It’s only an hour or so after learning that Nancy Pelosi finally defenestrated Charlie Rangel (D-NY) from his position at the helm of the House Ways and Means Committee and I am already missing Charlie – and it’s not just because Charlie and I had such a good time together in Copenhagen.

Pelosi is replacing him with Pete Stark. Yes, you heard me correctly. The Pete Stark. Rep. Fortney “Pete” Stark of California Pete Stark:

Other controversies include singling out “Jew colleagues” for blame for the Persian Gulf War and referring to Congressman Stephen Solarz of New York (who co-sponsored the Gulf War Authorization Act) as “Field Marshal Solarz in the pro-Israel forces.” in 1991.[16] In 1995, during a private meeting with Congresswoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, he called Johnson a “whore for the insurance industry” and suggested that her knowledge of health care came solely from “pillow talk” with her husband, a physician. His press secretary, Caleb Marshall, defended him in saying, “He didn’t call her a ‘whore,’ he called her a ‘whore of the insurance industry.’”[16] In 1999, he said to former California State Welfare Director Eloise Anderson, herself a former welfare mother, that she would “kill children if she had her way” for her advocacy of welfare reform.[7] In a 2001 Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health hearing on abstinence promotion, he referred to Congressman J. C. Watts of Oklahoma, an African American, as “the current Republican Conference Chairman, whose children were all born out of wedlock.”[16] In 2003, when Stark was told to “shut up” by Congressman Scott McInnis of Colorado during a Ways and Means Committee meeting due to Stark’s belittling of the chairman, Bill Thomas of California, he replied, “You think you are big enough to make me, you little wimp? Come on. Come over here and make me, I dare you. You little fruitcake.”[16]

(that’s only a taste – there’s plenty more at the Wikipedia link)

Do these Democrats have a death wish? Have they gone completely bonkers? Or did Nancy Pelosi’s plastic surgeon misfire and accidentally inject the Botox into her brain? Whatever the case, this an extraordinary gift to the Republican Party. It’s unclear at this point whether they will use it well, but it still constitutes an amazing opportunity. On the other hand, it is a huge insult to the American people. To appoint a man of Stark’s character – a complete and utter nut job- as the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee at a moment of national economic near-catastophe is about as cynical act as I have ever seen a modern American politician perform. Since it’s Oscar season, I think we can channel Sally Field and safely say this of Pelosi: “She hates us, she really hates us!”

UPDATE: Easy come, easy go or Sic Transit Stark. From Politico:

Rep. Sander Levin will take over as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee after Rep. Pete Stark, who held the gavel for a day, stepped aside.

The dominoes fell after Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) resigned the chairmanship of the powerful tax-writing panel Wednesday as Republicans and many Democrats were moving to oust him following an ethics committee ruling that found he violated House gift rules.

Levin, who had been chairman of the Trade Subcommittee, will helm the panel through the end of this Congress — barring the unlikely return of Rangel.

Officially, Stark stepped aside to keep the gavel of the panel’s Health Subcommittee. But lawmakers and aides said Stark faced a rebellion within the committee and the caucus over his sometimes bizarre behavior and penchant for making offensive comments.

Did the comments on this blog have something to do with this? We like to think so.

Well, it now seems that not one but two two-term governors will be running for unprecedented third terms in our two most populous states. What are the odds of that? And what are the odds that your-not-so-humble-servant knows both of them? As it happens, one hundred percent. I never expected to be that well connected (at least in this life) and I’m still trying to figure out how to exploit this, although my encounters with Jerry Brown are now over twenty years old and deep into the land of lost synapses. I met Rick Perry quite a bit more recently, not more than a couple of months ago, when I had the pleasure of going pistol shootin’ with the Texas governor in his hometown of Austin. (The video at the link is fun, if you haven’t seen it. And congrats to Gov. Perry — a PJTV fan — on your primary victory today.)

