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Nobel peace prize is Finni.
Martti Ahtisaari’s Nobel Peace Prize yesterday won’t get European elites buzzing as in past years (See: Gore, Al and Carter, Jimmy). In his diplomatic and political career, the former Finnish President brokered peace on various continents — yet also recognized clear limits to good intentions. …
Spengler explains why Israel is such a happy country.
Envy surrounds no country on Earth like the state of Israel, and with good reason: by objective measures, Israel is the happiest nation on Earth at the 60th anniversary of its founding. It is one of the wealthiest, freest and best-educated; and it enjoys a higher life expectancy than Germany or the Netherlands. But most remarkable is that Israelis appear to love life and hate death more than any other nation. If history is made not by rational design but by the demands of the human heart, as I argued last week , the light heart of the Israelis in face of continuous danger is a singularity worthy of a closer look.
Can it be a coincidence that this most ancient of nations, and the only nation persuaded that it was summoned into history for God’s service, consists of individuals who appear to love life more than any other people? As a simple index of life-preference, I plot the fertility rate versus the suicide rate of 35 industrial countries, that is, the proportion of people who choose to create new life against the proportion who choose to destroy their own. Israel stands alone, positioned in the upper-left-hand-quadrant, or life-loving, portion of the chart. Those who believe in Israel’s divine election might see a special grace reflected in its love of life. …
Mark Steyn is back from his hiatus. His subject is the shape of an Obama administration.
Speaking personally, I’m not looking for a messiah in the White House. My favorite presidential heritage site is the Coolidge homestead in Plymouth Notch, Vt.: I have seen the mausoleums of mighty kings, but none compares with the row of headstones on a snowbound hillside cemetery, seven generations of Coolidges lined up in a row, all buried under simple, bald granite markers with only an all but imperceptible small American eagle to distinguish the 30th president from his forebears and descendants. The American ideal: the citizen-president.
Or so I always assumed. But let’s be bipartisan here. If I were a Democrat, I’d salute Harry S. Truman, the Missouri haberdasher who … whoa, “haberdasher”! There’s a word you don’t hear too much nowadays, and, if you did, it’d probably be because the treasury secretary and the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee are on cable TV, standing on the steps of the Capitol announcing a 700 gazillion-dollar bipartisan haberdashery bailout package because the global haberdashery sector is too big to fail, and if we don’t act now there’ll be a massive planetary ripple effect that could take down ladies’ lingerie, if you’ll pardon the expression.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Citizen-presidents: Who needs ‘em? The day after the most-recent debate I bumped into two Obama supporters in St Johnsbury, Vt. They said isn’t it great that he’s on course to win. Well, they were cute chicks, and I know an obvious pick-up line when I hear one, so I stopped to chat. God Almighty, it was like reverse Viagra: After 10 minutes of Babes For Barack, I never want to meet a female woman of the opposite sex for the rest of my life. Their basic pitch was:
“How do you solve a problem? Like, Obama!
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” …
Michael Barone on the Obama thugs.
“I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.” Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people’s faces. They seem determined to shut people up.
That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign emails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program in Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama’s relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago — papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.
Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest emails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One. …
Charges in Canada against Mark Steyn have been dismissed says Mark Hemingway in the Corner.
But Mark doesn’t want to leave it at that.
… I sympathize with the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose mouthpiece feels that, if the British Columbia pseudo-judges had applied the logic of previous decisions, we’d have been found guilty. He’s right: Under the ludicrous British Columbia “Human Rights” Code, we are guilty. Which is why the Canadian Islamic Congress should appeal, and why I offered on the radio an hour ago to chip in a thousand bucks towards their costs.
Canada is having an election too. David Warren compares the two.
… Canadians who congratulate themselves for the comparative “niceness” of our election campaign, after glimpsing the nastiness of the presidential race to the south, are peculiarly out of touch with current realities. As Americans better realize — because they have no choice but to take their election seriously — this is no time for “nice.” There is far too much at stake.
With neither the McCain/Palin nor the Obama/Biden ticket, can Americans opt for “more of the same.” Touching everything from tax-and-spending, to core moral values, they have real issues before them. They know it; whereas, up here, what is there to know?
Alas, in the United States as here, the advance of “political correctness” has made a number of key issues undiscussable, except by the brave. But after years of prelude, the battle of the brave has now begun. It is a trial by ordeal for the candidates, but the job they are seeking requires it, and there is no question that should not be asked of the candidate for such a job.
I will be prouder of my country when our own elections get much nastier.
Bjørn Lomborg was in the London Times arguing for sensible global warming policies.
… Of course, we shouldn’t ignore global warming. But instead of trying to cut CO2 emissions, we should focus on dramatically increasing the funding into energy research and development. What matters is getting low-cost low-carbon technology available faster. If the price of renewable energy dropped below the cost of fossil fuels by mid-century, everyone – including China and India – would switch to the greener alternatives. Work done by the Copenhagen Consensus suggests that such a policy could be 300 times better for the world than the UK approach. We could end up doing more than £11 worth of good for each £1 invested. While we would do much more good in total terms, the cost would also be much lower, and hence much more likely to be implemented.
When it comes to climate, we have to come to our senses. Yes, global warming is real and caused by human beings, but it doesn’t mean we should panic in our policy decisions. We need to do the right thing – and invest in discovering and developing new low-carbon technology.
David Harsanyi asks,”Is it negativity or the truth?”
Most polls tell us that Americans have a tremendous aversion to negative campaigns. What these polls fail to explain is how Americans define “negative.” It probably goes something like this: any ugly or disparaging truth about my candidate.
So until those running for office begin to voluntarily divulge their own misdeeds, bad votes, devious dealings and shady alliances, negative ads remain advantageous for voters.
As the economic news — fairly or not — has provided Barack Obama the momentum this past month, John McCain has decided to bring the Illinois senator’s shady associations to the forefront. This promises to be spectacularly “negative” — and even somewhat true. But will it matter?
Former President Bill Clinton was recently asked by Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren: “What is the difference between an association with someone like David Duke and someone like Reverend [Jeremiah] Wright?” Clinton, as suave as they come, fumbled for a several moments, before he finally stating that “we don’t have to go there” and moved on to more comfortable environs.
The answer, of course, is, that anyone linked to Duke would never have been running for national office in the first place. …
Uninspired by the last debate, Samizdata commenter invents a drinking game.
Every time McCain says “My friends…” take a drink.
Every time Obama sidesteps a question in order to work Iraq into a question which was not asked…take a drink. …