaled a desire to meet with. Note the bolded bit in the quote, too: given a direct choice between defending the president or siding with the Iranian government circa 2003 — whose nominal leader was, of course, Khatami himself — Lurch essentially chose the latter.

UPDATE: This image needs no explanation.

she has the right to remain silent

At the antiwar spectacle yesterday:

"Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress, once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam, said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement but needed to speak out now.

Please. When do antiwar people ever shut up?

And by the way, she is still derided as Hanoi Jane.

from death metal to death to america

How does a young Southern California boy, raised by hippies, turn into an al-Qaeda mouthpiece? The answer makes fascinating reading in The New Yorker.

Gadahn is the ultimate “homegrown”—a term used by scholars and government officials for Western citizens who are “picking up the sword of the idea,” as one senior F.B.I. official put it, and are willing to attack their own societies, even martyr themselves if required.

Most homegrowns are second- or third-generation Muslims, but a few—and perhaps the most puzzling—are converts. Jose Padilla (the so-called Dirty Bomber) and Richard Reid (the so-called Shoe Bomber) are well-known examples.

In 2004, Ryan Anderson, a Muslim convert in the Washington Army National Guard, was convicted of attempting to provide Al Qaeda with military intelligence. (During a military sting, Anderson said, “I wish to defect from the United States. I wish to join Al Qaeda, train its members, and conduct terrorist attacks.”) John Walker Lindh, who grew up in Marin County, California, never plotted against America, but he joined and fought for the Taliban.

saturday, january 27, 2007

swiss miss: john kerry pisses on America

...and gets his facts wrong. Captains Quarters:

Kerry said the Bush administration has failed to adequately address a number of foreign policy issues.

"When we walk away from global warming, Kyoto, when we are irresponsibly slow in moving toward AIDS in Africa, when we don't advance and live up to our own rhetoric and standards, we set a terrible message of duplicity and hypocrisy," Kerry said.

"So we have a crisis of confidence in the Middle East - in the world, really. I've never seen our country as isolated, as much as a sort of international pariah for a number of reasons as it is today."

Once again, we have the spectre of Kyoto haunting the Bush administration, when it was the Clinton administration that refused to submit the treaty to the Senate -- and the Senate that unanimously passed a resolution saying they'd never ratify it. The Byrd-Hagel Resolution in 1997 made it clear that the US would not allow itself to be bound by the treaty as long as it exempted India, China, and other developing nations. That's the same position as the Bush Administration has taken -- and the same position that John Kerry himself took in 1997 when he voted in favor of the Byrd-Hagel Resolution.

That's yet another example of the hypocrisy of John Kerry -- but there's more.

He took the time to scold the Bush administration for its lack of effort on AIDS and other diseases in Africa. However, Bush has already spent more on these issues than the last Democratic administration did in eight years. Humanitarian aid to Africa comprised $1.4 billion a year at the end of the Clinton administration, but Bush has tripled that to $4 billion per year -- and wants to more than double it over the next two years:

President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa.

The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion. ...

Bush has increased direct development and humanitarian aid to Africa to more than $4 billion a year from $1.4 billion in 2001, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And four African nations -- Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt and Uganda -- rank among the world's top 10 recipients in aid from the United States.

So not only is John Kerry a hypocrite, he's also an ignoramus. However, we have noticed that the Davos forum has become, over the years, a convention of sorts for both. Kerry should feel right at home.

If you study hard, you do your homework, show up for committee meetings and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck believing (and repeating) your party's disinformation.

missed cinema: Millions

By now there have been dozens of movies that have its protagonist discover a bag of illicit loot. This is the best of them. It's funny and touching, and has something to say without making speeches. Alex Etel, the kid who plays the young boy, is a natural.

This was directed by Danny Boyle, who made the quasi-zombie movie "28 Days Later" and "Trainspotting." Neither of those would give you any indication he could make a film as sweet as this.

But, like David Lynch's "The Straight Story," one of the best G-rated movies every made, this is a family film that doesn't require adults to compromise.

The British accents can be a challenge in places. We turned on the English substitles and didn't miss a thing.

why ceos are warming up to global warming

In a word, money.

The warming of planet earth may or may not be manmade. But the politics of the Green Scare are definitely the work of man. Liberals have an instinct for minding other people's business, and an instinct for despising capitalism, which makes global warming such a delicious issue for them. By manufacturing a crisis, they've invented a righteous reason to meddle and tax.

Some corporations see the issue as a way to reduce competition and make a buck. As Kimberly Strassel notes:

The Climate Action Partnership, a group of 10 major companies that made headlines this week with its call for a national limit on carbon dioxide emissions, would surely feign shock at such an accusation. After all, their plea was carefully timed to coincide with President Bush's State of the Union capitulation on global warming, and it had the desired PR effect. The media dutifully declared that "even" business now recognized the climate threat. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who begins marathon hearings on warming next week, lauded the corporate angels for thinking of the "common good."

There was a time when the financial press understood that companies exist to make money. And it happens that the cap-and-trade climate program these 10 jolly green giants are now calling for is a regulatory device designed to financially reward companies that reduce CO2 emissions, and punish those that don't.

Four of the affiliates--Duke, PG&E, FPL and PNM Resources--are utilities that have made big bets on wind, hydroelectric and nuclear power. So a Kyoto program would reward them for simply enacting their business plan, and simultaneously sock it to their competitors. Duke also owns Cinergy, which relies heavily on dirty, CO2-emitting coal plants. But Cinergy will soon have to replace those plants with cleaner equipment. Under a Kyoto, it'll get paid for its trouble.

