PrairiePundit

Two weeks before President Obama visited China, two senior White House officials traveled to Beijing on a "special mission" to try to persuade China to pressure Iran to give up its alleged nuclear weapons program.

If Beijing did not help the United States on this issue, the consequences could be severe, the visitors, Dennis Ross and Jeffrey Bader, both senior officials in the National Security Council, informed the Chinese.

The Chinese were told that Israel regards Iran's nuclear program as an "existential issue and that countries that have an existential issue don't listen to other countries," according to a senior administration official. The implication was clear: Israel could bomb Iran, leading to a crisis in the Persian Gulf region and almost inevitably problems over the very oil China needs to fuel its economic juggernaut, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Earlier this week, the White House got its answer. China informed the United States that it would support a toughly worded, U.S.-backed statement criticizing the Islamic republic for flouting U.N. resolutions by constructing a secret uranium-enrichment plant. The statement, obtained by The Washington Post, is part of a draft resolution to be taken up as soon as Thursday by the 35 nations that make up the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
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Critical statements will not move Iran to change its policies and there is no assurance that Russia and China will agree to tougher sanctions which also might not be effective. Don't look for Iran to change its policies when the sanctions are made. They will work with allies like Venezuela and Ecuador to launder money and transactions to avoid the sanctions. I do not see them changing their policies before they are on their knees.

Iran thinks it is on a mission from God and that God would be displeased if they changed policies.

US looks to NATO to get surge to 40,000

The United States is scrambling to coax NATO allies to send 10,000 additional troops to Afghanistan as part of President Obama’s strategy for the region. Those countries appear willing to provide fewer than half that number, American and allied officials said Wednesday.

NATO members and other foreign allies have expressed reluctance to send more soldiers because of the Afghan war’s growing unpopularity in their countries and increasing concerns over corruption in President Hamid Karzai’s government.
The Obama administration views a substantial contribution from its allies as a way to keep the American troop increase lower and blunt domestic political criticism of the Afghan war. It would also allow the administration to come close to the military’s request for 40,000 additional troops without relying totally on the already stretched American armed forces.
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With the 34,000 additional troops the US is sending, we will probably be lucky to get 6,000 ,ore from NATO, although the NATO ministers have expressed support for the surge more vigorously than the Obama administration so far. Unfortunately, the NATO forces have mostly been willing to watch the US forces fight in recent years.

We need more troops to get the force to space ratio to a point where we can protect the population and cut off enemy movement to contact.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

BBC weatherman had globo warming emails since Oct. 12

Daily Mail:

The controversy surrounding the global warming scandal today deepened after a BBC correspondent admitted he was sent the leaked emails more than a month before they were made public.
Paul Hudson, weather presenter and climate change expert, claims the documents allegedly sent between some of the world's leading scientists are of a direct result of an article he wrote.
In his BBC blog two days ago, Hudson said: 'I was forwarded the chain of emails on the 12th October, which are comments from some of the world's leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article "Whatever Happened To Global Warming".'
That essay, written last month, argued that for the last 11 years there had not been an increase in global temperatures.
It also presented the arguments of sceptics who believe natural cycles control temperature and the counter-arguments of those who think it's man's actions which are warming the planet.
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The story does not really explain why he did not disclose the emailrs earlier since they supported the thesis of his article taht questioned where global warming was in the light of declining temperatures.He appears to have missed a real opportunity.

BTW, I did a post on his original article questioning the data on "climate change."

Ahmadinejad finds a place where he can show his face

Times:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, received a hero’s welcome yesterday as he visited his key Latin American ally on a regional tour designed to shore up support for Tehran in its confrontation with Western powers.

Shouting “Viva Ahmadinejad!” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pledged his full backing for Iran against “the threat of the empire”.

“In all the continent the people are rising for President Ahmadinejad,” the socialist leader declared. Iran is trying to deepen its strategic inroads on the Latin American continent, where it has found new allies in a host of anti-American leftist leaders led by Mr Chavez.
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There is much irony in this pronouncement since at home the people are rising up against him and his gang of religious bigots. He has to go halfway around the world to be able to appear in public. What a "leader."

Taliban rejects peace talks with Karzai

Dawn:

Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban militia, on Wednesday rejected a call from President Hamid Karzai for peace talks, in a statement issued ahead of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha.

Karzai was inaugurated last week after winning a fraud-tainted August poll and used a speech to again call for the Taliban to rejoin the political process in Afghanistan, where about 100,000 US and Nato troops are stationed.

‘The people of Afghanistan will not agree to negotiation which prolongs and legitimises the invader’s military presence in our beloved country. Afghanistan is our home,’ a Taliban statement quoted Omar as saying.

The elusive leader of the militia, which were unseated in the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, accused foreign powers of seeking negotiations to ‘prolong their evil process of colonization and occupation. The cunning enemy wants to attack people’s crowded places such as mosques and other similar places in order to malign the Mujahideen,’ Omar said.

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There is much more.

This is consistent with his past position on talks. You have to understand he is a religious bigot who thinks all his enemies either infidels or inadequately pious Muslims. A compromise with these people would be like compromising his religious beliefs. He is not going to do it. We need to concentrate on destroying the Taliban and its leadership.

Mexico to tighten its border with US

LA Times:

Driving into Mexico has been a largely hassle-free experience for decades: There were few customs inspectors, even fewer gates, and for most border crossers, no questions asked.

That's about to change.

The Mexican government is modernizing its ports of entry along the border, including its biggest crossing in Tijuana. The new infrastructure -- which includes gates, cameras and vehicle scales -- is meant to help curtail the flow of drug money and weapons to Mexican organized crime groups.

But bolstered security means more border-crossing logjams, and business and trade groups fear that the new measures will deal another blow to a fragile regional economy.

The System of Supervision and Vehicular Control is still in the testing phase ahead of its scheduled January rollout, but traffic jams already occur regularly at peak crossing times in late afternoon. Cross-border trips from San Diego that once took five minutes can take an hour or more.

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This is something that has been needed. It is a way to control the criminal insurgencies flow of money and to some extent weapons into the country. It will put more pressure on the criminal insurgents coming back to match the pressure the US is putting on as they enter this country.

Counterinsurgency in Khost

Stick with the report. The information on how the counterinsurgency operation is going begins about halfway through it. The troops are clearly looking for additional forces to help with the operation.

A Thanksgiving prayer

Gary Varvel captures the conservative spirit of Thanksgiving.

The Taliban in media battle space

Jeffrey Dressler:

As the world awaits the highly anticipated announcement of the President’s Afghan War strategy, the Taliban is actively trying to influence the debate in Washington through a sophisticated information campaign. Emphasizing the intractability of the conflict, the Taliban seek to dissuade the White House from investing more blood and treasure in a war that they contend will be a bloody, drawn-out struggle. However, there is little truth in the Taliban’s media blitz. It is a strategic mistake for decision makers in Washington to buy-in to the Taliban’s propaganda efforts.

The Taliban is aggressively attempting to rebrand their image and feed talking points to those in favor of de-escalation. Last month, the Taliban’s senior leadership released a statement claiming that, "[they] did not have any agenda to harm other countries including Europe, nor do we have such agenda today." This release coincided with a New York Times story claiming that the Obama administration has begun to define the Taliban as a group that "does not express ambitions of attacking the United States."

Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Earlier this year, a spokesman for the Taliban’s media wing said, "After removing America from our homeland and defeating them, we would then have achieved half of the work to free our occupied Muslim countries because with the collapse America… NATO will collapse. And all the towers of tyranny will collapse in the region, including Israel and Zionism, which receives its military, economic and political power from America." When asked if Afghanistan will become a center to attack targets outside of Afghanistan, he replied, "… After liberating Afghanistan we will do what concerns us of principle Islamic missions."

The Taliban clearly see the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan as an attack not only on their organization, but on Islam writ-large. They will not be satisfied with vanquishing America from their historical homeland, as they see their struggle as fundamental to Islamic missions across the globe. This is precisely the reason why Al Qaeda was allowed to train, plan, and launch attacks from Afghanistan. The Taliban are closely watching the debate unfolding in Washington and offering their insight on pending legislation. Recently, the Taliban’s day-to-day operational leader, Mullah Barader, released a statement directly addressed to President Obama, Carl Levin, and the Senate Armed Services Committee’s proposal to include “re-integration funding” in the Senate’s annual defense appropriations bill. As in Iraq, Senator Levin envisions doling out financial incentives for Taliban fighters who would be willing to switch sides. Barader urges the President that this strategy is bound to fail, as his fighters are not simply hired-hands, but deeply ideological and committed jihadists dedicated to the independence of the Afghan state and the widespread establishment of Sharia law...

To read the full commentary, please click here.

The Taliban have a surprisingly sophisticated media strategy which they have been using since the war began. Their anti aircraft strategy is mainly to claim that bombing attacks on their forces are hitting wedding parties instead. More recently they have used human shields in order to claim civilian casualties.

This piece is a good example of how to counter the Taliban media battle space strategy. The military response to this strategy has been poorly handled in the past. We have allowed the Taliban story to get inside the media OODA loop which has allowed their story line to dominate the news on occasion.

Obama's tricky message on Afghanistan

In declaring Tuesday that he would “finish the job” in Afghanistan, President Obama used a phrase clearly meant to imply that even as he deploys an additional 30,000 or so troops, he has finally figured out how to bring the eight-year-long conflict to an end.

But offering that reassuring if somewhat contradictory signal — that by adding troops he can speed the United States toward an exit — is just the first of a set of tricky messages Mr. Obama will have to deliver as he rolls out his strategy publicly.
Over the next week, he will deliver multiple messages to multiple audiences: voters at home, allies, the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the extremists who are the enemy. And as Mr. Obama’s own aides concede, the messages directed at some may undercut the messages sent to others.
He must convince Democrats, especially the antiwar base that helped elect him, and the slim majority of the country that tells pollsters the conflict is no longer worth the sacrifice, that in sending more troops he is not escalating the war L.B.J.-style. In fact, some of those involved in the deliberations on an Afghanistan strategy say Mr. Obama will argue that providing the additional numbers is the fastest way to assure that the United States will be able to “finish the job,” because it will speed the training of the Afghan national army.
But at the same moment, he must persuade Republicans that he is giving the military what it needs to beat back the Taliban and keep Al Qaeda from threatening the United States.
That would be a difficult task even if Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s strategic assessments and troop requests had not been paraded across front pages, including his contention that the task will require 40,000 or more troops if Mr. Obama wants to create true security in the country’s major population centers.
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There is nothing contradictory about adding troops to speed a victory. That is how most wars are won. That is how we defeated al Qaeda in Iraq. By increasing the force to space ratio we can make it more difficult for the enemy to move to contact and retreat from contact. That is how you defeat an insurgency.

The suggestion that adding troops is contradictory reminds me of the NY Times Butterworth syndrome where the writer seemed puzzled by the reduction in crime with an increasing prison population. Liberalism can be a curious thing.

Polling Afghan war approval

USA Today:

Public approval of President Obama's handling of the war in Afghanistan has plummeted, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, amid rising pessimism about the course of the conflict.
The nation is divided over what to do next: Nearly half of those surveyed endorse deploying thousands of additional U.S. troops, while four in 10 say it's time to begin withdrawing forces.

The mixed picture comes as the president weighs a request from the top U.S. commander for about 40,000 more troops. Obama said Tuesday he would announce his decision after Thanksgiving.
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His extended deliberations may be taking a toll: 55% disapprove of the way he is handling Afghanistan and 35% approve, a reversal of his 56% approval rating four months ago.

"He's being held responsible for a deteriorating situation and relentlessly bad news," says political scientist Richard Eichenberg of Tufts University. "But Americans continue to believe doing something about al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was the right thing to do."

On a series of fronts, Obama is moving against headwinds:

• By more than 2-1, Americans say the United States shouldn't close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, as Obama has promised.

• By 49%-44%, they oppose passing a health care bill in Congress this year, which he calls critical.

• A majority are against holding the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York, and nearly six in 10 say the self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind should be tried in a military rather than a civilian court. That's at odds with the decision announced this month by Attorney General Eric Holder.
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I think his dithering on the troop request hurt his poll numbers on his approval of handling the war. Some of his other moves involving the war in general have been deeply unpopular. That will eventually take a toll on his overall popularity.

