Both Clinton and Obama have endorsed the “80 by 50” target for greenhouse gas reductions: an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. Stephen Hayward ran the numbers to see what that would mean.
An 80% reduction in these emissions from 1990 levels means that the U.S. cannot emit more than about one billion metric tons of CO2 in 2050.
Were man-made carbon dioxide emissions in this country ever that low? The answer is probably yes – from historical energy data it is possible to estimate that the U.S. last emitted one billion metric tons around 1910. But in 1910, the U.S. had 92 million people, and per capita income, in current dollars, was about $6,000.
By the year 2050, the Census Bureau projects that our population will be around 420 million. This means per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons in order to meet the goal of 80% reduction.
2.5 tons. Now we can compare that against what is possible:
It is likely that U.S. per capita emissions were never that low – even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood. The only nations in the world today that emit at this low level are all poor developing nations, such as Belize, Mauritius, Jordan, Haiti and Somalia.
If that comparison seems unfair, consider that even the least-CO2 emitting industrialized nations do not come close to the 2050 target. France and Switzerland, compact nations that generate almost all of their electricity from nonfossil fuel sources (nuclear for France, hydro for Switzerland) emit about 6.5 metric tons of CO2 per capita.
Now there is a new study out of MIT that computes the absolute minimum level of emissions that an American can achieve:
But the “floor” below which nobody in the U.S. can reach, no matter a person’s energy choices, turned out to be 8.5 tons, the class found. That was the emissions calculated for a homeless person who ate in soup kitchens and slept in homeless shelters.
This offers some much-needed perspective. Barring an unforeseen technological breakthrough, the 80 by 50 goal advocated by Clinton and Obama is literally impossible without returning the entire nation to abject poverty.
Oh, and McCain? He is only slightly less the demagogue, advocating 65 by 50. That works out to 4.375 per person, which is still impossible. President Bush’s proposal, to freeze emissions at the current level, may be unpopular with greens, but it has the singular virtue of being possible.
Ed Morrissey notes an AP article that reports that the Iraqi army is preparing for an offensive in Sadr City:
Iraqi soldiers for the first time warned residents in the embattled Sadr City district to leave their houses Thursday, signaling a new push by the U.S.-backed forces against Shiite extremist who have been waging street battles for seven weeks. Iraqi soldiers, using loudspeakers, told residents in some virtually abandoned areas of southeastern Sadr City to go to nearby soccer stadiums, residents said.
This would make a lot of sense, as finishing the cleanup of Sadr City is the obvious next step in Maliki’s crackdown on the militias. However, the AP article has since been changed to withdraw that reporting:
Some residents of Sadr City claimed Thursday that Iraqi soldiers warned them to leave their houses and go to nearby soccer stadiums for security reasons. The U.S. military denied the claim and called it as a “rumor.”
So what’s happening? We’ll have to wait and see.
UPDATE: Based on an NPR report (no link, sorry), this is for real. It sounds like the rumor part was the stadium refuge.
According to Al-Arabiya television, Iraqi police have identified “Abu Omar al-Baghdadi”, the fictional leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, as one Hamid Dawoud al-Zawi, originally from Haditha.
The FBI has issued a warning over bogus WiFi networks:
How do hackers grab your personal data out of thin air? Agent Peterson said one of the most common types of attack is this: a bogus but legitimate-looking Wi-Fi network with a strong signal is strategically set up in a known hot spot…and the hacker waits for nearby laptops to connect to it. At that point, your computer—and all your sensitive information, including user ID, passwords, credit card numbers, etc.—basically belongs to the hacker. The intruder can mine your computer for valuable data, direct you to phony webpages that look like ones you frequent, and record your every keystroke.
“Another thing to remember,” said Agent Peterson, “is that the connection between your laptop and the attacker’s laptop runs both ways: while he’s taking info from you, you may be unknowingly downloading viruses, worms, and other malware from him.”
It’s worth warning people about the dangers of bogus networks, particularly if this is form of attack is really going on a lot, but Agent Peterson seems confused about the nature of the threat. This is simply a form of the classic man-in-the-middle attack, which computer scientists have been aware of for a long time. The attack arises whenever the adversary can compromise a node along your communication path, such as a wireless router. So it has nothing to do with WiFi, per se. Also, the business about your computer “basically belonging to the hacker” is complete nonsense. A man-in-the-middle attack can only compromise the information you send over the network — not everything on your computer.
In principle, the man-in-the-middle attack is a solved problem. Rather than warning people to beware of public WiFi, the FBI should be cautioning people to take appropriate precautions in all their network activity. Those precautions are necessary everywhere, not just on WiFi.
Score another one for the blogosphere: Tennessee bloggers catch the state collecting a tax that doesn’t exist in law. The Tennessee Revenue Department is now pushing a “technical correction” bill that would retroactively authorize their theft. (Via Instapundit.)
A Brazilian judge has ordered Brazilian ISPs to block access to a blog hosted at WordPress.com. Since all WordPress blogs share the same IP, the order amounts to a total ban on WordPress blogs (including Internet Scofflaw). Unfortunately, Brazil is establishing a record of such draconian censorship actions; two years ago Brazil banned YouTube for days.
To their credit, WordPress has refused to censor the blog themselves. This makes them better than Google (which owns Blogger).
The New York Times (!) runs a very positive piece on progress in Iraq, written by an employee of its Baghdad bureau. Here’s its conclusion:
This meant that all the things I heard about the improvements are true. Even the people are more friendly and I can say that there is now a kind of mutual trust between the people and the soldiers, not like before when there was no trust between each other. . .
Will it stay safe or not?
I guess that all depends on the American troops, since we will not have qualified Iraqi forces soon. Although most Iraqi forces are sincere you find some have been infiltrated by groups of gunmen and sectarian people who made the mess all around us.
So we still need the Americans because if they intend to leave, there will be something like a hurricane which will extract everything – people, buildings and even trees. Everything that has happened and all that safety will be past, just like a sweet dream.
As people say in my neighborhood: “The Americans are now Ansar al Sunna.” Protectors of the Sunni.
John McCain castigates Obama for vote against judge
May 6 04:50 AM US/Eastern
By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) – Republican John McCain castigated Democrat Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as Supreme Court chief justice in a speech about the kind of judges McCain would nominate.
McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.
McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
“They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me,” McCain said in his prepared speech.
Obama likes to talk up his image as someone who works with Republicans to get things done, McCain said. Yet Obama “went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee,” McCain said.
Mary Katharine Ham, who attended McCain’s speech, found this article rather remarkable, because four hours later she was still waiting for the speech actually to take place. (Via Instapundit.) The entire article is a fraud: a past-tense account of what the author thought was likely to take place, based on the prepared text.
On the heels of a lot of good (or not-so-bad) economic news, even Paul Krugman notes that the markets are recovering:
Cross your fingers, knock on wood: it’s possible, though by no means certain, that the worst of the financial crisis is over. That’s the good news.
Krugman is said to have predicted fifteen of the last two recessions (or something like that), so it has to be a good sign if even he sees things getting better. Of course, in Krugman’s bizarro world, good news is bad news:
The bad news is that as markets stabilize, chances for fundamental financial reform may be slipping away. As a result, the next crisis will probably be worse than this one.
You see, when the markets were tanking, the progressives had a good shot at extending more governmental control over financial markets. Now he fears that’s no longer in the cards. That means that all that excess freedom is likely to stay out there:
Wall Street did an end run around regulation, using complex financial arrangements to put most of the business of banking outside the regulators’ reach. Washington could have revised the rules to cover this new “shadow banking system” — but that would have run counter to the market-worshiping ideology of the times.
When they can, humans always do “end runs” around government curtailment of their freedom. Actually, I think Krugman understands this, but sees it as an arms race, one in which his side is falling behind.
Michael Yon reports on the next stage of the war in Iraq. These concluding paragraphs summarize what’s happening:
The militias, unlike Al Qaeda, are not insane; we can negotiate with them. But we and the Iraqi government can only capitalize on the shifting sentiments of the Shia neighborhoods if we first demonstrate that we and the government – not the gangs – control the streets.
That means, for the next few months, expect more blood, casualties and grim images of war. This may lead to a shift in the political debate inside the United States and more calls for rapid withdrawal. But on the ground in Iraq, it’s a sign of progress.
Public Editor Clark Hoyt admits that it might have been useful to report the news:
While The Times was aggressive with its coverage on the Web, it was slow to fully engage the Wright story in print and angered some readers by putting opinion about it on the front page — a review by the television critic of his appearances on PBS, at an N.A.A.C.P. convention and at the National Press Club — before ever reporting in any depth what he actually said. . .
Carol Hebb of Narberth, Pa., spoke for many when she wrote that she found the newspaper’s initial coverage “very strange.” If editors did not think Wright’s remarks were newsworthy enough to be on the front page, she asked, why did they put the review by Alessandra Stanley there? “I was very surprised that her piece was not accompanied by a ‘factual’ article reporting the content of Mr. Wright’s comments more completely and perhaps adding some meaningful context.” . . .
Peter Weltner of San Francisco wrote that he wished The Times had examined what he said were falsehoods in Wright’s remarks — like the claim that blacks and whites learn with different parts of their brains — instead of “merely guessing why Mr. Wright said it.”
I’m with Hebb and Weltner. For a newspaper that showed great enterprise on the subject last year — breaking the story that Obama had disinvited Wright to deliver the invocation at the announcement of his presidential campaign, and publishing a deep examination of their relationship before most Americans had heard of Wright — it was a performance strangely lacking in energy at a potential turning point in the election.
“Strangely” lacking? Not so strange, I would say.
Incidentally, Tom Maguire notes that the NYT still has yet to report the “God damn America” phrase in any news story. (Via Instapundit.)