DuPont has been plunging into biofuels, the use of which would soar under a cap. Somebody has to cobble together all these complex trading deals, so say hello to Lehman Brothers. Caterpillar has invested heavily in new engines that generate "clean energy." British Petroleum is mostly doing public penance for its dirty oil habit, but also gets a plug for its own biofuels venture.

Finally, there's General Electric, whose CEO Jeffrey Immelt these days spends as much time in Washington as Connecticut. GE makes all the solar equipment and wind turbines (at $2 million a pop) that utilities would have to buy under a climate regime. GE's revenue from environmental products long ago passed the $10 billion mark, and it doesn't take much "ecomagination" to see why Mr. Immelt is leading the pack of climate profiteers.

CEOs are quick learners, and even those who would get smacked by a carbon cap are now devising ways to make warming work to their political advantage. The "most creative" prize goes to steel giant Nucor. Steven Rowlan, the company's environmental director, doesn't want carbon caps in the U.S.--oh, no. The smarter answer, he explains, would be for the U.S. to impose trade restrictions on foreign firms that aren't environmentally clean. Global warming as foil for trade protectionism: Chuck Schumer's dream.

Note the irony of the Democrats kissing up to big business, to the detriment of the average Joe.

What makes this lobby worse than the usual K-Street crowd is that it offers no upside. At least when Big Pharma self-interestedly asks for fewer regulations, the economy benefits. There's nothing capitalist about lobbying for a program that foists its debilitating costs on taxpayers and consumers while redistributing the wealth to a few corporate players.

This is what comes from Washington steadily backstepping energy policy into the interventionist 1970s, picking winners and losers. In ethanol, in biodiesel, in wind farms, success isn't a function of supply or demand. The champs are the ones that coax out of Washington the best subsidies and regulations. Global warming is simply the biggest trough yet.

Both Republicans and Democrats understand this debate is increasingly about home-state economics, even as they publicly joust about environmental rights or wrongs. The softening Republican stance on a mandatory program is one result. New Mexico's Pete Domenici appeared to undergo an epiphany about global warming in 2005, voting for a Senate resolution supporting caps. The switch might have more to do with remembering that his state is nuclear-power central, and will win big under a new program. Just ask his fellow New Mexican, Jeff Bingaman, who introduced the resolution.

so long, saddam

by Burt Prelutsky

A lot of people were up in arms over Saddam Hussein’s execution. Some hated the fact that it took place around the time of an Islamic holiday. But it’s as difficult to avoid their holy days as it is to avoid hitting a mosque when you bomb Iraq. Others were angry that the actual hanging was captured on a cell phone. And, finally, there are those sob sisters who believe they are morally superior to mere mortals because they’re opposed to executions any time, anywhere.

Well, I beg to differ. I wish his hanging had been televised in color and broadcast during prime time around the world. Except for the initial elation when the Butcher of Baghdad was rooted out of his rat hole, I have been disgusted by all subsequent events. I still recall what consternation there was when we saw photos of Hussein having his hair checked for lice and his mouth checked for cyanide capsules. You’d have thought Mother Teresa was being strip-searched.

The guy was a monster who had used poison gas on the Kurds, invaded Kuwait, bribed every thief at the U.N., shot missiles into Israel and waged two wars against the U.S.; and still chowderheads in and out of the media were concerned about his dignity being insulted.
During his trial and again on the gallows, he urged his followers to go on killing. Well, why not? Torture, murder and rape, were his legacy. But we were supposed to preserve his dignity?

If there were really any justice in the world, Hussein would have wound up the way the Italians saw to it that Mussolini ended up – his carcass hanging upside down like a side of beef in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto.

Every tyrant in the world, from Kim Jong-iL and Ahmadinejad to Syria’s al-Assad and Vladimir Putin, should have had the opportunity to turn on his TV and seen in living color what might very well be their fate if they don’t shape up.

There are times, after all, when a picture is worth a thousand words. And a picture of a pig hanging in an Islamic country would have spoken volumes, and wouldn’t have required translation into Russian or Korean.

Speaking of swine, what I have never understood is why Israel or any other country besieged with suicide bombers doesn’t announce that in the future their remains will be carefully collected and buried wrapped in pig skins. I have to suspect that would cut way down on recruitment. I mean, it’s one thing to believe that 72 virgins are anxiously awaiting your arrival, and quite another to think you’ll be lucky to wind up on a blind date with Rosie O’Donnell!

friday, january 26, 2007

sign the no money pledge

If the weakling Republican senators offend you, offend them back by signing the Pledge:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

john edwards' crib

The presidential candidate and tort lawyer's humble home.

biology's next revolution

The emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organism, species and evolution itself.

One of the most fundamental patterns of scientific discovery is the revolution in thought that accompanies a new body of data. Satellite-based astronomy has, during the past decade, overthrown our most cherished ideas of cosmology, especially those relating to the size, dynamics and composition of the Universe.

Similarly, the convergence of fresh theoretical ideas in evolution and the coming avalanche of genomic data will profoundly alter our understanding of the biosphere — and is likely to lead to revision of concepts such as species, organism and evolution. Here we explain why we foresee such a dramatic transformation, and why we believe the molecular reductionism that dominated twentieth-century biology will be superseded by an interdisciplinary approach that embraces collective phenomena.

mohammed reports from baghdad

Apache attack helicopters are constantly hovering over Baghdad now. Tracking them from my home in this city I can often estimate where the action is taking place.

In many cases these are combat missions, not routine surveillance patrols, and the sounds of the helicopters heavy machineguns can often be heard in the distance; sometimes far away, sometimes coming closer.

