Environmentalism is just a pretext. The real motive is that the legislation is, in the words of Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.), “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time.”

(Via Chris Horner.)

I meant to link to this last month: William Tucker on our huge supply of natural gas.

Chris Horner, on the idea that carbon dioxide is a threat to humanity:

Try living without it, then talk to me.

Craig Newmark notes this from Keith Hennessey:

The stimulus will begin to ramp up in Q1 of next year, and be in full swing by Q2 and Q3 of 2010. . . . [T]he boost to GDP will come six to nine months later than it needed to (maybe more). Given the President’s desire to do a large fiscal stimulus, and given his policy preferences, he could have had a different bill that would have been producing significant GDP growth beginning now, rather than in the middle of next year. That’s a huge mistake with real consequences for the U.S. and global economies.

Prof. Newmark responds, "The administration didn't make a mistake and didn't defer. Q2 and Q3 of next year will be perfectly timed to take credit before the 2010 Congressional elections."

That's right. In the Democrats' view, better to let unemployment reach double digits than risk GOP electoral momentum. I repeat: Democrats care most about defeating Republicans, not about improving the economy (or any other issue). If in consequence you lose your job, or your business goes under, too bad; it's a price worth paying.

Whether Obama and co. can manage the recovery as precisely as they think remains to be seen.

Glenn Reynolds points to a post about "The Growing Demand for Goat Meat" in the US. Whenever the subject of goats arises (not often in my experience) I think of this, from a great essay by Theodore Dalrymple in which he describes his time working as a doctor in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe):

The young black doctors who earned the same salary as we whites could not achieve the same standard of living for a very simple reason: they had an immense number of social obligations to fulfill. They were expected to provide for an ever expanding circle of family members (some of whom may have invested in their education) and people from their village, tribe, and province. An income that allowed a white to live like a lord because of a lack of such obligations scarcely raised a black above the level of his family. Mere equality of salary, therefore, was quite insufficient to procure for them the standard of living that they saw the whites had and that it was only human nature for them to desire—and believe themselves entitled to, on account of the superior talent that had allowed them to raise themselves above their fellows. In fact, a salary a thousand times as great would hardly have been sufficient to procure it: for their social obligations increased pari passu with their incomes.

These obligations also explain the fact, often disdainfully remarked upon by former colonials, that when Africans moved into the beautiful and well-appointed villas of their former colonial masters, the houses swiftly degenerated into a species of superior, more spacious slum. Just as African doctors were perfectly equal to their medical tasks, technically speaking, so the degeneration of colonial villas had nothing to do with the intellectual inability of Africans to maintain them. Rather, the fortunate inheritor of such a villa was soon overwhelmed by relatives and others who had a social claim upon him. They brought even their goats with them; and one goat can undo in an afternoon what it has taken decades to establish.

Bjorn Lomborg:

In a new survey of 500 American pre-teens, it was found that one in three children, aged between six and 11, feared that the earth would not exist when they reach adulthood because of global warming and other environmental threats. An unbelievable one-third of our children believe that they don't have a future because of scary global warming stories.

We see the same pattern in the United Kingdom, where a survey showed that half of young children aged between seven and 11 are anxious about the effects of global warming, often losing sleep because of their concern. This is grotesquely harmful.

And let us be honest. This scare was intended.

(Via Planet Gore.)

David P. Goldman:

In countries where torture is habitual, unexceptionable and embedded in everyday life, it is foolish to imagine that our armed forces might conduct successful operations without employing torture as a matter of normal practice. . . . [T]he horror of everyday life in what President Obama calls “the Muslim world” is more than the American mind can absorb.

“Ishmael Jones,” formerly a deep-cover officer with the CIA, makes the case (convincingly, in my opinion; I'd like to learn what the folks at In From the Cold think).

An American Jew on his coreligionists' political unwisdom.

Possibly NSFW.

Mark Krikorian notes a study "that confirms what common sense would suggest: Immigrants bring with them the cultural attitudes of their home countries, and those [attitudes] persist in their children."

Leftists like government, Rightists don't. Many more Leftists than Rightists seek careers in government, not just political office but also the far more numerous jobs in governmental bureaucracies. Rightists generally prefer to work in the private sector.

Rightists are thus greatly outnumbered in government, and will probably remain so.

(This is a much-condensed version of the original post, which I badly overwrote.)

Donald Boudreaux quotes Francis Fukuyama and F. A. Hayek to show "that a successful economy must continually use knowledge that is dispersed, unimaginably detailed, and often unable to be articulated." Central planning always fails; local, specific knowledge is decisive, and blue-collar workers possess crucial skills that many white-collar workers would never be able to attain.

I wish our president would absorb that lesson. One disturbing trait of Obama's is his evident belief that he can improve any situation, even if he has little or no experience in that area. In fact, his lack of humility may be his defining flaw. Can the man in the world's most powerful office learn modesty on the job? I hope so. Were I religious I'd pray so, often.

AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com.

(Via BuzzFeed.)

A report on Iraq from StrategyPage.

Jill Sobule, "Nothing to Prove." I remember that Trader Joe's. (Some profanity.)

This post by Richard Fernandez and the first embedded video make me want to try some. Read the comments too.

From the episode "Deadpan" of Murder, She Wrote:

JESSICA: Well, maybe I'm confused, but if Mr. O'Mara was shot when you think that he was shot, why does his skin have that bluish look to it?

LT. JARVIS: Funny, he doesn't look bluish to me.

Republicans care most about defeating America's enemies.

Democrats care most about defeating Republicans.

(Prompted by Andrew Breitbart, via NRO.)