Of course, Perry is going to be running for a consecutive third term, while Brown has been off doing other things like being Mayor of Oakland and California Attorney General and, intermittently, wannabe zen roshi, etc. Further, Perry looks to be a shoo-in because Texas is in great shape compared to most of the nation now, while Brown is going to have a fight on his hands because California is, in a word, a mess. Some people even say it’s worse than Greece. And we don’t even have the Acropolis. We have to make do with Arianna Huffington’s mansion.

So would I support these guys? Well, I’m easy. You shake my hand, tell a few jokes, slap me on the back and you’ve usually got my vote. In fact, I thought Rick Perry was just a great fellow and if I lived in Texas, I’d certainly support him.

Jerry Brown is another matter. Much as I like Jerry — he’s an original mind and an amusing guy — he’s absolutely the wrong person for the job under the current catastrophic conditions in my home state. Reason: for all his famed Governor Moonbeam exoticism, when push comes to the proverbial shove, Jerry is very much a conventional liberal politician and very much his father’s son. But the days for that kind of approach to solving California’s financial problems are as long gone as the Buffalo Springfield from the Sunset Strip. Or should I say Linda Ronstadt?

Brown is using the failure of “political amateur” Arnold Schwarzenegger as California governor to try to convince voters to stay away from another “political amateur,” former Ebay CEO Meg Whitman. But right now California needs someone who can wield a red pencil with absolute determination — not allowing it out of his or her hand until half the lines in the budget were scratched out — or we really might turn into Greece. If I were a betting man — and sometimes I am — I’d bet California voters will be handing that pencil to Whitman in November.

Are values, family or otherwise, something we look for in the movies? They used to be – a loooong time ago. But that was before (at least) 1972 when Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris made hip sexuality King of the Cinema. Now I don’t have anything against sex in the movies – or outside of them, for that matter – but it is worth noting the winds may be heading the other way now, away from the ultra-edginess of Last Tango and toward the traditional morality of The Blind Side, the true story of a white Christian housewife who saves a lost child of the ghetto. Surprisingly… well, maybe not so surprisingly… the heart-warming Sandra Bullock film is the audience favorite going into Sunday night’s Oscars. According to Rasmussen, 25% of adults who are going to be watching on Sunday will be pulling for The Blind Side, as opposed to the vaunted Avatar, a film Lionel Chetywynd and I didn’t like very much, which is garnering only 17%.

Does this mean the return of the family movie? This is a strange conundrum. For the executive class family-oriented movies have never really gone away, because it is well known that at the box office the grosses for G and PG-rated fare usually outstrip the racier stuff. But don’t look for artsier Hollywood types to suddenly embrace remakes of Little Women. Normally you don’t win Oscars for that. You win them for Last Tango in Paris, better yet The Last Emperor, a Bertolucci film I hugely admire.

Whatever may happen in the best picture and director categories, look for Sandra Bullock to win the best actress on Sunday night (uh-oh… a prediction… bring out the crow) and look for more of The Blind Side approach to filmmaking in the near future. Call it Tea Party filmmaking. It’s the coming thing. Lionel and I will be doing a post-Oscar special for next Monday (Will Leonardo diCaprio say that Chile happened because of climate change?), but meanwhile check out the latest POLIWOOD: “The Blind Side vs. Last Tango in Park: Values in the Movies.”

Press bla-bla continues on the putative assassination of Hamas thug Mahmoud al-Mahbouh by the Mossad in Dubai last January. I don’t have much more to say on the subject, but couldn’t resist the title above. In fact, it may be more accurate than I intended because what the emirate seems to be embarked upon is a publicity campaign and, hey, their hotels aren’t as busy as they used to be (whose are? well, maybe Washington’s).

The latest jab from Dubai authorities seems to be an attempt to keep dual citizenship Israelis out of their country. (Normal Israelis weren’t welcome in the first place.) From the CSM: Dubai’s decision Monday to ban Israeli dual citizens in response to the assassination here last month of a senior Hamas figure is one part security, many parts politics. Gag me with a spoon, as Moon Unit Zappa would say.

But further down the piece we learn that even emirates don’t like being accused of racial profiling: “In announcing the sanction against Israeli citizens traveling to Dubai on second passports, Tamim raised hackles about racial stereotyping when he said that security personnel would be trained to identify Israelis by their accents and their faces.” But not to worry. High tech Dubai knows how to handle this: “Rather than relying on appearances and accents to identify Israeli citizens, says Dr. Karasik, Dubai authorities will likely improve their system for checking passports, including using biometric data.

