Political Digest June 2, 2010

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. It also doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with them. I have to say all this to give some of my critics the benefit of the doubt, assuming they are thick, rather than deliberately taking things the wrong way.

Feel Good Story of the Day
Al-Qaeda No. 3 Yazid reported killed by U.S. drone
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060100466.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR
Ackmed, alert the Virgins! Excerpt: Al-Qaeda's third-ranking operative, an Egyptian who was a founding member of the terrorist network and a key conduit to Osama bin Laden, has been killed in Pakistan, according to a statement Monday from al-Qaeda that U.S. intelligence officials believe is accurate. A U.S. official said there is "strong reason" to believe that Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, known as Sheik Saeed al-Masri, apparently was killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan's tribal belt within the past two weeks.

Obama administration moves to distance itself from BP on oil spill response
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/31/AR2010053103511.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
What’s Holder going to do? Move the spill to NYC? Excerpt: Struggling to convey command of the worsening Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Obama administration is taking steps to distance itself from BP and is dispatching Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to the Gulf Coast to meet with federal and state prosecutors. The Holder trip could signal that the environmental calamity might become the subject of a criminal investigation.

Court: Suspects must say they want to be silent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/01/AR2010060101378.html?hpid=topnews
Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that suspects must explicitly tell police they want to be silent to invoke Miranda protections during criminal interrogations, a decision one dissenting justice said turns defendants' rights "upside down." A right to remain silent and a right to a lawyer are the first of the Miranda rights warnings, which police recite to suspects during arrests and interrogations. But the justices said in a 5-4 decision that suspects must tell police they are going to remain silent to stop an interrogation, just as they must tell police that they want a lawyer.

The electability argument and the California Senate race
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/morning-fix/electability-and-the-californi.html?wprss=thefix
Excerpt: One week from the Republican primary fight for the right take on California Sen. Barbara Boxer (D), a fight over electability has broken out. Former Rep. Tom Campbell, who has run twice unsuccessfully for Senate seized on a Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California poll that showed him leading Boxer by seven -- while former HP executive Carly Fiorina (R) trailed the Democratic incumbent by six. "I can win if I have the resources to communicate in these final 9 days," Campbell wrote in a blog post aimed at narrowing the self-funding Fiorina's financial edge. "If I don't, we will not win -- and Boxer will breathe a huge sigh of relief." Fiorina's campaign quickly struck back with a memo to reporters arguing that it is Campbell, not their candidate, who would jeopardize Republican chances against Boxer.

The Realities Behind The Immigration Debate
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19401&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD
Worth reading, though unlikely to happen. Excerpt: Most of the debate on illegal immigration involves wishful thinking. The reality is that only four policies can significantly reduce illegal immigration, says Jeffrey Miron, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute.

When Will China Join the Also Rans?
http://whatpaulgregoryisthinkingabout.blogspot.com/2010/03/when-will-china-join-also-rans.html
Excerpt: We better foresee small than big changes. Transitory fads and group think divert us from recognizing obvious signs. In the 1930s, we -- mired in the Great Depression -- were taken in by “heroic” successes of Stalin’s five year plans. In the 1950s, we were alarmed by Sputnik and Nikita Khrushchev’s “We will bury you” boasts. In the 1960s, we dispatched congressional delegations to learn from Germany’s consensus economy and France’s Planification. The 1980s saw the glorification of Japan’s unerring industrial policy and its lifetime labor contracts. In each case, the model which we worried would bury us or admired returned to earth. The Soviet Union is gone after an extended “period of stagnation.” Congress had to form special committees to explain why so few saw this coming. Germany and France are plagued by stagnant growth and high unemployment. Japan has experienced economic stagnation for more than two decades and sees no end in sight. We now admire the Chinese model. We are told that its technocratic monopoly party makes rational decisions that guide it unscathed through storms of financial crisis and recession. Unlike the clumsy west, it knows how to build roads, whole new cities and stage Olympics – no dithering around with messy democratic decision making. We are now recycling calculations of when our rival will overtake us – only this time round it is China and not Russia.

Our Unsustainable Debt
America is on the verge of financial disaster.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/11/our-unsustainable-debt
Have I mentioned that a collapse is coming? Excerpt: America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product, a level unseen since World War II. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we’ll be drowning in red ink for the foreseeable future, with annual deficits averaging $1 trillion during the next decade. While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes foreign and domestic investors. According to the CBO, in 2009 America’s public debt reached $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of GDP, the highest it has been in 50 years. In 2010 the debt will cross the 60 percent threshold, a level at which many economists believe a country is putting itself in financial peril. And the situation is deteriorating rapidly. Figure 1 compares the CBO’s long-term public debt projections from 2010 with long-term projections calculated in 2007. Three years ago, the CBO projected that the debt held by the public would not surpass 60 percent until 2023. What’s more, with the impending entitlement crisis requiring more future borrowing, the national debt could grow faster than the economy. In 2020, if current trends continue, the country will owe more than $20 trillion, or 85 percent of GDP. There are six reasons why these deficits matter. First, debt is very expensive. The more we borrow, the higher the cost of borrowing. By 2020 the federal government will spend a projected $900 billion each year just to pay interest on our debt. That’s more than what the U.S. spends right now on two wars, plus the Departments of Defense, Education, Energy, and Homeland Security combined.