If the star in the sky is the Apache, the star on the ground is the Stryker armored vehicle. One can hardly avoid meeting Strykers in Baghdad these days. Everybody here is talking about the astounding presence of this armored castle with its surrounding steel bars. With its huge mass and powerful headlights that can be seen from hundreds of meters away it is pure intimidation.

Today in Baghdad, American troops not only man checkpoints on main streets, but are also running daily patrols through the inner streets in residential blocs. Typically a patrolling unit will choose a number of homes to meet their occupants. It’s more like getting familiar with the locals than searching; the commander of the patrol talks to the head of the household and meets the members of the family. If one of them happens to know English the commander usually ask the translator to stay outside; most Iraqis prefer not to speak before other Iraqis when it comes to security concerns.

Read it all.

poor bored susan

IraqPundit is hilarious today:

Since half of the State of the Union speech on Tuesday was about Iraq, I wanted very much to pay close attention. There was the proposed troop buildup to consider, the recent history of the conflict to weigh, the geostrategic context to judge. But a question distracted me the whole time, eventually growing so intense that I couldn't think about anything else. The same question was probably nagging you: What does Susan Sarandon think of all this?

That's why I was so grateful when, On Wednesday, the august Associated Press distributed this bit of breaking news: "Actress Susan Sarandon says she was bored by President Bush's State of the Union address asking Americans to give his troop buildup in Iraq a chance."

I'm furious at the White House speechwriters. Did they ask each other, even once, Are we telling Susan Sarandon anything she thinks is new? And what will I tell my family in Baghdad? They keep leaving me phone messages, and I'm petrified that they'll want an update on Susan Sarandon's latest mood swing. With everything else they've been through, will they be able to absorb Susan Sarandon's boredom?

only the dense are surprised

Muqtada Sadr, the radical anti-American cleric, has backed away from confrontation with U.S. and Iraqi forces in recent weeks, a move that has surprised U.S. officials who long have characterized his followers as among the greatest threats to Iraq's security.

Thursday, a leader of the Sadr movement in one of its Baghdad strongholds publicly endorsed President Bush's new Iraq security plan, which at least some U.S. officials have touted as a way to combat Sadr's group.

Surprised? Recall the famous words of Samuel Johnson:

"Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

Or as Jack Kelly wrote three days ago, noting the impact of "the surge" even before it's begun:

"Mookie," as the troops call him (al-Sadr), can only be relied upon to behave when he is terrified.

Hmm... could the arrest of 400 of his top followers have any bearing on this?

moktada makes a will

It's welcome news that Moktada Al Sadr, having studied his changing situation, has found it prudent to write a will. That's what he recently told the Italian center-left newspaper, La Repubblica, in what appears to be a genuine interview (and not the faux "interviews" that have appeared in such U.S. media as Newsweek). Al Sadr also said that he had moved his family to a safe place.

"There are at least four armies" out to get him, Al Sadr confided. These include a secret army trained by Americans in Jordan; a special army at the command of Ayad Allawi; the Kurdish peshmerga, and last but not least, the Americans. (It's Al Sadr's combination of ignorance and paranoia that is the most compelling evidence that this is a genuine interview.)

Anyway, the noble Moktada has ordered his thugs not to respond to these
four massing armies until Islamic New Year and Ashura are over, or so he told La
Repubblica. Even if they kill him, Moktada added, the Mahdi army will live. “They can kill men, but they can't kill faith or ideas,” he said in a fit of righteousness, though he might have thought of that before he got into the murder business himself.

The will is welcome news, of course, but word that the will's provisions are being applied will be far more welcome. In the meantime, the rest of us are left pondering the new crackdown on insurgents and militias in Iraq, and wondering just what to make of it. Has Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki really turned his back on Moktada, after steadfastly protecting him and his Sadr City stronghold from US troops? The reaction of my relatives in Baghdad is, “La hwaya,” or “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

an open letter from ben stein

Thanks to Susan Gertson, who passed this along to us.

Open Letter to Our Armed Forces and Their Families From Ben Stein
Greetings From Rancho Mirage By Ben Stein
Tuesday, January 23rd

Dear Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, National Guard, Reservists, in Iraq, in the Middle East theater, in Afghanistan, in the area near Afghanistan, in any base anywhere in the world, and your families:

Let me tell you about why you guys own about 90 percent of the backbone in the whole world right now and should be happy with yourselves and proud of whom you are.

It was a dazzlingly hot day here in Rancho Mirage today. I did small errands like going to the bank to pay my mortgage, finding a new bed at a price I can afford, practicing driving with my new 5 wood, paying bills for about two hours. I spoke for a long time to a woman who is going through a nasty child custody fight. I got e-mails from a woman who was fired today from her job for not paying attention. I read about multi-billion-dollar mergers in Europe, Asia, and the Mideast I noticed how overweight I am, for the millionth time. In other words, I did a lot of nothing.

Like every other American who is not in the armed forces family, I basically just rearranged the deck chairs on the Titanic in my trivial, self-important, meaningless way.

Above all, I talked to a friend of more than forty-three years who told me he thought his life had no meaning because all he did was count his money. And, friends in the armed forces, this is the story of all of America today. We are doing nothing but treading water while you guys carry on the life or death struggle against worldwide militant Islamic terrorism. Our lives are about nothing: paying bills, going to humdrum jobs, waiting until we can go to sleep and then do it all again. Our most vivid issues are trivia compared with what you do every day, every minute, every second.

Oprah Winfrey talks a lot about "meaning" in life. For her, "meaning" is dieting and then having her photo on the cover of her magazine every single month (surely a new world record for egomania ). This is not "meaning."

- Meaning is doing for others.

- Meaning is risking your life for hers.

- Meaning is putting your bodies and families' peace of mind on the line to defeat some of the most evil, sick killers the world has ever known.

