A Second Hand Conjecture

Or the clean mountain air…

God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars. ~Martin Luther

Sometimes you just have to remind yourself that there’s more to life then the daily squabbling of the chatterati about the daily news.

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“Last night, Senator Hillary Clinton hosted her  first party in her new home in Washington.  People said it was a lot like  the parties she used to host at the White House.  In fact, even the furniture was the same.”

— Jay Leno

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Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.

Defense

• An entire security detail was abducted in Baghdad, in a secure area, leading to questions about the extent to which local security forces are collaborating with the insurgents, whether private companies are appropriate agents, and the whole legitimacy of the operation.
• An excellent post on the continued need for civilian control of the military, and why simply deferring to “the generals” and reporters at the front is such a mistake. What was it Clemenceau said? War is too important to be left to the generals?
• Speaking of which: how will turning Baghdad into civil war-era Kabul (the 1992-1996 civil war, that is) ease sectarian strife? Creating zones of control, totally in isolation to the rest of the city—much like Israeli settlements in the West Bank—is not a sustainable, permanent, or even particularly well thought out solution to the fighting.
• Russia’s new ICBM missile should ease its fears over BMD in Eastern Europe, right? Right? Well, but don’t expect them to tone down the rhetoric.
• Sharon Weinberger takes a hard look at the $1 billion embassy in Baghdad.

Around the World

• Al-Qaeda as entrepreneur: Iraq has turned into al-Qaeda’s think tank, training fighters in strategic suicide bombing and anti-US combat from Algeria to Afghanistan.
• Iran has accused Wilson Scholar Haleh Esfandiari, among others, of being spies. And here I thought the regime was confident. It’s scared. Though spying is a capital offense in Iran, don’t expect to see the gallows anytime soon—unless Iran hopes executing innocent Americans will spark a disastrous invasion.
• Chris Hill still thinks North Korea will shut down decrepit old Yongbyon, despite being several months behind its agreed-upon date to do so.
• Is Europe going to regret tricking then forcing the resignation of Wolfowitz? Probably. They seem to regret a lot of things, in part because they’ve somehow managed to be even more myopic than Americans on a spread of issues.
• Speaking of which: look at the Swiss solution to minarets. Given how much Europe has been thrown into turmoil, I can’t blame their wariness. And, I have a lot of respect for how the Swiss handle the situation: many years ago, when one of the prominent members of the Saudi family was visiting the country, he asked a minister when he could build a mosque in Geneva. The minister replied, “when we can build a church in Riyadh.”
• Is all the hype about China… just hype? I certainly think so. Meanwhile, Rebiya Kadeer, the Uighur activist I still think should be given a Nobel Peace Prize, wrote an impassioned plea (reprinted by OEoC, with hilarious and ironic disclaimers) for her people’s freedom in the Wall Street Journal.
• I so called it! Meanwhile, Sean Roberts has pulled together a typically impressive analysis of the Kazakh First Family intrigues.
• I hate on some British chick writing about Afghanistan, and take a peek at changing tactics in Afghanistan. And don’t miss another of Miss Bonnie’s excellent big picture posts on the growing bilateral ties between Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.
• Oh look, another useless index (this one of “peace”) that uses weird indicators to say nothing about countries. For example, no where in the survey can one find North Korea. Similarly, where would you rather live—Equatorial Guinea (#71), or the United States (#96)? This ranking says nothing about quality of life, liberty, happiness, or even peacefulness. In fact, I don’t really know what it’s saying, aside from the shocking surprise that Norwegians aren’t very violent and Iraq is a bad place.

Back at Home

• Taking a page from the interface on Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft is trying to build a gesture-based (literal) desktop computer. Quibble if you must with Microsoft ripping off Apple’s user interface (I just might), or with how eerily similar it is to that from last year; this is a cool idea should it ever come to pass. Gestures are the future of computing, and it’s high time people started figuring out how to make it happen.
• I can’t say whether or not it’s a good idea to sell China nuclear technology. But I’m pretty sure the blatant attempts to block the sale will come back to bite us.

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[See below for UPDATES]

The Politico is reporting that insiders to the Fred Thompson organization are letting the cat out of the bag:

Fred Dalton Thompson is planning to enter the presidential race over the Fourth of July holiday, announcing that week that he has already raised several million dollars and is being backed by insiders from the past three Republican administrations, Thompson advisers told The Politico.

Thompson, the “Law and Order” star and former U.S. senator from Tennessee, has been publicly coy, even as people close to him have been furiously preparing for a late entry into the wide-open contest. But the advisers said Thompson dropped all pretenses on Tuesday afternoon during a conference call with more than 100 potential donors, each of whom was urged to raise about $50,000.

Thompson’s formal announcement is planned for Nashville. Organizers say the red pickup truck that was a hallmark of Thompson’s first Senate race will begin showing up in Iowa and New Hampshire as an emblem of what they consider his folksy, populist appeal.

A testing-the-waters committee is to be formed June 4 so Thompson can start raising money, and staffers will go on the payroll in early June, the organizers said. A policy team has been formed, but remains under wraps.

This announcement really should come as no surprise, but it is a welcome one. Thompson is, in the very least, an atypical candidate in that he has a presence that says “gravitas“, he hasn’t spent his entire career inside Washington, and he does not campaign in the usual manner either:

I don’t think it’s any secret that retail politics isn’t Fred Thompson’s favorite way to spend his time. I’ve been told by people involved in Thompson’s 1996 re-election campaign that a strategy he purposefully employed was to make the race as short possible. Knowing he had an immense advantage, not just as an incumbent, but as a celebrity, Thompson sought to marginalize his Democratic opponent, Houston Gordon, by acting as if he had no opponent and only campaigning for about a month. Thompson won by a landslide.

Now that strategy won’t work when you’re running against the likes of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, but it’s not surprising Thompson would be interested in nontraditional campaign methods to avoid the day-to-day drudgery of the trail. While the other Republican presidential candidates have been getting beaten up by the press and each other, Thompson has let the buzz about his potential campaign continue to build and build. As a result, Thompson has garnered quite a following among grassroots conservatives on the Web, and if he can turn that enthusiasm into an army of grassroots volunteers and contributors, he will really shake this race up and do what Howard Dean failed to with his coalition of grassroots Democrats and left-wing bloggers in the ‘04 Democratic primary — win!

Frank Cagle provides an interesting perspective on Thompson’s campaign style as well:

After the Knox County event at which Newt Gingrich had fired up the crowd with his Contract with America, Thompson and some of the locals repaired to the hotel bar to get something to drink that would kill the taste of rubber chicken . It was obvious Thompson was uncomfortable in his new role. He couldn’t find his rhythm. He had been watching Sundquist and Quillen and Congressman Jimmy Duncan, who had had years of party banquets behind them and could deliver a banal homily at the drop of a hat. It just wasn’t Thompson’s style.

Thompson had entered the race as a conventional candidate, doing what conventional candidates do, and he hated it. He also wasn’t making any progress in catching Cooper.

Somewhere in the course of the conversation Thompson became “Fred” and it got down to candid talk. Someone at the table offered the opinion that people didn’t really want those long-winded answers. They just wanted to know one thing: “Are you one of us, or are you one of them?” Thompson threw back his head and laughed at that.

He reminisced about his first job out of high school, the night shift at the Maury Bicycle plant in his home town of Lawrenceburg. Lawrenceburg is a typical small town in Tennessee, a backwater too far from an interstate. Despite the growth in Middle Tennessee in recent years the town still numbers about 10,000 people. It didn’t take Thompson long at the bike plant to decide to go to the University of Memphis and Vanderbilt Law School and get on with a career.

As the campaign wore on that spring and summer Thompson seemed to begin to remember that bike plant and the people he worked with and grew up with. He began to set aside the lawyer and Senate staffer persona he had taken on over the years. His speeches became shorter. More to the point. He started to connect with people.

“Fred being Fred” is a likely campaign slogan. Obviously, being well-known is a big plus for Thompson, and he has used his notoriety effectively which has allowed him to delay officially entering the 2008 race. I also think the comparison to Howard Dean is an interesting one. There isn’t any doubt that Dean harnessed the power of the internet in the 2004 race far better than any other candidate (Democrat or Republican), and thus far, Thompson seems to hold that crown for the Republicans:

The major media is missing the full magnitude of the grassroots Republican surge that will soon transform the 2008 field.

The remnants of the Bush presidency and recent Republican Congress is a crisis of conservatism with a major backlash brewing beneath the surface. None of the Big Three (McCain, Romney, or Guiliani) has won the confidence of authentic conservatives. The boomlet for Fred Thompson will grow and challenge the conventional wisdom, again.

This is a very long, drug-out race, and anything can happen (remember how Howard Dean met his end?). Some are speculating that Thompson is too far behind in the money race, but I’m really doubting that, especially when he can be so devastatingly effective with just a small amount of exposure. It will be very interesting to see how all of this plays out, however, to say the least.

Personally, I haven’t decided where I stand on Thompson yet. He seems very likable, but that could be the kiss of death in my skeptical mind. I believe he would manage the war better than Bush (indeed, almost anyone would), and that through his use of the bully pulpit he could reach the electorate and get them behind the troops for real. I’m not very clear as to how he would be fiscally or socially, though, and that gives me pause.

If you interested in learning more about Fred, you can visit here and here. I plan to.

Oh, and one last thing for our regular readers. Keep an eye out for some breaking announcements. Someone familiar to many of you may have something interesting to say about the Thompson campaign.

UPDATE: McQ has more, and Billy Hollis intends to provide some first hand reporting (see the comments).

MORE: Jim Geraghty reports on his discussion with a Thompson insider:

Just talked to a Thompson source I’ll call “TA3″ (Thompson Associate 3). Much more coming shortly, but the first word was, there will not be a presidential announcement from Fred Thompson on July 4.

(The Politico got it wrong, it appears.)

