David Pryce-Jones:

Familiar pieces of the landscape are falling away, and the Evening Standard is only the most recent. For a century and a half, this has been London's leading evening paper. . . . And now Lord Rothermere has sold it on to one Alexander Lebedev for a nominal one pound.

Lebedev is a former KGB agent, once stationed in London, and he glories in that fact. Nobody knows how he became an oligarch, but according to Forbes he is the world's 194th richest man, worth two billion dollars or more. He is said to have been a friend of Yeltsin, and now is on good terms with Putin. So a title with influence comes into the hands of a former Communist secret policeman and spy, whose past is as invisible as his present activities. Reportedly, Mikhail Gorbachev and Tony Blair will sit on some advisory board. The cabinet minister with responsibility for approving the transfer of title is Peter Mandelson, himself once a Communist and now a good friend of Oleg Deripaska, another dubious Russian oligarch.

Does this not remind you of the end of Animal Farm, George Orwell's satirical masterpiece, when the revolutionary pigs and the capitalist humans celebrate together whatever they can grab, and nobody can tell which is which.

Dave Barry:

It is a great honor to march in an inauguration parade. So when a group I belong to called the World Famous Lawn Rangers of Amazing Arcola was selected to march at Barack Obama's inauguration, our reaction, as Americans, was: "The organizers of this parade must be smoking crack."

I say this because we are not a traditional marching unit. We are an extremely random group of middle-age guys who carry brooms and push specially decorated show lawn mowers, which we use to perform synchronized broom-and-lawn mower maneuvers that always get a big crowd reaction (usually: "Huh?").

The conclusion, believe it or not, is stirring.

A good quip on the New York Times, from Greg Pollowitz.

(This may be the first time I've ever used the word "quip." It feels great.)

Later: Also on Media Blog, Tim Graham writes of Doris Kearns Goodwin et al., "Watching interviews like this makes you feel like some of these professor/pundits are not offering a historical perspective, but a hysterical perspective."

Rush Limbaugh on Reverend Joseph Lowery:

[T]his guy is still living in the sixties; he was part of the inaugural address today; he did not acknowledge at all the significant, the overwhelming change represented by Obama's inauguration today. And so, as far as the grievance community is concerned, there's no solution, there's no change. There hasn't been any major achievement or accomplishment. . . . I really don't know much about what Obama said, either, but I know damn well what Lowery just said. He was the most clear spoken guy up there on the dais. . . .

We just had the guy yesterday from down in Atlanta, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the guy who originally said that Obama doesn't mean a change at all because he doesn't have any slave blood. The race industry is still around. One of my most fervent desires and wishes, I'm serious, as a human being, is that all of this racism just be over with, all this group victimization be over with, and I don't get it, because it's never going to end. These are tactics, these are political tactics employed by the left to secure power, and they'll never give it up. And while they're the ones out there practicing all this racism and groupthink and victimization, they're blaming people like me for it. And it's just a shame. It's just a shame.

And on Elizabeth Alexander:

This is not torture. This is hilarious. Somebody, somewhere, thought this was exceptional. You have to understand, somebody thought that this was brilliant. It's a code. I don't understand it. . . . [G]et me more of this. Two sound bites from Elizabeth Alexander are simply not enough. Get me more.

Julia Turner, Slate's deputy editor:

Could Michelle Obama have better color sense? Like Dana, I am loving her apolitically chartreuse outfit.

And I'd find it hard to overstate** my agreement with this:

Down with matchy-matchiness.

*I'm not sure what ochre looks like.

**Or understate. Because I can't imagine having an opinion.

(Via Byron York.)

Specifically, the Geesepeace program, described in the original (1/22/04) press release as

a national non-profit organization that uses non-lethal methods to reduce the number of geese and redirect them to areas where they pose less of a threat to people.

"If environmental concerns overrode passenger safety," Greg Pollowitz writes, "then that's something that needs to be debated in light of yesterday's miracle." Yes indeed.

They know invective on Al-Jazeera. MEMRI's posted video of a talk show that devolved into insults (a lot of the clips on MEMRI follow that pattern). From the transcript:

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This proves that you are a vulgar, stupid man with a shoe mentality.

Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: These are the collaborators with George Bush and the Americans, collaborators with the neo-Nazis. Eventually, they will face trial and he held accountable. He might have fled Libya, but we will hunt him down in France, or even at the end of the world.

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This is a threat, and I will sue you today.

Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: Go to...

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: You animal...

Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: You collaborator, go to...

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This is the language and culture of shoes.

Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: You are a disgrace to international law!

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: Me a disgrace?!

Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: By the way, I've crossed your name off the ICC.

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: This show is being recorded, and I will sue you.

Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: I will hunt you down, you collaborator!

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: I didn’t hit you, but you said that you would hunt me down. This is recorded.

Interviewer: I thank you both.

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: It's globally recorded, and if anything happens to me, you'll be held responsible.