- Meaning is leaving the comfort of home to fight to make sure that there still will be a home for your family and for your nation and for free men and women everywhere.

Look, soldiers and Marines and sailors and airmen and Coast Guardsmen, there are eight billion people in this world. The whole fate of this world turns on what you people, 1.4 million, more or less, do every day. The fate of mankind depends on what about 2/100 of one percent of the people in this world do every day and you are those people. And joining you is every policeman, fireman, and Emergency Medical Technician in the country, also holding back the tide of chaos.

Do you know how important you are? Do you know how indispensable you are? Do you know how humbly grateful any of us who has a head on his shoulders is to you? Do you know that if you never do another thing in your lives, you will always still be heroes? That we could live without Hollywood or Wall Street or the NFL, but we cannot live for a week without you?

We are on our knees to you and we bless and pray for you every moment. And Oprah Winfrey, if she were a size two, would not have one millionth of your importance, and all of the Wall Street billionaires will never mean what the least of you do, and if Barry Bonds hits hundreds of home runs it would not mean as much as you going on one patrol or driving one truck to the Baghdad airport.

You are everything to us, as we go through our little days, and you are in the prayers of the nation and of every decent man and woman on the planet. That's who you are and what you mean. I hope you know that.

Love,

Ben Stein

the real cost of good intentions

by J.C. Phillips

In spite of political rhetoric to the contrary, it is an economic fact that the government can set the price of labor, but the government cannot determine the value of that labor. Whenever the price of labor exceeds its value, that job will be eliminated, automated, absorbed by others or replaced with lower priced labor. This may explain why virtually every empirical study of the minimum wage has found that the minimum wage results in a net decrease in jobs.

A study conducted by the National Center for Policy Analysis reports, “The magnitude of the unemployment effects of minimum wage increases can be questioned, but the existence of those effects cannot.” Indeed, advocates of the minimum wage do not dispute that there is indeed a nexus between the minimum wage and job loss. They simply hold that an incremental increase of the minimum wage implemented slowly over time will nullify the laws of economics and that the negative of jobs lost by some will become a net positive by the increase in wages for others.

Oddly enough, such arguments by defenders of the minimum wage depend on faith in another economic law: A dynamic economy creates jobs -- even low skilled jobs. When worker productivity is high and unemployment is low, there is upward pressure on wages. Increased productivity drives innovation and the creation of new businesses, which creates jobs.

Democrats have been very vocal about the failing American economy even as they push for an increase in the minimum wage. New Mexico governor Bill Richardson for example in declaring his intention to seek the Democratic nomination for president described the U.S. economy as “languishing,” thus illustrating one of the great ironies of the minimum wage debate. Democrats are able to propose an incremental increase in the minimum wage only because the economy is thriving. More than 7 million new jobs have been created since August of 2003 and the unemployment rate is below 5% , real wages have grown at 2.3 % over the last 12 months, well above the average of the 1990’s and over the last three decades worker productivity has more than doubled. The idea of government arbitrarily setting the price of labor is politically viable only because of the dynamism of the American economy.

It is also the same dynamism of the economy that renders the minimum wage a dinosaur of our new deal past. A thriving economy makes the minimum wage almost irrelevant as evidenced by the fact that wages for many low skilled jobs are currently well above the minimum wage even for illegal immigrant labor.

The day laborers looking for work in the parking lots of Home Depot stores across the country are not regulated by the government, nor do they work for slave wages. In fact, try offering any of these men as little as minimum wage and you are liable to get your feelings hurt. No matter their immigration status, they all speak the international language of $8-$10 per hour. The same is true of nannies and house keepers working in the Los Angeles area. Families looking for a little help during the day are not guided by minimum wage laws and yet the pay for domestic help is well above the minimum wage.

The absence of a minimum wage will certainly mean that wages for some jobs will fall below the previous federal minimums. Those jobs however, were overpriced for their value and very likely would have been eliminated. We cannot simply wish the laws of economics away. Employers, like all consumers are perfectly willing to pay for value. Rather than mandate a minimum wage that even they concede will cost jobs, the best thing Democrats in Congress can do is to keep taxes low, resist the urge to heap regulations onto business and continue to stoke the fires of a growing and dynamic economy.

thursday, january 25, 2007

recent history

How the Senate voted to authorize the war in Iraq.

The text of the resolution. Here are the opening paragraphs:

Whereas Congress in 1998 concluded that Iraq was then in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations and thereby threatened the vital interests of the United States and international peace and security, stated the reasons for that conclusion, and urged the President to take appropriate action to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations (Public Law 105-235);

Whereas Iraq remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations, thereby continuing to threaten the national security interests of the United States and international peace and security;

turnaround in baghdad

As Democrats in the Senate vote to hoist the white flag, the New York Sun reports good news:

The wider Sunni insurgency — the groups beyond Al Qaeda — is being slowly, and surely, defeated. The average insurgent today feels demoralized, disillusioned, and hunted. Those who have not been captured yet are opting for a quieter life outside of Iraq. Al Qaeda continues to grow for the time being as it cannibalizes the other insurgent groups and absorbs their most radical and hardcore fringes into its fold. The Baathists, who had been critical in spurring the initial insurgency, are becoming less and less relevant, and are drifting without a clear purpose following the hanging of their idol, Saddam Hussein. Rounding out this changing landscape is that Al Qaeda itself is getting a serious beating as the Americans improve in intelligence gathering and partner with more reliable Iraqi forces.

In other words, battling the insurgency now essentially means battling Al Qaeda. This is a major accomplishment.