Regulators’ Budget Rising
http://www.gwu.edu/~regstudies/20100518_Dudley_Warren_Regulators_Budget.pdf
Excerpt: The “Regulators’ Budget” is the portion of the fiscal budget devoted to developing and enforcing federal regulations. While these on-budget costs of regulation represent a small fraction of the full burden of regulations to society (and do not provide information on regulations’ benefits) the data presented in the report offer useful insights into the growth and composition of regulation over the last fifty years, from 1960 to the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2011. The President’s budget request calls for fiscal regulatory expenditures of over $59 billion in 2011, and a staff of almost 284,000. The allocation of regulatory outlays among the different departments and agencies reflects continued national concerns about homeland security, housing and financial markets, and corporate governance. The requested Regulators’ Budget of $59.4 billion in 2011 is 4.1 percent larger in real terms than appropriated outlays of $56.3 billion in 2010. Appropriated outlays in FY 2010 were 8.9 percent higher than in 2009.1 Over the last decade, between 2000 and 2010, annual budget outlays for regulatory activities increased 75.5 percent in real terms, for a real dollar increase of $21.7 billion. While the growth in the Regulators’ Budget was larger in percentage terms during the 1960s and 1970s, the growth in dollar terms over the last ten years is more than double that of any previous decade.

Government: The Next Bubble to Burst
http://www.aei.org/article/102080
Excerpt: The Bank of England recently warned that the U.S. is on the road to the same fiscal failure as Greece, and the Obama administration's insistence on massive public spending and increasing deficits is the reason. At this rate, the U.S. government will be the next economic bubble to burst. We've seen similar downturns: the information technology bubble in 2000, housing in 2007 and Wall Street in 2008. If unchecked, America's government bubble will depress our economy with higher interest rates and defaulting state and local governments. Federal spending alone this year accounts for 25% of our nation's gross domestic product. If you add state and local spending, the number is closer to 50%. No economy can thrive when nearly half of all economic output is directed by politicians rather than entrepreneurs and small businesses. After big government spending, government employee unions pose a serious threat to America's fiscal health. Over the past 30 years, union membership has declined significantly, from 23% of all workers in 1980 to about 12% today. But the percentage of union members working for government has soared: Over 50% of all union workers in the U.S. are employed by the government compared with only 17% in 1980.

Five Ways to Keep America From Turning Into Greece
http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2010/06/01/five_ways_to_keep_america_from_turning_into_greece
The problem is that fixing the problem will be very politically painful, so politicians of both parties are likely to keep kicking the can down the road until it becomes unfixable. Then comes the collapse. My motto is: “Vote Republican. They are ruining the country, but at a slower rate. Excerpt: "The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher Guess what, folks? "Eventually" is here for Greece and it may soon be for Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy as well. So, when does "eventually" come for us? Last week, congressman Mike Pence told me that unless something changes, "eventually" may only be a decade away, Does that sound like grim news? Well, it may be optimistic. Last week in a teleconference, Senator Tom Coburn told us he thinks it may only take four years for us to end up in the same situation as Greece. If the United States can't finance its debt, the government would be unable to pay its bills; we could see runaway inflation, a worldwide economic crisis, a new "Great Depression" -- and unlike Greece, there is no nation or collection of nations big enough to bail us out. Compounding the problem is the fact that while both political parties have helped get us into this situation, the Democratic Party is run by people every bit as blind to reality as the Greeks who are protesting attempts by their government to control spending. Their country is broke and living on the charity of other nations and their response is to throw Molotov cocktails and riot. Expect to see the same attitude from Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Barack Obama, the SEIU, MoveOn, the Daily Kos, and the rest of the gang that's driving this country's future off a cliff right now.

