Another Obama Appointment withdraws...

What’s the difference between Obama and Jesus?

Jesus knew how to build a cabinet.

(At Instapundit and all over the net now)

The first 50 days

Blinded with science

Obama lifting the ban on Federal funds for embryonic stem cell research is a very good thing. To quote our President:

Science shouldn’t be guided by ideology

Bravo. Let science solve problems.

Now explain again why he's stiffing the nuclear power industry as they work on the waste disposal problem, given "...the technical consensus is that the level of isolation will be sufficient to protect long-term public health and the environment."

Bush and Obama; blinded by ideology.

Cheese and bread

Jobs come from small business. The giants GM, US Steel, et al, have been shedding jobs for decades. America is a nation of entrepreneurs.

Here's how it works: Guys like me (and guys/gals WAY smarter/more successful than me) form pools of money and invest in start-ups and small business. Most fail, but many make it, employing thousands, or even tens of thousands in high-paying jobs. Over the past few decades, that has been the engine of American prosperity. Think FedX, Intel, Microsoft, Google, not to mention a gazillion smaller businesses you and I have never heard of.

Now, with unemployment spiking and capital harder to get than ever, Obama is going to tax carried interest– how everyone who manages pools of venture capital gets paid - not as capital gain (14%) but as ordinary income (37?%)

Less attractive return on risk means less effort. That's not just Econ 101, it's human nature.

Anyone with half a brain can see that this destroys future wealth and deals a death blow to job creation. The only hope is if the Rs win back the congress in ’10 and stop this lunacy. Given their general incoherence, I’m not optimistic.

Otherwise, we’re France without the cheese and bread.

Tax Cheat Tells Tax Cheat He’ll Crack Down on Tax Cheats

Spot the irony:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the U.S. bank rescue program may cost more than the $700 billion Congress approved, and he pledged to crack down on companies and individuals who try to avoid paying taxes.

You mean those who try to avoid paying taxes like . . . Tim Geithner?

UPDATE: Of course. Readers note that Geithner pledged to crack down on tax cheats before a committee chaired by . . . tax cheat Charlie Rangel.

From NRO and Patterico

Obama's engine of wealth destruction

Im not usually a Cramer fan, but in the clip below, he nails it. In the name of progress, in the name of fairness, Obama is destroying the wealth of everyday Americans. Spending like a drunken sailor during the worst recession in my lifetime is suicide for the next generation. The stock market is where American's put their savings, their future. Policy matters. Accepting no responsibility for this unprecedented destruction of wealth is politics of the worst kind.

Here's a prediction. The market, now around 6800, won't bottom until Obama's disapproval ratings top his approvals. Then, for the next 2 years, the Dow will inversely correlate with Obama's popularity.
By taxing the productive and transferring wealth to the unproductive, his administration has, moral preening aside, declared war on wealth. That die is cast. Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al are not changing. The only hope is a '10 congress that will impose some fiscal sanity on an out-of-control administration. Argue all you will, the markets vote with their money. Of course, it would help if there were a coherent opposition to articulate the dissenting opinion. There ain't, and we're not at a bottom yet.

The real solution is as simple as it is "fair:" make those who have made bad decisions pay the price. Don't punish the responsible by bailing out the irresponsible. One of the 10% who can't pay your mortgage? You lose your house ownership. Maybe the bank will let you rent the property? They need to decide how to survive too. Short term bad for the economy, long term, very good.

And what of the bank who overextended? We have a book for you with 11 chapters called bankruptcy. Banking isn't rocket science. Someone smarter and more prudent will take your place, Mr Citicorp. Will this hurt the economy? You betcha, short term. But the markets would rally as the future would have the incentives in the right place for responsible growth and wealth creation.

Bottom line? We need to let the recession run its course. Our economy needs to rid itself of an over-accumulation of inefficiencies: too much easy money, too many unqualified homeowners, too many rock-stupid CEOs, too many bad business models. If you risk and win, fine. If you risk and lose, you really need to lose. There is no shortage of people waiting in the wings to give it a try, be it as a consumer risking it all to buy a home or a businessperson, roll the dice on a new money making scheme. But most of all, our system needs a purge to return to the key to all prosperity and fairness: equilibrium of risk and reward.

Savvy trade

From The Big Picture:

To review: Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson made a terrible investment on behalf of the taxpayers by purchasing a 7.8% stake in Citigroup (C) for an initial $25 billion dollars. He further put the US on the hook by guaranteeing against 90% of future losses on $301 billion in assets. Subsequently, we (the taxpayers) injected another $20 billion dollars.

At the time, Citigroup had a market cap of about ~$50 billion dollars. Today, its worth ~$13 billion.

Pretty good deal, eh?

That $45 billion dollar stake now has a market value of just over a billion.

Simultaneous chess record set

360 games sounds impressive, but at least he could glance over each board before making his move. The ultimate chess-stud (is that an oxymoron?) move is blindfold chess. And in that rarefied air, there have been some truly epic performances like Alekhine's described below where he played 30 games and won 20, drew 5. Seriously, can you fathom playing 30, THIRTY, games of chess simultaneously while BLINDFOLDED? The human brain can be so far beyond amazing.

I played chess, as did my father and his father. In junior high, it was all consuming - much like PS3 or wii is for today's kids. I'm not bashing video games because I think most adults underestimate the strategy and complexity built into many of them. Nevertheless, I know how chess can shape the mind to think both tactically (what happens if I do this) and strategically (there is a weakness in his pawn formation.) Add to that the sheer concentration and discipline needed to play well and you have a powerful mental exercise package for life.

John at Powerline writes (lovingly) about the event and about chess in general:

Simultaneous Exhibition Record Set

Bulgarian Grandmaster Kiril Georgiev has set a new simultaneous chess exhibition record of 360 games. Georgiev played for more than 14 hours and has applied for recognition by the Guinness Book of World Records.

Simultaneous chess exhibitions have a long history, but today's version is wimpy by historical standards. Grandmasters used to play blindfolded: Alexander Alekhine played more than 30 games simultaneously, blindfolded, against tough opposition, and in more recent times other players have extended the record. At some point, the Russians banned simultaneous blindfolded exhibitions by their grandmasters because they believed such events led to mental deterioration--a plausible concern. Playing 360 games at once strikes me as pretty easy, compared to playing 30 or 40 blindfolded.

As a college student, I occasionally played against a Master who was a couple of years younger than me. (He crushed me.) He grew up in New York City and, with his friends, would skip school and spend the day riding the subways. As they rode, they would play chess. They never used boards, but just called out moves to one another. Still, they only played one game at a time.

Some years ago, Viktor Korchnoi made an appearance at the Renaissance Festival here in Minnesota. This was when Korchnoi was the second-rated player in the world and was scheduled to play Anatoly Karpov for the world championship. Korchnoi played a simultaneous exhibition of something like 50 boards. The first 50 people to send in postcards after the event was announced got to play. So it was a motley crew--a master or two, some very good players, some woodpushers, a few kids.

I didn't get a board, but I went to the Renaissance Festival to watch the event. A square of hay bales had been set up, and boards were perched on the bales around the perimeter. The contestants were all in place, awaiting Korchnoi's arrival. At the appointed hour he showed up and took his place in the middle of the square, wearing a Robin Hood hat with a feather, suitable to the occasion.

Korchnoi was a defensive genius who was known for a stodgy, conservative, but effective style of play. So what happened next was a revelation. Korchnoi walked swiftly from bale to bale, pushing a pawn forward on each board. As the games went on, he didn't stop, but slowed down briefly at each board to make a move. What was remarkable was how aggressive his moves were. Korchnoi, a defensive specialist, would look at each board for perhaps half a second, then grasp one of his pieces and shove it down the board in the most aggressive manner possible. I've never seen such vicious play; his opponents were brutally overrun.

Only after most of the 50 opponents had resigned or been checkmated did Korchnoi actually pause before a board. The last three or four opponents were excellent players and demanded some thought; one or two actually won their game against the grandmaster.

Early on in the process, one of the younger players, who had been utterly overrun, turned over his king in resignation and, when Korchnoi came around again, held out his scorecard and asked Korchnoi to sign it. As Korchnoi did so, the young man said, "Sir? It's been an honor to play you." Korchnoi looked at him for a long moment, assessed the proposition, and nodded in agreement.

Korchnoi's aggressive style was mirrored, in miniature, by the master I used to play against in college. Mediocre chess players play cautiously. They don't know what exactly will happen if they send their pieces careening down the board, but experience says the consequences are likely to be bad. Really good players--Korchnoi was an extreme example--understand exactly why it is that sheer aggression is usually punished. If their opponent is not skillful enough to position his pieces precisely correctly, all-out, headlong attack is the strategy of choice. Weaknesses invisible to the average player are ruthlessly exploited.

I've always thought that a broader lesson could be drawn from these observations. Ambitious world leaders are like top chess players. If they see that their opponent has positioned his forces flawlessly, so that aggression will be repelled, caution is the order of the day. But God help an amateur. A hint of weakness may unleash a relentless assault; an assault that will come as a surprise to anyone who does not understand thoroughly the forces that are in play.

A joke for today

A guy walks into a bar, spends $1,000,000,000,000, then says: "Hey everybody, let's have a fiscal responsibility summit."

The end.

A conversation... Part II

See Part I of this story HERE

Philippa from Barclay's got back to our Israeli friend. I'm going to start using his real name for reasons that will become obvious as you read his reply...

-----Original Message-----
From: phillippa-jane.vermoter@barclays.com [mailto:phillippa-jane.vermoter@barclays.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 7:34 PM
To: delowe@netvision.net.il
Subject: Re: Barclays Bank Dubai Tennis Champiionships

Mr de Lowe

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to write and to let us know your
views. I understand your point of view and would like to assure you that we
are listening and we take what you have said seriously.

Let me emphasise that Barclays is an apolitical organisation with a proven
commitment to equality and diversity across all its operations. We remain in
active dialogue with all of the critical stakeholders associated with the
tournament.

Kind regards

Phillippa

Well... now that certainly cleared up a thing or two, didn't it? Let's see how Mr de Lowe responded:

From: DeLowe [mailto:delowe@netvision.net.il]
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2009 10:22 PM
To: 'phillippa-jane.vermoter@barclays.com'
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Subject: RE: Barclays Bank Dubai Tennis Champiionships

Dear Phillippa,

Your reply began well enough. The second paragraph is simply a repeat of what you have previous stated. Mr. Chris Wharton-Hood is quoted as saying that you are a fantastic communications manager – and that you have a clear way to cut through the mess to create messages that are appropriate and well positioned (http://www.naymz.com/search/phillippa-jane/vermoter/2170049). I think the rhetoric that you spit out again would be as disappointing to Mr. Wharton-Hood as it was to me.

I asked you a simple question: As the sponsor of the Dubai Tennis Championships, does Barclays Bank endorse the actions of the Dubai government by banning a world ranked Israeli woman from competing in the tournament simply because she is Israeli (or Jewish)? It's not a difficult question. All you have to do is answer 'yes' or 'no.' There is no hedging on this issue. Either you endorse discrimination or you don't.

Please note that I am copying this message to my entire list. We await your reply.

Jack de Lowe

Advantage... Jack.

A conversation with Barclay's Bank

As you all know, Israeli Shahar Pe'er was not allowed to play in the Barclay's Dubai Open because she was denied a visa by the UAE because she is an Israeli. The Tennis Channel pulled coverage and the Wall St Journal did the same on sponsorship. But not grand old Barclay's Bank. No statement, no protest, no... nothing.

The least they could have done was to force a name change to The Barclay's Dubai Invitational (No Jews please) Tennis Tournament.

Today, a friend forwarded this email exchange between an Israeli acquaintance and the spokesperson for Barclay's Bank regarding the Pe'er affair.

-----Original Message-----

From: JL
To: Vermoter, Phillippa-Jane : Barclay's Corporate Affairs
Sent: Sat Feb 21 21:32:31 2009

Subject: Barclay's Bank Dubai Tennis Championships

I would like to pose the following questions to you.