Last October, my sources began telling me about rumblings among the insurgent strategists suggesting that their murderous endeavor was about to run out of steam. This sense of fatigue began registering among mid-level insurgent commanders in late December, and it has devolved to the rank and file since then. The insurgents have begun to feel that the tide has turned against them.

In many ways, the timing of this turnaround was inadvertent, coming at the height of political and bureaucratic mismanagement in Washington and Baghdad. A number of factors contributed to this turnaround, but most important was sustained, stay-the-course counterinsurgency pressure. At the end of the day, more insurgents were ending up dead or behind bars, which generated among them a sense of despair and a feeling that the insurgency was a dead end.

The Washington-initiated "surge" will speed-up the ongoing process of defeating the insurgency. But one should not consider the surge responsible for the turnaround. The lesson to be learned is to keep killing the killers until they realize their fate.

Read it all. Compare that to Daniel Henninger's column "Talking Ourselves into Defeat."

We are not only on the way to talking ourselves into defeat in Iraq but into a diminished international status that may be harder to recover than the doom mob imagines. Self-criticism has its role, but profligate self-doubt can exact a price.

Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins wonders "whether the clock has already run out." To U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton the new strategy is "a dead end." For the Bush troop request, presidential candidate Joe Biden predicted "overwhelming rejection." (His committee resolution to that effect yesterday passed by three votes.) Presidential candidate Chuck Hagel: "We have anarchy in Iraq. It's getting worse." And not least, Sen. John Warner this week heaved his tenured eminence against the war effort, proposing another "non-binding" resolution against more troops.

To pick one amid scores of similar characterizations in the media, the Associated Press wrote from Washington before the State of the Union speech that "Democrats--and even some Republicans--scoffed at his policy." "Scoff" is a strong word, suggesting eye-rolling ridicule. (The line was so good that the AP ran it after the speech as well, under another writer's byline, this time from Baghdad.) But of course amid the giddy vapors of mass mockery, they all "support the troops."

china scotches year of the pig

...to appease Muslims.

Meanwhile, the Faloon Gong must be wondering "What the @#^!?"

smoke and lens

Beautiful photographs composed of smoke.

euro-spiders hunt tax cheats

Websites around the world are getting a new computerized visitor among the Googlebots and Yahoo web spiders: The taxman. A five-nation tax enforcement cartel has been quietly cracking down on suspected internet tax cheats, using a sophisticated web crawling program to monitor transactions on auction sites, and track operators of online shops, poker and porn sites.

happy birthday...or else

Just when you thought every problem was being addressed by one interest group or another, along comes a new one. What a country, eh?!

Birthdays without Pressure seeks to curb the excessiveness of certain parents when throwing their kids a birthday party. You remember the old days of cake and ice cream, pin the tail on the donkey and pinatas. Outdated. Consider:

A one year old’s party in a Minnesota community has 60 guests. The gift opening takes two hours; the party infant sleeps through most of it.
A three year old’s parents in the same community rent a fire station for party #1, and a private club with a pool for party #2.
A six year old girl and her friends in St. Paul get makeovers and dance in public as part of a “starlet” package at a party business.
A six year old guest who is disappointed by a St. Paul party without gift bags, declares, “This is a rip off!”
A wealthy New York father throws a $10 million party for his 13 year old daughter’s birthday, including the band Aerosmith and $10,000 gift bags.

To find out whether you, as a parent, have lost touch with reality take the Birthday Pressure Quiz and read their helpful info.

remedial reading for senator webb

In his party's rebuttal to the State of the Union, newly elected Senator James Webb said:

When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it’s nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

Webb should read Thomas Sowell before he starts legislating "fairness." Sowell begins:

I could become so greedy that I wanted a fortune twice the size of Bill Gates' — but this greed would not increase my income by one cent.

If you want to explain why some people have astronomical incomes, it cannot be simply because of their own desires — whether "greedy" or not — but because of what other people are willing to pay them.

The real question, then, is: Why do other people choose to pay corporate executives so much?

Is it because of indifferent boards of directors who set CEO pay?

It makes a neat picture and may even be true in some cases. What deals a body blow to this theory, however, is that CEO compensation is even higher in corporations owned by a few giant investment firms, as distinguished from corporations owned by thousands of individual stockholders.

In other words, it is precisely where people are spending their own money and have financial expertise that they bid highest for CEOs. It is precisely where people most fully understand the difference that the right CEO can make in a corporation's profitability that they are willing to bid what it takes to get the executive they want.

If people who are capable of being outstanding executives were a dime a dozen, nobody would pay eleven cents a dozen for them.

Here's a message for Webb and his party of know-it-all meddlers.

Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.

All of us have thousands of things happening around us that we do not understand. We use computers all the time but most of us could not build a computer if our life depended on it — and those few individuals who could probably couldn't grow orchids or train horses.

In short, we all have grossly inadequate knowledge in other people's specialties.

The idea that everything must "justify itself before the bar of reason" goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world.

Given the high degree of specialization in a modern economy, demanding that everything "justify itself before the bar of reason" means demanding that people who know what they are doing must be subject to the veto of people who don't have a clue about the decisions that they are second-guessing.

wednesday, january 24, 2007

president bush

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in. Every one of us wishes this war was over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of the battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.

preventing human nature

From today's LA Daily News

Before Adolph Hitler began to wipe out Europe's Jews, gays and Gypsies, he argued that Nazi Germany's brutality would escape global condemnation.

"Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?" Hitler asked his commanding generals in 1939, The New York Times reported at the end of World War II.

The first genocide of the 20th century - the killing of 1 million to 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 - is viewed by scholars as a precursor to the Holocaust that erased 6 million Jews.

In Los Angeles, which has among the world's largest Armenian and Jewish populations, members of the two communities gathered in Encino late Monday to share their kinship of suffering and motivate their youths to fight the forces that lead to genocide.