It's funny to read, but of course it's (literally) deadly serious. What caused the exchange is that Shalouf defended Bush, at least by comparison to certain others:

Interviewer: . . . Doesn’t Bush deserve to be placed on trial?

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: I will answer this question. The Arab rulers are the ones who attack their own people, killing them, massacring them, and getting them involved in unwinnable wars. Yet these rulers are never held accountable – from Abd Al-Nasser to Assad, and all these rulers.

[...]

Deputy Secretary-General of the Arab Lawyers Association Abd Al-'Azim Al-Mughrabi: I'm sad to say that the things he said are contradictory, fictitious, and meaningless. I don't know what exactly my colleague is saying. You asked him a question about the crimes perpetrated by the Nazi of our times, George Bush, and his neo-Nazi comrades, who have destroyed the world, along with their own country, America, as we are now seeing. But he evades the question by saying that the Arab rulers should stand trial.

Abd Al-Hadi Shalouf: The Arab rulers should stand trial first...

It's downhill from there. One can't fail to admire Shalouf's courage in taking this stand against the disagreement of the host, the fury of his fellow guest, and the likely opposition of his audience. Our politicians are rarely so brave, when all they might lose are elections.

Andrew Stuttaford on how those who didn't support Obama might mark his inauguration:

I’d recommend punctuating the festivities with a few readings, seder-style, from a devotional book. . . . [T]he hagiographic Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope would do very well. This strikingly illustrated children’s book (and New York Times bestseller) by award-winning poetess Nikki Grimes tells the story of Obama from boyhood to presidential campaign. Celebrants might wish to begin with this passage describing Obama’s time in Indonesia:

He caught crickets, flew kites,
and joyed in the jungle
at the end of his new home—
a perfect paradise, until
the sight of beggars
broke his heart.
Barry started to wonder,
Will I ever be able
to help people like these?
Hope hummed deep inside of him.
Someday, son.
Someday.

With luck, your guests will rejoice in those words, and also in these, recording Barry-now-Barack’s move to Chicago:

Barack’s eyes saw
the hungry and the homeless,
crying out like beggars in Djakarta,
burning a hole in his heart.
When his classes came to an end,
he raced to Chicago
to join hands with the church,
to learn new lessons:
not how to be black or white, but how to be a healer,
how to change things,
how to make a difference
in the world.

And if those later lines conjure up any awkward thoughts of The Reverend Who Must Not Be Named, they can be dispelled by allowing your guests to gaze at some of the book’s illustrations—a weeping Barack at prayer, maybe, or a butterfly settled on the hands of a praying Barack of Assisi. Best of all is a picture showing Obama acknowledging the cheers of the crowd the night he was elected senator. Haloed by what looks like starlight, he’s smiling, his hands extended in a gesture more normally associated with the Mount of Olives.

Did I mention that Kool-Aid will be served?

If we're at war against the jihadists, writes Andrew C. McCarthy, then

the people we capture must first be seen as combatants, not defendants. . . .

President Obama can continue our current strategy of fighting radical Islam as a combatant force, which will entail some ancillary prosecutions but, more importantly, will unavoidably result in the apprehension of dangerous suspects who can’t be tried — certainly not “swiftly.” Or he can shift to a law-enforcement model and investigate radical Islam as a criminal enterprise: apprehending only those against whom there is evidence adequate to prove courtroom guilt — which will often mean after terrorists have struck and innocents have been killed.

He can’t do both.

That is our post-9/11 American reality. Despite the Left’s narrative, it was never a George W. Bush diversion. And no president can duck it. Voting “present” is no longer an option.

Mark Steyn notes "a wholly false equivalence" in "the bizarre response from the French government to a Molotov cocktail attack on a synagogue in St-Denis":

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said France has faced a "very clear increase" in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attacks since Israel started an offensive against the militant group Hamas in Gaza on Dec. 27.

Would it be too much for a French reporter to ask Mme Alliot-Marie to provide an example of an "anti-Muslim attack" since December 27th? None seems to have been reported in the French press, unlike the daily attacks on synagogues, kosher butchers, schools, and individual Jews in Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, etc.

To understand the context, Steyn suggests,

look at this "pro-Palestinian" protest in London and the Metropolitan Police retreating in the face of a crowd jeering, "Run, run, you cowards!" and "Fatwa!" The west's deluded multiculti progressives should understand: In the end, this isn't about Gaza, this isn't about Jews. It's about you.

Scary stuff, and worse is coming.

Follow-up post from Steyn here.

To let this make it into print?

the principle lesson of the Buckley-Reagan relationship

Yikes. Not an error I'd expect in the Sunday Book Review, whatever its other deficiencies.

Some past posturing by our likely Secretary-of-State-to-be.

Reuel Marc Gerecht offers a correction to Jeffrey Goldberg's (excellent) op-ed on Israel and its enemies.

Whatever Nicholas Kristof's politics in general, on this issue he's right factually and, I'm afraid (because there should be bipartisan consensus), politically:

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs. . . .