AFP shows again why they’re the best at disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda. Power Line pulls together the story of an April 28 UAV attack on terrorists operating within a populated neighborhood in Gaza in which five civilians were tragically killed.
AFP promotes the Palestinian line, that the IDF deliberately fired on a residential house (out of sheer evilness, I suppose). In paragraph twelve, they report the IDF’s denial of responsibility:
The Israeli army later said the explosion that killed the Abu Maateq family was the result of a strike on Palestinian militants carrying explosives.
“The IDF (army) targeted from the air two Palestinian gunmen” who were approaching soldiers “while carrying large bags on their backs,” the army said in a statement after conducting an inquiry into the incident.
“A big explosion erupted on the scene, following the attack against the two, indicating the presence of bombs and explosives in the gunmen’s bags,” it said.
As always, they immediately and uncritically report a Palestinian claim that the IDF is lying:
Palestinian witnesses disputed that account, insisting that the house was more than a kilometre from the scene of the clashes and that the explosion was caused by an Israeli missile fired by an aerial drone.
No armed men were killed or wounded in the explosion at the house, and an AFP correspondent who arrived at the scene shortly after the strike saw shrapnel from an Israeli missile amid the wreckage inside.
(ASIDE: Again the AFP shows its remarkable ability rapidly to get AFP correspondents to the scene of terrorist activity. I wonder how they do that?) This short rebuttal contains at least two (probably three) lies in two sentences, as was made clear when the IDF released their video of the incident.
The video shows two attacks, one of which was next to the house in question. The first attack might have been a kilometer away, but the second is fewer than ten meters away. (Lie number one.) Both attacks cause secondary explosions, indicating the targets were carrying some kind of munitions. (Lie number two.)
The video also shows what probably happened. The second attack shows a flare extending from the explosion into the house, most likely from a rocket being set off. The majority of any shrapnel in the house, then, would be from the terrorist rocket, not the Israeli missile. Is it possible that some Israeli shrapnel found its way into the house, and the AFP stringer was qualified to identify it among the other shrapnel? Barely. (Probable lie number three.)
The bottom line is that this “massacre” (as Hamas calls it) was the direct result of Hamas’s practice of carrying out their terrorism from within residential areas. The video shows the UAV aiming several meters away from its target, so as not to fire on the house, but even with that sort of restraint on the part of the IDF, Hamas’s practice of waging war from within residential neighborhoods is inevitably going to result in tragedies. Fortunately for Hamas, they have a reliable partner in AFP for turning tragedies into propaganda.
I had been excited to see Iron Man. Now I think I’ll wait for the video. Interestingly, none of the trailers let on that this is a blame-America movie.
While sporadic street battles erupted, voters in this divided country’s richest and second most-populous province appeared to approve a controversial measure Sunday that would make them autonomous from the leftist government of President Evo Morales.
According to an exit poll by the firm Captura Consulting, 82.7 percent of voters in Santa Cruz province supported the autonomy referendum, creating what promises to be a tense standoff between Morales and provincial leaders. . .
Morales has called the vote illegal, and the country’s top electoral court has said it will not certify the results because only the country’s Congress can call referendums. Morales has warned leaders of the eastern Bolivian province not to implement the autonomy statute, although he refused to send in troops to block Sunday’s vote. . .
Tension over the referendum exploded Sunday when autonomy opponents in the rural Santa Cruz towns of San Pedro, San Julian, Yapacani and Montero, as well as in the poor outskirts of Santa Cruz city, attacked polling sites, in some cases destroying and burning cardboard ballot boxes.
A friend of mine got into the BF:BC beta, and emails me his review:
There isn’t a party setup in the beta, so you jump right into a current game and choose your spawn point. You have the choice of spawning at your base or with your squad members. The base spawn is the safest, but it means you have to go all the way back to the frontline to get back to the objective. The squad spawn is convenient, but it can also throw you right into the firefight. Similar to Call of Duty you have a choice of class (Assault, Demolitions, Recon, Specialist, and Support) to select before spawning.
For the beta two maps are available: Ascension and Oasis. Initially the server was having issues setting up the games. It took about 10 minutes for me to get the first match and I could only get Oasis for the games I played. Visually, it doesn’t match up to CoD4’s intense level of detail. During close combat games I encountered frame rate issues and drops.
The only gametype available in the beta was “Goldrush.” Unfortunately, the players, including myself, were not sure about the objective so it was more of a slayer game than anything else. The team chat was also not working making it difficult to get anything organized going.
I have to say I wasn’t impressed with the game. It felt like Battlefield 2:Modern Combat. EA’s server issues and their initial thought of charging for additional weapons (after an outcry from the gaming community, they are now free) add to my reluctance in purchasing any EA games.
This is just the beta, of course, but it’s not a promising sign. (Besides, it will still be an EA game when it releases.)
Barack Obama is growing “angry and frustrated” with the tedium of campaigning against a real opponent:
Barack Obama is struggling to contain his anger and frustration over the constant barrage of questions about his character and judgment, his wife has revealed. Michelle Obama lifted the lid on the irritation felt by the leading Democrat candidate for the White House at the way anti-American outbursts by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, have dogged his campaign.
He is said to be itching to turn all his fire on John McCain, the Republican candidate, who is benefiting most from Mr Obama’s protracted tussle with Hillary Clinton. . .
A senior Democrat strategist privy to Obama’s campaign said: “He’s sick of the battle against Clinton. He wants to get stuck into McCain. His people have had to remind him that this thing isn’t over yet and he needs to focus and put her away.”
Most candidates get used to politics long before their first run for President. But not Barack Obama, who heretofore has always been able, oneway or another, to run virtually unopposed. Now that he’s running for President, people aren’t rolling over for him. Accordingly to his wife — presumably a well-informed source — this has left him “struggling to contain his anger and frustration.” How dare anyone oppose him!
A typical candidate would have run previous campaigns, which would have left him (1) emotionally prepared for opposition, and (2) with his numerous character and judgement issues already aired. On the other hand, then he wouldn’t be a blank canvas into which people could invest their hopes and dreams.
Charles Krauthammer points out that Obama’s recent remarks disowning Wright vitiate his “race” speech:
“I can no more disown him [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown my white grandmother.”
— Barack Obama, Philadelphia, March 18
Guess it’s time to disown Granny, if Obama’s famous Philadelphia “race” speech is to be believed. . . On Tuesday, the good senator begged to extend and revise his previous remarks on race. Moral equivalence between Grandma and Wright is now, as the Nixon administration used to say, inoperative.
These equivalences having been revealed as the cheap rhetorical tricks they always were, Obama has now decided that the man he simply could not banish because he had become part of Obama himself is, mirabile dictu, surgically excised.
At a news conference in North Carolina, Obama explained why he finally decided to do the deed. Apparently, Wright’s latest comments — Obama cited three in particular — were so shockingly “divisive and destructive” that he had to renounce the man, not just the words.
What were Obama’s three citations? Wright’s claim that AIDS was invented by the U.S. government to commit genocide. His praise of Louis Farrakhan as a great man. And his blaming Sept. 11 on American “terrorism.”
But these comments are not new. These were precisely the outrages that prompted the initial furor when the Wright tapes emerged seven weeks ago. Obama decided to cut off Wright not because Wright’s words or character or views had suddenly changed. The only thing that changed was the venue in which Wright chose to display them — live on national TV at the National Press Club. That unfortunate choice destroyed Obama’s Philadelphia pretense that this “endless loop” of sermon excerpts being shown on “television sets and YouTube” had been taken out of context.
(Emphasis mine.) Exactly right. The “you have to hear it in context” line was very clever, because no one at all is going to do that. (I sat through 10 minutes of one of them, and that was quite enough, thank you.) Unfortunately for Obama, that line is worthless now.
Krauthammer continues:
Obama’s Philadelphia oration was an exercise in contextualization. In one particularly egregious play on white guilt, Obama had the audacity to suggest that whites should be ashamed that they were ever surprised by Wright’s remarks: “The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning.”
That was then. On Tuesday, Obama declared that he himself was surprised at Wright’s outrages. But hadn’t Obama told us that surprise about Wright is a result of white ignorance of black churches brought on by America’s history of segregated services? How then to explain Obama’s own presumed ignorance? . . . Obama’s turning surprise about Wright into something to be counted against whites— one of the more clever devices in that shameful, brilliantly executed, 5,000-word intellectual fraud in Philadelphia — now stands discredited by Obama’s own admission of surprise.
(Emphasis mine.) There’s more. Read the whole thing.
In the British local elections yesterday, Labour was brutalized, capped by the defeat of “Red” Ken Livingstone, the appalling extreme-far-left mayor of London. Early results gave the Tories 44% of the vote, and Labour 24%. If it holds up, that would leave Labour in third place behind the socialist Liberal Democrats who were polling 25%.
Last September, Labour was riding high, and all expected that Prime Minister Brown would call a snap election. Then his poll numbers sagged and those plans were scrapped in favor of an election in Fall 2009. Now most expect that Brown will hold on until Spring 2010, the latest he could call an election. (ASIDE: How ridiculous is it for the party in power to decide when the election will be?)
Power Line notes that Al Franken, a US Senate hopeful in Minnesota, blames his failure to pay taxes on his accountant but has ordered his accountant to remain silent. He can’t have it both ways. In any case, it strains credulity to suggest that his repeated failure to pay his bills wherever he is (Air America and personally in multiple states) is always someone else’s fault.
Just weeks before it announced the onset of a global food crisis and the urgent need for donors to provide at least $775 million in additional funding, the World Food Program was sitting on a cash and near-cash stockpile of more than $1.22 billion.
The startling figure is contained in the latest audited statements of the WFP, which were endorsed by the WFP’s executive director, Josette Sheeran, on March 31, just a month before Sheeran announced at an international aid conference on April 22 that a “silent tsunami” in rising food prices demanded the huge infusion of cash for the WFP’s latest budget.