Such hijinks they get up to:

The [Palestinian] Health Ministry stated yesterday that Hamas militias had raided 46 ambulances, donated by Arab states during the recent aggression on the Gaza Strip, of the medical equipment that they contained... and used them as military vehicles to arrest civilians, after painting [the ambulances] black.

The Ministry's director of public relations and information, Dr. Omar Nasr[, . . .] demanded that the Hamas militias declare, courageously and openly, what had become of the thousands of tons of medical equipment which had been brought into the Gaza Strip as assistance for the Palestinian people, and which had passed at its [Hamas's] orders to private warehouses and its own medical centers[. . . .]

Mark Krikorian:

One of the reasons ongoing mass immigration is a security problem for a modern society is that it creates and constantly refreshes unassimilated immigrant communities that serve as cover for bad guys, whether transnational terrorists or transnational criminals, whose access to modern technologies of communications, transportation, and weaponry makes the threat different in kind from anything we faced in earlier eras.

Case in point: Gwinnett County, near Atlanta, which "has become a ground zero of sorts for Mexican drug cartels":

On a map, the city appears to have spokes with highways jutting out in all directions.

Drug traffickers have taken advantage of this.

"This is a place where I'd expect a business model like UPS to start up," said Jack Kilorin, head of Atlanta's federal High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which analyzes drug intelligence and helps coordinate law enforcement response. The cartels "have exploited a highway and communications and transportation hub. They're thugs, but they are not entirely stupid."

Michael Goldfarb rightly dubs this, by Dave Weigel, "Tweet of the Day":

I would hope that a wise Latina woman's ankle, with its richness of experience, can heal faster than a white male's ankle.

And yes, I know how much a broken ankle hurts, because I broke mine once. You won't shame me.

Charming stuff from John Derbyshire:

The question going round the dinner table was: Do you have any secret pleasures of a mentionable kind? . . .

When my turn came, I knew this was a heaven-sent opportunity to unbosom myself of my own secret passion.

"Stationery," I declared.

An odd sort of silence fell. Then the tree-climber ventured: "With an 'e', right?"

That's right, stationery with an 'e'. (The difference was immortalized, at least in England, on one of those vulgar comic postcards George Orwell wrote a famous essay about. A gorgeous female store assistant is being addressed by a callow-looking young man. He: "Excuse me, Miss, do you keep stationery?" She: "Well, sometimes I wriggle a bit.") Stationery! I love the stuff. Paper, pens, notepads, folders, envelopes, markers, erasers, staples, push pins, paper clips, bulldog clips, poster board, display board, foam board, desk furniture … A stationery store is to me … what? Aladdin's cave? Pah! — What did Aladdin know? You can't do anything with a mess of rubies.

A poignant story.

Betsy Newmark on the inevitable conflicts of interest.

Reflections from Rod Dreher.

"The Prowler," at The American Spectator's site, on our Secretary of State:

Clinton has often showed up for meetings seemingly unprepared or not fully briefed, misidentified officials, and at times seemed unsure of Obama Administration policies. Further, she and her senior staff have been cut out of personnel decisions, particularly on the selection of ambassadors, positions one would think the highest ranking foreign policy official in an administration would have a say in filling. . . .

Early stories on Clinton's State Department highlighted the slow pace of hiring for her senior staff, but the current issues have little to do with that, say the State Department employees, who say there is a growing impression that Clinton is frustrated by her inability to be front and center on foreign policy, taking the back seat to Obama, and chafing at White House control over foreign affairs.

Prediction: He'll argue for it in 2014 and apologize for not supporting it sooner. The audience will give him a standing ovation.

They make their own decisions, wise or not:

Instead of seeing older workers staying on the job longer as the economy has worsened, the Social Security system is reporting a major surge in early retirement claims that could have implications for the financial security of millions of baby boomers. . . .

The numbers upend expectations that older Americans who sustained financial losses in the recession would work longer to rebuild their nest eggs. . . .

As Americans live longer, the elderly are increasingly at risk of outlasting their financial assets. That's a serious problem for them and their families, who are often called upon to provide assistance.

Because benefits are reduced for people who retire early, the surge in retirements should not have any long-term effect on the solvency of the Social Security system, although it will probably add to the near-term budget deficits confronting the Obama administration. . . .

The full consequences of retirement decisions made in hard times will become apparent when people who retired early begin to exhaust their savings.

"As they get into their 70s and 80s, it will be increasingly inadequate," said Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

(Via Craig Newmark.)

I'd even agree to learn to smoke. Jonathan Last on a book about men and childbirth:

Ms. Leavitt quotes one doctor's argument [against the father's presence in the delivery room] from the mid-1960s: "As the charm of woman is in her mystery, it is inconceivable that a wife will maintain her sexual prestige after her husband witnessed the expulsion of a baby -- a negligee will never hide this apparition." Another doctor concluded: "On the whole, it is not a show to watch."

We all laugh at how benighted such views are. (Even if there is, just possibly, some truth in them.) Yet today it is socially acceptable to father a child without marrying the mother or to divorce her later on if mother and father actually do bother to get hitched. And at the same time there is zero tolerance for a husband who says: "No thanks, I'll be in the waiting room with cigars."

David Pryce-Jones on Amos Elon, who died last week:

Amos was a man of the Left, contentious and caustic. For reasons I could never quite fathom, I had some special license to debate with him, pressing him to admit the false assumptions, inconsistencies, and follies of the Left, and especially the belief that the famous two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation is practical politics rather than the Utopian fantasy it so clearly is. It really was as though we were out-of-date cosmopolitans from a Viennese café. One day I was about to go on a National Review cruise and he was about to go on a similar cruise for The Nation. He suggested that the two cruises ought to meet on the ocean like pirates and do battle, all of us naturally wearing formal evening dress and black tie.