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”

(Via Don Boudreaux.)

A report from StrategyPage.

In Eric Trager's opinion, it's

not that it promoted democracy naively, but that it promoted democracy inconsistently and - at times - half-heartedly. Yes, the administration demonstrated a very substantial commitment to democracy in Iraq - and history has not reached a unanimous verdict on this project yet. But in Egypt, the administration abandoned its landmark call for democracy, sitting idly by as the most prominent opposition candidate was jailed following false elections; in the Levant, the administration retreated from its multilateral effort to evict Syria from Lebanon, ultimately endorsing a treaty that strengthened Damascus’s position in Beirut; and throughout the Gulf, the administration strengthened its ties to oil-dripping despots.

In turn, perhaps the Bush administration’s real downfall is that it has discredited the “democracy agenda” by compromising and mitigating its efforts on that front so often. In the United States, we are unlikely to feel the immediate consequences: the Obama administration will probably embrace “power politics,” thus returning to the framework that has guided American foreign policy historically. But in the Middle East, the consequences will be tragic - particularly for liberals, who spent much of the past eight years working for change, only to expose themselves to greater repression when American support was not forthcoming.

Jennifer Rubin:

There is no peace with Hamas. There is only truce and war.

And on the editors of the New York Times:

Logic is absent. Fantasy is omnipresent. These people are no realists.

Mary Jordan in the Washington Post:

Joshua Silver remembers the first day he helped a man see.

Henry Adjei-Mensah, a tailor in Ghana, could no longer see well enough to thread the needle of his sewing machine. He was too poor to afford glasses or an optometrist. Then Silver, an atomic physicist who also taught optics at Oxford University, handed him a pair of self-adjusting glasses he had designed, and suddenly the tailor's world came into crystal-clear focus.

"He grinned and started operating his machine very fast," said Silver, 62, who aims to distribute his special glasses throughout the developing world.

Silver said he wants to provide eyeglasses to more than a billion people with poor eyesight. . . .

The glasses, which are made in China, are not sleek. In fact, he acknowledged, "detractors call them ugly." He said the design can be improved, but the current model looks like something from the back of Woody Allen's closet -- thick dark frames with round lenses. The glasses work on the principle that the more liquid pumped into a thin sac in the plastic lenses, the stronger the correction.

Silver has attached plastic syringes filled with silicone oil on each bow of the glasses; the wearer adds or subtracts the clear liquid with a little dial on the pump until the focus is right. After that adjustment, the syringes are removed and the "adaptive glasses" are ready to go.

Currently, Silver said, a pair costs about $19, but his hope is to cut that to a few dollars.

Few of us will do so much good. Silver deserves to be proud.

(Via William Saletan.)

Theodore Dalrymple draws a lesson from a subway stop.

(Via The Skeptical Doctor, my source for all things Dalrymple/Daniels.)

Mark Steyn looks back on Bill Clinton's impeachment:

It was, of course, a joke trial, and, after a couple of days’ exposure to “the world’s greatest deliberative body”, I was all in favour of unicameral legislatures. The bossy lady who runs the Congressional Press Gallery snootily told me and David Frum and Jan Cienski that there was a huge demand for tickets and we’d have to share a seat. Ha! By the third day, you could have shot bison on the wide open plains of the Senate Gallery, and she was pathetically grateful to those of us who still bothered showing up.

Still, I think back happily on that period: it was the glory days of the Conrad Black/Ken Whyte National Post, and, with the benefit of hindsight, there’s something to be said for coasting through an entire Presidential term on oral sex gags. I know the entire Clinton era was a holiday from history, but, after eight years of waking up to death threats from the more excitable readers, dirty-nuke scenarios from correspondents in the Horn of Africa, and "human rights" complaints of flagrant Islamophobia from Canadian Islamists and their PC stooges, I kinda miss the dopey triviality of an age when the rumours revolved around who’d offed Kathleen Willey’s cat.

Don't click on this link. Really. Don't.

In Poetry (issue dated 3/08—no link but quoted here), poet Heather McHugh tells of meeting Leonard Nimoy:

He advised me on the pronunciation of some words in the expression Alle Kunst ist umsunst Wenn ein Engel auf das Zündloch brunzt (which covers a multitude of sins and means something like: all skill is in vain if an angel pisses down the touch-hole of your musket).

That's the subtitle to the forthcoming book Welcome to Obamaland by British columnist James Delingpole, who remembers all too well Tony Blair's ascension to power:

Crikey, they were scary times for those few of us who, right from day one, refused to give any credence to the Blair project. It was like the second half of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, where pretty much every human alive has been taken over by the evil, gelatinous pod-creatures, and you no longer know which, if any, of your friends you can trust. Remember the awful final scene in the classic 1978 remake where the sweet girl goes up to nice Donald Sutherland only to have him reveal with that blood-curdling scream that, yes, he too has been got by the bodysnatchers? Well that’s just how I felt when my hitherto sound friend Damian confided to me that he too now held out high hopes for the new regime. . . .

