Monday, January 5. 2009
 Broadway for 20 bucks.
Hope and Change! 600,000 new government jobs. Heck, we all work for the gummint half the year already. Keep a civil tongue in your head for the next 365 days Obama's New Deal. Bad as the Old New Deal? The Gramsci Award du Jour: Bill Ayers Chavez' secret fan club Sea Ice back to 1979. The earth is cooling, but it doesn't fit the narrative. The funny business, in Minnesota. Related: Stop, thief cries Dick Morris Harry Reid's "worst President," and what he's done The gang rape of a Lesbian you never heard about A blog whose time has come: Democracy in Venezuela Will Neo-Conservatism die for Compassionate Conservatism's Sins?
 Algore got so many innocent and well-intentioned but scientifically-uneducated people upset with his fear-mongering silliness. It's a damn shame. Those with a familiarity with how science works, and who had no political agenda to drive, just stood back and watched bemusedly.
Finally, even the HuffPo gets it. Harold Ambler's Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted. (h/t, No Looking Backwards, whence the borrowed image.) One quote:
If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.
If Lefties want to take over the world's economy, they need to try Plan D.
Smart thing to do. Obama eyes tax cuts. It's one of the only effective things a government can do to try to shorten a recession. In the end, though, recessions just have to play themselves out. It's the natural history of economies, and, now that economics is fully global, local efforts can have minimal impact on the big picture. Maybe (let's hope) Obama will be more practical and less ideological than has been feared.
A reader sent in this hunting photo from Saturday. That is clearly an old, raggedy CT apple orchard, so I can assume he was hunting grouse. Nice spot. Dinosaurs grew feathers before they became birds. Bailout Bonds. Get 'em while they're fresh. Our blog friend Prof Deneen at Georgetown is going on indefinite blog sabbatical. And I don't blame him. If I could clone my inner dog self to handle this job, I'd do the same thing.  A friend of mine loves the new Garrison Keilor book. It's about aging.
The Lib love affair with Castro Why Clinton as Sec of State? Paglia How the UN funds Pali Jihad The Obama team needs to continue following Tiger's advice Re the seven things nobody tells you about marriage Carville: Watch for a Dem streak of scandals All that talk about "peak oil" has disappeared Steyn (via Driscoll) What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? "We can't just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world's resources with just 4 percent of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we'll be fine." And boy, we took the great man's words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home's thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama's logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world's resources. And in these last few months we've made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents. And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn't seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He's proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar "stimulus" package or whatever it is now to "stimulate" it back into its bad old ways.
Sunday, January 4. 2009
 I agree with Gateway: These kids must want jobs.
Alternative buildings and cities, from the 60s. EU denounces carbon offset scams projects The cost of hollow virtuousness: Taxpayers pay for UK's mountain of recycling. Isn't it called "garbage" for a reason? Does Israel really want a victory? Related, via SC&A at Shrinkwrapped from March: Has Israel lost the will to live? Rangel update (h/t, Insty). Yes, Rangel is an expert in ways and means. Branford Marsalis: What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of sh*t. More Burris Fun 'n Games. Politics is one disgusting game. Two camps on climate in the new admin: Crazy, and crazier. Related, from Junk Science: Obama energy/environment 'czar' is an offical with Socialist International - That's right comrades... Carol Browner is a member of Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society. Check out SI's principles -- including, "it is imperative to establish a genuinely new international economic order."
Just one more totalitarian bureaucrat who thinks she is smarter than me. She is not. She just likes power more than I do.
From our occasional guest poster Nathan in Israel:  Last night -
My coffee guy (long hair past his shoulders, very cool, very left) spent the night watching the news. "Eyn ma la'asot" - "Nothing else one could do." He says it is like walkiing into zefl (tar); have to fight meter by meter with mines and weapons not only in the ground but in houses. My electrician , Avi, came back from Miluim a few days before the war started (father of four). He has more to say (will write when I have time) . Temenite background; very quiet, diligent. He describes how Isr airforce gives warning 10 minutes before hitting a target; then the Hamas tells women and children to stand on top of the roof to wave at the planes and deter the bombing. He goes on to speak about a Palestinian laborer worked for him for years; good worker. But, when he would telephone his wife, he would get violent and warn her that she would get what is coming to her when he got home. Avi asked him why he didn't speak more respectfully to her -- she makes a life for you, cooks, raises your kids. Guy says, "But, she's a woman."
I plan to visit the children in Kiryat Malachi on Monday.
From guest poster Bruce Kesler:
The primary and overriding obligation of a government and its military during war is to accomplish its objectives. Support among its own public and that of influential outside powers is surely important, particularly the longer the armed engagement.
The press’ role can be either constructive toward this, or not. The government may, or may not, be correct in its management of the war and of the press, but it is the government at war that has the requirement to decide, not the press.