The European Union Will Come Apart
http://townhall.com/columnists/DickMorrisandEileenMcGann/2010/05/31/the_european_union_will_come_apart
The collapse of the EC can be predicted by anyone who can do math, using the entitlement and birthrate numbers. But we won’t have long to laugh. Excerpt: The inevitable outcome of the Greek financial crisis - soon to be followed by comparable events in Portugal, Spain and probably Italy - will be the collapse of the Euro and a sharp halt in the momentum for European integration. Ultimately, there is only one nation in Europe that investors trust - Germany. And they will only support the Euro and treat the southern European nations (now called Club Med) as credit-worthy if Germany backs up the debt. The current $1 trillion fund is a palliative that will not satisfy the market once the larger obligations of Spain ($1.6 trillion) and Italy ($2 trillion) come into question. Germany will have to buy the southern European debts and assume national responsibility for their repayment. But while her leaders may be willing to do it, I doubt that her voters will acquiesce. German nationalism - the force that dominated Europe for one hundred years - will not take kindly to paying the bills for their profligate neighbors to the south.
The Real Public Service—Classic Thomas Sowell
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/06/01/the_real_public_service
Excerpt: Every year about this time, big-government liberals stand up in front of college commencement crowds across the country and urge the graduates to do the noblest thing possible-- become big-government liberals. That isn't how they phrase it, of course. Commencement speakers express great reverence for "public service," as distinguished from narrow private "greed." There is usually not the slightest sign of embarrassment at this self-serving celebration of the kinds of careers they have chosen-- over and above the careers of others who merely provide us with the food we eat, the homes we live in, the clothes we wear and the medical care that saves our health and our lives. What I would like to see is someone with the guts to tell those students: Do you want to be of some use and service to your fellow human beings? Then let your fellow human beings tell you what they want-- not with words, but by putting their money where their mouth is.

Time to Change Course in the Middle East
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/01/morning-bell-time-to-change-course-in-the-middle-east/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Excerpt: Early Monday morning in the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea, helicopters lowered Israeli Commandos onto a Turkish-flagged ferry carrying 600 passengers determined to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Beset by activists armed with poles, knives and guns, the Israelis defended themselves, and the resulting violence left at least nine dead. Hours later, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report claiming that Iran now has enough nuclear fuel, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons. These two stories are not unrelated. And they ought to serve as a signal to the Obama administration that it is time to change its approach to the region.

Pilar Rahola is a Spanish politician, journalist and activist
http://israelseen.com/2009/12/30/pilar-rahola-is-a-spanish-politician-journalist-and-activist/
Why? Because the left always supports the enemies of freedom. Excerpt: Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam? Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan? Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel? Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism? Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist? Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism? An finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn’t care.

Ankara ambushes Israel at sea
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/turkish_blood_bath_Jean7yjj5Salz75brRSsMJ
Europe may wring its hands and condemn Israel, but I guarantee, Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union are as dead as the terrorists on the boat. Excerpt: Yesterday's "aid convoy" incident off the coast of Gaza wasn't about bringing humanitarian supplies to the terrorist-ruled territory. It wasn't even about Israel. It was about Turkey's determination to position itself as the leading Muslim state in the Middle East. Three ships of that six-ship pro-terror convoy flew Turkish flags and were crowded with Turkish citizens. The Ankara government -- led by Islamists these days -- sponsored the "aid" operation in a move to position itself as the new champion of the Palestinians. And Turkish decision-makers knew Israel would have to react -- and were waiting to exploit the inevitable clash. The provocation was as cynical as it was carefully orchestrated. The lead vessel, the Mavi Marmara, just happened to have an al-Jazeera TV crew on board to film Israel's response. Ironically, the early videos would've been counterproductive, had world leaders and journalists not been programmed to blame everything on Israel. Those videos showed Israeli commandos rappelling onto the ship with both hands on the rope (making it rather hard to use a weapon), yet activists claimed the Israelis opened fire as they descended. Purely by coincidence, dozens of "peace activists" waited with sharpened iron bars, clubs, slingshots -- and rifles. Of course, the nine dead in the melee were all Israel's victims.

Supply of weapons discovered on board the Mavi Marmara
http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/10/05/3106.htm
Excerpt: After IDF soldiers succeeded in stopping the attack against them by passengers on board the Mavi Marmara ship, the ship was brought to the Ashdod port and arrived in the late hours of Monday evening (May 31). Flotilla participants were brought off the ship and taken for questioning. Once the activists left the ship, security forces began a thorough search and found a supply of weapons, including knives, Molotov cocktails, detonators, wood and metal clubs, slingshots and rocks, large hammers and sharp metal objects. In addition, gas masks were found, pointing to the prior intention of the ship’s passengers to use violence against IDF soldiers who would then be forced to use riot dispersal methods. The Mavi Marmara was the last among the flotilla ships to arrive on Monday to Ashdod. Beforehand, the other five ships participating in the flotilla arrived. Unlike the Mavi Marmara, passengers on board the other ships cooperated with the security forces. The removal of passengers from the ships was secured by Israeli Police special forces, headed by the Yamam Special Police Unit, in addition to Military Policemen and naval officers who assisted in escorting the passengers to the security examination site set up in the Ashdod port. (The leftists saying, “End the Gaza blockade” want a war in Gaza. If the blockade is ended, the Muslims will send in rockets to bombard Israeli schools, etc. Israel will have to send in its forces to stop the attacks, and civilians will be killed. But the left will wash its hands of the blood, as it always does.)

