June 09, 2007

A NOVEL DEBATE PROPOSAL gathers steam.

WHO SAID THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION WASN'T KEEPING AN EYE ON THE BORDER:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Friday that Washington is taking steps to address Mexican concerns the U.S. is not doing enough to stop illegal weapons from being smuggled across the border and into the hands of brutal drug gangs. . . . "The firepower we are seeing here has to do with a lack of control on the (U.S.) side of the border," Patricio Patino, Mexico's top anti-drug intelligence official, said last month.

Maybe they could build a fence, or something . . . . Really, you can't make this stuff up.

CHINA IS CENSORING FLICKR: Probably trying to keep citizens from seeing Taiwan's Betelnut Beauties and wondering if they're on the wrong side . . . .

REASONS TO LIKE BILL RICHARDSON:

He owns a 12-gauge Browning over-and-under shotgun, which he has used for hunting birds, including quail and dove. Richardson also owns a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, which is not for hunting, but he has a state permit to carry it concealed. He has borrowed rifles to hunt big game such as elk, deer and the oryx. . . .

While a congressman, the Democrat voted against a ban on assault weapons and opposed a seven-day waiting period for handgun purchases. As governor, he backed and signed legislation allowing New Mexicans to carry concealed weapons.

His space-related record is good, too. (Via Alphecca). I don't like what he says about the war, though like all the candidates, what he says now is one thing, what he'll do once actually in office in 2009 is another.

ANBAR SPREADS?

U.S. military officials say they are making progress in negotiating with tribal leaders in a turbulent region north of Baghdad, using a formula that helped reduce violence in western Iraq. . . .

Anbar province, once among the most violent regions in Iraq, is held up as an example of how local politics can reduce violence. "A year ago we were about to write off Anbar province," Everett said. "We have turned it completely around."

A key part of the turnaround was an effort to work with tribal leaders. A growing number of the leaders, sometimes called sheiks, have joined with U.S. forces and turned against al-Qaeda militants. The average weekly attacks in Anbar province dropped from about 250 last year to about 100 last month, according to the U.S. military. This year 12,000 Iraqis volunteered for Iraqi security forces in Anbar, up from 1,000 in 2006, Odierno said.

"Anbar could be a microcosm of what could happen in the rest of country if the right elements come into play," said Army Col. Ralph Baker, a former brigade commander who served two tours in Iraq and now serves at the Pentagon.

Goins said he has used the example of Anbar when meeting with tribal leaders. He said he has met regularly with them since arriving in Iraq last fall.

Diyala differs significantly from Anbar. Anbar is almost entirely Sunni Muslim and influenced by tribal leaders. Diyala is split between Sunnis and Shiites and has 25 major tribes and more than 100 minor groups or offshoots. "The melting pot of tribes in Diyala makes it problematic," Goins said in a telephone interview from Iraq.

Let's hope they can pull it off.

AUSTIN BAY LOOKS AT Putin, missiles, and Russia's problems.

ANTIGUN CONGRESSMAN FORCED TO GIVE UP HIS RIFLES AND SHOTGUNS: Heh.

VACLAV HAVEL criticizes appeasement at the E.U.

I still think he should have been Secretary General of the UN.

STANLEY KURTZ ECHOES BILL QUICK: "Without the conservative web, the immigration bill would likely have passed–probably in a rushed vote before Memorial Day."

Hmmm. You can write off Quick's comments as blogosphere triumphalism, but not so much with Kurtz.

ANOTHER TERROR BUST: "A suspected international arms dealer was arrested yesterday in Spain and charged with conspiracy to sell millions of dollars in weapons to a State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization in Colombia to kill Americans."

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is up!

WAS THE IMMIGRATION BILL COLLAPSE A DEFEAT FOR BUSH? Yes, but:

On the other hand, the immigration compromise was almost universally disliked and threatened to split the GOP coalition. Maybe its death was a blessing for the president.

Unless he's dumb enough to bring it up again, which I predict he will be.

MORE ON THE WINKLER CASE.

A COLLECTION OF FATHER'S DAY GIFTS that goes beyond power tools and grilling gadgets -- not that there's anything wrong with those!

Me, I like the Simpsons DVDs.

PARIS HILTON: Victim of society! And George W. Bush!

It's a fair cop.

WAS PATRICK FITZGERALD'S APPOINTMENT unconstitutional? Some big names on the brief.

IS IT "CASTLE DOCTRINE" DAY IN TENNESSEE? Actually, I think that every day is.

MICKEY KAUS: "I'd never work for an organization that would botch a big story as thoroughly as the Washington Post Company's flagship has botched this year's immigration bill coverage! ... Oh, wait."

UPDATE: Hey, it's not the only story they're blowing!

Maybe we could make a shorter list of reporting that doesn't contain massive factual errors induced by beltway spin?

KEEPING THE NATIVES poor and happy. And picturesque!

UPDATE: It's the Green Man's Burden!

A LOOK AT what's a hate crime, and what isn't, using the Channon Christian / Christopher Newsom murders as a springboard.

SO IS THIS GOOD NEWS OR BAD NEWS?

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed more than forecast in April as a weaker dollar pushed exports to a record and demand for imports waned.

The deficit fell 6.2 percent, the most in six months, to $58.5 billion, from a revised $62.4 billion in March, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. The gap declined even as the shortfall with China widened.

The dollar's drop and expanding economies in Europe and Asia are fueling demand for American-made goods and the deficit is retreating from a record $67.6 billion in August. The gain in exports may also help economic growth accelerate after the slowest quarter in more than four years.

Good news, I think. Am I wrong?

