Yearly Archives: 2009

On the December 26 Saturday Today, as NBC anchor Amy Robach brought up Sarah Palin during a segment on people who made the news in 2009, Robach sounded as if she might have had a wish that Palin disappear from public view as she asked if Palin would "ever just go away?" Robach: "And, Brian, another big political story, the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, and yet she continues to grab headlines. Her new book came out. Will she ever just go away? Do you think she's going to be a big force this next year?"

Comedian Brian Balthazar seemed to want Palin to remain in public to be fodder for jokes as he contended that "when she opens her mouth, people pay attention. And, in fact, when she opens her mouth, often she doesn't stop, so it, there's so much to work with with Sarah. She's not going away."

Robach, possibly hinting that she also sees Palin as either a good source for humor or for the news industry which she is a part of, followed up by posing a question to NBC contributor Toure. Robach: "And, Toure, do we really want her to go away? Probably not." 

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the December 26 Saturday Today show on NBC: 

AMY ROBACH: And, Brian, another big political story, the rise and fall of Sarah Palin, and yet she continues to grab headlines. Her new book came out.

BRIAN BALTHAZAR, COMEDIAN: Absolutely.

ROBACH: Will she ever just go away? Do you think she's going to be a big force this next year?

BALTHAZAR: Well, I think she's a big force. I think Sarah Palin is like the Madonna of the GOP. You know, some people, some people love her, they hate her, and she has an accent we can't identify. I think, I think she's not going away. Her book, "Going Rogue," is a huge best-seller, it's on The New York Times best-seller list. You know, when she opens her mouth, people pay attention. And, in fact, when she opens her mouth, often she doesn't stop. So it, there's so much to work with with Sarah. She's not going away.

ROBACH: And, Toure, do we really want her to go away? Probably not.

TOURE: Well, I mean, I think there's a group of America that loves her and feels that she represents us, and then another group that feels like, `This is so disgusting, what this represents.' So she's not going anywhere, at least not until the end of 2012.

A rocket launcher and jihadist writings were found in a Houston apartment today.

The launcher reportedly belongs to Nabilaye I. Yansane seen here at court earlier this week.
Click2Houston reported:

Police went to a southwest Houston apartment to break up a disturbance but ended up finding something else, KPRC Local 2 reported Wednesday.

A woman called police on Monday and said a man was forcing his way into her apartment in the 5300 block of Elm Street.

When officers went inside, they found something that made them concerned enough to call the bomb squad.

They found an AT-4 shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. It can shoot a missile nearly 1,000 feet through buildings and tanks.

“It gives infantrymen the advantage with an ultra-light weapon that can stop vehicles, armored vehicles as well as main battle tanks and fortifications,” said Oscar Saldivar of Top Brass Military and Tactical on the North Freeway.

That type of rocket launcher has been used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The renter of the apartment didn’t want to talk to KPRC Local 2.

“This is my house,” the woman said. ” Get away from here. I don’t want to talk to nobody.”

The woman did tell police that the rocket launcher belonged to Nabilaye I. Yansane, someone whom she allowed to store items at her apartment.

Police records show that she didn’t want Yansane at her apartment, so she called them.

According to court documents, officers also found Jihadist writings that allegedly belonged to Yansane. The woman didn’t want to talk to KPRC Local 2 about that, either.

UPDATE: WFAA reported tonight that officials found a container with explosives in North Texas. A copy of the Koran was found nearby:

Authorities tell News 8 a suspicious device found in a North Texas neighborhood did contain explosives.

“Reports of a health scare involving talk titan Rush Limbaugh late Wednesday has fans filled with worry, while liberal foes respond with the usual vitriol,” Brian Maloney observed Thursday as he tracked the vitriol:

> Some of the meanest comments found at Washington Post

> Timing is everything: Tina Brown rips Limbaugh on Today show

> Obamacentric: CNN's Ed Henry sees health scare in context of Barack's trip to Hawaii

> Orbusmax: Seattle Times forced to remove nearly 50% of Rush-related comments

> Liberal columnist implores Left to 'stop wishing Limbaugh dead'

> More Twitter hate

I spent an hour this morning on the radio with Bill Bennett and his producer Seth Leibsohn, talking about the highlights and lowlights of 2009. It was fun as always, and, even though 2009 was not a great year by anyone's standard, in the end I think it was more positive than negative.

Two overarching and intertwined stories dominated the news this year, one bad and one good. The bad theme was, of course, the Washington Democrats' attack on our free enterprise system and on our liberties. The attack was broad-based and unremitting, encompassing the stimulus, TARP II, government medicine, cap and trade, card check and much more. But the good news of 2009 was how the American people pushed back: town halls, tea parties, plummeting poll numbers for President Obama and the Congressional Democrats, and unified Republican opposition in Congress. Above all, though, the opposition came from individual Americans who refused to surrender their hard-won independence without a fight. In hindsight, I think 2009 will be remembered as the year when the conservative movement reawakened.

So: Happy New Year to all of our readers. 2010 will bring its own problems and perils, but for now let hope reign.

Some of our readers may wonder why I am posting on New Year's Eve. Have I nothing better to do? Was I not invited to a New Year's Eve party? Or are we waiting until close to midnight to depart for some fashionable event?

Actually, tonight my wife and I are chaperoning a kids' New Year's Eve party, as we have for just about all of the last eight or nine years. My thirteen-year-old daughter invited 30 or more of her friends--including some boys--and the resulting chaos is taking place a level down from where I'm typing. Thankfully, we had reinforcements for the early stage of the party in the form of my twenty-year-old daughter and her boyfriend, but they have now departed for a party of their own. So far, no serious damage seems to have been done. But I appeal to our adult male readers: which would you rather do, write a few blog posts or supervise a room full of shrieking thirteen-year-old girls?

I rest my case. With luck, I'll be in bed before the ball drops. Happy New Year to all!

One remarkably serendipitous effect of Climategate is that mainstream science publications -- written for laymen, I mean, not scientists -- are beginning to take a hard look at the core contradictions of globaloney: Science-oriented magazines that never before so much as considered the evidence of "deniers* " are now calmly questioning the catechism of the First Church of Fundamentalist Catastrophism.

Here is a perfect example; Science Daily, which appears very "mainstream" -- that is, alarmist and intolerant -- has just published the following without much comment:

[S]ome studies have suggested that the ability of oceans and plants to absorb carbon dioxide recently may have begun to decline and that the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is therefore beginning to increase.

Many climate models also assume that the airborne fraction will increase. Because understanding of the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide is important for predicting future climate change, it is essential to have accurate knowledge of whether that fraction is changing or will change as emissions increase....

In contradiction to some recent studies, [Wolfgang Knorr of the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol] finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

Let me explain as best I can, given that I'm not an atmospheric scientist (or indeed any other kind of scientist). This doesn't mean that the amount of carbon and carbonoids in the atmosphere is decreasing or even that it's not increasing; the question is, what percent of that carbon dioxide that is generated is absorbed by the oceans and "terrestrial ecosystems" -- plants, essentially -- and what percent goes into the atmosphere?

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO₂ than had been previously expected.

A greater capacity to absorb carbon dioxide means that the increase is much less likely to cause disastrous problems... in this case, good news is bad news for globaloney!

The newsletter also makes explicit what was only hinted by Science Daily:

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO₂ should start to diminish as CO₂ emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

I love the word "expects" in the first sentence; as they say on Mythbusters, "well there's yer problem right there!" Too much of AGCC theory is based, not upon observation and analysis of existing data, but in the expectation that future data will confirm the thesis, regardless of what the dirty, lying, treacherous data indicates today.

Oh, and a final kick in the seat of globaloney's trousers:

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

Yes... complex and typically error-riddled and artifactual, if not outright fraudulent climate models.

So once again, the high priests of AGCC and their journalistic groupies discover that facts are stubborn things, the truth will out -- and that reality bites. It couldn't happen to a nicer group of idealogues.

* An AGCC "denier" currently includes any person or agency that wants further investigation on any of the following "settled" questions -- none of which needs any further research, as we've already learnt everything we need to know about them:

1. The Earth has warmed and is continuing to warm as we speak, and will continue to warm to Venusian temperatures unless -- well, read on.
2. The warming is primarily due to human industry and technology, with a large chunk of the remainder due to human agriculture and exhalation.

3. The warming (and the CO₂ itself) will lead to a cataclysmal, Malthusian die-off of the human species, and will leave the few remaining people in the condition described by Thomas Hobbes: "Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." (Kind of like how we'll end up after ObamaCare.)

4. The negative effects will include racist ocean rises; patriarchal swarms of hurricanes, tornados, and floods; genocidal "Dustbowl" droughts; and the complete collapse of Western civilization.
5. There will be no positive effects whatsoever; don't be stupid! (Well, maybe one: the complete collapse of Western civilization.)
6. This pending Armageddon can only be averted one way: By cutting energy production to a tiny fraction of its current level, terminating industry, smashing the looms, and returning to the idylic, pastoral lives we used to lead when there was a world-girdling Earthmother religion, before all those patriarchal, conservative, Republican, Judeo-Christian "penis religions" conquered everything and enslaved the world. This may require reducing the human population from its current six billion to approximately 500 million... but you can't make an omlet without breaking a few legs.

Amen.

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

I’m going to make you vote this one out, but feel free to suggest your own in the comments. [...] Read the rest »

The London Times gives the suicide bombing that killed seven CIA operatives this lurid billing: "CIA caught in dirty and secretive war against al-Qaeda on Afghan border." The article is interesting, but fails to live up to its billing as it offers no evidence that the Agency was "caught" as a result of this successful terrorist attack:

Forward Operating Base Chapman, and others like it along the border, are the forward edge of American military and intelligence counter-terrorism operations, aimed principally at hunting down senior figures in al-Qaeda and their allies in the Taleban hiding in the lawless tribal belt.

The CIA's main strike weapons are the drones that loiter over the border areas 24 hours a day, watching and listening to telephone networks. While the drones provide surveillance and electronic intelligence and carry out strikes, human intelligence is far harder to acquire among remote communities suspicious of any outsider.

Then there are the night raids against suspected insurgent and al-Qaeda linked leaders. It was an operation by what are euphemistically called "other government agencies" that was alleged to have killed a number of students in Kunar province on Saturday, causing widespread anger in Afghanistan. ...

Such units answer directly to the Pentagon rather than to the Nato command structure, and their operations are often so secretive that even other US forces operating nearby are sometimesmay be unaware of them.