TA3: “There will be no July 4 announcement… There was some discussion of a June 4 beginning of fundraising; that’s the date checks will be collected. I suspect that’s where there was some confusion.”

The forthcoming announcement will be that Thompson is “testing the waters.”

Geraghty adds: “My gut instinct after talking with TA3 is that there will be an announcement in July, but not July 4.”

YET MORE: Some “Cool Facts” and “Daily Facts” about Fred Thompson.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: It’s official inevitable [edited per ChrisB in comments]:

Politician-turned-actor Fred Thompson plans an unconventional campaign for president using blogs, video posts and other Internet innovations to reach voters repelled by politics-as-usual in both parties, he told USA Today.

Thompson, a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee, has been coy about his intentions with audiences, but made clear in an interview that he plans to run.

Technorati Tags: Fred Thompson, Election 2008, Republican nomination

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CNN does an amusing piece on our new leaders in Congress and their devotion to ending the scandalous use of earmarks. Watch the whole thing.

Highlights: The corporate airport for executives put in by that man of the people, (D) David Obey. Of course that old pork barrel warhorse Robert Byrd informs us that-

allowing the public to actually see earmark requests in advance isn’t a good idea.

For whom Senator, for whom?

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“Hillary Clinton, our junior senator from New York, announced that she has no intentions of ever, ever running for office of the President of the United States. Her husband, Bill Clinton, is bitterly disappointed. He is crushed. There go his dreams of becoming a two-impeachment family.”

— David Letterman

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A few weeks back I posted a facile little rebuke aimed at the national security implications of Green Party presidential candidate Alan Augustson’s political platform. Alan responded to this in such a way that I realized I had little idea what the Green Party’s position on security matters was, relative to its environmental policies. Indeed, rarely have I seen anyone even ask Green Party figures questions about this subject.

In continental Europe, Greens are expected to have a broad agenda on all conventional political issues from foreign policy, to funding for the humanities. However in the United States, Greens seem to have been ghettoized into answering questions solely on subjects like global warming or genetically engineered foods. This has the natural effect of marginalizing them into niche political interests within the broader Left. A Left that the media seems quite content to have dominated by the Democratic Party alone.

So, toward a better education in the broader politics of Greens, Alan was kind enough to sit down with us for a short interview on security policy.

From the outset, it should be noted that Alan is a fierce critic of current US security policy and naturally his ideas won’t find much agreement with me, or among postpolitical’s predominantly conservative audience. But I think you’ll agree with me that we managed to ask some fair questions and the interview turned out to be an interesting and instructive exploration of a radically different political perspective.

(more…)

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Is it possible that for the second straight time a presidential administration is permanently hobbled by someone named Monica?
For whatever reason, frequent commenter “glasnost” decided to take me to task because I was not sufficiently incensed enough about the admission by Monica Goodling that she broke the law. By taking political considerations into her calculus for deciding on who should be hired for career positions in the DOJ, Ms. Goodling certainly did break the law. I don’t pretend that there is any excuse for that. It just seemed rather obvious to me that, when confronted with a choice between otherwise equally qualified candidates for a job, the person doing the hiring will opt for the one most like her — i.e. a Republican would hire other Republicans, and Democrats would hire other Democrats. Accordingly, Goodling’s admission seemed like pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

However, when I originally wrote about her testimony, I only knew of her admission (“I may have gone too far, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions. And I regret those mistakes.“) and that her hiring practices were already under investigation, but not the details of the whole affair. In the past several days much more has come to light, including yet more evidence that Gonzales was completely absent in managing his department, that Kyle Sampson was either given, or arrogated to himself, near dictatorial control over DOJ personnel matters, and that the White House may have knowingly directed the DOJ to ignore civil service rules in the hiring of immigration judges. (more…)

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Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.

Defense

• What do you do when you’re losing a war? Revise victory, redefine success. Even the guys on the ground, who can usually be relied upon to offer “oo-rah” statements about the war, seem to be losing faith. David Axe, on the other hand, is more optimistic, though John Robb adeptly quarrels with him.
• Meanwhile, the Marines are starting to complain about the extreme lag in equipment request fulfillment. Less than 10% of all requests were fulfilled last year, and they complain they are being starved out by a horribly inefficient bureaucracy.
• The Pentagon’s latest annual report (PDF) on China’s military power seems to have forgotten several SSBN’s (nuclear powered submarines that can launch ballistic missiles). Arms Control Wonk has more on the DF-31, one of the new ballistic missiles we’re concerned with. Rumor has it China tells its war game planners to model as best they can war with the U.S. in 10-15 years. I’m not sure that’s much different than our own nearly two decade long quest to oppose China as the next superpower (or if it’s just spin, or even a reaction to our years of war gaming China). But it is worrying. A Sino-American war would be insanely ruinous for both sides, and also Korea, Japan, and probably Russia.
• An interesting take on the very limited threat caused by CBRN, or Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear weapons—based on recent experience with Iraq’s chlorine bombs, natch.
• Blackwater employees got into an armed standoff with Iraqi Interior Ministry forces—a situation that, in Dr. Hillhouse’s words, “underscores why private military teams use such aggressive tactics and just how blurred the lines between defensive security and combat have become in this outsourced war.” It’s almost a no-win for Blackwater, balancing the security demands of their contracts with the need to avoid the political morass.
• AFRICOM: military command, propaganda outlet? This is precisely the kind of mission creep (I won’t yet call it the opening salvo in yet another full-blown turf war) that I worry will ultimately degrade the DoD’s warfighting capability. They fight wars. The State Department handles propaganda, image, PR, and foreign relations. Turning the regional CINCs into proconsuls does not combat the growing image of the U.S. as an imperial power.

Around the World

• Der Spiegel asks a good question: where were all the pro-capitalism protesters at Heiligendamm? I would answer that if you’re already in a capitalist society, and you support capitalism, there is very little reason to gather en masse to support it. I would also guess that most people consider the annual G8 protest/party a marginal event, one unlikely to have any sort of impact aside from assuaging the egos and holy outrage of the paper mache artists.
• An investigation into China’s drug agency has led to a death sentence for its former administrator. I wonder what will happen to the guy who let poison dog food ship off to America?
• A string of violence in Northern Afghanistan, including the killing of a dozen pro-Dostum protesters. Afghanistanica sees it as the result of a century of internal colonization, along with some ham-handed appointments by Karzai. Meanwhile, I take yet another look at the messy problem of narcotics spraying.
• Marth Brill Olcott on the continuing saga of the political sort-of reforms in Turkmenistan.
• The strange case of Nursultan Nazarbayev issuing an arrest warrant for his own son-in-law, in part for his involvement in the surreal abduction of Nurbank employees. The incomparable Bonnie Boyd has more on the family, criminal, and political dynamics at play. I chimed in, too, with what I hope is an interesting hypothetical.
• Is it possible for the Iraqi Kurds to collaborate with Ankara? Color me skeptical, at least until Turkey decriminalizes the Kurdish language and stops torturing people for speaking it. Oh, and maybe if they stop openly contemplating invading Iraqi Kurdistan.
• I know this is like totally wrong, but I laughed upon hearing that Right Said Fred got caught up in the Moscow gay rights fracas.

Back at Home

• If the U.S. government were forced to keep its financial records in the same way it forces our corporations to keep records, it would have lost $1.3 trillion last year, a little over five times the reported $248 billion deficit. Put differently, we as a country are currently responsible for $59 trillion in debt, or $516,348 per household. Thanks, Congress!
• Thank you, Virginia, West Virginia and Colorado, for trying to force a horrendous, dirty, environmentally ruinous fuel down our throats. The NYT unintentionally provides the best LOL: “Industry executives contend that the [liquid coal] fuels can compete against gasoline if oil prices are about $50 a barrel or higher.” So why bother subsidizing it?
• “Dick Cheney’s unmarried lesbian daughter gave birth to a baby boy (father unknown, of course). It’s like when Dan Quayle attacked Murphy Brown for being a single career woman who had a baby boy, only this time instead of the vice president criticizing the amoral-yet-fictional TV character, the vice president is actually the father of the amoral-yet-real woman, and she’s a lesbian. We sent our good wishes.” I should note that I am glad Mary Cheney is now a mommy, and I wish her and her partner the best. I just thought Wonkette’s take on the Second Family having a lesbo branch was amusing.
• Meanwhile, on the off chance that you didn’t think we are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world in broadband usage: our average broadband speed is behind all of western Europe, Korea, and Japan, even Poland. And we are falling further and further behind.

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“In the book, she says when Bill told her he was having an affair, she said “I could hardly breathe, I was gulping for air. No, I’m sorry, that’s what Monica said.”

– David Letterman

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In Hillary Clinton’s new book ‘Living History,’ Hillary details what it was like meeting Bill Clinton, falling in love with him, getting married, and living a passionate, wonderful life as husband and wife. Then on page two, the trouble starts.”

– Jay Leno

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Hillary Clinton’s 506-page memoirs have come out. So much of her personality shines through, that in the end, you, too, will want to sleep with an intern.”

— Craig Kilborn

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Since it is a long weekend, I’ll happily provide some extra geeky goodness for your enjoyment. First, take a look at after the first Death Star was blown up. Then, see Vader having a to heart with Luke. to mess with Star Wars. How about ? Or what happens when reach puberty? In case you haven’t realized, I’ve been spending far too many waking hours watching YouTube videos. I take consolation only in the fact that at least I’m not watching celebrity social faux pas videos. Enjoy!