June 08, 2007

BRINK LINDSEY'S NEW BOOK, The Age of Abundance, gets a very positive review from George Will:

It took confidence for Brink Lindsey, of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, to venture onto this well-plowed ground with “The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture.” This constantly stimulating book vindicates that confidence. His thesis, stated ironically with Karl Marx’s categories, is that in the second half of the 20th century, America left the “realm of necessity” and entered the “realm of freedom.” Americans “live on the far side of a great fault line” separating them from all prior human experience. . . .

Lindsey rightly says that “today’s typical red-state conservative is considerably bluer on race relations, the role of women and sexual morality than his predecessor of a generation ago.” And “the typical bluestate liberal is considerably redder than his predecessor when it comes to the importance of markets to economic growth, the virtues of the two-parent family and the morality of American geopolitical power.” In “the bell curve of ideological allegiance,” the large bulging center has settled, for now, on an “implicit libertarian synthesis, one which reaffirms the core disciplines that underlie and sustain the modern lifestyle while making much greater allowances for variations within that lifestyle.” If so, material abundance has been, on balance , good for us, and Lindsey’s measured cheerfulness is, like his scintillating book, reasonable.

As I mentioned a while back, I read Brink's book and thought it was very good.

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER: "After hearing more than four hours of testimony and attorney arguments today, a McNairy County judge sentenced Mary Winkler, who shot her preacher-husband to death last year, to what amounts to a week in prison and 60 days in a facility where she can receive mental health treatment. . . . Winkler, 33, was charged with first-degree murder after shooting Matthew Winkler in the back with a shotgun on March 22 last year as he lay in bed."

UPDATE: More here.

MORE EVIDENCE that your tax dollars are wasted.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE REELECTED, prudishness would dominate the airwaves. And they were right!

JFK TERROR UPDATE: "The investigation into the thwarted plot to bomb Kennedy International Airport is widening beyond the four men in custody, with more suspects sought outside the U.S. for their suspected roles, a law enforcement official said Friday."

Meanwhile, here's a suggestion that the terrorists' plan was poorly conceived.

RASMUSSEN ON WHY THE IMMIGRATION BILL FAILED:

The reality is much simpler and has nothing to do with legislative tactics. The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people are opposed to it. Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters are opposed. Men are opposed. So are women. The young don’t like it; neither do the no-longer-young. White Americans are opposed. Americans of color are opposed.

The last Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll found that just 23% of Americans supported the legislation.

Bill Quick adds: "I have to say that the right blogosphere as a whole did an excellent job of revealing and mobilizing this sentiment. . . . Ten years ago, this bill would have been passed and signed by the president before most Americans were even aware that it existed. Those days are over."

J.D. JOHANNES offers predictions for this summer in Iraq. Excerpt:

If the Anbar Awakening works, AQIZ is in trouble and will be seen as losing not only the war against the U.S. but of losing support among their core constituency--Sunni Muslims.

Baghdad will be increasingly violent because if the surge shows even some signs of success, it will be extended and therefore deny victory to those who profit by chaos and a U.S. departure.

The best way for AQIZ and Jaysh al Mahdi puppet masters to derail the surge and the awakening is through spectacular violence--truck bombs, suicide vest bombs, suicide attacks on coalition bases and increasingly violent ways to carry out the sectarian murder campaigns.

The spectacular generates news media coverage and ratings points that drown out all other facts and progress leading public opinion to an ill informed conclusion--that the whole project should be abandoned because it cannot be won.

As the summer wears on expect more spectacular and more frequent attacks.

I also predict the Anbar Awakening will not remain isolated to Anbar. The Sheiks of Anbar are already reaching out to other Sunni provinces. These Sheiks will embrace the Anbar model of local neighborhood watches, check points and an IP that works with the coalition.

The Sheiks of Anbar will also be sending more 'qualified men' to Sunni suburbs in Baghdad.

Read the whole thing.

SO AS I MENTIONED A WHILE BACK, I set up the weather radio that's supposed to warn you if there's a tornado warning or other threats. Then, of course, we immediately got the calmest spell of weather we've had in ages. But today we had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning and though no alarm sounded (I silenced it for most alerts, as we get a lot of those, and I don't want to be awakened for something like that) it lit the little "warning" light and "Severe Thunderstorm Warning" scrolled across the display. So I guess it works!

GOODBYE TO TOTINO'S. There's actually a Totino's Restaurant behind the famous "Party Pizza?" Weird. That's like hearing that your dad used to date Mrs. Filbert.

LIVE FROM LIFTOFF: The Popular Mechanics folks are blogging from the Shuttle launch at Cape Canaveral. Plus, ten tough questions for NASA Administrator Mike Griffin.

TERRORISM BY THE NUMBERS.

MICKEY KAUS has a roundup on the immigration bill's failure.

A LOOK AT politics and Roe v. Wade.

WINNING BY LOSING in suing Gateway. Or is it losing by winning?

MICHAEL MOORE WOULD BE JEALOUS: A look at Russian film history.

ANOTHER PHOTO ESSAY from Michael Yon.

I PREDICT THAT THIS WILL DO WELL: The Fred Factor: How Fred Thompson May Change The Face Of The '08 Campaign.

PROMISE BREAKERS:

The ABC News/Washington Post poll found that among all Americans, only 29 percent approve of the way Bush is handling the immigration issue. That’s the lowest Bush has ever been on the issue in the survey.

Note, too, that overall approval ratings of the Democratic majority in Congress are even lower than those of the president.

Clearly, most Americans don’t approve of promise breakers.

But that's what we keep getting.

A NEW BOOK BY MICHAEL BARONE: Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers. (Via, er, Michael Barone.)