Al Qaeda's Syria sanctuary

Bill Roggio:

US intelligence officials are concerned that Syria is becoming an al Qaeda haven, as the terror group becomes increasingly intertwined with Ba’athist groups operating from Iraq's neighbor to the west.

Al Qaeda has refocused its efforts to build an infrastructure in eastern Syria after its network in Iraq was decimated by Iraqi and US security forces from 2007 to 2009, and now the organization is partnering with former Ba’athists from Saddam Hussein’s regime.

"A major concern is that eastern Syria will begin to look like northwestern Pakistan," where al Qaeda has joined forces with the Taliban and directs attacks to destabilize Afghanistan, a senior US military intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

In late 2008, the situation in eastern Syria came to a head when US special operations forces struck at al Qaeda's facilitation network in the town of Sukkariya near Abu Kamal in eastern Syria, just five miles from the Iraqi border. US troops killed Abu Ghadiya, al Qaeda's senior facilitator, and his senior staff during the October 2008 raid.

After Ghadiya was killed, al Qaeda sent a senior ideologue from Pakistan to Syria to partner with a dangerous operative who runs the network that funnels foreign fighters, cash, and weapons into western Iraq. Sheikh Issa al Masri is thought to have entered Syria in June 2009, where he paired up with Abu Khalaf, a senior al Qaeda operative who has been instrumental in reviving al Qaeda in Iraq's network in eastern Syria and directing terror operations in Iraq, a US intelligence official told The Long War Journal.

Sheikh Issa is believed to be based in Damascus and is protected by the Mukhabarat, Syria's secret intelligence service. The two al Qaeda leaders are thought to be behind some of the most deadly attacks in Iraq, including the deadly bombings in Baghdad in August and October that targeted government ministries and killed more than 230 Iraqis and wounded nearly 1,000 more.
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There is more.

Why the State Department believes Syria is someone who can be a partner for peace in the Middle East is a mystery to me. This is just more evidence that Syria is a haven and headquarters for terrorist organizations.

The real history of climate changes

Ian Pilmer:

In the geological past, there have been six major ice ages. During five of these six ice ages, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content was higher than at present. It is clear that the colorless, odorless, non-poisonous gas called carbon dioxide did not drive past climates. Carbon dioxide is plant food, not a pollutant.

Humans have adapted to live on ice sheets, deserts, mountains, tropics, and sea level. History shows that humans and other organisms have thrived in warm times and suffered in cold times.

In the 600-year long Roman Warming, it was 4ºC warmer than now. Sea level did not rise and ice sheets did not disappear. The Dark Ages followed, and starvation, disease, and depopulation occurred. The Medieval Warming followed the Dark Ages, and for 400 years it was 5ºC warmer. Sea level did not rise and the ice sheets remained. The Medieval Warming was followed by the Little Ice Age, which finished in 1850. It is absolutely no surprise that temperature increased after a cold period.

Unless I have missed something, I am not aware of heavy industry, coal-fired power stations, or SUVs in the 1,000 years of Roman and Medieval Warmings. These natural warmings are a dreadful nuisance for climate alarmists because they suggest that the warming since 1850 may be natural and may not be related to carbon dioxide emissions.

There was warming from 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, and 1976 to 1998, with intervening periods of cooling. The only time when temperature rise paralleled carbon dioxide emissions was 1976-1998. The other warmings and coolings in the last 150 years were unrelated to carbon dioxide emissions.

Something is seriously wrong. To argue that humans change climate requires abandoning all we know about history, archaeology, geology, astronomy, and solar physics. This is exactly what has been done.

The answer to this enigma was revealed last week. It is fraud.
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The release of the CRU data is a problem for the globo warmers that they appear ready to address by ignoring the evidence of their cooking the books. Much of the mainstream media appears ready to continue the hoax and also ignore the evidence. That in itself is a scandal.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Hezballah tries to smuggle guns from US

A Hezbollah political official and his son-in-law sought this year to smuggle 1,200 machine guns from the United States to the militant Islamist group via Syria, according to indictments made public Tuesday against 10 men in federal court in Philadelphia.

Hassan Hodroj and Dib Hani Harb, both of Beirut, were among four men accused of conspiring to support Hezbollah, a Shiite group with close ties to Iran and Syria that is on the State Department's list of terrorist groups, U.S. Attorney Michael L. Levy of Philadelphia said.

Harb, Moussa Ali Hamdan of Brooklyn, and Hasan Antar Karaki of Beirut were also charged with seeking to funnel counterfeit and stolen cash generated by the sale of phony passports to Hezbollah, with Hamdan acting as a U.S.-based conduit to a confidential government witness based on Philadelphia.

Hodroj was identified in court documents as a member of Hezbollah's political council and has been identified in news reports as spokesman and head of its Palestinian issues portfolio. None of the four is in U.S. custody and all are believed to be overseas, said Patricia Hartman, spokeswoman for Levy.
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Hezballah is a goup without conscience or morals. Anything is justified in pursuit of their objectives, I suspect they are engaged in other illegal activity in this country where the funds are used to support their religious bigotry and hatred of Israel and the US.

Assault charges against SEALs after capture of terrorist responsible for Fallujah atrocity

Fox News:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class (SO-2), is facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.

Petty Officer Jonathan Keefe, SO-2, is facing charges of dereliction of performance of duty and making a false official statement.

Petty Officer Julio Huertas, SO-1, faces those same charges and an additional charge of impediment of an investigation.
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This does not sound good. The military is not going to come out looking good with this prosecution. Unfortunately the SEALs want either. It is hard to have any sympathy for this murderer and corpse mutilator.

Rationed health care short changes research

Times:

Research into cancer and dementia will come under threat from government plans to fund social care, experts warned last night.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, told The Times that millions of pounds would be “reprioritised” from health research and development to pay the costs of the Social Care Bill, published today.

Money will also be diverted from public health campaigns such as those on swine flu, sexually transmitted diseases and obesity.
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It is one of the evils of socialism. The rationed care system delivers substandard care and robs the future by short changing research need to solve cancer and related killer diseases. It reminds me of the post below on how California has allowed its infrastructure and road to deteriorate while they waste money on liberal social programs.

Time for sex

From the Telegraph:

Sex in Sydney clock tower

This appears to also be a time for exhibitionist.

Pentagon prepares to send 34,000 troops to Afghanistan

CNN:

The Pentagon is making detailed plans to send about 34,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in anticipation of President Obama's decision on the future of the 8-year-old war, a defense official said Tuesday.
Obama held a lengthy meeting with top advisers Monday night and said Tuesday that he would announce plans for Afghanistan after the Thanksgiving holiday.

A Defense Department official with direct knowledge of the process said there has been no final word on the president's decision. But planners have been tasked with preparing to send 34,000 additional American troops into battle with the expectation that is the number Obama is leaning toward approving, the official said.
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It is a good move if he sticks with this number. I guess he plans to dither a few more days to think of something to tell the Democrat kook base about his decision. He should have done it sooner.

Cooking the books on global warming

Robert Tracinski:

In early October, I covered a breaking story about evidence of corruption in the basic temperature records maintained by key scientific advocates of the theory of man-made global warming. Global warming "skeptics" had unearthed evidence that scientists at the Hadley Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia had cherry-picked data to manufacture a "hockey stick" graph showing a dramatic-but illusory-runaway warming trend in the late 20th century.

But now newer and much broader evidence has emerged that looks like it will break that scandal wide open. Pundits have already named it "Climategate."
A hacker-or possibly a disillusioned insider-has gathered thousands of e-mails and data from the CRU and made them available on the Web. Officials at the CRU have verified the breach of their system and acknowledged that the e-mails appear to be genuine.

Yes, this is a theft of data-but the purpose of the theft was to blow the whistle on a much bigger, more brazen crime. The CRU has already called in the police to investigate the hacker. But now someone needs to call in the cops to investigate the CRU.

Australian journalist Andrew Bolt has a good overview of the story, with a selection of incriminating e-mails that have already been discovered in the hacked data. Note that these e-mails reveal more than just what it going on at the CRU, since they involve numerous leading British and American climate scientists outside of the CRU.

These e-mails show, among many other things, private admissions of doubt or scientific weakness in the global warming theory. In acknowledging that global temperatures have actually declined for the past decade, one scientist asks, "where the heck is global warming?... The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." They still can't account for it; see a new article in Der Spiegel: "Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out." I don't know where these people got their scientific education, but where I come from, if your theory can't predict or explain the observed facts, it's wrong.

More seriously, in one e-mail, a prominent global warming alarmist admits to using a statistical "trick" to "hide the decline" in temperatures. Anthony Watts provides an explanation of this case in technical detail; the "trick" consists of selectively mixing two different kinds of data-temperature "proxies" from tree rings and actual thermometer measurements-in a way designed to produce a graph of global temperatures that ends the way the global warming establishment wants it to: with an upward "hockey stick" slope.

Confirming the earlier scandal about cherry-picked data, the e-mails show CRU scientists conspiring to evade legal requests, under the Freedom of Information Act, for their underlying data. It's a basic rule of science that you don't just get to report your results and ask other people to take you on faith. You also have to report your data and your specific method of analysis, so that others can check it and, yes, even criticize it. Yet that is precisely what the CRU scientists have refused.
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The damage here goes far beyond the loss of a few billions of taxpayer dollars on bogus scientific research. The real cost of this fraud is the trillions of dollars of wealth that will be destroyed if a fraudulent theory is used to justify legislation that starves the global economy of its cheapest and most abundant sources of energy.

This is the scandal of the century. It needs to be thoroughly investigated-and the culprits need to be brought to justice.

The fraud at the core of the Globo warming crowd is what caused them to try to reframe their issue as "Climate Change." This was a more amorphous term that would make it easier for them to explain anomalies, but that was still not enough. They had to cook the books.

Tracinski is right about the expenditures at stake in this debate, but it overlooks the loss of freedom that is also at stake. The globo warmers are control freaks who want to use this manufactured "crisis" to control every aspect of our lives. The totalitarian polices they want to impose would make the communist blush.

We have to be willing to destroy the enemy

Ralph Peters:

It's not true that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. Even dead terrorists aren't good. But at least they're dead.
And that helps.
But political correctness has possessed Washington. It's so bad that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who's done a great job in many other respects, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this."
Well, folks, there's no other way out of this all-or-nothing struggle with fanatics. Three thousand years of history teach that there's no alternative -- none -- to killing fanatics in large numbers when your enemies are ablaze with religious zeal.
What Gates and countless others really mean is that we're unwilling to kill our way out of this assault on our civilization. So the terrorists keep on killing us.
We tell ourselves that one more charm offensive, one more inept aid program, one more surge of troops who aren't allowed to fight will persuade terrorists on a murderous mission from their god to lay down their arms and run for alderman.
We refuse to see the world through terrorist eyes. Instead, we superimpose liberal-arts-faculty values on bloodthirsty zealots, asking what we've done to make them so angry.
The result? We grant captured terrorists more rights and better treatment than nonviolent offenders in a US county jail. We cater to them at the gentrified prison at Guantanamo (yet the global media insist that Gitmo's just a big torture chamber).
We tell ourselves we'll impress our enemies with our humanitarianism. But how many Gitmo prisoners have turned pacifist or expressed regrets? If you were convinced that you were doing God's will, would you be budged by a captor who gives you priority health care, a religiously correct diet, special worship privileges and free legal counsel? Allah has made his enemies weak . . .
The laws of war provide for the battlefield execution of illegal combatants -- those who refuse to wear uniforms or identifying insignia or who commit atrocities. Instead, we give them flu shots before American citizens can get them.
When a madcap ideologue such as Attorney General Eric Holder tells Congress we mustn't be afraid to try terrorists in our judicial system, he gets it exactly wrong. The terrorists believe we're afraid to kill them. And they're right.
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We do not oppose the trials of terrorist because of fear, but because they are an irrational response to people making war against us. Lawfare is a poor match for warfare with this enemy. It is part of the failed policy of the 90s that led to 9-11.

I use the term destroy rather than kill because it encompasses more than just killing. It includes destroying the infrastructure of terrorism. It is how the Israelis defeated the second intifada. It is how we defeated al Qaeda in Iraq. Certainly killing the enemy is part of the deal, but you have to destroy their ability to move to contact and retreat from contact. You destroy this enemy when you limit their freedom of movement.