Obama, I very much fear, is Blair Mk II. . . .

Sometimes — from liberals, especially, like my best American friend W, who’s gay and teaches creative writing at a US univer-sity — you get the ‘You just don’t understand’ reaction. ‘You maybe can’t gauge just how vile and crypto-racist his opposition is here,’ protested W in a long, impassioned email trying to warn me off the project and quite missing the point. Me, I’m with the great Rush Limbaugh all the way on this one: I don’t hate Obama because he’s black. I hate him because he’s a white liberal.

Most often, and perhaps most predictably, though, you get the ‘Awww, how could you?’ reaction. This has less to do with anything Obama has ever said or done, than with the general fluffy benevolence people feel towards him. ‘But James, this is too awful!’ protested one former newspaper editor — let us call him Trevor — when I relayed the news [of Delingpole's book]. ‘Obama’s election was the one event this year that gave me hope for the future!’

It’s the naivety of this last group which I find most worrying because it’s sadly indicative of the critical response Obama can expect when he starts screwing up: i.e. no kind of critical response at all.

Is there no end to the mockery?

Later, and unrelated: I gather Randall Munroe has a thing for River Tam. (First link: some obscenity.)

Steve Chapman (1/1/09):

Burris is the prototypical time-serving career politician who owes his success to being simultaneously ambitious and bland. He has never been one to challenge the status quo, but no one underestimates his self-esteem. The two Burris children, after all, are named Roland and Rolanda. . . .

When the news broke that Gov. Rod Blagojevich was trying to auction off Barack Obama's Senate seat, Burris called his behavior "appalling." After the governor appointed him to fill the vacancy, though, the onetime comptroller-for-life lost interest in the scandal. "I have no comment on what the governor's circumstance is," he demurred.

But logic has never been his strong suit. A longtime advocate of a national handgun ban, Burris organized Chicago's first Gun Turn-in Day in 1993. But when he ran for governor the following year, he admitted that he owned a handgun ("for protection,") and did not hand it over to police as he urged others to do.

"He had simply forgotten about it," his spokesman said at the time. . . .

Most of the work of Congress is done in committee, and the Constitution doesn't say a senator is entitled to serve on committees—in fact, it doesn't even mention committees. Once on Capitol Hill, Burris may have nothing to do but bask in his new title, show up for an occasional floor vote, and cash his paycheck.

For that job, come to think of it, Burris is perfect.

Jennifer Rubin:

Is [Geithner] toast? If he were a Republican the answer would surely be yes. We’ll have to see whether he and the Obama team can get away with it. (The blogspheric cheerleaders are already assuring us it is but a “hiccup.”) This, of course, brings us to the bigger issue: what the heck is wrong with the Obama vetting process?

. . . Bottom line: whether or not Geithner survives, the air of competence surrounding the new administration is a precious thing and shouldn’t be frittered away like this. Certainly this was one more unforced error the new team did not need. One wonders if this is indicative of a regrettable pattern or simply the final bobble as the Obama administration gets its sea legs. But, wait. The Eric Holder hearing — which may be the bloodiest of them all — is still ahead. So much for the honeymoon.

Victor Davis Hanson:

I think one could legitimately argue that the Obama transition ethical lapses — Richardson, the Treasury Secretary nominee's Rangelesque tax problems, the Blago tapes to come surrounding the Obama Senate seat — already dwarf the surrealistic Libby matter during the eight years of the Bush administration.

Robert Ferrigno, imagining Bush's advice to Obama:

“First off, and this is something you’re going to have trouble believing. but it’s important — the media is your enemy. . . . General Robert E. Lee once said, ‘It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers.’ . . . So, lesson No. 1: The media aren’t your friends, they just liked you better than the other guy. Now you are the other guy.”

I agree with the first two, not with the third.

David Freddoso on the tenure of former Missouri governor Roy Blunt:

The downside to competent fiscal management is that it is not always appreciated.

Via Norm Geras.

Iain Murray:

One of the silver linings of the recession is that it is revealing quite how much of a burden environmental regulations are on the economy, something that tends to be masked in good times.

I'm reminded of Paul Johnson's observation that China and India "cannot afford liberalism" (i.e., modern leftism).

Craig Newmark:

The new administration has a fine opportunity to address the problem of Social Security and Medicare financing. I suggest once again that it should ask Congress to phase in an increase in the age for full benefits to 72, maybe 75.

Seconded, but I fear that Obama lacks the political backbone to fight for it, or even to make the request. Heck of a jump shot, though, and that's what matters in a president.

I think it safe to say that few people have seen anything like this.

(Via Dave Barry.)