ACE OFFERS IMPORTANT THOUGHTS on leering and feminism. "Weird. Feminists continue insisting that it's empowering to f*ck everything that moves, except your actual husband, who must be sexually punished as a state-sanctioned enforcer of The Oppressive Patriarchy."

Plus this:

Old, Hateful, Barbaric Rule: Women must keep their eyes averted when speaking to their superiors, men

New, Empowering, Enlightened Rule: Men must keep their eyes averted when speaking to their superiors, women

Upside: On looking at Jeri Thompson's actual age, as opposed to that originally imagined by feminist bloggers, I'm now declaring the Insta-Wife to be the "Insta-Trophy-Wife."

UPDATE: Alex Bensky emails: "Hey, Glenn, why not consider the possibility that you're Helen's trophy husband?"

Good point! Yeah, that's the ticket!

ANGEL FLIGHT: Alan Boyle looks at financing new commercial space ventures.

MICHAEL MALONE WRITES that working at home isn't as glamorous as you might think:

There's a video of me, when my kids were young, sitting in a rented house in Oregon on vacation. Barney is on the television, my boys are having a pillow war all around me, my wife is vacuuming, and I am on the couch with my laptop writing a New York Times column, oblivious to the noise, flying objects and general chaos around me. Somehow, over the years, I learned how to focus -- despite almost having flunked out of college because I was incapable of studying while wearing music headphones. Can you do that?

Read the whole thing. But the photo accompanying his article is certainly glamorous! Oh, wait, he addresses that: "In truth, real life working at home is to those glamor stories as real life home offices (empty coffee cups, magazines on the floor, overstuffed waste baskets) are to the photos that illustrate those articles."

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS looks at what (Fred) Thompsonomics might look like.

A LOOK AT FRED THOMPSON'S FUNDRAISING RESULTS so far.

A LOOK AT IRAN'S "secret cells" in Iraq, from Bill Roggio.

THE POLITICO: immigration deal collapses. Is it fully dead? Or just mostly dead? Because mostly dead is still slightly alive. So it may not be time to go through its pockets and look for loose change yet..

Kaus agrees: "Of course, the bill isn't dead. Just resting."

June 07, 2007

ANOTHER MYTH BUSTED? "He’s the ultimate symbol of radical chic but was Che Guevara really a homophobic, racist square who personally ordered the jailing and executions of innocent men, women and children?"

"GREEDY LITTLE PIMPS' EYES:" It does seem to be a transatlantic phenomenon.

INTERNET CENSORSHIP IS SPREADING, partly because big companies are collaborating. Perhaps some shareholder pressure is in order.

GUNS ON CAMPUS: Law enforcement officials are split on the subject.

AND THAT'S A BAD THING: "The story according to which politically connected industries block economic developments that would be beneficial overall but redound to the detriment of the big players is one expounded mostly by cranks in the U.S., but is commonly accepted in Europe. This results from the fact that in Europe, this kind of thing happens."

Of course, the United States is not immune to politically connected efforts to block new technologies.

TAUNTING ME with Kegerator blogging.

BATTERED COLUMNIST SYNDROME.

QUESTIONING THE TIMING of questions about the timing.

UNSECURE SECURITY AT THE F.B.I. Homeland Security remains not ready for primetime.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: David Obey is getting home-state flak:

In six months David Obey has gone from hero to villain.

Late last year the Wisconsin Democrat who heads the powerful House Appropriations Committee helped to spark an effort to save taxpayers billions of dollars by reining in pork-barrel spending.

But Obey is now dodging the very reforms he helped to generate. . . . He announced that because more than 30,000 earmark requests had been made so far this year, it was impossible to determine which had merit.

His solution was to wait until the end of the lawmaking process, where earmarks would be submitted in closed-door sessions of the committee that negotiates the differences between House and Senate versions of bills.

With this maneuver, Obey would enhance his own power but prevent the public and most lawmakers from questioning earmarks until it is too late.

Read the whole thing. Especially if you're Obey, or live in his district.

HAPPY SUMMER VACATION: E. Coli in beach sand.

HOW TO REVIVE A FADING CAREER: Israel-Bashing! It's the Boost Plus of politics!

IN THE MAIL: Dr. Grattan Woodson's The Bird Flu Preparedness Planner.

A couple of other avian flu items here and here. As I've noted before, regardless of whether avian flu ever becomes a deadly human pandemic, the likelihood is fairly high that we'll see some sort of deadly pandemic in the next decade or two. And most flu preparations will also help in the case of some other dangerous disease outbreak.

Also, on a not entirely unrelated subject, Paul Collier's The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Overall, the world is getting richer, even most of the world's poor. But there are still a lot of dirt-poor people out there, and that raises the risk of disease outbreaks.

WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR ENERGY FOOTPRINT: And bills!

Plus, summer lawn-prep. Mine consists of praying for rain. Hey, we got some!

SPEAKING OF FLOATING ADVANTAGEOUS RUMORS: "A man has sued the maker of the health drink Boost Plus, claiming the vitamin-enriched beverage gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized."

What do you think: Does this hurt Boost sales or help them?

Erection story -- good for Boost sales or bad?
	Good. Are you kidding?
	Bad. Who wants a "Winter Shunt" in his wingwang?
pollcode.com free polls

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE looks at pirates and the law.

STUCK IN virtual reality. Didn't that plot start with Tron?

TURNING SKIN CELLS INTO STEM CELLS: "In a surprising advance that could sidestep the ethical debates surrounding stem cell biology, researchers have come much closer to a major goal of regenerative medicine, the conversion of a patient’s cells into specialized tissues that might replace those lost to disease."