With the news that the Tennis Channel deciding against broadcasting the action from the upcoming Dubai Tennis Championships and that the Wall St. Journal has withdrawn its sponsorship, the question now must be posed to Barclay's, the main sponsor why the Bank continues to sponsor an event that is racist.

1. If it's a basic question of right versus wrong for the Tennis channel and the Wall St. Journal, shouldn't it also be one for Barclay's?
2. Does Barclay's Bank sanction these steps?
3. Does the Bank believe that an Israeli tennis player should be discriminated against because of her religion?
4. Why does the Bank continue with this corporate sponsorship?
5. Would Barclay's also condone the banning of English golfers from the Barclay's Scottish Open?
6. And will the Bank also ban Jews from the Barclay's Center, the sports and recreation center in Brooklyn, NY?
7. Finally, will the Jewish chairman of Barclay's Bank, Marcus Agius,be banned from presenting the winner's trophies at the Dubai Tennis Championships?

JL

I think #5 and #7 are brilliant questions. Let's see how the bank answered:

-----Original Message-----

From: phillippa-jane.vermoter@barclays.com
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 11:48 PM
To: JL

Subject: Re: Barclay's Bank Dubai Tennis Championships

Mr L,

Barclays is the title sponsor of the Dubai Tennis Championships, which are organised by Dubai Duty Free.

This event has received considerable media attention as a result of a visa for a competing Israeli woman tennis player being declined. That decision was taken by the UAE government, which is a sovereign nation.

As sponsor, Barclays is not involved in, nor does it have influence over, the application of the laws of the host country. The UAE government confirmed that an entry permit for an Israeli male tennis player has been granted.

The Women's Tennis Association, the Association of Tennis Professionals and the rest of the women's and men's fields have confirmed that the tournament will continue.

As title sponsor, our obligation is to support the tournament. Barclays is an apolitical organisation with a proven commitment to equality and diversity across all its operations. We remain in active dialogue with all of the critical stakeholders associated with the tournament.

Kind regards

Phillippa-Jane Vermoter
Media Relations Manager: Barclays GRCB

As one would expect, a complete punt. "Don't blame us, all we did was fund the event!"

To: Phillippa-Jane Vermoter
Media Relations Manager: Barclays GRCB

Dear Phillippa,

Let me first of all thank you for your very prompt response. I will explain below why I do not agree with your response, but want to emphasize how important it is that we are able to exchange views.

Barclays Bank is the main sponsor and therefore does not organize the tournament, but with the Bank's name on the tournament, it is as though the Bank is endorsing the tournament (for the good and for the bad). As such, Barclay's Bank should have at the very minimum made a statement making it very clear that the Bank in no way endorses the immoral stand Dubai has instituted by denying a world ranked Israeli woman from competing in the tournament. Such a stand by the Bank would help show Dubai that their behavior is unacceptable. Failure to do so is, de facto, an endorsement of the policy. I'm certain you are aware that the Wall St. Journal Europe completely withdrew their sponsorship of the tournament.

I have just over 6,500 correspondents on my mailing list and many of them are calling for a boycott of Barclays Bank. I have not yet reached that point and anxiously await your response.

Very truly yours,

JL

As far as I know, there has been no follow up from Barclay's. Perhaps they'll say something, but i'm not holding my breath. More likely another case of good old corporate cowardice.

Roddick wins in Dubai

By withdrawing...

The WTA fined Dubai Tennis Championships organizers a record $300,000 Friday after Israeli player Shahar Peer was denied a visa by the United Arab Emirates, and U.S. star Andy Roddick later said he wouldn't defend the title he won there last year.

"I really didn't agree with what went on over there. I don't know if it's the best thing to mix politics and sports, and that was probably a big part of it," Roddick said at a tournament in Memphis, Tenn.

"It's just disappointing that reflects on a tournament that probably didn't have much to do with the decision. Nevertheless, I just don't feel like there's a need for that in a sporting event. I don't think you make political statements through sports."

Way to go Andy!

Personal responsibility, RIP

Obama's $75 billion plan aims to let people "under water" or over-extended to keep their homes.

How did it happen? Much like running up debt on a credit card, some people got sold a "bill of goods" by unscrupulous mortgage brokers. Others just rolled the dice on ever-increasing real estate prices, seduced by the draw of a "flip" for "free" money. Either way, a lot of people own homes they can't afford.

At the end of the day, the question remains: how many of us who were responsible borrowers want to pay to keep people in houses they bought that they could never afford?

Not Rick Santeli of CNBC:



Of course, the vast majority of American home owners (92% today, bound to fall) are current on their loan payments. Maybe they saved better, they took lower risks, they did some research and planning and made better loan term decisions. Either way, they are the people who are being called upon to write checks to bail out their neighbors who took outsize risks and/or failed to responsibly borrow.

Under this mortgage "rescue" plan, what lesson will borrowers take away? What's the downside of taking huge risks in pursuit of big rewards? Is there any reason to be a responsible borrower in relation to income? Is there any reason to scrutinize loan terms that may be too good to be true?

Under this mortgage "rescue" plan, the 92% who can afford their homes can be identified in one of two ways:

1. Responsible homeowners

2. Suckers

Do the right thing

From Israel Matzav:

The Wall Street Journal does the right thing

In an editorial this morning, the Wall Street Journal rakes the government of Dubai over the coals for refusing a visa to Israeli tennis star Shahar Pe'er.

Dubai already forbids Israeli passport holders from setting foot on its soil. Which gives the lie to the emirate's excuse [concern for her 'safety' CiJ]for excluding Israel's Shahar Pe'er, currently ranked 45 in the world, from competing in next week's Barclay's Dubai Tennis Championships. In another twist, the tournament's director added that Ms. Pe'er's presence on the court might have "antagonized our fans." We used to feel that way about John McEnroe, but that didn't stop us from watching.

Happily, the Lords of Tennis seem to be having none of it. Larry Scott, chief executive of the World Tennis Association, plans to weigh sanctions against Dubai, including excluding it altogether from its tournament calendar. And Ken Solomon of the American Tennis Channel has decided not to televise the games. "Sports are about merit, absent of background, class, race, creed, color or religion," he told the New York Times. "This is an easy decision to come by, based on what is right and wrong."

Just so. Meantime, Dubai may wish to reconsider not only Ms. Pe'er's visa, but its attitude generally toward Israel. A city-state that fancies itself a global mecca for commerce, sport and recreation ought to be able to handle a few Jews in its cosmopolitan midst.

The Journal has put its money where its mouth is: It has withdrawn sponsorship of the tournament.

"The Wall Street Journal's editorial philosophy is free markets and free people, and this action runs counter to the Journal's editorial direction," the Journal Europe said in a statement.

It added that it was also withdrawing its sponsorship of the men's tournament beginning next week.

Good for them.

Writing in this morning's JPost, Michael Freund calls on the Women's Tennis Association to cancel the tournament altogether.

Labeling Dubai's decision "regrettable", Scott issued a tepid statement to the media, whimpering that, "The Tour is reviewing appropriate remedies for Ms. Peer and also will review appropriate future actions with regard to the future of the Dubai tournament." We all know what that means: not very much.

Indeed, what is truly "regrettable" is that both the WTA and the players themselves did not put principle before prize money. Dubai essentially hung a large "No Jews Allowed" sign over center court, but that didn't seem to bother anyone enough to cancel the tournament.

As criticism mounted over the decision, Scott changed his tone somewhat, telling the Associated Press that the WTA will consider "what types of sanctions are going to be deemed to be appropriate in light of what has happened, including whether or not the tournament has a slot on the calendar next year." This, he added, could mean its future cancellation. But it's a shame he didn't take that step this time around, in order to send a clear-cut message to Dubai that their actions are unacceptable.

And Freund argues that there's much more at stake here than mixing sports and politics.

Dubai's unsavory decision to block an Israeli tennis player is far more than just an issue of mixing politics with sports. The fact is that it is symptomatic of a larger problem, which is much of the Arab world's lingering hatred and rejection of Israel.

It underlines the extent to which numerous Arab states seek to undermine Israel's legitimacy and existence by negating any contact - even across a tennis net! - with the Jewish state.

WHILE MUCH has been written in recent years about the waning of the once-potent Arab economic and trade embargo against Israel, the Dubai debacle is a compelling reminder that the boycott is still very much a factor.

Just two months ago, as required by law, the US Treasury Department published its quarterly list of countries that actively enforce the Arab boycott against Israel. The inventory included eight Arab regimes: Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

A ninth country, Iraq, was said to be "under review by the Department of the Treasury" with regard to its anti-Israel practices.

While the situation is clearly better than it was, say, three decades ago, when virtually the entire Arab world was off-limits to Israelis, no one should fool themselves into thinking that the boycott is entirely a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, while the other players are sympathetic to Pe'er, they will not boycott the tournament, which means that unless the WTA cancels it, the tournament will go on.

Meanwhile, the Hopenchange administration, which has made outreach to the Arab world a centerpiece of its foreign policy, remains silent. Given that participating in it is illegal in the United States, shouldn't dropping the Arab boycott be a condition to American renewal of trade with Syria? Shouldn't American allies like Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE finally be pressured to drop the boycott?

Read the whole thing.

By the way, there's no word yet on whether Andy Ram, a male Israeli player who is scheduled to participate in the tournament will receive a visa to travel to Dubai. It's likely that his request will also be denied.

Inquiring minds want to know

Who said this? Mitch McConnell? Eric Cantor? Inquiring minds want to know!

"Genuine bipartisanship assumes an honest process of give-and-take, and that the quality of the compromise is measured by how well it serves some agreed-upon goal, whether better schools or lower deficits. This in turn assumes that the majority will be constrained -- by an exacting press corps and ultimately an informed electorate -- to negotiate in good faith.

If these conditions do not hold -- if nobody outside Washington is really paying attention to the substance of the bill, if the true costs . . . are buried in phony accounting and understated by a trillion dollars or so -- the majority party can begin every negotiation by asking for 100% of what it wants, go on to concede 10%, and then accuse any member of the minority party who fails to support this 'compromise' of being 'obstructionist.'

"For the minority party in such circumstances, 'bipartisanship' comes to mean getting chronically steamrolled, although individual senators may enjoy certain political rewards by consistently going along with the majority and hence gaining a reputation for being 'moderate' or 'centrist.'"

Figure it out?

No?

Wait for it...

Why it's from Candidate Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope!

Meanwhile, back on Capitol Hill...

The 1,071 page measure -- eight inches thick -- was posted on an overburdened congressional Web site late Thursday, giving lawmakers just a few overnight hours to read it before debate resumed in both the House and Senate Friday morning. Just on Tuesday, the House voted unanimously to recommend that lawmakers and the public have at least 48 hours to read the legislation before a vote.
...
The House vote was 246 to 183, with just 7 Democrats joining all 176 Republicans in opposition. In the Senate, the vote, 60 to 38, was similarly partisan. Only 3 centrist Republicans joined 55 Democrats and 2 independents in favor.

Maybe Nancy Pelosi didn't read the bosses book?

A Service Winner

Real live actual principal-in-action from Ken Soloman and The Tennis Channel.

Now it's time for a return of serve by the WTA and by all the other tennis players - no visa for Pe'er - no play in Dubai.

I'm not holding my breath for the same from Barclay's Bank...

Tennis Channel Won’t Televise Dubai Event in Protest

By RICHARD SANDOMIR NYT

The Tennis Channel will not televise the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships this week to protest the United Arab Emirates’ refusal to grant an entry visa to the Israeli player Shahar Peer. Peer was scheduled to play Anna Chakvetadze in the first round.

“This is an easy decision to come by, based on what is right and wrong,” said Ken Solomon, the chairman and chief executive of the network, said Monday from Utah.

