No Oil for Pacifists

According to the Weekly Standard, the Obama Administration apparently has discontinued President Bush's practice of transcribing and posting the daily press briefing. Glenn Reynolds supplies "the obvious explanation":

Bush wanted transcripts online because he expected the press to filter what he said. Obama doesn’t want transcripts online . . . because he expects the press to filter what he says.

In the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh is channelling Reagan about HR1:

• Recessions will end on their own if they're left alone. What can make the recession worse is the wrong kind of government intervention.


• I don't believe his is a "stimulus plan" at all -- I don't think it stimulates anything but the Democratic Party.


• This "porkulus" bill is designed to repair the Democratic Party's power losses from the 1990s forward, and to cement the party's majority power for decades.


• We know that when tax rates are cut in a recession, it brings an economy back.


• Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%.


• As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.

So there you have it -- use the presidential vote to apportion HR1. The beauty in its simplicity brings a tear to my eye. Can we all just say amen to that?

On this same subject, I have been pondering a couple of questions:

1. If we are spending most of the money in 2010, why are we in such a hurry to pass this bill RIGHT NOW?



2. Can we have an up and down vote on each line item in the bill on its merits?

Mickey Kaus:

On Wednesday, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger predicted there would be no wage cuts as part of the union's concessions to GM and Chrysler. Gettelfinger argued Toyota's workers actually make $2-per-hour more than UAW workers, if you count bonuses. But ... but. ... Toyota did not go bankrupt. ... Toyota hasn't had to be rescued with $17.4 billion of taxpayer money. ... If Toyota can afford to pay its workers $2/hour more than UAW workers--perhaps because it doesn't have to build cars under the union's legalistic work rule system--that's great. It doesn't mean Gettelfinger's workers have a right to $28/hour if at that wage their employers can't stay in business without an ongoing multi-billion dollar subsidy. I'm sorry if this seems obvious. It's apparently not obvious enough.

(via Instapundit)

Marc Thiessen on The Corner defends the moral basis of enhanced interrogation of terrorist detainees:

Those who oppose this program are preaching the moral equivalent of radical pacifism. Pacifism holds that killing is always wrong, therefore war--official killing by the state--is always wrong as well. This is both noble and naïve. Standing against this view is the Judeo-Christian tradition of "Just War" theory, which holds that there are circumstances under which war is permissible and indeed necessary, and ways in which it can be ethically conducted.

The same holds true for interrogations. There are circumstances under which coercive interrogations are both permissible and ethical--and the CIA program meets these just war standards.

First, the program is limited. We use enhanced interrogation techniques as a last resort, and on only a few individuals who have unique information about planned mass casualty attacks, and who are withholding that information.

Second, the program is restrained. Of the many thousands of people captured in the war on terror, less than 100 were taken into the CIA program. Of those, only a third ever had any enhanced interrogation techniques used on them. And of those, only three--three--were subjected to waterboarding. The CIA uses the least coercive method necessary to get information.

Third, the program is necessary. The individuals being questioned are often the only source of the information we need--there is no other way to find out what these terrorists are plotting and planning.

Finally, the program is for a moral purpose. We do not use these techniques to extract confessions or punish individuals for wrongdoing. We use them as a last resort, to get information needed to protect society and the lives of the innocent.

So not only is this program necessary, it is moral and it is ethical. We can defend it not just on pragmatic grounds, but on moral grounds as well.

See also Richard Cohen in Tuesday's Washington Post.

UPDATE: below

Last Friday, President Obama OKed a Predator strike killing at least 15 in Western Pakistan. And Afghanistan village elders claim 22 non-combatants were killed in a U.S.-led raid. The anti-war lefts' reaction: silence.

This isn't a critique of either Obama or our military. Just a comment on what a difference it makes not having George W. Bush to kick around anymore.

MORE:

Assistant Village Idiot:

This is bittersweet for conservatives. At one level, we’re thrilled that Obama gets it, now that he’s looking at the daily security briefings. That was always the case, as most Democrats who actually had the real information usually signed off on the Bush Administration actions. Once terrorists move from being pawns in the American political game, mere abstract counters where people get to preen about how noble they are, to actual dangerous people in our custody who want to kill Americans, what to do with them becomes much more problematic. Obama is smart enough to understand the situation and adjust. That’s a good thing.

It is more than a little irritating, however, to see Obama given a pass, or even praise, for the very things even he attacked Bush on. All that rhetoric about fascists, and cabals, and BusHitler, that made the rounds over the last few years -- what was that all about? All that relief progressives feel about not having to worry about Bush-Cheney anymore -- was there ever anything more to it than feelings?

(via Instapundit, Wizbang)

Fred Barnes in the February 2nd Weekly Standard:

In 1994, congressional Republicans carried laminated copies of their Contract With America (tax cuts, term limits, etc.) in their pockets. They may now want to laminate President Obama's inaugural address and carry it around.

This is not as silly as it sounds. Republican leaders believe the speech pleased them more than it did House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Obama's "new era of responsibility" echoed the "Personal Responsibility Act," the third of the ten planks in the Contract With America. Obama also said that it's not the size of government which matters but whether it works. Newt Gingrich coined that thought years ago. Obama lauded "risk-takers." Democrats want to tax them to death.

For the foreseeable future, attacking Obama will be counterproductive for Republicans. He's both enormously popular and the bearer of moral authority as the first African-American president. So the idea is for Republicans to make Obama an ally by using his words, from the inaugural address and speeches and interviews, against Democrats and their initiatives in Congress.

Obama is for bipartisanship. Pelosi, Reid, and their cohort are heavyhanded partisans with no interest in accommodating Republicans. Obama favors transparency. They don't. Obama says he wants "to spend wisely" and promises that "programs will end" if they don't work. That's hardly the philosophy of congressional Democrats.

Obama's words may be bromides or boilerplate that bear little relationship to his true sentiments or real plans. But so what? Republicans in the House and Senate are a badly outnumbered minority. They have few political weapons at their disposal. Citing Obama's words makes political sense. It's at least worth a try. Republicans have nothing to lose.

The House this week correctly affirmed the 17 February Digital TV Transition. However, it was by accident, as a majority vote for delay until June failed the necessary 2/3rds margin. The Senate had previously unanimously approved a delay to June.

Question: Is there anyone left in this country that is either ignorant of, or unprepared for, the DTV switch next month?

Answer: Who cares! They will find out soon enough and can decide (freedom of choice!) what, if anything, to do about the change in their lives. Why is it that Congress feels it must hold the hand of every couch potato in the country? Incredible that our 'dear leaders' are wasting oxygen over this one...they have dug themselves a hole. Now, no matter what Congress does, they will mess up the DTV transition. Ms. Chung, president and chief executive officer of Self Help for the Elderly in San Francisco says it best: "Whatever day Congress decides, we'll work around that..."

The New York Times, also turning couch potatoes into victims, has this to say:

Vesta Clemmons, who is 77 and lives alone, relies on the battered Zenith television in her tiny apartment here as more than just a lifeline to the outside world...for those older and low-income viewers like Ms. Clemmons who still use set-top rabbit ears or rooftop antennas to pull in images of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” or “The Young and the Restless,” the switchover to digital television has often proven a bewildering and cumbersome burden.

