The Black Knights Of KyoTwo

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Lead author David Douglass elaborates: The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming. So far, science hasn't had much to do with the global warming debate. I still think, though, that when voters understand that the "cure" for alleged anthropogenic global warming is for them to get poorer, interest in the scientific validity of the theory will be piqued.

Just a flesh wound no doubt...

Along Our Road

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com The effect of the NIE puts me in mind of Churchill's words in Parliament condemning the Munich Agreement. Referring to the relief felt by the people of England to the temporary avoidance of war with Germany, he avowed that "they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road[.]"

The Absolute Worst

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com "Su Wei, a top climate expert for China's government attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference, said the job belongs to the wealthy. He said it was unfair to ask developing nations to accept binding emissions cuts and other restrictions being pushed for already industrialized states." He said the United States and its fellow industrial nations have long spewed greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while newly emerging economies have done so for only a few decades. "China is in the process of industrialization and there is a need for economic growth to meet the basic needs of the people and fight against poverty," Why have things come to the point where the most stable and prosperous democracies in history must vie for the approval and acclamation of the Chinese bureaucrats and self-appointed nongovernment organization inspectors? It is in part because Western "intellectuals" who should know better have submitted the moral judgment of the relative best to the absolute worst.

The Tragedy

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com The Times Online reports: A British imam's daughter is living in fear of her life under police protection after she received death threats from her family for converting to Christianity. The young woman, aged 32, whose father is a Muslim imam in the north of England, has moved house 45 times to escape detection by her family since she became a Christian 15 years ago. And who's taken up the cudgels for the woman? The women's liberation movement? The Left? Why it's ... The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, will claim "freedom to believe" is under threat in Britain because of Islamic hostility to conversion. The story is interesting because it advances two conjectures. First the native Western liberal intellectual elite is going betray every principle it espouses to a) bash America; b) keep itself "safe". As I have often said, the War on Terror has been a tragedy for the Left in a way that it has never been for conservatives.

I Will Miss Israel Greatly. New York And Washington Not So Much...

clipped from pajamasmedia.com it will be taken as confirmation of the view that we should not do anything mean to the mullahs. We should talk to them instead. And that’s just what the Estimate says: …some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might–if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible–prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program. Incredibly, the authors of the document claim they can prove all this: “The impact of international pressure is beyond dispute, the officials said, a “cause-and-effect” relationship backed up by an ‘evidentiary trail.’ “ But any good student who has taken Psych 101 will tell you that it’s nigh unto impossible to determine someone else’s intentions, especially when presented by “analysts” who think that Ayatollah Khamenei and President Rafsanjani are as rational as the rest of us.

No Such Scrutiny

clipped from pajamasmedia.com No matter: the contemporary campus almost habitually serves as fierce critic of society with the understanding that no such scrutiny should ever apply to itself—whether that be tuition that rises higher than the rate of inflation, faculty governance that ensures no outside auditors dare question teaching competency or productivity, lifelong employment through tenure that has resulted in uniformity of belief rather than encouraged mavericks, and the steady erosion in common skills and basic education shown by recent college graduates.

Stalemate: A Perspective

clipped from www.americanthinker.com General George Marshall is noted for his famous economic assistance "Marshall Plan" commencement speech at Harvard in 1947. However, less appreciated was his "Stalemate Strategy," which George Kennan called "containment." General Marshall pointed out that we made a serious mistake after World War I by pulling our troops out of Europe, and allowing strife to be renewed. Prevention of large scale fighting must never again be allowed, he said, and the developed nations must collaborate in its prevention. Unfortunately, prevention is a multiple step process of transition from dictatorship to a democracy. It usually takes generations, and involves a sequence of stages.                 Fighting....Exhaustion     STALEMATE.....Negotiation.....Democracy The critical stage is "stalemate," which requires the immediate availability of a superior garrison military force, to be used if needed. Stalemate can then encourage a process of negotiation,

The Awkward Fit

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Any researchers who haven't fully signed on to the "social stigmatization" argument might like to dust off the reports following the stabbing in 2002 of Paris' first openly gay mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, by a Muslim immigrant, Azedine Berkane. Le Monde reported the views of M Berkane's neighbors: “He was a bit like us,” said one. “We’re all homophobic here, because it’s not natural.” “It’s against Islam,” said another. “Muslim fags don’t exist.”  As I say somewhere in my book: If you think Iraq's Kurds and Arabs, Sunni and Shia are incompatible, what do you call a jurisdiction split between post-Christian secular gay potheads and anti-whoring anti-sodomite anti-everything-you-dig Islamists? If Kurdistan’s an awkward fit in Iraq, how well will Pornostan fit in the Islamic Republic of Holland?