Bring it on!

YOU'VE GOT TO FIGHT, FOR YOUR RIGHT to leer.

Hey, they said that if George W. Bush were reelected people would be trying to turn the clock back to the 1950s. And they were right!

BILL ROGGIO TAKES A LOOK AT the state of Iraqi security forces.

WATCH OUT WHERE THE HUSKIES GO: "Dirty snow may warm Arctic as much as greenhouse gases."

IT'S STILL ALL IMMIGRATION, ALL THE TIME at Kausfiles. Rapid fire! Multiple updates! He's blogging like he's afraid Slate will hire a recently amnestied immigrant to replace him!

UPDATE: More here.

PATRICK FITZGERALD, call your office.

DOES THE GOP ESTABLISHMENT REALLY "hate and fear Fred Thompson?" I haven't gotten that impression, but maybe I've missed something.

Of course, given the popularity of the GOP establishment, maybe it's the Thompson camp that's floating this idea . . . .

GIVEN THAT THE ORIGINAL TRIAL SEEMED LIKE A GROTESQUE MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE, this is good news:

Julie Amero, the substitute teacher who could have received 40 years in jail after porn appeared on classroom PCs, was spared that fate—for now. Instead, Amero will get a new trial after revelations that the original computer analysis was flawed.

Since it was almost certainly malware that caused this, a new trial seems like the least that can be expected here. This case shouldn't have been prosecuted.

Much more from Mark Frauenfelder.

JAMES LILEKS IS NOW POSTING AT BUZZ.MN, too.

MICHAEL YON EMAILS:

Many readers are asking about the situation in Hit, Iraq after LTC Doug Crissman arrested General Hamid. http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/the-final-option.htm

In response to overwhelming reader inquiries, I asked LTC Crissman if he would address the public at home and give folks an idea of the outcome. LTC Crissman just responded via email. This posting is with his permission. The outcome is as fascinating as the arrest:

Mike,

The Hit City Council now unanimously stands behind the nomination for Gen Hamid's replacement. Though I haven't spoken to him myself, the Provincial Chief of Police reportedly also concurs and has forwarded our nomination to the Anbar Provincial Council for their final review/approval. We're still working hard to reschedule the visit by the Governor, Provincial Council Chairman and Provincial Chief of Police which was cancelled due to weather last Saturday. Through Coalition channels, we continue to encourage a sense of urgency for the Anbar Provincial Government so we can get a new guy into the seat ASAP. In the meantime, I've met with the incumbent several times already and truly believe he'll be the professional we need to get this Police Force on the right track. A career officer from the Iraqi Army, he thinks, looks, and acts like a soldier...which is exactly what we need here in Hit. Yesterday, he recommended 3 other retired/former members of the Iraqi Army to be hired as members of the Hit District Staff -- all of whom have impressive credentials and skill sets we've been trying to build ourselves.

After about 72 hours of increased Coalition Force presence and a stricter curfew in Hit, we've now returned to business as usual. There are still those who feel Hamid should have merely been fired rather than detained, but the overwhelming majority agrees what we did needed to be done...and I continue to remind them that they asked us to do it...repeatedly.

Doug

Sounds good.

June 06, 2007

RONALD REGAN, GEORGE FORMAN, AND RUDOLF GIULIANI? Well, it's not Speller of the Year. Those tend to be homeschooled.

UPDATE: Yes, having three misspellings in one PR email -- and misspellings of famous names at that -- does tend to suggest that the not-ready-for-primetime character of the Edwards campaign hasn't been fixed.

BARACK OBAMA MET WITH PHIL BREDESEN YESTERDAY: "Obama didn't elaborate on what was discussed, but he said Tennessee has smart Democrats who are able to fashion the kind of agenda that attracts support of independents and Republicans."

Gee, where have I heard that before? Hmm. . . Obama/Bredesen?

UPDATE: More on Obama/Bredesen -- including video -- here.

LOTS OF SPACEBLOGGING at the Carnival of Space.

CHUCK HAGEL GETS A CHALLENGER:

The attorney general of Nebraska, Jon Bruning, stopped by our office yesterday to let us know that tomorrow he will announce he will challenge Senator Hagel in the Republican primary, which is in May of 2008. A poll conducted for Mr. Bruning shows him leading Mr. Hagel among likely Republican primary voters by 9 percentage points. Mr. Bruning assails Mr, Hagel for being, "The Republican that talks like a Democrat," pointing to Mr. Hagel's support for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, as well as his discussion of impeaching President Bush. "He's become arrogant and out of touch," Mr. Bruning said. "His constituent services are very poor."

That's bad poll news for an incumbent. (Via Bill Quick, who thinks the GOP establishment will try to sink Bruning. They'd be crazy to -- which, I suppose, doesn't rule it out.)

UPDATE: Via Bill Quick's comments, here's Bruning's website.

GRAPHING THE SURGE.

IT'S NOT JUST CAPE WIND, but a far more general problem:

Al Gore has been hectoring Americans to pare back their lifestyles to fight global warming. But if Mr. Gore wants us to rethink our priorities in the face of this mother of all environmental threats, surely he has convinced his fellow greens to rethink theirs, right?

Wrong. If their opposition to the Klamath hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest is any indication, the greens, it appears, are just as unwilling to sacrifice their pet causes as a Texas rancher is to sacrifice his pickup truck. If anything, the radicalization of the environmental movement is the bigger obstacle to addressing global warming than the allegedly gluttonous American way of life. . . .

These dams provide cheap, renewable energy to 70,000 homes in Oregon and California. Replacing this energy with natural gas -- the cleanest fossil-fuel source -- would still pump 473,000 tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. This is roughly equal to the annual emissions of 102,000 cars.