The photo of Vesta is Priceless, she is a refined woman of obvious taste and style, she is no shut-in. Matter of fact, Vesta's preferred music: Pink Floyd, Ozzy Osbourne and Nine-Inch Nails. Folks, you don't develop a taste for the metal without a little help from your friends.



But, who is that in the picture with Vesta? Why it is Meals-On-Wheels delivering a digital converter box!:

For several months now, drivers and volunteers for the Houston-area program have been delivering and installing digital converter boxes for its clients — as a side dish alongside the baked chicken and stewed peaches that are their usual fare. Ms. Clemmons’s turn came last week.

The thousand points of light... our citizens helping each other, without congressional action. We know the right thing to do.

And BO-44 is also proposing delay. You know what would make me proud: if BO were to say "The country cannot afford to delay progress. My Fellow Citizens, I encourage each one of you to call your friends, to call your family, and to reach out to your new neighbors, your old neighbors, your tired neighbors and your shut-in neighbors to aid them during this transition. We will not delay; nay, the thousand points of light will shine, and together we will do without delay, without further expense."

(P.S. The House can and probably will still screw-up the DTV transition next week with a simple majority vote, all in the name of defense of the helpless couch potato victims of course. Won't someone think of the couch potatoes, please?)

The LA Times claims that

At least 200 passengers have been convicted of felonies under the Patriot Act, often for behavior involving raised voices and profanity. Some experts say airlines are misusing the law.

Ken at Popehat--who is a lawyer--shows why the Times is wrong:

This is the heart of the article’s legal illiteracy and/or willful scaremongering. People like Freeman are being prosecuted "under the PATRIOT Act" in only the most remote sense — they are being prosecuted under a statute that existed well before the PATRIOT Act, under elements established well before the PATRIOT Act, facing a sentencing guideline range not altered by the PATRIOT Act. . .

As a reporter who had achieved a baseline of legal literacy would know, neither the airlines nor the FAA prosecute cases. They have no "wide latitude" to do so. All that the airlines and the FAA can do is decide when to call the FBI so that they show up when the plane lands, and whether to "refer the case for prosecution" -- that is, ask the local U.S. Attorney’s Office to prosecute the drunk lout. The U.S. Attorney, with the advice of the investigating FBI agent -- not the pilot or the airline or the FAA -- decides, based in part on guidelines established by the Department of Justice, whether the evidence warrants prosecution. That’s how Freeman, and everyone else prosecuted for interference with a flight crew, winds up on the hook. And despite the Times’ suggestion that there has been a sea change in the government’s approach to such cases, the United States Attorney’s Manual entry on interference with a flight crew has not been updated since 1999.

(via Patterico)

From Tom McMahon's 4-Block World:


source: 4-Block World January 27th

From what passes for the objective media, specifically the Associated Press:

Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush's unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.

"What an opportunity we have to change this country," the Democrat told his senior staff after his inauguration. "The American people are really counting on us now. Let's make sure we take advantage of it."

In the highly scripted first days of his administration, Obama overturned a slew of Bush policies with great fanfare. He largely avoided cultural issues; the exception was reversing one abortion-related policy, a predictable move done in a very low-profile way.

(via Best of the Web)

From the National Newspaper, January 24th:

This is the frozen north ... of the [United Arab Emirates].

Snow covered the Jebel Jais area for only the second time in recorded history yesterday.

So rare was the event that one lifelong resident said the local dialect had no word for it.

According to the RAK Government, temperatures on Jebel Jais dropped to -3°C on Friday night. On Saturday, the area had reached 1°C.

Major Saeed Rashid al Yamahi, a helicopter pilot and the manager of the Air Wing of RAK Police, said the snow covered an area of five kilometres and was 10cm deep.

"The sight up there this morning was totally unbelievable, with the snow-capped mountain and the entire area covered with fresh, dazzling white snow," Major al Yamahi said.

"The snowfall started at 3pm Friday, and heavy snowing began at 8pm and continued till midnight, covering the entire area in a thick blanket of snow. Much of the snow was still there even when we flew back from the mountain this afternoon. It is still freezing cold up there and there are chances that it might snow again tonight."

(via TigerHawk)

No stimulus package for you Barack. As reported here the 'economic stimulus package' is a load of chitlins in stimulus clothing.

Here is one of the latest revelations: $4 Billion for "Neighborhood Stabilization" What is my neighborhood unstable? Do we need hurricane ties or concrete anchors? What will it slide down the street? No -- this is money for ACORN, the low-income advocacy group under investigation for voter registration fraud.

Did you ever notice BO gives no estimate on how much economic growth the stimulus will foster, or when growth is expected? That is because it is not an economic stimulus package, it is just liberal movements towards socialism.

However, listen to what House Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey, D-Wis., has to say (last paragraph): said the goal is to act now and address problems later. During the Depression, he said, President Franklin Roosevelt "tried lots of things. We'll do the same thing." Did he say we are going to experiment? Good grief! Economic stimulus is common sense. We don't have to "try lots of things." Moreover, Roosevelt's actions were neither constitutional, nor did they dig us out of depression. It took WW2 to end the depression. Hello!?!!

James Pethokoukis over at USNWR does a righteous survey of economists views of the 'stimulus package'; here are a few selections from his analysis (emphasis mine)

Andrew Mountford and Harald Uhlig "analyzed three types of policy shocks: a deficit-financed spending increase, a balanced budget spending increase (financed with higher taxes) and a deficit-financed tax cut, in which revenues increase but government spending stays unchanged. We found that a deficit-spending shock stimulates the economy for the first 4 quarters but only weakly compared to that for a deficit-financed tax cut." In other words, FDR vs. Clinton vs. Reagan, Reagan wins.

Economists Susan Woodward and Robert Hall find that the multiplier effect from infrastructure spending maybe just 1-for-1, less than that 3-to-1 ratio for tax cuts that Romer found: "We believe that the one-for-one rule derived from
wartime increases in military spending would also apply to increases in
infrastructure spending in a stimulus package. We should not count on any
inducement of higher consumption from the infrastructure stimulus."

Massive stimulus didn't work in the Great Depression. As this Heritage Foundation study notes: "After the stock market collapse in 1929, the Hoover Administration increased federal spending by 47 percent over the following three years. As a result, federal spending increased from 3.4 percent of GDP in 1930 to 6.9 percent in 1932 and reached 9.8 percent by 1940. That same year-- 10 years into the Great Depression--America's unemployment rate stood at 14.6 percent." Same goes for Japan and its Great Stagnation of the 1990s.

His bottom-line: "...when you look at the economic evidence, it sure seems like an economic recovery package that's heavy on government spending and light on tax cuts is just the opposite of what we should be doing right now." Pethokoukis also has a great list of sources.

BO has failed his history lesson and is going to stick to pushing through the biggest spending bill of all time -- even adjusting for inflation -- in the name of 'economic stimulus'. It is just socialism wrapped in the flag. I conclude we are in serious trouble from a leadership perspective. There is no 'spend wisely' in this bill, it is wholesale income transfer.