Heather Mac Donald:

The teen birth rate has started climbing again. As usual, it’s highest in red states and states with high black and Hispanic populations and lowest in New England blue states. In 2006, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Texas topped the list, with 68, 64, and 63 births for every 1000 female teens, respectively, compared to 19 births per 1000 female teens in New Hampshire and 21 in Vermont and Massachusetts.

. . . Mexican-American teens have the highest birth rate—93 births per 1000 girls—compared to 64 births per 1000 black girls and 26 births per 1000 white girls. Decadent secular Europe and non-Christian Asia lag far behind. In 2003, Japan’s teen birthrate was 3.9 births per 1000 girls. Italy’s rate was 6.9 per 1000, and France’s, 10 births per 1000 girls.

The overall birth rate for American teenage girls in 2006 was 41.9 per 1000.

As recounted by Jay Nordlinger. One brief excerpt:

How about the incoming vice president? Smiling, almost chuckling, Cheney said, “Well, I like Joe. He’s a — he is an engaging fellow. He and his wife came here and we had a very pleasant hour as we showed them around the house. It’s the first time I’d met her. I hadn’t seen her before. But it was — well, I think it would be fair to say it was a lot easier, smoother than when we came to call on the Gores eight years ago.”

And what was that like? “It was awkward, because we’d had this tough, tough fight. He’d run for reelection — had run for election as president. . . . The recount had drug on for five weeks. There was a group of people out here on the street throughout that period of time, which I had nothing to do with, but with signs, yelling, ‘Get out of Cheney’s house!’ You could hear them inside here. And it was tough for them.”

Kate O'Beirne is another of the journalists who participated (it was a group interview). Her post on it concludes,

Finally, for the umpteenth time the caricature of this talented, temperate, dedicated patriot struck me as insane.

Nordlinger's op-ed on Bush's likability is also good reading, and the comments are fascinating for their vitriol.

Behold Männerspielplatz,

a German amusement park where, instead of standing in line to ride on roller coasters, you get to play with big, loud machines. For 219 euros (about $280), patrons can spend the day operating 29-ton Liebherr backhoes and 32-ton Komatsu front-end loaders, off-roading through the woods in a Mercedes-built Unimog, peeling out in a Suzuki SUV, and slinging some mud on quad bikes.

As the founder says, "I hear 'It's better than sex' a lot."

That's Daniel Pipes's assessment. He lists among Olmert's other errors the decision to fight Hamas rather than confront "the existential threat of Iran's nuclear program."

Pipes argues elsewhere that "only one practical approach" can resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs,

that which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67: Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule: Amman rules the West Bank and Cairo runs Gaza.

Pro: "Ishmael Jones," who argues that the CIA should be dismantled, calls him "a brave choice" for CIA Director.
 
Con: Ralph Peters likens Obama's selection of Panetta to "ask[ing] your accountant to perform brain surgery on your child."

Why I didn't embed the video in my original post I can't explain.

Stereo version here. Downloads: mp3, lead sheet, video.

Excellent analysis, all worth reading, from Victor Davis Hanson. Here's a sample, on "the now-familiar Middle East doctrine of proportionality":

Legitimate military action is strangely defined by the relative strength of the combatants. World opinion more vehemently condemns Israel's countermeasures, apparently because its rockets are far more accurate and deadly than previous Hamas barrages that are poorly targeted and thus not so lethal.

If America had accepted such rules in, say, World War II, then by late 1944 we, not the Axis, would have been the culpable party, since by then once-aggressive German, Italian, and Japanese forces were increasingly on the defensive and far less lethal than the Allies.

UK blogger and columnist Neil Clark:

For most of the first 60 years of its existence, Israel got an easy ride from Europeans due to European guilt over the Holocaust.

From what I can gather, that easy ride ended in the early 1980s (see here for instance), so in 2018 the comparable line will have to be "For most of the first 70 years of its existence, Israel got a hard time from Europeans despite European participation in and tolerance of the Holocaust."

Clark's blog is up for a Weblog Award. He's worried:

Melanie Phillips, yes 'Mad' Melanie Phillips, the woman who thinks Israel's actions in Gaza are "moral" and that the IDF is defending "civilisation" is currently leading the poll, having already received over 100 votes. She's clearly picking up the US Zionist vote- having gone from nowhere at bedtime UK time to a clear lead by the morning. In a week where the citizens of Gaza face death and destruction for having the temerity to vote the wrong way, I think it would be shocking if such an outspoken supporter of Israeli aggression won the 'Best UK Blog' award, don't you? Then, let's do something about it. Keep those votes coming in, and remember you can vote once every 24 hours from the same computer.

I just cast my ballot for Ms. Phillips.

Washington Times:

A once-popular bumper sticker says simply, "When Bush took office, gas was $1.46." It was meant to be a slam, but as the end of his eight years approaches, President Bush is seeing gas prices that, adjusted for inflation, are lower than when he was inaugurated.

Last week's $1.59 - the average for a gallon of regular on Dec. 29, according to the Energy Information Administration - works out to $1.33 in 2001 dollars, or 9 percent less than it was the day Mr. Bush took office. . . .