Which sounds fine to me. You have to read to the end to find out how successful the Agency's operations have been:

Such has been the effectiveness of strikes on the terrorist command structure that there are persistent reports of al-Qaeda leadership figures relocating to urban areas in Pakistan and shifting the focus of their operations towards Yemen, Somalia and other areas of the Horn of Africa.

This is, of course, the kind of offensive action against terrorists that I talked about here. So far, at least, the Obama administration hasn't found it necessary to read terrorists in Afghanistan their rights and get them a lawyer.

PAUL adds: What's striking to me about this attack is that it was directed at precisely the people who have been causing terrorists and their leaders to be killed. It was not intended to terrorize, and the CIA won't back off. I think it was intended, at least in part, to increase the survival prospects of the terrorists who ordered the attack and their comrades.

And that will probably be its effect for a while. The amount of expertise available to direct attacks against terrorists in the region has just decreased, and probably substantially.

Of all the post mortems that have followed the attempted Christmas bombing of the Delta airliner, the weakest in my view is the criticism of Senator Jim DeMint for having placed a legislative hold on Erroll Southers, the nominee for head of the Transportation Security Agency. Other things being equal, it's better that the TSA have a head, rather than an acting head. But it's more important that the person in charge of the TSA be a good choice for the job.

That's why Sen. DeMint has done a service by placing a hold on Southers. The basis for the hold is that Southers has not answered a simple question: does he believe that TSA employees should be allowed to bargain collectively with the government on workplace rules and procedures?

There is reason to believe that Southers does believe this. As the editors of the Examiner point out, his nomination was greeted warmly by John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees.

The matter is not a trivial one. As the Examiner explains, there are at least four reasons why it's reasonable to be concerned about collective bargaining at the TSA. First, it would probably impede the agency's flexibility to move people and change protocols in response to what it believes is a specific terrorist threat. Second, it might well force TSA managers to share sensitive intelligence information with union negotiators, thereby increasing the likelihood of leaks. Third, TSA managers would likely be limited in their ability to reward high-performing screeners and fire poor performers. Fouth, a substantial number of TSA screeners would be diverted from the jobs they were hired to perform so they can set up the negotiating framework required for collective bargaining.

In any event, the ball is in Southers' court to answer DeMint's question. Assuming that he favors collective bargaining at the TSA, he can explain why he thinks the above arguments lack merit. Senators will then be in a position to cast an informed vote. That's how the confirmation process is supposed to work.

Until Southers takes a clear stand one way or the other on this matter, it is his fault, not DeMint's, that the nomination is stalled.

There was jubilation in Great Britain when Peter Moore, who had long been held hostage by an Iran-backed terrorist group in Iraq, was released a few days ago. But for some reason, the downside of that event has gotten no attention. Bill Roggio reports:

The British are all smiles over the release of Peter Moore, a British citizen who was held hostage by an Iranian-backed Shia terror group in Iraq. But there is little talk about the price paid to secure Moore's release. The US military has freed Qais Qazali, the leader of the Asaib al Haq, or League of the Righteous, as well as his brother Laith, several Qods Force officers, and more than 100 members of the terror group, in exchange for Moore. ...

Qais Qazli wasn't just some run of the mill Shia thug; his group is backed by Iran. Qazali's men were trained by Iranian Qods Force to infiltrate and assault the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala in January 2007. Five US soldiers were killed during the kidnapping attempt. The US soldiers were executed after US and Iraqi security forces closed in on the assault team.

The attack on the Karbala Provincial Joint Coordination Center was a complex, sophisticated operation. The assault team, led by tactical commander Azhar al Dulaimi (who was later killed by the US military), was trained in a mock-up of the center that was built in Iran. The unit had excellent intelligence and received equipment that made them appear to be US soldiers.

One hundred terrorists, plus the leaders of a dangerous group controlled by Iran, in exchange for a single hostage? We will no doubt be hearing from them again. This strikes me as one more sign of our government's lack of seriousness when it comes to Islamic terrorism.

Via Andy McCarthy at The Corner.

I like this news story from Salt Lake City, partly because it features a good-humored "progressive"--a rare breed!

A downtown protest of the climate change talks in Copenhagen became a victim of Wednesday's snowstorm.

"Not many people showed up because of the blizzard conditions," said organizer Clea Major, an international studies student at the University of Utah.

It didn't take long for the six friends to pack up a bullhorn and posters they'd planned to use for their "scream-in," an outlet for their frustration about the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks earlier this month to curb the pollution blamed for climate change. ...

[Major] called Wednesday evening's effort a success and possibly the first in a series. As for the snow, it's not entirely new; a protest she attended last year in Washington, D.C., suffered a similar fate.

"There is always the irony element," Major said.

That particular irony has been much in evidence lately. Here in Minnesota, no one will be holding outdoor demonstrations of any kind for a while. It's slated to get down to 12 below tomorrow night and 13 below on Saturday.

Next week, we will finally air the Atlas Shrugged hour. 52  years ago, Ayn Rand wrote a novel that describes much of what's happening in America now: explosive growth of government, an increasing number of rules, and more busybody bureaucrats and politicians, like Rand's villain, Wesley Mouch.

On the show, I ask my guests: Who, today, is most like Wesley Mouch? But for now, I’d like to know what YOU think. Who is today's Wesley Mouch?

Mouch did not just make rules to control businesses. He also colluded with businessmen, like Associated Steel owner Orren Boyle.

Who is today’s Orren Boyle? Is it Jeffrey Immelt? Immelt, the head of GE, serves on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board...and GE has received millions in federal grants and billions in loan supports. Or maybe today's Orren Boyle is the United Auto Workers?

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

From Fox News’ Nine Big Stories the Mainstream Media Missed in 2009:

ACORN Tapes

Filmmakers James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, went undercover to the offices of the community organizing group ACORN in the summer. They secretly videotaped employees instructing them in how to falsify tax forms and seek illegal benefits for 13 “very young” girls from El Salvador whom the pair said they wanted to import to work as child prostitutes. New videos emerged daily, but the mainstream media ignored the growing scandal for days, even as federal agencies began severing their ties with the group and members of Congress cried for an investigation.

Kevin Jennings, Safe Schools Czar

President Obama’s “safe schools czar,” Kevin Jennings, is a former schoolteacher who advocated promoting homosexuality in schools and was forced to admit he had poorly handled an incident in which a student told him he was having sex with older men. Jennings has since been tied to a pornographic suggested reading list for 7th graders that was designed by the organization he founded and directed for over a decade, and dozens of members of Congress have called for his ouster.

Van Jones

White House Green Jobs adviser Van Jones resigned from his post in September after weeks of pressure over his radical past. A former self-avowed Marxist and anarchist, Jones signed a 2004 petition that suggested the U.S. government was involved in the Sept 11. terrorist attacks. The New York Times and Washington Post ignored the story until Jones’ resignation, which occurred in the middle of the Labor Day weekend.

Other Highlights include Politicizing the NEA, Climate-Gate, and Tea Party Protests. Check out the full list here.

The Washington Independent released the “Best of the Rightest” for 2009 today.
Gateway Pundit came in at #9.
It’s quite an honor.

The Best and the Rightest The Top Ten Conservatives of 2009

No conservative blogger gave liberals more heartburn in 2009 than Hoft, whether or not they realized it. Based in St.Louis — “the heart of America” — Hoft launched his Gateway Pundit site in 2004 and turned it into a constantly churning hub of the conservative blogosphere. It wasn’t until this year, however, that Hoft began collecting liberal scalps. When then-White House “green jobs czar” Van Jones came under right-wing fire for his attacks on Republicans, Hoft discovered a 2002 petition, signed by Jones, calling for a new investigation into 9/11. The news quickly brought Jones down. Many liberals pinned the blame on Glenn Beck, who catapulted Hoft’s scoop into the mainstream conversation. Hoft, however, deserved credit as the leading example of a web-savvy amateur who leveraged the conservative media to cover stories that hurt liberals. In October, Hoft made the move to the conservative Catholic magazine First Things and blogged for Big Government (see #3), where he and other conservative bloggers campaigned for the removal of “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings.

On this afternoon's CNN Newsroom, anchor Rick Sanchez briefly updated his audience on Rush Limbaugh's medical condition.  He completed his comments with "We wish him well."  Sanchez's good wishes didn't square with the Twitter messages that crawled at the bottom of the screen for his entire program.

Here is a sampling of the tweets he aired:

rush is an excuse for people to be vicariously racist. I have nothing good to say about him except "gotta love karma"  

Rick can we get some answers on if rush's insur. will pay for his hospital stay if it is found out drugs were a part of this

I don't like to wish bad luck on people, but a 2010 without Rush's mouth going off would be fine with me

under yr new health plan Rush may pay higher premiums cuz of weight. Time to hit the treadmill and lose the weight Rush

May rush be worked on by a liberal democrat, feminist doctor who is pro gun control :)

Rush shld take this opportunity, being a New Year, 2 reflect on his treatment of ppl who disagree w/him. His ways R is wrong  

Rush: I hope it's nothing serious; just something that will keep him off the air for the next 40 or so years :)

re Rush, ummm. . .I have to go try that old saying, "if u can't say anything nice, dont say anything at all" lol (biting my tongue)

I'm not fond of Rush L. but I wish him the best. Maybe he will be a little kinder. . . nah

Can't you just feel the love?  Liberals like Sanchez often characterize conservatives as mean-spirited.  Mean-spirited is the ultimate epithet in the liberal lexicon. It's the adjective that they never tire of using, of ascribing to anyone who doesn't share their views. For decades we've been subjected to its wearisome reiteration.

If Sanchez truly wished Rush well, he could have provided some balance to those mean-spirited comments.  He didn't.  Then again, judging by their spiteful observations, many of his viewers wouldn't want him to.    
 

Despite last year's oral-sex-insult fiasco, left-wing comedienne Kathy Griffin is co-hosting CNN's New Year's Eve coverage with Anderson Cooper again in 2009. On Wednesday night's Anderson Cooper 360, Griffin joked to CNN anchor Erica Hill: "This year, there's a stipulation in my contract, which I'm almost sure is not in yours or Wolf's or Jack Cafferty's, which is if I cuss like I did last year, by accident, I -- I have to write the [pay] check back."