"The question is: Can we teach our young persons something true so there will be no genocide in their generation?" said Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom. "Can we acknowledge that there is something evil in human nature?"

Good luck. Liberals choke on the concept of evil (unless you're speaking about Bush).

In 1994 as 800,000 Rwandans were being hacked to death by machete, the Clinton State Department held a briefing.

The first spokesperson was asked about the reports of genocide. She tap danced about "acts of genocide" but refused to call it thus. To do so would have obliged the US, and the UN, to act. After she finished, another spokeserson took the podium to protest certain foreign governments' ban on showing the film "Schindler's List." He sniffed that only by acknowledging genocide could it be prevented.

In such a world, there's no cure for genocide.

hollywood for ugly people

That's the knock on Washington's social dynamic, populated as it is by strivers and posers. (Hollywood is known as Washington for stupid people - so there!)

Anyway, the epithet comes to mind watching the strange ritual known as the State of the Union address. George Washington delivered the first one in person, then Thomas Jefferson, believing the event reeked of monarchy, mailed his in. This remained the practice until Woodrow Wilson resurrected the live event.

Today, Bush could easily post a PDF on the White House website and be done with it. Of course, the Oscars don't need an event either.

The SOTU is both compelling to watch and tough to stomach. As the President enters the hall he's gladhanded by members of Congress who've staked out their seats for hours, like dweeb losers camped out for Star Wars tickets. Many of them despise Bush, but want to be seen on TV by the folks back home. At least they don't wear funny hats like football fans hoping to be singled out on teevee.

Then there's the incessant applause. God almighty, let the speech continue! Example:

It's in our vital interest to diversify America's energy supply -- the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power, by even greater use of clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and clean, safe nuclear power. (Applause.) We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. (Applause.) We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol -- (applause) -- using everything from wood chips to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

That's an interruption every 31 words. When Bush began speaking about the war on terrorm that droppped to one interruption for every 156 words.

It was interesting to see all the Republicans rise and applaud Bush's call for victory in Iraq, while only a handful of Democrats did, rather blatantly advertising their desire to see us lose.

Bush was in good form last night. But Nancy Pelosi, like a scene stealing actor who does something distracting to attract attention, blinked incessantly. Located off Bush's right shoulder, she blinked so much I couldn't take my eyes off her. Soon I was counting how many times she blinked and not listening to Bush. Clever woman, she.

fly with google earth

hitchens reviews steyn

Christopher Hitchens reviews Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, in City Journal. It's worth reading in its entirety. A sample:

Steyn is much more definite about the cultural side of his argument, in other words, than about the counterterrorist dimension. If I wanted to sharpen both prongs of his thesis, I would also propose the following:

1. An end to one-way multiculturalism and to the cultural masochism that goes with it. The Koran does not mandate the wearing of veils or genital mutilation, and until recently only those who apostasized from Islam faced the threat of punishment by death. Now, though, all manner of antisocial practices find themselves validated in the name of religion, and mullahs have begun to issue threats even against non-Muslims for criticism of Islam. This creeping Islamism must cease at once, and those responsible must feel the full weight of the law. Meanwhile, we should insist on reciprocity at all times. We should not allow a single Saudi dollar to pay for propaganda within the U.S., for example, until Saudi Arabia also permits Jewish and Christian and secular practices. No Wahhabi-printed Korans anywhere in our prison system. No Salafist imams in our armed forces.

2. A strong, open alliance with India on all fronts, from the military to the political and economic, backed by an extensive cultural exchange program, to demonstrate solidarity with the other great multiethnic democracy under attack from Muslim fascism. A hugely enlarged quota for qualified Indian immigrants and a reduction in quotas from Pakistan and other nations where fundamentalism dominates.

socialist webb

Senator Jim Webb seems to have guzzled the whole tank of Democrat Kool-aid, spouting the "two Americas" canard. Dan Riehl takes him apart. We begin with a quote from Webb's speech.

There are two areas where our respective parties have largely stood in contradiction, and I want to take a few minutes to address them tonight. The first relates to how we see the health of our economy – how we measure it, and how we ensure that its benefits are properly shared among all Americans. The second regards our foreign policy – how we might bring the war in Iraq to a proper conclusion that will also allow us to continue to fight the war against international terrorism, and to address other strategic concerns that our country faces around the world.

When one looks at the health of our economy, it’s almost as if we are living in two different countries. Some say that things have never been better. The stock market is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. But these benefits are not being fairly shared. When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it’s nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day.

At a time when most reasonable experts conclude today's economy is an extremely positive tribute to the fiscal policy of the Bush presidency, a Democrat Party more interested in wealth distribution and entitlements can't bring itself to see it that way.

I'll link as oppose to address mostly the same populist rhetoric we've been hearing from Democrats for years. As usual, they seek only to divide America by class, instead of celebrating an America of free enterprise that encourages and allows even the poorest among us to elevate themselves and accumulate wealth as a result of their work.

They remain the party which seeks to cultivate a society of average people, as opposed to nurturing what's best in each and every American by urging them forward in working for their dreams, financial and otherwise. In the world view of today's Democrats, apparently no one can succeed without government help. That concept flies directly in the face of most everything that has made America great, through its appreciation for rugged independence and every individual's unique efforts and strengths.

tuesday, january 23, 2007

just threat of a surge seems to be working

Only 3000 additional troops have arrived in Iraq, but Jack Kelly writes that already things are changing:

Three interesting things have happened since President Bush announced plans to "surge" U.S. troops.