Police can also identify dual nationals after they enter the country by tracking where they congregate and where their businesses have tended to be located, he adds.”

I didn’t know there were any delis in Dubai. (The Vegas analogy only goes so far.) Meanwhile, the Dubai police are calling for reinforcements in the form of the Federal Bureau of Investigation no less: Dubai police have called on the FBI to probe links between the suspects in the assassination of a Hamas commander and their U.S.-issued payment cards, the National reported on Tuesday, citing a source at the federal intelligence agency.

Hmmm…. interesting. Why this grandstanding? I’m not sure this is particularly good publicity for Dubai, though it is good publicity (sort of) for the police chief, etc. Nevertheless, the longer this story stays in the news the longer the biggest of all lingering questions stays there: What the Hell was Dubai doing being the transit for Hamas weapons for all these years that it would necessitate this Mossad action? It’s unlikely the Israelis want to send six, sixty or six hundred (whatever the number proves to be) agents into their country. Well, the answer is a four-letter word and it begins with I….

The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mahbouh in Dubai on January 19 is beginning to move off our computer screens. According to the latest AP report, European countries are pulling back from the investigation:

Michael Boyle, a lecturer in strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, said European countries were “unlikely or unwilling to make it a serious political issue with Israel. It’s going to raise up embarrassing questions and complicate their relationship with Israel,” he said.

Boyle said the focus on forged passports made sense, however. “I think there’s a concern on the part of European governments that if this process of Israeli operatives using European passports were to continue, that would put European citizens at risk.”

Not to mention that almost all intelligence agencies use phony passports. Everyone knows that. Still, some countries are pursuing this issue – the UK, via a new Ynet report, and Australia (I wonder what John Howard would think). Caroline Glick seems to have this dance about right:

It reportedly took the intervention of the highest echelons of Europe’s intelligence agencies to get their hysterical politicians and diplomats to stop blaming and threatening Israel. After being dressed down, on Monday, the chastened EU foreign ministers abstained from mentioning Israel by name in their joint condemnation of the alleged use of European passports by the alleged operatives who allegedly killed the terrorist Mabhouh.

And lucky they held their tongues. Because on Tuesday, Tamim claimed that after the hit, at least two of the alleged members of the alleged assassination team departed Dubai for Iran. It’s hard to imagine Mossad officers feeling safer in Iran than in Dubai at any time and certainly it is hard to see why they would flee to Iran after killing an Iranian-sponsored terrorist.

In the second graph Caroline is indeed reporting the most tittilating recent news – except the possibly bogus report that the Dubai authorities have DNA evidence on one suspect.

What indeed were the alleged Mossad assassins doing escaping to Iran?

The Dubai police statement issued Wednesday included a striking detail: two of the new suspects, identified as Nicole Sandra McCabe and Adam Marcus Korman and carrying Australian passports, left Dubai on a ship bound for Iran. All the others traveled by plane to European and Asian countries, according to the statement. The statement included no further information about the two suspects or why they would have gone to Iran.

And were they actually Mossad assassins? Some think not. I prefer to think they were, perhaps because that would be much more disturbing for the mullahs. It would open up all kinds of interesting questions. (What information were these agents carrying? Where were they headed?) In fact, one way of reading this event is that a lot of it was deliberately in plain sight. This is in essence the subtext of the Debka account, which contains the supposition that the Israelis were fully aware of the CCTV capability in Dubai and essentially acted out in front of the cameras. Of course, this is an extremely complex approach to intelligence work, the kind of thing you might find more in a novel than in real life, so I don’t know. But it’s possible.

To be continued – or not.

Such is my personal dislike for the junior senator from my home state of California that I take little solace that the influential Rothenberg Political Report has downgraded Barbara Boxer’s chance of reelection from a “safe” seat to a “clear advantage for the incumbent.” Nothing less than humiliating defeat would be satisfying to me.