Given this alternative, one would think that environmentalists would form a human shield around the dams to protect them. Instead, they have been fighting tooth-and-nail to tear them down because the dams stand in the way of migrating salmon. Environmentalists don't even let many states, including California, count hydro as renewable. . . .

Their opposition to nuclear energy is well known. Wind power? Two years ago the Center for Biological Diversity sued California's Altamont Pass Wind Farm for obstructing and shredding migrating birds. ("Cuisinarts of the sky" is what many greens call wind farms.) Solar? Worldwatch Institute's Christopher Flavin has been decidedly lukewarm about solar farms because they involve placing acres of mirrors in pristine desert habitat. The Sierra Club and Wilderness Society once testified before Congress to keep California's Mojave Desert -- one of the prime solar sites in the country -- off limits to all development. Geothermal energy? They are unlikely to get enviro blessings, because some of the best sites are located on protected federal lands.

Kind of makes you doubt their sincerity. If global warming is the crisis they say, then all the other stuff is secondary. If all the other stuff isn't secondary, then do they really believe it's the crisis they say? It's just a Laurie David of a different color.

NEWS: "Iran caught red-handed shipping arms to Taliban." By NATO officials, which will make it a bit harder for the Euros to ignore.

WHY NOT HAVE THE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES debate each other now? "Whoever wins is EVENTUALLY going to be pitted against someone from the opposite party.... shouldn't we want to see what they seem like in contrast with their eventual opponent?"

UPDATE: I like the Family Feud suggestion in the comments!

MORE ON L'AFFAIRE BRITTNEY, here, and here. Also here, and a poll, here.

UPDATE: Beware the bloggers' bile! "The smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn't move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed." Even when, as in Brittney's case, the ridiculers are confused.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. And here.

STRATEGYPAGE ON IRAQ: "Militarily, U.S. troops are unstoppable. But American military success is not what will bring victory in Iraq, it's the willingness of Iraqis to stop killing each other. Ultimate success is a quiet Iraq and American troops going home. But the Sunni Arabs have had a real hard time living with the idea that they are no longer in power. However, four years of getting hammered by U.S. and, increasingly, Iraqi, troops, has caused a very visible shift in attitudes." The question is whether things will change fast enough, in enough places, to prevent disaster, especially disaster for the Sunnis.

MY EARLIER WIND POWER POSTS produced this email from PR guy Marshall Manson:

I saw your post this morning about Wind Power, and I thought you might like to know that the American Wind Energy Association (our client) is currently putting on Windpower 2007, the industry’s huge convention and trade show. We had a number of bloggers attend and provide coverage, and thought you might be interested in a couple of good posts:

Link

Link

AWEA also did a Flickr feed for the event and a YouTube channel which has some great video of some of the expert discussions.

Link

Link

Very interesting.

PROBE: "A group of House Republicans are calling for an investigation into 'the release of sensitive information' in a recent ABC News report on CIA covert activities against Iran."

UPDATE: Oh, well, the word's out anyway!

YOU'D THINK THE WHOLE NIFONG THING WOULD BE OVER, but you'd be wrong. Just keep scrolling.

A PROBLEM WITH ASSIMILATION: "Moslem migrants get off the plane from the old country, and within a short time, they are looking at the same newscasts they consumed back home. When they attempt to discus world affairs with the locals, they quickly find a vast difference of opinions. Most Moslems recoil and retreat into an insular migrant mind set. This is why you have Moslems in places like Britain, or anywhere else in the West, clinging to old country myths, even with a lot of contradictory evidence confronting them daily."

It's unfortunate that as immigration gets easier, the forces of assimilation get weaker.

SOME RANDOM OBSERVATIONS FROM IRAQ, courtesy of J.D. Johannes. Lots of good stuff, but note this:

The bureacracy--even in combat--is staggering. To get some things done the request has to go through 15! steps of approval.

One Company Commander summed it up like this:

"They trust me with the lives of 100 men, humvees, weapons, ammo, civil affairs negotiations, classified intelligence, radios, everything. But I cannot be trusted with $20k worth of Dinar to hire a crew to build up an IP station?"

Which is interesting, because I keep hearing that the appeal of JAM and AQIZ is the money.

I saw one sheet listing the rewards for tips. But the rewards were lower than what JAM and AQIZ pay.

Is the coalition losing a bidding war?

Read the whole thing. Remember my earlier blogging about the CERP program and how the bureaucrats were blowing it?

THE TRUTH ABOUT SYRIA: Michael Totten interviews the author.

BRITTNEY GILBERT hangs up her keyboard in response to reader abuse. "I do not want to be seen as a victim here, I only want to honestly tell you why I will no longer be authoring NIT. Your host is simply not cut from strong enough cloth. This is the internet. People are vicious."

It's true, they are. But I suspect Brittney will be back, because the addictive nature of blogging is strong, too.

UPDATE: Oliver Willis emails:

You may want to (I know you probably won't) note that a lot of the vitriol got directed at Gilbert, right or wrong, after she linked and excerpted a mean dig at the recently deceased Steve Gilliard.

But I know you've got an agenda and a cause to push and all.

Hmm. I thought this was about the Bob Krumm / Kleinheider dustup. But since Brittney is an antiwar blogger who doesn't like me very much, I'm not sure what "agenda" and "cause" I'm pushing here. Better email Rove for instructions, I guess!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oliver emails that it's actually about this post.