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Recently, BBC America has announced its plan to air the entire first season (first series to you Euro-types) of Torchwood during its summer restructuring. Despite a fair degree of success in attraction US viewership, the execs at BBCA felt that a radical restructuring of the network’s programming selections and scheduling would boost its moderate ratings to a level capable of competing with general interest US basic cable networks such as A&E, USA, TNT, etc. I’m highly excited about the decision to carry Torchwood, which our own Sci-Fi network seems to have steered clear of. Despite the fact that it is a spin-off series, Sci-Fi certainly didn’t show the same level of caution when purchasing the rights to, for example, Crusade or Angel. Anyway, I’m glad that Torchwood will be available to US audiences (although most likely in a censored format; Torchwood is very R rated for language, violence and some moderately graphic sex scenes [and male nudity]). I’ve already watched the entire first season in HD, uncensored, commercial-free format on various websites (Google it) and, although a bit disappointed by some of the more adolescent tendencies toward cheeseball lines and gratuitous violence in a few of the episodes, most were extremely well written with, “Captain Jack Harkness,” (episode 12) probably my favorite for character development and sheer emotional impact. BBC Three has already ordered a second season of 13 episodes to premiere sometime next year and I certainly look forward to that. If nothing else, the explanation behind Jack’s disappearance and return should be worth the wait, along with the resolution of his “condition.” As a side note, I confess that I’m hugely impressed by John Barrowman’s ability to pull-off the complex character that Jack Harkness is and by his acting ability in general. John was, oddly enough, originally slated for the role of Will Truman in Will & Grace but series’ producers eventually choose Eric McCormack because they felt that John was, “too straight.” This is quite ironic as John Barrowman is gay and Eric McCormack is straight. Eve Myles, whom various newspapers and magazines have named one of the sexiest women in Wales and “Bachelorette of the Year,” has also impressed as the gap-toothed, wide-eyed police constable who provides emotional grounding and a human element to the otherwordly Torchwood team.

In other news, the Sci-Fi channel has indicated that it will be airing season three of Torchwood’s parent show Doctor Who (currently running in the UK) in the late summer or fall of this year. By the little I’ve seen of it, David Tennant is even better this season than last and Freema Agyeman is a much better actress than Billie Piper who, admittedly, is the UK’s answer to Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson. So fire your Tivo’s up (those of you who have and are able to operate them), Torchwood hits this summer and Doctor Who in fall. Sci-fi geekdom heaven.

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Defense

• An excellent look at so-called blast-resistent vehicles (or “Mine Resistant Ambush Protected” vehicles, or MRAP), though it doesn’t explore the specificities of the newly deployed American MRAP. Still, the idea of a heavily armored truck on stilts is weirdly appealing in an H.R. Giger kind of way. More on the MRAP here.
• The Navy is probably buying crap. This is a response to a pressing need with little chance for oversight. But it still sucks. Then again, so does the entire acquisition process.
• Richard Feinberg on the horrible dangers of fortress embassies, such as the Vatican 2.0 we’re building in Iraq. Worth mentioning as well is a 4-person consulate in Germany that has closed down an entire block of the city. That’s just not necessary, and doesn’t make us any friends.
• David Axe on the dilemma of planes versus people. It’s not quite guns and butter, but it’s close enough to be compelling.
• Oh, and what’s with prosecuting our women in uniform for hot bisexual threesomes? Oh yeah—the military is puritan (in its defense, by necessity), all the booze, and maybe an issue of consent.

Around the World

• Good news—Registan.net has now been picked up by PostGlobal. I saw two of my most recent posts, on Energy in Central Asia and Afghanistan’s Narco-Culture, were both posted there. The site is updated frequently, however, so they’re probably gone by now.
• What exactly is Eurasia? The term seems to really mean “post-Soviet Studies,” but no academic in his right mind would use such a term (I don’t know why). I like the idea of trying to attach the area’s name to its Mongolian roots, but their influence is centuries past its relevance date. I honestly don’t see the problem with just calling the place Central Asia, because that is what it is. Then again, I am not (yet) an academic.
• North Korea continues to make an ass of itself. I very seriously wonder if the only thing that will make them behave like adults instead of nuclear-armed teenagers is announcing our intention to help Japan develop nuclear weapons. Only, that will piss off China, whom we can’t afford to alienate. Argh.
• Viktor Yushchenko has seized more power, leading me to think he might not be the democratic hero the Orange Revolution crowd thought he was.
• I’d like to wish a big happy berfday to Eritrea, and the 16-year reign of brutal thug Isaias Afewerki. Hey, it could be worse—unlike another tinpot African monster, at least Afewerki isn’t accused of consuming the flesh of his enemies!
• Nerd alert! The World Bank has combined its Doing Business database of the world’s business environments with Google Maps. The result is much like other Google API mashups—a really damned cool way to waste time at work.
• Just how much has the world changed in the last year? China has more mobile phone users than the U.S. has people, with a better network, better service, and cheaper phones than what’s available stateside. Big thanks to Verizon for dicking us over with a globally incompatible wireless standard, and the FCC for its piss poor management of our information infrastructure. We’re leapfrogging into the early 2000s!
• Creepy video of what looks like a Russian Alpha surfacing right off a densely-packed beach.
• Turkey battles creationists. They’re a lot like Kansas, I guess?
• Can you pass the Rhunama quiz? Turkmenbashi’s legacy. It’s still taught at all levels of primary schools in Turkmenistan.

Back at Home

• Barbara Streisand is the ultimate price gouger. My favorite comment? “My mother told me there were no real monsters, but there are.” Tell me about it, Newt.
• With any luck, Antigua and the UK will be able to strike back at our truly idiotic intellectual property and internet gambling laws. I want Antigua and Barbuda to win their case in the WTO.
• Ron Paul just LOLz0red Rudy by asking him to read the 9/11 Commission Report, Dying to Win by Robert Pape, Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer, and Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback. He also zinged Rudy for being oh-so-pious about 9/11 while apparently not understanding its roots.
• But in case you didn’t think Washington was a big incestuous mess, well… you’re wrong. West Virginia ain’t got nothing on us.
• Oh, and please let’s end the designer vagina craze. I can’t handle any more of Dr. Ray rambling to his fresh victims, “oh your new vagina is so cute!” Yuck.

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At least, one could read it that way (my emphasis)(HT: McQ):

Defying White House opposition, the House passed legislation Wednesday that would make gas price gouging a federal crime in times of an energy emergency.

In a 284-141 vote, only one more than the two-thirds majority needed under special rules to speed passage, enough Republicans joined the narrow Democratic majority to approve the measure. The Bush administration said the president’s advisers would recommend he veto the measure if it passes the Senate.

The bill defines gouging as pricing that is “unconscionably excessive” or “indicates the seller is taking unfair advantage of unusual market conditions … to increase prices unreasonably.”

If, as the House Bill defines it, price gouging means that an “unconscionably excessive” price is being charged (whatever that means) and it is the profits of gas retailers that are being targeted, shouldn’t that necessarily mean that the targeted companies are making the most money off of gasoline? The problem is that, after the cost of crude oil (which the FTC found to be responsible for about 85% of the changes in gas prices), it is federal, state and local taxes that make up the greatest amount of the price of gas. When the same issues were being debated a year ago, the Tax Foundation issued this statement (emphasis added):

High gas prices and strong oil company earnings have generated a rash of new tax proposals in recent months. Some lawmakers have called for new “windfall profits” taxes—similar to the one signed into federal law in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter—that would tax the profits of major oil companies at a rate of 50%. Meanwhile, many commentators have voiced support for the idea of increasing gas taxes to keep the price of gasoline at post-Katrina highs, thereby reducing gas consumption. However, often ignored in this debate is the fact that oil industry profits are highly cyclical, making them just as prone to “busts” as to “booms.” Additionally, tax collections on the production and import of gasoline by state and federal governments are already near historic highs. In fact, in recent decades governments have collected far more revenue from gasoline taxes than the largest U.S. oil companies have collectively earned in domestic profits….

[F]ederal and state taxes on gasoline production and imports have been climbing steadily since the late 1970s and now total roughly $58.4 billion. Due in part to substantial hikes in the federal gasoline excise tax in 1983, 1990, and 1993, annual tax revenues have continued to grow. Since 1977, governments collected more than $1.34 trillion, after adjusting for inflation, in gasoline tax revenues—more than twice the amount of domestic profits earned by major U.S. oil companies during the same period.

(See also here for another breakdown of gas prices.)

John W. Schoen at MSNBC.com offers a pretty good analysis of current gasoline prices and arrives at the same conclusion:

Last — but by no means least -– is the sizeable chunk of gasoline spending that goes to your government, the second biggest beneficiary of rising gasoline prices. First, you pay 18.4 cents a gallon in federal excise tax. States charge another 25.6 cents (on average, weighted by volume) for a total of 44 cents a gallon.

A lot depends on where you live. In Alaska, you’ll pay just 8 cents a gallon in taxes, according to the American Petroleum Institute. New Yorkers, on the other hand, fork over 42.6 cents for every gallon. The rest of us pay something in between — another big reason pump prices vary so much from one part of the country to another.

Obviously, if the profits made by gasoline retailers are so high that they amount to price gouging, then the taxes charged that make up an even greater amount of the price are also “price gouging”. Ergo, the bill just passed by the House has effectively declared that gasoline taxes are illegal per se. QED.

Technorati Tags: gas prices, price gouging, gas taxes, U.S. House of Representatives, costs of gasoline, dumb laws

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“Hillary Clinton said today that she wants legislation to allow all ex-felons to vote.  See, this way all the Clinton’s former business partners can vote for her in 2008.”

–Jay Leno

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Fish updates the famous Aesop Fable of the “Ant and the Grasshopper” to conform with modern times. Excerpt:

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

RTWT to learn the moral to the story.

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One of the aspects of blogging and commenting on political topics that I find quite overwhelming sometimes is tackling the vast amounts of disinformation and false premises that form the basis of a good number of arguments. It gets tiring having to continuously find the links to the same real sources, or to once again put together the actual chain of events, or what have you. Suffice it to say that I have passed on more comments and blog posts than I have written because I was awed by the sheer enormity of re-salting old ground, which should be devoid of any life by now, just so I could establish a common basis of argument.