'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush
http://is.gd/cxGgl
Excerpt: As the international community rushes to condemn Israel for the violence on board one of the ships in the Gaza flotilla, which left a reported 10 people dead and dozens injured, it is now obvious that the real purpose of this ‘armada of hate’ was not merely the further delegitimisation of Israel but something far worse. Gaza’s markets are full of produce, thousands of tons of supplies are travelling into Gaza every week through the Israeli-controlled border crossings, and there is no starvation or humanitarian crisis. It was always obvious that the flotilla was not the humanitarian exercise it was said to be. Here is footage of the IDF offering to dock the Marmara -- the main flotilla ship -- at Ashdod and transfer its supplies and being told ‘Negative, negative, our destination is Gaza’. And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion -- backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine -- was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. As I write, reports are coming in of Arab rioting in Jerusalem. The notion – uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media – that the flotilla organisers are ‘peace activists’ is simply ludicrous. This research by the Danish Institute for International Studies details the part played by the IHH in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya. According to the French magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguiere testifying at the Seattle trial of would-be al Qaeda Millenium bomber Ahmed Ressamin, the IHH had played ‘[a]n important role’ in the al Qaeda Millenium bomb plot targeting Los Angeles airport. It was also involved in weapons trafficking, and played in addition a key role in galvanizing anti-Western sentiment among Turkish Muslims in the lead-up to the 2003 war in Iraq. ‘Peace activists’ these people most certainly are not. And this flotilla was but the latest jihadi attack, deploying the Islamists’ signature strategy of violence and media manipulation. Here from MEMRI (via Just Journalism) is a clip showing the hysteria against Israel being whipped up on board before the ships set sail, with the chanting of intifada songs about ‘Khaybar’ – the iconic slaughter of Jews by Muslims in the 7th century which is used as a rallying cry to kill the Jews today -- and threats of ‘martyrdom’. This was not merely a propaganda stunt, but a terrorist attack.

Round up the usual traitors
Son of Brewster man aboard ship raided by Israeli commandos
http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/05/son_of_brewster.html
Of course the Videos don’t show the Israelis shooting as they landed, but the big lie is still a tactic of choice by the enemies of freedom. Excerpt: A Brewster resident whose son was on board one of a flotilla of ships raided by the Israeli Navy today said his son does not appear to be among the nine people believed killed and that messages posted on a Facebook page indicate the attack was unprovoked, contrary to Israeli statements on the raid. Joseph Bangert said he believed his son, Fiachra Ó Luain (left), was "awake and alert" when Israeli helicopters and boats approached the flotilla, which had pro-Palestinian activists aboard and was attempting to bring aid to the Gaza strip. Bangert said Israeli commandos stormed the lead ship and began firing without provocation. "They evidently just hit the deck shooting," Bangert said. "All they had on that vessel were wheelchairs, medical equipment, and construction supplies. I'm very, very upset."
And who is Joseph Bangert?
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=26415
Excerpt: A John Kerry veterans' organizer lived in Hanoi for five years in the 1990s, testified that American troops skinned and crucified Vietnamese in the 1960s and joined the presidential candidate at an infamous 1971 meeting of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War executive committee in which the assassination of U.S. senators was debated, Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin reports. Joe Bangert, a Massachusetts English teacher and longtime friend of the junior senator, has campaigned with Kerry in several states and serves the campaign as a veterans' organizer. (The survival of father and son is to be regretted by free peoples.)

Flotillas and Falsehoods: Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=ZWI3Y2E0YTE3ZDlkY2JhYzdhNzQ5NmRkMWM5YmMyMmM=
Resent it? They are proud to be on the anti-freedom team. Excerpt: The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to “wipe Israel off the map” marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called “international community.” It was the propaganda arm that staged the “Freedom Flotilla.” But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged “death” of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the “massacre” at Jenin, and the “war crimes” in Gaza. In each and every case, the “news” of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations such as Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth seemed always to have a case of laryngitis.

Live Oak Prosecutor Fired for Speaking to Tea Party
http://www.resistnet.com/forum/topics/live-oak-prosecutor-fired-for
Will the ACLU be on the case? Excerpt: An assistant state attorney in Live Oak was fired Monday after she refused to stop speaking to tea party rallies and other groups, her boss said. Prosecutor KrisAnne Hall asked a federal judge Friday for a ruling that would have allowed her to keep speaking and prevented her boss, State Attorney Skip Jarvis, from following through on threats to fire her if she didn’t stop. Courtroom arguments on that request hadn’t been scheduled by Monday afternoon, when Jarvis said he fired Hall shortly after receiving a copy of her federal complaint.

GOP sees a way to revive old debate
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/37990.html
To be fair, if our cancer survival rates dropped to what they are in Britain, it would greatly reduce healthcare costs and the dead folk’s carbon footprints. Excerpt: President Barack Obama spent the last year insisting he doesn’t want to turn the American health care system into a carbon copy of the government-run British system. But Obama’s pick to run Medicaid and Medicare — Donald Berwick — is a pediatrician and Harvard University professor with a self-professed “love” of the British system. Berwick has called Britain’s National Health Service “one of the greatest health care institutions in human history” and “a global treasure.” He once said it sets an “example” for the United States to follow. And his decade-long efforts to improve the NHS were so well-regarded that Queen Elizabeth granted him an honorary knighthood in 2005.