Iraq = D.C.

clipped from blogs.dailymail.com The left’s demand for instant democracy is laughable. “In Baghdad, politics are a mess. Critics of Bush’s policy complain that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite fundamentalist, has not reached out with sufficient vigor to Sunni Arabs to seek reconciliation. In fact, the situation is far worse than that,” Cole wrote. Oh? Two months into the fiscal year, Congress has yet to pass a federal budget. Critics of Harry Reid complain that “he has not reached out with sufficient vigor to” Republicans “to seek reconciliation. In fact, the situation is far worse than that.” Congress mirrors conditions in the Iraqi parliament because of the left’s refusal to accept victory.

I've been saying this for a while now...

One Man's Terrorist ... Is Every Sane Man's Terrorist

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com In an effort to get close enough to murder Benazir Bhutto, one of the Islamist attackers reportedly strapped his explosives to a one-year old infant. Meanwhile, horrifying new details emerged last night of the attempt by suicide bombers to kill Ms Bhutto on her return home from exile last month. Investigators from Ms Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party said yesterday they believed the bomb, which killed 170 people and left hundreds more wounded, was strapped to a one-year-old child carried by its jihadist father. They said the suicide bomber tried repeatedly to carry the baby to Ms Bhutto’s vehicle as she drove in a late-night cavalcade through the streets of Karachi. “At the point where the bombs exploded, Benazir Bhutto herself saw the man with the child and asked him to come closer so that she could hug or kiss the infant,”

I'm no friend of Benazir Bhutto. But whether she knows it or not, she IS facing terrorists. That's spelled M-U-R-D-E-R-O-U-S L-U-N-A-T-I-C.

The Perfectly Fine Adventures Of Him/Her/It In Iran

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Remember Ahmadi-Nezhad’s boast at Columbia University that there were no gays in Iran? Well, it turns out that at a recent “peace” conference, Mohsen Yahyavi let it slip that, while there might be none, if the regime laid its hands on a homosexual, they killed him/her/it. Homosexuals deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, The Times has learnt. Mohsen Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay youths were being hanged. I don’t expect this story to make headlines, but hey, it’s in the London “Times” so you never know. Let’s hope. It is one of those dazzling statements that, so to speak, tears the veil away from the illusion the mullahs try to cultivate in Western circles.

The Despair

clipped from www.nysun.com Capitalism requires careers that are open to talent: successful investment banks need to be run by the best brains rather than the best pedigrees. At the same time, capitalism produces social change. Competition leads companies to invest in new technologies. Great social cataclysms like the industrial and information revolutions change the way people live. Some cultures, some societies, tolerate this kind of diversity and upheaval better than others. Jewish society, with a culture shaped by millennia of exile, encountered capitalist modernity with the ability to maintain a sense of identity and continuity in the face of change and has generally adapted well to the new conditions. Wasps, with cultural roots in a form of Protestant Christianity that is individualistic and future-oriented, have also managed to negotiate the challenges of liberal modernity relatively smoothly. the "Anglo-Judaic" synthesis remains the despair of our enemies.

The Forgiveness Question

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The President is challenging the world with a new order. There is always passionate opposition to change. Have grievous mistakes been made? Yes. But just as Wilson, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and Reagan laid the foundations for fighting and prevailing in the Cold War, Bush has responded to 9/11 with a foreign policy revolution of similar magnitude: a reorganization of government institutions and appropriate legislation to meet the emerging threats. Containment and deterrence are ineffective in this brave new world. There is no containment if you can’t see the enemy; there is no deterrence if the enemy desires death. I believe the President’s critics are profoundly mistaken. I believe they misunderstand how he’s trying to protect us. I believe they misunderstand the nature of the threat. I believe they misunderstand history. If they succeed in dismantling what President Bush has set in motion, the results may well be catastrophic and history will never forgive them.

Shame And Obsession

clipped from opinionjournal.com Do you know what leadership is all about? Leadership is all about restoring that perspective that this country is truly an exceptional country that has great things that it is going to accomplish in the future that will be as great and maybe even greater than the ones we've accomplished in the past. If we can't do that, shame on us. This is exactly right, and we hope Giuliani keeps hammering home the point. In the conservative circles in which we usually travel, we hear far too much depressive, alarmist talk. And the left is much worse. They are so scared of terrorism that they have constructed an elaborate system of denial. They lash out at anyone who takes the terror threat seriously (see Glenn Greenwald's silly attack on the Giuliani speech for an example), but their complacency is obviously phony, as evidenced by their lurid and obsessive fantasies about torture, tyranny, global warming and all other manner of unreal horrors.