In a May 1 International Herald Tribune op-ed, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon further declared that the WFP had just “$18 million cash in hand” in the wake of its appeal for emergency funding.
So the UN was understating its assets for food relief by 98.5%. This organization is a complete fraud. Why exactly do we continue to fund them?
The Star-Tribune reports the story of a homeowner who shot a home invader armed with a knife:
I grabbed our gun, which we keep for protection,” he said. “As I stepped around the corner, he hit me … right between the eyes,” Sokol said. “And I fired the gun.
“Down on the ground he went and I insisted, in a not very nice way, that he not move,” he said. “I held him at gunpoint until the police arrived.” . . .
Sokol said the burglar had a knife, but Sokol doesn’t know if he was hit by that or a fireplace poker that he noticed had been moved.
TaxProf Blog reports that yesterday the US Tax Court issued an astounding opinion finding that the IRS committed a fraud on the court affecting over 1300 cases. (Via Instapundit.) The post doesn’t really make it clear (to me anyway) what was at issue, so I went looking for a news story. Finding none (I guess massive fraud by the IRS isn’t newsworthy), I thought I’d see if I could decipher the opinion itself (pdf link).
Here’s what I gather from reading the opinion: The IRS and Tax Court have developed a “test case” procedure to streamline the litigation of large volumes of cases resulting from tax shelter examinations. How it works is that “a few typical cases are selected and most taxpayers whose cases are not selected execute ‘piggyback agreements’ binding the resolution of their cases to the outcome of the final decision in the test cases.” (Page 15.)
In the examination of one particular tax shelter (named after its inventor, Henry Kersting), the IRS secretly arranged for the test case subjects to settle their cases on terms favorable to the IRS (that is, unfavorable to the taxpayer). From page 22:
In December 1986 [Attorney Kenneth] McWade, with the knowledge and connivance of his supervisor, Honolulu District Counsel William A. Sims (Sims), entered into secret contingent settlement agreements with the Cravenses regarding their test cases and with DeCastro regarding the Thompsons’ test cases. The Thompsons and the Cravenses understood that a condition of these settlements was that they would remain test case petitioners. The Cravenses, who were not represented by counsel, agreed with McWade to a reduction of about 6 percent of the originally determined deficiencies for their taxable years 1979 and 1980. This settlement was less favorable to them than the generally available modified 7-percent reduction settlement offer and did not include the burnout.
There seem to be numerous complications and misconducts on top of this, including an illegal IRS search, but the gist is that the IRS defrauded all the people who trusted them to litigate the test cases honestly. (Incidentally, anyone who didn’t agree to a piggyback agreement had to litigate their case in Maui, which is a very nice place to vacation, but probably an expensive and impractical place for a protracted court battle.)
Finally, note that it took the Tax Court 22 years to hold the IRS accountable for its fraud.
CBS News journalist Richard Butler said he believes he was kidnapped in Iraq by policemen with sympathies toward the Hezbollah but isn’t entirely sure who held him captive for two months or why.
Butler, a British journalist kidnapped with his interpreter on Feb. 10, was rescued by Iraqi troops on April 14 when he was found with a sack over his head in a house in Basra. . .
While he was held, he heard a lot of Hezbollah propaganda video and Hezbollah ringtones on mobile phones, but he can’t be sure his captors were affiliated with the organization. . .
Yes, let’s not jump to any conclusions that Hezbollah was involved. Anyway, now we get to the point:
Butler said he felt it was better to be kidnapped in Iraq then taken into custody by Americans in Afghanistan.
“I was pleased I wasn’t being mortarboarded in Guantanamo or being held for six and a half years like an Al-Jazeera cameraman, for instance,” he said.
Yeah, I hear that mortarboarding is really unpleasant. . . I didn’t know there was a chapter at Guantanamo, but I guess those guys want it on their resume when they graduate.
All snark aside, one is tempted to speculate about Stockholm syndrome, but I think it’s more likely he leaned that way from the start.
The original defense of Jeremiah Wright’s was that his sort of hatemongering was typical of black churches. This struck me as a strange sort of defense (“everybody’s doing it!”), but more importantly, it smelled to me like a slander of Black churches. Nevertheless, it didn’t seem like something I could usefully comment on. Now, Protein Wisdom takes on the matter. (Via Instapundit.)
For what it’s worth, the one time I visited a Black church (an AME church in the Boston area), the focus of the service was on Christ, and no racial hatred was preached.
James Pethokoukis asks, “Dude, where’s my recession?” The economy grew 0.6 percent in the first quarter 2008. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, so the soonest we could say there was a recession this year is October. (Via Instapundit.)
This news is actually pretty good, in a beats-low-expectations kind of way. The press will probably notice it early next year.
A college student apparently called 911 from her cell phone shortly before she was killed but a dispatcher hung up, failed to call back and never sent police to investigate, authorities said Thursday.
Madison Police Chief Noble Wray said it was too early to know whether a better response could have prevented the April 2 slaying of Wisconsin-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann or helped police capture her killer.
Too early to know? More like it’s too late.
Depending on the government for protection can be a risky gamble.
Pittsburgh is now the nation’s sootiest city, surpassing Los Angeles, according to the American Lung Association. However, Los Angeles remains number one in overall air pollution. Pittsburgh doesn’t make the top eight.
The Washington DC Examiner has the shocking story of an Arlington County court permanently dissolving the parental rights of a special-needs child’s parents, despite the parents having been exonerated of neglect nine months earlier.
Arlington Judge Esther Wiggins Lyles signed the removal order with neither Hey nor Slitor even aware of the proceedings, much less being present to contest the decision. Sabrina went to a politically influential local professional couple with no training as foster parents, despite CPS requirements that foster couples be trained before being entrusted with children. Judge Almand later used the baby’s inappropriate removal to justify making the separation permanent, saying it would be too “traumatic” to return Sabrina to her natural parents.
No happy ending here either. This outrage has yet to be corrected.
Now, to some degree, you know — I know that one thing that he said was true, was that he wasn’t — you know, he was never my, quote-unquote, “spiritual adviser.”
He was never my “spiritual mentor.” He was — he was my pastor. And so to some extent, how, you know, the — the press characterized in the past that relationship, I think, wasn’t accurate.
Dartmouth gets another black eye, courtesy of one of its English instructors. One Priya Venkatesan, after (deservedly) receiving profoundly negative course evaluations, decides to sue:
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:56:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
To: “WRIT.005.17.18-WI08”:;, Priya.Venkatesan@Dartmouth.EDU
Subject: WRIT.005.17.18-WI08: Possible lawsuit
Dear former class members of Science, Technology and Society:
I tried to send an email through my server but got undelivered messages. I regret to inform you that I am pursuing a lawsuit in which I am accusing some of you (whom shall go unmentioned in this email) of violating Title VII of anti-federal [SIC] discrimination laws.
The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit.
I am also writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will “name names” so to speak. I have all of your evaluations and these will be reproduced in the book.
Have a nice day.
One’s first inclination is that this has to be a hoax, not just because of the idea of a lawsuit over course evaluations, but also because the person who wrote this was teaching English at Dartmouth. Nevertheless, the story seems to be for real. Still, I’m pretty sure Ms. Venkatesan hasn’t yet consulted a lawyer.
A new DNC ad attacking McCain prominently features the 100-years calumny yet again. Then it goes on to show two soldiers apparently being blown up by an IED.
This is the same party that thought it was unacceptable for President Bush to “politicize” 9/11 by using its images in his re-election campaign.
ASIDE: Confederate Yankee tracks down the clip and finds that both soldiers survived the blast. Also, the clip comes from Fahrenheit 911, Michael Moore’s notorious propaganda piece.
On Meet the Press Sunday, DNC chair Howard Dean defended the ad, saying, “we’re not arguing that he’s going to be at war for a hundred years. We don’t think we ought to be in Iraq for a hundred years under any circumstances.”
That won’t wash. They use images of war and quote casualties. They are clearly implying 100 years of war.
“I have been a member of Trinity United Church of Christ since 1992, and have known Reverend Wright for 20 years,” Obama said. “The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago.”
Oh, come on! You expect us to believe that Wright had a big change in character, and it just so happened to occur exactly when people started paying attention to him? Sheesh.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE:
“And what I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I’m about knows that I am about trying to bridge gaps and I see the commonality in all people,” [Obama said.]
In all the stuff Wright said (e.g., the United States created HIV to commit genocide against minorities), the thing that particularly angered Obama was that Wright called him a politician. (Via the Corner.)
STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: Wright agrees with me. (There’s a sentence I never I thought I’d use!) (Via the Corner.)
He sounds bitter. Maybe that explains his antipathy toward people who aren’t like him.
“In the course of a year after they got full up they would have produced enough plutonium for one or two weapons,” Hayden told reporters after a speech at Georgetown University. . .
U.S. intelligence and administration officials publicly disclosed last week their assessment that Syria was building a covert nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance. . . The Syrian site, they said, was within weeks or months of being operational.
The head of the UN nuclear monitoring agency on Friday criticized the US for not giving his organization intelligence information sooner on what Washington says was a nuclear reactor in Syria being built secretly by North Korea.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei also chastised Israel for bombing the site seven months ago, in a statement whose strong language reflected his anger at being kept out of the picture for so long. . .
“The director general views the unilateral use of force by Israel as undermining the due process of verification that is at the heart of the nonproliferation regime,” it said.
In full knowledge that the reactor would have produced two bombs in a year, ElBaradei is still against the Israeli operation. I think we can safely say that the IAEA is fundamentally unserious. To them, “nonproliferation” isn’t about preventing proliferation, it’s about verifying proliferation. Hmm, I wonder why we and Israel weren’t hurrying to give them our classified intelligence.
My sister’s roller derby team, the Camaro Harem, made the Everett Herald and is featured on the web edition’s front page. For those who haven’t been following, roller derby is a real sport now, at least in western Washington.