Obama’s Potemkin Presidency
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2010/05/29/obamas-potemkin-presidency/
Excerpt: It is becoming increasingly clear that neither Obama nor his administration nor the Democrat Congress are up to the task of governance. Yesterday we chronicled the shouting match between former MMS director Liz Birnbaum and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that resulted in her being fired shortly before she was scheduled to testify before a Congressional subcommittee headed by the corrupt Jim Moran on the lackadaisical efforts of the administration to ameliorate the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The ineffectualness of the administration was on display for all to see this week. Over a month after the spill began, Obama was able to take time away from his busy schedule of back to back vacations to visit the Gulf. He was there for about three hours — which would equate to about nine holes of golf — gave an insipid speech and left. And then there was this: Perhaps you saw news footage of President Obama in Grand Isle, La., on Friday and thought things didn’t look all that bad. Well, there may have been a reason for that: The town was evidently swarmed by an army of temp workers to spruce it up for the president and the national news crews following him.

Bam's border bungle
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/bam_border_bungle_t6n3P5zrfeMeIZaBqPSwCJ
Excerpt: I fully agree with Ralph Peters' perception that this administration's strategy remains stagnant ("Security Charade," PostOpinion, May 28). At best, President Obama offers virtually useless gestures, as he has with regard to directing trained warriors to be stationed behind desks. There is a war on our southern border, and it's not with a neighboring nation but with criminals who have murdered both Mexicans and Americans. It will only escalate should we hide behind the rhetoric of political correctness. Laws need to be honored, because without the rule of law, society erodes.

Al and Tipper Gore to separate after 40 years
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100601/ap_on_re_us/us_gore_separation
Signs of Global Cooling. She’s be fine, with her half of the $100M Al made off his GW scam.

Obama blasts BP: 'We will bring those responsible to justice'
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/100809-obama-my-solemn-pledge-is-to-bring-these-people-to-justice-
Difference between the oil spill and Katrina is there is a scapegoat available.

No Time For Snorin’ In The Sonoran
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2010/06/01/no-time-for-snorin%E2%80%99-in-the-sonoran/
Excerpt: Gunfights in the area between police and lawbreakers are increasing in frequency, cops there agree. It’s largely involving criminals from south of the border. The Sinaloa Cartel and Zeta Cartel are fed up with their drug shipments being confiscated by gringo cops, and some informants say cartel leaders have told the drug mules that if they allow the dope to be snagged by Yank LEOs, they can expect reprisals upon their loved ones and death for themselves. This has upped the likelihood of homicidal armed resistance by drug runners stopped by our police. Cartel-sponsored dopers are also believed to have been behind the recent murder of an Arizona rancher who tipped the local law to one of their drug caches. In Pinal County, Arizona recently, a deputy sheriff came under heavy weapons fire when he interdicted some drug smugglers. He was severely wounded, but returned a barrage of gunfire that sent his assailants running, one or more of them leaving blood trails. The officer has survived and is expected to recover. No word on his assailants, who may already have given their all to feed desert wildlife on one side or the other of the US/Mexican border. Border Patrol Agent Matthew Boyd, a firearms instructor for his agency, told me that each agent has an AR-platform rifle and an ample supply of Winchester 62 grain softpoints, and a Remington 870 pump shotgun well supplied with 12-gauge buckshot and slugs, to back up their issue HK P2000 .40 caliber pistols. I saw USBP personnel wearing four spare pistol magazines, two being the mandatory minimum. (guy has an impressive resume. If half true, I’d be very polite to him. http://www.ayoob.com/AboutMas.html)

Treasury and CSIRO both have breached trust
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/treasury-and-csiro-both-have-breached-trust/story-e6frg9if-1225872732507
Excerpt: The Treasury building in Canberra houses the greatest collection of economic analytical and policymaking brainpower in Australia. The same, in the fields of science, goes for the CSIRO in Melbourne. Together they should form the rock-solid foundation of policymaking in Australia. We need to be able to trust Treasury to advise the government based on the best possible economic analysis. Arguably its most important task is to deploy its economic heft against usually well-intentioned "good ideas at the time", or failing that to at least limit their damage. From the CSIRO we need, very simply, good science. As its own strategic plan puts it: "We are committed to scientific excellence and working ethically and with integrity in everything we do." Both have, in their separate ways, breached that trust. This is a very serious matter for the governance of Australia. If we can't trust Treasury to give us rational economics and we can't trust the CSIRO to give us good, or even just honest, science -- as in both cases they have generally done for a good three-quarters of a century or more -- we are adrift in a sea of irrationalism….. But as one of the peskier of them, Tom Quirk -- our version of Canada's even peskier Stephen McIntyre -- discovered, there was a very curious omission in one of the CSIRO graphs. It showed the rise and rise of concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and its fellow greenhouse gas methane. It was an almost perfect replica of the infamous (Michael) Mann Hockey Stick. After being virtually stable for 900 years, concentrations of both CO2 and methane went almost vertical through the 20th century. But as the eagle-eyed Quirk noticed and wrote about on Quadrant Online, methane was plotted only up to 1990, while the plots for CO2 continued to 2000.Why so, when the CSIRO measures methane concentrations and has data up to last year? Did the answer lie in the inconvenient truth that methane concentrations have plateaued since the mid-1990s? Yet here is the CSIRO, the organisation dedicated to scientific truth, pretending -- even stating -- that they're still going up, Climategate style. This is bad enough, but just as with Treasury, real policies are built on this sort of "analysis". The first version of the so-called carbon pollution reduction scheme included farming to address the methane question. But as Quirk has shown in a peer-reviewed paper, atmospheric methane is driven by a combination of volcanos, El Ninos and pipeline (mostly dodgy old Soviet) leakage. ("When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all." Yes. Are political words or real science to be master?)