Griffin stood out for calling Carrie Prejean a "moron" for opposing gay marriage, and then displayed her own lack of intelligence by suggesting current FBI director Robert Mueller was actually head of the CIA. Oops. Is that close enough when grading on the celebrity curve? Here's the first half:

ERICA HILL: But what I really need to know, speaking of guys, whose team are you on, looking back at 2009? Are you Team Larry King or Team Carrie Prejean?

GRIFFIN: Right. I'm a gay dude. I'm not Team Prejean, please. She's a moron. I'm Team Larry King all the time, even though he thinks I'm Kathie Lee Gifford. Larry, don't argue. You know that you're never quite sure.

Griffin appeared in two segments, which certainly suggests a very slow news night. In the second, she helped Erica Hill by reading (and commenting on) all the latest celebrity gossip, like a story on Charlie Sheen and his wife Brooke Mueller:

GRIFFIN: The drama of his story and his wife. We're hearing Brooke Muller -- or Mueller -- is she related to the former CIA head, 'cause that would be funny?

No, it's funny that Griffin would insult someone else as a "moron" and then so blatantly mess this up. Mueller has headed the FBI since September 4, 2001. Has Kathy Griffin opened a newspaper since then?

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS -- EXCEPT EUROPA.

ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

Or at least that warning has been on my mind since about 1984, when I first read Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2010.

Thanks to the Nigerian undie bomber passengers can look forward to full-body scanners at several international airports in the coming months.

But they won’t protect passengers from terrorists who store explosives in their anal cavity.
That’s right. The scanners won’t do $hit to protect you.

Consumer Traveler reported:

These new machines have already been rendered obsolete by terrorists who are packing explosives up their anus. Don’t laugh. This technique has already been tested with lethal effect in the assassination a Saudi prince. The whole-body scanners can not detect that kind of hidden explosive. I only worry about TSA’s coming anus-scanning system. I’m sure it is in the works.

If we must, to temporarily satisfy the insatiable quest for full disclosure, these machines can be used for secondary screening. The U.S. House of Representatives have already sounded off loudly and clearly about their disagreement with TSA when it comes to using these full-body virtual strip machines as the primary screening systems at out nation’s airports.

Earlier this month, TSA arranged for me to see one of these whole-body scanners in operation at Washington-Regan Airport. It was of the millimeter wave type and is in operation at the bank of gates that serves US Airways among other airlines.

Besides the fact that the scanners won’t protect passengers from terrorists storing bombs in their anal or vaginal cavity, Al-Qaeda is already practicing to beat the scanners.

For the record… a Yemeni Jihadi nearly assassinated Saudi Deputy Interior Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. The attacker hid the explosives in his a$$.

So mind-bendingly insane is this that I thought Roggio might have been duped by his sources. [...] Read the rest »

So mind-bendingly insane is this that I thought Roggio might have been duped by his sources. [...] Read the rest »

On this last day of 2009, a quick rundown of the Media Research Center's quote compilations and assessments, issued over the past couple of weeks, on the worst of the media during the year:

♦ From the MRC's News Analysis Division: “Best Notable Quotables of 2009: The 22nd Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting” (thread on NB) as determined in 16 categories (with dozens of videos) by a judging panel of 48 expert conservative media observers. Check the sidebar for links to Fox News segments about the worst quotes. Also, year-end NQ Video Show with MRC staff ridiculing the worst journalists. (Separate public/online ballot results; thread on NB with those winners)

♦ From MRC's Times Watch: “Top Ten Lowlights of the New York Times in 2009.” (Thread on NB)

♦ From MRC's Times Watch: “Quotes of Note 2009, the Worst NY Times Quotes of the Year.” (thread on NB)

♦ From MRC's Business & Media Institute: “Media's Top 10 Worst Economic Myths of 2009.” (thread on NB)

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

“We hope the Egyptians get so annoyed they just want to get rid of us.” Jodie Evans, Cairo, December 29, 2009

Top President Barack Obama funder Jodie Evans and her terrorist sympathizing group Code Pink have provoked a violent crisis in Egypt over an attempt to deliver ‘humanitarian aid’ to Hamas-run Gaza to mark the one-year anniversary of Israel’s response to repeated provocations by Hamas terrorists. Evans was joined in Cairo by Obama pals Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn, both former terrorists with the Weather Underground.

Jodie Evans appealed to Egypt’s First Lady Suzanne Mubarak for help after the Egyptian government refused to allow the nearly 1400 leftist activists from a reported forty-three nations gathered in Cairo to cross into Gaza through Egyptian border crossings to join the so-called Gaza Freedom March scheduled for December 31st in Gaza. 1400 was the number of Palestinians reported killed in Israel’s defensive operations in Gaza last December.

Jodie Evans blamed the Israeli government for Egypt’s refusal.

It’s obvious that the only reason for it is to make Israel happy. Israel is behind the refusal – what other excuse could there be?

After first accepting the government’s offer to allow 100 select activists and aid to cross that came through the intercession of Mrs. Mubarak, the activists rejected the offer and have engaged in protests that have brought a strong reaction from the government.

After much internal struggle, a group of about eighty activists crossed into Gaza on Wednesday. They met up with Palestinian activists at the Israeli border where they were addressed via the cellphone of an Israeli Knesset Member, Talab El-Sana, by Hamas ‘Prime Minister’ Ismail Haniyeh.

Haniyeh told the crowd, “We have managed to overcome the occupation plans and we will surely meet at the al-Aqsa Mosque and in Jerusalem, which will remain Arab and Islamic.”

As noted by the blog Mystical Politics, there was no mention by Haniyeh of Code Pink’s delivery of humanitarian aid or the plight of the people in Gaza.

When Code Pink last visited Hamas in June, they were given a letter addressed to President Obama from Hamas.

A press release issued by “Gaza Freedom March” claimed the activists left behind in Cairo were being attacked by the Egyptian government.

Members of the Gaza Freedom March are being forcibly detained in hotels around town (Lotus, Liala) as well as violently forced into pens in Tahir Square by Egyptian police and additional security forces. Reports of police brutality are flooding a delegate legal hotline faster than the legal support team can answer the calls. The reports span from women being kicked, beaten to the ground and dragged into pens, at least one confirmed account of broken ribs, and many left bloody.

The press release went on to describe the activists’ purpose for being in Egypt.

The marchers had planned to enter Gaza through Egypt’s Rafah Crossing on Dec. 27, then to join with an estimated 50,000 Palestinian residents to march to Erez Crossing into Israel to peacefully demand an end to the siege. However, the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak announced just days before the hundreds of delegates began arriving in Cairo that the march would not be allowed to go forward. It cited ongoing tensions at the border. When marchers demonstrated against the decision, the government cracked down, often using heavily armed riot police to encircle and intimidate the nonviolent marchers.

Code Pink’s initial acceptance of Egypt’s offer exacerbated divisions among the leftists.

On first arriving we had a legal ban placed on us. Europeans have organised on a basis where we do not take any notice of the law. Codepink have used those activities to put pressure on the Egyptian authorities.

The French for instance – around 300 – mobilised on the basis of resistance. The Spanish tried to get to al Arish in different ways. Similar actions were taken by others. Some of the activities in Cairo have been extremely high risk – for instance at the Journalist’s Syndicate. It was like World War III: riot police everywhere. Meetings have been bust up. Proprietors threatened. Hotel arrests. People being followed everywhere and so on and so on. Whilst the Codepink people have simply put pressure on the authorities to get all the right permission to press on in a tiny group.

The French who have had it very rough have not even had a visit from the Codepink. They have been demonised as though they were the extremists, disrupting things for everyone. I have spent a lot of time with the French and they are simply determined to expose the Egyptian role in this whole business.

What is going on right now is meetings, lots of wind and blaming the Codepink for a lot of the duplicity and betrayal. They have had hell of a job to get enough people to go with them and the Egyptians have exploited their compliance something terrible. So now the media here is full of this story about the moderate, reasonable Americans who are working in complete harmony with the Egyptians whilst the rest of us are extremist anarchists who disobey law as a matter of routine.

Musician Roger Waters issued a video statement urging Barack Obama to intervene:

So I hope Barack Obama will respond to this, and I hope he makes a statement about it. And I hope he will come out and support this march. And I hope he will come out and say, “Listen, this siege of this country is illegal, and we must support—we must support the law. We must support the rights that human beings have under the law.”

Speaking from Cairo, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now December 30th about the pressure activists are putting on their home nations’ embassies in Cairo

[J]ust a short while ago, I came from the encampment at the French embassy, where hundreds of French citizens and others are still camped out on the sidewalk in front of the French embassy, absolutely surrounded by phalanxes of riot police in Cairo.

Yesterday we were at the US embassy for many hours, surrounded by police. But I think really the responsibility in that situation has to lie with the US embassy and the United States, which absolutely stonewalled and was unresponsive to the demands of its citizens to speak to their representatives. And when we finally did get a meeting, it really became very clear, from the US representative that we met, the senior political officer at the US embassy in Cairo, Greg Legrefo, that the United States was not going to do anything to support our effort to break the siege, that the policies of the United States remain unchanged.

And Mr. Legrefo did confirm in that meeting that the United States Army Corps of Engineers is providing technical assistance to Egypt to build an underground barrier along the border with Gaza to prevent the digging of tunnels, which have become the last lifeline for people of Gaza in circumventing the siege.

Author Philip Weiss wrote of witnessing Ayers and Dohrn getting caught up in the debate over whether to accept Egypt’s offer for a small number of activists entry to Gaza.

The people staying on the buses leaned out the doors to say that the Gazans wanted them to come so as to to join their march to the Israeli border on the 31st. But they wavered. Indeed, you saw some of the most resolute activists on the planet—Bernardine Dohrn, the law professor and former member of the Weather Underground; Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada; and Donna Mulhearn, an Australian woman who was a human shield during the beginning of he Iraq war, board the bus and get it off it, and then board it again and get off it, and on and on.

…Abunimah, who had been roughed up by security at the American Embassy yesterday, told me it was the hardest decision he’d ever had to make. It was an individual decision, he had no clarity on it, and no one could tell you what to do, and he respected the decisions of all parties. Mulhearn said that going to Iraq in 2003 had been easy compared to this; for that choice was in the face of physical danger and she would take that any day, this was in the face of moral doubt. As for the Egyptian statement that only hooligans were staying behind in Cairo, she said it was a lie, she would say so on her blog, and the people who were against anyone going on that basis were giving the Egyptian security state power. Dohrn said that the principle of “All or none” was a miserable one for activist politics. You always took what you could get and kept fighting for more. A European man in a red keffiyeh screamed at her that she was serving the fascisti. Her partner Bill Ayers gently confronted him and asked him why he was so out of control. Between getting on and off the bus, Dohrn, who wore a flower in her hair, said that she didn’t like the absolutist certainty of the people on the other side of the police barricades, and having been in the Weather Underground, she knew something about absolutist feeling.