"I wonder if the same people who blamed the president for the increase in prices will now credit him with the reduction in prices. It's only fair," said Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.

(Via Drudge.)

I might be able to judge whether Gordon G. Chang is right:

Is there anything that can be done to prevent another global depression? Yes, there is. As noted by many analysts, Americans spend too much and the Chinese save too much. The obvious solution is for Americans to export to the Chinese, which would put an end to the world's two most important economic imbalances: the American current account deficit and the Chinese current account surplus.

Unfortunately, Beijing, beginning late last July, decided to try to export its way out of the crisis that it saw coming. The measures the Chinese then adopted, such as driving down the value of their currency, also had the effect of closing off their domestic market to imports. Unless President Obama takes drastic steps to open up the Chinese market–the Bush administration's patient approach was mostly ineffective–the global economy will continue to trend downward.

. . . We don't have to spend a dime to solve the global crisis. Mr. Obama merely needs to pick up the phone and talk to Hu Jintao in terms the Chinese president understands. It is as simple–or as difficult–as that. If we do not change China's mercantilist outlook in a hurry, we should prepare ourselves for the greatest depression the world has ever known.

Jay Nordlinger posts comments from readers of this story. One I find especially troubling:

For me, it is perhaps even worse, because it brings back all the stench of Communist propaganda, which filled my early years. Now the same thing is creeping into everyday American life. Sick, sick, sick.

Harry Reid, who memorably implied that he and Rush Limbaugh worked together to benefit a Marine Corps charity, claims partial credit for the surge.

That such a man could be Senate Majority Leader says something terrible about our republic.

Drew Thornley at Planet Gore:

[U]nlike the alleged “consensus” on anthropogenic global warming, the acceptance of ethanol’s folly is becoming more and more widespread. Why? Because we’re not talking centuries-hence computer projections and doomsday scenarios but rather actual results (or lack thereof), wasted subsidies, land clearing and its resulting carbon debt, an energy-inferior fuel, and harm to global food prices.

But on the heels of the federal stimulus package’s $17 billion in alternative-energy handouts, the president-elect’s links with the ethanol industry, and his plans to revolutionize our economy with green/clean/alternative energy jobs, don’t expect the fat lady to sing her ode to ethanol quite yet.

After surveying this latest clash between Israel and Hamas, Caroline Glick reaches "a very nasty conclusion":

The Olmert-Livni-Barak government now leading Israel in its war against Hamas is no different from the Olmert-Livni-Peretz government that led Israel in the 2006 war against Hizbullah. Our leaders have learned nothing from their prior failure. Indeed they are reenacting it in Gaza today.

The only thing the public can hope for, and indeed demand at this stage, is for Olmert, Livni and Barak to forego any ground operation in Gaza. There is no reason for our soldiers to place their lives in jeopardy in a campaign that the government that has already decided to lose.

Israeli troops entered Gaza today.

Megan McArdle, whose blog I like a lot, writes something so foolish that I check the post several times because I'm sure someone must be substituting for her. The latest instance, on Israel and Hamas:

I see a bunch of people who have been stomped on by history beating up each other in revenge for past wrongs that can't be righted, lashing out whenever they think they can get away with it without losing the foreign funding that allows them to continue the fun.

To explain thoroughly the idiocy of that passage would take a long time and would serve no useful purpose. At least she had the sense to disable comments.

From Tony Woodlief.

Jay Nordlinger on the ubiquity of leftist preening:

So, on Friday night, I go to Carnegie Hall for a Christmas concert. The King’s Singers are performing with the New York Pops Orchestra; Marilyn Horne is a special guest. This should be an evening away from politics — just a little fodder for my next New Criterion music piece, you know?

Shortly into the concert, the conductor turns to the audience and speaks about “the holidays.” This year, he says, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa are overlapping with Christmas. (According to what I can find, Kwanzaa begins on December 26, but never mind.) Then we have New Year’s Day. And “on January 20, there will be a new beginning for our country.” The crowd, of course, erupts into cheers. Then he says, “I see I’m not the only one who’s ready.”

. . . I suppose that conservatives, somewhere, act like that conductor, injecting politics where it doesn’t belong, transgressing against public decorum (and simply displaying bad manners). I have not witnessed it, though.

A list from Terry Teachout.

Melanie Phillips (12/1):

The Mumbai atrocities show very clearly what too many in Britain obdurately deny — that a war is being waged against civilisation.

It is both global and local. It is not ‘our’ fault; it has nothing to do with Muslim poverty, oppression or discrimination.

The Islamic fundamentalist fanatics use specific grievances — Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya — merely as recruiting sergeants for their worldwide holy war against all ‘unbelievers’. . . .

The Government and security establishment refuse to acknowledge that what we are facing is a religious war. Instead, they think that Islamist terrorism is driven by grievances which are basically the fault of the West.