Invariably, debate with anyone on any topic concerning Bush is rife with tropes and conventional wisdom. Hacking through the tall grass of bumper-sticker arguments (”Bush lied! People died!”; “selected, not elected!”; “No blood for oil!”; etc.), and media-enhanced myths (”Bush was AWOL!“) is both tiresome and annoying. Unfortunately, those who most fervently push such arguments and myths comprise the netroots crowd, who happen to have a great deal of influence over the Democratic majority in Congress. Accordingly, the national legislative agenda is largely driven by the Hobbesian maelstroms emanating from those who seek to destroy their political enemies at the expense of their own country.

One method of accomplishing this goal, which is very popular amongst the netroots populous, is to impeach Pres. Bush (or perhaps VP Cheney). To their credit, the Democrats have mostly resisted such calls thus far, but the chorus continues to grow.

The Anchoress takes a different tact in her post “Let’s do it; let’s Impeach Bush” (HT: PJM). In her post, the Anchoress encourages Pelosi and pals to go right ahead and start the impeachment process, so that we finally get all of those false premises on the record, and have the political version of a no-holds-barred cage match (all go in; one comes out):

Please. Impeach the president. Do it. Bring all of your accusations, narratives, memes, large conspiracy theories and small distrusts, petty dislikes and visceral hatreds. Let’s make it a very thorough impeachment, with long, hard looks and bright, hot lights, and everyone under oath and on the record! You won’t mind if – once we finally lance the purulent boil that is George W. Bush – some of the pus splashes up on you, will you? For the good of the nation?

The Anchoress helpfully provides a list of several of the most prominent anti-Bush memes and either links to various sources debunking them or spells out the logical reasoning undermining the less well-conceived memes. For example:

2) Bush Lied Us Into War!

Let’s have President Clinton, Senator Clinton, John Kerry, , Edward Kennedy, Madeline Albright, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, Sandy Berger and all the rest (including – again – the NY Times) testify – under oath – that when they were telling the world – from 1998 right up to the Iraq invasion – that Saddam Hussein “had WMD” and given half a chance would “use them,” and that the intelligence they saw from President Bush and SecState Powell either was (as Sen. Clinton said) “consistent with the intelligence we saw in the White House [from 1998-2000],” or it was not. Let them testify that they were telling the truth then, or that they were lying through their teeth, all along and the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act was mere hogwash. Oh and, when they voted for the war, they didn’t actually mean it, too.

Let’s get it on the record, and settled once and for all. And while we’re at it, let’s shine a little light on some real voter fraud.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: Impeachment, President Bush, Rathergate, netroots, political arguments, anti-Bush memes

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Snakes on a Plane!

Samuel L. Jackson was unavailable for comment.

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Jed Nitzberg has left a comment on a post I made back in March which I feel deserves added attention. So, if you’re already buying something from Best Buy, go ahead and kick in some extra money for Fisher House.

And another way to support the troops and their families.

Best Buy is partnering with the 38 Fisher Houses to donate laptop computers and other support to make it easier for service men and women at these medical centers stay in touch with their friends and families. Best Buy customers can support Fisher House, the troops and their families through in-store and online donations.

Beginning on Memorial Day Weekend and continuing through the week of July 4th, Best Buy customers can donate to Fisher House at any Best Buy register during check-out, or any time from the Best Buy website, www.bestbuy.com. Best Buy vendor partners, including Nintendo, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba are donating lap top computers, flat screen televisions, Wii gaming systems and other technology to the Campaign. Best Buy employees will volunteer at Fisher Houses and help install and service the new systems. All is part of an effort by Best Buy to provide the Fisher Houses with the most modern technology so the families can remain connected to their loved ones.

STARTING ON 5/27: Go to www.bestbuy.com or http://www.fisherhouse.org/ for more information and donation links.

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Dave Leonhardt asks the question in the New York Times:

Last year, the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index jumped 14 percent, while the average hedge fund returned less than 13 percent, after investment fees, according to Hedge Fund Research in Chicago…Since 2000, the average hedge fund hasn’t done any better, after fees, than the market as a whole, according to research by David A. Hsieh, a finance professor at Duke.

There is much more of interest in the article, but for most investors (who qualify) are they worth it?

Tyler Cowen gives his thoughts:

My guess is that a small number of very bright individuals can in fact beat the market on a systematic basis. Today the world can mobilize enough capital so that these people become very very rich and have a larger impact on market prices than in times past. These individuals also spawn overconfident imitators, which lead to subnormal returns for the non-superstars. On average the gains and losses are a wash, but the true stars must limit the amount of capital they manage, for fear of pushing around market prices too much. Some set of insiders thus continue to gain wealth whereas most outsiders are playing the usual efficient markets game, with slightly subpar returns, due to the informed trading of the insiders. The geniuses are in effect taxing the uninformed trading of the non-genuises, but I do not see the trading volume of the latter group falling in response.

Maybe so, but as an asset allocation decision neither Tyler or Mr. Leonhardt address the real issues.

First, about the statistics addressed above. I have no idea where he gets his data from, but professor Hsieh is comparing apples to oranges. Hedge funds comprise a rather diverse group of strategies that are not necessarily expected to beat the S&P500. The data is quite likely incomplete as well. In addition, comparing a period when hedge fund returns have been relatively low may not be particularly meaningful. If the S&P500 were to decline even 15% over the next year, hedge funds would have a rather large lead. Finally, hedge funds are far less volatile as a whole, thus as risk control vehicles even approximating the returns of the S&P500 makes them look rather attractive.

We also have a definitional problem. Given that the term hedge fund has basically become a name for the legal and compensation structure, rather than approach, hedge funds should be judged relative to the purposes they are used for, not against the S&P500 or any particular benchmark.

The final issue centers around how they are used. Many absolute return oriented funds are used as bond replacements and as a diversifier. Thus they may raise a portfolio’s return while improving its risk characteristics even if they underperform for a period the S&P500. Others may serve various purposes in a portfolio. Especially if one feels the market is unlikely to perform well over a particular time frame, and that the risk/reward ratio is unattractive in equities, it may make sense to allocate more to hedged vehicles (whether they are hedge funds or not) just as one might allocate more to bonds or cash. Hedge funds are about making money, not beating the S&P500 over any discrete period of time, especially on the upside (even as tepid an upside as we have seen since 2002.)

As one wise man once told me, “I’ll take a mediocre manager who is making money during times when great ones are losing their shirt any day. I don’t care if the great one is beating his benchmark, because my benchmark is making money and not losing it.” Or as one of the greatest hedge fund mangers of all time, Warren Buffett, once said on investing:

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

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A student from the University of Washington has sold his soul on eBay  for $400.  He’s a law student, so he probably  doesn’t need it, but still,  that’s not very much.  Today, Hillary Clinton said, ‘Hey, at least I got some furniture and a Senate seat for mine.”

-Jay Leno

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So this is Edwards plan(???)…

“What we need is not more slogans but a comprehensive strategy to deal with the complex challenge of both delivering justice and being just.”

“We will need imagination and courage to imagine great possibilities, to create a world where terrorism belongs to the past.”

“Edwards believes military force is justified to protect our vital national interests; to respond to acts of aggression by other nations and non-state actors; to protect treaty allies and alliance commitments; to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons; and to prevent or stop genocide.”

“As president, Edwards will institute regular, on-on-one meetings with top military leadership.”

“As president, Edwards will launch a comprehensive, tough review of fraud, waste, and abuse, such as missile defense and offensive space-based weapons, that are costly and unlikely to work.”

“The force structure of our military should match its mission. our forces are not equipped to meet the challenges of stabilizing weak states. Civilians and experienced government employees need to be involved in stabilizing states with weak governments, and providing humanitarian assistance where disasters have struck.”

“Ensuring national security requires more than the exercise of raw power. Fighting global warming will also protect our security interests — a recent report authored by a group of top military leaders said that, if unchecked, global warming could lead to civil strife, genocide, and increased terrorism. Solving global poverty is a moral imperative, but it is also a security issue — global poverty increases the risk to America by providing a safe harbor for instability, extremism, and terrorism. Living up to our American ideals by protecting basic freedoms will help us avoid actions that give terrorists or even other nations an excuse to abandon international law.”

So, if stopping genocide and stabilizing weak states is in our national interests, then I assume, that once Edwards pulls our troops out of Iraq, he will be prepared to send them back in after several months, once the ‘civil war’ devolves into pure genocide, and further weakens Iraq’s government…

And I suppose to many people have lost sight that we do have, and are following a strategy in our “Global War on Terror,” aka the long war, aka the War Against Islamofascism.

Today, we face a global terrorist movement and must confront the radical ideology that justifies the use of violence against innocents in the name of religion. As laid out in this strategy, to win the War on Terror, we will:

* Advance effective democracies as the long–term antidote to the ideology of terrorism;
* Prevent attacks by terrorist networks;
* Deny terrorists the support and sanctuary of rogue states;
* Deny terrorists control of any nation they would use as a base and launching pad for terror; and
* Lay the foundations and build the institutions and structures we need to carry the fight forward against terror and help ensure our ultimate success.

But of course, when the President says that Iraq is the central front in the GWOT, what he’s not saying is there are other areas of operation in which we are engaged. Economic, Diplomatic, Cultural, Political, and Military. Those are all fronts which have activity occurring somewhere around the globe. All the time. It is simplistic to think that we are only engaging terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, to be fair, there are some things which Edwards gets right. But, there are many that simply make it sound like he’s chopped up the position papers of several advisor’s and spewed out what sounded like it would get him votes.

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I have to second Matt’s endorsement of local Baton Rouge band, “The Eames Era.”

Though I don’t find the name irritating at all.