In the end Dohrn and Abunimah got off the bus. Mulhearn stayed on, I heard. A big reason for them was a call that Abunimah had with leaders of civil society in Gaza, who said, if this is going to hurt the movement, don’t come. We will march without you. (The message, from Haidar Eid and Omar Barghouti, says, “After a lot of hesitation and deliberation, we are writing to call on you to reject the ‘deal’ reached with the Egyptian authorities. This deal is bad for us and, we deeply feel, terrible for the solidarity movement.”)

Dohrn sent a report from Cairo that was posted at the blog of fellow former SDS member Fred Klonsky.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009; 11:30 am

It has been a tumultuous 15 hours. Two buses, carrying 100 people from the GFM and loads of humanitarian supplies just departed from Cairo for Gaza. This was a victory and a concession. The decisions and the manner in which this opportunity was framed and promoted by various actors fractured the GFM participants in familiar and unlikely, real and sectarian ways – all documented by media cameras and hundreds of Egyptian security forces. Ali Abunimah, Bernardine Dohrn, Veterans for Peace organizers, and Israeli journalist Amira Hess were among the 100 people on the list to go, who arrived at 6:30 this morning, on the corner of Ramsis by the 6thOctober Bridge at the Al Gona Bridge, to depart for Gaza.

Tuesday morning, delegates from several countries went to their embassies in Cairo to plead for help getting to Gaza. Most were met with predictable bureaucratic intransigence. The French, however, staged an extraordinary encampment in front of their embassy and their ambassador and his wife came out and spent time speaking with them individually and in small groups. That action continues today. Bill and I went to the American Embassy at 10 am and asked to see the Ambassador. We were ushered into a holding pen a block away from the embassy building where we joined 35 people already there, surrounded by Egyptian soldiers. Over the next 4 hours, another dozen Americans arrived, and those of us who asked to leave, were denied. Meanwhile, Medea Benjamin, Kit Kiteredge, and Ali Abunimah were meeting with an embassy official and stressing that we intended to go to Gaza on a non-violent, humanitarian mission, and requesting their assistance. Further, they asked that the embassy officials release the US citizens who were now clearly being detained outside.

Ali emerged first, to tell us that their discussion achieved nothing, and they were now requesting that we be free to go. This process took another hour. Ali refused to enter the holding cage, and spoke to us from outside. At one point, out of nowhere, military personnel grabbed Ali, and Medea – who was standing a few feet away – sprang to action, shouting “No! No!”, grabbing Ali’s arm and pulling him down to the ground with her. As soon as they were prone, the security backed off. It was an impressive display of non-violent direct action and solidarity in-the-moment, performed with speed, force and clarity.

In late afternoon, a huge demonstration took place outside the Syndicate of Journalists, a traditional site of political mobilizations in downtown Cairo. The GFM was a force, and joined by large numbers of Egyptian citizens chanting in solidarity with Palestine and in opposition to the visit that day by Netanyahu. This action got widespread coverage throughout the Arab world.

Late last night, it was announced at the nightly team leaders’ meeting that our three days of actions across Cairo, the international pressure around the world, and consistent efforts by Code Pink leadership to meet with high level Egyptian officials – including a meeting yesterday at the offices of Suzanne Mubarak – resulted in an agreement with the Egyptian government that two buses could leave for the Rafah crossing into Gaza early Wednesday. The names of the 100, however, had to be submitted to Egyptian officials by Tuesday evening. This resulted in a (necessarily) rushed process, without the opportunity for full debate, discussion, and input about criteria for selection, or about the strategic goals of sending a smaller, incomplete team of people to enter Gaza and participate in the New Year’s freedom march with the people there. By mid-evening, whole delegations (South Africa, New York) announced that they would not participate. In part, they critiqued the process of decision-making; in part, they took the position, “all of us or none.”(more here.)

Hamas, Code Pink, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Jodie Evans and Barack Obama. Quite a witches brew. And Huffington Post and Politico wonder why Americans doubt Obama’s committment to win the war on terror.

Oh, and speaking of witches, Code Pink’s Wiccan co-founder took time off from her ‘dirt worship’ and made a rare visit to the front lines with he Code Pink partners to help Hamas from Cairo. You can read her reports which feature her Baby-Boomer angst and her disdain for protest chanting and fasting here.

-Video of activists changing minds about being on government sanctioned bus to Gaza:

The "Duke 88" consisted of 88 Duke professors who signed an ad which implicitly assumed that Duke lacrosse players raped a black stripper, an allegation that proved to be entirely fraudulent. The ad praised protesters who had put lacrosse players' photos on "wanted" posters, associated "what happened to this young woman" with "racism and sexism," and suggested that the lacrosse players were getting privileged treatment because of their race.

The ad appeared almost four years ago. Stuart Taylor takes a look at what has happened since to some of the 88 thoroughly wrongheaded professors who signed it.

First, according to Taylor, no member of the "Duke 88" has publicly apologized. Many have expressed pride in their rush to judgment.

Second, sigining the ad seems to have been a pretty good career move. In 2007, one member of the group -- Paula McClain -- became head of Duke's Academic Council, the highest elected position for a faculty member.

Three members of the "Duke 88" have been hired by other leading universities. One of them is the execrable Houston Baker. As I wrote here:

The demagogic Baker excoriated the lacrosse team for their "silent whiteness" and their "white, male, athletic privilege." He called for the "immediate dismissals" by Duke of "the team itself and its players," to combat the "abhorrent sexual assault, verbal racial violence, and drunken white male privilege loosed amongst us." After the innocence of the accused players had become clear, Baker received an email from the mother of a member of the lacrosse team (who hadn't been accused) asking if he would reconsider his earlier statements. Baker responded, by typing "LIES" and indicating that his correspondent was the mother of a "farm animal." Eventually Baker, a post-modernist if nothing else, fell back to arguing that it didn't matter whether the rape allegations were true.

Baker was hired to teach at Vanderbilt. According to Taylor, Vanderbilt touts him as Duke's "leading dissident voice" regarding the rape allegations. Of course, Baker wasn't a dissident at first -- he was part of the lynch mob. If he became a dissident at all, it was because of his refusal to back off (not apologize, just shut-up) once it became clear that the stripper's allegations were bogus.

Vanderbilt's conduct shows that smearing innocent whites is a badge of honor in major precincts of academia. That the allegations Baker defended were bogus made no difference; all that mattered was that the stereotypes and the hatreds he relied on to reach his false conclusions were the stereotypes and hatreds of the dominant academic left.

Grant Farred, also of the "Duke 88," is another beneficiary of this phenomenon. According to Taylor, after the Attorney General of North Carolina declared the lacrosse players innocent, Farred called the players racists and perjurers. In 2007, Cornell hired Farred. The following year, it promoted him to director of graduate studies in the African-American department.

From Cornell's perspective it's a good decision. A man of Farred's blind ideological adherence to the left-wing narrative of American race relations is perfect for the job of director of African-American graduate studies at Cornell. Indeed, to the extent that this appointment maximizes Farred's exposure to people misguided enough to have entered a graduate program in African-American studies -- and mimimizes his exposure to more innocent undergraduates -- the appointment can be considered a good deal all around.

Finally, in 2007 the University of Chicago gave an endowed chair to Charles Payne, also of the "Duke 88." According to Taylor, as the head of Duke's African and American studies department, Payne had inappropriately authorized the use of university funds to pay for the "Duke 88's" ad. The doubly unscrupulous Professor Payne is now with the Chicago's School of Social Service Administration. He specializes in education issues. Having suffered through Bill Ayers and Barack Obama (and, some might say Arne Duncan), the Chicago school system can only hope that Payne's interest will be purely academic.

Meanwhile, back at Duke, the University has adopted a revised "sexual misconduct" policy. I will discuss this in a future post.

Nothing occurs immediately. 2010 has no entry in David Wells's indispensable Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers. Nor could I find a reference in Conway & Guy on a quick leaf-through.

It's a rounder-than-usual number, having sixteen factors, the usual number of factors for numbers of that size being about 4. (Note: the "usual" number of factors of a number in the region of n is (log n)^log 2 -- natural logs, please -- which for n = 2010 comes to 4.081. See Hardy & Wright, The Theory of Numbers, §22.13.)

The OEIS turns up 154 entries for 2010, but none of them really made me jump out of my chair. It's nice that 2010 is the 16th 21-gonal number, and the 35th coefficient of the 6th-order mock theta function ρ(q), and the number of trees of diameter 7 (huh?), and belongs to the happy band of numbers which are the products of distinct substrings of themselves (2010 = 201 × 10, see?). I'm even willing to give a nod of appreciation to the fact that 2010³ / 3 is the average of a pair of twin primes. On the whole, though, one is left contemplating the great universal truth that something has to happen, and that there is no number so benighted that there isn't something mildly noteworthy to say about it. (This latter fact can be proved rigorously.) We are all special!

•  Yes, Tennessee is a nice place:

Derb,

Having been born in Georgia and spending most of my life there, I have some comments about Tennessee.

We moved here to my wife's hometown of [name of town], Tennessee five and a half years ago to escape the zone of destruction which is Atlanta. [Some unkind remarks about Atlanta, making it sound like the place is about due for another burning.] This part of Tennessee is like Atlanta fifty years ago. Most people here are still native born Tennesseeans. They wave to you driving down the street, they speak when you meet on the street, clerks in stores are friendly and helpful. It's even pleasant to visit the courthouse or city hall to pay taxes. Getting a driver's license is as bad as anywhere.

There's no income tax, though not for lack of trying.

The government here is slightly more intrusive than in Georgia. Of course, this area went for the North in the War of Northern Agression, so what else could I expect?

I can see why it was voted a nice place to live. We may have to leave to be near our son in our declining years, but we won't want to.

[Me]  I await with resignation the furious e-mails from people angry that I have revealed the secret of Tennessee's niceness, thereby opening the place up to hordes of uncouth, un-assimilable refugees from Blue America.

And I'll add that one of the finest American ladies I know lives in Tennessee. If she's reading this, she knows who she is.