MORE: Bruce Hill wonders if Oliver and I have had a falling out. Well, I had high hopes for Oliver once, but since he went to work for Media Matters I think he's squandered his potential. Still, Oliver seems to care much more about my blogging than I do about his. But then, he's paid to, I guess.

MORE STILL: Various readers note that Oliver is in no position to criticize anyone for speaking ill of the dead. Basically, though, he went off half-cocked and made a fool out of himself, along with a lot of other lefty bloggers here.

But yeah, he's in no position to take a "have you no decency, sir" stance on, well, anything. People who work for David Brock seldom are.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS ON Giuliani's libertarian health reform plans.

WHO CARES ABOUT THE PLANET? KOSSACKS STILL LAGGING:

Come on, you guys can beat InstaPundit if you try. There are supposed to be a lot more Kos readers, and surely they care about the planet. Right?

UPDATE: Reader Bradley Ems emails: "As PJ O’Rourke once said, everyone wants to save the world; no one wants to help mom with the dishes."

A LOOK AT INKJET IMAGE PERMANENCE, or the lack thereof.

SNAKE-HANDLING CONGREGATIONALISTS for freedom.

WILLIAM JEFFERSON MYSTERY, SOLVED.

STILL MORE SCARBOROUGH.

INFORMATION WARFARE:

The days of the independent, neutral war correspondent, objectively reporting from a war's front lines, are quickly coming to an end. In the future, a war correspondent will either effectively be soldier for one faction of a conflict, or he will literally not survive in the war zone. In today's media age, the requirement for combatants to shape perceptions about the nature of a conflict, and the necessity of denying that ability to the enemy, are more crucial than firepower and logistics, the traditional measures of battlefield dominance. Successful media operations energize a faction's supporters and demoralize its enemies. When effective, this is more important than squadrons of fighter-bombers or train-loads of assault rifles. Whether they like or not, journalists are in the army now.

You couldn't tell it from their product. Well, I guess that depends on which army you mean . . .

A LOOK AT AIDS, AFRICA, AND THE ELECTIONS:

Bush didn’t just renew his historic initiative, he vastly expanded it. But unlike with the first five-year run of PEPFAR, this time he won’t be around to make good on his promises. That will fall to the next President. So if you think of yourself as a social-justice-loving sort of person, you should make damn sure that whoever you vote for has made clear that, on Africa, they’ll carry forward Bush’s legacy, rather than bringing us back to the dark days of Clintonian indifference.

If that happens, it will be because of personal belief, not politics. As Bush's history makes clear, his support on this issue has done nothing for him politically, as not enough people care.

TURKISH TROOPS in Iraq.

UPDATE: Huge roundup on the subject here.

IN THE MAIL: Joshua Kurlantzick's Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World. He's right about that, and the kinds of things that China is doing are things that we ought to be doing better, but that our bureaucracies (and in particular the State Department) aren't very good at. Perhaps this book will draw some attention to that problem.

EVERYBODY'S A CRITIC: "I'd like to congratulate Mitt Romney on being the first to introduce a term from mathematical set theory into a presidential campaign... except that he plainly has no clue what 'null set' actually means. If he DID have any clue, he'd know to say 'THE null set,' not 'A null set.'"

A JOE SCARBOROUGH ROUNDUP, from Howard Kurtz.

GOOD NEWS from Derek Lowe. "I'm very glad to announce that I've accepted an offer of a new research position. . . . It's a bit unsettling for me to realize, though, how much my search was helped out by things that had no official connection to my old position - this blog, for one thing." Not surprising, though.

A CONFESSION: In my entire life, I've never felt bad about my neck. That doesn't make me a shallow person, does it?

UPDATE: I guess it's part of the Zabar's Zeitgeist!

TERRY HEATON 1, COMPUSA . . . 1. Why isn't this just a victory for Heaton? Because when CompUSA treats a customer right, it wins, too.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Phony earmark reform:

Last December, victorious congressional Democrats pledged a one-year moratorium on all earmarks. New appropriations chairmen Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., issued a joint statement promising voters “there will be no congressional earmarks” until 2008 — and only after tough reforms were enacted.

But if you watch what they do instead of listen to what they say, it’s abundantly clear that just six months later, the earmark moratorium is already over. . . .

The cavalier way the new Democratic majority quickly abandoned its promise to “drain the swamp” was succinctly summed up by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., earlier this week. In a frank admission to Examiner editors, Mikulski said she would continue to sponsor “smart earmarks” — with the term conveniently defined by her. But there’s nothing “smart” about tacking on billions of dollars in earmarks to phone-book-sized appropriations bills that bypass agency procurement rules, competitive bidding, congressional oversight and public scrutiny. As a Mikulski aide told The Examiner: “Federal funding is either competitive or an earmark, it can’t be both.”

The situation is no better on the House side where the Lower Rio Grande Valley Water Resources Conservation and Improvement Act of 2007 came to the floor Tuesday loaded with 14 earmarks for water projects throughout Texas. No names of the earmarks’ sponsors were included because, since the bill was considered under a suspension of the rules, the House reforms adopted in January didn’t apply.

I didn't think it was possible for the Democrats to be worse in this regard than the GOP Congress was. Clearly, I suffered from a lack of imagination.

TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF D-DAY.

A WRAP-UP ON LAST NIGHT'S DEBATE, from Marc Ambinder.

FRED THOMPSON'S NEW WEBSITE, ImWithFred.com, is up and running.

According to the pollsters at Pew, he shows "broad popular appeal."

POLITICALLY CORRECT WARFARE: "PC brigade ban pin-ups on RAF jets - in case they offend women and Muslims."