But you have only to look around the world or at the history of the past four decades and more to see the absurdity and ignorance of this view.

Look at Thailand, for example, currently convulsed by Islamist terrorism in the south with bombings, beheadings and the murder of Buddhists.

Look at the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Look at the Islamist terrorism in the Philippines. Look . . . at the attacks variously upon New York, Bali, Istanbul, Jakarta, Sharm el Sheikh, Casablanca, Madrid, London and India.

If we don’t understand what we are fighting, we cannot defeat it.

StrategyPage:

Many Pakistanis now believe that the recent Islamic terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, was the work of the Israeli Mossad, or the American CIA. Such fantasies are a common explanation, in Moslem nations, for Islamic terrorist atrocities. Especially when women and children, and Moslems, are among the victims, other Moslems tend to accept fantastic explanations shifting the blame to infidels (non-Moslems). . . .

After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, many Moslems again blamed Israel. A favorite variation of this is that, before the attacks on the World Trade Center, a secret message went out to all Jews in the area to stay away. Another variation has it that the 19 attackers (all of them Arab, 15 from Saudi Arabia) were really not Arabs, but falsely identified as part of the Israeli deception. . . . Even Western educated Arabs, speaking good English, will casually express, and accept, these tales of the Israeli Mossad staging the attacks, to trick the U.S. into attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. Americans are shocked at this, but the Moslems expressing these beliefs just shrug.

American troops arriving in Iraq go through a real culture shock as they encounter these cultural difference. They also discover that the cause of this, and many other Arab problems, is the concept of "inshallah" ("If God wills it.") . . . The "inshallah" thing is made worse by a stronger belief in the supernatural, and magic in general. This often extends to technology. Thus many Iraqis believe that American troops wear sunglasses that see through clothing, and armor vests that are actually air conditioned. When they first encounter these beliefs, U.S. troops thought the Arabs are putting them on. Then it sinks in that Arabs really believe this stuff. It's a scary moment.

Byron York:

George W. Bush leaves office with a job-approval rating that once soared to historic highs, then fell slowly but steadily for five years before settling, in the last couple of years, into lows that no president has ever experienced for so long. The president’s final Gallup approval rating of 2008 is 28 percent; a number like that means some core Republicans don’t approve of Bush’s performance, and even among the many in the GOP who still approve, there are a number who are ready to see the president go.

Bush knows that. The White House staff knows it. But the president’s political fortunes haven’t affected the intense loyalty that those who know him best feel for him. The people who have worked with George W. Bush in the White House for many of these past eight years have seen a different man from the one reflected in so much negative press coverage. And as they prepare to leave on January 20, their feelings for him are, if anything, stronger than when they arrived.

Via Don Boudreaux, thoughts from H. L. Mencken (1880-1956):

When we say that (government) has decided to do this or that, that it proposes or aspires to do this or that -- usually to the great cost and inconvenience of nine-tenths of us -- we simply say that a definite man or group of men has decided to do it, or proposes or aspires to do it; and when we examine this group of men realistically we almost invariably find that it is composed of individuals who are not only not superior to the general, but plainly and depressingly inferior, both in common sense and in common decency.

Andrew C. McCarthy:

I have an article coming soon which calls (among other things) for a complete reappraisal of what "international law" means in the context of the ongoing conflict [between Israel and Hamas]. I argue that there is no international law of warfare because Israel, like the U.S., has wisely declined to join the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. It has therefore not consented to Protocol I's effort to convert warfare from a military campaign into a hyper-legal regulatory exercise that favors terrorist factions over national armed forces. . . .

[A] set of obligations only constitutes "international law" if a country has agreed to be bound by it. Israel and the U.S. have not agreed to be bound by Protocol I. Consequently, there is no law violation in failures by Israel or us to meet its impossible terms (impossible, that is, if the objective of a military campaign is to be victory).

No number of loopy "disproportionate" reports by CNN, MSNBC and their stable of human-rights experts can change this. We should understand, moreover, that these are not simply reports; they are very purposeful efforts to advance a leftist antiwar agenda. If adopted, they would prevent the U.S. and Israel from pursuing vital national interests — especially national defense. We ought to be attacking the premise of these war-crimes smears rather than trying to finesse the matter for the purportedly greater good of harmony within the "international community." A community is a place where everyone is bound by the same law. We don't have one.

Susan Estrich:

I remember a time, many years ago, when my biggest worry on Thanksgiving was whether Marblehead would beat Swampscott in a game of football that almost everyone — winners and losers — would forget about the next day. In those days, I worried about things like whether my sister would make fun of me for being chubby, whether my mother would actually sit at the table, and who would get stuck doing the dishes. I didn't really understand what it meant to be thankful because I didn't really understand loss. The irony, of course, is that the more pain you face, the more you have to be thankful for.