“It is a simple and clear issue,” he said. “Sports are about merit, absent of background, class, race, creed, color or religion. They are simply about talent. This is a classic case, not about what country did what to another country; if the state of Israel were barring a citizen of an Arab nation, we would have made the same decision.”

The $2 million tournament is a premier, non-major tournament on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour with nine of the world’s top 10 women. Peer is ranked No. 48.

The event is part of a package of rights to several international tournaments acquired by the Tennis Channel from the WTA.

Solomon, who said he would consider carrying the tournament next year if Peer were granted a visa, began thinking about canceling the network’s coverage on Sunday. He spoke to his staff and to board members, and heard no significant dissent, before calling Larry Scott, the chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour, on Monday.

Scott said by telephone that he wasn’t expecting the network’s cancellation, but understood it. “I’m sorry it was in the position of having to make the decision,” he said. “We’re quite upset about what happened and understand Ken wanted to make a strong statement. We’ve got some of the same feelings but many more complications.”

Solomon was not critical of the WTA’s decision to play the tournament. “It’s easier for us to pull the plug,” he said. “It’s different for Larry and the WTA, who were more or less strung along and led to believe she would get the visa; his players were on the ground, and everything was in motion. The rug was pulled out from under their feet.”

He added: “The entire field of competitors is diminished by this happening. It hurts them all. Shahar earned the right to be in the tournament. She’s been on a roll and could have won it. It’s just hard to imagine this happening in this day and age.”

Scott said that United Arab Emirates officials did not tell him why Peer was denied the visa but believes Israel’s incursion in to Gaza was a crucial element of the decision. Still, he said, he knew for about a year that Peer might have trouble entering Dubai. At a tournament in Auckland, New Zealand, last month, she faced a protest over Israel’s action in Gaza.

Solomon said that his channel had a “higher duty” to refuse to carry the Dubai event. “Tennis in many ways has been at the forefront of sport, with people breaking down barriers like Althea Gibson , Arthur Ashe and Billie Jean King,” he said. “It’s harder for the Tennis Channel to turn the other cheek and not do the right thing.”

SUPPORT THE TENNIS CHANNEL! To send them a note click here.

Boycott Barclay's! - click here to send the main sponsor of Dubai Tennis a note

Compromising... our morallity?

U.S. to participate in preparations for Durban II meeting
By Barak Ravid

The theory is that team O will try and redirect the Human Rights Counsel - a group that has had Israel at the top of it's list of world-wide racists through Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia and all the other real genocides of the past decade. Why on earth would they change now? What possible leverage, other than "Because Barack asked us to" does the US think it has with this UN offshoot?

More to the point, many, but not the US, at least not today, say that if we can't get the agenda changed, we'll just not participate. Problem with that is say team O does get them to change - from Israel being the world's worst offender to Israel is just as bad as, say, Sudan? Is THAT a victory? Will wee hear Susan Rice or Sam Power tell us we now HAVE to attend because of all the """progress""" we've made?

What is the standard, Mr. President? When do we wash our hands of this "Rights" charade? Israel is the only democracy in the region. It is the only place where women and gays have rights. The Arabs living there have more rights than Arabs living in any of its neighbors.

Talking is fine. Compromising with ideas so far off the map always leaves you morally compromised.

And if that's not enough, there's this...

Commerce Department Waives Syria Sanctions by Claudia Rosett, 02.12.09, 12:00 AM EST

To paraphrase:

Of course Syria is a dynastic, tyrannical, terror-based regime. They partnered with Iran and North Korea to build a secret, illicit plutonium factory on the Euphrates, assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, have a policy, in tandem with Iran, of providing support, haven and training for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas...you get the idea.

What would a compromise with Syria look like, Mr. President?

The Ferrell Rule

One of about a half-a-million little giveaways in porkulous:

A provision in the current "stimulus" bill would allow Hollywood moguls to write off half the production and filming costs of big-budget films and TV shows.

Backed by Walt Disney and the Motion Picture Association of America, the provision amounts to an estimated $246 million Hollywood tax break over 11 years.

It's the least Democrats can do for some of their richest and most generous supporters, who gave nearly $20 million in campaign contributions to Democrats during the 2008 election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Currently, only the first $15 million of production costs can be written off - a rule aimed at keeping low-budget film-makers in the U.S.

Chris "I'll disclose the sweetheart loan I got from Countrywide manana" Dodd slipped this little feel-good gem into spendulous literally at the 11th hour:

WASHINGTON - The stimulus package Congress passed last night imposes new limits on executive compensation that could significantly curb multimillion dollar pay packages on Wall Street and goes much further than restrictions proposed by the Obama administration last week.

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign into law next week, limits bonuses for executives at all financial institutions receiving government funds to no more than a third of their annual compensation. The bonuses must be paid in company stock that can be redeemed only when the government investment has been repaid. With the measure, lawmakers seek to address public outrage over extravagant Wall Street paydays even as taxpayers bail out the industry.

Unlike the rules issued by the White House, the limits in the stimulus bill would apply to top executives and the highest-paid employees at all 359 banks that have already received government aid.

Now, put this in your pipe and smoke it:

Forbes has released their latest list for the highest-paid actor in Hollywood, and this year's winner is Will Smith. The list is based on who banks the most between June 1st 2007 through June 1st 2008.

Will made $80 million last year, beating out Johnny Depp, who made $74 million, and Eddie Murphy, who made $55 million.

Other guys who made the list are Will Ferrell, Bruce Willis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Stiller, and Adam Sandler. Do you think they're worth it?

Will Ferrell made $40 million last year. Will Freaking Ferrell!!!!

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. CEO James Dimon earned $1 million in salary in 2007, but his total pay was more than $30 million, almost all in incentive-based bonus and awards of restricted stock.

Nice. So if you're the best trader at Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, and you can make $1m max there or, say $20m in a bad year at a private hedge fund, where do you think you'll land? And don't kid yourself, losing that kind of talent is devastating to an already reeling financial company.

What about Al Gore? He made hundreds of millions as a Venture Capitalist off "green" investments that flew because of massive Federal subsidies. And what about the CEOs of Freddie and Fannie? We spend billions yearly to keep agribusiness afloat - Hey, let's cap farmer's income too. You can play this game endlessly.

The government needs to get the hell out of the micro-managing of business.

I say cap TARP-Bank CEO pay at $1 less than what Will Ferrel makes. Will Ferrel makes 40 mill, Jamie Dimon makes 39.999 mill. Dimon is a better actor.

Ch-ch-change

Consider this pledge from Obama's change.gov website:

End the Practice of Writing Legislation Behind Closed Doors: As president, Barack Obama will restore the American people’s trust in their government by making government more open and transparent. Obama will work to reform congressional rules to require all legislative sessions, including committee mark-ups and conference committees, to be conducted in public. By making these practices public, the American people will be able to hold their leaders accountable for wasteful spending and lawmakers won’t be able to slip favors for lobbyists into bills at the last minute.

Let's see, the bill is 1434 pages long. It was hammered out behind closed doors without a single Republican present. The bill was posted publicly for citizens (and Republican legislators) late last night and was voted on this morning.

Unread, rammed through by Pelosi and Reid. What are the chances that the thing is stuffed with pork? Can I answer more than 100%?

According to Sundries

In order for anyone to read the entire bill in 13 hours, they’d have to start the very minute they got it and read over 1.8 pages a minute every minute, without a break. They’ll be clocking in at a reading speed of 640.5 words per minute at that rate. If anyone needs a potty break, they’d better take the bill with them. Forget eating.

Well, I guess that Obama pledge doesn't apply to the biggest spending bill since...ever.

Sheesh, even GW Bush got almost all the Democrats to vote for his "gotta have it right now before you read it or think about the consequences or the universe will come to an end" legislation. Obama got zero, yes, nada-squat votes in the House for his spendulous bill. Not a single vote outside his party. Some new tone in Washington. Change? Seems an awful like a slightly less competent version of Rovian "take no prisoners" politics to me.

Hope? Well I hope it works. I hope there isn't too much pork in it when everyone has a chance to actually read it. And I really hope that "...the American people will be able to hold their leaders accountable for wasteful spending..."

A really good day in history...

Feb. 12, 1809

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was born in present-day LaRue County, Ky.

-and-

Naturalist Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England.

Match that, humanity!

The Test

As expected, the new administration is off to a rocky start. I never fully bought into the infailable narrative of Obama. He's always been a Chicago-style politician with painfully little executive experience, loads of intellectual horsepower, and, yes, rock star public speaking chops. If he seems less than presidential - attacking his predecessor, using fear to promote his agenda, the sheer incompetence of serial nominations of tax cheats - it's because just a few years ago he was a non-distinguished Illinois State Senator with a hell of a lot less executive experience than, say, Sarah Palin.

Besides, he is the President, duly elected, and as such, I give him the benefit of the doubt as chief executive - as long as he learns, and quickly, from his many miscues. He'll learn - he's proven himself a quick study.

As much as my gut thinks he's wrong on the economy, I give him some slack there too. Hey, it's economics - everyone's probably wrong... besides, my issues are more with his process than anything: losing control of the process to the out-of-control porkers in the Democratic House, a rush to spend without forethought and oversight, and good old sheer incompetence in the Treasury department... But still, it's early.

While Obama get's a wide berth from me on executive skill and economics, I can't say the same about the core, gut issues of the day. While I think it will take time for him to sort out "adult" answers to the myriad of real issues surrounding FISA, Gitmo, rendition, and stateless combatants, there happens to be an upcoming event that I think summarizes and crystallizes the global "war" issue - the upcoming Durban II conference on Racism.

Will President Obama have America represented or not? For me, this is the test.

On one side is Obama's desire to engage the international "Human Rights" institutions so dear to him and his close aids like Samantha Power.

On the other side, Durban, and its supporters are beyond obsessed with one "rights" issue - Israel. They represent the worst kind of anti-freedom of thought, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism in the world today. The organizing counties of Durban reads like a who's who of dictators and fascists. The anti-racism conference run by racists.

So what will it be? Who will we side with? And don't give me that "we need to go to talk to them" crap - Durban's outcome is pre-ordained - screams that Israel is a racist Nazi State, whispers about Darfur, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Egypt, etc... We're either going to be part of it, or we're not. Period.

If you say no, you earn my appreciation and my deep respect for your moral courage. If yes, you are either without morals or spine, or both, and I will work tirelessly for your defeat in 2012.

What's it going to be, President Obama?

Where to start?

If the past few weeks was Team Obama's driving test, the best I can say is that while they ran quite a few lights and rolled through most of the stop signs, they probably didn't kill all that many pedestrians.

Notwithstanding the MSM's comical "best transition, ever!" calls, what a disaster, on nearly all fronts. Here's just a few of the moving violations:

1. Competence - One tax slacker I could live with. But two? Three? Maybe a process of elimination would work better? Who DID pay taxes? Either Obama's vetting team is channeling Brownie, or their bosses learned ethics at Chicago's Capone charm school. One or the other. Take your pick. Either way, it's not pretty.

2. Leadership by Footnote - We will not torture¹. There will be no rendition². We're closing Gitmo³.

(Notes: 1: See classified annex to new rules for exceptions. 2. Unless we receive "assurances" (ie from the Saudis, Egyptians, et al) that those rendered will not be tortured. 3. It's a complex issue that might take a while. See, the Yemenis aren't cooperating...)

3. Spendulous - "There will be no earmarks in my administration!" Seems he appointed Nancy Pelosi to enforce that promise... the result? The most porkulicious spending bill... ever. Top to bottom, every single fear I have about handing the national checkbook over to the Democratic party come true. Yikes.

4. Standards - "No lobbyists in my administration!" Do I need to finish the thought? Or can you figure out how this one ends? Hint - the pledge lasted a full 3 days. And the 2010 census? Moving to the White House. No politicizing constitutional duties (of the Commerce Department) here... move along.. .nothing to see.