Prediction: The end of the recession is a long long way off.

Conclusion: Sell your stocks, if you have any left, put the money under a mattress.

From the January 21st Baltimore Examiner:

Two separate studies through NASA confirm that since 2003, the world's oceans have been losing heat. . .

John Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, published his first report about the warming oceans. The article Correcting Ocean Cooling published on NASA's Earth Observatory page this week discussed his and other results. Willis used data from1993-2003 that showed the warm-up and followed the Global Warming Theory. In 2006, he co-piloted a follow-up study led by John Lyman at Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle that updated the time series for 2003-2005. Surprisingly, the ocean seemed to have cooled. He was surprised, and called it a 'speed bump' on the way to global warming.

A second, independent study was conducted. Takmeng Wong and his colleagues at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia came up with the same results. Wong studies net flux of solar energy at the top of our atmosphere. From the 1980s to 1990s his team noticed increased amounts net energy when comparing incoming solar energy to what Earth radiates and reflects. Since then, the solar flux has remained the same.


source: NASA Earth Observatory

Other studies have suggested that the sun's output has decreased in the past few years.

Oh, I forgot--"cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists."

(via Planet Gore)

From the January 26th Jerusalem Post:

Hamas bears full responsibility for the war in Gaza, a top EU official said Monday in the Strip, calling the group "a terrorist movement."

"At this time we have to also recall the overwhelming responsibility of Hamas," Louis Michel, European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, told reporters.

"I intentionally say this here -- Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such," Michel said as he visited the town of Jabalya in northern Gaza.

"Public opinion is fed up to see that we are paying over and over again -- be it the [European] commission, the member states or the major donors -- for infrastructure that will be systematically destroyed," he said.

Reuters quoted the EU official as saying that the Islamic group had used civilians as "human shields" by placing operatives in residential areas, and said that the years of terrorist rocket-fire on southern Israel served as a "provocation."

The report also quoted Michel as saying that, "When you kill innocents, it is not resistance. It is terrorism."

(via Instapundit)

UPDATE: below

New York Times, January 27, 2009:

In an interview broadcast Tuesday on one of the Middle East’s major news channels, President Obama struck a conciliatory tone toward the Islamic world, saying he wanted to persuade Muslims that “the Americans are not your enemy.” He also said the moment was ripe for negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The interview with Al Arabiya, an Arabic-language channel based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, signaled a shift — in style and manner, at least — from the Bush administration, with Mr. Obama offering what he depicted as a new readiness to listen rather than to dictate.

George W. Bush, September 20, 2001:

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful.

MORE:

Charles Krauthammer in the January 30th Washington Post:

Look. If Barack Obama wants to say, as he said to al-Arabiya, I have Muslim roots, Muslim family members, have lived in a Muslim country -- implying a special affinity that uniquely positions him to establish good relations -- that's fine. But it is both false and deeply injurious to this country to draw a historical line dividing America under Obama from a benighted past when Islam was supposedly disrespected and demonized.

As in Obama's grand admonition: "We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name." Have "we" been doing that, smearing Islam because of a small minority? George W. Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when the fires of Ground Zero were still smoldering, to declare "Islam is peace," to extend fellowship and friendship to Muslims, to insist that Americans treat them with respect and generosity of spirit.

(via Best of the Web)

From The Hill:

Movie star Susan Sarandon compared President Obama to Jesus. Broadway and film actor Alan Cumming thought of him more like Mahatma Gandhi.

"He is a community organizer like Jesus was," Sarandon said Tuesday night on the bright blue carpet leading into the Creative Coalition’s 2009 Ball at the Harman Center for the Arts in Chinatown. "And now, we’re a community and he can organize us."

(via The Corner)

I have previously argued that the 2002 assassination of Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn signaled the inability of the Netherlands' tolerance policy to withstand radical Islam. Last week's decision by a Dutch court to order the indictment of Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing Freedom Party, on charges of 'inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs,' confirms the collapse of freedom in Europe, as Bruce Bawer says in City Journal:

With Hirsi Ali abroad, the torch passed to Geert Wilders. At times, it seems that he is the last prominent Dutch figure willing to speak bluntly about the perils of fundamentalist Islam. The same people who demonized Fortuyn have done their best to stifle Wilders. In April 2007, intelligence and security officials called him in and demanded that he tone down his rhetoric on Islam. Last February, the Minister of Justice subjected him to what he described as another "hour of intimidation." The announcement that he was making a film about Islam only led his enemies to turn up the heat. Even before Fitna was released early last year, Doekle Terpstra, a leading member of the Dutch establishment, called for mass rallies to protest the movie. Terpstra organized a coalition of political, business, academic, and religious leaders, the sole purpose of which was to try to freeze Wilders out of public debate. Dutch cities are riddled with terrorist cells and crowded with fundamentalist Muslims who cheered 9/11 and idolize Osama bin Laden, but for Terpstra and his political allies, the real problem was the one Member of Parliament who wouldn’t shut up. "Geert Wilders is evil," pronounced Terpstra, "and evil has to be stopped." Fortuyn, van Gogh, and Hirsi Ali had been stopped; now it was Wilders’s turn.

But Wilders—who for years now has lived under 24-hour armed guard—would not be gagged. Thus the disgraceful decision to put him on trial. In Dutch Muslim schools and mosques, incendiary rhetoric about the Netherlands, America, Jews, gays, democracy, and sexual equality is routine; a generation of Dutch Muslims are being brought up with toxic attitudes toward the society in which they live. And no one is ever prosecuted for any of this. Instead, a court in the Netherlands—a nation once famous for being an oasis of free speech—has now decided to prosecute a member of the national legislature for speaking his mind. By doing so, it proves exactly what Wilders has argued all along: that fear and "sensitivity" to a religion of submission are destroying Dutch freedom.

I agree with Mark Steyn:

The Dutch, like the Canadians, think they can maintain social peace by shriveling the bounds of public discourse and bringing what little remains under state regulation. But one notices that the coercive urge, which comes so naturally to Euro-progressives, only goes in one direction. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice shuts down the investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm for selling tapes urging believers to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" (ie, Jews) because that's simply "the everyday climate in the rhetoric". The masked men marching through the streets of London with placards threatening to rain down another 9/11 on the infidels are protected by a phalanx of Metropolitan Police officers. The PC nellies of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, happy to hound the last neo-Nazi in Saskatchewan posting to the Internet from his mum's basement, won't go anywhere near Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus al-Hayitia, the big-time Montreal imam whose book says infidels are "evil people", Jews "spread corruption and chaos", and homosexuals should be "exterminated".

Instead, the state's response to explicit Islamic intimidation is to punish those foolish enough to point out that intimidation.

(via Andrew Stuttaford on The Corner, Conservative Grapevine, Brussels Journal, FOX News)

From Politico:

President Barack Obama is taking far-reaching steps to centralize decision-making inside the White House, surrounding himself with influential counselors, overseas envoys and policy "czars" that shift power from traditional Cabinet posts.

