No Oil for Pacifists

In terms of General Petraeus, I think that, consistent with our approach to this, General Petraeus presented the President with a range of options for pursuing this drawdown. There were certainly options that went beyond what the President settled on in terms of the length of time that it would take to recover the surge and the pace that troops would come out -- so there were options that would have kept troops in Afghanistan longer at a higher number.

That said, the President’s decision was fully within the range of options that were presented to him and has the full support of his national security team.

[Sen. Lindsey] GRAHAM [R-SC]: The option that the country has chosen through President Obama is to withdraw 10,000 this year, all surge forces gone by September. Is it fair to say, General Allen, that was not one of the options presented to the president by General Petraeus?

ALLEN: It is a more aggressive option than that which was presented.

GRAHAM: My question is, was that a option?

ALLEN: It was not.

Green 'stealth tax' to encourage wind farms and nuclear power will hit poor the hardest

A green 'stealth' tax to encourage new wind farms and nuclear power plants could push tens of thousands of households into fuel poverty but do nothing to reduce emissions.

The carbon floor price, announced in the March Budget, could even end up giving climate policies a 'bad name', the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has warned.

To be introduced in 2013, the tax is intended to encourage investment in low-carbon energy -- and raise billions for the Treasury.

Under the existing rules, energy companies must generate a fixed amount of green energy every year, or else buy permits to pollute on the open market.

The new tax kicks in if the cost of these permits falls too low. From 2013, the ‘floor price’ of a permit needed to emit a tonne of carbon will be set at £16, rising to £30 by 2020.

The higher cost of electricity will be passed on to household and business customers with energy-guzzling industries hit hardest.

But the IPPR, a centre-left think-tank, says that householders, many of whom are already struggling to pay their fuel bills, will also suffer. It estimates that 30,000 to 60,000 more households will be pushed into fuel poverty -- defined as spending more than 10 per cent of your disposable income on heat and light.

The think-tank also warned that the UK scheme could lead to lower carbon permit prices elsewhere in Europe -- and so do nothing to ease pollution.

Andrew Pendleton, IPPR associate director, said: 'The carbon price support scheme risks giving energy and climate change policy a bad name because it will do nothing to reduce carbon emissions while piling more cost on to the shoulders of already hard-pressed consumers in the UK.'

[T]he international diplomacy of climate change is the most implausible and unpromising initiative since the disarmament talks of the 1930s, and for many of the same reasons; that the Kyoto Protocol and its progeny are the climate diplomacy equivalent of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that promised to end war (a treaty that is still on the books, by the way), and finally, that future historians are going to look back on this whole period as the climate policy equivalent of wage and price controls to fight inflation in the 1970s.

Bureaucrats have added insult to injury for a corn farmer south of Montreal whose fields have been damaged by near-record flooding.

Martin Reid says he's been forced to buy a fishing licence to remove carp that are swimming in a metre of water on his flooded-out fields.

He says he bought the permit to avoid the problems he faced the last time he was forced to remove fish from his flooded farmland. In 1993, Reid was fined $1,000 for illegal fishing.

"My father and I . . . were charged by Fisheries and Oceans Canada," Reid recalled. "We were jointly responsible for having caused the death of fish for reasons other than sport fishing."

Reid says the fine will jump to $100,000 if he's cited a second time.

A spokesman for the provincial natural resources department defended Ottawa's decision.

"The idea is to help farmers," said Jean-Philippe Detolle. "The licence was issued to reassure them they won't be fined."

The use of a fitted sheet, instead of a flat sheet, as the bottom sheet on all beds within the lodging establishment. For the purpose of this section, a "fitted sheet" means a bed sheet containing elastic or similar material sewn into each of the four corners that allows the sheet to stay in place over the mattress.

[Workplace injuries for housekeeping staffers] isn’t just necessarily from changing sheets. We’ve seen high instances of repetitive motion injury and that comes from the bending and the lifting. That stuff’s been documented by OSHA, it’s been documented by us, by ergonomics experts, by loads of people. This isn’t stuff that we just, like, pulled out of our ass.

In a comment likely to offend just about everyone, I dislike Sarah Palin for just about the same reasons I dislike Barack Obama. She intentionally touches on cultural symbols as substitute for content. I feel more comfortable with Obama's symbols, and certainly, most of the people I know hail from crowds that would be Barack-symbolic rather than Sarah symbolic. But either way, both draw their support from people who really want a full-out culture war -- with the other side defeated, humiliated, enslaved. And both are sure that this is exactly what the country needs. Do you think we need more presidents who ride motorcycles and shoot wolves, or more presidents who are embarrassed to be Americans in front of Europeans? Would you rather be a Lilliputian or a Blefuscuan? [NOfP note: Gulliver's Travels reference]. . .