•  I momentarily forgot one of the rules of writing for the web, which is: Never attempt anything orthographically cute or clever. Our material passes through the hands of editors, and those hands are itchy. They want to edit. It's what they're paid to do. When a contributor sends in flawless prose, with nothing in it that needs editing -- as is invariably the case with my copy -- the editor makes changes anyway.

Thus, a word in the cleverly lipogrammatic section of my diary got changed from "murmur'd,", which is what Georges Perec wrote, and what I submitted, to "mutter'd," which kills the lipogram stone dead. Thanks a lot, pal. (The diary has since been corrected.)

The hunt is on for the offending editor. When I find him, I shall lobby Jonah to ban him from the grotto for a month.

Editors are of course a valuable and essential part of any publishing enterprise. I love editors, really I do. Really. God bless you every one! To the writer who enjoys a bit of wordplay, though, editors are dangerous. They want things right. Occasionally, for some effect he is trying to achieve, the author deliberately wants things wrong. You can't imagine the trouble I had getting this piece past the NR editor (see the pre-antepenultimate paragraph). Or things like this (last paragraph).

•  From a reader:

Mr. Derb,

I read your December Diary over coffee here at [place of work]. Its seems nothing regarding the financial crisis makes it onto NRO without a caveat pointing out how a primary cause was the government-sponsored extension of credit to those who had no business buying real estate. It's become such a talking point on the right … pops up everywhere.

But really? Lehman gets leveraged at over 30/1, the ratings agencies are bribed to slap AAA on anything, etc etc, etc and the primary cause is the goverment made them sell loans to poor folks? Clearly this didn't help, and deserves to be mentioned as a factor, but the frequency which I see it referenced on right of center publications is silly.

[Me]  I'm afraid I disagree. Go out into the streets and coffee-shops of your city and listen to people talking about the financial crisis. Not one in a hundred will mention the PC aspect. Not one in a hundred has ever read or thought about it. It may be common currency on conservative blogs, but the citizenry in general have no clue. Our business is to bring things to their attention, things the mainstream media and bigfoot politicians would rather were not brought to their attention. Hammering away on a point, perhaps louder and more repetitively than is warranted from a strictly analytic point of view, is what we do. It's our job. It's called "polemic."

On the PC aspect of the recession, Steve Sailer has been out in the lead, starting way back around here. There are many follow-ups, and Steve gives full coverage to skeptical counter-arguments. It's a thing everyone should be talking about. Wellnigh no-one is in fact talking about it. Are we wrong to keep pushing it forward? I don't think so. Bad policy is bad policy, however well-intentioned. (The worst policies usually are well-intentioned. Indeed, at the head of a list of Seven Deadly Political Sins, I'd put the mistaking of good intentions for good policy. It's a plague.) Our job is to identify bad policies and smack our political enemies over the head with them. That's what we do.

Without bubble-era tax revenues, the two European nations need to borrow heavily to support their huge public sectors. But investors, including European banks, buy Greek bonds only because they figure that Germany and France would lead the eurozone nations in a bailout if necessary. The stronger nations likely would do so to prevent any nation that uses the euro as its currency from defaulting on its sovereign debt.

Germany and France don't want to say outright that they would bail a profligate neighbor. So they're hoping that it won't come to that end. But, as the Times notes today, Greece and Spain won't cut spending on their own: “A new Greek government . . . is just now promising steep spending cuts. But it is not clear whether the political system in Greece will accept them. Meanwhile, Spain . . . seems to be putting off difficult fiscal questions in the hope that its economy will soon recover.”

The risk is that the European Central Bank and the bigger European governments will harm their own economies in an attempt to avoid an overt cross-national bailout that would set a bad precedent. The ECB could keep interest rates far too low for too long, tending another asset bubble, so that Greece and Spain can continue to borrow at somewhat affordable rates.

America has its own fiscal weak links -- and they present similar temptations.

New York State is nearly out of money; California has been there, off and on, for a year now. The Times's assessments about Greece and Spain could apply to either domestic state. New York and California have political leaders that don't stand up well to public-sector unions, and both states have spent the financial and economic crises waiting for a magical confetti shower of revenues rather than making cutbacks.

Just as in Europe, these states' precarious fiscal positions create a motive for the Federal Reserve and the rest of Washington to pursue policies that may avert an overt state bailout now, but harm the nation's interests.

New York, for example, benefits immensely from Washington's zero-percent interest rates and its failure to regulate Wall Street properly. Thanks to nearly free borrowing, Wall Street firms have been able to earn huge profits this year. They'll thus pay out big bonuses to their heavily taxed New York employees early next year.

The most indebted states benefit from negligible interest rates in another way. Savers can't earn even a modest return in a bank account, so they must take risk -- including lending even more money to states that really shouldn't be borrowing any more than they have already. But investors can take comfort in the fact that the risk is blunted. Just as European investors don't think Paris and Berlin would let a fellow eurozone nation fail, American investors don't think Washington would let Albany or Sacramento fail.

Zero interest rates and an arbitrary risk environment distort the value of everything, meaning that nobody knows what anything is worth. Executives are already having a hard enough time figuring out what's a good investment in this economy. They hardly need Washington to add another challenge by way of a backdoor bailout for profligate debtors that include state governments.

— Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, is author of After The Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street — and Washington.

Without bubble-era tax revenues, the two European nations need to borrow heavily to support their huge public sectors. But investors, including European banks, buy Greek bonds only because they figure that Germany and France would lead the eurozone nations in a bailout if necessary. The stronger nations likely would do so to prevent any nation that uses the euro as its currency from defaulting on its sovereign debt.

Germany and France don't want to say outright that they would bail a profligate neighbor. So they're hoping that it won't come to that end. But, as the Times notes today, Greece and Spain won't cut spending on their own: “A new Greek government . . . is just now promising steep spending cuts. But it is not clear whether the political system in Greece will accept them. Meanwhile, Spain . . . seems to be putting off difficult fiscal questions in the hope that its economy will soon recover.”

The risk is that the European Central Bank and the bigger European governments will harm their own economies in an attempt to avoid an overt cross-national bailout that would set a bad precedent. The ECB could keep interest rates far too low for too long, tending another asset bubble, so that Greece and Spain can continue to borrow at somewhat affordable rates.

America has its own fiscal weak links -- and they present similar temptations.

New York State is nearly out of money; California has been there, off and on, for a year now. The Times's assessments about Greece and Spain could apply to either domestic state. New York and California have political leaders that don't stand up well to public-sector unions, and both states have spent the financial and economic crises waiting for a magical confetti shower of revenues rather than making cutbacks.

Just as in Europe, these states' precarious fiscal positions create a motive for the Federal Reserve and the rest of Washington to pursue policies that may avert an overt state bailout now, but harm the nation's interests.

New York, for example, benefits immensely from Washington's zero-percent interest rates and its failure to regulate Wall Street properly. Thanks to nearly free borrowing, Wall Street firms have been able to earn huge profits this year. They'll thus pay out big bonuses to their heavily taxed New York employees early next year.

The most indebted states benefit from negligible interest rates in another way. Savers can't earn even a modest return in a bank account, so they must take risk -- including lending even more money to states that really shouldn't be borrowing any more than they have already. But investors can take comfort in the fact that the risk is blunted. Just as European investors don't think Paris and Berlin would let a fellow eurozone nation fail, American investors don't think Washington would let Albany or Sacramento fail.

Zero interest rates and an arbitrary risk environment distort the value of everything, meaning that nobody knows what anything is worth. Executives are already having a hard enough time figuring out what's a good investment in this economy. They hardly need Washington to add another challenge by way of a backdoor bailout for profligate debtors that include state governments.

— Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, is author of After The Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street — and Washington.

This is big government at its finest hour. The Democrats have officially killed a successful private school voucher program banishing more than 3,300 low-income children back to the DC schools they so desperately wanted to escape. The Heartland Institute reports:

The leaders of D.C.’s school choice movement, Kevin P. Chavous (former D.C. Councilman) and Virginia Walden Ford (executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice), today issued the following statement:

“House and Senate Appropriators this week ignored the wishes of D.C.’s mayor, D.C.’s public schools chancellor, a majority of D.C.’s city council, and more than 70 percent of D.C. residents and have mandated the slow death of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. This successful school voucher program—for D.C.’s poorest families—has allowed more than 3,300 children to attend the best schools they have ever known.

The decision to end the program, a decision buried in a thousand-page spending bill and announced right before the holidays, destroys the hopes and dreams of thousands of D.C. families. Parents and children have rallied countless times over the past year in support of reauthorization and in favor of strengthening the OSP.

Yet, despite the clearly positive results and the proven success of this program, Sen. Dick Durbin, Rep. Jose Serrano, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Secretary Arne Duncan worked together to kill the OSP. Funding the program only for existing children shrinks the program each year, compromises the federal evaluation of the program, denies entry to the siblings of existing participants, and punishes those children waiting in line by sentencing them to failing and often unsafe schools.

[emphasis mine]

The Democrats have effectively ended the voucher program. Obama only extended it into the 2009-2010 school year. He could have done more. He didn’t. Underpriveleged children–whom the Democrats oppress “protect” from the greed and injustices of the Right had a chance to gain the social justice and fairness Obama continuously touts in his speeches.

The Democrats have spent trillions of our tax dollars so carelessly with failed stimulus pork payouts, cash for clunkers, auto bailouts, bank bailouts, and additional Fannie and Freddie bailouts, you would think they could spare an extra $50 million over five years to continue to educate poor children–especially minority children.

For the record, it was the Republicans in 2004 who started the voucher program and Republican Senator John Ensign (R-NV) who introduced an amendment to the omnibus appropriations bill to extend the voucher program. Democrats voted down the amendment 50-39.

Ensign said in a statement:

“In drafting this bill, Democrats put their political agenda ahead of educating our children. As a result, students who chose to leave a failing school and attend a better, safer school will have to return to the school they decided to leave. This is such a tragic situation.”

I can only deduce that the product of the Democrats’ social justice mantra is to give the poor enough money to buy the basic necessities, including food and clothes, but not empower or provide them the means–starting with education–to become so much more than a welfare dependent or government volunteer.

Eight years later, the system still doesn’t work. [...] Read the rest »

It was a year in which the dominant cultural story was the sad, but eerily almost predictable drug-addled death of Michael Jackson. But there were a few good moments sprinkled in with the outrageous and the tawdry in 2009. My choices for cultural winners and losers this year:

Winner: Farrah Fawcett. Unlike Jackson, she fought and ultimately lost her battle with cancer with extraordinary grace, faith, and dignity.