Whoops

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com Robert Spencer links to an FBI report on US “hate-motivated crimes” during 2006, showing the truth behind the constant claims of victimhood from Islamic advocacy groups: FBI hate crimes report for 2006: Jews suffer over 5 times more attacks than Muslims. Anti-Black 3,136 Anti-Jewish 1,027 Anti-White 1,008 Anti-Male Homosexual 881 Anti-Hispanic 770 Anti-Female Homosexual 192 Anti-Islamic 191

The Obscenity

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Max Dimont in his 1962 book, Jews, God and History, observes that Nazi propaganda had been anti-Christian since 1919, and that Jews sent to concentration camps were met there by Christians of conscience who arrived before the Jews. Dimont is not defending Christianity as a Christian and he certainly is not condemning his own faith or denying the mass murder of his own Jewish people in the Holocaust, which his book explains in great and awful detail.   What Dimont does in his book, written only seventeen years after the end of the Second World War, is to show that blaming the Holocaust on Christian "anti-Semitism," is not just wrongheaded, but obscene.  Professor Schapiro, an eminent Jewish professor, in his 1940 college textbook on European history observed that the only opposition to the Nazis came from Protestant and Catholic clergy, who stood their ground despite persecution.

MAD RIP Update

clipped from www.commentarymagazine.com We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world. But this is not new. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot also had their apologists who saw them as “nationalists” with “legitimate grievances.” So much for the allegation that the Khomeini quotation is “non-existent.” But there is another quotation I have cited repeatedly in the course of showing why Iran would not be deterred by the fear of retaliation. This one is a statement by the supposedly moderate former President Rafsanjani: If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession . . . application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.

Before, Not After

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Still the idea of BBC broadcasts that might have warned any Germans who participated in the extermination process that they would be prosecuted as war criminals, broadcasts that left no doubt in the mind of every single German, every single European (since most European nations were complicit in the execution of the Holocaust) that they would be held accountable. Even if they weren’t, the fear of it might have had some effect, the putative broadcasts might have made a difference. Still among all the stories of warnings ignored, or disbelieved, rescue action denied or delayed till too late, this struck me as a not-impossible lost chance. And a reminder that the time to stop a nation from committing genocide is before it starts not after it’s finished.

Long Out Of Fashion

clipped from opinionjournal.com For its own protection, and thus that of Europe, Germany could more closely integrate and where appropriate reintegrate itself into the expeditionary and nuclear retaliatory structures of the U.S., Britain, and France without moving nuclear weapons forward to German soil; end leniency for terrorists; step up defensive measures as if it is just about to be hit; and embrace limited missile defense against potentially nuclear-armed Iranian intermediate-range ballistic missiles rather than accept the Russian thesis that 10 interceptors will perturb the nuclear equation. What are the chances of this? Though the West comprises the richest grouping of nations the world has ever seen, it has somehow come to believe not only that it is not entitled to its customary defenses but that it cannot afford them. And looking ahead strategically so as to outmaneuver crisis and war has, unfortunately, long been out of fashion.

Where They Excel

clipped from www.redstate.com The slide to success can only be stopped by the Democrat Congress cutting off funding now. The sad fact of the matter is that they may just do it. All they have to do is nothing. They are excelling at that right now. It would trigger a massive debacle if they carry through with it. The only good that would come of it is the destruction of the Democrat party for decades to come. However, as much as I would like to see the Democrats do that to themselves, it is not worth the cost, and I do not think they would commit party suicide willingly. However, they may be too blind or stupid to realize they are doing it to themselves until it is too late I am afraid. Gosh, the "what if's" can give a person a headache!

Because W Did It Of Course...

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com Several other Democrats voiced similar sentiments, but Obama's chief rivals pounced on his answer, suggesting that it sounded weak. What they should have said is that it sounded like George Bush. It is President Bush who has has been saying since 2002 that the longstanding Western policy of accommodating corrupt dictatorships in the Arab world has contributed to the rise of terrorism, and that the only long-term solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism is our effort to bring modernity, including democracy, to the Muslim world. This was the chief reason for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, and those who share Bush's view of the matter are conventionally called, for no very good reason, "neocons." What is weird about Obama and other Democrats who pay lip service, at least, to the value of democracy is that they seem willing to apply the principle to every country in the world except Iraq.