Not even a week has passed since he was sworn in, but already Obama is moving to create perhaps the most powerful staff in modern history -- a sort of West Wing on steroids that places no less than a half-dozen of his top initiatives into the hands of advisers outside the Cabinet.

(via Instapundit)

President Obama's decision to close the Guantánamo Bay detention facility further confuses criminal law with the laws of war--do we expect our soldiers to give "Miranda warnings" to captured terrorists in Afghanistan? The decision--essentially a rejection of "the war on terror"--also exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of warfare, as Andrew McCarthy says on the NY Times' Room For Debate blog:

We are dealing with two ugly realities that mainstream opinion wants to wish away: (a) we are, as President Obama has taken to repeating, "a nation at war," and (b) the enemy, which means Americans mortal harm, is animated by an ideology firmly rooted in fundamentalist Islam.

Unpleasant fact (a) has a corollary: you cannot convert what is in essence a national-security challenge into a mere criminal-justice issue. That is, it never has been and it never will be the case that every enemy operative in a war is going to be a person we will have sufficient evidence to convict in court. In war, it is necessary to detain people who are suspected of being enemy operatives, not always provable enemy operatives in a courtroom.

The objective in peacetime is to maximize due process and put all burdens of proof on the government before liberty and privacy are infringed -- we’d rather see government lose than an innocent be done an injustice. By contrast, the objective in wartime is to defeat the enemy -- which calls for recognition that some injustices will be done for the greater good of safeguarding the nation. The excruciating weight of these injustices is why we resist warfare if we can do so responsibly; but once in it, our security requires that we make winning it our priority.

Contrary to Norm Geras, "innocent until proven guilty" isn't the rule of the law of war. The terrorists were sent to Git'mo primarily so we could learn more about Al Qaeda, not to be prosecuted.

Certainly, releasing all detainees would be a disaster. As Matthew Waxman says, "The big question is what to do with any detainees who are too dangerous or heinous to send home but who cannot be effectively prosecuted." And moving some detainees to Kansas is crazy. Our Arab allies may have a better understanding of the issue than the President:

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, said he had been told by officials from Muslim countries that they would no longer send officers to the Army Command and General Staff College if the detainees came to Fort Leavenworth.

“We’ve already heard from students from Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that they will leave, or be pulled by their governments, if the detainees from Guantanamo are moved there,” Brownback said. "It’s where these relationships are built with foreign officers, particularly in the Islamic world. This really hurts us."

See also Stephanie Hessler's outline of the options for dealing with the Git'mo detainees in the current Weekly Standard.

(via Campaign Spot, reader Doug J.)

From Don Surber:

President Obama is willing to talk to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. But Rush Limbaugh? “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.” America, we have met the enemy and he is some fat guy in Florida.

(via Instapundit)

From Bernard Goldberg on The Corner:

Did you hear the one about how after Barack Obama became president this week he found out the economy was worse than he thought—so he had to lay off 17 journalists.

Obama's "no lobbyists" policy always was more campaign rhetoric than reality. But it apparently has a new loophole: it doesn't apply to good lobbyists.

See also this New York Times correction:

An article on Thursday about new ethics rules imposed by President Obama on members of his administration paraphrased incorrectly from a statement by the Republican National Committee about a provision barring former lobbyists from working for agencies they had lobbied within the past few years. The committee criticized the Obama administration for violating the new standard in some of its appointments; it did not criticize the new rule.

(via Megan McArdle, TigerHawk)

As reported by Wired magazine:

The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

In a filing in San Francisco federal court, President Barack Obama adopted the same position as his predecessor.

(via Instapundit)

From Sigmund, Carl and Alfred:

The predicament the Palestinians find themselves in today is of their own making. Saeb Erekat, Palestinian cause ‘negotiator’ and obfuscator par excellence, denounces rocket launches, terror, kidnappings and other crimes against civilians because ‘they harm the image and goals of the Palestinian people.’ He cannot bring himself to say that kidnappings and other terrorist activities are crimes and are the behavior of immoral people. He clearly does not understand that his own words underscore why his ‘government’ is noting more than a sham.

Carl skipped the inauguration speech, while I did not. Why? Because I believed he would deliver a speech dripping with magnetism, quotable for the next 200 years. I wanted to to hear it myself before they quote it out of context. It would have given me something to else do besides shooing these miserable kids off my lawn.

That did not happen. He did not even come close to "Ask not what your country can do for you..." he did utter this gem:

Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

To honor the occasion, I have composed this nice letter to President Obama. It echos the sentiments of Brian and Allison over at the ACUF, who ask for your help in holding Obama to his promises, which I urge you to read.

My Dear, Dear B-Man:

How are things with you, the Mrs. and all the little Obamas in the new home? Getting settled in and picking out a new china pattern? The place could use some color. . .

Looks like you have a whole lot more power today than you did a few days ago. I can see you on the TV with your new Cadillac One. . . and check out that Air Force One. Bad!

With the press fawning all over you and proclaiming you can do no evil, let us not let this make you all head-trippy, you need a little deflating.

Barack, I heard about the little problem you had later, and I well, say this as a friend: ED can happen to anyone, even the president. There, well someone had to say that.

Now that we registered your mortal status, before you start experimenting with the economy, have you read 'The Forgotten Man'? It is about the Roosevelt administration during the depression. Yes it is long, we will give you the Cliff notes version.

Roosevelt liked to experiment too. . . one of his experiments we call Social Security. Many of the others like the National Recovery Administration were ruled unconstitutional, but not until they prolonged the depression and created misery for the untold multitudes. Here are a few more lessons learned from Roosevelt:

- Raising taxes in recession will extend it, it destroys motivation for innovation
- Wage and price controls will not cure inflation or deflation, they do cause local pain. (corollary: the min wage is counterproductive)
- Tariffs + quotas are counterproductive.
- Cutting military spending will add many laborers to the unemployment lines.

Now we realize that you promised to do a lot before the election. like universal health care, 'economic justice'. Lets not forget the promise of net spending cuts. We do need massive economic stimulus to avoid the fate of Japan -- but every dollar has to count. Looking at the economic stimulus spending bill:

- $6 billion to weatherize modest income homes
- $6 billion to provide internet in underserved areas
- $20 billion to increase food stamp funding
- $87 billion to provide a "temporary" increase in Medicaid funding
- $4 Billion for law enforcement?
- $79 billion in state fiscal relief
- $41 billion to local school district
- $15.6 billion to increase the PELL Grant.

Is this change we can believe in? More relevant to your most recent promise in your inaugural address, is this "spending wisely"? Come on, this is a lot of either pork or socialism in stimulus clothing. If you keep it up they will be calling it chittlins. Or I will anyway.

Barack -- if our government is going to spend wisely, you need a litmus test on what will stimulate the economy before we spend the bling. Insist on it! Lets not let our precious tax dollars go to social programs in the name of economic stimulus. We all know that make work jobs are a drag on the economy. Duh! Now, do some of that president stuff. Thanks.

BTW I sent you a Linkedin invitation, look for it!