It is argued, often correctly, that the press in a war sometimes sees more clearly than the government or offers useful additional insights. Still, it remains that it is the government and its people that suffers from failing to meet war’s objectives, not the press. Failure at war is a far more grievous harm than can be recompensed by a corrections column or apologetic retrospective re-analysis in the newspaper.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in Gaza and the West Bank, have always focused on this priority. All journalists and stringers there are under their strict control, only allowed access to those areas and stories chosen by Hamas and the PA, and physically penalized for straying into criticism or embarrassment of Hamas or the PA. The Western media has gone along with this, in virtual silence and even cover-up, in order to retain any access at all. Meanwhile, the world’s media has had unlimited access and freedom to report anything it wishes in and about Israel. Mostly hewing to excess Western sensitivities and even to anti-Israeli attitudes, much of the world’s media have in effect been active accomplices of Palestinian propaganda. Western and world audiences have thereby been manipulated into undue negativity toward Israel and sympathy toward Palestinians.
Israel recognizes this imbalance and in the current Gaza offensive has taken measures to restrain the press’ undermining of its war effort.
This lengthy article, http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/86631with much more detail than here offers a useful summary of the measures that Israel has taken, and of the establishment press’ opposition. Among Israel’s new approaches is going around the West’s established reporting screen and filters by going directly to the increasingly influential alternative media outlets, including YouTube. As reported in the Jerusalem Post: “'In terms of communicating our message, new media is the future', Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu, the IDF's spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post.”
The ending observation made by the Israeli Defense Force spokesman gets to the heart of the matter: “An army has to fight, not to spend its time in front of television cameras.” Israel is not allowing journalists in Israel to enter Gaza at will, to flash emotional scenes – often stage managed by Hamas – to incite the natural distaste the world’s civilians have toward the hell that is war. For that matter, Egypt is also barring entry for journalists via Egypt.
The Israeli Supreme Court, in the manner of a civilized state, has ruled that some safe pooled entry will be allowed. Egypt has no such civilized, independent court. The response by the Western media, from its Foreign Press Association in Israel: “We believe the Israeli Government should ensure unfettered access for the world's media to Gaza during this crisis.” Of note, there is no such press entity or hue allowed in Egypt, but that is not mentioned or mentionable by these Western press representatives.
It is not the responsibility of Israel to cut its own throat by allowing the sensationalist emphasis, negativity and bias of much of the West’s media “unfettered access.”
Saturday, January 3. 2009
Among other things, Kindleberger's classic Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. From a review at Amazon: If you believe in efficient markets or the overriding importance of macroeconomics, you will be angered and annoyed by this book. Milton Friedman and John Maynard Keynes each take their shots here, although in polite ways. As Peter L. Bernstein summarizes nicely in his introduction, Professor Kindleberger's argument boils down to four principles: (1) Irrational behavior does occur from time to time in financial markets. (2) There is a general, repeatable pattern in how this irrational behavior plays out (a positive economic displacement is followed by euphoria that takes the form of overtrading, then distress following revulsion, discredit by lenders in the overtraded assets, and then panic leading possibly to a crash brought on by those who bought high). (3) The economic system needs a lender of last resort to step in at the right time and in the right way to restore confidence and liquidity. (4) Trying to solve these problems by being doctrinaire is "wrong . . . and dangerous."
How about a net worth test for Charlie Rangel? The medical and spiritual dangers of WiFi Good point, via Driscoll. Be sure to read the Jamie Lee Curtis link. Reasons global warming may not exist at all New Year's resolutions you can keep Peoples' Paradise update: Cuba celebrates 50 years of oppression, fear, and misery. Powerline A book: Larry Elder's Stupid Black Men
Friday, January 2. 2009
 Was 2008 really all that bad? Only to us who have been spoiled and expect life to be easy.
Good news. Earth has cooled since Bush took office. Good going, George. But I think you overdid it. School endowments are saving for what? It's greed, I tell ya. This guy Senator Burris sure does dig himself. I wonder what it feels like to have that much "self-esteem." (h/t, Betsy) Related: Bobby Rush says take a chill pill. I'm fresh out of 'em. Our cuz Mr. Free Market not only pokes a friendly stick in Maggie's eye, but, more importantly, into the eye of the Nannies. Make my day, Nanny. How did California become so suicidal? We always knew they were nutty and flakey, but not suicidal. Unpleasant truths about Germany. No, not about the Nazis. Quagmire update: Most under-reported item of yesterday: Green Zone handed off to Iraqis. I know she's good, but how does Small Dead Lemmings do this? Jealous? Who, me? Pondering parenthood in that agonizing, Liberal way. Sheesh. What a putz. The C of E today: Crazy people. Certifiable. Student of the Great Depression Amity Schlaes on What Obama should do. He won't. George Will: Health care costs keep growing All this rug stuff on Maggie's. Now I've been bidding on old rugs on eBay. Most of the eBay rug items are coarse new crap, but some looks very nice. Life does need beauty in it. But does one need to own it? Photo: Borrowed from Moonbattery. At first I thought it was satire, but now I wonder. That shirt has got to come off.