The Smallest President
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/the_smallest_president_1.html
Excerpt: Identity politics is where grievance-mongering and class resentment intersect with entitlement agitation and representational profiling. Those who use the currency of identity politics appeal to the ideals of justice and fair distribution of resources and outcomes. But in reality they prey on those who are underprivileged and dependent, making claims of dispossession against those who have enjoyed success and independence derived from their own sweat, equity, and competence. Leaders who devote all of their energy and emotional capital to identity politics instead of creating a competent, skills-based organization soon discover that when critical decisions need to be made and highly skilled resources need to be mobilized, nobody is around who knows how to do it. Such leaders, eventually tuned out and abandoned by even their former acolytes, become irrelevant, easily overwhelmed by events and rivals, taking their organizations -- even a nation -- down with them. Obama's presidency is finished because identity trumped competency. And without competency, his big government is dysfunctional and destructive. So what's the alternative? Simple. The ideology of limited government. Why? Because limited government is the antithesis of identity politics. The ideology of limited government wouldn't need to rely on overextended organization competencies to manage vast and complex bureaucracies because those bureaucracies would be unnecessary and wouldn't exist. Without identity politics, people who actually know what they're doing could occupy key jobs.

U.N. Says Iran Has Fuel for 2 Nuclear Weapons
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/middleeast/01nuke.html?hp
Need three for NYC, DC and Tel Aviv. Excerpt: In their last report before the United Nations Security Council votes on sanctions against Iran, international nuclear inspectors declared Monday that Iran has now produced a stockpile of nuclear fuel that experts say would be enough, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons. The report, by the International Atomic Energy Agency, a branch of the United Nations, appears likely to bolster the Obama administration’s case for a fourth round of economic sanctions against Iran and further diminish its interest in a deal, recently revived by Turkey and Brazil, in which Iran would send a portion of its nuclear stockpile out of the country. When Iran tentatively agreed eight months ago to ship some of its nuclear material out of the country, the White House said the deal would temporarily deprive Iran of enough fuel to make even a single weapon. But Iran delayed for months, and the figures contained in the inspectors’ report on Monday indicated that even if Iran now shipped the agreed-upon amount of nuclear material out of the country, it would retain enough for a single weapon, undercutting the American rationale for the deal.

Reading is not a strength for the Robin Carnahan campaign
http://www.redstate.com/bs/2010/05/30/reading-is-not-a-strength-for-the-robin-carnahan-campaign/
Excerpt: This past week, the campaign for Democrat Senate candidate Robin Carnahan released a hit video criticizing Republican Senate candidate Rep. Roy Blunt about his response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The video claims that “BP’s Bill for Cleanup is only $75M” and that supposedly, Blunt is OK with that. One problem: current law does NOT cap cleanup costs at $75M. It clearly states that the violator (BP, in this case), must pay the ENTIRE cost for spill cleanup, plus $75M. BP has already committed to reimbursing any legitimate claims for financial impact, and has even appointed an independent mediator to intervene for disputed claims. You would think that Carnahan’s campaign consultants would have at least read the law before creating their hit vid - but you would be wrong. As the KC Star points out, the wording is crystal clear:

Authorities identify man taken off Mexico-bound plane
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20100531/mexico-plane-immigration-100531/
Probably going to Mexico because of their large Muslim population. Or maybe their long, open border. Excerpt: A man considered too dangerous to fly over the United States is facing deportation from Canada after his transatlantic flight was forced to land in Montreal. Abdirahman Ali Gaal was identified on Monday as the suspect arrested by a team of police officers when they boarded a flight from Paris to Mexico City that made a sudden stop at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport over the weekend. Gaal was the subject of an outstanding warrant, according to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