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Matt Yglesias, one of the progressive lefts sharper knives, just can’t help himself in throwing every problem in the world at the Bush administrations feet, as if the world run right would be some vastly different place. The fact is, it wouldn’t be. More tellingly, Matt and many on the left are busy advocating policies that might be better or worse, but certainly would have consequences of their own which could easily be “blamed” on them. Which is politics, but what is surprising is how roundly they would have condemned them had they come from the “right.” There are many such examples, but for today Exhibit A is a post I wrote back in November: (more…)

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Put these to articles together, and I see, or still see, a regime on the brink of collapse. With their pursuit of weapons grade nuclear technology, and their support of terrorism throughout the Middle East, I have to agree with Leeden that it can’t happen quick enough. As Iran goes, so will go Syria. If the current regime in Iran falls, then either Assad curbs his desires, or the people there will build further pressure to topple his regime. Assuming that Pelosi doesn’t do something stupid, again…

http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/michaelledeen/2007/05/22/more_mullahs_lies.php

So the mullahs have lied once again to the Iranian people. On Sunday, the regime promised they would not be raising gasoline prices. Less than two days later they raised them by twenty-five percent. Meanwhile housing prices are up one hundred percent, vegetables have tripled, and citizens are beaten up in the streets. And still there are apologists in the West who say this regime has the support of most Iranians.

If a government behaved like this in a free country, it would be turned out of office in a nanosecond. The Yahoo! story is pretty good, pointing out that President Ahmadi-Nezhad promised to spend Iran’s huge oil revenues on improving people’s lives, but in fact it all goes to terrorist groups like Hamas (to which they could have added Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad, al Qaeda, Fatah, and the rest of the motley jihadis).

http://www.pajamasmedia.com/2007/05/show_of_force.php

Teachers striking for equal pay, workers who for months have been barely paid enough to survive, university students uprising across Iran, women protesting, unrest in different parts of the country, the cost of living rising faster and faster, gasoline rationed, and the rivals in the Majlis (Islamic parliament) and other power houses of the Islamic Republic challenging him; they all are the nightmare that Ahmadinejad has to endure in the hope of politically surviving until the next morning.

In a political system with big figures like Rafsanjani and Khatami controlling the money, while Ahmadinejad holds the gun, the Iranian president is faced with obstacles that even his father figure, Chamran, and his godfather, Larijani, are unable to deal with in a serene manner. So what’s a repressive regime to do? Well, why not try focusing the attention to the youth’s social behavior creating an artificial crisis over the dress code?

…

Just yesterday, in the midst of police beating on two defenseless women in Haft e Tir, a popular square in Tehran, people quickly gathered, holding hands with one another and chanting loud and clear against the police, demanding them to let the women go. The police squad, suddenly frightened, radioed for help, but amid the turmoil they were kicked by a young man. Others released the victims from police custody and helped them escape to safety. The young man who also disappeared in the crowd. And today, reports from Tehran said that in another incident near an upscale shopping mall in the north of the city, a girl was being harassed by a police officer for her dress code, but then she pulled a knife and attacked the policeman. People tried to help the girl, but a special police backup unit quickly arrived and manage to take the the girl away by force.

A witness on the scene told PJ Media that after these reactions against police brutality he feels confident, powerful, and “smells freedom in the air.” Is this the beginning of something more?

Uh, oh, don’t look know, France is calling for tighter sanctions against Iran!!!

And why shouldn’t all concerned countries be calling for tighter sanctions, and sanctions with teeth.

Despite ElBaradei’s recent comments, on Wednesday he released a report saying that Iran continues to defy UN Security Council demands to scrap its uranium enrichment program and has instead expanded its activities.

ElBaradei also faulted Teheran for blocking IAEA efforts to probe suspicious nuclear activities, saying that meant it could not “provide assurances about… the exclusively peaceful nature” of its atomic program.

And, in new and worrying phrasing, it expressed concern about its “deteriorating” understanding of unexplored aspects of the program, despite four years of a probe sparked by revelations that Teheran had been clandestinely developing enrichment and other nuclear activities that could be used to make weapons for nearly two decades.

And this is sure to cause some consternation among the elite in Iran… and always a good show of force…

The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline on Wednesday, sending two aircraft carriers and landing ships packed with 17,000 U.S. Marines and sailors to carry out unannounced exercises in the Persian Gulf.

One could think that all of this is happening as part of a plan… a secret plan…

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

Sounds like it’s directly from a Clancy novel…

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The much anticipated congressional testimony of Monica Goodling, former DOJ liason to the White House, regarding the firing of 7 U.S. Attorneys appears to be more of whimper than a bang:

The Justice Department’s former White House liaison denied Wednesday that she played a major role in the firings of U.S. attorneys last year and blamed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty for misleading Congress about the dismissals.

McNulty’s explanation, on Feb. 6, “was incomplete or inaccurate in a number of respects,” Monica Goodling told a packed House Judiciary Committee inquiry into the firings.

She added: “I believe the deputy was not fully candid.”

I won’t pretend to know what her testimony means for McNulty, but as for the purposes of the hearing, and as it relates to charges hurled at Alberto Gonzales and other administration officials, Goodling pretty well backs up what was said all along:

Goodling told the House committee that she and others at the Justice Department fully briefed McNulty, who is resigning later this year, about the circumstances before his Feb. 6 testimony in front of a Senate panel. Goodling also said Kyle Sampson, who resigned in March as chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, compiled the list of prosecutors who were purged last year.

She said she never spoke to former White House counsel Harriet Miers or Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser, about the firings.

Depending on what the full transcript provides, it appears to me that Goodling’s testimony does two things: (1) it makes clear that this investigation is little more than political theater, and (2) it conclusively puts the nail in Gonzales’ coffin, by evincing his complete lack of management and oversight of the DOJ.

In addition, if those making decisions about who would be fired were not even consulting with the Administration, much less the AG himself, then the charges that the White House was attempting to influence elections and specific investigations of cronies (which were pretty weak to begin with) would seem to be without much support. It doesn’t make much sense to claim that Karl Rove and his evil minions were behind such devious machinations if they didn’t have anything to do with the process.

Kyle Sampson and Mike McNulty, on the other hand, may have something to worry about (see also here for why the Bush Administration is not entirely off the hook regarding USA Iglesias). I would hope that, in the very least, what started as congressional kabuki would result in delivering just desserts to those who transgressed the trust placed in them. If either of them sought to fire U.S Attorney’s for such a calculated reason as retribution for failing to indict political opponents, then they deserve to be punished.

Also, Goodling’s testimony revealed another interesting tidbit:

But she admitted to have considered applicants for jobs as career prosecutors based on their political loyalties – a violation of federal law.

“I may have gone too far, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions,” Goodling said. “And I regret those mistakes.”

I’ll wager that she is not the first person to weigh political loyalties in the calculus of hiring career DOJ officials, and she certainly won’t be the last. That, after all, is the nature of the beast. When politicians and their agents are charged with a task, it is nigh on impossible to expect that political considerations won’t enter the decision-making process. Nevertheless, it is refreshing to see it out there in the open, even if nothing can really be done about it. In the very least, it may indicate to some people that government is not objective and disinterested, no matter how much you may wish it to be.

As for the main purpose of the investigation, claiming another administration scalp, Goodling’s testimony does not appear to help, and may in fact hurt any further witch-hunting.

Technorati Tags: Monica Goodling, DOJ, U.S. Attorneys, Attorney-Gate, Alberto Gonzales, Kyle Sampson, Mike McNulty, Pete Domenici

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These are the sorts of people we’re supposed to outsource the security of places like Darfur, Iraq, and a whole host of unstable nations/regions to…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6681457.stm

Pakistani UN peacekeeping troops have traded in gold and sold weapons to Congolese militia groups they were meant to disarm, the BBC has learnt.

These militia groups were guilty of some of the worst human rights abuses during the Democratic Republic of Congo’s long civil war.

The trading went on in 2005. A UN investigative team sent to gather evidence was obstructed and threatened.

The team’s report was buried by the UN itself to “avoid political fallout”.

Nice bit of CYA there at the UN.

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An interesting metaphor for the Iraq war…

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“Former President Bill Clinton said that if his wife, Hillary, is elected president, he will do whatever she wants. You know Bill Clinton — when he makes a vow to Hillary, you can take that to the bank.”

–Jay Leno

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Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. I am not posting the rest of the week, as I will be traveling.

Defense

• I really like thinking the best of our guys in uniform. But the demon spawn of our rightwing radio hosts seem determined to make that incredibly difficult. Best line: “Dr. Laura has been curiously silent about her son’s bravery.” Indeed.
• Doug Bandow takes a look at what Ron Paul said, what Paul Wolfowitz said, and offers this: “Doing so does not mean that Americans are “to blame” for terrorism. Or that the victims of 9/11 “deserved” what they got. Talking about the issue doesn’t necessarily even mean that the United States should change what it is doing. But the first step to design good policy is to recognize the consequences — all of them, including the ugly, unexpected, and painful ones — of alternative strategies.” He notes that 9/11 short-circuited the debate, and he’s right. Sometimes, it’s difficult for me to discuss, too, if only for the very personal losses that resulted.