Winner: "Up." The elite and the people agree that Pixar films are sublimely entertaining. The eight-minute montage near the beginning of this film sweetly chronicling a loving marriage moved millions to tears from coast to coast.

In fact, animated movies continued to earn massive box-office receipts. "Up" drew almost $300 million, "Monsters vs. Aliens" and "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" came very close to $200 million, and the offbeat "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" grossed more than $120 million.

Loser: Michael Moore. His latest mockumentary "Capitalism: A Love Story" grossed a miserable $14 million in theaters. (By contrast, his 2004 hit "Fahrenheit 911" grossed almost $24 million – in its first weekend.) His Warhol moment is over.

Loser: "Bruno." Sacha Baron Cohen tried to satirize the backwardness of Americans once again, this time in the role of a gay Austrian blonde Beatle fashion reporter. But this character was so unbelievably stupid and self-absorbed that the film set the cause of sexual "liberation" backward by a decade or two. The lowest point is a scene where a focus group watches as "Bruno" displays a long, drawn-out shot of a penis twirling around like a pinwheel, which then points at the camera and "speaks."

Winner: MTV’s "16 and Pregnant." It was a stunning turnabout for MTV: finally, a reality show about sex and its consequences with a message parents could embrace. Crews filmed teenaged girls and their boyfriends trying to make decisions about unexpected pregnancies. The most moving story centered on giving a baby up for adoption.

Loser: MTV’s "Jersey Shore." This was a much more typical MTV product: putting eight loud stereotyped Italian "Guidos" and "Guidettes" in a summer beach house. But what really rankled viewers was MTV’s Internet exploitation of a female cast member getting punched in the face in a bar. Faced with bad publicity, MTV caved and dropped the footage from its December 17 episode.

Winner: Los Angeles county prosecutors, for ignoring the Beautiful People and daring to nab director Roman Polanski on a child rape charge he fled in 1977 despite Hollywood’s claim that he had too much "empathy" as an artist to be bothered.

Loser: Whoopi Goldberg embarrassed herself mightily for saying of the act of sodomizing a 13-year-old girl, "It wasn’t rape-rape." And she wasn’t sane-sane.

Loser: David Letterman, who apparently still thinks we think it’s pretty funny that he sent the clear message to female employees that having sex with him would be a good career move, even after he got married. He couldn’t resist joking about the Tiger Woods adultery scandal, including a plea to Woods to stop calling him for advice.

Loser: That vile internet gossip Perez Hilton, for insisting every contestant has to accept every political whim of the gay left to have a chance at being Miss America. After surging to prominence with crude gossip and cruder pictures (often penciling in obscene images) on his website, aren’t his 15 minutes of infamy up yet?

Loser: Larry David, for taking his HBO show "Curb Your Enthusiasm" to ridiculous extremes. Take the plot where David’s character takes some drug that causes him to urinate wildly and, while using the bathroom at a co-worker's house, urinates on a painting of Jesus hanging on a wall next to the toilet. His co-worker then believed the portrait was a miracle -- a weeping Jesus. Even this show’s fans think David should take his bigotry elsewhere in 2010.

Step (2): Use Predator missiles to strike the baggage-claim area 20 minutes after they arrive.

Just an idea.

That's what voters say, according to today's Rasmussen survey:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure.

There's this, too:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, as is currently the case.

My conclusion: the debate is over, and Dick Cheney won it.

PAUL adds: I would waterboard the guy only as a last resort. Does that make me a moderate on this issue?

JOHN responds: Bear in mind that the poll question referred to "waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques." I believe that in all three instances where waterboarding has been used, it was indeed as a last resort after the other methods had been tried. No doubt the same would hold for Mr. Abdulmatallab were waterboarding, or any other effective interrogation technique, still in use. So, hey--we're both moderates, as is Dick Cheney!

Lots of readers objected to my assertion that the decade is not ending tonight. One sent over this excellent discussion of when the decade ends and when it begins -- and why, he argues, my conclusion is wrong (I am right when it comes to millennia and centuries, but counting “decades” is really informal).

Interesting point he concedes: If we count decades they way most readers say we should (ie, ending tonight) then this means the first decade in our calendar only had nine years: AD 1-9.

A salute not to the most evil or corrupt behavior of the year but to the most … [...] Read the rest »

A few more thoughts regarding the Talking Points Memo, in which Josh Marshall chides National Review and asserts:

There's no reason beside GOP electoral strategy for not trying AbdulMutallab in a regular American Court.

It is not clear how Josh arrived at this conclusion, but certainly logic was not the vehicle in which he traveled. Consider:

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has reportedly told investigators:

There are more just like me who will strike soon.

If he knows that, he may also be in possession of information that would help investigators locate these individuals before they strike. Indeed, it is likely that UFA attended suicide-bomber school with some of them in Yemen between August and September.

But because UFA is being treated as a criminal suspect to be tried in a regular American court, he has been told he has a “right to remain silent.” And his attorney, presumably, has told him to exercise that right until such time as it is possible to determine how much leniency his cooperation may be worth.

In the meantime, one of these terrorists may succeed in his mission. That will be the price we pay for treating UFA as criminal suspect rather than an unlawful combatant.

I guess Josh, the ACLU, MoveOn.org -- and the current administration as well -- are okay with that. I doubt most Americans would agree. Because of partisan politics? No, because they aren't eager to risk hundreds of lives in order to strike a pose.

BTW, I argue in this NRO column for three lessons this administration ought to learn from this experience. And in this piece for AOL.com I develop some arguments for why airport security officials should be spending less time looking for weapons and more time looking for terrorists (the ACLU takes the opposing argument).

Among the first comments were those at The Daily Dish. Conor Friedersdorf and Andrew Sullivan excerpted reasonable chunks of it, and generally had very kind things to say. Conor focused one of his posts on the immigration recommendation, which I think is the most radical recommendation, and something I believe in very strongly.

Arnold Kling at EconLog (implicitly) provided an excellent criticism:

But I do not know exactly what we mean by social cohesion. I mean, if you have a civil war, that would seem to represent a loss of cohesion, and clearly civil wars are very bad things. But beyond that, the concept has a vague, “I know it when I see it” connotation.

In other words, I never defined social cohesion well. Here is my working definition (that I should have made clear in the piece, and will do in the book): the widespread and irrational willingness and propensity to sometimes and to some extent sacrifice narrowly-defined rational self-interest to the needs of a greater collective, and the expectation that others will do the same. In general, in a capitalist democracy this does not mean the expectation that everyone (or even most people) will become martyrs to the Greater Good, but more that they will pursue narrow self-interest within the written and unwritten rules of the society which tend to channel self-interest “as if by an invisible hand” to the good of the society as a whole over time.

David Brooks, in his New York Times column on Tuesday, very generously named the piece one of the better articles published in 2009. Lots of things in life look easy -- until you try them. As the guy who wrote the actual article, I can’t see how I would improve on his five-sentence summary:

Jim Manzi’s essay, “Keeping America’s Edge,” in National Affairs, explores two giant problems. First, widening inequality; second, economic stagnation, the fear that without rapid innovation, the U.S. will fall behind China and other rising powers.

Manzi investigates a dilemma. Most efforts to expand the welfare state to tackle inequality will slow innovation. Efforts to free up enterprise, meanwhile, will only exacerbate inequality because the already educated will benefit most from information economy growth.

Finally, Steve Pearlstein devoted his column in today’s Washington Post to reacting to the article. In spite of confusing me with a different Jim Manzi, he had a very interesting take.

He writes:

But the debate, it seems to me, needs to go beyond simply determining where the pendulum should come to rest. For equally important is how effective the two sectors are in actually delivering all that social justice and growth-inducing innovation.

I agree entirely with this. He goes on to criticize, in a very even-handed way, the effectiveness of both businesses and governments in delivering the goods. I’ll focus on the criticisms of business in this comment, concerning which, he writes:

Americans understand that free markets are the best vehicle for generating innovative products and ever more efficient ways of producing them. But recent experience also reminds that innovation and the competitive dynamic are not always what they are cracked up to be.

When investors engage in herd behavior and deploy scarce capital merely to bid up the price of real estate or financial assets, that does nothing to improve economic output or efficiency. . . .

What good is competition if it drives corporate executives to knowingly engage in increasingly risky behavior simply to boost short-term profits and stock prices even at the expense of long-term value creation?

What this seems to ignore (or at least discount) is the centrality of the knowledge problem. All real markets will have bubbles, speculative excess, obnoxious rich people who confuse luck with merit, and so on. This is because markets are a method for making decisions in the face of deep uncertainty. As I tried to go into in the piece, I believe that the trick is to construct a political economy that can withstand these problems, rather than one that tries to eliminate them.

View the video »

Is there a political answer to every problem? Most of my colleagues feel this is the case. I disagree.

In the past day, there was a spate of news articles about California’s trans-fat ban due to go into effect on New Year’s Day. I voted against this new law.

California has the 4th-highest unemployment rate, a $21 billion budget deficit, and a severe water shortage, so, what do lawmakers do?  Pass a law that will fine restaurants $1,000 for using margarine in their foods.

One of the articles said:

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, criticized the new law as an example of nanny government with little beneficial impact.
“Not every human problem deserves a political solution,” he said. “That’s the fallacy my colleagues engage in.”

I’ve been criticized for voting against all sorts of nanny state bills that expand the police power of government in the name of making us safe from ourselves. I’ve often argued that we might as well pass a blanket bill outlawing stupidity and rudeness in California.

Since 2004, I and most of my Republican colleagues have opposed bills that:

• Mandate the kinds of light bulbs we use
• Outlawed the spanking of children by parents
• Banned texting in cars (we already had a law against reckless driving and this new law is near-impossible to enforce as dialing a number remains legal)
• Mandated costly home energy audits at the time of a house sale

And, if we had the time, the list would go on for pages.

Is it any wonder Forbes magazine ranks California as having the worst combination of taxes and regulations of any state in America?

Lest those in other, more fortunate venues chortle at California’s misfortune remember, for better or for worse, what starts in California often spreads to the nation.  One of the chief vectors of California’s Big Government infection is Senator Barbara Boxer, who approves of all of this liberty-infringing, Big Government nonsense.  In fact, she regularly mines the ore of California’s bad laws for inspiration for her own Big Government agenda in Washington.

Liberals are driven to burden us with law upon law for one overriding reason: the conceited will to control because they think they know what’s best for all of us.  Putting a stop to this is a strong motivator for me as I work to unseat Sen. Boxer in 2010.