5. Demeanor - Perhaps the most disappointing and potentially damaging realization of the past several weeks is just how aloof and even arrogant the new President is in office. Neither he nor his Press Secretary can stand actual questions from reporters, rare as they are these days. Like his predecessor, he seems to have no problem question the patriotism of his political opponents. And his tonal acuity seems all too similar - eating fancy waygu steaks in DC while people froze in Kentucky for a week.

Its early, and I fully expect Team Obama to get much better. I hope they do... to quote Carl the assistant greens keeper: "I'd keep playing. I don't think the heavy stuff's gonna come down for quite some time now."

Back in business Haiku

Quite a fix-it week
PC keyboard then washer
World's handiest Jew!

Haiku!

My space-bar's broken
Makes blogging impossible
I hate Lenovo

Coach vs First

Modest Proposals in the Age of Obama

From the always excellent VDH:

Modest Proposals in the Age of Obama

1. If you are a green environmentalist, an advocate for sustainable energy, a critic of global warming, then just one caveat: please live in a house of no more than 3,000 sq. feet—a comfortable, roomy home that does not guzzle the energy of a larger and more lavish reflection of your success. Do not emulate Al Gore or so many in New York and DC or those who write impassioned columns about wasteful, pampered, and affluent Americans, who all live one way in palatial splendor, but write and hector others in quite another populist fashion.

2. If you are an egalitarian, a strong believer that merit, not class, not status, not birth or money should adjudicate success, then do not approve of the selection of Caroline Kennedy as the Senator from New York. Her appointment is at odds with all that you preach about race and class and gender equity, and is a throwback to the 19th-century aristocratic sensibility, in which a name, or a finishing school, or a pot of money, or strong patrons ensured your future. All that is fine perhaps for the refined private sector, but if you are an egalitarian, a modern liberal, progressive in thought and spirit, then you simply cannot promote Ms. Kennedy, who has no experience, no record of consistent public participation, no skill in speaking or writing, no knowledge of the issues, not anything really other than money, a name, and powerful friends. She is the spiritual successor of the powdered wigs at Versailles, not the reflection of the party of the American demos.

3. If you are a populist, a critic of rich white people who throw big parties and who spend over a $1,000 on their evening clothes (we remember the pirated videos of those corporate Bacchanalia and You-tube shots of the modern equivalents to Petronius’s Cena Trimalchionis among Ken-Lay elites), who use the monies of others to host celebrations while still others less fortunate suffer, then express a modest word of rebuke, just one for the richest, most expensive inauguration extravaganza in our collective history—and all during a time of severe recession.

4. If you are a civil libertarian, if you are in the ACLU or a law professor, or a liberal in good standing who swore that George Bush from Texas, with strut and twang and mangled vocabulary, destroyed your liberties with FISA, with the Patriot Act, and with Iraq, then please extend that outrage to Barack Obama, for whom all such shredding of the Constitution suddenly has become merely complex and problematic rather than fascistic. Please list, cite, name just one instance from 2002-8 in which you lost your freedom, or you were censored on the library internet, or you were followed around by the FBI, or your letter to the editor earned a wiretap, or even one instance of the loss of any freedom under Bush—and if so, just one example of how the election of Obama has once again restored your lost liberty. Nothing in the abstract, please—something concrete, an example both real and personal.

5. If you are outraged at Israel, really mad at the violence in Gaza and the tactics of the IDF and the killing of civilians, and if you have felt real anger at the Jews for their treatment of the Palestinians, then, please, one additional word of rebuke for the killers within Hamas, who are scouring Gaza for suspected Fatah and Palestinian Authority members—torturing, maiming, and shooting them without trials and often without cause. Just one picture of an IDF conscript pulling out a Palestinian and kneecapping him would bring global outrage, in a way an Hamas killer doing the same to a fellow Palestinian does not. And if that makes no impression, then please post outrage about Grozny or occupied Tibet or divided Cyprus, and do so with a simple rule: each time I curse Israeli for killing hundreds, I curse Russia for killing thousands of Muslims in Chechnya; each time I damn Israel for taking land, I damn China for swallowing an entire Tibet; and each time I say no to occupation, I say no to the Turks who gobbled up so much of Cyprus in 1974.

Haikus!

Byrd calls the waiter
Told he's the new President
Promptly has a stroke

Continuity
The shredded Constitution
Never really was

Bully for Barack
Civil rights rock. Don't forget
Gays and Lesbians

Un-conscience

Bill Moyers, apparently vying for the title of "the conscience of Hamas" exposed himself last week for what he is: a moral preener living in safety and luxury who demands perfection in all acts of self-defense from the open, pluralistic society while standing mute in the face of constant acts of terror by the state run by fascist religious zealots.

In closing remarks to his Jan 10 show, he manages to raise his moral equivalence bar several notches, repeats without proof half-a-dozen anti-Israel slurs as if reading directly from the IRNA wire, single-handedly rejuvenates the pseudo-science of racial genetics, and even finds time to lecture us on the Biblical imperative operating today between Israel and Hamas - all in about 5 minutes.

Here's a bit of his "analysis:"

What we are seeing in Gaza is the latest battle in the oldest family quarrel on record. Open your Bible: the sons of the patriarch Abraham become Arab and Jew. Go to the Book of Deuteronomy. When the ancient Israelites entered Canaan their leaders urged violence against its inhabitants. The very Moses who had brought down the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" now proclaimed, "You must destroy completely all the places where the nations have served their gods. You must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, cut down their sacred poles, set fire to the carved images of their gods, and wipe out their name from that place."

So God-soaked violence became genetically coded.

Seems he's not just a "journalist," he's a "scientist" too.

Luckily, there are people like my friend David S who are willing and able to take on the likes of Mr. Moyers. Well to the left of me, he's a thinking, articulate Liberal and proud of it. He sees this "debate" not as left vs right, but for what it really is - fact vs fiction.

His rebuttal follows.

Dear Bill Moyers:

It is not only that you got it wrong in your January 9th commentary on the conflict in Gaza, but just how significantly and offensively you got it wrong.

You accuse Israel of "state terrorism," thus violating the very meaning of "terrorism," which connotes the *deliberate* targeting of civilians for death or serious injury. As you know, or should, Hamas' 6,000-8,000 rockets fired into Israel over the past 8 years have always targeted civilians; Israel's incursion into Gaza, while tragically costing many civilian lives -- in part because Hamas has embedded itself in the densest civilian population -- never has deliberately targeted civilians.

You offensively suggest the nonsense that violence in the Middle East is somehow "genetically coded," an inappropriate and unwarranted slur on both Muslims and Jews, and a revival of the hoariest anti-Semitic perspective that the Jews are a "race" and that their actions are somehow "in the blood." Please. There is nothing whatsoever genetic about the current conflict in Gaza. Rather, a particular terrorist group, Hamas, refuses to recognize Israel's existence and, to apply physical and psychological warfare against Israel's people, fires rockets against them. In return, a particular Jewish state, Israel, defends itself. As you have badly misused the word "terrorism," so have you badly misused the word "genetic."

You quote an unnamed, un-sourced Norwegian doctor to the effect that "They [Israel] are bombing one and a half million people in a cage." Wrong on two counts: (1) Israel is not bombing 1.5 million people; it is bombing Hamas firing and command and control centers; 2) Gaza is not really a "cage." It has been governed by Hamas for over two years and its leaders, rather than develop the land and the economy, have chosen to wage war on Israeli civilians. This may be an inconvenient truth, but it is a truth that cannot and should not be skirted.

Still another way you get it wrong is in your misquoting and citing of the Bible. The commandment that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai in the Book of Exodus was not "Thou shalt not kill" -- if it were, the Jews would have been commanded to be pacifists -- but "Thou shalt not murder." And Moses' command about the Moabites in a war of well over 2,000 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with Israeli reprisals against Hamas in 2009.

I'm also curious who the unnamed "Jewish American activist" is claimed, in your words (undoubtedly not his or her) never to have seen "such blind and binding conformity" in the Jewish community. Only a person for whom the Jewish community is itself an abstraction -- who doesn't read its press or listen to the very diverse views of its leaders -- could make such a statement.

Your commentary last Friday made me and a great many other people lose respect for you. You've opined in way that's based on wrong information, a misuse of language, and that appeals to a "racial" views of both Jews and Muslims that is as wrongheaded as it is offensive to both peoples. I urge you to issue a clarification, and to think and study more about the particular situation in the Mideast, in all its irreducible complexity, before expressing your views again.

Sincerely,

David S

I'd call that a smack-down.

Another from Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, noted Holocaust scholar, author and lecturer, who uses the transcript as a "teachable moment:"

Dear Mr. Moyers:

I teach a course on antisemitism at Indiana University and today introduced the transcript of your last television program to my students. I did so in order to illustrate how the history of anti-Jewish accusations can still have a strong contemporary resonance. Your charge about violence being genetically coded, for instance, finds recognizable parallels with the rhetoric of Nazi racial antisemitism. In addition, the continuities that you seem to draw between biblical accounts of ancient Israel’s conquests and present-day Israeli military action in Gaza find a familiar place in the history of Christian anti-Judaism. No respectable historian today would make such a claim. I’ve watched your show over the years and never thought that anything you might say about the Jews would provide proof texts for the kind of course I am presently teaching. But, whatever your intentions, your words this past Friday evening are now indelibly part of the vocabulary of contemporary anti-Jewish defamation. I wish you would see fit to apologize for them and retract them.

Professor Alvin Rosenfeld

And finally, a letter from the father of murdered real journalist Daniel Pearl.

Dear Mr. Moyer:

I am the father of Daniel Pearl, a former member of your profession. My attention was called to remarks that you made on your last television program where you spoke about how violence is genetically encoded in the Jewish psyche. I would like to appear on your show and speak on behalf of my son, who was murdered by people of like-beliefs, and who cannot come himself to demonstrate to you personally what his DNA was made of and what decency and integrity in journalism is all about.

Please give me a chance to speak on his behalf; you have offended everything he stood for, and he deserves an equal time.

Sincerely

----------------
Dr. Judea Pearl
Daniel Pearl Foundation
www.danielpearl.org

A difference with no distinction

I feel privileged to have lived long enough to see the end of many of the prejudices rampant in our society. When I was in kindergarten in Nashville c.1962, separate drinking fountains for "whites and coloreds" were not at all out of the ordinary. By 2002 the Senate Majority Leader was forced from his post for suggesting that segregation was once a good idea.

The reality is that racism, though it undoubtedly still flourishes, has been relegated to the hush of private parlors. There simply are no places in Europe or America where it is "polite" to be openly racist in a public setting. It simply is not tolerated.

Sadly, I have now lived long enough to witness firsthand the lifting of almost all taboos against another prejudice, one with a history every bit as long and sad as racism - antisemitism. Almost like a mirror image of racism, antisemitism was not acceptable public dialogue when I was growing up. Like racism, it of course existed, but almost everywhere its practitioners were usually labeled as rubes, morons, or worse. When I was younger, I could only read about antisemitic mobs in history books, or old newsreels.

Today, I get to see it on the internet and cable TV every hour of every day.

When thousands march, be they in London, Miami, or Stockholm calling for "death to Jews," its so practiced, so usual, so accepted, that it hardly makes news. The media tells us its a "protest," as if somehow that absolves the perpetrators of all individual moral responsibility.

When I see demonstrators in Los Angeles calling for Jews to be "put in the ovens" I can't help but imagine a mob calling for black people to be "put back on slave ships." When I hear them decry the "genocide" in Gaza, I think: "how dare you besmerch the memory of a hundred million African slaves. Of the six million! The two million Rwandans! or the half-million in Darfur!" Allowing such talk is our way; accepting such a devaluation of the concept of genocide is unconcionable.

For years the media and many "thought leaders" of western society have tried for some time now to telll me that all of this is not antisemitism, "it's only anti-Israel," they bleet. Really? I challange each and every one of them to find me one anti-Israel protest where there are not openly antisemitic displays and chants. Just one.

But they cannot - because today, anti-Israel and antisemetic is a difference with no distinction.

Haikus!