My parents are both gone. My brother and sister are far away. It has not been easy for any of us. I have faced defeats far more crushing than the Thanksgiving football game, lost friends I loved dearly, spent too many days sitting in too many hospitals praying in case it helped. I can't imagine ever being as carefree as I was on those Thanksgivings so long ago, or as the young and beautiful woman in the elevator.

But I have learned what it means to be thankful.

(Via Craig Newmark.)

Betsy Newmark notes this, from a Washington Times story on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), aka card check:

Gerald McEntee, president of the influential American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told The Washington Times in an interview that EFCA was "payback" for the labor movement's massive campaign effort for Mr. Obama and the Democrats. . . . [U]nions expect a full-throttle effort in time on EFCA, he added.

Newmark asks,

Is there really such a big difference between looking for "payback" for campaign efforts and what Blagojevich was doing? If we had tapes of labor officials offering to spend millions campaigning for Democrats in exchange for such "payback," would people be as horrified as they were for the selling of a Senate seat?

There isn't much of a difference. In each case a powerful politician (governor, president-elect) is willing to accept something useful to him (money, campaign efforts) in exchange for political favors (a Senate seat, a piece of legislation). It all makes one proud to be American, doesn't it?

James Dunnigan:

The war that worries most people in the Middle East is the one going on between Shia Iran and Arab Sunnis. This conflict ultimately takes over every other conflict. . . .

For the last three months, Shia and Sunni radicals have escalated their attacks on each other's web sites. What really got things going was a Shia attack on the two main web sites for Sunni radical religious propaganda (including al Qaeda) on September 11, 2008. Sunni hackers retaliated shortly thereafter by defacing 300 web sites belonging to Shia clergy and religious organizations. Shia hackers then came back with more attacks on Sunni clergy, media and religious sites. . . . Since some 80 percent of Moslems are Sunni (versus about ten percent Shia), the Shia soon began taking more damage than they were dishing out, by a margin of more than two to one. . . .

Although most Hamas members are Sunni, Shia Iran is a major backer of Hamas. So it makes sense for Hamas to come up with something to stop the Internet war between Shia and Sunni Moslems, and unite everyone against Israel. It hasn't worked, and Israeli and Western counter-intelligence agencies appear to have joined in, making attacks on Shia and Sunni sites, and letting paranoia take its course.

I hope they both lose.

A good catch from one of Tim Blair's readers.

"David Hume" at Secular Right:

One of the main points which my liberal friends have a hard time grasping is the conservative anger at George W. Bush for not being a conservative.

Hume seems to be referring to "conservative anger" over the war in Iraq. I read a lot of rightist commentary, and I can attest that Hume is greatly narrowing the definition of "conservative," oversimplifying conservatives' opinions of Bush, or both. Many of us on the right, perhaps most of us, still feel that removing Saddam's regime was necessary to American security. Even those of us who've come to disagree with the decision to invade, or who feel that Bush's conduct of the post-Saddam war was unforgivably inept (or simply ill-advised), are often more disappointed than angry. More broadly, though, many or most conservatives are angry at Bush for diverging from conservatism in one way or another. So Hume is largely correct.

Jim Powell of the Cato Institute, arguing for tax cuts rather than "blitz[ing] the economy with infrastructure spending":

Private individuals are likely to be more careful with their money than politicians. Private individuals stand to gain from good spending decisions and lose from bad spending decisions. By contrast, there seldom seems to be any effective consequences for politicians who squander other people's money[. . . .]

Also:

The United States was a comparatively poor country two hundred years ago, but it became wealthy because decisions about allocating resources were made mainly by private individuals with strong incentives to make the most of what they had. Similarly, in recent decades the expansion of private decision-making has enabled hundreds of millions throughout Asia to emerge from poverty. Cutting taxes returns resources to private individuals, who are best placed to make the most effective spending decisions.

(Via Andrew Roth at The Club For Growth.)

Behold:

From America's Funniest Home Videos.

(I'm comfortable posting this clip because I consider it good advertising for AFV, with which, by the way, I have no affiliation. But I expect YouTube will delete it for copyright reasons.)

I've read more than once that the Gaza Strip has the highest population density in the world. Alan R.M. Jones, a correspondent of Tim Blair's, checks the numbers:

Gaza’s area is 140 square miles or 363 square km (along some of the world’s best beachfront real estate, turned into a wasteland by a bunch of fanatical ratbags). That gives Gaza a population density of 4,132 people per sq km. Hong Kong has seven million people living on 1,092 square KM, for a population density of 6,392.

Hong Kong's GDP per capita: $42,000. Gaza and the West Bank's: $1100.

I've posted this quote before, but it keeps coming to mind, so I'll keep posting it. Tawfik Hamid:

Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They're slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can't you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want.

Blaming ourselves is at least in part an attempt to assert control over our situation: if it's our fault, then we can fix it. But it isn't our fault, and we can't control the situation. We can only fight those who wish to destroy us. Though far from perfect, we aren't imperialists, or aggressors, or mass murderers. They are.