Once you have captured the enemy, they should be held until the end of the war or their death, which ever comes sooner. If they are tried for war crimes it should be in a military tribunal.

The Carter effect and the bomb

Bret Stephens:

An idealistic president takes office promising an era of American moral renewal at home and abroad. The effort includes a focus on diplomacy and peace-making, an aversion to the use of force, the selling out of old allies. The result is that within a couple of years the U.S. is more suspected, detested and enfeebled than ever.

No, we're not talking about Barack Obama. But since the current administration took office offering roughly the same prescriptions as Jimmy Carter did, it's worth recalling how that worked out.

How it worked out became inescapably apparent 30 years ago this month. On Nov. 20, 1979, Sunni religious fanatics led by a dark-eyed charismatic Saudi named Juhayman bin Seif al Uteybi seized Mecca's Grand Mosque, Islam's holiest site. After a two week siege distinguished mainly by its incompetence, Saudi forces were able to recapture the mosque at a cost of several hundred lives.

By any objective account—the very best of which was offered by Wall Street Journal reporter Yaroslav Trofimov in his 2007 book "The Siege of Mecca"—the battle at the Grand Mosque was a purely Sunni affair pitting a fundamentalist Islamic regime against ultra-fundamentalist renegades. Yet throughout the Muslim world, the Carter administration was viewed as the main culprit. U.S. diplomatic missions in Bangladesh, India, Turkey and Libya were assaulted; in Pakistan, the embassy was burned to the ground. How could that happen to a country whose president was so intent on making his policies as inoffensive as possible?

The answer was, precisely, that Mr. Carter had set out to make America as inoffensive as possible. Two weeks before Juhayman seized the Grand Mosque, Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. They did so after Mr. Carter had refused to bail out the Shah, as the Eisenhower administration had in 1953, and after Andrew Young, Mr. Carter's U.N. ambassador, had described the Ayatollah Khomeini as "somewhat of a saint."

They also did so after Mr. Carter had scored his one diplomatic coup by brokering a peace deal between Egypt and Israel. Today, the consensus view of the Obama administration is that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would ease tensions throughout the region. But worthy though it was in its own right, peace between Egypt and Israel was also a fillip for Sunni and Shiite radicals alike from Tehran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza. Whatever else the Middle East has been since the signing of the Camp David Accords, it has not been a more peaceful place.
Nor has it been any less inclined to hate the U.S., no matter whether the president is a peace-loving Democrat or a war-mongering Republican....

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Israel has only been attacked by terrorist since it developed its nuclear arsenal. Egypt and Jordon have signed peace agreements and Syria has resisted any overt attacks. In fact Israel's nukes have had much more to do with its not being attacked by its neighbors than any diplomatic agreements.

The main reason there has been no agreement with the Palestinians is that they have nothing of value to offer the Israelis. They want a state, but they are not willing to engage in a civil war with their terrorist subdivisions to get it. Since they cannot deliver on the peace part of the equation there is no reason for the Israelis to cede land to them.

Liberalism's bad roads

NPR:

California is known for its car culture. But it turns out those wheels are rolling over some of the worst roads in the nation. A recent study ranked California 49th out of the 50 states for the quality of its pavement. New Jersey came in last. But California has the distinction of having the nation's worst roads in urban areas.

...

For example, there's a brutal stretch of I-10 east of Los Angeles. From high up in the cab of the truck the pavement looks like a patchwork quilt of asphalt and concrete. Every seam of every repair job can be felt in the cab. And so can every crack and pothole that repair crews have yet to touch. The trailers Park hauls clatter and clang over the crevices and bumps.
"When you hit a pothole enough times," explains Park, "it jars the front end, then the front end gets out of line, then the tires start wearing funny and then you start cracking the frame. Eventually, it just tears up equipment."
Truck drivers aren't the only ones who dodge the impacts of rough roads. In San Francisco more than 60 percent of the streets are in poor condition. You think that's bad in a car? Try it on a bike.
...
TRIP also calculated just how much bad roads cost individual motorists in additional maintenance. The national average is $335 a year. But "motorists in the Los Angeles urban area are paying the greatest additional vehicle operating costs of $746 per year."
One reason for the deterioration of the nation's roads is that vehicle traffic has gone up 36 percent since 1990. States can't come up with the money to deal with the stress that puts on the pavement. California, for example, is projecting a deficit in the next year and a half of more than $20 billion. But many states are strapped for cash. And if it weren't for the federal stimulus money, says Moretti, they might find their roads in even worse shape.
...

What is really happening is that liberal states like California and New Jersey are spending the gas tax money on other priorities. That is what liberals do. Liberals are already shorting national security spending while piling up huge deficits on Democrat boondoggles and wasteful rationed health care plans. They are shortchanging basic maintenance to pay for liberalism's priorities.

Monday, November 23, 2009

This is not a CIA facility

Live Science:

If you experience impotence, instead of a little blue pill maybe you want to apply shockwaves to your privates instead.

Experiments now suggest directing shockwaves at penises can help treat erectile dysfunction.

"We can really reverse erectile problems with this," researcher Yoram Vardi, head of the neuro-urology department at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, told LiveScience.

"While patients with erectile dysfunction can function with Viagra or Cialis, this is not a cure - when they stop the medication, they cannot function," he added. "This is only a preliminary study, but here with shockwaves, we can do something biological for the problem - after treatments, these patients can function without the need for medication."
...
At each session, a device that resembles a computer mouse applied shockwaves at five different sites on their penises.

"These are very, very low energy shock waves," Vardi said. Each shockwave applied roughly 100 bar of pressure - some 20 times the air pressure in a bottle of champagne, but less than the pressure exerted by a woman in stiletto heels who weighs 132 lbs. (60 kg).

"This sort of energy is completely different from what you would get in a massage, although everyone can do what they want," Vardi said.
...

Will the market for this mouse outpace the one for vibrators?

How low can support for Democrat rationed health care go?

Rasmussen Reports:

Just 38% of voters now favor the health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. That’s the lowest level of support measured for the plan in nearly two dozen tracking polls conducted since June.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% now oppose the plan.
...
Only 16% now believe passage of the plan will lead to lower health care costs. Nearly four times as many (60%) believe the plan will increase health care costs. Most (54%) also believe passage of the plan will hurt the quality of care.
...

I think support for the plan and the Democrats can still go lower and probably will if they keep pushing their control freak agenda. Independents now oppose the plan by 70 percent.

Obama administration in secret taks with Taliban

Dawn:

The Obama administration may be close to reversing course on its current strategy in Afghanistan, after DawnNews quoted sources as saying that high-level talks with senior Taliban militants are currently underway.

The indirect talks involve officials from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Britain, and top Afghan Taliban leadership, including the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Chief and Abdullah Anus, among others.

...

The first round of talks has concluded an a new round is expected. This could explain Obama's dithering. I am skeptical that the Taliban would honor any agreement that did not put them in charge fo imposing their weir religious beliefs on the population as a whole.

Multicultural masochism in response to Fort Hood massacre

Christopher Hitchens:

...

In many recent reports of this controversy one has seen reporters from respectable papers referring not just to generic, uniform "Muslims" but even to the places where they live as "Muslim lands." If you would object to seeing the absurd term "Christendom" in your newspaper as a description of Europe, let alone to reading about "Jewish land" on the West Bank, then please have the fortitude to complain next time violent theocracy is smuggled into the discourse under the increasingly feeble disguise of multicultural masochism.

Hitchens eviscerates those would rationalize the mass murder for Allah attack by Maj. Hasan at Fort Hood.

Shiefer drops out of Dem primary, White may enter

San Antonio Express-News:

Fort Worth businessman Tom Schieffer is expected to drop out of the Texas governor's race later today, and Houston Mayor Bill White then will join the fray, according to a reliable source.

We now have a second reliable source telling us that White's switch to the governor's race will occur.

White spokeswoman Katy Bacon said it is not true that White is moving to the governor's race. She said White will have a statement after Schieffer's formal withdrawal announcement this afternoon.

However, two other sources tell us that White will not make a formal switch to the governor's race until after the Thanksgiving weekend, probably next Monday or Tuesday.
...

Both moves make some sense. Shieffer seemed to be a long shot to me. The Senate race is on hold while Sen. Hutchison decides to resign at a later date. The Governors race is also a better fit for White who has executive experience as Mayor of Houston. Whoever wins the Democrat primary will be an underdog against either Perry or Hutchison.

The Hill has more on White's decision.

Operation gratitude

Bruce Bialosky:

Carolyn Blashek was in shock, like many of us, on 9/11. She was searching to find something that would assuage her concerns. Her decision was to enlist in the Army. The Army recruiter took one look at this then-46-year-old, 5’ 5”, and 115 lb. woman, and suggested she find another way to channel her energies. That recruiter definitely saved Islamic terrorists from a severe thrashing.

Looking for something to fulfill her commitment to help, she volunteered at the military lounge at Los Angeles Airport. Ms. Blashek had a unique experience with a particular soldier on leave, one who really had no family at all. It became clear what the soldiers in war zones really needed – which then became her mission – was to help our best men and women believe that someone here in the homeland actually cared.
Starting in her home, Carolyn created something different – and special. Her objective was to send each soldier an individually addressed box that included not only helpful items, but also a handwritten note. This is not an easy task to accomplish. She has to get the names and the locations of our soldiers which is something the military does not hand out willy-nilly. The decision to release this information is left to the commanders in the field or on the ships. You see, these packages are meant for the men and women in harm’s way -- those that most need to know that we sincerely care – and deeply appreciate what they are doing for us.
From the days in 2003 and 2004 when you would visit Carolyn’s house and be greeted by a wall of boxes, the operation has really changed. Operation Gratitude has taken over the Army National Guard Armory in Van Nuys, California. I stopped by recently and what I saw there made me particularly proud to be American.
At first glance, it looks like Santa’s workshop three days before Christmas. You are stunned by the mass of people hard at work on an assembly line. Almost 1,000 volunteers (no one at Operation Gratitude gets paid) are busy working away on this season’s goal of sending 70,000 boxes to our brave souls in Iraq and Afghanistan. Who would have thought this could happen in California, the heart of blue-state America?
...

I know there are many patriotic Americans in California laboring under the handicap of liberalism. They deserve our sympathy and gratitude. Carolyn Blashek and her helpers deserve a special sense of gratitude from those of us who support the troops and their mission.

Global warming fear mongering gets heated

CNN has a story on the cost to port cities of rising sea levels. It has the typical tipping point scare stories with a suggestion of urgency in avoiding the situation. The story fails to discuss the emails which have cast doubt on the globo warmer's studies. I remain skeptical of both the warming and the consequences of it.

An opportunity missed in World War II

David Colley:

SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River.
One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up of the United States Seventh and French First Armies, 350,000 men, had landed Aug. 15 near Marseille — an invasion largely overlooked by history but regarded at the time as “the second D-Day” — and advanced through southern France to Strasbourg. No other Allied army had yet reached the Rhine, not even hard-charging George Patton’s.
Devers dispatched scouts over the river. “There’s nobody in those pillboxes over there,” a soldier reported. Defenses on the German side of the upper Rhine were unmanned and the enemy was unprepared for a cross-river attack, which could unhinge the Germans’ southern front and possibly lead to the collapse of the entire line from Holland to Switzerland.
The Sixth Army Group had assembled bridging equipment, amphibious trucks and assault boats. Seven crossing sites along the upper Rhine were evaluated and intelligence gathered. The Seventh Army could cross north of Strasbourg at Rastatt, Germany, advance north along the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and swing west to come in behind the German First Army, which was blocking Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine. The enemy would face annihilation, and the Third and Seventh Armies could break loose and drive into Germany. The war might end quickly.
Devers never crossed. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander, visited Devers’s headquarters that day and ordered him instead to stay on the Rhine’s west bank and attack enemy positions in northern Alsace. Devers was stunned. “We had a clean breakthrough,” he wrote in his diary. “By driving hard, I feel that we could have accomplished our mission.” Instead the war of attrition continued, giving the Germans a chance to counterattack three weeks later in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, which cost 80,000 American dead and wounded.
...

The southern landing in France was called Operation Anvil. It was one that many in the command opposed, and historically it has been largely ignored even though as this story points out, is was surprisingly successful and could have been even more successful if Eisenhower had not insisted on his "broad front" strategy for dealing with the advance into Germany.