UPDATE: Never mind. I withdraw any criticism. Apparently, they plan to replace the nose art with the London Olympics logo, thus sending any enemies into convulsions caused by either epilepsy, or aesthetic revulsion. It's brilliant! Er, but does it pass the Geneva Conventions?

DESPITE TED KENNEDY'S BEST EFFORTS, wind power is booming: "The U.S. is the fastest growing global market for wind power, according to the Energy Department's first annual report on U.S wind power installations. U.S. wind power capacity jumped 27 percent in 2006, the largest incremental jump on record and the highest incremental capacity in the world, the DoE study found."

Wind will never be a really major source, but it's a nontrivial one.

IF IT QUACKS LIKE A DUCK:

Kopel told me that he thinks conservatives should keep the conservative media honest.

But charged with being deceptive, O'Reilly exploded, falsely accusing Kopel of being a "secular progressive." Not only that, but O'Reilly told Kopel to shut up and quit filibustering.

O'Reilly's modus operandi on this particular program seemed to be, "Don't talk while I'm interrupting." He looked completely ridiculous. . . .

All of this followed O'Reilly's claim that if Kopel were not a secular progressive, then he, O'Reilly, was Donald Duck. . . .

It was to O'Reilly's credit that he had Kopel on his show, and he thanked Kopel at the end of the interview, after insulting him. However, there was absolutely no excuse for O'Reilly to have behaved this badly on the air. It was an embarrassing moment for O'Reilly and the Fox News Channel.

Donald Duck is a frequently-blustering type with an excessively high opinion of himself. . . .

RIAA CHARGED WITH extortion and conspiracy.

A LOOK AT THE NANNY STATE -- and that "pilfering" business, by the way, happens a lot.

ILYA SOMIN LOOKS AT THE IMPACT OF passing the Equal Rights Amendment: "If enacted, the ERA is likely to have a greater impact than many expect."

CRIMINALIZATION OF NAPPING? Well, new news stories suggest there's more than was originaly reported: " A teenager had been up all night drinking at a party before coming home to baby-sit her stepsister and another toddler, who both wandered outside and drowned in a nearby pond while the teen slept, state police said Tuesday."

So it's not so much napping here, despite what the initial reports said.

June 05, 2007

A LOOK AT Russia's re-emerging nightmare.

A VERY DIVERSE press conference in Prague.

BUT WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO when these guys get too old?

LIVEBLOGGING THE REPUBLICAN DEBATES. More debates? Did I know about those? I had forgotten, if so.

More from Dave Weigel: "Hasn't John McCain been tortured enough?"

The more of these debates they have, the smarter it is for Fred Thompson to stay out as long as possible.

More liveblogging at The American Spectator and at Jim Geraghty's place.

UPDATE: The McCain people are on top of things -- they've already sent this YouTube video of McCain on Iraq.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lots more liveblogging rounded up here.

Plus, a debate highlight reel at Hot Air.

IT'S AN Assault on Seasons.

Plus, global warming criminals identified.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA: A COMPARISON AND CONTRAST.

LISTEN TO the experts!

INDECENCY AT THE FCC.

MORE ON THE OPPOSITION TO WIND POWER, here.

CAN YOU MAKE A CAMPAIGN COMMERCIAL ON THIS? I'll bet someone can, and I'll bet someone will. But not yet.

THE PERFECT LAPTOP (FOR NOW): The sunlight-friendly lcd display, though, isn't new -- my old NEC Versa Daylite had that, and it was great. It was also thin and got great battery life.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER in Prague.

IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN:

House Democrats, in their first draft of new energy legislation, would wipe out California's landmark global warming law -- despite their California speaker's promises that her party would use the state as a model to combat climate change.

The legislation would pre-empt California and 11 other states from implementing laws requiring automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across their fleets. The bill would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from granting the states waivers to put their climate change rules into effect.

California officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's top environmental aides, blasted the legislative proposal.

They keep retrenching. Though it sounds like this won't last.

A TRULY OPEN LETTER ON SPACE POLICY, to Gregg Easterbrook from the National Space Society. You can't get much more open than that.

VIDEO: Freeman Dyson on global warming.

MARC AMBINDER joins The Atlantic's stable of bloggers.

MORE ON THE DEPRESSION AND THE NEW DEAL from Arnold Kling.

Kling seems to be getting a lot out of Amity Shlaes' new book.

BRITAIN'S NANNY STATE GETS MORE NANNYISH:

Middle-class wine drinkers will be the focus of government plans to make drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking, The Times has learnt.

Under the plans published today, a fresh audit is to be conducted by the Government into the overall costs of alcohol abuse to society and the National Health Service.

A return to the era of tar and feathers is probably the only way to stop this sort of thing. It's warranted, I think.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIVIL WAR AND 'FACTIONAL FIGHTING," explained.

NO LOVE FOR JOE SCARBOROUGH: No, really, no love: "I have to once again ask the 'Don Imus' question: Does anyone at MSNBC watch its own programming?"

ERIC SCHEIE looks at "gun violence." "Yeah, but it's all the fault of the gun. It made this ex-con possess it, and file the serial numbers off, and shoot people."

NOW HERE'S A POWER TOOL that most dads would like. Moms, too!

Well, it's a power tool of sorts. Though not quite like these.

UPDATE: How did I find this? The Insta-Wife asked if I wanted one for Father's Day. I declined, even though it looks cool, for the same reason I didn't get the Kegerator.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bradley Burris emails: "I bought one for my wife. Quick and easy ‘rita’s. It’s definitely increased our tequila purchases. The ice shaver could be a little better, but close enough to restaurant quality for us."

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Meet the new boss, yada, yada:

When Democrats took control of Congress four months back, incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., bragged it would take her party less than 100 hours to curb wasteful pork spending by requiring members to attach their names to their "earmarks," exposing such waste to the harsh light of public scrutiny.