First, al Qaida appears to be retreating from Baghdad. A military intelligence officer has confirmed to Richard Miniter, editor of Pajamas Media, a report in the Iraqi newspaper al Sabah that Abu Ayyub al Masri, the head of al Qaida in Iraq, has ordered a withdrawal to Diyala province, north and east of Baghdad.

Mr. al Masri's evacuation order said that remaining in Baghdad is a no-win situation for al Qaida, because the Fallujah campaign demonstrating the Americans have learned how to prevail in house to house fighting, Mr. Miniter said.

"In more than 10 years of reading al Qaida intercepts, I've never seen (pessimistic) language like this," he quoted his intelligence officer source as saying.

Second, the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr, whose Iranian-subsidized militia, the Mahdi army, is responsible for most of the assaults on Sunni civilians in Iraq, is cooling his rhetoric and lowering his profile.

"Mahdi army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements," wrote Leila Fadel and Zaineb Obeid of the McClatchy Newspapers Jan. 13.

Third, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is putting more distance between himself and al Sadr, upon whose bloc of votes in parliament he had relied for political support.

Last Friday al Sadr ordered the 30 lawmakers and six cabinet ministers he controls to end the boycott of the government he ordered two months ago. AP writer Steven Hurst described this Monday as "a desperate bid to fend off an all out American offensive."

Despite this, Mr. Maliki consented to the arrest that same day of Abdul Hadi al Durraji, al Sadr's media director in Baghdad. Mr. Sadr said Saturday some 400 of his supporters have been arrested in recent days.

mapping gdp

This map compares each of the 50 states' GDP and substitutes it with a corresponding nation. California becomes France, Texas becomes Canada and Michigan become Argentina, etc.. Fascinating.

film buffs

"Attend" the Sundance Film Festival via the web. There's plenty to watch.

state of the union

As the news media prepares to pee all over President Bush, regardless of what he says, this perspective is welcome.

This widespread derision of President Bush bothers me. I'm distressed that a man like George Bush can be so reviled, while a moral degenerate like Bill Clinton can be so widely praised.

Notice, now, that I didn't say that I couldn't understand why this is so, I just said that it distresses me. The why is easy to understand. Bush has been a target since the day he was sworn in. Over 90% of the members of the mainstream New York and Washington press corps voted for Al Gore in the 2000 elections. Some of these people have come to accept the reality that it was a close election .. .and that Bush won. Others, perhaps the majority, have never come to terms with Bush's win and have been dedicated to the idea of destroying his presidency since January of 2000.

Since day one there has been a template applied to the media coverage of Bush's presidency. If the story makes Bush look good, either ignore it or downplay it. If the story makes Bush look bad, put it on the front page.

The media hasn't been fighting this war against Bush alone. The Democrats, of course, have been on board. There was a momentary respite in the aftermath of 9/11. But it took no time at all for the Democrats to renew their attacks. I firmly believe that the Democrats made a conscious decision that it was more important that they destroy the image of George Bush than it was for them to get behind the war against Islamic terrorism.

I believe that 9/11 transformed George Bush. I believe that since that date he has been completely dedicated to the purpose of protecting this country from further terrorist attacks.

How can he be blamed for acting against Saddam Hussein? Have we all forgotten that the official U.S. policy of removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq was adopted during the Clinton administration? Have we forgotten Saddam's cat and mouse games with U.N. weapons inspectors? Have we forgotten that American intelligence officials have recovered documents and materials that constitute proof positive that Saddam was proceeding with a program to develop nuclear weapons? Hussein defied the U.N. He defied the international community. The proof is there ... he had contacts with Al Qaeda. No, I'm not saying that Saddam was behind 9/11, but there were agents in Saddam's government who had contact with those who did plan 9/11. Add the rape rooms, the mass graves, the use of WMDs to kill tens of thousands of Iranians and his own countrymen .. .and you come up with a despot that should have been left in power --- in power to continue with his weapons programs?

Read it all.

two-fer

From Sisu.

now, this is depressing

Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, got basic facts wrong when writing about the Plame affair in the New Yorker, which brought this post from John Podhoretz at the Corner.

"[T]he White House dispatched former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger, in February of 2002, to find proof that the country had shipped yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Wilson not only came up empty-handed; he said so publicly, in a Times Op-Ed piece that he published five months later. The Administration then went on another search for evidence—the kind that could be used to discredit Wilson—and began disseminating it, off the record, to a few trusted reporters. That led to the unlawful exposure of Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a C.I.A. agent."

Now, to correct Dean Nicholas Lemann:

First: The White House did not dispatch Wilson to Niger. The CIA — acting on the recommendation of Wilson's wife — did.

Second: Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times not five months later, but seventeen months later. There was an intervening event. It was called "the war in Iraq." Perhaps Lemann has heard of it.

Third: It is probably untrue that the "exposure" of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was "unlawful." No one has been charged with any such offense, and there is a significant question about whether she maintained covert status in the five years preceding the publication of her name by Robert Novak — the trigger for the possibility that a crime was committed.

As Podhoretz noted, Lemann is an honorable journalist. And the New Yorker is famous for its staff of "fact checkers" who scrutinize every article before publication to insure factual accuracy.

And they still bungled the basic facts of a story that has been amply covered.

monday, january 22, 2007

the saddest day of the year

...is today, says some expert.

cop tech

Stink bombs, pain beams, spy drones—this is the future of law enforcement, brought to you by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

Dick Tracy would've drooled over this gear.

fareed zakaria

...in Newsweek bleats more nonsense:

Of course, one study that Zakaria cited to prove this premise “points out that 2006 was a bad year for liberty, under attack from creeping authoritarianism in Venezuela and Russia, a coup in Thailand, massive corruption in Africa and a host of more subtle reversals.”