“Job opportunities are scarce for women in Saudi Arabia, mainly limited to teaching and health care.” (I doubt we’re talking about radiology, either.)
“The Saudi Education Ministry appoints thousands of male and female teachers to fill vacancies every year at government-run schools in remote areas.”
“Female teachers find it difficult to move because they need permission from a male guardian to live alone and have to find a landlord willing to rent them an apartment.”
As a result, many women live in the city and commute to remote rural areas.
“Women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, so the teachers must hire drivers — sometimes sharing rides in minivans, leaving home as early as 3 a.m.
The Saudi roads on which female teachers spend countless hours are among the most dangerous in the world:
Nearly 6,000 people died in traffic accidents in 2007 in this country of 27.6 million, according to the Saudi Traffic Department. That is a rate of around 21 deaths per 100,000 people — one of the highest in the world. By comparison, around 14 per 100,000 people were killed in road accidents in the United States in 2006, according to the most recent statistics from the Transportation Department.
As a result, female teachers are dying in car accidents at an alarming rate:
A study released in October by the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology found that female teachers commuting to their jobs have about a 50 percent greater chance of getting into car accidents than average Saudi citizens. Its findings were based on figures from the late 1990s.
The worst thing about this is how little I’m shocked.
Somehow I missed this when I happened, so I’m grateful to Power Line for pointing it out again. In a speech at UCLA earlier this year, Michelle Obama described her husband’s messianic qualities:
We have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here. Because Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that. That before we can work on the problems we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.
If we can’t see ourselves in one another we will never make those sacrifices. So I am here right now because I am married to the only person in this race who has a chance of healing this nation. . .
Barack, as Oprah said, is one of the most brilliant men you will meet in our lifetime. Barack is more than ready. He’ll be ready today. He’ll be ready on day one. He’ll be ready in a year from now. Five years from now. He is ready. That is not the question.
Okay, I’m frightened now. Obama is not Jesus. Does Obama really see himself as the one to fix my broken soul?
It gets scarier, because it isn’t just about Obama. No, it’s also about what Obama will require of us:
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.
Got that? Obama will require our complete psychological reconfiguration so we can carry out his agenda.
In context, it’s fairly clear that Mrs. Obama is not talking about a Soviet-style campaign of re-education and psychological adjustment. She is talking about what we must all do as Obama’s disciples. She truly sees him as a christ for America.
. . . to be released this year. I’m not kidding. I didn’t even know they’d made a second. Based on the reviews, Starship Troopers 2 was even worse than the original movie. I scarcely would have thought that possible. Heinlein must be rolling in his grave.
For most of the primary campaign, Gov. Ed Rendell acted as a “super staffer” for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, raising serious questions about his use of state resources for political purposes, a state House GOP spokesman says. . .
“The vast majority of the governor’s campaign activity was either very early in the morning, in the evening or on weekends and did not interfere with his full time job,” said Rendell’s spokesman Chuck Ardo. “He merely added hours to a routinely hectic schedule by getting less sleep.
“Additionally, he flew to campaign events on commercial airlines and paid his own way, and he reimbursed the commonwealth for the use of his office phone to a far greater extent than the charges incurred,” Ardo said. “No one got short-changed by this governor’s work ethic, and no one needs to be concerned about the misuse of state resources.”
This doesn’t seem like a profitable tack to me. Rendell has had his ethical problems, but absent any evidence to the contrary, I’d be surprised if he’d be so sloppy as to spend state resources on the Clinton campaign. As far as his own time goes, the less time Rendell dedicates to state business the better.
The world’s stupidest Obama controversy is given new legs . . . by Obama. At a town hall in Kokomo, Indiana, Obama takes up the topic yet again:
“Then I was asked about this in Iowa,” Obama said. “And somebody said ‘Why don’t you wear a flag pin?’ I said, well, sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I said, although I will say that sometimes I notice that they’re people who wear flag pins but they don’t always act patriotic. And I was specifically referring to politicians, not individuals who wear flag pins, but politicians who you see wearing flag pins and then vote against funding for veterans, saying we can’t afford it.”
(What Obama said last October was: “You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest. Instead, I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great, and hopefully that will be a testimony to my patriotism.”)
Obama continued, saying “so I make this comment. suddenly a bunch of these, you know, TV commentators and bloggers (say) ‘Obama is disrespecting people who wear flag pins.’ Well, that’s just not true. Also, another way of saying it is, it’s a lie.”
(Interjection in original.) One thing I’ve noticed about Obama is a bizarre inability to take anything back, be it his statements about Jeremiah Wright (e.g., “I don’t think my church is actually particularly controversial”), his claim that rural Americans are religious because of bitterness about the economy, or his bizarre foreign policy pronouncements (e.g., we should invade Pakistan).
No, when Obama wishes his remarks would go away, he doesn’t retract them: either he retroactively rewords them, or he makes it someone else’s fault for bringing them up, or (most often) both. This is a perfect example. First, he rewords his remarks. (For our convenience, ABC juxtaposes his revised comment with the original.) Then, he counter-attacks against those who quoted him, calling them liars.
To my mind, there is no one more a scoundrel than the man who lies in accusing another man of lying. Here, it’s the journalists and bloggers who accurately quoted Obama’s remark that get the treatment.
PS: Lest I commit the same offense, let me concede that Obama left himself some wiggle room here. He doesn’t name anyone in particular, and no one actually makes the statement that Obama cites. (At least, Google gets no hits on the phrase, other than this very story.) So, even if nearly everyone quoted his remarks accurately, he could probably find someone who lied, and say that’s who he meant.
Robert “Get behind the fist” Mugabe’s latest atrocity in his reign of terror hits a new low:
Scores of children and babies have been locked up in filthy prison cells in Harare as Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president, sinks to new depths in his campaign to force the opposition into exile before an expected run-off in presidential elections.
Twenty-four babies and 40 children under the age of six were among the 250 people rounded up in a raid on Friday, according to Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Yesterday they were crammed into cells in Southerton police station in central Harare. . .
The families were rounded up from MDC headquarters, where they had sought refuge from violence in the countryside.
The abduction of children is just one element in a systematic campaign of murder and intimidation:
Thought to be directed by top military officers, Operation Where Did You Put Your Cross? has prompted thousands to flee. They are trying to escape the so-called war veterans, who are attacking people and burning down hundreds of houses for voting “incorrectly” in last month’s elections. . .
The regime’s strategy is to ensure that by the time of the run-off, Mugabe would have a clean sweep in rural areas, where 70% of Zimbabweans live. A police officer admitted yesterday that he had been instructed not to interfere with war veterans as they carry out their campaign of terror.
Roger Kimball analyzes the NYT’s formula for McCain hit pieces:
1. Prissy introductory sentence or two noting that Mr. McCain has a reputation [read “unearned reputation”] for taking the ethical high road on issues like campaign finance reform.
2. “The-Times-has-learned” sentence intimating some tort or misbehavior.
3. A paragraph or two of exposition that simultaneously reveals that a) Mr. McCain actually didn’t do anything wrong but b) he would have if only the law had been different and besides everyone knows he is guilty in spirit.
In the latest case, the “misbehavior” is that McCain sometimes rides on his wife’s plane, which saves him some money. The NYT concedes that this violates no campaign finance rules, but the FEC has considered changing the rules. That’s it.
The chief of Hamas said Saturday that the Palestinian militant group would accept an Egyptian proposal for a cease-fire with Israel but it would be a “tactic” in the group’s struggle with the Jewish state. . .
“It is a tactic in conducting the struggle. … It is normal for any resistance … to sometimes escalate, other times retreat a bit. … Hamas is known for that. In 2003, there was a cease-fire and then the operations were resumed.”
Jerry Pournelle has a very interesting, and frightening, insight:
The Democrats seem to be drifting toward the concept of prosecution of former office holders by criminalizing policy differences. That’s a certain formula for civil war; perhaps not immediate, but inevitable. The absolute minimum requirement for democratic government is that the loser be willing to lose the election: that losing an election is not the loss of everything that matters. As soon as that assurance is gone, playing by the rules makes no sense at all. (Pinochet learned that lesson. Fortunately for Chile, he was old and was allowed to die in peace; the inevitable — liberals can always find a good reason not to keep their word — persecutions after he turned over power on the assurance that he would be allowed to retire in peace were not so severe that his adherents didn’t take to their weapons.)
Via Instapundit, who adds an interesting email about the Roman civil war. I’m not so sure Caesar was a republican to the core, but the point doesn’t seem to rely on that.
David Freddoso has a post about Nancy Pelosi’s ignorance and deceit on gas prices. Apropos to that, here’s a graph of gasoline prices at the pump since 1979, real and nominal. I was interested to see that real gas prices are indeed high now, flirting with their peak in the early 1980s. They spiked in mid-2005, started fluctuating wildly and settled into the higher price in mid-2007. (If we’re in a recession now, that has to be a significant cause.) On the other hand, the recent spike in the nominal price is all due to inflation. Real prices haven’t changed much since mid-2007.
Young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again.
All across Iraq’s second city life is improving, a month after Iraqi troops began a surprise crackdown on the black-clad gangs who were allowed to flourish under the British military. The gunmen’s reign had enforced a strict set of religious codes.
Yet after three years of being terrified of kidnap, rape and murder – a fate that befell scores of other women – Nadyia Ahmed, 22, is among those enjoying a sense of normality, happy for the first time to attend her science course at Basra University. . .
She also no longer has to wear a headscarf. Under the strict Islamic rules imposed by the militias, women had to cover their hair, could not wear jeans or bright clothes and were strictly forbidden from sitting next to male colleagues on pain of death.
“All these men in black [who imposed the laws] just vanished from the university after this operation,” said Ms Ahmed. “Things have completely changed over the past week.”
Read the whole thing; there’s too much good news here to pull quotes.