What Our Media Taught Me
http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/what-our-media-taught-me/?singlepage=true
Excerpt: I’ve been over here in Europe for about ten days, getting a different perspective on our illustrious media and how it is handling the various Obama “troubles.” Perspective and distance are sometime valuable. I used to think, given the enormous size of the bureaucracy and the tragic nature of the human condition, that from time to time disasters would overwhelm us — and there would be not much the president of the United States could do about them. But after Katrina, the media taught me that neither the mayor nor the governor nor the Army Corps of Engineers nor the people of New Orleans were at fault for either the vulnerability to the chance of a catastrophic Katrina or the response after its arrival. No, you see, the commander in chief is the ultimate arbiter of successful or unsuccessful reactions to all such disasters. OK, so be it. So while I am not inclined to blame Barack Obama for the scandalous federal laxity in the now polluted Gulf, the media long ago taught me that I most certainly should. I don’t play golf. Never have swung a club. But in the spirit of live and let live, I also never cared much for deconstructing the game in terms of culture and sociology. The media, however, in 2002, taught met that I should in the case of George Bush — that his swing and even his use of a golf cart reflected a certain class disdain for us, or at least a frat-boy frivolity at a time of two ongoing wars. So while I would like to give our present president a pass on his obsession with playing golf at a frequency far in excess to poor George Bush’s, I cannot. I am conditioned now to grasp that Obama’s golf craze is a sort of self-indulgence reflective of a disturbing narcissist who entertains a shocking indifference toward the rest of us. Press conferences were always painful to watch. Finger in the wind pundits try to one up their commander in chief, who, in turn, is always one slip of the tongue away from global scandal. But the press during the Bush administration also taught me that we need these feeding frenzies frequently, and must demand that our executives prove to be both eloquent and veracious. So while I don’t much care whether Obama stutters off the teleprompter, or idiotically says things like “corpse-man,” or misleads us on matters of fact, or even grossly says things such as the beheading of Daniel Pearl “captured the world’s imagination,” the media lectured me that I very much should care — namely, that President Obama almost never gives a press conference, and on the rare occasions when he does, we know why he was wise not to have done so in the past.

White House can't get its Sestak story straight
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/White-House-can_t-get-its-Sestak-story-straight-95277519.html
But Sestak won’t rock the boat with the truth now. Excerpt: Did you hear the one about how President Obama got Slick Willie Clinton to offer second-term Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak an unpaid appointment to an obscure White House advisory panel in return for dropping his primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter? Obama and his Chicago boys are still guffawing over how all the chumps in the media reported that one with a straight face. Hey, it's a just another reason why running a gangster government is nothing but laughs for the Obama crew in the White House. The reality is that nobody outside the White House gang and its congressional confederates is laughing about this one. It is simply illegal to offer a job to anybody in return for doing something designed to influence a congressional election, so the White House story fails both the legal and the giggle test. In the first place, nobody can seriously believe that a wizened con man like Bill Clinton would agree to offer such rotten bait to a deep-water fish like Sestak, a former three-star admiral. When the job offer was originally made to Sestak in February, it was done because he clearly represented a serious threat to Specter's bid for the Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial primary less than a year after turncoat Arlen bolted the Republican Party. It is ludicrous to believe that the prospect of a presidential appointment to an unpaid federal advisory panel of little stature and less consequence would persuade Sestak to give up his dream of moving up from the House to the Senate. Clinton must have known this beforehand.

Obama Makes Little Headway Among Arabic-Speaking Muslims
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTRmMTZkNmU4YmU2MDA0OGMwMWQ0ZmEzMzdmNzRlMzU=
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, we will cut off all your heads until you convert to the religion of peace or pay the jizya like good dhimmis! Excerpt: Gallup’s results show something of a wash: Obama does distinctly better than George W. Bush in Mauritania (going from 44 to 69 percent) and Egypt (6 to 19 percent). He improves on Bush just over the margin of error in Algeria (going from 25 to 30 percent). He improves on Bush within the margin of error in the Palestinian Territories (from 13 to 16 percent). The two are tied in Lebanon (at 25 percent). And Obama does worse than Bush in Iraq (going from 35 to 30 percent). Also noteworthy is that Obama’s current standing has declined among all six of the populations from what it was in mid-2009. The smallest drop (3 percent) was in Iraq and the largest (18 percent) in Egypt. Comments: (1) These polls register a highly unimpressive showing for someone who placed so much emphasis on improving U.S. standing among Muslims. (2) The graph of Arabic-speakers’ attitudes toward Obama differs from that of Americans’ views: The former went up and then down, while the latter went down and then flattened out. That said, both at present show a downward trend

Venezuela's Chavez backing leftist guerrillas in Mexico
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/world/Venezuela_s-Chavez-backing-leftist-guerrillas-in-Mexico-95280089.html
Coming soon to an open border near you. Excerpt: A leftist guerrilla movement responsible for many kidnappings and attacks inside Mexico is secretly receiving funding from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, U.S. and Mexican intelligence officials told The Washington Examiner. The group, called the Ejercito Popular Revolucionario (EPR), is "a terrorist organization bent on destabilizing Mexico. ... Splinters of the group are also adding to the problem," said a Mexican official who requested anonymity. The group, which announced its existence in 1996, claimed responsibility for the 2007 bombings of the Mexican government's Pemex oil pipelines, along with several other bombing attempts of a bank and Sears department stores in cities throughout Mexico. "Chavez has been funding groups like these in Mexico and throughout Latin America," said a U.S. official with knowledge of the group and its operations. "These groups are nothing more than terrorist organizations and members have connected to other narco-trafficking organizations in Mexico, creating a very dangerous matrix."