Do keep in touch --

Best,

More

The CBO report reveals that the majority of H.R. 1, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will be in the form of income transfers.

From last year's Daily Mail (U.K.):


source of all: March 18, 2008, Daily Mail











According to the Daily Mail:

These stunning banded icebergs -- formed over hundreds, if not thousands, of years -- were pictured floating in the waters of the Antarctic.

Some of the stripes formed when layers of the iceberg melted and refroze.

Others were created from the dust and soil picked up when the ice sheet that gave birth to the iceberg was sliding down an Antarctic hillside. . .

Most of those in the Antarctic were formed from snow falling on the giant ice sheet that covers the continent.

Over time, the snow is compressed to form more ice, which slides slowly towards the sea.

There it either breaks off into the water, or forms an ice shelf.

Most appear white as a result of the tiny bubbles trapped within them which scatter light in every direction.

However, if the bubbles are squeezed out, or if part of the iceberg melts and quickly refreezes, it can appear blue.

Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with meltwater and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form.

When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe.

Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea.

The London Times added:

Keith Makinson, of the British Antarctic Survey, said that icebergs that seemed to show stripes were quite common in southern waters, but it was the first time that he had seen brown stripes. They are believed to be created when ice crystals form under the water and, in a process described as “inverted snow”, rise to stick to the bottom of the ice shelf. As the ice crystals form a new layer at the bottom of the ice shelf, which later fragments to float away as icebergs, tiny particles of organic matter are trapped.

Parts of dead marine creatures such as krill form much of the trapped material and have the effect of creating coloured stripes, mainly blues and greens, in icebergs. Dr Makinson said that the brown stripes in this example were likely to have been formed from sediment washing underneath the ice shelf.

Other related photos here.

(via reader OBH, Snopes)

According to Helen Thomas--former White House corespondent, and long-time whack-job--if you're not a liberal you're a liar. Here's an excerpt from an interview on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation morning TV show called "Sun Day":

Helen Thomas: I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, I'll be one 'til I die, what else should a reporter be when you see so much and when we have such great privilege and access to the truth?

CBC Interviewer: Well, you know, it's interesting because I'm sure that if somebody from the right was sitting here they would say... if you ask the question what should a reporter be they will say, "Oh, I don't know, How about objective?"

Helen Thomas: You're not asking people not to think not to care are you? But you are asking them to give a fair reporting both sides and so forth and I did it for 57 years I was never, never accused of bias in my copy. But I had a right to be angry and unhappy at the trend that I saw in my country that I was close enough to see.

Does anyone doubt Thomas represents the majority view of objectivity among the mainstream media?

(via NewsBusters, which posts video of the interview)

The recession and cheap oil are battering the European carbon trading market, according to the New York Times:

Fears that the global economic slowdown will hobble efforts to fund a green transformation of energy systems seem to be well founded.

Governments are putting plans aimed at mitigating carbon dioxide emissions on hold at a time when concerns are focused on finance rather than ecology and when the collapsing price of oil and gas is undermining incentives to invest in renewable energy.

Another blow to the sector is the tumbling price of permits for emitting carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. In countries where emitters must buy these permits, like those in the European Union, low prices mean emitters have fewer incentives to make their production process more efficient or move to less greenhouse gas intensive fuels.


source: NY Times Green Inc. blog


The price of these permits has fallen by more than half since mid-2008 and were trading at 11.63 euros (about $15) by early afternoon on Wednesday, according to Point Carbon.

The slumping price signals something else: The market already has considered the prospects for America joining Europe's carbon cap-and-trade scheme, and it doesn't believe it. Neither do I.

(via CCNet News (email only))

From the January 21st Daily Mail (U.K.):

Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle

(via Ann Althouse)

GayPatriot West:

Obama worship is the flip side of Bush hatred. They love the one without knowing what he stands for and loath the other while misrepresenting his record.

(via Instapundit)

According to Brett Stevens in the January 19th Wall Street Journal:

[W]hy are the top echelons of Israel's political and military establishment delighted by the war's result? . . . [A] senior military official offers perhaps the most authoritative explanation of his government's war aims and his interpretation of its effects. "We have no desire to go back into Gaza," he says. "We decided we're not going to spend five years [in Gaza] like the five years Americans spent in Iraq."

On the contrary: Far from seeking regime change in Gaza, the official seems at ease that the Palestinians will remain bifurcated between Hamastan and Fatahland for many years more, the way Germany was divided during the Cold War. The idea is that a Hamas state in Gaza -- somehow deterred from mischief -- could become a kind of useful negative example to the Palestinians of the West Bank, somewhat in the way East Germany served West Germany as a monument to everything that was wrong with communism.

This leads the official to his second remarkable comment, after I ask whether Israel deliberately chose not to kill Ismail Haniyeh, the elected Palestinian prime minister and Hamas's political leader in Gaza. "Israel tried to target people from the security apparatus and military wing," he answers. "At this moment, we prefer that the less-radical wing will take over."

The current divisions within Hamas are not the only ones the official sees as a consequence of the war. Palestinians, he says, no longer look to Hamas as the party of clean and competent government. Instead, they see a group whose leaders needlessly provoked a ruinous war they didn't have the courage to fight themselves. No wonder the third intifada in the West Bank, on which Hamas had counted, never materialized.

Elsewhere, Hamas's former patrons in the Arab world have split with the group ever since it became a client of Tehran. A dozen Arab states, along with the Palestinian Authority, boycotted an emergency summit of the Arab League, which had been intended as a show of support for Hamas supremo Khaled Mashal.

Then there is Egypt. For years, it took an ambivalent view of Hamas: partly worried by the threat it poses to its own secular regime, partly delighted by the trouble it causes Israel. Now the Mubarak government at last understands that Hamas is also a strategic threat to Egypt. "An Iranian base can play against Egypt the same way it played against Israel," says the official. Almost as an aside, he adds that the timing of Israel's operation in Gaza was dictated in part by the assessment that Hamas was just months away from obtaining longer-range missiles that could reach Cairo as easily as Tel Aviv.

As reported Monday on the Puffington Host:

President Bush was given an Iraqi-journalist-style sendoff on his last full day in office Monday, as tourists and demonstrators lobbed shoes, pumps, boots, sandals and Crocs from Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House lawn. . .

Medea Benjamin, a cofounder of the antiwar group CODEPINK, said the protest was a way to "get the Bush era out of your intestines."

"I was a little reluctant because I want to be in a positive mood," she said. "I don't want to be seen as doing something violent. The shoe-throwing is borderline, but the intent is to insult, not to hurt. There's a fine line."

Once all the shoes had been tossed onto the White House lawn, the officers collected them and piled them into the back of a small truck. "The next person who throws them gets arrested," said one, though the entire pile had already been thrown.

(The Secret Service arrested one man who threw a shoe onto the other side of the White House lawn.)

Also, at Tuesday's Heroes Red, White & Blue Inaugural Ball honoring veterans:

a vocalist with George Clinton and the P. Funk All-Stars held up a white towel with large block letters saying "[Expletive] GEORGE."