Usual warnings for language and subject matter.

On Wednesday, former vice president Dick Cheney made the following brief statement to Politico:

[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.

Cheney's statement was made on December 30, and was given in the context of President Obama having waited for three days to personally comment on the Christmas Day terrorist attack on Northwest Flight 253. Cheney was very obviously giving his opinion that Obama prioritizes social reform over national security, pointing to Obama's handling of the Christmas terror attack as proof.

These criticisms were too much for Eugene Robinson to handle, who responded today in the Washington Post with his not-so-subtlely-titled article "Dick Cheney's Lies About President Obama." Robinson's article is premised upon the bogus notion that he made a new year's resolution to ignore Dick Cheney (as if he could), but these particular statements from Cheney required a response.

It's pathetic to break a New Year's resolution before we even get to New Year's Day, but here I go. I had promised myself that I would do a better job of ignoring Dick Cheney's corrosive and nonsensical outbursts -- that I would treat them, more or less, like the pearls of wisdom one hears from homeless people sitting in bus shelters ... But he is a former vice president, which gives him a big stage for his histrionic Rottweiler-in-Winter act. It is never a good idea to let widely disseminated lies and distortions go unchallenged. And the shrill screed that Cheney unloosed Wednesday is so full of outright mendacity that, well, my resolution will have to wait.

Yes - it is pathetic Mr. Robinson. As an aside, notice Robinson's utter contempt for homeless people, dismissing the entire group as "nonsensical," and whose comments are not even worthy of consideration by such an esteemed member of the media elite.

Back to the business at hand, Robinson claims that Cheney lied when he said "Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war." This statement, according to Robinson is:

Flat-out untrue. The fact is that Obama has said many times that we are at war against terrorists. He said it as a candidate. He said it in his inaugural address: "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred." He has said it since.  

Robinson goes on to provide further "evidence" that Obama knows we are at war, such as the recent troop commitment to Afghanistan. Robinson goes so far as to point to Obama's "commitment to warfare."

Robinson's main argument is that Cheney is dishonestly claiming that Obama is pretending there is no war at all. Robinson's argument is, in and of itself, dishonest. Cheney's short (and possibly impromptu) statement was obviously directed at recent events.

Parsing the words, Cheney said ... "we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe." Cheney's rhetorical statement is not that Obama is denying a war on terrorism, but that he would like to "pretend" these issues do not exist and instead focus on social transformation. Robinson takes Cheney's statement out of context and far beyond its obvious intent.  

The weakness of Robinson's argument is underscored by his all-too-familiar use of personal attacks on Cheney.

"As Cheney well knows, unless he has lost even the most tenuous grip on reality ..."

"Toward the end of his two-paragraph statement, Cheney goes completely off the rails ..."

"It makes you wonder whether Cheney is just feeding the fantasies of the paranoid right or has actually joined the tea-party fringe."

Robinson's defense of Obama here is perfectly understandable. Obama has been hurt by his (and his administration's) response to the Christmas Day terror attack, all of which Robinson acknowledges:

I can find reasons to criticize the administration's response to the Christmas Day attack. Obama and his team were slow off the mark. Their initial statements were weak. Obama shouldn't have waited thee days to speak publicly, and when he did he should have shown some emotion.

But Robinson frames Cheney's actions as far worse, conluding:

But using a terrorist attack to seek political gain? I have a New Year's resolution to suggest for Cheney: Ahead of your quest for personal vindication, put country first.

Robinson's article here is pretty transparent. He knows that Obama has been hurt by the handling of the recent terror attack. Robinson acknowleges the damage but also reminds all of us that we'd be worse off with the "corrosive" Dick Cheney still in charge.

When in doubt, Robinson knows he can always return to a familiar theme for his readers: bash Dick Cheney.

The kooks are infuriated that former Vice President Dick Cheney has criticized Snorkler in Chief on his weak security record.
Blowhard dem Rep. Eric Massa challenged former Vice President Dick Cheney to debate national security:

The Hill reported:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) is challenging former Vice President Dick Cheney to a debate about his most recent security criticisms of the Obama administration.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Ed Show” Wednesday night, Massa said he’s had enough of former Vice President Cheney “kicking us in the shins.”

“I don’t want the president being diverted from his mission on this, having to deal with Dick Cheney. I want Dick Cheney debate me, anywhere, anytime, anyhow. And let’s see how he stands up to the truth,” Massa said.

After host Ed Schultz suggested that Cheney would only appear on Fox News, Massa said that wasn’t a problem.

“Then Ed, here’s a proposition — I’ll go on Fox and I’ll debate Dick Cheney on his home territory, because he’s standing on quicksand on this issue,” Massa said.

Since Barack Obama took office there has been a significant increase in terrorist activity inside our borders. There have been 33 terror-related “events” on US shores since 9-11. 13 of those events occurred in 2009.

Related… White House takes four days to respond to terror attack, but responds to Cheney criticism in matter of hours?

The kooks are infuriated that former Vice President Dick Cheney has criticized Snorkler in Chief on his weak security record.
Blowhard dem Rep. Eric Massa challenged former Vice President Dick Cheney to debate national security:

The Hill reported:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) is challenging former Vice President Dick Cheney to a debate about his most recent security criticisms of the Obama administration.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Ed Show” Wednesday night, Massa said he’s had enough of former Vice President Cheney “kicking us in the shins.”

“I don’t want the president being diverted from his mission on this, having to deal with Dick Cheney. I want Dick Cheney debate me, anywhere, anytime, anyhow. And let’s see how he stands up to the truth,” Massa said.

After host Ed Schultz suggested that Cheney would only appear on Fox News, Massa said that wasn’t a problem.

“Then Ed, here’s a proposition — I’ll go on Fox and I’ll debate Dick Cheney on his home territory, because he’s standing on quicksand on this issue,” Massa said.

Since Barack Obama took office there has been a significant increase in terrorist activity inside our borders. There have been 33 terror-related “events” on US shores since 9-11. 13 of those events occurred in 2009.

Related… White House takes four days to respond to terror attack, but responds to Cheney criticism in matter of hours?

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I’ll pour the water.

Despite the constant drumbeat against so-called waterboarding “torture” by the state-run media and the Team Obama, most Americans want the undie bomber to be interrogated using the same harsh techniques that were uesd to gain information from 3 top Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Rasmussen reported:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 30% oppose the use of such techniques, and another 12% are not sure.

Men and younger voters are more strongly supportive of the aggressive interrogation techniques than women and those who are older. Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party favor their use more than Democrats.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, as is currently the case.

But sadly the radical in the White House has already handed the Al-Qaeda terrorist over to civilian authorities.

Related… Waterboarding not only worked – It was a great success.

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When Time Magazine named Ben Bernanke its “Person of the Year” for 2009, its editors set off a lot of headscratching — and not just because most of the Bernanke actions Time highlighted came in 2008 rather than 2009.  The economy may not have utterly crashed, but it certainly moved in the wrong direction all year long.  Over 3 million private-sector jobs have been lost in the last year, and some argue, as does Steve Forbes in his new book  How Capitalism Will Save Us, that the Fed creates more problems than it solves. [...] Read the rest »

When Time Magazine named Ben Bernanke its “Person of the Year” for 2009, its editors set off a lot of headscratching — and not just because most of the Bernanke actions Time highlighted came in 2008 rather than 2009.  The economy may not have utterly crashed, but it certainly moved in the wrong direction all year long.  Over 3 million private-sector jobs have been lost in the last year, and some argue, as does Steve Forbes in his new book  How Capitalism Will Save Us, that the Fed creates more problems than it solves. [...] Read the rest »

Back in the early summer, I wrote about how, even as the Iranian regime continued killing American troops, the Obama administration had engaged in shameful negotiations with an Iran-backed terror network (the League of the Righteous) in Iraq -- negotiations that resulted in the release of Laith Qazali, one of the terrorists responsible for the murders of five American soldiers in Karbala, in exchange for the remains of two British hostages.

Shortly thereafter, the Obama administration released the "Irbil Five," commanders from the Iranian IRGC's elite "Quds Force" who had been captured by our military after coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds of American soldiers and Marines. 

Today, New Year's Eve, while everyone's attention is understandably on family and friends, we learn (thanks to the ever alert Bill Roggio, reporting on the Standard's blog) that the administration has now released Qais Qazali, Laith's brother, who is the head of the Iran-backed terror network, in addition to a hundred other terrorists. In violation of the long-standing, commonsense policy against capitulating to kidnappers and terrorists because it just encourages more hostage-taking and murder, the terrorists were released in exchange for a British hostage and the remains of his three contract guards (whom the terrorists had murdered).

So, as the mullahs, America's incorrigible enemies, struggle to hang on, we're giving them accommodations and legitimacy. And the messages we send? Terrorize us and we'll negotiate with you. Kill American troops or kidnap civilians and win valuable concessions -- including the release of an army of jihadists, and its leaders, who can now go back to targeting American troops.

As Bill elaborated in the Long War Journal: “We let a very dangerous man go, a man whose hands are stained with US and Iraqi blood,” a military officer said. “We are going to pay for this in the future.”

It is just astonishing.

BROWN: Well, it’s got to be that incredible inauguration of Obama because, you know, you started the year with this huge festival of hope and renewal and everything is going to be so different now, and then, like the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, Rush Limbaugh utters the words, ‘I hope you fail.’ ‘I hope he fails,’ he said, and from that moment, the sort of the Pandora’s box opened and the rest of the year has been just this big discord and toxic atmosphere in politics and partisan divide and people shouting at each other and the Tea Parties and death panels, and all of the stuff til we descend to the year where now, where we just got the health care bill probably about to be passed with no Republican votes at all. So, it was a real turn-around from the bank bonuses and bailouts onwards.

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Shameful.
Ron Paul tells CNN that Al-Qaeda hates us because we’re occupiers:

And, that is exactly the reason why Ron Paul can never be taken seriously on foreign policy.
We weren’t “occupiers” when they blew up the Twin Towers, Ron.

As Tass says below, “Bin Laden declared war against the United States in 1996, long before 9-11. They were fighting a war and killing Americans long before we joined the fight.”

AllahPundit has more on Paul’s disgraceful and inaccurate statements.

More… MRT added:

“They bomb us because we’re occupiers.”
“We’re occupiers because they bombed us.”
“You got chocolate in my peanut butter.”
“You got peanut butter in my chocolate.”
What. An. Idiot.