From whence my perhaps over-heated reaction to Boxer? Well, she represents to me all the most distasteful aspects of perpetually unexamined “liberalism” rolled into one angry, rigid, misguided persona. How angry is she? It’s not just her well-known disdain for Brigadier General Michael Walsh(the don’t-call-me-ma’am-I’m-a-Senator affair); it’s her abiding, self-satisified, arrogant dyspepsia. This is on display, if you’re interested, in the video aptly entitled “I’ve never seen anything like it” – in which she dresses down a Bush era EPA official.

Of course, it’s more than an unpleasant personality that makes me react so strongly to Boxer (we’re none of us perfect in that regard, right?). It’s also her uncanny ability to mix willful ignorance and guilt-free dishonesty. That combination was on display at Tuesday’s meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which she chairs and at which Senator Inhofe made an interesting minority report. At that meeting, according to Pajamas Media’s own Charlie Martin, Boxer and the EPA’s Lisa Jackson “threw the IPCC under the bus,” ostensibly by denying they had been influenced by that UN organization, its officers like Rajendra Pachauri or other tarnished foreign sources (the East Anglia CRU) in their conclusions about climate and AGW. (Boxer: “In my opening statement, I didn’t quote one international scientist or IPCC report. … We are quoting the American scientific community here.”)

Boxer lied.

According to the perspicacious climatequotes.com, “Barbara Boxer relied heavily on both the IPCC and Pachauri.” Here’s just one sample, but for the rest, go to climatequotes. They deserve your attention. Boxer on Jan. 30, 2008: “Dr. Pachauri, you have been a tremendous leader on this issue. I have spoken to you on several occasions to learn first hand about the recent IPCC reports that summarize the recent science of global warming.”

Enough of the lying for now. What about the ignorance? We’re used to politicians prevaricating but they’re even more dangerous when they are ignorant as well. Does Boxer have the background to understand climate science even if she wanted to? There is nothing in her vitae to demonstrate that. She has a B.A. from Brooklyn College in economics and that’s about it. For many years she has been a leading environmental advocate in the Congress, but as the stakes of “environmentalism” morphed and grew, the amount of scientific expertise necessary to separate legitimate concern from cant has increased exponentially. Politicians’ reliance on scientists has perforce also increased with the selection of those scientists all the more open to bias and distortion. As this occurs, it is particularly incumbent on politicians to seek the judgment of scientists on all sides of an issue, not just the side they want to believe or find expedient to believe. Few seem to do this. And Boxer is the poster girl of those who do not. She goes on and on as she was, talking to the same people and spouting the same conventional opinions as if they were fact. If there were ever a time for a change, this is it.

Now that I am at the end of this, I am not so sure I am as angry at Boxer as I thought I was (or am now, at any rate). Nor am I that disappointed in her because I have not had any hopes or expectations for her for quite some time. No, she is just the wrong person for our era. She stopped growing years ago and there’s nothing we can do about that. We have to move on.

Over the decades I was a Leftist, I lived under the evidently misguided belief that my side was for freedom and democracy and the other was rigid, old farts willing to do anything to preserve the ancien régime.

Well, nowhere have I been proven more wrong than Holland where the history of the last decade – from the 2002 assassination of Pim Fortuyn to the 2005 murder of Theo Van Gogh to the current controversy surrounding the trial (and political candidacy) of Geert Wilders – makes clear the we indeed live in a world upside down.

As a reminder, Wilders is the Dutch politician now on trial for “hate-speech” in the Netherlands. Among other things he has produced the film Fitna, accusing Islam of being a violent ideology, and called for the banning of the Koran in Holland in similar manner to the banning of Mein Kampf in that country. Many leftist, multi-culturalists have come down heavily on Wilders for this but the Netherlands is a complicated place and others see Wilders as a paragon of free speech and honesty. Needless to say, Wilders’ positions are defensible, even if his methods may have been excessive to our eyes.

Furthermore, many Dutch citizens are apparently on Wilders’ side because, in the midst of his trial, an election is being held and the standard bearer of the Freedom Party is enjoying tremendous popularity. From Reuters:

A Dutch Labour politician’s call to keep far-right leader Geert Wilders out of a new government has stirred anger among other parties who consider the move undemocratic and likely to drive voters towards him.