Imagine the fuss had conservatives tossed blue dresses at the Clinton White House. And right-wing musical parodies eschew expletives and actually are clever.

(via The Corner, twice)

Fable: Washington Post editorial, January 16th:

Barack Obama told us yesterday that he's a "strong proponent" of D.C. voting rights but that "this is just a pure political issue: Can we get it done?" . . .

That Mr. Obama seems dedicated to District issues is encouraging, but leadership by example isn't enough. For 200 years, the government has treated the residents of its capital as second-class citizens. With Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and a "strong proponent" in the White House, there is no reason that a bill giving the District a true representative in Congress shouldn't pass -- and soon.

Reality: The authority of Congress, set forth in the United States Constitution, Article I, Section 8, clause 17:

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of Particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States.

Meaning: As I've said,

Citizens of the District of Columbia aren't state residents, and thus lack elected Representatives or Senators. Judicial challenges repeatedly fail, because the Constitutional text is unambiguous. Congress can't reverse the Constitution via legislation.

Question: "Is it the media or the Obama team that think we're stupid?"

(via Bench Memos)

Sixteen year-old Disney star Demi Lovato, who performed at the "Kids' Inaugural" on Monday, about the change she expects from Obama:

I hope that the war resolves. Whether we win or lose or whatever, it doesn't matter. I hope that it just ends.

(via Don Surber on Big Hollywood)

UPDATE: below

According to Fabius Maximus, America passed an unwelcome milestone:


source: Fabius Maximus


I can't confirm FM's data; the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed government employment well below manufacturing as of last May. Still, assuming it's true, the chart isn't quite as alarming as it might first appear.

That's because manufacturing productivity is rising, by 4.6 percent annually between 2000 and 2007. (In part, it's a result of increased factory automation.) Indeed, the productivity of U.S. manufacturing has risen at nearly double the pace of non-manufacturing productivity, and for the most part, manufacturing productivity has risen faster here as compared with Europe.

Observers on the left, far left and right blame the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs on free trade. But, as Carpe Diem shows graphically, manufacturing output has increased even as employment has declined. This suggests that increased productivity has allowed the U.S. to make more with less, as the Heritage Foundation's Terry Miller concludes:

The explanation for these shifts is that productivity has been exploding in the United States and throughout the world. Technological change and innovation are making it possible to produce more output with less labor. In the U.S., that labor is shifting to jobs in the services sector and other parts of the economy. William Ward, a professor of applied economics and statistics at Clemson University, has estimated that 7.5 million of the 17.7 million manufacturing jobs that existed in the United States in 1990 would not have been needed in 2004 because of productivity growth.

Still, I'm no fan of big government; at some point, a larger bureaucracy inhibits growth and wealth creation. There are limits to the utility of using increased government to "vote yourself rich." Not that the left grasps the point, says Brian Micklethwait: "In the mind of the anti-free-marketeer, the government occupies the same kind of intellectual territory as the divine designer in the mind of an anti-Darwinian."

Conclusion: America is better off getting increased manufacturing output with fewer workers. But offsetting manufacturing job losses via a larger government sector isn't the answer, as Greg Mankiw observed:

[A]dvocates of limited government are rightly worried about the fiscal stimulus package that the incoming administration is going to propose. Rahm Emanuel, the new White House chief of staff, is reported to have said, "You don't ever want to let a crisis go to waste: It's an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid." It is not entirely clear what he meant by this. But one interpretation is that he wants to use a temporary crisis as a pretense to engineer a permanent increase in the size of government.

MORE:

According to Carpe Diem:

Back in 1969, there were almost 2 manufacturing and construction jobs for every government employee. Since then, government employment almost doubled from 12 million in 1969 to almost 24 million today, as manufacturing and construction jobs have remained flat and have recently fallen, to the point that there are now more workers employed by government than are employed in the manufacturing and construction sectors.

(via Instapundit)

From CNN:

The new first family could inspire some of their biggest changes within the black family itself, some say.

In 1965, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democratic senator from New York, warned the nation about the rise of fatherless black families. He concluded that many black families were caught in a "tangle of pathology." The pathology persists. The U.S. Census Bureau said that 69 percent of black women who gave birth in 2005 were unmarried (it was 31 percent for white mothers).

The relationship between Obama and his wife may help untangle some of that pathology, some black commentators say.

It could start with black intimacy. The American public is routinely exposed to sexually charged relationships between black men and women. "Street lit" books with titles such as "Thugs and the Women Who Love Them," and "A Project Chick" now crowd bookstores and public library shelves.

Yet the new first couple offers America an example of a black, passionate, marital relationship, says Jennifer Brea, a writer for EbonyJet.com.

"They are the most natural and accessible first couple this country has ever had," Brea says. "You see a politician give a peck on his wife's cheek after a speech and often it looks staged. When you look at them, you feel like that there's this chemistry and spark."

Several black women actually sighed as they talked about how much Obama seems to touch his wife and exchange soulful glances with her in public. They said Obama will show young black men how to treat women -- and young black women how they should be treated.

"We don't get to see black love," says Heidi Durrow, the prize-winning author of the forthcoming novel, "Low Sky Dreaming."

"But every time you see them [the Obamas] on stage, it's been super," she says. "It's an amazing image to see these dynamic, smart, progressive people just openly affectionate. I'm all for it."

(via reader Josh A.)

Good advice for the right from Andy Levy in the form of a "To Don’t List," including:

DON’T question the motives - question the policy. When you disagree with Obama’s policies, say so, and make it clear why. But remember that President Obama is doing what he thinks is best for the country, as President Bush did. Both men love America and want what’s best for her. End of story.

DON’T make it personal. We don’t need another Derangement Syndrome. We don’t need people doing things like emphasizing Obama’s middle name in a derogatory fashion. How anyone would think that’s beneficial to their cause, or to the country as a whole, is beyond me. Also, it’s not even clever. Neither are smushwords like BusHitler, or sillywords like Rethuglicans and Dhimmicrats.

DON’T cozy up to and champion foreign dictators and despots. Sean Penn is an ass. No reason to be like him. 'Nuff said. (Corollary: Don’t cozy up to and champion foreign dictators and despots and then act outraged when people question your patriotism.) . . .

DON’T use the word "divisive." At this point, all that word means is "You disagree with me," and the English language gets mangled enough these days.

DON’T use the phrase "speaking truth to power." EVER.

Read the whole thing.

(via Instapundit)

From Newsvine via AFP:

German sex-shop owners and erotic film makers, badly hit by the economic crisis, are pushing for state aid that has also been requested by US peers, a press report said on Friday.

"Economic aid would be judicious," erotic trade federation official Uwe Kaltenberg was quoted by the regional newspaper WAZ as saying.

(via Carpe Diem)

Laura Meckler and Neil King Jr. in the January 19th Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama has an opportunity granted almost none of his predecessors. Because of the economic crisis, he is meeting an unusual array of promises almost immediately, including heavy investments in energy and other priorities.

But the unprecedented largess granted through the $825 billion economic-stimulus bill may bind his hands later. The growing deficit will make it difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill spending promises that total hundreds of billions of dollars. . .