Zakaria never addressed what President Bush did to advance creeping authoritarianism in Venezuela and Russia, the coup in Thailand, and the massive corruption in Africa. Instead, he reported the following (emphasis mine throughout):

What explains this paradox—of freedom's retreat, even with a U.S. administration vociferous in promoting democracy? Some part of the explanation lies in the global antipathy to the U.S. president. "We have all been hurt by the association with the Bush administration," Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the Egyptian activist, told me last month. "Bush's arrogance has turned people off the idea of democracy," says Larry Diamond, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Isn’t that special? Of course, no article critical of the Administration would be complete without bringing up Iraq:

The administration has constantly argued that Iraq has witnessed amazing political progress over the last four years only to be undermined by violence. In fact, Iraq has seen its politics and institutions fall apart since the American invasion. Its state was dismantled, its economy disrupted, its social order overturned and its civic institutions and community corroded by sectarianism. Its three communities were never brought together to hammer out a basic deal on how they could live together. The only things that did take place in Iraq were elections (and the writing of a Constitution that is widely ignored). Those elections had wondrous aspects, but they also divided the country into three communities and hardened these splits. To describe the last four years as a period of political progress requires a strange definition of political development.

Mysteriously, as Zakaria complained about Iraq’s economy, he totally ignored a Newsweek article from just a month ago addressing how that nation’s economy is booming.

lower oil prices = pain for iran

Oil prices have fallen 17% over the past few months, now heading toward US$50 a barrel. Surprisingly, the Saudis are not interested in stemming the price drop. Ibrahim al-Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, during a recent trip to India said oil prices were headed in the "right direction". A close US ally, Nigeria, has Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries chairmanship, and even though Venezuela and Iran have requested an early OPEC meeting, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf have all refused to schedule one to discuss oil prices.

The Sunni Saudis take on the Shia Iranians via the battle of the barrel. Gee, and I thought Bush controlled oil prices.

how the ap helped stoke civil war in iraq

James Lewis:

What has been lost in the debate about "Who is Jamil Hussein?" is the substance of his Iraqi atrocity stories peddled by the AP. The most recent ones have been denied by the US military, which has much better sources than the Associated Press. They have also not been confirmed by other news outlets. Whether "Jamil Hussein" was a cover name, an AP fabrication, or a real person is not as important as the content of his apparent disinformation. What was the purpose of the lie about six Iraqis being deliberately burned to death by terrorists? What about the other 60 AP stories that cited "Hussein"? How many lent credibility to other atrocity tales?

Two hypotheses spring to mind. One is that "Jamil Hussein" was benefiting from being an AP source. He was smart enough to know that AP wanted horror stories, and that's what he gave them. Maybe he was paid. Maybe he liked instant fame. But 61 citations as an AP source suggests an ongoing relationship, one with a clear and sustained purpose.

A more sinister interpretation is that "Jamil Hussein" was a political plant, whose primary goal was to feed atrocity stories to the AP. He could be an Iranian plant in the Iraqi Police, which is heavily infiltrated by Mahdi Army killers who are paid by Iran. They were the ones who shouted "Muqtada Al Sadr!" when Saddam Hussein was hanged. An Iranian mole's purpose would be to stir up civil war, and at the same time to provide more "evidence" for the American Leftist news narrative that Iraq is a hopeless mess.

would you buy a used car from this couple?

scrappleface

The ever sharp Scott Ott:

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-NB, today introduced a bill with several of his Democrat colleagues that would cap the number of Republican Senators at current levels and begin negotiations with Democrats for a phased GOP withdrawal from the Senate.

The measure comes as the Senate prepares to debate a Hagel-sponsored resolution opposing President George Bush’s move to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

“Just as sending more U.S. troops isn’t the solution to defeating terrorists in Iraq,” said Sen. Hagel, “more Republican senators won’t accomplish the party’s legislative goals here. Each additional GOP senator simply antagonizes the majority party and makes the Senate a worse quagmire than it already is.”

New York Democrat Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton co-sponsored the so-called “cap and yank” measure.

sunday, january 21 2007

my spanking initiative

California made national news again with an effort by a Democrat legislator to outlaw spanking of children under age three. It will never pass. So, rather than waste pixels on her law that will never pass, I'll waste pixels on my law that will never even get introduced, much less passed.

Call it The Citizens Spanking Law. To understand how it would work, I refer you to a real life incident.

While shopping at Trader Joes, a local specialty market, I saw a father and six-year-old son in the tea aisle. While dad scruntinized the labels of the tea boxes, sonny stretched his shirt sleeve about six inches past his wrist and used it as a whip to knock over the carefully arranged stacks of tea boxes. Dad said, "Stop that, honey." The kid smirked and did it again. Dadddy repeated the warning. Sonny knocked more boxes over, defiantly looking at Dad. (Kind of like Saddam and the UN.)

This went on until the twerp had created quite a mess. Weakling dad never did anything to discipline his darling monster.

Here's where my law would go into effect. Much like a citizen's arrest, outraged observers could apply a citizen's spanking. That's right, grab the brat and give him a couple swats, bruising only the kid's ego, but teaching him that actions have consequences. One might force the kid to start cleaning up the mess, while lecturing him about respecting private property and his fellow man.

If dad objects, spank him, too. Explain that unleashing brats on the world is unkind. Explain that California, and much of America, already filled its quota of human beings with an exaggerated sense of entitlement, and that his weak parenting is, at minimum, littering our social environment.

Then make him stand in the corner.

here's a new one: retail food environment index

What is an RFEI? It's a silly statistic invented by a group called the California Center for Public Health Advocacy. Last Friday they managed to get stories in the LA Times and local television news with this bulletin:

In California, people are more than four t

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