Getting between an enemy and his line of supplies and retreat has usually been decisive in battle. This looks like a costly opportunity that was missed. There is probably a good book in the story of Operation Anvil. Colley has written one.

Diabetes

This blog has never been about me, but is about items that interest me. Unfortunately, I have come down with diabetes which sometimes effects my ability to blog these items as much as I would like. It effects my stamina and more importantly my vision. I recently got new glasses, but my vision changed again in less than a week's time. I am now wearing 2X reading glasses over the new glasses and that works to some extent, but I am told it will take several months for it to stabilize.

I intend to continue to blog as much as possible, doctor visits and vision problems permitting. I appreciate the loyal following of this blog. It was recently named in the top 133 conservative blogs in the country. It also ranks as one of the most influential blogs in Texas.

Since I am suddenly interested in diabetes, you may see post on the subject from time to time.

The Afghan troop buffet Obama is dithering over

Should President Obama decide to send 40,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan, the most ambitious plan under consideration at the White House, the military would have enormous flexibility to deploy as many as 15,000 troops to the Taliban center of gravity in the south, 5,000 to the critical eastern border with Pakistan and 10,000 as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

The rest could be deployed flexibly across the country, including to the NATO headquarters in Kabul, the capital, and in clandestine operations.
If Mr. Obama limited any additional American troops to 10,000 to 15,000, the military would deploy them largely as trainers, with some reinforcements likely in the southern province of Kandahar, the Taliban’s spiritual home. The neighboring, and opium-rich, Helmand Province and the eastern border with Pakistan, military analysts say, would receive few if any American troops and would remain largely as they are today.
...

There is more detail on the options. Historically, we know that the small foot print strategies lead to a longer and bloodier war. Putting the additional troops in place in adequate numbers creates a situation where enemy movement to contact and retreat from contact becomes ever more difficult. If you do not have an adequate force to space ratio you are forced to play whack-a-mole with the enemy or cede real estate that makes it easier for the enemy to operate from sanctuaries.

The best option is clearly to send the largest force that you can support. It will make for a shorter war with less bloodshed.

Obama's war against Texas

Kevin Williams:

‘You don’t have to hit us in the head with a baseball bat too many times,” says Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, “before we start to think you’re doing it on purpose.” And so Governor Perry has a question for the Obama administration: Why ship thousands and thousands of illegal aliens from places as far away as San Diego, Calif., and Nogales, Ariz., all the way down to the tiny little village of Presidio, Tex. — population 4,167 — to deport them?

The Obama administration says the answer to that question, or at least part of the answer, is the Chihuahuan Desert. Send illegals across the border at San Diego, immigration authorities have argued, and they’ll just hit a couple of happy hours in Tijuana before coming right back across to the United States. But get them on the other side of a vast and inhospitable desert, and the heat and the cactuses and the coachwhip snakes will do what the U.S. Border Patrol cannot: Keep Mexicans in Mexico.

It’s a great theory, with one glaring flaw: It assumes that the Mexican authorities are going to transport deportees across the desert and back to their hometowns in the interior....

“They’re going to walk them halfway across the bridge and say, ‘Good luck,’” Governor Perry says. “On the one side, they’re going to be facing the desert. On the other side is Texas. Which way would you go?”

The Border Patrol is going to be shipping nearly 100 illegals a day through Presidio....

...

Governor Perry, who does not hesitate to characterize the Obama administration’s ambitions as socialist, thinks the administration is setting out to punish Texas. “You look at this, you look at cap-and-trade, which absolutely would punish the Texas economy — we get it.”

...

This is a strange policy that reflects the unserious attitude of this administration on immigration issues. It is also why about 80 percent of Texans hold this administration in such low regard. If they were really serious about a deterrent they would go back to the policy of work site raids. These raids resulted in a significant increase in self deportations.

Climate of failure in Copenhagen

Nigel Lawson:

Exactly a fortnight from today, the United Nations climate change conference opens in Copenhagen. Its purpose is (or was) clear: to agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

...

The greatest error in the current conventional wisdom is that, if you accept the (present) majority scientific view that most of the modest global warming in the last quarter of the last century — about half a degree centigrade — was caused by man-made carbon emissions, then you must also accept that we have to decarbonise our economies.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I have no idea whether the majority scientific view (and it is far from a consensus) is correct. Certainly, it is curious that, whereas their models predicted an acceleration in global warming this century as the growth in emissions accelerated, so far this century there has been no further warming at all. But the current majority view may still be right.

Even if it is, however, that cannot determine the right policy choice. For a warmer climate brings benefits as well as disadvantages. Even if there is a net disadvantage, which is uncertain, it is far less than the economic cost (let alone the human cost) of decarbonisation. Moreover, the greatest single attribute of mankind is our capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. By adapting to any warming that may occur over the next century, we can pocket the benefits and greatly reduce the disadvantages, at a cost that is far less than the cost of global decarbonisation — even if that could be achieved.

Moreover, the scientific basis for global warming projections is now under scrutiny as never before. The principal source of these projections is produced by a small group of scientists at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), affiliated to the University of East Anglia.

Last week an apparent hacker obtained access to their computers and published in the blogosphere part of their internal e-mail traffic. And the CRU has conceded that the at least some of the published e-mails are genuine.

Astonishingly, what appears, at least at first blush, to have emerged is that (a) the scientists have been manipulating the raw temperature figures to show a relentlessly rising global warming trend; (b) they have consistently refused outsiders access to the raw data; (c) the scientists have been trying to avoid freedom of information requests; and (d) they have been discussing ways to prevent papers by dissenting scientists being published in learned journals.
...

I am pleased to see someone express an opinion on global warming or climate change that is in agreement with my on. Adaption makes much more sense than the carbon phobes insistence on reducing emissions. The apparent dishonest of the carbon phobes in suppressing dissenting opinions is a real scandal for an operation that is insisting on a control freak response to a problem that many remain skeptical of.

Honest arguments against Islamist

Ibn Warraq:

Judging from the way his critics have been going on, I would say that Tunku Varadarajan was on to something in his Forbes column "Going Muslim."

The reaction to his important and well-reasoned article ironically confirms and further underlines his central point; namely, that out of political correctness we refuse to see and act on the obvious--the implication of Islamist ideology in violent acts such as the murders perpetrated by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

Instead of addressing the substance of Mr. Varadarajan's arguments, the self-appointed spokespersons for Islam turn the whole discussion around and present Muslims as the victims of "hate-speech" or "Islamophobia." This now-familiar rhetorical tactic deflects public attention away from an entirely legitimate and necessary question: Would this crime make any sense apart from Islamist ideology?

While posing as victims, some Muslims absolve themselves from considering Islam as in any way responsible for acts such as those of Maj. Hasan. Certain groups of Muslims are adept at nursing and flaunting their grievances, and, as Theodore Dalrymple once put it, there is nothing like grievance to prevent people from examining their own responsibility for their situation.

...

Muslims have invented two new human rights: the right not to have Islam criticized, and the right not to be offended. Religions do not have rights, only individuals have rights; and second, there is no such right as "the right not to be offended." There are many passages in the Koran that offend me, but I do not advocate the banning of this book.

....

There is much more.

Radical Muslims are adept at playing a victim strategy and they do it on many levels. They search for reasons to be victims and many times make it up. These are people who have no serious argument and use victimization to avoid one.

Al Qaeda's third wave

Gordon Cucullu:

The Fort Hood killings were no isolated incident, but part of al Qaeda's "third wave."
The 9/11 terrorists were the first wave: Their attacks culminated years of direct attacks on America and the West by al Qaeda operators -- a core group of Saudi, Yemeni and other identifiably Arab men. But Osama bin Laden and his key assistants had long realized we'd take measures to guard against such foreigners -- that future attacks would have to draw on a new "talent" pool.
"Zacarias Moussaoui was designated to be part of the second wave of attacks," terror mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad testified in a deposition for Moussaoui's trial. Al Qaeda's leaders knew that, post-9/11, US security authorities would look at men from Arab countries as a potential threat. To circumvent expected security measures, they recruited terrorists with French, British and other countries' passports.
Witness shoe bomber Richard Reid, flying from Paris with a UK passport, and Jose Padilla, a potential dirty bomber who trained in al Qaeda's Afghanistan terror camps. Those attempts failed, but the second wave, to a certain extent, continues.
Yet the third wave was visible well before Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan hit the headlines. It consists of US citizens and residents (legal or otherwise) plotting attacks who can pass under the radar of measures designed to thwart first- and second-wave operatives.
Hasan may have acted alone, but his alleged actions prompt the question: How many are out there? There's excellent reason to think the answer is many, many more.
Even before Fort Hood, authorities in New York, Michigan, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio and other states recently had broken a rash of cases, arresting potential terrorists and disclosing their plots. Every time law enforcement kicks over one of these anthills, it uncovers an intricate underground network with paths leading into major cities, rural areas and even prisons.
...

There is more.

Most of the other third wave plots were unsuccessful and the perps were caught. Hasan was not because the military was over sensitive in their pursuit of diversity and missed the many warning signs the guy exhibited.

Hasan is another example of what a wicked enemy we face that is still very much at war with us regardless of whether the Democrats want to fight it.

US too sensitive to hurting Muslim feelings about radicals

Reuel Marc Gerecht:

For those of us who have tracked Islamic militancy in Europe, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's actions are not extraordinary. Since Muslim militants first tried to blow a French high-speed train off its rails in 1995, European intelligence and internal-security services have increasingly monitored European Muslim radicals. Whether it's anti-Muslim bigotry, the large numbers of immigrant and native-born Muslims in Europe, an appreciation of how hard it is to become European, or just an understanding of how dangerous Islamic radicalism is, most Europeans are far less circumspect and politically correct when discussing their Muslim compatriots than are Americans.

A concern for not giving offense to Muslims would never prevent the French internal-security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), which deploys a large number of Muslim officers, from aggressively trying to pre-empt terrorism. As Maj. Hasan's case shows, this is not true in the United States. The American military and especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation were in great part inattentive because they were too sensitive.

Moreover, President Barack Obama's determined effort not to mention Islam in terrorist discussions—which means that we must not suggest that Maj. Hasan's murderous actions flowed from his faith—will weaken American counterterrorism. Worse, the president's position is an enormous wasted opportunity to advance an all-critical Muslim debate about the nature and legitimacy of jihad.
European counterterrorist officers know well that jihadists can appear, self-generated or tutored by extremist groups, inside Muslim families where parents and siblings lead peaceful lives. Security officials live in fear of the quiet believer who quickly radicalizes, or the secular down-and-out European who enthusiastically converts to a militant creed. Both cases allow little time and often few leads to neutralize a possible lethal explosion of the faith.

It shouldn't require the U.S. to have a French-style, internal-security service to neutralize the likes of Maj. Hasan. He combines all of the factors—especially his public ruminations about American villainy in the Middle East and his overriding sense of Muslim fraternity—that should have had him under surveillance by counterintelligence units. Add the outrageous fact that he was in email correspondence with Anwar al-Awlaqi, a pro-al Qaeda imam well-known to American intelligence, and it is hard not to conclude that the FBI is still incapable of counterterrorism against an Islamic target.
...

There is much more.

We need to not fear protecting ourselves from Muslims with weird beliefs like al Qaeda and other Islamic religious bigots who base their beliefs on Islamic supremacy. We know what that looks like and should not hesitate to act on it when we see. Hasan was pretty obvious about his beliefs and he should not have been ignored.

Green stimulus isn't putting people to work

"Green energy" is proving to be no miracle solution to the nation's monumental unemployment problems, and it is doing little to help the economy emerge from its deepest recession in decades, economists say.
A large part of the $786 billion stimulus bill was devoted to green or renewable energy projects, with President Obama, Democratic legislators and their environmental allies repeatedly promising that the money would be used to create an army of home weatherizers, wind-turbine factory jobs and other employment opportunities that would help put to work the nearly 8 million people who have lost jobs during the recession.
The president and his allies have asserted that as many as 5 million jobs would be created by spending $150 billion over the next decade on new technologies such as solar and tidal power while retrofitting buildings and residences to make them more energy-efficient.
...
But the reality is that after a big dose of spending in the stimulus bill, no more than 100,000 or so jobs have been created, economists say, and the prospects are for only modest growth in alternative energy jobs for years to come.
"This is not the spark" that will pull the economy out of recession and put it in a lasting expansion that creates millions of jobs, said Rajeev Dhawan, director of the Economic Forecasting Center at Georgia State University. "This is not the solution to the current big unemployment problem."
Green-energy industries other than wind and hydropower remain mostly in the experimental stages and are not proven enough technologically or economically to be instrumental in pulling the economy out of recession and putting millions of people to work like the Internet boom of the 1990s or the housing boom of the early 2000s, he said.
"We need to put 7.3 million people back to work, and none of these ideas can make a dent of more than a few hundred thousand at best, and then after only a long gestation time," Mr. Dhawan said.
...