A couple of observations. First, we were told for years that the British “softly, softly” strategy was superior to the American strategy. It may well have been, when our strategy was to defeat the enemy and then leave. But now that we have decided to defeat the enemy then stay and keep them defeated, we’re succeeding where “softly, softly” failed:
The contrast could not be more stark with the last time The Times visited Basra in December, when intimidation was rife.
Many blame the British for allowing the militias to grow. “If they sent competent Iraqi troops to Basra in the early stages it would have limited the damage that happened in our city,” said Hameed Hashim, 39, who works for the South Oil Company.
Second, the above can teach us an important lesson. We’ve learned clearly on the small scale that defeat-and-depart does not work; you eventually need to return and fight again. Why would anyone think that it would work on the large scale? But that’s exactly what the Democrats are proposing. Al Qaeda is largely defeated but not annihilated. If we left, we would be handing the country over to some of the worst butchers in the world, and eventually we would have to invade all over again.
In their more practical moments, some Democrats have seemed to suggest a limited withdrawal from Iraq, one that would leave us with a limited presence there, but not on the front lines. That is, they want to employ the softly-softly strategy, which has also been shown to be a failure.
We need to employ the one strategy that has worked in Iraq: defeat-and-hold. We need to stay in Iraq until the locals are capable of defending themselves. That’s the strategy that will be least costly in the long run. Anything else ignores the clear lesson of this war.
A week ago, I noted that the Sunnis that had left Nouri al-Maliki’s government last year in a huff had decided to return. A week later, the New York Times has reported on it, making it true.
The London Times has an interesting piece on how the Iraqi Army won in Basra. It claims that the key factor was Iran cutting off support for Sadr:
Once the British withdrew from the city centre to Basra airport last summer, the situation changed. Suddenly it was Moqtadr al-Sadr and his rag-tag fighters who were the dominant force in the Basra region. The Iranian backed Badr Organisation, which is well represented in Iraq’s police and military, was sidelined. There were real fears that the Sadrists could consolidate their gains on the ground in local elections planned for October and eclipse the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Badr’s political wing.
For once the interests of America, Britain, Iran and the Iraqi government coincided with disastrous results for Mr al-Sadr and his fighters. Isolated and abandoned they fled, were captured or killed from what were once their impregnable fiefdoms in Basra. Mr al-Sadr was left to lick his wounds and complain that the Government had forgotten that they were all “brothers”.
This is at odds with much of the other reporting, so I’m not sure I buy it, but it’s food for thought.
What this does illustrate is that the media was grossly premature in declaring defeat. In fact, the Basra operation has proven to be a total victory for the Iraqi government. (It reminds me of the week during the invasion that we were supposedly losing. Heaven knows how they would have reported the Battle of the Bulge!)
The sling-shot anomaly you asked about is taken seriously enough to have been published in Phys Rev Letters last month. Of course it COULD indicate undreamed of physics. But it’s more likely to be a subtle systematic error.
The same first author (Anderson) is also on the 1998 paper on the Pioneer anomaly which seemed to indicate that Pioneer 10 and 11 were accelerating towards the sun a little more than they should. That’s been a thorn in the side of general relativity for some time now. That effect has now been PARTLY explained by a rather prosaic effect: the heat from the plutonium power source warms the spacecraft which radiate thermal radiation. But, because of their composition, it turns out that they radiate more in front of them than behind. So radiation pressure slows them down…. how annoying… but not exciting.
As a condition to posting his email, my friend asks me to point out that he is not an expert. Noted. He knows much more than I do, though.
Earlier on Thursday, a Chinese ship carrying armaments made by a Chinese state-owned company and bound for Zimbabwe headed back to China without unloading its cargo of bullets and mortar bombs, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry confirmed at a briefing Thursday.
“The Chinese company has already decided to send the military goods back to China in the same vessel, the An Yue Jiang,” the spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said. . .
China’s decision to turn the ship around was welcomed by the dock workers, trade unionists, religious leaders, Western diplomats and human rights workers who have been campaigning since last week to block delivery of the weapons to Zimbabwe.
They had said the weaponry could be used to carry out an even more violent crackdown on Zimbabwe’s political opposition, which is allied with the country’s unionized workers.
“This is a great victory for the trade union movement in particular and civil society in general in putting its foot down and saying we will not allow weapons that could be used to kill and maim our fellow workers and Zimbabweans to be transported across South Africa,” said Patrick Craven, spokesman for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which represents 1.9 million South African workers. China’s strategic retreat in delivering the weapons also allows it to avoid Zimbabwe-related protests over its human rights record before it hosts the Olympic Games this summer.
Also, the State Department has decided to acknowledge what everyone knows:
Turning up the pressure on President Robert Mugabe, the top United States envoy to Africa declared Zimbabwe’s opposition leader the “clear victor” in the nation’s disputed presidential election. . .
“This is a government rejecting the will of the people,” she said, referring to the government’s refusal to announce who won the presidential election last month, despite independent projections that placed the opposition ahead. “If they had voted for Mugabe the results would already have been announced. Everyone knows what time it is.”
The Syrian facility bombed by Israel last September was almost certainly a nuclear reactor of North Korean design, reports the Washington Post:
A video taken inside a secret Syrian facility last summer convinced the Israeli government and the Bush administration that North Korea was helping to construct a reactor similar to one that produces plutonium for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials who said it would be shared with lawmakers today.
The officials said the video of the remote site, code-named Al Kibar by the Syrians, shows North Koreans inside. It played a pivotal role in Israel’s decision to bomb the facility late at night last Sept. 6. . .
Sources familiar with the video say it also shows that the Syrian reactor core’s design is the same as that of the North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, including a virtually identical configuration and number of holes for fuel rods. It shows “remarkable resemblances inside and out to Yongbyon,” a U.S. intelligence official said. A nuclear weapons specialist called the video “very, very damning.”
Nuclear weapons analysts and U.S. officials predicted that CIA Director Michael V. Hayden’s planned disclosures to Capitol Hill could complicate U.S. efforts to improve relations with North Korea as a way to stop its nuclear weapons program. . .
The timing of the congressional briefing is nonetheless awkward for the Bush administration’s diplomatic initiative to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program and permanently disable the reactor at Yongbyon. The CIA’s hand was forced, officials said, because influential lawmakers had threatened to cut off funding for the U.S. diplomatic effort unless they received a full account of what the administration knew.
The Bush administration will tell Congress tomorrow that a nuclear facility in Syria built with North Korean help was nearly complete when Israel bombed it in September, and that Pyongyang has not provided any further nuclear assistance to the hard-line Arab nation, at least at that site, U.S. officials said.
Nancy Pelosi quotes some “scripture” on Earth Day:
The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’
Huh? Where exactly in the Old Testament would that be? Biblical scholars are equally puzzled:
John J. Collins, the Holmes professor of Old Testament criticism and interpretation at Yale Divinity School, said he is totally unfamiliar with Pelosi’s quotation.
“(It’s) not one that I recognize,” Collins told Cybercast News Service. “I assume that she means this is a paraphrase. But it wouldn’t be a close paraphrase to anything I know of.”
Claude Mariottini, a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Cybercast News Service the passage not only doesn’t exist – it’s “fictional.”
“It is not in the Bible,” Mariottini said. “There is nothing that even approximates that.”
In fact, one hardly has to be a Bible scholar to recognize Pelosi’s quote as unlikely. Although the Bible definitely suggests that we should be good stewards of creation, to call doing so “an act of worship” sounds awfully close to idolatry.
Mark Goodwin, an associate professor of theology at the University of Dallas, said Pelosi’s quote only reflects a partial Scriptural truth, at best.
“‘To minister to the needs of creation is an act of worship’ doesn’t sound right to my ears,” Goodwin said. “To minister to the needs of creation’- yes, but not as an act of worship. I’m not sure what she meant by that, and if I were there, I would have raised my hand and asked her to clarify that.”
Mariottini doesn’t mince words:
“People try to use the Bible to give authority to what they are trying to say,” he said. “(This) is one of those texts that you fabricate in order to support what you want to say.”
Sources with knowledge of the incident said the official, Rafael Quintero Curiel, served as the lead press advance person for the Mexican Delegation. . . He took six or seven of the handheld devices from a table outside a special room in the hotel where the Mexican delegation was meeting with President Bush earlier this week. . .
It didn’t take long before Secret Service officials reviewed videotape taken by a surveillance camera and found footage showing Quintero Curiel absconding with the BlackBerries.
Sources said Quintero Curiel made it all the way to the airport before Secret Service officers caught up with him. He initially denied taking the devices, but after agents showed him the DVD, Quintero Curiel said it was purely accidental, gave them back, claimed diplomatic immunity and left New Orleans with the Mexican delegation.
If Mexican officials don’t punish this guy, they will be making themselves complicit in his espionage.
UPDATE: The linked article has been updated:
Mexican Embassy spokesman Ricardo Alday said Thursday he was asked to tender his resignation once he arrived back in Mexico City.
“Mr. Quintero will be responsible for explaining his actions to the American authorities conducting an investigation. The Mexican Government deeply regrets this incident,” he said.
Getting fired seems a little minor to me, but it’s a start.
John McCain received permanent injuries at the hands of the North Vietnamese during his time as a POW, injuries that earn him a disability pension. The LA Times insinuates that this should disqualify him from being President.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve heard since the Amazing Race 7, when Kelly accused Ron of not following through on his army obligations. Ron “escaped” his obligations by becoming a POW during the Gulf War.
Bill Roggio reports the Iraqi Army has issued an ultimatum to al-Sadr’s Mahdi army to surrender or face the consequences:
The senior-most Iraqi general in charge of the security operation in Basrah has issued an ultimatum for wanted Mahdi Army leaders and fighters to surrender in the next 24 hours as the Iraqi and US military ignore Muqtada al Sadr’s threat to conduct a third uprising. US troops killed 15 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad yesterday and have killed 56 fighters since Sadr issued his threat last weekend.