Around the World

• Andrei Lugovoi has been charged with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The trick? Russia’s constitution forbids extradiction, in addition to the Kremlin’s desire to shelter Putin’s contract murderers. Lugovoi was discovered to have had extensive contact with Polonium-210 before his meeting with Litvinenko, with samples found on an airplane he rode and the hotel at which he stayed. He protests his innocence.
• And no, Russian still haven’t figured out a tasteful way to spend their oil money.
• Anne Applebaum takes an excellent look at whether and how NATO should respond to Russia’s cyberwar against Estonia. Such cyberwarfare doesn’t work against Russia’s other side thorn, Georgia: there, they’ve relied on their continuing row with the EU to slowly bleed off Saakashvili’s supporters, I assume for the ultimate cause of annexing liberating South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
• The Mark Seidenfeld case grows dark—and the prospects for a fair trial or equitable outcome look bleak.
• China’s protest season (I have no idea if there is an actual season, like in Boulder) kicks off with a bang, as the enforcement campaign for the One Child policy prompts massive riots in Gunagxi. China routinely faces between fifty and ninety thousand protest marches each year in reaction to various inefficiencies and poor planning.
• David Axe got to sit down with Afghan Ambassador Said Jawad. The snippets are encouraging: he shares many of my frustrations with how things are proceeding, along with a guarded hope that it just might work out. In stark contrast to some other, unnamed American projects, Afghanistan still has a very real chance of success.
• Meanwhile, Germany is back to wringing its hands and gazing at its navel over a soldier’s death in Afghanistan. But it is at least a debate, with a majority still seeing the value of cleaning up the mess.
• While I can see the geopolitik reasoning behind the assumption that Iran is responsible for the new missiles being found in Afghanistan, does anyone in their right mind think Tehran would suddenly reverse more than a decade of opposition to the Taliban, just to score a few western bodies? It was opposition to the Taliban that garnered a surprising collaboration between Tehran and Washington in 2001 and 2002, and the Shi’a in charge of Afghanistan’s western neighbor do not want to deal with a newly emboldened Mullah Omar setting up shop in Kandahar again, or even with a NATO withdrawal spurred by excessive chaos.
• Daniel Ortega, apparently not of the salsa fame, totes luvs the Kim Jong-il.
• Is our healthcare and welfare making us short? Color me skeptical—while the correlation between childhood nutrition (and by extension, overall societal wealth) and adult height is strong, I can’t imagine how researchers could control for all the variables associated with childhood development to establish a causative relationship. From what I know, a more logical cause of the height difference would be an interplay of two things: different rates of immigration (immigrants introduce difficult externalities into population studies), and food quality. I would imagine the amount of steroids and hormones we inject into our food products, as well as the pervasiveness of a corn monoculture, play a bigger role in adult height variance than whether or not we provide adequate social security to our elderly.

Back at Home

• Annoying as it is, the DC area isn’t that bad a place—so long as you avoid Leesburg, Ashburn, South Riding… Hell, any of the children-of-the-corn “planned” communities governed by HOAs so fascist and obsessed with uniformity they’d make the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly proud. Anycrap, so there are other annoying bits as well, like Clarendon’s new reputation as a dumping ground for the recently bereaved, or development turf wars that feature lines like, “On the other side, Reed Fawell, a project supporter, compared the block where the proposed project would be to a “Third World country,” albeit one within walking distance of a Williams-Sonoma.” Yes, people say things like that with a straight face. Luckily, I’m in Reston, which does me the courtesy of being too expensive to live while also having nothing to do. Thanks, Virginia! At least we’re not third-world DC with starving fly babies!
• Democrats announce economic illiteracy, power of instincts.
• The Instapundit hates the Economist for being unfair. No, he thinks it is unfair to America. Yes, I realize how silly that sounds.
• Meanwhile, the Supreme Court hates your freedom to sleep at night without fear of… well, let’s let Radley Balko explain: “the police can break into your home, rouse you from sleep, hold you naked at gunpoint, and—even if you’re completely innocent—[and] you have no recourse, so long as the warrant was valid.” In other words, we live in a police state.

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[UPDATE: Whoops! I see great minds think alike, and that Keith posted on this as well, so read that too.]

After much procedural wrangling, Sen. Harry Reid opted to put off a vote on the much-maligned immigration bill (which can be reviewed here), and the Senate voted to open debate:

The Senate voted Monday to open debate but delay a vote on legislation that would allow an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to stay in the country legally.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said senators needed more time to digest and reshape the complicated bill, which Sen. Ken Sala zar, D-Colo., helped craft. Reid put off a vote for at least three weeks.

“The country deserves it. … The Senate deserves it,” Reid said. “This is a tremendously important piece of legislation.”

[...]

The Senate will debate the compromise bill this week, take a week break from Washington after Memorial Day, then return for another week of debate with a vote after that.

Senators voted 69-23 on the procedural vote that allows debate on the immigration measure to begin. Several senators said they opposed the bill as written but voted to open debate.

It appears that dozens of amendments will be offered to the bill, which was one of the things that proponents sought to avoid by ramrodding it through Congress (HT: QandO).

It’s understandable that the White House and its Senate negotiating partners want to rush through the compromise immigration bill they agreed to Thursday. Supporters acknowledge that the delicately balanced legislation could collapse if a single destructive amendment is attached to it. Its sponsors admit they want to minimize the political debate. “We all know this issue can be caught up in extracurricular politics unless we move forward as quickly as possible,” says Sen. John McCain , a key architect of the bill.

Thankfully, Senators will now have time to pore over the 300+ page bill, and at least have some modicum of understanding as to what they are asked to vote upon. As John Fund noted, the last time such immigration reform legislation was rushed to a vote, it “failed so spectacularly”:

But this is no way to debate the most sweeping change to our nation’s immigration laws in two decades—especially since the last comprehensive attempt, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, failed so spectacularly. The new bill is set to pass with much less analysis in the Senate than the 1986 law, known as Simpson-Mazzoli, had.

Of course, this is exactly how most bills are passed, with little to no review of the details and often no comprehension of what provisions the bill actually includes. So kudos should go to Sens. Reid and McConnell for doing the right thing.

Technorati Tags: immigration bill, Senate debate, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell

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Senator Reid has agreed that this bill will not be ram-rodded through the Senate this week.

Senate leaders agreed Monday that they would wait until June to take final action on a bipartisan plan to give millions of unlawful immigrants legal status.

The measure, which also tightens border security and workplace enforcement measures, unites a group of influential liberals, centrists and conservatives and has White House backing, but it has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. In a nod to that opposition, Senate leaders won’t seek to complete it before a hoped-for Memorial Day deadline.

“It would be to the best interests of the Senate … that we not try to finish this bill this week,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., as the chamber began debate on the volatile issue. “I think we could, but I’m afraid the conclusion wouldn’t be anything that anyone wanted.”

The bipartisan compromise cleared its first hurdle Monday with a bipartisan Senate vote to begin debate on a separate immigration measure. Still, it faces significant obstacles as lawmakers seek dozens of modifications to its key elements.

Republicans want to make the bill tougher on the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. Democrats want to change a new temporary worker program and reorder priorities in a merit-based system for future immigration that weights employability over family ties.

The unlikely coalition that brokered the deal, led by Sens. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., is plotting to protect the agreement from “deal-breaker” changes that would sap its support. The group will hold daily meetings starting Tuesday to determine whether proposed revisions would sink what they are calling their “grand bargain.”

And here are some of “The Usual Suspects” that are lining up against this. Well, one can say that this compromise is centrist, as it’s pissing off people on both the left and right.

BUCHANAN: America is now risking national suicide…

labor unions and Hispanic groups saying the deal brokered by leading U.S. senators and the White House was bad for workers, families and employers.

“Sellout.” It may be harsh, but it’s the most accurate and succinct way to sum up how conservatives feel right now about President Bush and Senate Republicans, who have cut a deal that would grant amnesty to the estimated 12 million illegal aliens living in the U.S. — not to mention the parents, spouses, and children of these illegals. – Brian Darling, Heritage Foundation.

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“In a fiery speech this weekend, Hillary Clinton wondered why President Bush can’t find the tallest man in Afghanistan. Probably for the same reason she couldn’t find the fattest intern under the desk.”

–Jay Leno

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.

Defense

• The VA is facing a mounting wave of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder patients… Vietnam. It is ballooning costs and straining resources already, and David Axe asks the very relevant question: what happens when all the OIF and OEF vets start succumbing?
• Meanwhile, is the Army being starved? Given the extreme likelihood of future 4th Gen wars in the near and medium term futures, is it a good idea to fiscally force the Army into stagnation at the cost of pretty $34 billion paperweights and massive new ship expenditures?
• The world’s only remaining Top Guns are in Iran, until Congress forbids the sale of replacement parts for the F-14. Because after a few decades, it’s about time to stop giving the Iranian military the equipment it needs.
• Bob Gates wants college graduates to pursue “public service.” Huh. I tried, but I found the hiring process so unbelievable laborious that, unless you already have some kind of personal advocate (friend, family, networked acquaintance) in the agency where you want to work, it is absolutely not worth the trouble. Also, not to be this cynical, but the era of selfless government service—of the wealthy New England families sending their children into the foreign service and CIA—left us with the 60’s. People want to work for the government either because it’s cool (the NCS, SEALs), or because it’s just steady, guaranteed work with a predictable pay scale. Altruism is nowhere to be found, outside maybe USAID and the Armed Forces.

Around the World

• And here I thought Kim Jong-il was the only murderous tyrant of a failed state who dropped millions on monuments to himself.
• Yet more piracy off the Horn of Africa, interdicting yet more aid to Somalia, thanks to our proxy war. See more here and here.
• How dare Estonia disrespect statues built to honor the mass murdering tyrants responsible for millions of Estonian deaths?!?! The sheer gall of those people, thinking they can ever escape the yoke of Soviet imperialism. Mother Russia Soviet!
• China is taking a miniscule fraction of the $1.2 trillion dollars it’s saved and buying a major stake in a private equity firm. I guess they’re no longer communist, then—this is surely the final nail in that coffin.
• Oh hey, look—CIA agents were yanked out of Pakistan and off bin Laden’s trail in 2002 to help prepare the invasion of Iraq (where the one on-time building—the Vatican-sized U.S. Embassy—is now basically a $600 million bomb magnet). It seems they’re ineffective and useless in lots of places, not just South Asia. Meanwhile, I carp about conservative or right wing over-simplification of what’s going on in Afghanistan, along with a brief glimpse at the internal politics of the Taliban.
• Oh, and Nathan and I team up to complain about the Instapundit and his poor grasp of what makes credible commentary on foreign affairs—in this case, he points to some dangerous non-reporting on energy politics in the Caspian basin, including misconceptions about Russia’s relationship with Iran and outright falsehoods about the Caucasus. These are the kinds of errors that lead to disastrous policy—which is exactly what we’re seeing now.