For some strange reason, the Daily Kos has gained the reputation in the mainstream media for somehow being composed of "reasonable progressives" in stark contrast to their Democratic Underground cousins whom even many in the MSM will admit are flat out loons. However, certain events prove that the Kossacks are every bit as crazed and full of hate as the DUers. And one such event that has proved this to be true is the reaction of the two sites to the news that Rush Limbaugh has been hospitalized in Hawaii.

Of course there was a DU thread full of hate towards Rush but as you can see in this Kossack thread, they are every bit as hateful as the DUers. Some sanity-challenged sample comments from the Kossacks on the subject of Rush Limbaugh's hospitalization:

He does NOT have a f---ing right to make up s--t and present it as fact to incite his millions of so-called ditto heads to hatred and violence. 

i hope that this piece of human excrement that has lied and lied his way to a fortune is silenced for a long time...eternity

Feel the "love!" This was a very long thread chock full of hate. Some more examples:

Why isn't this POS in jail? He needs to be sharing a cell with a large angry black homosexual. And those are the "nice" thoughts I have for him. 

It is nature's way of telling a--holes like Limbaugh that beers are being thrown back in celebration of that heart attack. 

If he gets well, so be it. If he gets worse, be it paralyzed, comatose, or dead, he's earned it.

I hope he dies and I'm glad he's sick. All this fat a--hole has done is encourage a whole generation of Americans to be right-wing, bigoted scumbags like him. He's divided our nation and has been nothing but a bad influence. 

I'll never apologize for hating Rush. Or wishing death and illness on him.

Of course, if you think the Kossacks couldn't get any worse, just wait until Rush recuperates and returns to the golden EIB microphone. That will completely drive them even further over the edge so get well soon, Rush!

If you can stomach it, you can read even more postings of the Kossacks completely consumed by hate at the DUmmie FUnnies.

Governor Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Michelle Malkin and Kevin Jackson

St. Louis author-blogger Kevin Jackson will emcee and speak at the National Conservative Symposium Jan. 22nd-24th, San Antonio. Sign up ONLINE ONLY http://www.teapartysupport.com…
THE conservative event you’ve been waiting for.

The National Conservative Symposium will be held at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, Texas, January 22-24, 2010. It will provide training, networking and strategy sessions to attendees. Networking and strategy focus sessions for attendees will develop for the first time the road map for success in the battle to restore conservative constitutional governance and fiscal responsibility to America.

Read this post »

Michael Calderone, Doing it Right

UPDATE #2 - ALSO BELOW THE FOLD.

UPDATE BELOW THE FOLD - THE ESTEEMED MR. CALDERONE RESPONDS.

-------------

CORRECTION: I said the Washington Post was on the hook twice on Calderone's list.  H/t to NBer Dean who pointed out it's three - #s 2, 7 & 10.  A thousand apologies, and thanks to The Man from the People's Republic of Maryland.

Politico's staff reporter Michael Calderone has compiled his list of his top ten Media Blunders of 2009.

I for one think he did a fully fair and more than fairly good job of it. Media Research Center Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham for two thinks so as well.

On his list were the likes of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, the New York Times's Maureen Dowd and CNN. And the Washington Post - twice. Targets all for which you'll find a rich environment here on NewsBusters. And he slammed the traditional media in totality for remaining dockside while the Good Ships ACORN and Van Jones set sail on alternative media seas. He hailed the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and website mogul Andrew Breitbart by name for captaining those stories when the Jurassic Press stood down.

Calderone clips Fox News for what he calls their "Tea Party Trifecta," but he's hardly bashing meritlessly here either. An FNC producer was caught on tape rallying a Tea Party crowd. That is quite a bit over the top. And Sean Hannity did run B-roll from the wrong rally - a more populous one - and was forced to apologize to the world generally and Jon Stewart particularly.

Though Hannity's probably was an honest mistake. The Pulitzer-winning Dowd's excuse for "borrowing" a paragraph from the liberal website Talking Points Memo - that a "friend" had sent it to her - bends the credibility curve downward quite a bit.

Someone at Politico worn-out horsed (See: Definition #3) Calderone on the photograph composite accompanying his article, however. (Said snapshots appear below the fold.) We don't think Calderone chooses what goes with his pieces. Perhaps he should.

Their Caption? "The year's top 10 most noticeable media blunders." Their Credit? "Photo: AP photo composite by Politico"

That's Fox News Channel owner Rupert Murdoch, Beck and Dowd left to right.

Calderone lauds rather than scolds Murdoch and Beck - so why are they pictured for this story, over the caption "The year's top 10 most noticeable media blunders"?

Calderone may be interested in having that addressed. It is an inaccurate representation of what he has so accurately written.

UPDATE: Mr. Calderone replied to my email.  And said I "had a good point" about the photo montage, that he had NOT chosen the pics and that he would look into having them changed - once he completed his New Year's Eve travel. 

We appreciate his reply, and wish him safe travels and good luck with the powers that be at his publication.

UPDATE #2: Politico has changed their photo montage.  They have replaced Beck, who Calderone had lauded, not criticized in #5 - with Olbermann, who Calderone had co-assigned Blunder #9.  Bully for them for the change - and for Calderone, who told us he would be asking them to do it.

Merry New Year, Michael, wherever you are.    

Get better, Big Guy.

Several state attorneys general have been asked, or plan, to investigate the deal struck by Senator Ben Nelson to permanently exempt Nebraska from paying Medicaid expenses in exchange for his voting for Obamacare.

An investigation of the Nelson deal would likely have two focuses. First, is the Nebraska exemption unconstitutional under Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which requires “all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States?” Secondly, did the deal constitute a form of corruption?

Whether the Nebraska exemption constitutes unlawful corruption obviously depends on the facts surrounding how Senator Nelson cut his deal. However, even a pure constitutional challenge would benefit from a clear understanding and presentation of the facts underlying how and why the Nebraska exemption was reached.

If an investigation about unlawful corruption were to proceed, it would of course be critical to question Senator Nelson himself. Senator Nelson – and Harry Reid – would assuredly invoke the Speech and Debate Clause (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution) to block such an investigation.

The Speech and Debate Clause provides that members of Congress:

shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same, and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

(Emphasis added.)

The Speech and Debate Clause was written so an overly aggressive executive would not suppress and intimidate critical legislators. The Founders, however, did not envision a Congress as gluttonous and corrupt as the one we have today.

The Speech and Debate Clause has been construed by the courts more broadly than its text to include legislative acts and congressional staff within its protections. Given how too many members of Congress have demonstrated contempt for the first principles embodied in our Constitution, and how they’ve exhibited disdain towards limits on power, perhaps the Speech and Debate Clause needs to be reformed by way of amendment.

The most recent high-profile example of use of the Speech and Debate Clause involved now-imprisoned former Democratic Congressman, William Jefferson, along with former Republican House Speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, who invoked the Clause after Jefferson’s congressional office was raided by the FBI using a judge-authorized search warrant. A United States District Court declared the FBI raid unconstitutional. Congressman Jefferson, however, was unsuccessful in later using the Speech and Debate Clause to challenge his conviction of bribery.

Unfortunately, the Speech and Debate Clause has come to be abused all too frequently. Many members of Congress engage in otherwise actionable defamation to bully and impugn witnesses at congressional hearings, or even members of the public. Emboldened by constitutional immunity, and obviously not respecting their offices as representatives of the people, members of Congress frequently degrade hearings into circuses of false charges more suitable for banana republics than the United States.

The more serious degradation of the Speech and Debate Clause, however, may be that it is used to protect corruption under the guise of official activity in Congress. Even if the promise of ‘transparency’ weren’t an utter joke, there are billions of taxpayer dollars being used for payola. Just look at ACORN as one example, where public money is traded for political endorsements.

The states and the people, from whom Congress derives its enumerated powers by their consent, should be able to question their representatives under oath under certain well-defined circumstances, such as when taxpayer money may have been spent unconstitutionally, or as quid pro quo. The Ben Nelson deal appears to be both, and Americans deserve answers under oath, not in response to fluff from a press favoring Obamacare.

I’ve been critical of some state attorneys general, such as former New Yorker AG Eliot Spitzer, for abusing their investigatory powers over private entities and people. However, if state attorneys general may not investigate federal elected officials when corruption may be present, and question them under standards of reasonable cause when there appears to be corruption, then who’s to stop it?

It seems it’s time for a limited amendment to the Speech and Debate Clause, one that fosters the original intent of the Founders in spirited debate among our representatives, yet does not allow – or even encourage – corruption and abuse of the offices representing the people.

A constitutional amendment is no small matter or accomplishment, but the Founders never intended any provision in the Constitution to protect government corruption on the scale we see today. The Speech and Debate Clause should no longer give corrupt elected officials cover, especially because the Constitution was created by men far more honorable and respectful than they.

After reading my post on wealth mobility and Dane Smith’s latest cri de coeur for lost tax revenues, University of St. [...] Read the rest »

Tonight is considered one of the worst nights to be on the road because of the risk of encountering drunk drivers.

Entrepreneur Karim Varela had an idea that might alleviate that problem.  In 2008, he started an online business called i-Booze.com.  Customers ordered beer, wine, and cigarettes from their home, and Varela would deliver it to them in about an hour.

He came up with the business idea after he had spent a night in jail for drinking and driving.  “I thought maybe there’s some way I could prevent other people from having the same kind of predicament,” he told FOX Seattle.  Customers liked the idea, saying it’s good to keep drunk drivers off the road.

But, of course, no business is ever too useful or clever for government to hassle:

[I]n April, the city of Bellevue told him the business was violating its home-base business zoning standards because it had more than two employees.

Varela relocated to an Eastlake warehouse and filed for a new liquor license, but kept running the business.

"I wasn't going to stop the business and shut it down,'' he said.

While he waited for the license, a state liquor board conducted a sting, placing an order in Seattle.

"Five minutes later they stormed the warehouse with three officers," Varela said.

Why wouldn’t the city give him a liquor license?  According to City Attorney Tom Carr, businesses with liquor licensees are prohibited from selling to intoxicated people.  Even if these intoxicated people were at home, the city took offense.  Misdemeanor charges were brought against Varela.

Varela shuttered i-Booze in August, just as it was starting to see positive cash flow.
Gone are his plans to expand to San Francisco and Las Vegas.

I’ll be spotlighting best-of images and stories of 2009 throughout the day. [...] Read the rest »