She failed to mention this "reform" would remain in effect for little more than 100 days.

At this point, "Democrats are sidestepping rules approved their first day in power in January to clearly identify 'earmarks' -- lawmakers' requests for specific projects and contracts for their states -- in documents that accompany spending bills," The Associated Press reported Monday. . . .

The whole point of the Democratic "reform" was to allow other members to criticize and oppose pork set-asides. But last month, when Rep. Murtha (the second-ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, a man so powerful that he secured more than $200 million for his personal pet projects in 2006 alone, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense) sponsored an earmark to authorize $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center -- a government agency that happens to be based in his district -- Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., a former FBI agent, had the nerve to rise and propose the allocation be canceled.

Rep. Rogers was acting in accordance with the Bush administration's desire to close the office, which duplicates services provided by the FBI and which has received repeated low marks from several federal review boards.

Rep. Rogers' attempt to cut the $23 million failed. Despite that, on May 17 an outraged Rep. Murtha -- who in his failed bid for majority leader described the ethics package in a private meeting with lawmakers as "total crap" -- approached Rep. Rogers on the House floor.

"I hope you don't have any earmarks in the defense appropriation bill because they are gone, and you will not get any earmarks now and forever," the now-tabled resolution quotes Rep. Murtha as telling Rep. Rogers.

Rep. Murtha has never disputed Rep. Rogers' account. He doesn't have to. He knows he will never be disciplined for violating Ms. Pelosi's reforms, because he had it right the first time. The "anti-earmark reforms" are just for show. Mere window dressing. Why, if we enjoyed the immunities of a colorful old Democratic congressman, we might even call them "total crap."

And there's more unhappy editorializing here:

The new game that House Appropriations Chairman David Obey intends to play with budget earmarks this year is worse than the usual hide-and-seek. He is taking the whole thing underground, as though he is to be trusted as a one-man auditor for congressional pork. If this is to be the new ethic that Democrats promised, voters might want their ballots back. . . .

The result, then, is that the earmark projects will receive almost no public scrutiny and no congressional debate. This is precisely the kind of environment in which convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff thrived, the kind of place he fondly called the "favor factory."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to drain this swamp, of course, but Democrats attached enough pork to the Iraq appropriations bill this spring to render that commitment a fraud. Neither the House nor the Senate has delivered on its promise to fully expose and limit the special-interest earmarks.

As budgetary gambits go, though, Obey's is particularly insidious. It is what Democratic caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel last fall called "earmark abuse" when he introduced an amendment that sought to prohibit "the inclusion of earmarks and other provisions in conference reports without the language having first been in either the House or Senate legislation's original language."

That was when the Republicans were in charge. Now the Democrats run the bank, and it appears open for withdrawals again.

Could this kind of thing have any connection to the Democrats' massive slide in the polls? Nahhh.

UPDATE: More backsliding here.

MICHIGAN CRAVES CORN, AND I DON'T CARE: Howard Lovy on ethanol and Jennifer Granholm.

BILL HOBBS INTERVIEWS SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER on immigration and Iraq, and Alexander's planned amendment to the immigration bill.

ANOTHER EMAIL FROM MICHAEL YON:

After the arrest of General Hamid in Hit last week, there was serious concern there would be violence. Hamid was/is a hero to many Iraqis. In fact, our own soldiers talked about Hamid with admiration. When our soldiers arrested Hamid and 14 police that day, our guys were upset. They had run many missions with those police, and did not want to arrest them. LTC Doug Crissman was saddened that he had to arrest General Hamid. But Hamid was running wild, and many of the Iraqis could see it. I arrived back in Baghdad yesterday. Up to that point, there had been no violence in Hit subsequent the arrest. There was a peaceful demonstration, and someone threatened to kidnap Hit City Council members to secure Hamid's release, but nothing had happened. Anbar Province in general seems to have turned a corner for the better. There is still some fighting, but the action has greatly abated this year.

Not so down in Basra and Maysan, where our British friends are fighting.

I'm with Strykers again, which means I will be in combat again soon. Strykers go where the trouble is.

I look forward to another report.

CLASH OF TITANS: The FBI vs. the Zabar's Zeitgeist.

J.D. JOHANNES POSTS ANOTHER DISPATCH FROM IRAQ:

The times I have been around injured Marines I pitched in to help. I ran to get the stretcher. The only photos I have taken of an injured person were of a Soldier treating an Iraqi man for shrapnel wounds. You see the soldier doing his job, but not the face of the Iraqi man.

If I were to be wounded while embeded with Soldiers, Seabees or Marines they would provide medical attention and likely risk their lives to protect me and save my life.

I feel I should reciprocate because these young men and a few women I roll with outside the wire would not stand around snapping photos of me while I bled out--they would do what they do best. Save Lives. . . . Perhaps I do not have what it takes to be a big-time big-media reporter.

I agree with him on journalistic detachment. Wasn't it CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta who got criticized by the usual journalistic chin-pullers for treating some wounded Iraqis instead of maintaining his reportorial distance?

J.D.'s work, like Michael Yon's, is supported by reader donations. If you like it, consider hitting the tipjar.

NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN: "So far this year, Taliban and drug gang related violence has left about 1,700 dead. It's less than last year, and lower than the average annual death toll in Afghanistan for the last three decades."

FOCUSING ON THE BOOBIES: It pretty much always works!

IT'S ALL IMMIGRATION, ALL THE TIME AT KAUSFILES: Mickey remains on fire, but what about the cars? And the Burkle-bashing?