Back at Home

• I got a lot of grief for daring to say Ron Paul’s conception of 9/11—that it was blowback for interventionist policies in the Middle East—was, in fact, not just not crazy but eminently reasonable. Both Greg Scoblete and The Robot Economist provide needed context for understanding why.
• As long as you hate America, you can kill millions and keep Noam Chomsky’s smiling face upon your visage. But dare to imprison an academic and… well, that’s just going too far. Snaps to Dan Drezner for spotting the worst sort of hypocrisy I can imagine.
• Ronald Bailey nicely summarizes why I dislike the pushers of the “American Christians are so persecuted” meme: it is simply not true. Moreover, athiests and other non-Christians face actual discrimination in many social settings… including, apparently, politics.
• Michael Ledeen unintentionally makes the case for invading America.
• At the start of the Click It or Ticket campaign to enforce seatbelt laws, President Bush drives his monster truck . I think he’s talking with some European about some country we invaded once and have since kind of ignored or something. Meanwhile, I eagerly await federal mandatory sentencing guidelines for daring to eat trans-fats.
• Jimmy Carter, selfish jackass.

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After the move to actually defund the war failed miserably, the Democrats may finally come up with a bill without the massive pork spending, without timelines or other qualifiers which undermine the effort.

In grudging concessions to President Bush , Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of billions of dollars in spending on domestic programs, officials said Monday.

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising veto fight between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

We’ll have to see in case this is a trial balloon which they will deny if the response is negative:

Democratic officials stressed the legislation was subject to change. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss provisions before a planned presentation to members of the party‘s rank and file later in the day.

Much is unclear:

Failure to make progress toward the goals could cost the Iraqis some of the reconstruction aid the United States has promised, although it was not clear whether Democrats intended to give Bush power to order the aid to be spent regardless of progress.

Still developing.

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Michael Barone has the editorial the probably matches my current take on the issue. I haven’t read much about the current compromise, and haven’t read the actual bill. It does seem to have riled up all “The Usual Suspects.”

I confess that I haven’t read the text of the compromise immigration bill agreed to by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, and I request the right to, in congressional language, revise and extend my remarks.

But at this writing, apparently nobody has read it — the final text is still not available. Many Americans have been complaining that the Iraqi parliament has been taking too long to come to agreement on sharing oil revenues and other big issues. But the same thing happens in the United States Congress. Members mull important issues and seem to do nothing for long periods of time and then are stirred into sudden action — so sudden it’s hard to keep up with it — when a deadline looms. This is the way of representative democracy, which as Winston Churchill remarked, is the worst system of government except for all the others that have been tried over time.

This strikes me as a long step forward.

…

The Kennedy-Kyl immigration compromise, now under attack from many conservatives and some liberals, attempts to steer the immigration ship in the direction of regularization, enforcement that actually works, and toward skill-based rather than family-based immigration. At least if they get the details right.

Mitch McConnell has promised a serious debate about this compromise, and had some things to say on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”

“Some would argue that allowing 12 million illegals in the country right now, free to move around the country, is a form of amnesty. Everyone’s against amnesty. The question is: How do you go forward on this bill?

I think it’s an improvement over the status quo. It may get better, George, in the course of the two weeks of debate we’ll need to have to pass the bill.”

“Better from my point of view is certainly no amnesty, strengthened borders. I think we’re going to go a long way toward strengthened borders.”

I think I agree with this statement, in as far as the status quo (open, unsecured borders) is untenable in the long run from a security viewpoint, while the needs of our economy requires that we have a large number of low wage workers. So, in the end, there needs to be some way of allowing in a large number of low wage workers, with background checks, and no long term reward for being here already (other then not being punished.) Now, granted, once illegals are “regularized” they may become slightly more costly to employ, unless they are treated as independent contractors. (Unless there’s some part of the tax code that let’s you bit withhold Social Security and Medicare from foreign workers.)

I’m going to reserve final judgment until I learn more.

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“Top Democrats have mixed feelings about Sen.  Hillary Clinton running for president.  Apparently, some Democrats don’t like the idea, while others hate it.”
–Conan O’Brien

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“Well, the big story — Hillary Clinton will be running for president in 2008.  You know why I think she’s running?  I think she finally wants to see what it’s like to sleep in the president’s bed.”
–Jay Leno

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Lost so very badly. I pretty much feel the same way as Glenn Reynolds does on the immigration bill:

SAXBY CHAMBLISS was booed at a GOP convention over the immigration bill. The big problem for the GOP leadership is that they’ve lost their credibility. And they still don’t understand it. This was clear a year ago when we talked to then-GOP chair Ken Mehlman, and it’s much, much truer now. As a reader emails: “No credibility to fall back on. No reserve of good will to fall back on. No record to fall back on. No successes to fall back on.”

And as Dan Riehl said earlier this week, Republicans were given a wakeup call with the 2006 elections, and they opted to hit snooze.

I still don’t know enough to know if the bill is good or bad. But if the bill is actually a good bill that the GOP base would accept if they read it . . . then that’s an even bigger indictment of the GOP leadership for failing to sell it. At this point, they’ve either mis-sold a good bill, or produced a bad one.

What a bunch of fools. It is sad our political class is such a cynical bunch of power seekers and panderers, it is pathetic that they are so bad at it.

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This lovely angel is Tania Derveaux, the NEE party candidate for the Belgian Senate. Nee is the Belgian equivalent of “None of the Above.”

Tania has a problem with the dishonest and unrealistic promises most politicians make while running for office:

It started with our response to incredible claims that were made by other parties in Belgium, several parties promised new job opportunities in ridiculous amounts. We responded with a parody campaign for which I posed naked and promised our voters 400,000 new jobs.

The response was , how can I say this?….Energetic! The response after many requests, was to give the public what they wanted, as Tania came up with a campaign to express her disdain for “dirty politics” and differentiate herself from the typical politician. Uh, some might find this a bit… “risque.”

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I haven’t been following closely the CHANNON CHRISTIAN / CHRISTOPHER NEWSOME story. Generally I don’t follow the crime of the day, nor have I found that the crime of the day in our media deserves to be the crime amongst all the cruel barbarity of the world to deserve much coverage. The drive this time amongst many seems to be to make this a bookend to the Duke lacrosse case, as if we need similar behavior on the part of our media and justice system to balance out the scales of justice. Simply put, we don’t. Typically Glenn Reynold’s has a reasonable view to counter the frothing and links to this:

The popular comparison for media coverage is to the Duke Lacrosse case, because the races of the accused and victims are inverted. This is considered the main difference driving the degree of coverage. But there’s another difference that matters – in the Duke case, the DA actively sought out media coverage. He was either trying to drum up witnesses for an ongoing investigation (if you want to be charitable towards him), or exploiting the racial aspect of the case to help his re-election bid (if you don’t.) Either way, he actively asked the media to cover his case. The authorities in Knoxville have not. Are the Knoxville authorities wrong for not acting enough like Mike Nifong?

For the balance seekers it seems yes. Read it all.

Just as typically Eric Scheie has lots of reasonable and intelligent observations. I would start here, but follow the links to his other posts as well.

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Apparently Democrat Congressman from California, Tom Lantos, has decided that Congress’ recent attacks on Major League Baseball and its various teams and athletes just weren’t enough. Now, it seems, the NFL is in for it. Citing the recent investigation into Atlanta Falcons’ Quarterback Michael Vick’s former home in Virginia, the distinguished gentleman from California took the opportunity to threate… um, I mean remind Commissioner Goodell that his Oversight and Government Reform Committee would be only too happen to visit the same woes on NFL teams and players as the MLB suffered. In fact, Lantos seems to infer that the NFL would wish for the type of treatment that baseball received by the time he and his Committee are done with it. Once again the feds are absolutely overstepping their bounds here and interfering in a private organization. The Commissioner has to walk a fine line between defending the NFL and its teams and players and graciously accepting the advice of Congressman Lantos (that is, not irritating him further). In this case of flagrant abuse of Congressional power, however, I’d say he should lean a bit more towards the former. Doesn’t Lantos have other things he could be focusing on (like immigration, homeland security, the global war on terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, earmark refrom, the Di-Fi scandal, Hillary’s choice of theme music for her campaign, etc.).

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Hillary Clinton said that her childhood dream was to be an Olympic athlete. But she was not athletic enough. She said she wanted to be an astronaut, but at the time they didn’t take women.  She said she wanted to go into medicine, but hospitals made her woozy. Should  she be telling people this story? I mean she’s basically saying she wants to be president because she can’t do anything else.”

–Jay Leno

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Now I know this has been everywhere, but the fact is it should be. So I am putting it up as well. Fred Thompson’s response to Michael Moore’s request to debate health care policy:

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Cross-posted at The Conjecturer

Defense

• Part 2 of Danger Room’s interview with John Robb. I bought his book last night, and I’ll be posting a review of it here when I’m done. John Robb has some damned interesting ideas, and even if I wind up not fully buying them (I try to remain skeptical of these kinds of military ideas books), I’m glad there are credible guys doing some serious outside-the-box thinking.
• I like this bit: “Q: [Are there] any presidential candidates [who get it, who understand Fourth Gen warfare?] A: No. Not that I have seen. It almost seems like they are living in a parallel reality to the real world we live in.” Indeed.
• I don’t like this bit: ” One of the things we see again and again is the need for the ability to provide instant infrastructure to damaged communities. This ranges from a community cut off due to security needs in counter-insurgency to disaster relief. How do you package infrastructure for 20-30,000 people in a box? The military should be solving this.” I disagree; community and institution building is not a primary function of the military, that is a primary function of aid and reconstruction groups such as FEMA, USAID, and the State Department. The military should be “solving” how to fight wars. I think I am going to love his book.
• Meanwhile, the DoD is presenting a decidedly Luddite face to the country and the world, in that it seems to not understand things like VPNs, bandwidth, or the intertubes. This should be embarrassing for them, but not as much as a British judge who, in a trial of men accused of Internet terrorism, admitted he didn’t know what a “Web site” was (see below).
• What? The Army has duplicate weapons and equipment programs, and tries to sell the cutting of one as an unacceptable attack on the troops? Never.
• I hope none of you work for Northrop Grumman, because if you do, and if you happen to be captured by FARC while on a recon mission in Colombia, you will be forgotten, consigned to some hell hole prison for years with nary a peep or outcry from your company, your country, or its press.