Both "Obama" and "Palin" still show up as red-line misspellings in my blogger dictionary, and I ain't a-gonna change it by adding them in. My own little petty protest.

F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The thing about this photo is that the dumbest element isn't the misspelling. It is the silly idea that "corporate greed" is "destroying the planet." Corporations aren't greedy. They have a legal duty to try to make money for their shareholders, and they do so in a wide variety of legal ways. I don't know how, specifically, this particular dim bulb thinks "corporations," which is to say all of us, are destroying the planet, but I suppose it involves drilling for petroleum so we can drive cars rather than riding in horse-drawn buggies, or mining coal so that when we flip a switch in our home or office, a light will go on.

[I]t is a great honor to join you again in this great country as we reaffirm the enduring bonds between our two nations and reinforce this special relationship. . .

Our alliance is a commitment that speaks to who we are. As Winston Churchill said on a visit to the United States, "Above all, among the English-speaking peoples, there must be the union of hearts based upon convictions and common ideals." . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand with me and raise your glasses as I propose a toast:

To Her Majesty the Queen. For the vitality of the special relationship between our peoples, and in the words of Shakespeare, "To this blessed plot, this Earth, this realm, this England."

I come here today to reaffirm one of the oldest, one of the strongest alliances the world has ever known. It’s long been said that the United States and the United Kingdom share a special relationship. . .

We share a common interest in resolving conflicts that prolong human suffering and threaten to tear whole regions asunder. . .

We do these things because we believe not simply in the rights of nations; we believe in the rights of citizens. That is the beacon that guided us through our fight against fascism and our twilight struggle against communism. . .

Let there be no doubt: The United States and United Kingdom stand squarely on the side of those who long to be free.

On the topic of the Malvinas Islands, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Trade, and Worship of Argentina, Héctor Timerman, asked the member countries to support Argentina’s claim. . . He then urged the member countries to support his country "with the conviction that your voice will have to be heard, because, in embracing this cause, you will be the voice of those who forged our history."

It has not yet been possible to resume the negotiations between the two countries with a view to solving the sovereignty dispute over the Malvinas Islands, South Georgias and South Sandwich Islands and the surrounding maritime areas . . .

REAFFIRMS the need for the Governments of the Argentine Republic and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to resume, as soon as possible, negotiations on the sovereignty dispute, in order to find a peaceful solution to this protracted controversy.

Siding with Argentina in this dispute is nuts--Falkland Islanders are overwhelmingly (95 percent) British subjects, and repeatedly have rejected Argentine citizenship/sovereignty: they have "nothing in common with Argentina -- culturally, linguistically, historically or politically." And current Argentine President Ms Fernández de Kirchner "hasn't shrunk from playing to anti-American sentiment around the region."

It is hugely disappointing that the Obama administration has chosen once again to side not only with the increasingly authoritarian regime in Argentina, but also with an array of despots in Latin America against British interests. Mrs Clinton should be reminded that 255 brave British servicemen laid down their lives in 1982 for the freedom of the Falkland Islanders, who are overwhelmingly British, following the brutal Argentine invasion.

The sovereignty of the Islands is not a matter for negotiation, and Britain will never give in to threats from Argentina or its tyrannical allies in places such as Venezuela. The White House recently declared that Britain remains America’s most important ally. Now it should live up to its words by supporting Washington’s closest friend and partner on matters of vital British interest, including the future of British subjects living in the South Atlantic, whose only wish is to remain free under the protection of the Union Jack.

Farting Death Camels Must Die to save the world!

An Adelaide-based entrepreneur has hit upon a novel method of fighting global warming: he intends to exterminate Australia's vast population of feral camels by means of gunfire from helicopters and jeeps, so preventing the beasts from unleashing a deadly planet-wrecking miasma of greenhouse gas from their rumbling guts.

The idea is that the War On Dromedaries would be paid for -- and indeed, turn a profit -- by selling government carbon credits issued on the basis that a dead camel cannot be emitting methane by means of belch or trouser cough. . .

[The company] calculates that each of the feral dromedaries roaming Australia's mostly desolate interior belches or farts out no less than 45kg of methane each year, equating to a thumping tonne of CO2. On average, each camel assassination will prevent the equivalent of 15 tonnes of carbon emissions.

The resulting certificates . . . could easily be traded for enough money to cover the costs of blasting the dromedaries from helicopters or 4x4s and disposing of the bodies, which could perhaps be sold for pet food.