At this point it looks like another sinkhole investment. It is producing little of lasting value and nothing to spur the economy. If these jobs really had significant economic value they would not need the subsidies anyway. If the government would just get out of the way, there would be significant jobs in the oil and gas business that would also produce revenue for the government. It is energy we are going to need in the future anyway.

Pakistan pushes into Orakzai tribal area

Reuters:

Pakistani security forces backed by tanks and artillery attacked Taliban positions in the northwest of the country, killing 22 militants, a senior police official on Monday.

...

Fighting erupted on Sunday night after an assault on militants in the village of Shahukhel, which borders the Taliban stronghold of Orakzai tribal region.

"There has been fierce fighting throughout the night. Militants fired rocket propelled grenades while troops responded with artillery and tank fire," local police official Fareed Khattak told Reuters.

"We have a figure of 22 militants dead and 14 arrested."
...
Khattak said forces had entered the lawless Orakzai region where many Taliban insurgents had fled. "Now helicopter gunships are striking Taliban hideouts in the agency," he said.

A Taliban spokesman in Orakzai, Zia-ur-Rehman, said both sides suffered heavy casualties in the clashes.
...

The Pakistan army has the Taliban in a mismatch in this battle. The Taliban are a poorly trained light infantry trying to counter tanks and artillery with RPGs. That is a fight the Pakistan army should win every time. In fact, it was a big mistake for the Taliban to even give battle in this particular fight.

Insurgency warfare strategy would dictate that the Taliban should retreat and try to fight under more favorable circumstances. It could be that the army has put the Taliban in a position where they cannot retreat, but the article does not give enough detail to determine that.

The Pakistan army is demonstrating the effectiveness of having a high force to space ratio in this current campaign. Obama should take notice and provide the US with additional forces to defeat the enemy in Afghanistan.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Hollywood looks at the Palin Presidency

This is really funny stuff.

Terrorist admit plan to exploit trial despite guilt

The five men the Justice Department has said will be charged in the attacks of Sept. 11 intend to plead not guilty so they can express their political and religious views during a trial, the lawyer for one of the men said on Saturday.

The lawyer, Scott L. Fenstermaker, said that during a meeting at the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, prison on Tuesday, his client, Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, expressed the desire for a trial despite his intention to admit his role in the attacks and seek “martyrdom” through execution.
“He acknowledges that he helped plan the 9/11 attacks, and he says he’s looking forward to dying,” Mr. Fenstermaker said of Mr. Ali. But he said he expected Mr. Ali and his co-defendants to plead not guilty “so they can have a trial and try to get their message out.”
Mr. Ali, also known as Ammar al-Baluchi, is a nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief organizer of the 2001 plot. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced on Nov. 13 that Mr. Mohammed, Mr. Ali and three other alleged 9/11 plotters would be tried in federal criminal court. Mr. Fenstermaker said Mr. Ali told him all five men would seek a trial.
The report of Mr. Ali’s comments may add to complaints from critics of Mr. Holder’s decision who favored military trials in Cuba and have said a criminal trial will provide terrorists with a propaganda platform. Defenders of the move say military commissions, too, would have given the defendants a public showcase for their views.
...

I think it is clear that it would be harder to exploit the military commissions. Some evidence of that is the terrorist attempt to plead guilty in the commission, which they are now not going to do in the New York trials. This is just more evidence of how bad a decision Holder and Obama have made on this issue and it will only get worse.

Obama loses his magic

Tony Allen-Mills:

Gazing serenely from the Great Wall of China last week, President Barack Obama appeared to be making the most of one of the supreme perks of White House occupancy — a private guided tour of Asia’s most spectacular tourist destination.

White House aides exulted that perfectly choreographed pictures of this moment would make front pages around the world. Yet an experience Obama declared to be “magical” turned sour as he returned home to a spreading domestic revolt that is fanning Democratic unease.

It was not just that the US media have suddenly turned a lot more sceptical about a president with grand ambitions to reshape politics at home and abroad — even one previously friendly newspaper noted dismissively: “Obama goes to China, brings home a T-shirt.”

Nor was the steady decline in the president’s approval ratings — which fell below 50% for the first time in a Gallup poll last week — the main cause of White House angst. Obama remains more popular than either Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton a year after their elections, and both presidents eventually cruised to second terms.
The real problem may be Obama’s friends — or rather, those among his formerly most enthusiastic supporters who are now having second thoughts.

The doubters are suddenly stretching across a broad section of the Democratic party’s natural constituency. They include black congressional leaders upset by the sluggish economy; women and Hispanics appalled by concessions made to Republicans on healthcare; anti-war liberals depressed by the debate over troops for Afghanistan; and growing numbers of blue-collar workers who are continuing to lose their jobs and homes.

Obama’s Asian adventure perceptibly increased the murmurings of dissent when he returned to Washington last week, having failed to wring any public concessions from China on any major issue.
...

There is more.

It does not even begin to describe how he has alienated the independents Democrats need to stay in power. That is one thing that liberals who are now beating up on Obama don't seem to comprehend. Liberalism is a minority position in the US, and if Democrats do not learn that now, they will get a clear lesson in 2010.

Fear mongering over fuel

George Will:

...

In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said U.S. oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. In 1939, the Interior Department said the world had 13 years worth of petroleum reserves. Then a global war was fought and the postwar boom was fueled, and in 1951 Interior reported that the world had ... 13 years of reserves. In 1970, the world's proven oil reserves were an estimated 612 billion barrels. By 2006, more than 767 billion barrels had been pumped and proven reserves were 1.2 trillion barrels. In 1977, Scold in Chief Jimmy Carter predicted that mankind “could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.” Since then the world has consumed three times more oil than was then in the world's proven reserves.

...

Today, wind and solar power combined are just one-sixth of 1 percent of American energy consumption. Nuclear? The United States and other rich nations endorse reducing world carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. But Oliver Morton, a science writer, says that if nuclear is to supply even just 10 percent of the necessary carbon-free energy, the world must build more than 50 large nuclear power plants a year. Currently five a year are being built. Rattie says that as part of “a worldwide building boom in coal-fired power plants,” about 30 under construction in America “will burn about 70 million tons of coal a year.”
Edward L. Morse, an energy official in Carter's State Department, writes in Foreign Affairs that the world's deep-water reserves are significantly larger than was thought just a decade ago, and high prices have spurred development of technologies — a drilling vessel can cost $1 billion — for extracting them. The costs of developing oil sands — Canada may contain more oil than Saudi Arabia has — are declining, so projects that last year were not economic with the price of oil under $90 a barrel are now viable with oil at $79 a barrel. Morse says new technologies are also speeding development of natural gas trapped in U.S. shale rock. The Marcellus Shale, which stretches from West Virginia through Pennsylvania and into New York, “may contain as much natural gas as the North Field in Qatar, the largest field ever discovered.”
...

API has asked me to attend a seminar on Shale oil production that will show aspects of the process that has developed the Barnett Shale field near Fort Worth. It is currently the largest such field, although the process will be used to develop the Marcellus hale as well as other such fields around the world.

These techniques have the potential of developing natural gas that will provide us energy beyond most current lifetimes. The main impediment to the development of these resources are Democrats who want to use carbon phobia to grab control of the energy supply and strangle traditional energy production in hopes that magic energy will become available.

Democrats go rottweiler over Palin

Kyle Smith:

Sarah Palin is going rogue. The Democrats are going rottweiler.
Liberals in the media make heinous personal attacks, dress up quibbles and debating as “fact-checking” and compare her to such noxious harridans as Evita Peron and Madonna. Newsweek went with a cover photo of a picture of her in running shorts to degrade her to the level of a spokesmodel and Stephen Colbert broke character to call her book “a steaming pile of s - - -.” They called her a “deeply disturbed person” (Andrew Sullivan) “unhinged” (ibid), a “delusional fantasist” (ibid; Andrew’s been a busy lad) and even — this is really low — “the leader of the Republican party.”
...

Smith goes on to call Palin a distraction from the conservatives needs to campaign against the evils of liberalism. But, I think that is exactly what she is doing and she is energizing those who oppose liberalism. It is way to early to talk about whether she is running for President and not even she knows whether that will happen at this point. But there4 are clearly a lot of people who would like to see her do so and a lot of Democrats who fear she might.

Palin's political movement

McClatchey:

...

While it's too early to call it a campaign, Palin's brand of common sense conservatism crackles with the energy of a burgeoning political movement.
In "The Way Forward," the title of the final chapter of her memoir, she says that her persona and her political philosophy are based on common sense that were last espoused by Reagan, her political idol. The role of government, Palin writes, "is not to perfect us, but to protect us."
Some, like Doug McKinnis, see Palin's political philosophy as a stand against what he describes as "government control, dependence on the government and loss of liberty."
McKinnis, a 48-year-old commercial pilot from Palin's Alaska hometown, Wasilla, was visiting his mother in Pennsylvania when he learned that Palin was signing books. He dropped by the Sam's Club with his "Alaskans Love Sarah" sign.
"The way I see things going in our country, there are two lines," McKinnis said. The line he waited in outside the Palin event represents "liberty, freedom, independence and a constitutional government."
The other line is just the opposite, McKinnis said. "I want to be in the line of freedom, and I think Sarah Palin is a voice for freedom."
Palin appears to have tapped into a powerful strain of populism fueled by dissatisfaction with the economy and by fear that the Democratic Party that's running the country is made up of elites who aren't listening, said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics at Drake University in Iowa.
"A populist is against big, period," Goldford said. "The populist basically says, 'Look, big labor, big business, big government, they're all trying to screw me, the little guy.' That populism that she's tapped into, it's partly a politics of resentment. She's very much somebody who bristles with all sorts of resentments."
...

I think Mark Steyn says it better, ""Climate change

" and "health care" are different ends of the same stick: They're both all-purpose pretexts for regulating every aspect of your life...." I don't call that populism. I call it a pro freedom agenda. It is an anti control freak agenda.

US pull back in Iraq leads to al Qaeda come back

The Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has rebounded in strength in recent months and appears to be launching a concerted effort to cripple the Iraqi government as U.S. troops withdraw, Iraqi and American officials say.
The group asserted responsibility for four powerful bombings that targeted five government buildings in Baghdad in August and October -- the deadliest attacks directed at the government in more than six years of war. Authorities say al-Qaeda in Iraq intends to carry out additional high-profile attacks in the months ahead and is attempting to regain its foothold in former strongholds just outside the capital.

The strategy represents a shift in tactics from the group's efforts to kindle the kind of sectarian violence that brought Iraq to the brink of anarchy in 2007. The group suffered major setbacks after the "surge" in U.S. troops to Iraq that year, but American and Iraqi officials say that al-Qaeda in Iraq has found more recent success by enlisting other groups in an effort aimed at undermining elections scheduled for January and the formation of a new government.
...

I think the restrictions on the use of US troops is the primary problem. The Iraqi forces have not been as effective without the direct participation of US forces. The Shia majority have also alienated some Sunnis who were helping to limit al Qaeda activity. The Obama administrations stated objective of removing US forces has also encouraged the enemy.

Control freak health care

Washington Times Editorial:

...

The bill contains the word "tax" 511 times and includes 18 tax hikes, according to Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative lobbying group. It uses the word "require" more than 1,000 times and the word "shall" more than 3,500 times, and talks about studies required by the bill 150 times.

...

That is just the Senate bill which is 2,074 pages weighing more than 20 pounds. It is proof of the lengths and heights Democrats will go to to control your life.