Delusion defined
Feminists for Sharia
Gays support Hamas

We just bought a car
No taxpayer subsidies
Boycott the Big Three

Proportional war
New concept that applies to
Israel alone

Would I lie to you?

Would I lie to you? Would I lie to you honey?
Now would I say something that wasnt true?
Im asking you sugar Would I lie to you?



Not intentionally. It's just that Annie Lennox is an IDIOT.

Time for An Inconvenient Apology

This article is the first must-read for 2009.

You are probably wondering whether President-elect Obama owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming. The answer is, not yet. There is one person, however, who does. You have probably guessed his name: Al Gore.

Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.

The author then precedes to demolishes the "science is in" meme with a long, well documented list of refuted or scientifically obfuscated Gore-ist claims, including but in no way limited to:

1. First, the expression "climate change" itself is a redundancy, and contains a lie. Climate has always changed, and always will...

2. Mr. Gore has gone so far to discourage debate on climate as to refer to those who question his simplistic view of the atmosphere as "flat-Earthers." This, too, is right on target, except for one tiny detail. It is exactly the opposite of the truth...

3. What the alarmists now state is that past episodes of warming were not caused by C02 but amplified by it, which is debatable, for many reasons, but, more important, is a far cry from the version of events sold to the public by Mr. Gore...

4. This mechanism has never been shown to exist. Indeed, increased temperature leads to increased evaporation of the oceans, which leads to increased cloud cover (one cooling effect) and increased precipitation (a bigger cooling effect)...

Even more amazing? It's published in The Huffington Post!

The French Army Knife

Shear brilliance from Israel Matzav:

Fwance condemns Gaza operation

Earlier this evening, I reported that the EU issued a statement that it views the Gaza action as 'defensive.' I noted that this was because the Czech Republic took over from France on Thursday as President of the EU.

Israel Radio just announce that Fwance has condemned the Gaza operation.

This is what they would rather we do instead.

Dear Idiots

Israel rejects truce call, pursues bombing Gaza

Dear idiots at AP, and elsewhere: try looking up the definition of the word "truce" before using it to tar Israel.

TRUCE, intern. law. An agreement between belligerent parties, by which they mutually engage to forbear all acts of hostility against each other for some time, the war still continuing. Burlamaqui's N. & P. Law, part 4, c. 11, §1.

There was a truce between Hamas and Israel. Hamas never really ceased attacks on Israel during it, they only fired less rockets at civilian targets. A few weeks ago, they ended the truce and increased rocket fire on Israeli citizens. Israel went to war and attacked Hamas. At no time has Hamas agreed to stop its hostile acts against Israel, yet to listen to the press, everyone is calling for an immediate truce.

But Hamas does not want a truce, they want to keep firing missiles and destroy the "Zionist Entity." Only the useful idiots safely ensconced in London, Turtle Bay, and San Francisco are screaming for a truce.

Israel does not want a thing called a "truce" during which they are subjected to continued attacks and are prohibited from defending themselves. And, of course, one side laying down arms is not a truce at all.

So if what the AP and its friends, like Roseanne Barr, call a truce isn't really a truce at all, then what is it these people want from Israel?

Most would call it surrender. Look it up.

Disproportionate Response

"Disproportionate Response" sounds bad, like shooting someone who sneers at you. The phrase is always trotted out to tar the Israeli army when it exercises its duty to defend its citizens. The Palestinians shoot off rockets, called "little more than bottle rockets" by the media; Israel bombs a Hamas headquarters. The media and the anti-Israel crowd scream in unison: Disproportionate!! Only the term, as applied in International Law, has nothing to do with such tit-for-tat.

Disproportionate Response refers only to the military value of the target, not the size or nature of the attack or even what did, or did not, provoke it. A missile fired on Sderot that provokes a response is only disproportionate if the target is not a military one. In fact, it has nothing to do with the size of the attack on Sderot at all, only on the response. If the Israelis dropped napalm on ten square blocks of Gaza City, that would be disproportionate. If they targeted Hamas headquarters, it is most certainly not disproportionate - even if they used 1000 times the number of bombs and even if civilians were killed because the HQ was located in an urban area.

Forget the provocation - its irrelevant. Israel attacked Hamas, destroying much of its infrastructure. She did not indiscriminately bomb civilians. Some innocent Palestinians died, but these deaths are clearly, by international law, the fault of Hamas for locating its bases in urban areas. Where's the disproportion in any Israeli action, when correctly judged by the standards of International Law?

These are simple and fair concepts, aren't they? Too bad the UN, The EU, and most of the rest of the world can't seem to grasp them.

International Law Review

From the source, here's a little preemptive reading of International Law to counteract the inevitable UN, EU, American Left, and Arab world calls for Israel to stop its "illegal" attacks on Hamas in Gaza.

Bottom line is simple: Hamas hiding behind civilians does not make Israeli military attacks illegal in any way, shape, or form. It is Hamas who is in violation of the International Agreements, not Israel.

Bold emphasis is mine.

Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. Geneva, 12 August 1949.

Art. 28. The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations.

Rules for the Limitation of the Dangers incurred by the Civilian Population in Time of War. ICRC, 1956

CHAPTER II : OBJECTIVES BARRED FROM ATTACK

Immunity of the civilian population

Art. 6. Attacks directed against the civilian population, as such, whether with the object of terrorizing it or for any other reason, are prohibited. This prohibition applies both to attacks on individuals and to those directed against groups.

In consequence, it is also forbidden to attack dwellings, installations or means of transport, which are for the exclusive use of, and occupied by, the civilian population.

Nevertheless, should members of the civilian population, Article 11 notwithstanding, be within or in close proximity to a military objective they must accept the risks resulting from an attack directed against that objective.

Art. 11. The Parties to the conflict shall, so far as possible, take all necessary steps to protect the civilian population subject to their authority from the dangers to which they would be exposed in an attack -- in particular by removing them from the vicinity of military objectives and from threatened areas. However, the rights conferred upon the population in the event of transfer or evacuation under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949 are expressly reserved.

Similarly, the Parties to the conflict shall, so far as possible, avoid the permanent presence of armed forces, military material, mobile military establishments or installations, in towns or other places with a large civilian population.

Idea of the year

The first great capitalist idea in months...

Credit Suisse has a fine idea:


Credit Suisse announced today that bonuses for its top executives would be made in illiquid, mortgage-backed securities. Seeing as these guys are responsible for getting this stuff on the companies books, it makes sense to shove it back to them. And if the market gets liquid again, and the stuff goes up, that's going to be a huge windfall for execs.


I'd like to see this idea spread. Maybe Congressmen could be paid in Freddie Mac paper and union officials in GM stock. The possibilities are endless!

lifted from Powerline

Thanks-f*ckin-giving at the Blagos

Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard finds the basement tapes the Feds left out of the indictment. A snippet:

On or about November 27, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH, his wife and daughters, and BLAGOJEVICH's chief of staff JOHN HARRIS ate Thanksgiving dinner together. BLAGOJEVICH's wife asked BLAGOJEVICH to "please pass the potatoes." BLAGOJEVICH asked what his wife was willing to give him for "the f---ing potatoes" because "these f---ing things aren't f---ing cheap." HARRIS said that BLAGOJEVICH's wife might donate $250,000 to Friends of Blagojevich in exchange for the potatoes. BLAGOJEVICH's wife said she thought that was a high price for a spoonful of mashed potatoes and asked BLAGOJEVICH to carve the turkey instead. BLAGOJEVICH said "What am I, your f---ing butler?" and reminded her that "I don't f---ing work for free." HARRIS asked BLAGOJEVICH to consider carving the turkey in exchange for a helping of BLAGOJEVICH's wife's cranberry sauce. BLAGOJEVICH said he "hated f---ing cranberry sauce, you stupid f--k," and reminded his wife that the "only reason we have this f---ing turkey in the first place" was because Senate Candidate 5 had personally delivered it to the BLAGOJEVICH residence that morning. BLAGOJEVICH's wife said BLAGOJEVICH could take Senate Candidate 5's turkey and "shove it up your a--." BLAGOJEVICH said she could have the turkey "but if you feel like you can do this and not f---ing give me anything, then I'll f---ing go." HARRIS volunteered to carve the turkey if BLAGOJEVICH did not want to and the group returned to eating in silence.

Turkey 1 has not been identified.

Lifted from Just One Minute

Everyone I know...

Common wisdom... in some circles:

"GM needs its own Prius to survive. Everyone I know wants one!"

"Bush could not have won. Everyone I know voted for Gore!

Now Congress wants to bail out GM. While that's stupid enough, what really scares me is all the talk of "fixing" the product line. Seems Nancy Pelosi and her pals think they have the silver bullet: force GM to build Hybrids. After all, everyone they know wants one, just like everyone they know voted for Gore...

She needs to get out more.

GM sales in 2007: 9,370,000 vehicles

Toyota sales in 2007: 9,366,418 vehicles

Clearly volume isn't the gating factor. Arguments like "If GM had the Prius, they'd be..." are like saying "If only Yahoo had invented Google they'd be..." If pigs had wings... GM failed because they cut bad labor deals and built a non-market-responsive infrastructure. Having the "wrong" cars isn't their problem. 3-40% higher labor costs and physical plant designed to make 14 million cars is.

The Toyota Prius is a fine automobile that costs a lot more than a comparable non-hybrid. A whole lot more. At least three grand more. Yet people buy them.

Many buy a Prius because of its branding as a "responsible" car to own. People pay premium dollars to belong to this elite "club." There is nothing remotely new about this kind of behavior - how you are perceived by your peers is "worth" a lot to a lot of people. On the economic side, buyers do a calculus to end up with an expected lifetime operating cost. That number is compared to the cost of a conventional car with similar features yielding, in theory, an informed buying decision. Here's where things get complicated. What is the future cost of gas? Obviously, it makes way more sense to shell out big bucks for a Prius is gas costs $4.50 than$1.25. Where is the break-even point?

How does $10/gallon sound?

Micro-economically, the Prius is a disaster. At $2.50 gas, it takes about 5 years to get to break even vs a Toyota Camry.

For those Americans with ample disposable income, Nancy's friends, the environmental and/or social aspects of Prius ownership may make the economics moot. But for the vast majority of Americans who live on the margin, from paycheck to paycheck, its a no brainer - buy the Camry.

Here's an idea for Congress: If you really want to save GM, reset the UAW contract to where its competitive with domestic Toyota, right-size production and fire 1/3 of the employees, and tar and feather the management team and the Board on their way out of town.

Here's another idea: If you really want to use less gas, stop trying to ram hybrids down consumers throats. End the CAFE nonsense. Instead, tax gas at the pump and watch everybody drive less, carpool more, demand fuel efficient cars, and use public transit. And we can use the public windfall to pay down debt, research new energy technologies, and help people transition. The icing on the cake? We send a whole lot less dollars to people who want to kill us.

(data via Carpe)

Coming this January

From The Beast

Blagojevich Haikus!

Vengeful and profane
What is thy name, oh scumbag?
Rod Blagojevich

Seems Candidate Five
Is like Client Number Nine
Only we're getting f*cked

Barak and Blago
Never spoke? Axel said did
[new feature - alternate endings!]
[Just a distraction]
[Not Blago I knew]
[How 'bout those White Sox]
[You are a racist!]

Nothing bad could possibly come from that

Representative (* see below) Richard J. Durbin talked to reporters after visiting workers occupying the Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago on Monday.

CHICAGO (NYT) — Illinois will no longer do business with Bank of America until the bank restores credit to the shuttered factory here where workers are continuing their sit-in, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich announced Monday.

Executives at the plant, Republic Windows and Doors, which is on the city’s North Side, have said they need the restoration of their line of credit, which the bank canceled last week, to enable them to pay workers severance and vacation time owed to them.