Thursday, January 1. 2009
From guest poster Bruce Kesler:
There are better states of “peace” and lesser ones. A better peace is one that leads to or allows increases in mutual safety and respect; a lesser peace increases the security risks and leads to or allows more or larger conflict and suffering.
If that critical distinction is not understood, dictating decisions, then by default a lesser peace will result as actions are taken that undermine the focus and measures necessary for a better peace.
The primary element needed for a better peace is recognition by all sides that it is preferable to the alternatives. This may require one side to lead the other to this thinking, and that thinking to be reinforced.
Sometimes, either sooner or later, or more usually as a last resort, this will require the side desiring a better peace to take forceful action, including armed ones.
That has always been the regretful but necessary course by Israel since its founding.
Successfully and decisively fending off repeated attacks by neighboring Arab states, soundly defeating them, Jordan and Egypt finally accepted the sense of a better peace with Israel. The intervention of Iran and Syria into Lebanon’s nascent better peace with Israel, via their Hizbullah proxy, destroyed that better peace. But, although Israel’s 2006 incursion into Lebanon was far from decisive, and Hizbullah has rearmed to more lethal levels than before, Hizbullah was severely bloodied and has restrained armed and missile attacks on Israel longer than most expected.
Within, Israel has tried to neutralize the enmity of Palestinians through raising their economics and education above that in Arab countries, succeeding in that but it failing to prevail against the power-lusting thuggery of almost all Palestinian leadership from 1967 to now who see greater personal advantage and profit from encouraging the hate that entrenches their position. Even exiting Gaza, trying to have constructive trade and relations with it, failed to create a better peace as the most extreme of major Palestinian factions – Hamas – forcefully took control and destroyed all facets of external cooperation and internal development, further endangering Israel by thousands of terror missile and mortar attacks moving deeper into Israel till now about 700,000 in Israel are within range.
The West, particularly the US, has properly labeled Hamas as the primary culprit in Gaza’s downward spiral, and its targeting by Israel’s restrained and focused retaliations. But, at the same time, the West has insisted on allowing flows of “humanitarian” food and medical supplies to enter Gaza, including from Israel. This relieves suffering, but both through waylaying by Hamas for its own benefit and through reducing Gazan’s need to demand compromise or have hostility toward Hamas, it has contradicted the quest for a better peace. Even now, during active hostilities, this Western demand continues.
It is harsh but necessary that all supplies to Gaza be cut off during present circumstances. That is war.
Israel, it is said by all observers, cannot realistically afford to nor hope to eradicate Hamas. But, it – with the West’s support – can at least hope to so bloody and weaken Hamas as to possibly – not probably, but better prospects than any other alternative – create conditions for a better peace through so weakening Hamas’ stranglehold on Gaza as to allow the opening for Gazans with Arab states’ active involvement to develop a better peace of security and respect under the realistic deterrence of facing a sharp sword of retaliation.
Along with a complete cutoff of external supplies, it may be necessary for Israel to launch a short land offensive into Gaza to further uproot Hamas strongpoints and infrastructure, to drive the point home that Hamas dare not face Israel’s purposeful and firm deterrence measures.
Stopping now, especially when the point is not sufficiently driven home, and appearing to kowtow to misled pacifist demands from the West, will only accomplish a disrespect for Israel’s deterrence and lead to another shorter-lived lesser peace.
Although, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, only 31% of Democrats back Israel’s choice to take military action in Gaza (75% of Republicans do), ironically soon to be president Barack Obama can right now provide the voice that can lead to a better peace. Obama’s coy silence fosters Hamas’hope or expectation that a soon less resolved US will, in effect, save its necks by demanding Israel halt its attacks on Hamas. If Obama would forcefully speak out now in favor of Israel’s measures and express his determination to continue to do so until Hamas assuredly ceases its missile attacks upon Israel, Obama could both prevent the necessity of Israeli troops having to enter Gaza and persuade Hamas that it can only lose more by its intransigence. A better peace could emerge.
That would be real hope and change all would welcome.
A review of a new bio of Arthur Miller. A quote: One good test of a literary biography is whether it sends one back to the author. I finished this one relieved that I never had to hear anything more about Arthur Miller.
CT newspapers want government $. We knew this would come up. Related, via Insty: How can newspapers cover somebody they love? Related: Village Voice lays off Nat Hentoff. Nat Hentoff? They are done. Ireland's enviro minister: Climate change is a con Thomas Frank on the un-wisdom of markets. WSJ. Methinks he does not understand the history of bubbles in economics. Chantrill at Am Thinker: A Conservative Narrative
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