Islamic intolerance in Egypt

A 15-year-old Egyptian girl, Dina el-Gohary, has written an emotional appeal to President Obama asking him to use his influence to save her father, Maher el-Gohary, who is being persecuted for his beliefs. "Mr. President Obama, we are a minority in Egypt," Dina writes, according to a report from the Assyrian International News Agency. "We are treated very badly. ... We are imprisoned in our own home because Muslim clerics called for the murder of my father, and now the Government has set for us a new prison, we are imprisoned in our own country."
Dina and her father are Christian converts in a part of the world where conversion can mean death.
The Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East are among the world's greatest offenders against freedom of conscience. Religious liberty does not exist or is severely curtailed based on Shariah supremacy. Egypt is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which commits signatories to respect a variety of liberties, including religious freedom, but a court considering whether Mr. el-Gohary could legally change his religious affiliation ruled that Egypt was only bound to honor those provisions that did not contradict Islamic law, and "in the event of a contradiction, Shariah takes precedence."
Egypt's Constitution guarantees freedom of belief but not freedom of religious practice. The same court stated that faith is "an internal, personal matter," but the right to actually practice a religion other than Islam "is subject to restrictions that may be imposed through regulations that emphasize certain higher interests, especially those related to safeguarding public order and moral values and to protecting the rights and freedoms of others." Because Muslims would take offense at Mr. el-Gohary becoming a Christian, their indignation outweighs his right to choose his faith. The state thinks that changing the religious affiliation on his identity card from Muslim to Christian is "a threat to societal order."
...

This discloses a fundamental weakness of Islam, that it cannot tolerate dissent or other points of view. It also reveals why Shari'a law should be banned around the world because it is fundamentally anti freedom and barbaric.

It also tells you one of the things that Islamic religious bigots hate about this country--freedom of religion.

Iran wargames defense of nuke sites

BBC:

Iran has begun five days of war games to simulate attacks on its nuclear sites, state media report.
The head of Iran's air defence said the aim was to thwart aerial reconnaissance of the sites as well as air attacks.
Brigadier General Ahmad Mighani said the training would also improve cooperation among different units.
Iran has come under mounting pressure over its nuclear programme, which critics say is intended to produce nuclear weapons.
The US and Israel have not ruled out the prospect of a military attack to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapon.
...
"If the enemy attacks Iran, our missiles will strike Tel Aviv," Mojhtaba Zolnoor was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.
Brig Mighani told state media the aim of the exercises, which will cover an area of 600,000 sq km (230,000 sq miles), was "to display Iran's combat readiness and military potentials.
...

I am sure the US and Israel appreciate the heads up on Iran's defensive strategy. It appears that one part of that strategy is to target Israeli civilians if Israel targets Iran's nuclear facilities. Shouldn't Israel then respond by targeting Tehran?

Note the BBC does not even blink at Iran's suggestion that she will respond to a military target on weapons sites with the targeting of civilians. Islamic war crimes are OK to some I guess.

US-Mexican cooperation in dealing with criminal insurgents

...

After decades of mistrust and sometimes betrayal, Mexican and U.S. authorities are increasingly setting aside their differences to unite against a common enemy. According to interviews in Washington and Mexico City, the two countries are sharing sensitive intelligence and computer technology, military hardware and, perhaps most importantly, U.S. know-how to train and vet Mexican agents. Police and soldiers secretly on the cartels' payroll have long poisoned efforts at cross-border cooperation against some of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations.

"The recognition by both sides, at the highest levels, that we have a shared responsibility for drug trafficking and serious crime in Mexico is a watershed change," said John Feeley, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico.
The newly robust partnership is still risky, uneasy and freighted with old suspicions. U.S. law enforcement officials said it is being forged with the assurance by the U.S. State Department that Mexico's weak law enforcement agencies will overcome a history of incompetence and corruption, and that the closed ranks of the Mexican military, which operates with virtual impunity, can get past its hostility to outsiders.

U.S. officials also acknowledge that the growing cooperation is still a gamble. With their almost limitless resources, drug traffickers have corrupted top crime fighters in President Felipe Calderón's administration, including the head of the attorney general's organized-crime unit. A cartel spy penetrated the Interpol office here and claims to have worked inside the U.S. Embassy to steal secrets from the Drug Enforcement Administration.
...

They have also corrupted some US officials too. I think the Bush administration started this cooperation, much of it over the objections of the Democrats in Congress who wanted to withhold funds because US labor thugs and human rights wackos objected to the spending.

We still need to persuade Mexico to train their army in counterinsurgency operations. That would be money well spent for both the US and Mexico.

Palin's passionate followers

When tickets to see Sarah Palin in Michigan ran out, people drove to her appearance here (Fort Wayne, Ind.), three hours away.

Thousands had lined up overnight, starting nearly 24 hours before she was to begin signing books, camping out in 39-degree weather for a moment with the woman many see as the great conservative hope, a role model, “one of us.”
They brought their sleeping bags, their children, homemade chocolate Cheerios bars, and balloons to twist into animal shapes and hats for the crowd. And they brought their anger — about bailouts, jobs and health care.
If Sarah Palin was the star attraction, Barack Obama was a constant presence in the clutches of conversation along the lines snaking to meet her.
“It may not be this year, it may not be next year, but we’re going to take our country back,” said Sherry Haner, 54, who was standing in the cold on Wednesday outside a mall in Grand Rapids, Mich., hoping to make it into the overflow crowd after failing to get one of the 1,000 bracelets Barnes & Noble had handed out as tickets to the signing.
...
“He isn’t governing, he’s still campaigning,” said Joe Miller, a lab technician who had taken a vacation day to wait in line Thursday at a Meijer superstore in Fort Wayne. “He’s trying to convince us that he’s doing a good job. He hasn’t done anything, except spend money.”
Kevin Witzigreuter, 38, a Fort Wayne firefighter waiting in line next to Mr. Miller, chimed in: “And he can’t even make a simple decision about what to do in Afghanistan. We’ve got men and women fighting overseas. Either man up and fight the war to win it, or get out.”
...
But mostly, people were upset about ballooning budget deficits and health care.
“I was willing to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt, but the spending is out of control,” said Gloria Taylor, 54, as she waited in line in Grand Rapids. “It’s going to be our downfall.”
...

This is one of the reasons liberals hate her, conservatives love her. What liberals really hate is conservatism and the people who believe in it. Palin's positions on the issues are pretty much center right conservatism and many on the left are invested in demonizing that and anyone who espouses it.

But, with liberalism failing to deal with joblessness and with liberals trying to cram down an unpopular control freak health care plan, conservatives are energized. What Palin would do differently is cut taxes and cut spending which is what these voters want.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Chavez embraces murderer's row

BBC:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has defended jailed killer "Carlos the Jackal" and several world leaders he says are wrongly considered "bad guys".
In a speech to international socialist politicians, Mr Chavez said "Carlos", a Venezuelan, was not a terrorist but a key "revolutionary fighter".
He is serving a life sentence in France for murders committed in 1975.
Mr Chavez also hailed Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the late Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
...

I am surprised he overlooked Stalin and Mao who are responsible for the deaths of more people than anyone in the history of the world. How could he overlook these stars of communism? Certainly Mugabe is an interesting soul mate for Chavez. I guess he aspires to match Mugabe's world record inflation.

Anti Taliban awakening in Afghanistan?

American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban.

The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.
The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say.
The endeavor represents one of the most ambitious — and one of the riskiest — plans for regaining the initiative against the Taliban, who are fighting more vigorously than at any time since 2001.
By harnessing the militias, American and Afghan officials hope to rapidly increase the number of Afghans fighting the Taliban. That could supplement the American and Afghan forces already here, and whatever number of American troops President Obama might decide to send. The militias could also help fill the gap while the Afghan Army and police forces train and grow — a project that could take years to bear fruit.
The Americans hope the militias will encourage an increasingly demoralized Afghan population to take a stake in the war against the Taliban.
...
The first phase of the Afghan plan, now being carried out by American Special Forces soldiers, is to set up or expand the militias in areas with a population of about a million people. Special Forces soldiers have been fanning out across the countryside, descending from helicopters into valleys where the residents have taken up arms against the Taliban and offering their help.
“We are trying to reach out to these groups that have organized themselves,” Col. Christopher Kolenda said in Kabul.
Afghan and American officials say they plan to use the militias as tripwires for Taliban incursions, enabling them to call the army or the police if things get out of hand.
The official assistance to the militias so far has been modest, consisting mainly of ammunition and food, officials said. But American and Afghan officials say they are also planning to train the fighters and provide communication equipment.
...

This is a way to increase the force to space ratio without adding additional troops in some areas. The militias function in a way that they can detect and deter enemy movement to contact or their retreat. This is the way you defeat an insurgency by getting local help and support as well as intelligence on enemy movement. Supporting these movements make sense.

The Blind Side

This is from an LA Times review of a film based on book about a white family who take in a black kid who becomes a football star who is now a tackle with the Baltimore Ravens.

Watching "The Blind Side" is like watching your favorite football team; you'll cheer when things go well, curse when they don't, and be reminded that in football, as in life, it's how you play the game that counts -- though winning doesn't hurt, either.

I'm talking to the jocks here. The rest of you can just bring Kleenex and give in to this quintessentially old-style story that is high on hope, low on cynicism and long on heart. If Frank Capra was still around, director John Lee Hancock might have had to fight him for the job.

Based on the remarkable true story of Baltimore Ravens tackle Michael Oher -- once a homeless black Memphis teenager literally plucked off the road on an icy winter night by a well-heeled white family -- the movie stars Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy. She's a spitfire of a mom, and it's the kind of smart, sassy role Hollywood should have given the actress ages ago.

...

Leigh Anne is a force of nature in a Chanel suit, armed with a cellphone and a .22. In the role, Bullock blows in like a tornado, issuing orders in a rapid-fire Southern drawl that defies speed and ruffles more than a few feathers. It's not her fault, she just knows she's right and won't stop until everyone else is on the same page.

And believe me, Bullock makes "join rather than fight" the option you want to take. She nails the character with every click, click, click of her heels and every toss of those perfectly coiffed blond locks. When she stares down a drug dealer while she assures him her Saturday Night Special works just fine on all the other days of the week, you feel like ducking too.

The rest of the clan is made up of husband Sean, played with an easygoing charm by country singer Tim McGraw, teenage daughter Collins (Lily Collins) and young son SJ, with Jae Head pulling off such a perfect mix of Leigh Anne's cockiness and Sean's charisma that you miss him when he's not around.

Michael ends up enrolled in the private Christian school where the Tuohy kids go. His size and agility had caught the coach's eye and he's accepted despite having a grade-point average that barely registers. That fateful freezing night when Leigh Anne takes him home comes soon after, and almost overnight he is being absorbed into the family, which has not only an open heart and an open mind, but a serious obsession with football, Ole Miss in particular.

What happens next is a testament to the unique people that both Leigh Anne and Michael are. As she begins to piece together the depressing back story of his life, he begins to trust that she will be there for him. These are emotional colors not easy to get to, but they happen here in moving ways because of the chemistry between Bullock and Aaron. She infuses the role with empathy, not pity; he brings an aching vulnerability and an innocence that are remarkable for someone with no formal training.

You know going in that this is a success story, but it still is deeply satisfying to see Michael's life unfold. He becomes a decent student in large part thanks to the help of his tutor Miss Sue ( Kathy Bates), another Ole Miss alum. He's a bull on the field and eventually the object of a college ball recruitment drive so extensive that the NCAA investigates. No one can quite believe the Tuohys would take him in with no ulterior motive, particularly after he chooses to go to Ole Miss.

...

This is really a remarkable story and I look forward to seeing the movie. I hope it also shows the dynamic of the daughter Collins and Michael too. I posted about the family and Michael back during the NFL draft when Michael was taken in the first round.

Here is the YouTube trailer.