This burst of spending so early in his presidency could also hobble Mr. Obama politically in the years to come as the country's soaring budget deficit demands cutbacks in social programs and even potential tax increases.

The global recession has put enormous pressure on Euro-zone countries--no longer able to devaluate, each is yoked to both weaker economies and economies with incompatible structural needs. Given that the Euro was more political symbol than actual monetary melding, economist Barry Eichengreen thinks the Euro will survive:

The euro area will hang together, in other words, because the decision to enter is essentially irreversible. Getting out is impossible without precipitating the most serious imaginable financial crisis -- something that no government is prepared to risk.

But some suggest otherwise, as reported in the Daily Telegraph (U.K.):

A leading Irish economist has called on Dublin to threaten withdrawal from the euro unless Europe's big powers do more to rescue Ireland's economy.

"This is war: countries have to defend themselves," said David McWilliams, a former official at the Irish central bank.

"It is essential that we go to Europe and say we have a serious problem. We say, either we default or we pull out of Europe," he told RTE radio.

"If Ireland continues hurtling down this road, which is close to default, the whole of Europe will be badly affected. The credibility of the euro will be badly affected. Then Spain might default, Italy and Greece," he said.

Mr McWilliams, a former UBS director and now prominent broadcaster, has broken the ultimate taboo by evoking threats to precipitate an EMU crisis, which would risk a chain reaction across the eurozone's southern belt, where yield spreads on state bonds are already flashing warning signals. The comments reflect growing bitterness in Dublin over the way the country has been treated after voting against the EU's Lisbon Treaty.

"If we have a single currency there are obligations and responsibilities on both sides. The idea that Germany and France can just hang us out to dry, as has been the talk in the last couple of days should not be taken lying down," he said.

If Ireland doesn't bolt, Greece could be forced out if its government defaults on sovereign debt.

See also the reports of wide-spread economic discontent in Eastern Europe.

(via The Corner, VOX)

Steven Weber on the Puffington Host:

The people are now stirred and, though they may not always express their passions in an orderly fashion, will no longer be silenced. They have tasted the fruits of a long sought after victory. For years, their protests have been relegated to fenced-off areas away from the scrupulously controlled spectacle of Bush's lurid circus maximus, the rising anger of a people banished to a free speech gulag some distance away from the Mission Accomplished banners and Republican fundraisers.

But Barack Obama is our new leader, our new son of freedom. He is at once at the center of a force and the force itself.

(via Big Hollywood)

Item -- International Herald Tribune, January 16th:

France's interior ministry says masked thieves who attacked a young man east of Paris to steal his car repeatedly stabbed him after noticing he was wearing a Jewish symbol. . .

The [Interior] ministry said in a statement Friday that the attackers shouted anti-Semitic threats at the man as they stabbed him four times with a knife in the Thursday evening attack.

Item -- Melbourne Australia's Nilk on RightWingDeathBogan writing about a recent Hamas rally, January 19th:

While I never felt quite safe, I only got verbally abused for being a christian and supporting Israel.

By white people, of course.


source: RightWingDeathBogan


None of us carried placards, and I'm glad about that, as the police presence was near non-existent. The one time I did have a chat to the police about the sign above, he really didn't have much of a clue about jihadi ideology.

Item -- Frank Furedi on Pajamas Media, January 17th:

I am standing in a queue waiting to buy a train ticket from London to Canterbury. A well-dressed lady standing behind me informs her friend that she “can’t wait till Israel disappears off the face of the earth.” What struck me was not her intense hostility to Israel but the mild-mannered, matter-of-fact tone with which she announced her wish for the annihilation of a nation. It seems that it is okay to condemn and demonize Israel. All of a sudden Israel has become an all-purpose target for a variety of disparate and confused causes. When I ask a group of Pakistani waiters sitting around a table in their restaurant why they "hate" Israel, they casually tell me that it is because Jews are their "religion’s enemy." Those who are highly educated have their own pet prejudice. One of my young colleagues who teaches media studies in a London-based university was taken aback during a seminar discussion when some of her students insisted that since all the banks are owned by Jews, Israel was responsible for the current global financial crisis.

Increasingly expressions of aversion towards Israel have assumed the status of a taken-for-granted sentiment in many sections of polite European society. Such attitudes are underwritten by powerful cultural forces that communicate the idea that Israel is a malevolent society sui generis. It alone faces regular demands for academic and commercial boycotts. In the media and popular culture it is often portrayed as an intensely racist and barbaric society.

Item -- La Dépêche, January 18th:

Yesterday in Toulouse pavements and walls were tagged at several locations: the inscription “Israel Nazi” on the sidewalks caused consternation among employees of a supermarket at the Allées Pompidou. Others were reported in front of the “Parc des expositions” and also in a street outside a factory. And yesterday, in the late afternoon, a bomb squad destroyed a suspicious bag near the synagogue in the Rue Rembrandt. The same place of Jewish worship was rammed by a car on the night of January 5.

Item -- The East London Advertiser, January 13th:

A fire bomb was hurled into the premises of a cafe and coffee bar in London’s East End in the early hours of this morning.

It was one of a series of 'hate' incidents in Whitechapel which have included anti-Semitic graffiti, believed to be linked to protests over Israel’s operations in Gaza.

The thugs hurled the petrol bomb through the front glass door of Starbucks in Whitechapel Road, 300 yards from Brick Lane, at 1am. . .

Scotland Yard said one line of inquiry was that it was "racially motivated" following the fighting in Gaza.

Starbucks, whose American chief executive Howard Schultz is Jewish, confirmed the attack in a statement today.

Item -- The Jerusalem Post, January 18th:

A court in the German capital struck down an administrative ban on Hamas flags, clothing and banners on Friday, but left in place the ban on invoking Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar's call to murder Israeli children worldwide.

The decision paved the way for supporters of the Islamist movement to march in anti-Israeli rallies on Saturday with pro-Hamas paraphernalia.. . .

Anti-Israeli demonstrations across Germany have been marked by calls to "kill, kill Israelis" and "kill, kill Jews," as well as "Jews out" of Germany and Israel.

Item -- The Jerusalem Post, January 14th:

German police officials in the cities of Duisburg and Düsseldorf, located in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, prohibited pro-Israeli supporters from displaying Israeli flags.

During an anti-Israeli demonstration organized by the radical Islamic group, Milli Görüs, which attracted 10,000 protesters last Saturday in Duisburg, two police officers stormed the apartment of a 25-year-old student and his 26-year-old girlfriend and seized Israeli flags hanging on the balcony and inside a window.

The hostile crowd pelted stones and other objects at the flags. . .

When asked if the Duisburg police plan to confiscate Israeli flags from supporters who demonstrate against an anti-Israeli protest slated for this coming Saturday, Ramon van der Maat, a Duisburg police spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post that, "we have to see what is expected" at the protest, adding, "It depends on the situation and one cannot, across the board" say that Israeli flags will be permitted.