Good Article: An Ode to Citizen Journalists
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/an_ode_to_citizen_journalists.html
Excerpt: Why are newspapers published? Simple question, right? But there is one group of (theoretically) educated people who, when asked, find themselves at a loss. I know what I'm talking about: During my thirty years in journalism, I've interviewed dozens of candidates who were hoping to be hired as a reporter or editor. I asked each one: Why are newspapers published? In thirty years, no recent graduate of a journalism school has known the answer. This isn't a trick question. Candidates coming in from other fields mostly knew the answer, though they sometimes hedged their bets, trying to guess what I wanted to hear. But those who had been formally, laboriously studying the industry were simply baffled.

Sarah Palin: Is It Any Wonder Why We Call Them “Lame”?
http://palintwibe.blogspot.com/2010/06/sarah-palin-is-it-any-wonder-why-we.html
Excerpt: It may seem like a small thing, considering the state of the union and international issues of the day, but let me share some facts surrounding a most recent illustration of the untrustworthiness of America’s mainstream media. Yesterday, Todd and I spent our Memorial Day evening exchanging emails with NBC in regards to the interview they conducted this morning with our new neighbor. As you’ll recall, the “journalist” Joe McGinniss moved all the way from Massachusetts to Wasilla – literally right next door to our home – after tracking us down in various forums this past year, so that he could be close to his “subject matter” while he writes his book about me. When NBC asked to interview me for this story, I politely declined. NBC then asked for a statement from us and promised to run it as a full screen graphic during their interview with McGinniss. We were glad to provide a statement and appreciated NBC’s promise to run it. Todd and I both crafted the statement very carefully because our new neighbor has taken to accusing us of “inciting hatred” – a charge which we obviously take very seriously. We knew that he would make more accusations like this, and we felt very strongly that such comments should not go unanswered. So, we emailed NBC the following statements: “McGinniss has followed us for some time now, from showing up on our doorstep last winter, bidding over $60,000 for a military charity auction dinner with me, writing the hit pieces, attending at least one Outside book event, etc. He has a right to pursue his subject, I suppose, and certainly has a right to live wherever he wants, but my family also has a right to expect privacy, and hopefully to enjoy peace this summer. Good fences do make for good neighbors. The fence is now up, and I hope that we can enjoy peace. The media sensationalizes the recent McGinniss’ tactic so the public will tune in to whatever the latest episode is, always with ratings in mind, and that’s unfortunate.” - Sarah Palin

But He Still Has the AP: If Obama's lost Frank Rich, he's lost Middle America.
https://mail.google.com/mail/?hl=en&shva=1#inbox/128f54f473572766
Excerpt: Remember "accountability journalism"? As we noted in 2007, this was an Associated Press innovation designed "to report whether government officials are doing the job for which they were elected and keeping the promises they make." It started in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, and was exemplified by stories like these:

A Hole in the Fence of Immigration Reform
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/a_hole_in_the_fence_of_immigra.html
Excerpt: Graglia opined that the framers of the 14th Amendment "could not have considered the question of granting birthright citizenship to children of illegal aliens because ... there were no illegal aliens in 1868 ... because there were no restrictions on immigration. It is hard to believe, moreover, that if they had considered it, they would have intended to provide that violators of United States immigration law be given the award of American citizenship for their children[.]" [George] Will highlighted some breathtaking statistics: "[M]ore than two-thirds of all births in Los Angeles public hospitals, and more than half of all births in that city, and nearly 10 percent of all births in the nation in recent years, have been to mothers who are here illegally." Graglia added: "Nearly half of illegal-immigrant households are couples with children, 73% of which have an American-citizen child. Illegal immigrant parents also benefit ... from the welfare and other benefits to which their citizen child is entitled."

The Terror Finance Flotilla
http://schanzer.pundicity.com/7539/the-terror-finance-flotilla
Excerpt: The Turkish organizers of the Gaza Strip-bound flotilla that was boarded this morning by Israeli commandos knew well in advance that their vessels would never reach Israeli waters. That's because the organizers belong to a nonprofit that was banned by the Israeli government in July 2008 for its ties to terrorism finance. The Turkish IHH (Islan Haklary Ve Hurriyetleri Vakfi in Turkish) was founded in 1992, and reportedly popped up on the CIA's radar in 1996 for its radical Islamist leanings. Like many other Islamist charities, the IHH has a record of providing relief to areas where disaster has struck in the Muslim world.

Illegal to be illegal?
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/06/illegal-to-be-illegal-shameful.html
Shameful. Trying to make criminals into criminals.