A chilling Internet video confirms what has long been suspected: Al Qaeda terrorists are eager to launch a gun-fueled rampage against Americans -- and they know just how to do it.

Spotted on jihadist forums, the video shows American-born Al Qaeda fighter Adam Gadahn almost cheerily urging followers to action:

America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms. You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle without a background check and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?

We don't say this often about Al Qaeda types, but: He's right on the facts.

Automatic weapons are classed as machine guns under 26 U.S.C. § 5845(b), and outlawed for civilian sale in the U.S. (see 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(4)(o)(1)), since 1986.

No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.

- Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.

- The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.

- The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.

- To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.

- Greece will redenominate all its debts into "New Drachmas" or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting)

- The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 per cent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting 0n 50 per cent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts.

- The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.

- The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn.

- A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements.

- The European Central Bank will become insolvent, given its very high exposure to Greek government debt, and to Greek banking sector and Irish banking sector debt.

UK faces job losses as businesses threaten to flee abroad to escape green energy levies

Environmental tax threatens green energy research in UK

Carbon reduction commitment (CRC) scheme has 'perverse effect' of threatening zero-carbon energy research

World-class research into future sources of green energy is under threat in Britain from an environmental tax designed to boost energy efficiency and drive down carbon emissions, scientists claim.

Some facilities must find hundreds of thousands of pounds to settle green tax bills, putting jobs and research at risk.

The unexpected impact of the government's carbon reduction commitment (CRC) scheme is so severe that scientists and research funders have lobbied ministers for an exemption to reduce the bills.

Among the worst hit is the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, a facility for research into almost limitless carbon-free energy. The lab faces an estimated £400,000 payment next year, raising the spectre of job losses and operational cuts. "Considering our research is aimed at producing zero-carbon energy, it seems ironic and perverse to clobber us with an extra bill," a senior scientist at the lab said. "We have to use electricity to run the machine and there is no way of getting around that."

[I]t is a big victory for Big Labor and for no one else. This investigation will end up gobbling up millions, and a lot of time, for Delta. The airline industry is already ailing badly. Is now really a good time to have a federal bureaucracy rooting around and causing trouble?

Erections have consequences

Let us declare with certitude the obvious: Rep. Anthony Weiner has disgraced his office, and himself, and he needs to quit.

According to the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report released today, the nation experienced a 5.5 percent decrease in the number of violent crimes and a 2.8 percent decline in the number of property crimes in 2010 when compared with data from 2009.

One obvious answer is that many more people are in prison than in the past. Experts differ on the size of the effect, but I think that William Spelman and Steven Levitt have it about right in believing that greater incarceration can explain about one-quarter or more of the crime decline. Yes, many thoughtful observers think that we put too many offenders in prison for too long. For some criminals, such as low-level drug dealers and former inmates returned to prison for parole violations, that may be so. But it's true nevertheless that when prisoners are kept off the street, they can attack only one another, not you or your family.

Imprisonment's crime-reduction effect helps to explain why the burglary, car-theft and robbery rates are lower in the U.S. than in England. The difference results not from the willingness to send convicted offenders to prison, which is about the same in both countries, but in how long America keeps them behind bars. For the same offense, you will spend more time in prison here than in England. Still, prison can't be the sole reason for the recent crime drop in this country: Canada has seen roughly the same decline in crime, but its imprisonment rate has been relatively flat for at least two decades.

Another possible reason for reduced crime is that potential victims may have become better at protecting themselves by equipping their homes with burglar alarms, putting extra locks on their cars and moving into safer buildings or even safer neighborhoods. We have only the faintest idea, however, about how common these trends are or what effects on crime they may have.

Policing has become more disciplined over the last two decades; these days, it tends to be driven by the desire to reduce crime, rather than simply to maximize arrests, and that shift has reduced crime rates. One of the most important innovations is what has been called hot-spot policing. The great majority of crimes tend to occur in the same places. Put active police resources in those areas instead of telling officers to drive around waiting for 911 calls, and you can bring down crime. The hot-spot idea helped to increase the effectiveness of the New York Police Department's Compstat program, which uses computerized maps to pinpoint where crime is taking place and enables police chiefs to hold precinct captains responsible for targeting those areas.

[T]he Constitution is archaic and boring and lots of it no longer applies anymore.

• $80,000 study on why the same teams always dominate March Madness;

• $315,000 study suggesting playing FarmVille on Facebook helps adults develop and maintain relationships;

• $1 million for an analysis of how quickly parents respond to trendy baby names;

• $50,000 to produce and publicize amateur songs about science, including a rap called "Money 4 Drugz," and a misleading song titled "Biogas is a Gas, Gas, Gas";

• $2 million to figure out that people who often post pictures on the internet from the same location at the same time are usually friends; and

• $581,000 on whether online dating site users are racist.