In Basrah, General Mohan al Freiji, the chief of the Basrah Operational Commander and leader of the security operation in the province, has given issued warrants “for 81 people, including senior leaders of the Mahdi militia, and they have 24 hours to give up,” The Associated Press reported.
It will be interesting to watch how this goes. The Iraqi Army no doubt is eager not to be embarrassed again, and there’s no reason they would kick this off early (if indeed that’s what happened last time). I expect they’ll make a better showing this time. The most important thing, though, is to go through with it. Idle threats won’t help their reputation any.
This bit is also interesting:
The assassination of Riyad al Nouri, Sadr’s brother-in-law and a senior aide in Najaf, continues to spark reports that his death was carried out from within the Sadrist movement. On April 17, The Long War Journal reported that Nouri was pushing for the Sadrist movement to disband the Mahdi Army lest the party be shut out from the political process, and US military officers believe he was killed because of this.
The Iraqi press has also reported Nouri was killed after he suggested disarming the Mahdi Army. Nouri “was assassinated after he wrote Muqtada a letter asking him to dissolve the Mahdi Army,” Al Rafidain reported.
It’s the one-month anniversary of my first post at Internet Scofflaw. I wanted to take this occasion to thank WordPress for a their blogging service. It works great, and is quite inexpensive. Thanks guys!
Fox News reports. Although I’m sure Gen. Petraeus will do a good job at CENTCOM, this strikes me as bad news. We need him where he is, winning the war in Iraq.
UPDATE: Secretary Gates says that Petraeus won’t be leaving until late summer or early fall. Also, Frederick and Kimberly Kagan say that Gen. Odierno, who will be taking over in Iraq, deserves a lot of the credit for putting Petraeus’s strategy into effect. (Via Hot Air.) This makes me feel a little better.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Rich Lowry thinks this is good news too.
The nation’s most hypocritical editorial page issues another gem, entitled “The Low Road to Victory”. It calls for an old-fashioned Fisking:
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
According to the New York Times, negative campaigning is the job of the New York Times. They’ll take care of the mean, vacuous hatchet jobs so the Democrats don’t have to.
Also, 10 points is inconclusive? Reagan defeated Carter by 10 points and won 44 states.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
Getting tired of it? Actually, we Pennsylvanians had to wait a long time for the candidates to pay attention to us. When we did, we didn’t like what we saw in Obama. And by the way, on what planet does negative campaigning not work?
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race. It is true that Senator Barack Obama outspent her 2-to-1. But Mrs. Clinton and her advisers should mainly blame themselves, because, as the political operatives say, they went heavily negative and ended up squandering a good part of what was once a 20-point lead.
The “political operatives” say that, do they? Those operatives wouldn’t happen to be the NYT editorial board, would they?
On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11. A Clinton television ad — torn right from Karl Rove’s playbook — evoked the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the cold war and the 9/11 attacks, complete with video of Osama bin Laden. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” the narrator intoned.
Islamic terrorism is the most dangerous threat facing our country today. For many people, such as me, it’s the only issue of consequence. But according to the NYT, it’s out-of-bounds even to mention it. We can’t even mention it in the context of crises from throughout the last century.
If that was supposed to bolster Mrs. Clinton’s argument that she is the better prepared to be president in a dangerous world, she sent the opposite message on Tuesday morning by declaring in an interview on ABC News that if Iran attacked Israel while she were president: “We would be able to totally obliterate them.”
Anyone who recognizes the value of deterrence is not prepared to be President, I guess.
By staying on the attack and not engaging Mr. Obama on the substance of issues like terrorism, the economy and how to organize an orderly exit from Iraq, Mrs. Clinton does more than just turn off voters who don’t like negative campaigning. She undercuts the rationale for her candidacy that led this page and others to support her: that she is more qualified, right now, to be president than Mr. Obama.
As Lisa Schiffren asks, what on earth has changed about Hillary Clinton since the NYT endorsed her? It used to be she used her super-powers for good (ie, against Republicans), but now she’s using them against a Democrat.
Mr. Obama is not blameless when it comes to the negative and vapid nature of this campaign. He is increasingly rising to Mrs. Clinton’s bait, undercutting his own claims that he is offering a higher more inclusive form of politics. When she criticized his comments about “bitter” voters, Mr. Obama mocked her as an Annie Oakley wannabe. All that does is remind Americans who are on the fence about his relative youth and inexperience.
When Clinton is negative, she’s bad. When Obama is negative, he’s rising to her bait. I get it.
No matter what the high-priced political operatives (from both camps) may think, it is not a disadvantage that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton share many of the same essential values and sensible policy prescriptions. It is their strength, and they are doing their best to make voters forget it. And if they think that only Democrats are paying attention to this spectacle, they’re wrong.
I have no idea what they’re trying to say here.
After seven years of George W. Bush’s failed with-us-or-against-us presidency, all American voters deserve to hear a nuanced debate — right now and through the general campaign — about how each candidate will combat terrorism, protect civil liberties, address the housing crisis and end the war in Iraq.
We should have a nuanced debate about fighting terrorism without mentioning it? How’s that going to work?
It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind when they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
This makes no sense. This race could have been won at the ballot box, if the Democrats operated under the same rules as the GOP and the United States. If not for the superdelegates, the race would be over. The purpose of the superdelegates was to give the party elites the chance to overturn the voters’ choice. Now the Democrats are reaping the dividend of their bizarre rules. Bravo.
An outburst of gunfire rattled the city during the weekend, with at least nine people killed in 36 separate acts of violence.
“There are just too many weapons here,” [Police Superintendent Jody] Weis said Sunday. “Too many guns, too many gangs.”
I’m confused. Doesn’t Illinois have the most severe gun control outside of D.C.? From Wikipedia:
Some municipalities, most notably Chicago, require that all firearms be registered with the local police department. Chicago does not allow the registration of handguns, which has the effect of outlawing their possession, unless they were grandfathered in by being registered before April 16, 1982. . .
Illinois is one of two remaining states that have no provision for the concealed carry of firearms by citizens. Open carry is also illegal, except when hunting. When a firearm is being transported, it must be unloaded and enclosed in a case.
If gun control works, there shouldn’t be any guns in Chicago, right?
The debate over net neutrality is frustrating, since so few people seem to know what they are talking about. This AP article (“FCC chief says no need for new regulation of the Internet”) is a good example:
The hearing was called at a time when the issue of “network neutrality”—the principle that people should be able to go where they choose on the Internet without interference from network owners—has heated up.
This is exactly not what network neutrality is about. The main thing to remember is the Internet is not, contrary to popular opinion, a bunch of wires. The Internet is a protocol. Specifically, the Internet Protocol (IP) is a way to route packets over a variety of networks.
An important property of IP is it provides best effort delivery. That means that sometimes it drops packets, typically when it gets too much traffic. Indeed, there is no way to prevent this in a packet-switched network, unless you can prevent routers from getting too much traffic, which IP does not do. If you want reliable delivery, you need to layer another protocol (such as TCP) on top of IP.
IP does not dictate any rules regarding how a router chooses which packets to drop. (This is what network neutrality supporters want to change.) Typically it chooses them arbitrarily. But, it could do something more sensible, based on the nature of the packets. Some packets are more important than others. For example, a video stream typically contains some keyframes and various other frames that depend on the latest keyframe. Dropping one of the latter frames is no big deal, but dropping a keyframe loses you a chunk of video. Therefore, we would like it if our router kept keyframes in preference to non-keyframes.
Furthermore, there’s been research on Quality of Service, by which we might somehow reserve a certain level of network performance. QoS is an active research area, but one thing is for certain, to achieve it we definitely need to discriminate between packets.
Network neutrality advocates are concerned that the people who own the routers might choose to discriminate between packets on some basis that’s bad, like “Google didn’t pay me any money, so I’ll deliver their packets slowly or not at all.” The thing is, exactly no one is proposing to do this. Were any ISP to do it (and it is the ISPs that people seem particularly concerned about), they would immediately lose their customers to another ISP that did not.
But what an ISP might do is establish some preferences between different sorts of traffic; for example to prefer interactive traffic over large downloads. (According to the article, Comcast has done this.) Someday, they might even implement Quality of Service. This is all for the good. It would be a tragedy if network neutrality were to prevent it.
The broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.
If I had ever heard of such a thing happening, I might feel differently. Until then, network neutrality is a solution to a non-existent problem, and one that, if not implemented very carefully, could be very harmful to the development of the Internet. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that I would estimate the likelihood of Congress being so careful at roughly zero.
A large shipment of weapons from China to Robert “get behind the fist” Mugabe (I won’t call him “President” any more) has been unable to reach him, as African ports have refused to unload the cargo. (Via Instapundit.) I’ve resisted getting too pleased by this, figuring China would find somewhere else to unload their guns, but this story has the first indication that they might give up:
China has defended the shipment as “perfectly normal trade” but Beijing has hinted it may recall the ship as it was unable to offload its cargo.
Pennsylvania Lt. Governor Catherine Baker Knoll makes a scene at a rally for Hillary Clinton:
Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato was introducing [Bill] Clinton to a crowd of about 6,000 people in Market Square, where they had gathered to hear a campaign speech by Clinton’s wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton.
When Onorato tried to hand over the microphone, Knoll grabbed it and let loose with some talk targeted at Onorato and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.
“They never recognize the lieutenant governor. These two men can’t stand women,” she said, before leaving the stage while talking to Onorato.
It gets weirder:
After the campaign event ended, Knoll spoke briefly with WTAE Channel 4 Action News reporter Paul Van Osdol.
“You really think that Mr. Onorato and Mr. Ravenstahl don’t like women?” Van Osdol asked.