#177? (!)

clipped from www.theaviationnation.com TSA Office of Intelligence Comment: Although there is no information that the aircraft was being specifically targeted for a future terrorist attack, the actions of the four passengers are highly suspicious. FFDO confirmation of possible tampering of the lavatory mirror in one of the lavatories could be indicative of an attempt to locate concealment areas for smuggling criminal contraband or terrorist materials.  In this case, it appears the left lavatory was the sole area of interest for the passengers. One subject's excuse that the right lavatory was dirty when it was confirmed to be clean shows the four passengers had a specific, operational objective. Although unconfirmed at this time, this incident has many of the elements of pre-operational terrorist planning.  Source: TSA Suspicious Incidents Report #177 Unless there have been 177 such incidents in the past fifteen months, one wonders when TSA Suspicious Incident Reports #1-#176 occurred — and what information they contain?

Yes. And The Swiss Were "Neutral" In WWII Also...

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Has an opening appeared for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear weapons standoff? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged that Iran might have a neutral third party such as Switzerland perform their uranium enrichment in order to appease Western nations who insist Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons: Iran's President President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Dow Jones Newswires Sunday that he would be consulting with Arab nations on a plan to enrich uranium outside the region in a neutral country such as Switzerland.

The Weak Horses (And Stomachs)

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Blair says he has no regrets over removing Saddam Hussein, but clearly he sees 2003 as a missed opportunity for the UN. He tells the Times that in the end, the permanent UNSC members seemed more interested in hamstringing the US than they ever were in resolving the problem of Saddam Hussein. It points to a problem at the basis of the war on terror -- the lack of stomach in the West for the fight. “The enemy that we are fighting I am afraid has learnt . . . that our stomach for this fight is limited and I believe they think they can wait us out." So far, with the exception of George Bush and Tony Blair and perhaps now Nicolas Sarkozy, that mostly appears correct. UPDATE: As CapQ commenter C Cage points out, I forgot John Howard of Australia.

Our Corrupt "Betters" (Part 92365)

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com Jazz Shaw at Middle Earth Journal noticed a story buried at the Washington Post regarding the biggest embarrassment in the House of Representatives, William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson. The man who commandeered a National Guard detachment to act as his personal moving company during Hurricane Katrina and who kept $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer had new allegations of corruption filed in federal court on Friday. Nancy Pelosi does not have her hands tied in this case. The House has the ability to expel members who act unethically, even absent a criminal conviction. It rarely happens; the only two in the last 150 years to be expelled were James Traficant in 2002 and Michael Myers in 1980, and both had to get convicted of bribery first to get the boot from their colleagues. Neither party has proven very courageous in protecting Congress and the People from the corrupt. Denny Hastert even filed a lawsuit to keep the FBI from using material seized in Jefferson's Capitol Hill offices

The Nazis Were Christian?

clipped from www.americanthinker.com Within a year of taking power, Hitler was saying:  "Christianity was incapable of uniting the Germans, and that only an entirely new world-theory was capable of doing so."  Also within a year of the Nazis taking power, The Twenty-Five Theses of the German Religion, a conscious modeling of the twenty-five points of the Nazi program, was published in Germany. Thesis XV of that Nazi publication states:  "The Ethic of the German Religion condemns all belief in inherited sin, as well as the Jewish-Christian teaching of a fallen world.  Such a teaching is not only non-Germanic and non-German, it is immoral and nonreligious.  Whoever preaches this menaces the morality of the people." In February 1937 Hanns Kerrl, Minister of Religion in the Third Reich, said:  "The question of the divinity of Christ is ridiculous and inessential.  A new answer has arisen as to what Christ and Christianity are: Adolph Hitler."

Ummm. No.

And frankly you've had a failed education if you believe it.

In fact, it's a fair argument that the Nazis made the Bolsheviks look like pikers in their level of hatred for Christianity. In fact, their implacable Jew hatred was in part because the Christians had been spawned from them...

But In Practice...

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is. — Yogi Berra

I Could Have Had An E8!