Backhanders are so common in Nigeria that they feature in the country’s unofficial anthem, "International Thief Thief". Its author, Fela Kuti, the late father of the Afrobeat genre, sang in 1980, To become of high position here / Him go bribe some thousand naira bread / To become one useless chief. When a Broadway musical based on Kuti’s life premiered in Lagos recently, fans shouted out the names of today’s leaders over the first few bars. Little has changed since the song was written. When The Economist requested an interview with the president, we were asked whether we would contribute to his election campaign--or whether the president should pay us.

Politicians in all parts of the world want bungs. But Nigerian leaders are so greedy that they have subverted the entire machinery of state to serve their needs. Every policy is a scam, every regulation a source of rent.

Freed from kleptocrats, Nigeria could be an African giant. It has the people, resources and entrepreneurial metabolism to make it one of the world’s 20 leading economies, reckons PwC, a consultancy. Today it ranks 132nd by GDP per head. More than two-thirds of its people live on under $2 a day. Despite its many resources, the amount of electricity that is delivered to each Nigerian is a thirtieth of the level in South Africa.

• A university prof argued that "the Israeli side is relentlessly churned out while the Palestinian narrative is rarely put forward"


• A former BBC executive, previously based in Palestine, charged that "BBC is failing to tell us the truth." (The same executive once called former White House Middle East envoy Denis Ross "not just a Jew, [but] a Zionist propagandist.")


• A Palestinian spokesman complained that he "was given almost no airtime on many high profile news outlets at the time of the Israeli attacks on Gaza in the winter of 2008-9."

is run by one Dr Daud Abdullah, the deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain and a signatory of the Istanbul Declaration. This gothic document states that it is the obligation of the "Islamic Nation" to "carry on jihad and Resistance" against Israel and to fight "by all means and ways" any "foreign warship" attempting to block arms smuggling to Hamas, which, last time I checked, was still a terrorist organisation according to EU and UK law.

Question: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers' Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan.

Answer: They are all among the 1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families, that have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

All of which raises another question: If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare's biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers.

In a . . . report on Syria, the agency also laid out a detailed case, for the first time, that the country was "very likely" building a secret nuclear reactor that should have been reported to the agency. The facility was bombed by Israel in September 2007, and Syria quickly bulldozed the site, eliminating most of the evidence.

Although the C.I.A. released photographs in 2008 of the reactor building, taken before the bombing raid, the agency’s inspectors in Vienna had at first been quite skeptical of any evidence provided by the Bush administration, with which they had clashed over the status of Iraq’s nuclear program. But they have now come to the same conclusion that Washington came to nearly four years ago, and American officials said they plan to use the report to press the agency’s board of governors at its meeting next month to refer the issue to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.

"Possible sanctions" for a plant that was destroyed almost four years ago?

Talk about barn doors and fled horses.

• people not being given the assistance they needed to eat -- meaning they struggled to eat and in some cases were physically unable to eat meals



• their nutritional needs not being assessed and monitored -- for example, not being weighed throughout their stay, making it impossible to determine if they were losing weight; or identified as malnourished without an action plan being put in place to address this



• people not being given enough to drink -- water left out of reach or no fluids given for long periods of time. In one case, a member of clinical staff described having to prescribe water on medicine charts to ensure patients got enough to drink.

found staff routinely ignored patients’ calls for help and forgot to check that they had had enough to eat and drink.

Dehydration contributes to the death of more than 800 hospital patients every year. Another 300 die malnourished.

[I]t's notable--make that downright amazing--that former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty launched his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination Monday by including a challenge to King Corn.

"The truth about federal energy subsidies, including federal subsidies for ethanol, is that they have to be phased out," Mr. Pawlenty told a crowd in Des Moines. "We simply can't afford them anymore."

He's certainly right about that, though that hasn't stopped nearly every other candidate from deploring the federal deficit while supporting the most egregious of corporate welfare subsidies. This marks a change for Mr. Pawlenty, who over two terms leading Iowa's northern neighbor first fought farmers on subsidies but later supported their push for a 20% ethanol mandate for gasoline. But in refusing to stick to the script for candidates looking to harvest votes in February's Iowa caucuses, Mr. Pawlenty has passed an early test of fortitude. By opposing ethanol despite the political risks, Mr. Pawlenty will also gain credibility to tackle other energy subsidies that drain the federal fisc to little good effect.