“No, it’s a guy in the back who doesn’t know who Cathy Baker Knoll is,” Knoll said.
“Why did you say that about Luke and Dan?” Van Osdol asked.
“Because they’re afraid of the guys who call the shots,” Knoll said. “You know what? I’m not afraid of anybody.”
(There’s video.) How often do you see a politician simultaneously make powerful enemies and show the world that they’re barking mad? I think Knoll just committed political suicide.
“Some will be surprised that Penn, an Ivy League school, would reject Obama’s appeal to creative class ‘wine trackers.’ But the university is known as being heavily pre-professional, a favorite choice of New Yorkers, and in general, much less of an activist campus than brethren such as Brown, or even Yale and Harvard. So all in all, the endorsement is not a huge shock,” wrote Dana Goldstein at TAPPED.
The article (and the linked TAPPED article) doesn’t give any context, though, so I’m not sure how many of their readers will know what Goldstein meant.
Jim Rutenberg, who wrote the NYT’s last McCain hatchet job, has been called in for a second. This one is even more pathetic than the last. Ed Morrissey has the story.
DARPA has awarded contracts to several firms to build prototypes for the Vulture, an unmanned plane that would stay aloft for five years on solar power:
What the Pentagon wants is essentially a maneuverable satellite replacement: a fixed-wing, heavier-than-air craft that’s high enough to “see” large swaths of the Earth at once, but one that can also reposition itself to circle over new areas of interest, something satellites in fixed orbits can’t do.
It has to be able carry a 1,000-pound payload, battle stratospheric winds, generate a continuous 5 kilowatts of electricity — and it can’t use nuclear power to do so.
“We want to completely change the paradigm of how we think of aircraft,” Vulture project manager Daniel Newman tells Flight. “We would no longer define an aircraft by the launch, recover, maintain, launch cycle.”
Cool. It also would fly at 90 thousand feet, higher than most planes but quite a bit lower than satellites, which would give it better resolution.
As he suggested last week he might, Obama has decided to cancel the upcoming North Carolina debate. Were he to be brutalized again, it might affect his standing with the superdelegates. I expect this is the last time for a while that we’ll see him anywhere he can’t control the agenda.
Running out the clock makes good sense for Obama, if he can, but there is a downside. This pulls the rug out from underneath his spin that the last debate was a travesty for not focusing on the important issues. Apparently Obama doesn’t think there’s much more to be debated on those issues after all.
George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term.
I guess that’s where the tradition of presidents stepping down after one term in office started.
The critic now is suitably embarrassed, but what about the editors? I thought that editors and fact checking were supposed to be the big advantage of the mainstream media.
Carter announces the results of his meeting with Hamas:
Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas — the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel — is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to “live as a neighbor next door in peace.”
But Carter warned that there would not be peace if Israel and the U.S. continue to shut out Hamas and its main backer, Syria. . .
“They (Hamas) said that they would accept a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, if approved by Palestinians and that they would accept the right of Israel to live as a neighbor next door in peace,” Carter said.
Somehow this is not very exciting, even if we assume Carter is accurately reporting his conversation. Firstly, over half of Palestinians approve of attacks on Israeli civilians. Secondly, if such a referendum were actually held, and did pass, Hamas would simply renege. In fact, they already have:
Carter said Hamas promised it wouldn’t undermine Abbas’ efforts to reach a peace deal with Israel, as long as the Palestinian people approved it in a referendum. In such a scenario, he said Hamas would not oppose a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Carter said Hamas officials, including Mashaal, agreed to this in a written statement.
But Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri in Gaza said Hamas’ readiness to put a peace deal to a referendum “does not mean that Hamas is going to accept the result of the referendum.”
While searching for the video of Palestinians celebrating the 9/11attacks, I discovered an urban legend that seems to be popular in certain circles. It says that the video was not from 9/11 as CNN and other major new outlets claimed, but it was actually from 1991, celebrating Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. This YouTube comment is typical:
This footage was later proven to be from the 1990s so it had absolutely nothing to do with 911.
All around the world we are subjected to 3 or 4 huge news distributors, and one of them – as you well know – is CNN. Very well, I guess all of you have been seeing (just as I’ve been) images from this company. In particular, one set of images called my attencion: the Palestinians celebrating the bombing, out on the streets, eating some cake and making funny faces for the camera. Well, THOSE IMAGES WERE SHOT BACK IN 1991!!! Those are images of Palestinians celebrating the invasion of Kuwait! It’s simply unacceptable that a super-power of cumminications as CNN uses images which do not correspond to the reality in talking about so serious an issue. A teacher of mine, here in Brazil, has videotapes recorded in 1991, with the very same images; he’s been sending emails to CNN, Globo (the major TV network in Brazil) and newspapers, denouncing what I myself classify as a crime against the public opinion. If anyone of you has access to this kind of files, serch for it. In the meanwhile, I’ll try to ‘put my hands’ on a copy of this tape.
Snopes does a good job of debunking the legend, including statements from Reuters, CNN, and the Brazilian university where the legend originated, and also listing several other news outlets that carried the same story.
The debunking hasn’t stopped the Palestinians from promoting it. Here’s a video of Manuel Hassassian, the official Palestinian “Ambassador/General Delegate” to the United Kingdom, telling the story. (His version is a little bit different. Predictably, he blames Israel rather than CNN for the fraud.)
Given how incendiary the video is, it’s not surprising that the Palestinians would like to discredit it. Their first effort was to suppress such videos entirely, by threateningjournalists if the media ran them. For instance:
Encouraging the Associated Press in Jerusalem not to air the footage [of a September 12th rally in Nablus], Ahmed Abdel Rahman, Arafat’s cabinet secretary, said that the Palestinian Authority “cannot guarantee the life” of the cameraman if his film was broadcast.
Unfortunately for us (but fortunately for the cameraman) the AP folded. That particular video was never broadcast.
UPDATE: I found the original JPost story at the Wayback Machine. It’s a little different; it suggests that the AP producers, not the cameraman, were the ones being threatened.
According to a poll published in the Jerusalem Post, the number of Palestinians who support attacks on Israeli civilians now exceeds 50% for the first time, including nearly two-thirds of Gazans:
The number of Palestinians who support attacks against Israelis continues to rise and more than half of them favor suicide bombings, according to a poll published this weekend.
The survey also showed that Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh is still more popular than Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
The percentage of Palestinians who support “resistance operations” against Israeli targets rose from 43.1 percent in September 2006 to 49.5% at present. Support for this option was highest in the Gaza Strip, at 58.1%, with 24.5% in the West Bank agreeing.
Palestinians who support bombing attacks against Israeli civilians rose from 44.8% in June 2006 to 48% in September 2006 and to 50.7% now.
Again, more Gazans support these operations (65.1%), compared with 42.3% of Palestinians in the West Bank.
The Palestinian public is divided on the rocket attacks on Israel: 39.3% said the firing of these rockets was “useful” to Palestinian national interests, while 35.7% said they were harmful.
Over half of Palestinians approve of murdering civilians. They celebrated on 9/11. They chose Hamas in a free election. Why do we persist in thinking that these people will ever make peace?
ASIDE: It’s interesting that attacks on civilians (i.e., soft targets) gains the highest support, followed by “resistance operations”, and then rocket attacks (which often evoke an IDF response).
MoveOn.org claims they never opposed the campaign in Afghanistan. Tom Maguire tracks down the facts. (Via Instapundit.) The Internet Wayback Machine is involved.
At the debate, Charlie Gibson asked Obama about the handwriting on a questionnaire returned by his campaign on which someone wrote that Obama supports a total ban on handguns:
GIBSON: But do you still favor the registration of guns? Do you still favor the licensing of guns?
And in 1996, your campaign issued a questionnaire, and your writing was on the questionnaire that said you favored a ban on handguns.
OBAMA: No, my writing wasn’t on that particular questionnaire, Charlie. As I said, I have never favored an all-out ban on handguns.
No surprise; this was obviously coming. Now, someone needs to ask Obama the obvious follow-up questions:
Whose handwriting was it?
The handwriting in question was revising the answers to the questionnaire, to include some additional endorsements. Why did the staffer bother to revise the list of endorsements, but not correct all the inaccurate policy positions?
I suppose, though, that’s the sort of “gotcha” politics we’re not supposed to play.
At TalkLeft, Jeralyn Merritt reports a statement from Obama’s campaign that D.C.’s total ban on guns is constitutional:
But the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he “…believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.”
Bob Casey (D-PA), an Obama surrogate, goes further, saying that Obama approves of the ban:
Bob Casey: He would probably be a supporter, as he has been in the U.S. Senate and the Illinois legislature, for various restrictions on gun ownership. I happen to disagree with him on that, we have our disagreements.
(No link to either, so I’m trusting that Merritt transcribed them accurately.) Prepare to be disavowed, Senator Casey!
There’s more. David Bernstein notes that Obama wants to require that all gun dealers operate from a storefront and also wants to ban such storefronts within 5 miles of a school or park. (5 miles is roughly the radius of Pittsburgh.) And, shockingly, when a stolen gun is used to hurt someone, he wants to make it a felony on the part of the rightful owner if he didn’t store it “securely.”
I think we can close the book on Obama and gun rights now.
Zimbabwe’s opposition revealed 10 of its supporters have now been killed with 400 arrested and 500 injured in President Mugabe’s post-election clampdown.
As a further delay was announced in the recounting of votes cast over three weeks ago fears grew that an attempt is being made to overturn the results of the parliamentary election, which showed ZANU-PF losing its majority to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for the first time.
This makes sense for Mugabe, I suppose. As long as he’s going to thwart the Presidential election and stay in office, there’s no reason to abide by the Parliamentary vote.
But don’t despair, the African Union is on the case:
An AU statement said: “The African Union wishes to express its concern over the delay observed in the announcement of Zimbabwe’s election results, which creates an atmosphere of tension.