Around the World

• Excellent rundown of the growing instability in Pakistan. Doing daily dispatches sometimes makes me forget to take even a short term big-picture view. Doing so can be hugely useful, however, as Daniel shows. Seeing that Musharraf has ruled out the return of the two previous failed heads of state (Bhutto and Sharif), it’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
• Clearly, what was missing from the Afghan campaign was more Ahmed Shah Massoud. His name, like adding more cow bell to the Blue Oyster Cult, is slowly turning into an abused joke that will ruin the whole thing for the rest of us. Or is anointing an Afghan national hero a good thing, and sound nation-building policy? I look at that here.
• Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera carries an alarming story about the scourge of opium addiction in Badakhshan, a rural province at the far northeast of the country. A few months back, Ted Callahan wrote an entry for neweurasia.net’s regional roundup on the Afghan Pamirs, a small group of Kyrgyz nomads in the area, and how the use of opium was slowly killing them all off.
• Interesting that apparently in both the Economist’s and in Foreign Policy’s take on the recent debate over China curiously fails to mention the one things that many of us continue to object to with China: human rights. From their reeducation camps to the America-funded censorship and imprisonment of democrats to having the highest execution rate in the world (as well as credible, though still unfounded, rumors of using arrested Falun Gong members to supply organ tourism), to their forced repatriation of North Korean refugees, to (oh yeah) TIBET, China has one of the worst human rights records on the planet. If there were like Japan or something—culturally alien but benign—I doubt as many people would care, at least in the same and with such doom-and-gloom, about their growing power and influence.
• Ms. Bonnie has been on fire this week, tackling the issue of poverty and income inequality with gusto. See here, here, and just today, here. If you enjoy reading of Central Asia, you should add her site to your reader. I want to address these in greater depth, assuming I develop both the time and inclination (I might be sleeping).
• Wow, Stasi agents were bastard coated bastards with bastard filling… and now they’re renting hotel space for G8 summits. The Lives of Others, a German-language Oscar-winner about the last days of the Stasi, will be at the top of my Netflix queue once it has a release date—it is supposed to be stunning. Even for someone as theoretically young as I am, the pace of change in the world is sometimes head-spinning.
• The moment I feel depressed about this country, I get to read about the English. Supposedly, a judge tasked with trying people accused of Internet-based terrorism Without exaggerating, the exchange was something like: “These men are accused of hosting terrorism materials on a website.” “Wait, what’s a website?” That has to be embarrassing.
• Hrm, it sure looks like Russia is forming a natural gas cartel, doesn’t it? Let’s brainstorm names: I nominate ONGEC, LiNGEC, and WHNGYDSPU (we have natural gas and you don’t so pay up).
• Meanwhile, the EU actually played a form of hardball with its wayward eastern neighbor, for once.
• Why isn’t Blake Hounshell willing to declare the Agreed Framework 2.0 a failure “just yet?” North Korea is only 35 days behind its original 60 day gentleman’s agreement to shut down the Yongbyon reactor. But that’s not what Hounshell says. He rather leaves the reasons behind his belief a bit obscured behind the scare mongering over Iran, and Chris Hill’s latest exciting trip to offer North Korea zero incentives for major setback.
• Some pretty pictures from Ukraine: one set, of the underground, and another of the rotting (but still beautiful) Soviet aircraft carrier Varyag.

Back at Home

• Major military brass must patiently explain why torture is bad. That we have to have this conversation is appalling enough; that so many Republican candidates were engaged in a contest of “who would torture more” for Fox News, including several jaw-dropping invocations of Jack Bauer, is deeply depressing.
• Clearly the best way to handle a wayward Republican of growing popularity is to ban him from future debates. Because, you know, silencing dissent is for the good of the party. $20 says the same Republicans who railed about Joe Lieberman’s freezing out last year will applaud Ron Paul’s excommunication.
• Yesterday, Jules Witcover wrote an interesting post at the Campaigning for History blog: Who’s Worse, Nixon or Bush? Before going off about the predictable liberal bias of the New York Times, realize that this isn’t a new or even particularly noteworthy comparison: recall Jonathan Rauch’s pronouncement that Bush is worse than Carter but not as bad as Nixon, a perverse status given the current state of the country and the far less severe current imbroglio with Iran (i.e. they’re not holding several dozen diplomats ransom). Regardless, how much more stale can you get than recycling seven month-old Atlantic articles written by a far more accomplished writer?
• WTF? The DC won’t be Chocolate City very soon? Times are changing.
• Wolfie’s been railroaded, though I don’t think it was a good call to put him there in the first place (regardless of his efficacy as President, he was such a controversial figure, and so universally disliked, it was a thumb of the nose by President Bush). Leave it to the always wide-eyed Sebastian Mallaby (Bastian! Please!) to say the next President should be more of the same.

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Going back over some territory I analyzed in depth last fall, it has now been demonstrated quite quickly how right I was.

Any thought that the Democrats couldn’t be worse than the Republicans on spending is now officially buried:

Majority Democrats passed an important test Thursday with approval of a $2.9 trillion budget plan that promises big spending increases for party priorities such as education and health care. The budget blueprint sets a course to produce a small surplus in five years by assuming that many of President Bush’s tax cuts would expire.

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Cross-posted on The Conjecturer

Defense

• Are we losing the info war? I think we are, and attacks on al-Hurra for not being propagandistic enough when the channel already faces criticism for exactly that certainly don’t help. We could maybe start by renouncing torture, given that we lecture other countries on their use of it.
• The constant back-and-forth over whether Iraq is an insurgency or civil war are a bit academic at this point: many civil wars are fought as insurgencies, and that is the dynamic I see at play here (I also dislike the over-simplification of the nature of the parties in the conflict). It is a struggle for the control of Iraq, and insurgency is one side’s strategy. That being said, it hasn’t been a traditional insurgency, but has rather been highly adaptive in tactics, technology, and even ideology—leading to a fractured network of competing factions, all vying for their various spheres of control. That makes me think that, despite General Petraeus’ many skills in handling traditional insurgencies, he still might not be what’s needed to properly address the conflict.
• This UK report on the fighting seems to confirm that we need a radical departure in tactics and strategy (or, more simply and cheaply, a withdrawal) to have any kind of positive impact.
• Hey, whaddya know, paying contractors to run acquisition programs isn’t a very good idea. At last, some constraints on the unbelievable amounts of waste in Defense contracting.

Around the World

• How cell phones affect the price of fish, or how cell phones solve global poverty (a recurring meme here, in case you haven’t noticed). Other great poverty news is the $30 stove/refrigerator/generator, which has tremendous potential in improving the condition of the BoP crowd.
• Maybe it really is a state-to-state guerilla war? Estonia has faced a weeks-long wave of cyber attacks on its information infrastructure, primarily from Russia. Estonia gained a lot of praise from the IT world for its Tiger Leap program, which essentially declared Internet access a human right and has since worked aggressively to wire all parts and population segments of the country. Interesting to see how that is now being used against them. Also, stupid Russia.
• Is the train a sign of thawing relations? Or further evidence of Pyongyang’s penchant for empty, meaningless gestures in pursuit of a larger goal? I vote for the latter, especially if it turns out North Korea really did test its “new” missile in Iran.
• Benazir Bhutto, of course, is clearly a selfless democrat clearly uninterested in wresting the reins of power away from Musharraf and ruling over her rightful fiefdom.
• Meanwhile, Pakistan and Iran are preparing to deport thousands of Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan. If millions of homeless Afghans suddenly flood into the south, as these expulsions portend, the result will be disaster, even if marginally mitigated by SAARC membership (the most recent meeting of which yielded no appreciably gainful policies).
• Russia is not just arming Burma’s horridly violent military dictatorship; it is now helping them build nuclear power plants. There’s been a spate of Burma stuff lately, from letters by 59 heads of state to a pair—here, and here—of travel posts by the venerable James Fallows (must be nice to tour Asia like that), to the recently-Flickr’d Smithsonian archive, to (tangentially) former Myanmar Times and Business Review reporter and current Reason editor Kerry Howley’s oddly-compelling campaign for organ markets.

Back at Home

• I don’t see the sovereignty concerns with the UN Sea treaty, especially as they are no more onerous or expansive than the concessions we demand other countries make through the IMF, World Bank, and sometimes UNSC. We should ratify it.
• Want to help Hillarity Clinton choose her campaign theme song? They allow write-ins! I vote for “Stupid Girl” by Garbage; it seems appropriate on several levels.
• A depressing look at what kind of house you can get in this area for $300,000. Now, of course, if you work out in the suburbs somewhere (say, Reston, or McLean, or Rockville, and so on) it’s not always a smart move to eat an hour-long commute for a cheap townhouse in NE. Ugh. I think I’ve consigned myself to living in hovels until I become a millionaire. Oh yeah, and also whoever designed 66 in the Gainesville area was retarded.
• “Lesson: Dick Cheney looks 90% like Dick Cheney.” God I love Wonkette.
• Here’s a sad but also uplifting story about the plight of homeless gay youth, a group far larger than most people realize (yes, we still do face sometimes violent discimination in society). I dated a guy in Denver who used to work at one of these shelters; he said many of the children are forced by their parents to the streets, which then forces the children into hustling (i.e. prostitution), which then almost always results in getting HIV. A depressingly large number of these kids come from Christian homes, too.

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Mostly right, but unfortunately the left won’t listen to their own economists as we can see in the comments.

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