Wilders and his Freedom Party have been a focus of debate since the Dutch cabinet collapsed on Saturday, as the election which could be held as early as May will be a key opportunity for the anti-immigration group to increase its influence after a stunning success at European elections last year.

Frans Timmermans, a member of the Labour party and minister for European affairs, said on Monday that Labour would refuse to govern in coalition with Wilders’ party, and he called on other parties to consider a similar approach.

“The Labour party stands for a completely different Holland than the party of Wilders, and for that reason we cannot be in a government with him,” a spokeswoman for the Labour party said.

“He (Timmermans) dared other parties to think the same thing. Do they want to be in a government that segregates people by race and religion?”

Wilders has described the call as an “arrogant” attempt to ringfence his Freedom Party (PVV) and said it was an insult to the democratic system, telling Dutch media “the voter will seek punishment for this”.

Members of other parties have also described the move as undemocratic and warned that it could push voters into the arms of Wilders, considered a maverick among the political elite.

What can the Tea Party Movement learn from Wilders? Two things, I think. The first is courage. We are dealing with big issues. Don’t be afraid. Go for them. The public will reward you.

The second is to think globally (to use an old leftist phrase). America is an exceptional country, but the tendency among certain elements of the Tea Party Movement (not just Ron Paulites, but them especially) to use this exceptionalism as an excuse to roll up the plank and act is if the rest of the world does not exist is not only impossible, it’s absurd. Technology has made our globe the size of a peanut. Unwinding the global economy at this point is ridiculous and impoverishing to all. Pretending that ideologies, such as the one Wilders opposes, are not out to destroy our civilization is being willfully ignorant and self-destructive. Learn from Chairman Geert!

Okay, I’m being cute with that last phrase, but there is something to be learned here. Courage is global. Our values are global and wue should ally with those who espouse them. Here’s another example. And for an update on the Wilders Trial go here.

UPDATE: There has been some discussion on here about the matter of book-banning as it reflects on the Wilders case. As an author, it should go without saying that I unequivocally oppose book-banning. Regarding Wilders, I had the pleasure of meeting the man at a party in Los Angeles last year and spent thirty minutes or so talking with him, often one-on-one. He is extremely well-spoken and personable. I raised the issue of book-banning with him and he acknowledged that it was problematic in anglo-saxon society and also indicated that he personally opposed it, but he raised the question of banning the Koran in Holland because that country (and Germany) had already banned Mein Kampf. (MK is available only to scholars in restricted libraries.) He indicated this banning was a kind of publicity stunt aimed at a form of consciousness raising. I believe he was being honest with me. After all, the aim of his short film Fitna was to publish portions of the Koran that he deemed racist and violent in intent – essentially to publicize them.

Am I fascinated with this story or am I fascinated with this story?

As the MSM continues to report on the huffing and puffing of various Eurocrats about the use of stolen or semi-stolen (who really knows?) passports in the murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, you have to look around the edges for the real story. And one of those places today is the Chinese news agency Xinhua. The world’s biggest news agency (by a fair amount) often publishes some fascinating material before its censors get their hands in to do their regulating and squashing. Here’s today’s tidbit – Hamas denies Dubai police accusation:

Hamas on Monday denied Dubai police chief’s accusation that a Hamas traitor informed Mossad, Israel’s security intelligence service, about its militant leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s visit to Dubai, which led to his assassination on Jan. 20.

Hamas office in Damascus told Xinhua on Monday that “we do not accept the accusation, we will continue our coordination with the Dubai police to complete the investigation.”

Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said an internal “agent” of Hamas leaked the travel information of al-Mabhouh, which resulted in his assassination, calling on Hamas to launch an internal inquiry, the English newspaper of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Gulf News reported on Sunday.