I've closed down several businesses. It's no fun for anyone. But you do it because it's part of the risk/reward equation - when you win as a business, owners get overpaid; when it fails and you have to close, they get underpaid. All I know is that there is a rule you just don't cross: pay the payroll taxes. If you don't, you go to jail. Everyone knows that. But vacation? Severance? I'm not sure. If it is not a legal obligation, then the management are simply scumbags for running the cash balance down past the point where they could have an orderly close-down; taking care of their workers. But if it is the law, then the management AND the Board should all be liable for the expense... and should get tossed in jail. Companies close down all the time. People lose jobs. It happens. There are rules. Follow them.

Then there's the bank. B of A is in the business of making loans to people they think will pay them back. A few weeks ago, the Fed invested $25B in them in exchange for preferred shares. The deal had all sorts of restrictive convents but did not change management or dictate investment policy.

Loans get pulled all the time. Why is the bank the bad guy? What gives these politicians the right to demand that they lend to any specific borrower? And it's not just B of A. If this were a good thing for ANY bank to do, wouldn't there be some other bank out there waiting in line to lend Republic money? Why not boycott ALL banks that don't offer a credit line to the screen company? Who needs markets to allocate capital when The State does it for you?

This is nothing political demagoguery from the lowest rated, most corrupt governor in America, Illinois' own, Rod B.

Why, the next thing you know the government and unions are going to start pressuring lenders to extend lines of credit (often called "mortgages") to unqualified home buyers.

Nothing bad could possibly come from that.

[*ps to The Times: Newsflash! It's SENATOR Durbin... sheesh, with that kind of shoddy editing you'd think the Times was the bankrupt company...oh wait a minute... ]

Haiku!

My wife in the Times
I 'm so proud that she hated
The DaVinci Code

Quote/stat of the day

"It is the steady abuse of power in other governments which renders that of opposition always the popular party." --Thomas Jefferson

Total Democratic Presidential Votes Since 1932: 745,407,082 50.0037%

Total Republican Presidential Votes Since 1932: 745,297,123 49.9963%

via Instapundit

and now,for something completely different...

Swedish Dance Bands From the 70's!


Where's ABBA when you need 'em?

Form EZ-CASH

found at Carpe Diem

Ima, ima...

Two year old Moshe Holtzberg cries "Ima Ima," Hebrew for mommy, mommy, as his grand parents Yehodit and Shimon Rosenberg sit beside him during a memorial ceremony for Rivka (28) and Gavriel (29) killed at the Nariman House terrorist attack, at the Keneseth Eliyahoo synagogue on December 01, 2008 in Mumbai, India. (From JCI)


"... in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."

- Anne Frank

Bush's gift to Obama

President-elect Obama inherits a dangerous world - a world that still runs on oil, sourced from the most dangerous part of the world, the Mideast.

Despots and tyrants accumulate the fruits of the productive world's labor, spending on palaces and arms with no need to ever reflect on the needs of the people they pretend to govern. Glittering capitols that produce nothing and leave the common man with no hope and no future, save religion and the afterlife. Money flows in and oil ships out to all corners of the earth, the barrels full of black gold and Jihadi Islam.

In Darfur, Chechnya, Lebanon, Gaza, Twin Towers, Khobar, Mumbai, Somalia, Afghanistan, Bali, Madrid, London, Philippines, and a hundred other places we've never thought about, oil fueled Jihad spreads the worst of human misery to every corner of the globe. Innocents everywhere become victims, paying "blood for oil," just not in the way that the hard left bleats about.

What is Jihad? Simple, it is a formula for organizing society around an old, strict, radical interpretation of Islam. Who are their enemies? Anyone who does not share their old, strict, radical interpretation of Islam. What are their demands? That everyone convert to their old, strict, radical interpretation of Islam. It's hard to have a real argument about God.

But even as Western intelligentcia does linguistic and logical gymnastics looking for "root causes" behind Jihadi terror, even Nadia Comaneci isn't flexible enough to deny that the vast majority of riots, murders, terror attacks, and genocides of the past decade involves radical Muslims vs people who are not radical Muslims. It is also patently obvious that "concessions" to the Jihadists have produced nothing but more Jihad. Withdrawal from Lebanon, defending Bosnian Muslims, unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the list goes on, as does the Jihad.

Appeasement won't work. There's about as much a chance of getting a Jihadi to agree to stop trying to force non-believers to convert as there is getting a devout Catholic to agree that Mary's child was not of virgin birth. It's hard to negotiate about God.

So is there any hope? Is there anyone out there with even a plan to turn this human suffering machine - massive export of Jihad - around? The UN has no clue. There answer seems to be, in order, 1) talk, 2) blame the Jews, 3) repeat. The EU? Blame Israel. India? Blame Pakistan. China? Live with it and pass the oil. Anyone?

Enter Iraq.

While widely discredited, politically, after a long and often bungled war, the Iraq strategy is on the cusp of becoming a part of the solution. What makes this unique is that if the Iraqi experiment in consensual government actually takes hold, it will be the very first actual step ever taken to solve the Jihadi problem and the misery that comes with it.

The Iraq war was awful. All wars are awful. But imagine the world that Obama would have inherited with Sadaam in control of Iraq. Some say Sadaam would have "contained" Iran. Huh? How, by invading Kuwait? Isn't it more likely that he would have raced Iran to nuclear capability? And bullied the Saudis into joining that race? And like Syria, wouldn't (more) arms and money have flowed to Jihadis?

Ridding the world of scum like Sadaam is an act for which America deserves kudos, not moral posturing. Do I even need to recount his atrocities? I hope not. But the bigger prize has always been the establishment of an alternative way of organizing a society in the oil-rich heart of Islam. Democracy - bottom-up consensual governing - responsible to the will of the people.

Imagine the fear such a possibility strikes in the hearts of Jihadists and plain old despots? Hell, it strikes fear in the hearts of Euro-socialists and One-worlders.

This, President Obama, is the gift many thousands of brave American and allied soldiers, and George Bush, have left you - a long-term strategic solution to the most vexing problem confronting the world today. Yes, it's flawed. No, it isn't going to look like America when it's done, and no, it's not anywhere close to a done deal. But the democracy seed is planted.

Please, Mr. President-elect, don't squander the chance - in Iraq or in Afghanistan. Make the lives of the people in these places better, first by fighting for security then by fighting for democracy. By doing so, you are also improving the lot of millions of oppressed peoples because democratic states don't export hate.

Will it work? Would democracy and success in Iraq lead to its spreading to the whole region? Would Jihadi ideology look less attractive to the millions of disaffected? I think so. Thing is, to date, no one has proposed or tried anything else.

We are the targets

From Elder:

We are the targets

The world has been hearing a lot about "Islamophobia" in the past few years. Since 9/11, the Muslim community has been responding to every Islamic terror attack with statements cautioning the West to not succumb to this terrible disease of Islamophobia, often elevating its heinousness to a par with the terror attacks themselves.

However, while there is undoubtedly some discrimination against and fear of Muslims in the West, they do not live their lives as targets.

A Muslim can walk down the street in New York, Mississippi, London, Rome or Moscow, in full Muslim clothing, without any fear of being attacked because he or she is a Muslim. He does not have to worry that he will be in a hostage situation where someone will take his passport and single him out for death because of his name or nationality.

They might have to worry about getting certain kinds of jobs or being looked at funny. But they do not have to fear for their lives.

In Mumbai, the targets were clear: Americans, British, Israelis and Jews. The terrorists went out of their way to target these groups; months of research into targets that would maximize their damage to these groups and their own actions during the attacks prove this.

Islamophobia is a joke compared to the real fear that Westerners have in many countries worldwide for their very lives. The entire purpose of terror is to instill just this kind of fear. And the terrorists have made their targets clear.

To talk about "Islamophobia" as if it is a real, pressing, worldwide concern is not just deceptive - it is a conscious effort to minimize and deflect from the Islamic terrorism which is the real plague that needs to be eradicated. If the terror stops, the relatively small amount of discrimination against Islam will stop as well. The people pretending that "Islamophobia" is a major concern are part of the problem.

NYT insults the murdered

From today's NYT on-line front page:

Brooklyn Couple Killed in Attacks By LIZ ROBBINS and JACK HEALY

...It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene...

If Liz and Jack and The Times really think that there is any possibility that the Mumbai Jewish Centre was an "accidental" target then they need to get another line of work, right after they apologize.

Way, way too many innocent bystanders were killed by the terrorists simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But others, like Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, were murdered because of who they were and what they believed. They were Jews, and they, along with 4 other men, women, and children, were targeted and murdered in cold blood because they were Jews. Chabad House was targeted by the Jihadists specifically because the killers knew there would be Jews there.

How can any reporter not trapped in a cave for the past two decades possibly reach any other conclusion? How can a credible newspaper? Is this in any way a controversial conclusion?

No, this isn't just bad editing, and it's not just political correctness run amok, it's disgusting, and an insult to the memories of all the murdered souls.

Just one question

The (mostly) guys that run America's big public corporations are paid staggering amounts of money - over $8,00,000 a year on average. I have just one question: other than being caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy, what, exactly, does a Wall Street or Detroit CEO have to do to get fired?

Lose $12 billion last year, like Ford? Have $300 billion of assets turn into financial jello, like CitiCorp? Nope. Apparently, even this kind of titanic, mind-boggling fuck-up doesn't ring the "throw the bums out" bell in the board room these days.

"But the Board is responsible for hiring and firing the CEO," you might say. Right. Boards are bought and sold like Chicago Aldermen, with juicy stock options and huge stipends rather than brown paper sacks of cash. Wait, come to think of it, I think some Board members now get sacks of cash too.

"If all else fails, we can always can the board, right? We can call a vote of shareholders, one share, one vote - democracy, right?"

Wrong. In the real world, boards and management use company funds to re-elect themselves. Yes, we retain the illusion of corporate democracy - we can vote for whomever we want - but only for those put on the ballot by... management. If shareholder want to run an alternate slate to the incumbents, they can - provided that they have vast resources to win against a machine fueled by the unlimited resources of the very entity they own and have the right to control. How many proxy fights actually succeed? Almost none - only billionaires can afford to wage them.

The result is that corporations are effectively unanswerable to the shareholders, and CEOs collect stratospheric compensation in consequence-free environments. As long as the boards and the management happen to be talented and motivated, it can work with the efficiency of a benign dictatorship. But if they are less than stellar, of fail to change with the times, there is nothing to stop the slow bleeding of cash until the inevitable death by Chapter 7.

When you bought a share of a public corporation, you were supposed to become part of a mini-democracy where you elect a board that names a CEO to work in the best interests of all the stakeholders. What a joke. Today's big-time corporate democracy is about as fair and well-meaning as a Zimbabwe election.

And that, my friends, is the real crisis of today. Corporate governance is broken. Sounds like some unpublished Orwell novel, doesn't it? It's corporate America, c. 2008.

Email from a VC friend

"The government backs up to $300 billion of bad CitiCorp assets AND puts in$ 20 billion AFTER putting in $25 billion.....and gets only 7 percent of the company??? Any sane third party would have crushed the shareholders to zero."

Fun fact: Citi's largest shareholder?

(wait for it...)

Prince Al-Walid of Saudi Arabia!

Moronic Bailout Move of the Day

Big Three CEOs Flew Private Jets to Plead for Public Funds

Haikus!

You broke my heart, Ford
Time for a rowboat ride like
Fredo Corleone

Hillary for State
Betrayed rage on Daily Kos
Daily Show show is saved

Decade of stock fraud
Convictions by SEC?
Martha Stewart? Oh please!

More Price Gouging at the Pump

Please join me in support for poor, beleaguered gas station owners, the victims of unconscionable price gouging by ruthless consumers who are taking advantage of market conditions to reduce their demand for gasoline, driving down the price by nearly $2 per gallon over the last four months. Fortunately, governments are swinging into action. Georgia governor Sonny Perdue issued this statement: “The financial crisis has disrupted the consumption of gasoline, which will have an effect on prices. However, we expect the prices that Georgian gasoline station owners receive at the pump to be in line with changes in consumers’ incomes and the prices of substitutes and complements. We will not tolerate consumers taking advantage of Georgian business owners during a time of emergency.”