“The African Union therefore urges competent authorities of the Republic of Zimbabwe to announce the results without any further delay, in transparency, thus contributing, inter alia, to reducing the prevailing tension.”
A newspaper that defied the Kremlin by reporting that President Vladimir Putin was planning to marry an Olympic gold medal-winning rhythmic gymnast half his age was shut down yesterday. The closure of Moskovski Korrespondent, whose editor Grigori Nekhoroshev was forced to resign, was a sharp reminder of the perils of invoking Kremlin displeasure. . .
Its parent firm blamed “costs” and “conceptual disagreements with the newsroom” but insisted in a statement that “this has nothing to do with politics and is solely a business decision”. Few in Russia will believe that. The closure came a few hours after Putin had said during a visit to Sardinia that there was not a word of truth in the story.
It has previously been reported that Obama’s church has been known to print racist material in its worship bulletin. So it’s not as shocking as it should be to learn that in July 2007 Rev. Wright handed over his “Pastor’s Page” for a piece by Mousa Abu Marzook, a terrorist and front man for Hamas. In that column, Marzook justifies attacks on Israel, denies Israel’s right to exist, and bizarrely refers to a Fatah coup that partitioned the Palestinian Authority.
Even if Wright didn’t know Marzook was wanted by the government, Hamas has been designated a terrorist group since 1995, blacklisted by a Democrat administration.
Wright had to have known from headlines that Hamas targets innocent civilians in pizza parlors and buses for suicide bombings, eviscerating children and elderly with fireballs laced with nails and ball bearings. These are not warriors, but terrorists.
Obama, for his part, says he is shocked— shocked! — that his church would support Hamas.
“I certainly wasn’t in church when that outrageously wrong piece was reprinted in the bulletin,” he said in a carefully worded statement that denies only his attendance and not his prior knowledge of the bulletin.
The IBD editorial mentions something else I hadn’t known, that Wright’s ties to notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan go deeper than is generally known:
Obama also pleaded ignorance about Wright last year honoring anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan with a “lifetime achievement award,” even though the church featured Farrakhan on the cover of its magazine and held a gala in Chicago to celebrate his “greatness.”
This didn’t come out of the blue. Wright and Farrakhan go way back. In the 1980s, they traveled to Libya to pay homage to terrorist leader Muammar Qaddafi.
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has worked to assure uneasy gun owners that he believes the Constitution protects their rights and that he doesn’t want to take away their guns.
But before he became a national political figure, he sat on the board of a Chicago-based foundation that doled out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the opposite positions. . .
Obama’s eight years on the board of the Joyce Foundation, which paid him more than $70,000 in directors fees, do not in any way conflict with his campaign-trail support for the rights of gun owners . . . a spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, asserted in a statement issued to Politico this week.
As with most foundations, Joyce did not record how individual board members voted on grants, but former Joyce officials told Politico that funding was typically approved unanimously.
During Obama’s time on the Joyce board, though, the foundation gave seven grants totaling more than $2.5 million to a group that wants Congress to take much more proactive action: the Violence Policy Center.
The D.C.-based nonprofit, which calls itself “the most aggressive group in the gun control movement,” for years has argued for a national handgun ban.
In a 2000 study called “Unsafe in Any Hands: Why America Needs to Ban Handguns,” the group concluded that Congress could and should ban handguns nationwide “soon” and allocate $16.25 billion to buy back the 65 million handguns it estimated were then owned by civilians.
The study dismissed as “pure myth” the theory that the Second Amendment bars such strict gun control laws.
The study was funded partly by the Joyce Foundation, said Josh Sugarmann, the center’s executive director. “The Joyce Foundation gives us general support,” he said.
There’s more. I don’t doubt that Obama will disavow this; if you can disavow your own handwriting, you’ll disavow anything. Whether he’ll get away with it is another matter.
Gallup now gives Clinton the advantage over Obama among Democrats nationwide 46%-45%, with a very noticeable shift since the last debate. (Via Hot Air.) Both Democrats also tie McCain among registered voters.
The top story at the New York Times is a lengthy piece on the Pentagon’s information strategy. Although I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing yet, it seems pretty interesting. The NYT’s slant, of course, is that there’s something sinister about the Pentagon even to have an information strategy. (If they’re bothered by Al Qaeda having an information strategy, I’ve never heard of it.) Most of the Pentagon strategies they allude to (and cast aspersions on) seem like just good sense to me: court the media’s military experts, and give them access to the facts. They also write that the Pentagon recognizes the importance of not letting enemy propaganda drive the media cycle. (You’re doing a bang-up job, then. Thanks guys!)
I’m most interested, though, in the New York Times’s own information strategy. (Let’s not pretend they’re not a combatant in the information war.) They’re not targeting their article at any particular military expert. It doesn’t gain them much to discredit a single person, and they don’t have the material to do it anyway. More interestingly, they aren’t really targeting the Pentagon or the White House, which is surprising since there are few things they enjoy more. Instead, they are targeting media military experts as a group.
Why? Here’s my theory. The good news out of Iraq is becoming increasingly unavoidable. Even the bad news isn’t staying bad for long enough. The usual anti-war sources can only get them so far. In order to maintain their narrative, they need a way to discount all the positive news out of Iraq. If they can convince people that all the experts are colluding with the Pentagon to deceive us, the good news simply goes away.
Of course, they won’t succeed to that extent — the experts aren’t going away — but they can instill a grain of suspicion into every positive analysis. Look for a new meme on the left: any expert that speaks of progress is a tool of the Pentagon. (Not just former generals, incidentally, but also embedded journalists.) What we need, they will say, are “independent” experts, ones with no active ties to the military. The “independent” experts will not know anything — they’ll have no sources, after all — but they will be reliably anti-war (not knowing anything will help), and they’ll serve as a counterbalance to any good news out of Iraq.
UPDATE: Commentary has two columns on the piece. (Via Instapundit.) Max Boot’s analysis agrees substantially with mine, except without the prediction. (Internet Scofflaw: tomorrow’s expert analysis from a non-expert today!) John Podhoretz thinks that the piece was an investigative report that failed to uncover any wrongdoing, but they couldn’t bear to kill. (Note to the NYT: sunk cost.)
It’s popular in certain circles to assert that US funding for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war went to Osama Bin Laden. This is convenient for that crowd, because it places the ultimate blame for all of his atrocities back where they want it, on the United States. The problem is, it’s not true in the slightest.
There were two factions of Afghans who fought against the Soviets. One was a domestic faction that eventually evolved into the Northern Alliance. The other was the so-called “Afghan Arabs”, foreign Muslims (mostly Arabs) who came into Afghanistan to fight the jihad. Osama Bin Laden, obviously, was a member of the latter faction. The United States funded the former faction, but never gave a cent to the latter. The latter was funded primarily by Saudi Arabia. (The Taliban, incidentally, didn’t exist then at all.)
This is made clear by this article from the US Department of State. Richard Miniter has a good column on the subject as well. I found both articles with just a few minutes of Googling; it’s hardly a secret.
UPDATE (9/12/11): Freshened the stale links with links to the Internet Archive.
At Abu Muqawama, an interesting account of how the Basra operation (Sawlat al-Fursan) came to pass in the way that it did. (Via Instapundit.) It’s anonymously sourced, so grains of salt are required. If it’s true, the operation was planned very differently, but they had to start early and improvise due to a counter-intelligence failure. The green units that deserted weren’t supposed to be involved much at all. Interesting.
Iraqi soldiers swooped on the Basra stronghold of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday, saying they had seized control of his militia bastion where they suffered an embarrassing setback in late March.
The dawn raid by government troops on the Hayaniya district of the southern oil city was backed by a thunderous bombardment by U.S. warplanes and British artillery.
Iraqi soldiers took control of the last bastions of the cleric Moktada al-Sadr’s militia in Basra on Saturday, and Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad strongly endorsed the Iraqi government’s monthlong military operation against the fighters.
By Saturday evening, Basra was calm, but only after air and artillery strikes by American and British forces cleared the way for Iraqi troops to move into the Hayaniya district and other remaining Mahdi Army militia strongholds and begin house-to house searches, Iraqi officials said. Iraqi troops were meeting little resistance, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the spokesman for the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad.
Despite the apparent concession of Basra, Mr. Sadr issued defiant words on Saturday night.
You know Sadr is at the end of his rope when both the NYT and Iran throw in the towel. Defiant words are about all he has left.
In response to the Obamaists’ apoplexy at their candidate being asked about his friendships with a racist and a terrorist, Peter Wehner proposes a hypothetical:
Assume that a conservative candidate for the GOP nomination spent two decades at a church whose senior pastor was a white supremacist who uttered ugly racial (as well as anti-American) epithets from the pulpit. Assume, too, that this minister wasn’t just the candidate’s pastor but also a close friend, the man who married the candidate and his wife, baptized his two daughters, and inspired the title of his best-selling book.
In addition, assume that this GOP candidate, in preparing for his entry into politics, attended an early organizing meeting at the home of a man who, years before, was involved in blowing up multiple abortion clinics and today was unrepentant, stating his wish that he had bombed even more clinics. And let’s say that the GOP candidate’s press spokesman described the relationship between the two men as “friendly.”
Do you think that if those moderating a debate asked the GOP candidate about these relationships for the first time, after 22 previous debates had been held, that other journalists would become apoplectic at the moderators for merely asking about the relationships? Not only would there be a near-universal consensus that those questions should be asked; there would be a moral urgency in pressing for answers. We would, I predict, be seeing an unprecedented media “feeding frenzy.”
The truth is that a close relationship with a white supremacist pastor and a friendly relationship with an abortion clinic bomber would, by themselves, torpedo a conservative candidate running for president. There is an enormous double standard at play here, one rooted in the fawning regard many journalists have for Barack Obama. They have a deep, even emotional, investment in his candidacy.
Posted by K. Crary 
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