(via Gateway Pundit, Gates of Vienna, Ed Driscoll, Infidels Are Cool, Tim Blair, Axis of Right, The Spectator (U.K.), TigerHawk)

Peter Beinart in Sunday's Washington Post:

Admit It: The Surge Worked

It's no longer a close call: President Bush was right about the surge. . .

[I]f Iraq overall represents a massive stain on Bush's record, his decision to increase America's troop presence in late 2006 now looks like his finest hour. Given the mood in Washington and the country as a whole, it would have been far easier to do the opposite. Politically, Bush took the path of most resistance. He endured an avalanche of scorn, and now he has been vindicated. He was not only right; he was courageous.

It's time for Democrats to say so. During the campaign they rarely did for fear of jeopardizing Barack Obama's chances of winning the presidency. But today, the hesitation is less tactical than emotional. Most Democrats think Bush has been an atrocious president, and they want to usher him out of office with the jeers he so richly deserves. Even if they suspect, in their heart of hearts, that he was right about the surge, they don't want to give him the satisfaction.

(via Instapundit)

In Forbes magazine, Walter Olson has a follow-on about the law passed last year responding to the alarm over lead paint in toys from China:

Hailed almost universally on its passage last year--it passed the Senate 89 to three and the House by 424 to one, with Ron Paul the lone dissenter--CPSIA is now shaping up as a calamity for businesses and an epic failure of regulation, threatening to wipe out tens of thousands of small makers of children's items from coast to coast, and taking a particular toll on the handcrafted and creative, the small-production-run and sideline at-home business, not to mention struggling retailers. How could this have happened?

Congress passed CPSIA in a frenzy of self-congratulation following last year's overblown panic over Chinese toys with lead paint. Washington's consumer and environmentalist lobbies used the occasion to tack on some other long-sought legislative goals, including a ban on phthalates used to soften plastic.

The law's provisions were billed as stringent, something applauded by high-minded commentators as a way to force the Mattels and Fisher-Prices of the world to keep more careful watch on the supply chains of their Chinese factories.

Barbed with penalties that include felony prison time and fines of $100,000, the law goes into effect in stages; one key deadline is Feb. 10, when it becomes unlawful to ship goods for sale that have not been tested. Eventually, new kids' goods will all have to be subjected to more stringent "third-party" testing, and it will be unlawful to give away untested inventory even for free.

The first thing to note is that we're not just talking about toys here. With few exceptions, the law covers all products intended primarily for children under 12. That includes clothing, fabric and textile goods of all kinds: hats, shoes, diapers, hair bands, sports pennants, Scouting patches, local school-logo gear and so on. . .

Again with relatively few exceptions, makers of these goods can't rely only on materials known to be unproblematic (natural dyed yarn, local wood) or that come from reputable local suppliers, or even ones that are certified organic.

Instead they must put a sample item from each lot of goods through testing after complete assembly, and the testing must be applied to each component. For a given hand-knitted sweater, for example, one might have to pay not just, say, $150 for the first test, but added-on charges for each component beyond the first: a button or snap, yarn of a second color, a care label, maybe a ribbon or stitching--with each color of stitching thread having to be tested separately.

Suddenly the bill is more like $1,000--and that's just to test the one style and size. The same sweater in a larger size, or with a different button or clasp, would need a new round of tests--not just on the button or clasp, but on the whole garment. The maker of a kids' telescope (with no suspected problems) was quoted a $24,000 testing estimate, on a product with only $32,000 in annual sales.

(via The Corner)

From Megan McArdle:

Everyone's hailing Obama's decision to suspend all Guantanamo trials for 120 days. But I thought the problem with Guantanamo was the people being held without trial.

MORE:

As the Wall Street Journal says, "Fighting terrorism is simpler when you're a candidate."

CalPERS, the nations largest government employee investment firm, stopped 'social screening' last August. The Sierra Club Stock Fund liquidated last month, after having "trailed the benchmark S&P 500 index by about 6 percent a year." Citizens Funds, another SRI firm, sold its assets early last year to Sentinal, with seven Citizens funds merging into five Sentinal funds. The record does not seem to be favoring green investors. Why?

The thesis of the green, socially responsible investing (SRI) community is that going green will allow you to feel better about your investments, make the world a better place while yielding better returns (implying no additional risk). The increased returns will come through companies led by enlightened individuals that have better long term performance. The PAX funds, the first SRI fund offerer (since 1971), has a typical mantra: "We believe these companies are better managed, more innovative and better positioned to deliver long-term performance than their less enlightened competitors." However, there is a problem with this thesis.

First some investing basics:

1. Investing in the total market investing yields market risk and market return. This is self evident.



2. Active managers all use a strategy to forecast a subset of stocks they think will beat the market, and avoid stocks they believe are losers. From IndexInvestor.com:

   Consistently successful active management (that is, active management that delivers higher after-tax risk adjusted returns than a comparable index fund) ultimately comes down to consistently successful forecasting.

3. Active management does not work. In fact, the best almost anyone can do is to invest in an index fund and assume the market risk and return. See origins of the index fund. As studied by John Bogle, et al, about one-third of active managers beat market any given year. There are a few like Buffett that are the long term genius investors, and some people win the WSOP as well. Most of us are not that lucky. Most of us now understand that the active fund manager's advantage is eaten up by expenses and fees. Investing is essentially a constrained optimization problem where the goal is to maximize the risk adjusted net return. The only way to increase return is to take on additional risk.

Well the greens imply a better return without a commensurate increase is risk by picking better led, enlightened, better managed companies. They assert their scheme is better than the market, in the same way that value investors favor their investments, and growth investors favor theirs. The turn-around specialist has his day. Unfortunately, no one scheme is better than the market. This is also true for the 'liberal scheme'.

I personally wish they'd destroy every last tobacco seed. However, as long as cigarette companies are paying a huge dividend, there will be a strong market for them. By "screening" then narrowing investing choices, SRI funds either eschew companies with an above-market return or exclude a loser that others are dumping anyway, which gives them no market edge. The net result is an increase in constraints, and hence and increase in net risk, but no commensurate increase in return. Additionally, the social research adds a burden (cost) to the fund management that is not borne out by other active managers.

The latest research shows that SRI funds lag other funds one full percentage point per annum over the last ten years. Indeed, the two huge California pension funds, CalSTRS and CalPERS, left billions on the table by shifting to SRI.

SRI funds still have the 'feel good' factor going for them, and they can point to some shareholder activism victories as well. SRI can also claim victory in opening up mutual fund proxy voting.

If SRI makes you feel better, then go green and get happy. However, do so with eyes wide open. Limiting your investments to the SRI subset adds constraints, ups risk, and thus generally makes it tougher to beat the market return. Also, such constraints typically increase management costs, which further depresses return on investment relative to the market. As Carl Winfield observed in Business Week, "good intentions do not always translate into high profits."

Admittedly, it's not just SRI: The same can be said for all stock picking schemes. Oh, the false promise of increased risk adjusted return! If you feel like risking a wad in the market, then (unless you are Warren Buffet) buy an index fund. You can do a lot worse than the market return. Just ask anyone in the California pension system.