From Peter Klein at the Organizations and Markets blog.

You can have my answer now...

As part of his plan to bailout the Big Three, Harry Reid, D-Nevada, is insisting on:

"...including a ban on bonuses for employees who make more than $200,000 a year..."

I assume he is adding this extraordinary measure because he thinks the management teams at Ford, GM, and Chrysler are overpaid.

Surprise, I agree.

Sales declines, check. Profit plunge, check. Making bad deals with labor and other suppliers, double check. Stock price? Pass the microscope. Clearly, these guys blew it. So what is the optimal level of pay? Ten million? Ha! One million per year? No way. $200k? For doing exactly what?

What makes real-world sense? For this, perhaps Senator Reid should just wait for the opinion of noted management expert Michael Corleone. Of course, in Godfather II Michael was answering the query of a sleazy, fictional Senator representing Nevada, whereas in real life, Reid... oh, never mind.

"Uh, senator -- you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this -- nothing."

Either way, the answer is the same. The problem isn't that Detroit's executives are overpaid - the problem is that they are not unemployed.

Associated Press: making the tough calls

Forecasters: tough road ahead for the economy

Newsies

What follows is about the New York Times but it could have been about almost any national newspaper. My assertion that the Times is a left-pandering paper (as opposed to a right-pandering one) isn't relevant to the argument. If it bothers you, flip the politics and insert "Washington Times" wherever I name the paper.

Ken Anderson over at Pajamas asks an important question:

... the fundamental question is not whether one should read the New York Times. The question is whether (forgetting about the incontrovertible fact that it’s expensive on paper and free online) one should ever pay for it.

The answer has little to do with your political leanings. What the Times is becoming, is a magazine, offering opinion rather than fact. I don't expect partisan readers to agree with me on this - and that's the Times' problem - it panders to the political views of its core readers, the intellectual left.

Take this Times headline, found via JWF:

Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage

Is this factual reporting or fanciful pandering? Read the story - not a word about the overwhelming African American vote (2:1) for Prop 8. Not a word about the historic surge of black voting that swept Obama to victory. Yes, Mormons were for the ban, but is this headline news or is it dogma? But that's not really the point. This headline was not on the Opinion page, it was top-of-the-fold on Politics. This is no isolated example, it is what the Time is all about - opinion packaged as news reflecting the opinions it's readers want to hear.

I am a-ok with that. A free press is vital to the democratic process. But it does create an economic dislocation. Why? Because press consumers - on either side of the great political rift - assign materially different values to "news" depending on its character. Value drives pricing, and pricing drives business model. Business model determines viability. Anderson continues:

What’s the pricing issue, then? Facts are expensive. Opinion is cheap. And cocooning your elite audience in its own pre-formed emotional connections is cheapest of all. Facts are expensive to gather, produce, research, report — at least if they are new facts, or facts not already in the stream of discourse. That should have been the Times’ competitive advantage, as Glenn Reynolds and other new media types have said to the deaf MSM ears for years. New facts are worth paying for. By the time facts have entered the stream of written opinion, they have already been discounted to practically zero. Especially in competition with the Web, where so many bloggers write pretty well, thank you, and for free; opinion is not a value added product. Opinionification is commodification, and commodity pricing will not pay the rent in Manhattan.

So where does this all go? Look at the chart below (from before the big meltdown - is now at 7) Can you spot the trend?

The routinely sensible Times’ media columnist, David Carr, notes that more than 90 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenues still “derives from the print product.” A single newspaper ad in the printed newspaper might pay “many thousands of dollars,” whereas the equivalent online ad might bring in a mere “$20 for each 1,000 customers who sees it.” The online advertising revenue stream won’t support the print product, including all the reporters, editors, (supposed) fact checkers, and assorted staff that one might need if producing a newspaper based around facts. The easy conclusion, of course, is that a newspaper that is actually a magazine doesn’t really need all those people, and that is clearly the conclusion that the Times has reached, at least as far as the long term is concerned.

An on-line ad revenue model. What does this really mean? The Times strives to become... The Huffington Post?

And that really sucks. The Times, and scores of other "real" papers deliver a vital service - news. Critical thinkers need facts - they can draw their own conclusions. Cheer leading is just dandy for sports, not so much for the real world.

Were I a New York Times reporter — and there still are reporters, such as those on the Times’ business pages who have done a genuinely magnificent job reporting on the crisis, so long as it does not involve reporting on Frank, Schumer, Dodd, or Obama — I’d consider slitting my wrists with a rusty spoon rather than cuddle up online for a group hug with my readership. Read Judith Warner and you can see the future of the Times as the Times understands itself. The Times is a facilitator of elite onanism, convener of the elite circle jerk.

I still pay the Times $29.95 per year for on-line access to unique content. There still are parts of the beast worth forking over real cash for. Parts that are based on hard work and good editing. That challenge the reader to think yet are based solely on researched facts, not smarty-pants opinions. That would be the crossword puzzles.

Ironic Bailout headline of the day

WSJ: AIG Uses Bailout Funds to Sue IRS for $329m Tax Refund

From Tax Prof

Sweet

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators." - - P. J. O'Rourke

WASHINGTON – Congressional Democrats are pushing legislation to send $25 billion in emergency loans to the beleaguered auto industry in exchange for a government ownership stake in the Big Three car companies.

But is it a loan, stock buy, or a subsidy? Here's how to tell. If you, Mr and Ms Taxpayer, wouldn't put your own money, your 401K or your IRA in GM stock at $3/share right now, than it's not a buy or o loan, end of story. Assuming you have an ounce of sense, we can move on and analyze this mess for what it is,

Sweet, another governmental subsidy.

Labor cost Detroit, or rather the purchasers of Detroit's cars, 52% more than it costs the buyers of Nagoya's. $73 vs $48. What more can anyone say? 52%: There's broken, then there's broken.

Sweet, massively overpaid workforce.

We can say that $25,000,000,000 is a whole boatload of money. Just for perspective, there are about 100,000,000 US tax payers, so that works out to $2,500 per tax payer. Two brand new Macs, a trip to Cancun, eight cases of really nice wine, or in-state college tuition for Junior - not chump change. And what is Detroit going to do with the our money? Spend it. On million dollar salaries for its executives, but mostly on UAW labor - on making up that 52% disadvantage.

Sweet. Not only does Detroit make shitty cars, now everyone gets to subsidize them.

There are, in very rough terms, 500,000 Big Three auto workers. Since labor is roughly 50% of auto costs, we can think of this loan as the 99,500,000 American taxpayers writing out half-a-million $25,000 checks to domestic auto workers and their bosses. Since the average household earns$50,000 per year and, by coincidence, the average Ford worker makes $50,000 per year (before overtime) this wealth transfer isn't "class warfare," its just the more productive workers forking it over to the less productive ones.

Sweet, let's subsidize vacuum tube production too.

To what end? Seriously, anyone who thinks that this subsidy is all it's going to take to get Detroit "over the hump' needs electro-shock therapy. What, over the next two years are Toyota's labor costs going to spike 53% and make GM competitive again? Is the ghost of Ransom Olds going to materialize in Flint, wave a magic wrench, and poof, re-tool the assembly lines to meet dynamic market needs?

Sweet, a band-aid on a festering sore.

Up to now, who has paid of Detroit's blunders? The shareholders of Ford, GM and Chrysler, that's who. The people who risked money to make money. The people (mostly their pension and IRA funds) who paid $50 for GM shares now trading at 3. If Washington gets their way, who's going to pay going forward? You and me.

Sweet - privatized reward, socialized risk.

Obviously, its more complex than I am presenting here. While it sounds like I "blame" the workers, I do not. Workers, like those they work for, try to maximize their lot - but it is management that ultimately says yes, or no. Management said yes to the UAW too much, and now, their cost structure is completely out of whack. Keeping cost structures in whack is exactly what management is supposed to to - its why they earn the big bucks when it all works - and why they are to blame when it doesn't.

Sweet, self-inflicted fatal wounds.

Here's an idea - I'll buy a Prius, an Audi, or an Outback, Uncle Sam can spend a few billion retraining most of those 500,000 auto workers, and together, we can put the entire management team of the Big Three out to pasture.

"It is not the employer who pays the wages; he only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages." - - Henry Ford

Sweet irony.

(graph from Carpe Diem)

Surfin' USA

A must-read article by Camille Paglia "Obama Surfs Through." The money paragraphs:

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.
(...)

And why has Obama not made his university records or thesis work widely available? The passivity of the press toward Bush administration propaganda about weapons of mass destruction led the nation into the costly blunder of the Iraq war. We don't need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling. I deeply admire Obama, but as a voter I don't like feeling gamed or played.

Right-on! Simply brilliant. Read the whole thing.

The L-shaped recession

From the WSJ

Ailing mall owner General Growth Properties Inc. warned Monday in a government filing that its failure to refinance or extend $1 billion in debt due this month could trigger default on billions of dollars in debt and its ability to continue operations would be in "substantial doubt.

This is going to be a long and excruciating recession; like playing that kids game where you pull blocks from a wooden tower hoping the whole thing doesn't collapse on you. Housing was first, now its commercial real estate. Can auto and credit card debt be far behind? Anyone want to bet on farm debt?

I hope that whoever Obama taps for his economic team (ps: can you do it like, now!) understands that this is not your run-of-the-mill demand-driven recession. It is not so much a buyer's strike as a lender's walk-out. As such, conventional fixes, like stimulus, and conventional thinking, like "prime the pump" are unlikely to have much long term impact.

Credit is what drives a modern economy, not demand.

Most people think of credit in terms of borrowing - using the VISA card or getting a mortgage to buy a home. That alone is a big chunk of the economy - but no where near all of it. Think of it this way, when you go to the store and buy a box of cereal for $4, you are in a very real sense, paying off someone's $3.75 loan. How?

Goods and services are produced "on the come," they have to be paid for by producers before they can be sold to consumers. The farmer growing the corn had to buy seed, fertilizer, (way too much) insecticide, and gas for his machinery. General Mills or Kellogg had to buy his corn, buy (way too much) sugar, some cardboard, and, of course, purchase (way too much) ad time on Saturday morning TV. All before you paid a dime.

How they do that? They borrow money. Everyone borrows money. That is the real credit cycle. And all the stimulus in the world isn't going to help them if they can't borrow money.

At the base of the borrowing chain are assets - the collateral for the loans that make everything possible. That base was increasingly full of real estate assets - mostly in derivative form like Freddie bonds - mortgages on houses when you boil it down. Mortgage defaults skyrocketed - asset values deflated - touching of a death spiral where lenders lost faith in collateral. Literally, no one knew what a mortgage was worth. And in finance-land, when you don't know what something is worth, you assume it's worth nothing. Worse still, lenders lost faith in their borrowers word about the make-up of their assets. Are any of them toxic mortgages? Again, if lenders don't know, they will assume everything is toxic.

So lenders stopped lending - to everyone.

What to do?

We need full and complete transparency of assets. None of this "other assets" crap. Everyone comes clean. We have a Federal Accounting Standards Board. Get to work. I mean, seriously. If I applied for a loan and said I had "2 gold coins, $3 in cash, and about $91,256,000,000 in other stuff and things," would I get a loan? If I were AIG, apparently so. There is no excuse in this day and age for financial statement obfuscation.

Some assets are hard to value and that's why the Treasury should become a "market maker." Is a mortgage bond worth .10c or .90c? Have the Fed hold a "shotgun" auction. At first, the Fed may be the only bidder, but as time goes on, others will see them as a "floor" and prices will converge to reality. Properly done, this is no bailout. It is the government is buying assets below market in a panic. The very act of FED buying, at any price, ameliorates the "no price = zero price" death spiral.