No wonder Hamas was floating their contention over the weekend that Mahbouh got caught because he was making his travel reservations online. (Was it Expedia or Travelocity? … I would recommend Kayak.) They also accused him of sloppy cellphone usage, which would have made him about the dumbest guy in the Middle East. But who knows? In any case, Hamas’ greatest fear – and the fear no doubt of allies in Iran and elsewhere – is now that they have been compromised. That only would make this action a huge success and call to question the whole notion that agents involved were sloppy in being caught on camera. Maybe that was their intention all along – or if not an intention a known possible collateral result which they gave only a shrug.

Hamas is getting a bad press too from Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, who the LAT is calling “an acerbic Columbo in an Arabic dishdasha” (good photo at the link), for not taking proper security precautions:

“Mabhouh did not take basic security precautions, and if he had at least one person with him, [the suspects] would not have been able to kill him,” Tamim told the Gulf News, a Dubai-based English-language daily paper.

Well, maybe, maybe not. If Hamas was already compromised, I’m not sure a single security person would have been able to save Mahbhouh, who, after all, had at least eleven against him.

I should also mention Tom Gross’s discussion of the case from last week, which notably contains photos of victims of missiles procured by Mahbouh. When you see the pictures, you don’t really much care how this guy died, just as long as he did. Whereevr the “blame” is assigned, I suspect this all now poised to fade from the front pages and what we learn in the future will be from memoirs, most of which will be self-serving, naturally enough. To be continued. Sometime.

What is it when guys of a certain age watch the Olympics? Assuming you’ve been waiting up for the answer to that one, you can find out on the new Poliwood – Poliwood Goes to the Olympics: Gold for Shaun White… Bob Costas, Not So Much.

Since we shot this episode, Bode Miller has won the Combined. As a one-time sorta skier, now a sorta sorta skier (I have been off the Cornice at Mammoth, but that was in another country), I watched Miller in the slalom in awe. How does he do that? Anyway, enjoy the Poliwood show. If you really like it, perhaps you will support the offer made by Lionel and me at the end – that we (and PJTV) replace Bob Costas (and NBC) for the 2014 games. Enough of those guys, don’t you agree?

Everybody loves a good mystery and the alleged murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai by Mossad agents is sure attracting a lot of ink or pixels, not the least of which is Ronen Bergman’s Israel and the Dubai Murder Mystery in Friday’s Wall Street Journal. But unfortunately, Mr. Bergman – a senior military and intelligence analyst for Israel’s popular daily Yedioth Ahronoth – makes a major error in the second paragraph of his piece. Can you spot it?

Nearly everyone believes that the 11 alleged members of the hit squad that killed Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last week in Dubai are Mossad agents. Seven of the 11 identities used were stolen from other Israelis with dual European citizenship.

Well, as it happens, the murder didn’t take place “last week” but on January 19. It was only reported widely last week. I’m not noting that to make fun of Mr. Bergman, obviously a knowledgeable fellow, or the fact-checkers at the WSJ, stressed as they may be, but it does cause you to wrinkle your nose at some of Mr. Bergman’s comments further down the page:

But the real, and so far unappreciated, achievement in this affair belongs to the Dubai police, who were able to integrate all the evidence at their disposal into one clear picture and do so with remarkable speed.

Whoever sent the hit squad to Dubai was not aware that the police and security services had such advanced capabilities at the ready. The investigators managed to put together still and video shots taken in seven different locations and place them on a single timeline together with the cellphone records of the individuals in the footage. Doing this requires sharp analysis and advanced computer skills, and computerized intelligence systems able to cross check information from various sources.

How did the Dubai police manage all this? Did they have help? For now, it remains a mystery. But in any case, misjudging the ability of the Dubai authorities so spectacularly is evidence of a serious intelligence failure on the part of the organization that sent out the squad.

Remarkable speed? Advanced capabilities? Hmm… Besides his timeline being off by nearly a month here, Mr. Bergman (speaking of speed) is not particularly up to speed on technology either. With face recognition software so ubiquitous it comes with a $150 point-and-shoot camera nowadays, a smart high school student could probably put these surveillance videos together on a MacBook in matter of days, if not hours. I don’t know about the expertise of the Dubai police, though at the very least they’ve probably seen a few episodes of “Las Vegas.”