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk "Although he cultivates a bit of a surfer-guy image its clear he has put enormous effort and time into working the complexities of this structure out over several years," Prof Smolin tells The Telegraph. The new theory reported today in New Scientist has been laid out in an online paper entitled "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything" by Lisi, who completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in 1999 at the University of California, San Diego. The reason for the excitement is that Lisi's model also takes account of gravity, a force that has only successfully been included by a rival and highly fashionable idea called string theory, one that proposes particles are made up of minute strings, which is highly complex and elegant but has lacked predictions by which to do experiments to see if it works. Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887,

Pakistan: Horrible Options ... And Worse Ones

clipped from www.latimes.com Ms. Bhutto's repeated promises to end fundamentalism and terrorism in Pakistan strain credulity because, after all, the Taliban government that ran Afghanistan was recognized by Pakistan under her last government -- making Pakistan one of only three governments in the world to do so. And I am suspicious of her talk of ensuring peace. My father was a member of Parliament and a vocal critic of his sister's politics. He was killed outside our home in 1996 in a carefully planned police assassination while she was prime minister. There were 70 to 100 policemen at the scene, all the streetlights had been shut off and the roads were cordoned off. Six men were killed with my father. They were shot at point-blank range, suffered multiple bullet wounds and were left to bleed on the streets. My father was Benazir's younger brother. To this day, her role in his assassination has never been adequately answered,

A Human Generation

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com Plain sailing so far. But David Broder's friend had more to whisper in his ear. the second, and largely unspoken, issue identified by my friend from the Clinton administration [was] the two-headed campaign and the prospect of a dual presidency. As my friend says, "there is nothing in American constitutional or political theory to account for the role of a former president, still energetic and active and full of ideas, occupying the White House with the current president." ... In the background and somewhat more diffuse is another disturbing paradigm. If Hillary is elected and possibily re-elected, either a Clinton or a Bush will have occupied the Presidency for 24 years. A human generation.

Its Up To W

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com All this is a fancy way of saying that to rely on Israel to take out Iran is to bet on a long shot. It would be like planning to pay off a vacation you can't afford in the expectation you'll win the lottery. It might happen but it probably won't. With the prospects of success so low, and America so unlikely to do the heavy lifting, Former Spook argues that Israel essentially has no realistic pre-emptive strike option. With their own military options limited--and the U.S. seemingly unable to act, it's no wonder that Israel is growing increasingly pessimistic in its outlook. With the world community unwilling to aggressively confront Iran, and with military options apparently limited, planning for "The Day After" may become Israel's policy by default. With Iran's nuclear program showing ElBaradei a clean pair of heels; Israel impotent and America paralyzed with indecision it is possible that Teheran is home free.

Fake But Bizarre -- On Stilts In Fact

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com Dan Rather’s “fake but accurate” lawsuit against CBS has left CBS executives “mystified.” Today, in New York Supreme Court, in response to Dan Rather’s civil lawsuit, CBS filed a lengthy 30-page motion to dismiss the case. CBS executives also released a statement today, noting that they are “mystified” by Rather’s “bizarre allegations” but will “vigorously” defend themselves in court if need be. “Dan Rather is one of the most important figures in the history of broadcast journalism, and for more than 40 years was one of our most valued colleagues,” CBS said in the statement. “That is why we at CBS are mystified and saddened by the baseless and self-serving allegations and distortions of fact raised in his lawsuit.” “Of course, there was no such nefarious scheme, and Rather’s allegations bear no resemblance to reality. CBS and its executives are not now, and never have been, out to get Dan Rather.”

Let me ask an inconvenient question: What does it say about the state of our country and its "journalists" that Dan Rather can still be considered "one of the most important figures in the history of broadcast journalism"?

Did I forget to mention that he's crazier than a Cuckoo Clock? On stilts?

You Want Bi-Partisan?

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com There is an aspect of this attack on Paulouse that may not be apparent at first: Paulouse has taken aggressive action against trafficking and has quickly become one of the leading anti-trafficking prosecutors in the country. We are in the final stages of negotiating the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2007. The strongest opponent are those in the Justice Department who have subverted the Bush presidential directive on human trafficking. Right now, the only groups that support the position of the Justice Department are the liberal/leftists that support legalization of prostitution. Sound impossible? Attached is a letter sent to Acting A.G. Keisler recently that addresses the poor performance of the Justice Department on issues related to prosecution and training on human trafficking, specifically sex trafficking. Please read it and please note the incredible breadth and depth of the signers of this letter -- from Gary Bauer to Kim Gandy, President of NOW.