Obama--Give terrorist a fair trial and hang them

Paul Greenberg:

Worried about trying the ringleader of the 9/11 terrorists and four of his close associates in a civilian courtroom?
Don't be, says our president. He knows just how the trial will turn out -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed will be convicted and executed. We have his word on it.
He makes the trial sound like just a formality. And here some of us thought trials didn't have a predetermined outcome, not in America. Naive us.
Despite all the assurances from on high, almost every aspect of this coming trial-cum-circus troubles. From its hazy conception to, according to the president and his equally cocksure attorney general, foregone conclusion.
The prospect of moving this trial from safe and secure Guantanamo to bustling downtown Manhattan worries because, well, it's worrisome.
What possibly could go wrong? What couldn't? Some of us more cautious types worry that legal technicalities and complications will result in an endless trial without sure result, that the trial will require needless expense (the figure of $75 million just to assure New Yorkers' safety has been bruited about), that it will expose judges, jurors and witnesses to all too real threats (just as an earlier trial of jihadi bombers in New York did), that secrets about the sources and techniques of American intelligence may be revealed even inadvertently, and that the defendants will turn a federal courtroom into another forum for their pet hates. The country may be in for a repeat of the farcical proceedings in U.S. v. Zacarias Moussaoui, the stranger-than-usual terrorist now living out the rest of his days as the guest of the U.S. taxpayers at a maximum-security prison high in the scenic Rockies.
...

Obama sounds like Opey on the Andy Griffith show talking about dealing with the person who killed his pet turtle. When you consider that the Obama adminsitration passed up a guilty plea in the military commission, it become clear that this is a show trial with a predetermined outcome.

Public sees no upside to Democrat health care scheme

Fox News:

More Americans continue to oppose health care reform legislation than support it, and half favor banning the use of federal funds for abortions.

More Americans continue to oppose the health care reform legislation than support it, according to a Fox News poll released Friday. In addition, half favor banning the use of federal funds for abortions.

By 51 percent to 35 percent, the public opposes the reform legislation being considered right now by Congress. Last month, a majority opposed the health care legislation by a similar 54-35 percent (October 13-14, 2009).

While a majority of Democrats favor the reforms (65 percent), some 17 percent are opposed and another 18 percent are unsure. Most Republicans (82 percent) and a majority of independents (61 percent) oppose the legislation.

Seniors aged 65 and over oppose to the legislation by 56-30 percent, while voters under age 30 are slightly more likely to be in favor of it (45-41 percent).
More Americans continue to oppose the health care reform legislation than support it, according to a Fox News poll released Friday. In addition, half favor banning the use of federal funds for abortions.

By 51 percent to 35 percent, the public opposes the reform legislation being considered right now by Congress. Last month, a majority opposed the health care legislation by a similar 54-35 percent (October 13-14, 2009).

While a majority of Democrats favor the reforms (65 percent), some 17 percent are opposed and another 18 percent are unsure. Most Republicans (82 percent) and a majority of independents (61 percent) oppose the legislation.

Seniors aged 65 and over oppose to the legislation by 56-30 percent, while voters under age 30 are slightly more likely to be in favor of it (45-41 percent).
...

Democrats ignore these numbers at their peril. I think the more people come to understand their scheme, the less support they will have.

Obama lacks credibility on health care deficit impact

David Broder:

It's simply not true that America is ambivalent about everything when it comes to the Obama health plan.

The day after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gave its qualified blessing to the version of health reform produced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Quinnipiac University poll of a national cross section of voters reported its latest results.

This poll may not be as famous as some others, but I know the care and professionalism of the people who run it, and one question was particularly interesting to me.

It read: "President Obama has pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade. Do you think that President Obama will be able to keep his promise or do you think that any health care plan that Congress passes and President Obama signs will add to the federal budget deficit?"

The answer: Less than one-fifth of the voters -- 19 percent of the sample -- think he will keep his word. Nine of 10 Republicans and eight of 10 independents said that whatever passes will add to the torrent of red ink. By a margin of four to three, even Democrats agreed this is likely.
That fear contributed directly to the fact that, by a 16-point margin, the majority in this poll said they oppose the legislation moving through Congress.
...

This is one of the biggest complaints of the Tea Party movement and the Town Hall protesters. The Democrat response has be insults and vulgar name calling. That is not surprising since the facts are not on their side. By pushing this very unpopular mess into law Democrats are also pushing for their own defeat in 2010.

Italy makes arrests in Mumbai terror attacks

CNN:

Two Pakistani men accused of providing logistical support for last year's deadly terror attacks in Mumbai, India, were arrested Saturday in Italy, police said.
They were arrested in the northern Italian city of Brescia, said Stefano Fonzi, head of Italy's Division of General Investigations and Special Operations.
...
On November 25, 2008, the day before the attacks in Mumbai, the two men arrested allegedly transferred $229 that was used to activate Internet phone lines used by the suspects.

Two others connected with the longstanding money transfer agency in Brescia also were arrested for other illegal activity, Fonzi told CNN. Police are looking for a fifth man.

Italian police started their investigation the following month after being alerted by Indian authorities and the FBI that funds had been transferred from Italy, Fonzi said.

Authorities suspected the agency after money was transferred under the Muslim name of a man who had never entered Italy, a police statement said.
...

Two Americans have also been connected to the attacks making the outside asistance much broader based than first thought. I suspect that all those connected were also connected to the Pakistan terror group LET.

Buying guns for the Zetas

Houston Chronicle:

A Houston windshield repairman has admitted to helping manage a part of a broader conspiracy to traffic more than 300 military-style weapons across the border, part of a plea deal requiring him to tell federal agents about the ring that supplied weapons to Mexico's fearsome Zetas drug cartel.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has taken down more than a dozen U.S. citizens the agency contends purchased weapons to help fuel a protracted war that has taken thousands of lives south of the border.
The latest, and one of the more significant players, was Christian Garza, 26, who admitted in federal court Friday to conspiring to lie to gun dealers about where the weapons were headed.
Garza's background and day job repairing windshields underscore part of the cartel's apparent strategy.
It enlists Americans who are both facing tougher economic times, so they may be tempted by quick cash, and have no felony convictions so they'll pass gun-buying background checks.
...
Records on the cases do not explain exactly how the weapons are smuggled into Mexico and into the hands of cartel soldiers.
The ATF contends that due to the large number of gun stores in Houston, and because of the city's proximity to the border, the area remains the prime point of origin for guns recovered in Mexico and traced to the United States. who cautioned that while Garza was a manager, he never actually saw or spoke directly to anyone in the Zetas.
“My man wasn't that far up the food chain, where he'd be the connection to the guys in Mexico,” Williams said.
Three other men who have been charged with Garza remain fugitives.
...
The case began in 2007 during a routine inspection of files at Carter's County, a firearms dealer, according to court papers. ATF agents noticed numerous large cash purchases for what the agency considers cartel weapons of choice.
Purchasers were brazen, with thousands of dollars in cash, according to the papers.
...

It sounds like the cases are relatively easy to make if the AFT has the resources for checking dealer records. It should be noted that these purchases are just one source of weapons for the cartels. They also buy on the black market and get guns from South and Central America as well as weapons stolen from the Mexican army.

Made in Italy?

From AP:

Researcher: Faint writing seen on Shroud of Turin

Socialist or worse?

Jay Ambrose:

Gov. Rick Perry, Texas Republican, recently joined commentators Rush Limbaugh, Patrick Buchanan and others in using the word "socialist" to describe President Obama and his policies, and we all know what's coming - a verbal bombardment.
Critics will call him hysterical, paranoid and stupid. They will say he is a scaremonger misusing the language for political effect. Instead of looking at where Mr. Obama's policies are taking us, we'll have another fight over the meaning of a word and its connotations.
So fine. Let's drop the S-word and simply agree that Mr. Obama's policies call for a vastly enlarged welfare state, an extraordinarily more powerful and interventionist federal government exercising ever-greater control over business firms and the economy, further redistribution of income and fewer freedoms for all.
Obviously, our current chief of state did not invent this federal intrusiveness that the Founders explicitly tried to inhibit. From very early on, there were dribs and drabs of statist ambition, though it was not until President Franklin D. Roosevelt that we had the deluge - the New Deal - much of which is still with us.
...
The question is whether the Obama agenda could take all of this to something like the still more overweening governmental invasiveness that much of Europe is now trying to escape, something that becomes a change in kind instead of just a change in degree, and the answer is: Look at what's happening.
Mr. Obama has already undone Mr. Clinton's welfare reform. The stimulus bill is a heaping helping of deficit deathliness with few compensatory benefits. The government now represents the largest percentage of the economy since World War II. The oppressively dictatorial House health bill would expand costs when the only salvation is to contain them. The government is the boss of financial institutions and much of the auto industry, massive new regulation is looming, and there is constant talk of reshaping the economy. Proposals to lessen global warming would further tax and control overtaxed businesses to restrict energy vital to economic growth with little hope of affecting climate more than an insignificant bit.
If you don't want to call all of this and much more socialism, don't. But it would assuredly give us a new kind of America that diminishes much that has been precious.

Socialism is where the state owns the means of production. With the exception of GM and Chrysler that is not the case. But Obama policies are actually worse than socialism. His control freak agenda is dictating salaries and other policy considerations without the responsibility of ownership. He is exercising control without ownership of the results of his policies.

I don't think it is socialism, but I do think his policies are worse than socialism. Socialism is evil, and these polices are having the same effect.

Senate bill imposes new marriage penalty

Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more.
That's one of 17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which also creates a levy on elective plastic surgery - some call it "botax" - and places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans.
"If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you get taxed," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, who is leading the fight against the bill.
...

Raising taxes is what Democrats do. This bill will make health care more expensive not cheaper as they promised. This is a bill with much to recommend its defeat.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Was stimulus too small?

Now that unemployment has topped 10 percent, some liberal-leaning economists see confirmation of their warnings that the $787 billion stimulus package President Obama signed into law last February was way too small. The economy needs a second big infusion, they say.

No, some conservative-leaning economists counter, we were right: The package has been wasteful, ineffectual and even harmful to the extent that it adds to the nation’s debt and crowds out private-sector borrowing.

...

The stimulus bill has been a political disaster for the Democrats and remains one. A recent poll showed voters favor tax cuts adn spending cuts to stimulate the economy. It found only 21 percent agreed with Krugman on a bigger stimulus. 62 percent favor tax cuts.

Democrats oppose tax cuts even if they work because they are control freaks who think they can modulate the economy by directing spending to their constituency groups. Democrats don't really understand the dynamic effect of tax cuts on job creation and economic growth.

Perry vs. Hutchison

Both ads will probably appeal to Texas voters. The Perry ad seems to have more energy, but Hutchison's ad delivers on the problems with Democrat rationed health care schemes.

Figure and intelligence in women

BBC:

Women with curvy figures are likely to be brighter than waif-like counterparts and may well produce more intelligent offspring, a US study suggests.
Researchers studied 16,000 women and girls and found the more voluptuous performed better on cognitive tests - as did their children.
The bigger the difference between a woman's waist and hips the better.
Researchers writing in Evolution and Human Behaviour speculated this was to do with fatty acids found on the hips.
In this area, the fat is likely to be the much touted Omega-3, which could improve the woman's own mental abilities as well as those of her child during pregnancy.
Men respond to the double enticement of both an intelligent partner and an intelligent child, the researchers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California said.
The findings appear to be borne out in the educational attainments of at least one of the UK's most famous curvaceous women, Nigella Lawson, who graduated from Oxford.
...

My experience is that a woman's figure has little to do with intelligence. The most important factor in successful women is the same as that of men, a desire to achieve. For some women that desire also leads them to exercise and workout to maintain a figure they desire.

Michael Moore beware

From the Scotsman:

Jungle murder gang 'drained fat from victims for cosmetics'

Does it matter whether the fat comes from the unattractive?

Emails reveal globo warmer consipracy to suppress evidence?

James Delingpole:

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip: Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at Hadley CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science”. These alleged emails – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists pushing AGW theory – suggest:

Conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of embarrassing information, organised resistance to disclosure, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.

...

But perhaps the most damaging revelations – the scientific equivalent of the Telegraph’s MPs’ expenses scandal – are those concerning the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.

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There is much more including excerpts from various emails. If true this will be very embarrassing for the globo warmers, but I predict they will ignore the facts and keep on spinning.

The NY Times coverage of the emails is here. It tends to give the side of those whose emails' were exposed, but I did not find their arguments all that convincing. But, then I am a skeptic about global warming as well as the purported consequences of global warming. Since I like warmer weather I am sure I can tolerate the increased temperature if it happens, and I think opening the Northwest Passage would be an economic benefit to the US and Europe. Canadians and Russians as well as Alaska would have more land available for farming. I have also seen stories indicating that the Shara desert would become green because of global warming.