Once we have a market for all assets, and once we have knowledge of what everyone holds, we can get something done. I favor taking a hard line on irresponsible borrowers - both those who overreached on homes with levered mortgages and those who overdid the derivative side of the market: Let' em fail. This recession will be long, with more layoffs, and more short term pain. But those who were more prudent, the better managers, people with more vision will move in to fill the economic voids left by those who overreached. It will be hell, but we will emerge much stronger if we let the weak die.

I just hope that as a nation we have the guts to solve the real problem rather than papering it over.

Unintentionally hilarious headline of the year

GM's stock falls 30% after analyst sets share-price target of $0

1938 Gallup Polls on Jew

From Volokh

1938 Gallup Polls on Jews.

Glenn notes that today is the 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht.

To remind you of US sentiment at the time, consider these Gallup Poll results from Nov. 22, 1938, nearly two weeks after that night.

Do you approve or disapprove of the Nazi's treatment ... Of Jews in Germany?

5.6% Approve
88.2% Disapprove
6.2% No Opinion

Should we allow a larger number of Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?

21.2 Yes
71.8% No
7.0% No Opinion

Though only 6% of the American public approve of German actions, only 21% favor taking in more Jewish exiles.

That may be because of the attitudes toward Jews revealed in this poll from earlier in 1938 (April 27):

Do you think the persecution of the Jews in Europe has been their own fault?

10.9% Entirely
54.0% Partly
35.1% Not at all

(After being asked: “Do you think there is likely to be a widespread campaign against the Jews in this country?”): Would you support such a campaign?

11.7% Yes
88.3% No

So in April 1938, 65% of Americans thought that the persecution of Jews in Europe had been partly or completely their own fault. And 12% would support “a widespread campaign against the Jews in this country.”

Never Again.

Let 'em dangle

My '04 Audi has 70k miles on it and the brake light comes on and a buzzer sounds every time I turn left. It's been a pretty good car - 20 mpg in the city, 28 on I-65. Solid, fast, and mostly dependable.

I want a new car. Something that gets better mileage but can still do 90 on the trip up to Chicago without the rivets popping. Prius is a possibility, though they seem just a tad flimsy to take on the semis on the Dan Ryan. And I have to admit the only real reason I'd get one is to bask in the cognitive dissonance after I put really right-wing bumper stickers on it and drove around campus.

The sad truth is that cars... suck. I want performance. I want features, I want style, and like almost everyone I know, I want mileage. I can't get it, particularly from domestic manufacturers, and neither can you. The sadder truth is... car makers suck.

Which brings us to fall, 2008 and the inevitable spectacle of Detroit CEOs prostrating themselves before DC, begging for a few billion alms for the poor. Yes, the same leaders, and I apologies for abusing that term, that burn about $2,000,000,000 a month as their assembly lines spew out unimaginative, follow-the-leader, low quality crap, want Uncle Sam, the American tax payer, to give them money.

No I say. Hell no. If ever an industry has earned the right to go out of business, surely it is the US auto makers. Re-invest in this team? In management with a mole-like vision, that finds itself in the technology age unable to re-tool in time units less than a decade? Saddled with a 50s distribution network and a hands-off, distant relationship with their customers? Not a penny for them.

And make no mistake, the bulk of the blame rests with management, not labor. Were unions short-sighted and greedy? Did they over-reach? Of course they did. But like every other input to production, it is and always was management's job to play the hand they're dealt. Heck, the Saudis are greedy too, and the steel companies, and every other supplier. Managing all that, labor included, is what management is supposed to do!

There's a technical term for enterprises who can't juggle all the pieces into longterm profits- it's called a failed business model.

The fact of the matter is that in a capitalist system, employment is a function of good management teams creating and operating successful business models. Labor will flow to jobs over time. Auto workers need to be retrained to meet the demands of industries with working models. Some will end up in a high-paying job at Microsoft, and a whole bunch will end up as greeters in a Wal-Mart. I think there is a legitimate role for government to play in Detroit - helping workers get re-trained and extending benefits, including education loans, to give them some runway to find new employment.

But, unfortunately, their high-paying jobs are gone and there will be hardships. The answer is not to artificially prop up the very people responsible for the disaster. It is to clean out the incompetents and get the competent to replace them. If America is to ever again lead the world in cars, if Americans are ever going to work in the auto industry again, it will be because a new generation of entrepreneurs invents a new business model that works.

It may sound daunting - re-inventing a whole industry - but it happens all the time these days, and with amazing speed. ITunes destroyed and re-invented the music business - in 2 years.

Trusting in American ingenuity means letting broken models die a natural death, knowing that somewhere out there are people with a better model waiting for an opportunity to get it right.

Bring back $4 gas!

DC is all atwitter about tax cuts. Great, I'm all for 'em. Everyone is all for 'em. Until we start seeing the 55-gallon drums of red ink they're going to need to print the deficit numbers next year.

Can I revive a thought, President Obama? How about we get serious fixing the real problem with our economy - imported oil.

Let's pay for the stimulus package through a tax on oil.

Yes, I know, gas prices will go up at the pump. Good. Do we really want $2 gas or do we really want alternate energy? At $2, we will kill off innovation on new sources - would an electric or fuel-cell or natural gas entrepreneur take more or less risk if gas were $2 or $4? And will people drive more or less? And since lower consumption means lower crude prices and less dollars to petro-thugs, are American interests better served with tax-induced $4 gas?

I hope the answers are blindingly obvious.

Yes, it is a tax. And yes, it does suck much needed cash out of the economy - but is sucks the cash into the US Treasury, not the Saudi's or the Iranian's. When oil money goes there, we lose all control. When it comes to our government, it can be re-deployed as stimulus.

Build some roads, fix some bridges, add some trains, cut capital gains taxes - whatever.

$2 gas is nice. $40 fill-ups beat $65 ones. I get it. But none of us here in America can really afford cheap gas. We need to use this window of opportunity to keep gas prices high, but on our terms. An oil tax means less money to our enemies, less consumption, more economic motivation for energy innovation. Higher pump prices are a lose, but one offset by a win, win, win.

The Police

Good cop (Barack), bad cop (Rahm)

Never again

Obama may well have won without without 78% Jewish support, up from Kerry's 74%, but it is infinitely better for the future of the US-Israel relationship that he won with us. At its best, the community didn't just help him win, it helped him understand the American context of the Israel issue. I thank the Pro-Israel Obama people (you know who you are!) for the gargantuan and winning effort you made on behalf of “the team.”

I also thank the pro-Israel Obama opposition. I know you (we) didn't get the answers you always wanted, but by asking the tough questions, you forced candidate Obama to hone his issue-knowledge and to take public stands on a much broader range of policy details than he would have in the absence of push-back.

Elections are war, and in battle, soldiers on both sides often do and say things they would never, ever do in peacetime. As far as I'm concerned, as of yesterday, the war ended and I wipe the political slate clean. I urge all factions - right, left, Obama, McCain - in the pro-Israel community to do the same.

What he did, who he hung with, and what he said he’d do – the past tense - is no longer relevant, the present and the future is what matters. What he does, and who he empowers from here forward: that’s all that matters now. A clean slate means that if he does smart things that enhance the US-Israel relationship, he gets kudos; dumb moves, he gets called out. As a candidate, it's all on the table. As President, deserves the benefit of the doubt - for a while. And please, no "I told you sos," what does that get us?

Now that the votes are counted, and the people have picked a new President, all of us in the pro-Israel movement need to take a second or two to reflect on just what we're really all about. It was never the Presidential race per se. It is about shared values, about the one country with those values that sits in the cross hairs of fascists and thugs.

It's all about never again.

The President-elect's Secret Service Detail

Me, Barack, and Eli. March 2, 2007 in Chicago.

Dance to your heart's content.

After way too many appetizers and a whole lot of channel surfing, I drove my son back to his apartment. An exceptionally warm and clear night, the main drag had the proverbial sidewalks rolled up - not a soul in sight. As we came closer to town, I heard a car horn and caught a glimpse of something moving in the lot of a closed gas station, $2.09/gallon, thank you very much, just ahead.

As we drove by, we both stared.

"Um, dad," my son said as a man did spins and jumps, pumping his fist at passing cars until they sounded their horn. "He's pretty happy." I honked our horn; we could see the unrestrained emotion on his face. "Dad, a black man is jumping for joy in the street."

At first we both laughed; it really was a funny scene - the first black President just got elected and here is a solitary black man dancing alone on a deserted street corner. But then something happened. To both of us.

"You know, it's actually kinda cool," my son said.

We covered several blocks as I thought about slavery, about Jim Crow, and about segregation. I tried to imagine how I would have felt if I had been alive when Louis Brandies became the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, never mind President. Then I spoke, "Yep. I'd dance too."

We laughed again.

On the way home I passed by the now abandoned gas station and it got me thinking about the importance of the moment. Clearly, it's a watershed, truly the final frontier, worthy of joyous celebration. But then it dawned on me. As great as this must be for African-Americans, doesn't ultimate equality come when blacks in American don't celebrate the election of someone just because they're black too? Wouldn't that represent the final victory?

Yes, it would.

But to get there, someone has to go first. And that first one is President-elect Barack Obama. Hopefully, someday, that happy dancer we met tonight, who ever he is, won't celebrate some future person's election just because they share the same skin color.

But that's for the future. For tonight, dance to your heart's content.

Is this a great country or what?

Live haiku-blogging election night!

9:38

Bush back to Crawford
Democrats own Washington
Our moms are happy

9:35

Who are big losers?
Very difficult four years
Colbert and John Stewart

9:31 (from earlier)

Up yours Euro-snobs
"Racist" America chose
A black President

9:28

Hats off to Barack
He ran a fantastic race
A deserving win


9:23

The race is over
It's time to come together
And fix what's broken

8:16

Keystone state goes blue
Here's what remains to be seen:
O win or blowout?

7:50 - GUEST Haiku from our Democratic friend Dave

To live in '08!
Dems, Reps. contend so fiercely.
Better man will win.

7:26

McCain: 8 to 3
Don't panic Dems, probably
As close as he'll get

6:50

About exit polls
Two words you should remember
Sampling error

6:34

First results from Maine
Obama two, McCain one
Where is the remote?

5:17

Which network to watch
MSNBC or Fox
What time is Stewart on?

5:08

Polls are all open
Chips, cheese, and wine are ready
We await returns

From this morning...

He can talk the talk
Now we will find out if he
Can he walk the walk

Bush was no fascist
Obama is no commie
Now take your Prozac

Meet the new boss...

Is calling a female political opponent "caribou Barbie" any less offensive than calling an African-American "Macaca?"

Last minute flooding of the voter registration system to swamp efforts at verification, and intentionally turning off credit card fraud protection - versus - voter suppression. Don't both aim to steal elections?

Obama pretends to be for campaign finance reform. Bush pretends to be a compassionate conservative. Discuss.

Democrats are uniformly in favor of government surveillance against a 15-minutes-of-fame-plumber-guy who's only potential "crime" is that he happens to be a Republican. Suspected terrorists? No so much.

After falling behind Fox, does MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NYT, LA Times, and CBS's uncritically echoing Obama talking points and calling it news put them in the lead in the blatant press bias race?

Admit it, isn't tossing reporters from papers that didn't endorse Obama off the press plane just a tiny bit Rovian?

Congratulations! Democrats are the new Republicans.

And Axelrod is the new Rove.

Look, I'm not trying to make a case against Obama or a case for McCain. Like I've been saying for some time, Obama may well turn out to be a good, even great President. Hopefully he's a pragmatic liberal Democrat who wants a second term so badly that he'll not stray too far from the center.

Yes, his campaign was full of ugliness and hypocrisies, but my point has never been that this, alone, disqualifies a candidate. On this score, he is no worse, but no better than what has come before.

So if you're voting for Barack because you think he will "reach across the aisle" or be some kind of "new kind of politician," or a "reformer," guess again. All that was and remains, a smoke screen. Reformer? Heck, more like a 1st ward alderman. Cue Paddy Bauler and dance a jig, "Chicago ain't ready for reform!"