Hold On, She's Probably Not Done Yet... (Innumeracy Edition)

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com First she sounded sympathetic to the idea during a televised debate, and within moments had refused to endorse it. Afterwards, she changed her mind and endorsed it. Now today, after Governor Eliot Spitzer shelved a plan to issue New York drivers licenses to illegal aliens, Hillary Clinton shifted her position yet again to oppose the idea entirely: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday came out against granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, after weeks of pressure in the presidential race to take a position on a now-failed ID plan from her home state governor. People laughed at John Kerry for saying, "I was for the $87 billion before I was against it." He looks like the Rock of Gibraltar next to Hillary Clinton. She has now taken four different positions in two weeks on a single topic.

You know, you don't have to be a math wiz to figure out that the odds of a single family (much less a "husband" and "wife") producing two people truly sharp enough to be president of a country of 300 million people are ridiculously large.

And Hillary's out to prove it for those who may periodically drift into consciousness at all.

Oh. And our current president -- the few very important things he's got reasonably right not withstanding -- does little to dispel my analysis.

The Sieve In The South

clipped from www.washingtontimes.com Alien and drug smugglers along the U.S.-Mexico border have spawned a rise in violence against federal, state and local law enforcement authorities, who say they are outmanned and outgunned. "They've got weapons, high-tech radios, computers, cell phones, Global Positioning Systems, spotters and can react faster than we are able to," said Shawn P. Moran, a 10-year U.S. Border Patrol veteran who serves as vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 1613 in San Diego. "And they have no hesitancy to attack the agents on the line, with anything from assault rifles and improvised Molotov cocktails to rocks, concrete slabs and bottles," he said. "There are so many agent 'rockings' that few are even reported anymore. If we wrote them all up, that's all we would be doing." Assaults against Border Patrol agents have more than doubled over the past two years,

It's Not Just W With The Saudi Problem...

clipped from corner.nationalreview.com Remember "Saudi in the Classroom?" That’s where I explained how the Saudis are using federal subsidies to university programs of Middle East Studies (under Title VI of the Higher Education Act) as a kind of Trojan horse to gain influence over American K-12 education. Now it looks like the House Democrats mean to let the Saudis get away with it. When I wrote "Saudi in the Classroom," back in July, I made a point of praising the very reasonable bipartisan compromise on Title VI reform crafted by Kennedy and Enzi in the Senate. But now, under pressure from the higher education lobby (really Juan Cole and his radical professor pals from the Middle East Studies Association–MESA), the House Democrats have gutted every proposed reform of this disastrously broken federal subsidy program.

Baghdad Update

clipped from hotair.com Captain Aaron Kaufman is the CO of Bravo Company, 177 Armor, 2nd Brigade of the US 1st Infantry. He spent the past year deployed in Baghdad and the past several months in command of a unit in Adamiyah in east Baghdad. It was his second tour in Iraq; the first was in Tikrit. In late October he and his unit returned to base at Schweinfurt, Germany. Today I interviewed him about the war, whether the surge is working and whether we’re winning. The interview is about 40 minutes long, so I posted it in its entirety below but I’ve also pulled out a few sound bites. The first one deals with the question that’s probably on everyone’s mind: Are we winning? CPT Kaufman followed the Scott Thomas Beauchamp saga, and says that Beauchamp’s characterization of American soldiers doesn’t match reality:

If Only It Were So Simple

clipped from finance.yahoo.com 6. The direct impacts of terrorist attacks are not huge. This isn't meant to diminish the suffering of those directly affected by 9/11 or any other such attack; His point is that terrorism can only succeed by sowing fear and overreaction, not by destroying things and killing people. He posits that terrorists strike democratic countries more than autocratic regimes because public reaction matters more in open societies. "What Makes a Terrorist" includes a wonderful chart showing the relative risk of dying from assorted causes. The lifetime risk of dying in a motor vehicle accident for the U.S. population is 1 in 88. The lifetime risk for dying of suicide is 1 in 120. The lifetime risk for dying in a terrorist attack is 1 in 69,000, which is significantly less than the risk of dying from a lightning strike. (To be fair, the average American is far more likely to die at the hands of a terrorist than from a shark attack; that lifetime risk is 1 in 3,700,000.)

This is certainly worth the read -- but things are not quite as neat as this would lead you to believe. The statistics on Hitler were rather benign also until the Blitzkrieg started.

When the Islamofascists have WMD -- and it grows increasing less likely that they won't watching the turmoil in Pakistan and the latest Iranian announcement of a 3,000 centrifuge cascade -- all bets are off.

The Soviets had the means but not (quite) sufficient intent. The Islamofascists have the intent -- the means are only a matter of time...