I think the worse thing we could do is make a futile expensive attempt to stop it instead of adapting to it if it actually occurs. Putting control freaks in charge of the energy economy will be a disaster. Green jobs are a mirage at this point, and strangling the domestic production of oil, gas and coal by the Democrats is a gift to those who hate us.

Harry Reid's Enron accounting

Jeffrey Anderson:

SENATE Majority Leader Harry Reid is touting the Senate's latest health-care bill as costing $849 billion over 10 years. But this uses the same accounting trick as past versions: 99 percent of the costs don't kick in until the fifth year of that "10-year" period. The true 10-year costs are well over twice what Reid's advertising: $1.8 trillion.
The Democrats cite the bills' projected costs from 2010-19. Yet, as the Congressional Budget Office reports, the bill would cost just $9 billion total from 2010 through 2013 -- versus $147 billion in 2016 alone. In the first 40 percent of what the Democrats are calling the bill's "first 10 years," only 1 percent of its costs would yet have hit.
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The Democrat politics of fraud is not going to be cheap for tax payers.

What is price for Mary Landrieu--$100 million

ABC News:

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On page 432 of the Reid bill, there is a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster.”

The section spends two pages defining which “states” would qualify, saying, among other things, that it would be states that “during the preceding 7 fiscal years” have been declared a “major disaster area.”

I am told the section applies to exactly one state: Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu, who has been playing hard to get on the health care bill.

In other words, the bill spends two pages describing would could be written with a single world: Louisiana. (This may also help explain why the bill is long.)

Senator Harry Reid, who drafted the bill, cannot pass it without the support of Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu.

How much does it cost? According to the Congressional Budget Office: $100 million.
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That makes Cold Cash Jefferson look like a cheap date. But, it want take Louisiana long to burn through that amount with the new patients that will be covered by the rationed health care bill.

Mullah Omar flees to Karchi to avoid Hellfires

Jeb Hensarling and Paul Ryan:

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Afghan Taliban, has fled a Pakistani city on the border with Afghanistan and found refuge from potential U.S. attacks in the teeming Pakistani port city of Karachi with the assistance of Pakistan's intelligence service, three current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.
Mullah Omar, who hosted Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders when they plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had been residing in Quetta, where the Afghan Taliban shura -- or council -- had moved from Kandahar after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Two senior U.S. intelligence officials and one former senior CIA officer told The Washington Times that Mullah Omar traveled to Karachi last month after the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. He inaugurated a new senior leadership council in Karachi, a city that so far has escaped U.S. and Pakistani counterterrorism campaigns, the officials said.
The officials, two of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the ISI, helped the Taliban leaders move from Quetta, where they were exposed to attacks by unmanned U.S. drones.
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We need to get resources in place in Karachi to find and eliminate Mullah Omar. He is a leadership target that needs to be destroyed. We also need to find out who at the ISI is helping him.

Palin phobes

Jonah Goldberg:

Slate magazine is just one of the countless media outlets convulsing with St. Vitus' Dance over that demonic succubus Sarah Palin. In its reader forum, The Fray, one supposed Palinophobe took dead aim at the former Alaska governor's writing chops, excerpting the following sentence from her book:

"The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn't work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle."
Other readers pounced like wolf-sized Dobermans on an intruder. One guffawed, "That sentence by Sarah Palin could be entered into the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. It could have a chance at winning a (sic) honorable mention, at any rate."
But soon, the original contributor confessed: "I probably should have mentioned that the sentence quoted above was not written by Sarah Palin. It's taken from the first paragraph of 'Dreams From My Father,' written by Barack Obama."
The ruse should have been allowed to fester longer, but the point was made nonetheless: Some people hate Palin first and ask questions later.
My all-time favorite response to John McCain's selection of Palin as his running mate was from Wendy Doniger, a feminist professor of religion at the University of Chicago. Professor Doniger wrote of the exceedingly feminine "hockey mom" with five children: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."
The best part about that sentence: Doniger uses the pronoun "her" -- twice.
Just this week, a liberal blogger at the Atlantic who has dedicated an unhealthy amount of his life to proving a one-man birther conspiracy theory about Palin's youngest child (it's both too slanderous and too deranged to detail here) shut down his blog to cope with the epochal, existential crisis that Palin's book presents to all humankind. The un-self-consciously parodic announcement seemed more appropriate for a BBC warning that the German blitz was about to begin, God Help Us All.
Indeed, some of us will always be sympathetic to Mrs. Palin if for nothing else than her enemies. The bile she extracts from her critics is almost like a dye marker, illuminating deep pockets of asininity that heretofore were either unnoticed or underappreciated.

...

I think they hate her because they hate the rest of us who agree with many of her positions on the issues. She is right on energy policy and national security issues and those happen to be my main decisions points for a candidate. Obama is wrong on those issues as is Al Gore. Their supporters hate her for disagreeing with them and have the conceit that if she were really intelligent she would agree with them.

Whether she is a candidate will depend not on this book tour but whether she can develop support in the primaries of 2012, should she choose to run. She seems to be realistic about that too. It is too bad her critics are not.

Planning for defeat in Afghanistan

WSJ:

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have turned the focus of Afghan war planning toward an exit strategy, publicly declaring that the U.S. and its allies can't send additional troops without a plan for getting them out.
The shift has unnerved some U.S. and foreign officials, who say that planning a pullout now -- with or without a specific timetable -- encourages the Taliban to wait out foreign forces and exacerbates fears in the region that the U.S. isn't fully committed to their security.
"It's not a good idea," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D., Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

"When the area has been stabilized...then it's time to go home. But to set up a timetable for people in that neck of the woods, they'll just wait us out," said Rep. Skelton, a prominent supporter of proposals by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Kabul, to send more troops for a counterinsurgency campaign.
...
... the administration wants the Pentagon to identify key milestones for Afghanistan to meet, in its governance and the capability of its security forces, and then give a rough sense of when each objective is likely to be achieved. Reaching these goals would allow the U.S. role to shift away from direct combat, allowing troop levels to decline.
Mr. Obama said Wednesday in a CNN interview that he believed his new Afghan policy needed to include an "endgame" because "unless you impose that kind of discipline, [U.S. policy] could end up leading to a multiyear occupation that won't serve the interests of the United States."

Keeping the public eye on an exit strategy -- rather than on how many new troops would be deployed, the subject of much of the U.S. public debate so far -- could also help Mr. Obama sell his strategy at home.
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It may help him with his anti war puke base, but not with those of us who want to defeat the enemy. That is the only exit strategy that makes any sense. Skelton is right about the downside to the Obama strategy. That is why the Taliban say "You have the watches, we have the time." We need to not give them a gift of an exit strategy.

Sec. Gates has indicated he opposes any time lines.

Numbers working against Democrats

Politico:

Counting to 60 in the Senate is only the beginning of the tough math that bedevils Democrats these days as they try to pass health reform, survive a bad economy and appeal more to the middle-class voters whose support they’ll need in the 2010 elections.

The giant health care bill rolled out Wednesday night by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is laced with puts-and-takes aimed at easing the burden on families in the $60,000-to-$80,000 income range.

But just around the corner next month, Reid’s Democrats face immediate new challenges, including a $925 billion debt ceiling increase and a social safety net that’s unraveling even as unemployment has topped 10 percent.

Expanded federal jobless benefits — hastily authorized under the economic recovery bill last February — are due to expire in January and will cost $85 billion to renew for the coming year. And this says nothing about a backlog of year-end spending bills and President Barack Obama’s decision on the Afghanistan war, which threatens to eat up whatever savings are coming from the troop withdrawals from Iraq.

For the first time, Democrats are talking seriously about going back and rechanneling portions of their $787 billion stimulus bill to help jump-start job-creation initiatives — such as a long-delayed highway bill.
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There is something of an admission that the stimulus bill did not accomplish its objectives and has made us worse off. These other items are also going against the voters objections. Control freak economics is not working and is pushing the US ever deeper into debt. It is probably going to have to take an election to stop the evils of liberalism that the Democrats are pushing.

Venezuela troops destroy bridges to Colombia

Bloomberg:

Venezuelan troops blew up two foot bridges that connect the country with Colombia, aggravating tensions along the border that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said could lead to war.
Venezuelan soldiers dynamited rope suspension bridges crossing the Tachira River near the Colombian hamlet of Ragonvalia, in the northeastern province of Norte de Santander, Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said in a statement yesterday on the ministry’s Web site. Venezuelan Vice President Ramon Carrizalez said the bridges were used to move contraband.

“It’s almost like somebody’s hitting a piece of flint trying to get a spark going,” said Adam Isacson, director of the Center for International Policy in Washington. “The minor incidents are coming fast and furious. If you’re looking for a casus belli, something is coming up almost every day.”

Chavez last week told his military to prepare to resist an invasion by Colombia, which signed an agreement last month to give U.S. troops access to Colombian bases. Colombia’s government has denied any intention of attacking Venezuela and says the U.S. accord will help fight drug trafficking and domestic terrorism.
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Footbridges are a very unlikely invasion route, and besides that, Colombia has indicated zero intention of invading Venezuela. It appears to be just another provocation by Chavez to distract from his incompetent command economy which is dragging Venezuela down in a way that no invasion force is ever likely to accomplish.

Ironically it may inhibit one of Venezuela's income streams as a transit point for exporting FARC drugs to Europe through Africa.

Democrats' recipe for a weak recovery

One of the strongest factors promoting recovery from our 10 post-World War II recessions was an unshakable conviction that, regardless of the immediate trouble, the American economy is fundamentally strong. Based on this underlying confidence, recessions and recoveries roughly conformed to the principle of the bigger the bust, the bigger the boom, and vice versa.

Thus real growth in the four quarters following postwar recessions averaged 6.6% and 4.3% over the following five years. As the chief economist for Barclays, Dean Maki, said in this newspaper on Aug. 19, "You can't find a single deep recession that has been followed by a moderate recovery."

That may no longer hold. Since the current recession has lasted a record seven quarters—and has been marked by a near-record average GDP decline of 1.8% per quarter—we should be witnessing the start of a powerful and sustained recovery. Yet forecasts of a 2% recovery in growth are only one-fourth as strong as postwar experience suggests. Meanwhile, unemployment sits at a generational high of 10.2%.

Why all the pessimism? The source appears to be a growing fear that the federal government is retreating from the free-market economic principles of the last half-century, and in particular the strong growth policies that began under Ronald Reagan. A review of the economic policies instituted by President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress lends credibility to this concern.

Exhibit A is the economic stimulus package signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Even among previous stimulus efforts, the 2009 stimulus stands out for its ineffective targeting and sheer size. With interest, it is $1.1 trillion, double the size of Roosevelt's New Deal spending as a percentage of GDP.
Virtually none of the stimulus spending was directed towards encouraging broad-based private investment, and thus failed to encourage true economic growth. An analysis by economists John F. Cogan, John B. Taylor and Volker Wieland, published on this page on Sept. 17, suggests that while the stimulus succeeded in temporarily and marginally increasing disposable personal income, it left personal consumption spending virtually unchanged.

Meanwhile, $112 billion of its $300 billion tax relief was in the form of payments to people who paid no income taxes. These payments, akin to a one-time welfare check, do not change the incentives to save and invest, and do not effectively promote broad-based economic growth.
Exhibit B is tax policy going forward. It is a near certainty that Democratic-controlled Congress will allow most of the tax cuts of 2001-2003 to expire on Dec. 31, 2010. Marginal income tax rates, capital gains rates, dividend rates and death-tax rates will increase—significantly. Hardest hit by these increases will be small businesses that file under the individual income tax code as sub-chapter S corporations, partnerships and proprietorships. Yet these are the very people whose investment and hiring decisions either drive or starve recoveries.

Exhibit C is the administration's intervention in the GM and Chrysler reorganizations. Upsetting decades of accepted bankruptcy law, the administration leveraged TARP funds to place unsecured and lower priority creditors like the United Auto Workers union in front of secured and higher priority creditors. This intervention has arguably had the effect of stifling investment as wary investors watched political considerations trump the rule of law.
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There is more including cap and trade and health care reform. Both will do great harm to the economy.

We lnow and the American people know that tax cuts and spending cuts are the way to boost the economy, but Democrats have an aversion to them because they are control freaks who fear letting the American people make the choices in the type of economic growth we achieve. They want to have theri thumb on the scales to try to control how the economy grows and to give benefits to their constituency groups.

Enforcement of immigration laws decline under Obama