Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

In the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick discusses Netanyahu’s upcoming White House visit in light of recent Obama actions.

The Democratic Party is feeling the heat for US President Barack Obama’s hostility towards Israel. In an interview with Channel 10 earlier this month, Democratic Party mega-donor Haim Saban characterized the Obama administration as ideologically aligned with the radical Left and harshly criticized its treatment of Israel.

Both Ma’ariv and Yediot Aharonot reported this week that Democratic congressmen and senators are deeply concerned that the administration’s harsh treatment of Israel has convinced many American Jews not to contribute to their campaigns or to the Democratic Party ahead of November 2’s mid-term elections. They also fear that American Jews will vote for Republican challengers in large numbers.

It is these concerns, rather than a decision to alter his positions on Israel specifically and the Middle East generally, that now drive Obama’s relentless courtship of the American Jewish community. His latest move in this sphere was his sudden invitation to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to visit him at the White House for a “warm reception” in front of television cameras next Tuesday.

It is clear that electoral worries rather than policy concerns are behind what the White House has described as a “charm offensive,” because since launching this offensive a few weeks ago, Obama not changed any of his policies towards Israel and the wider Middle East. In fact, he has ratcheted up these policies to Israel’s detriment. …

… AS PART of the administration’s attempt to woo American Jews back into the Democratic Party fold despite its anti-Israel policies, last week a group of pre-selected pro-Obama rabbis was invited to the White House for talks with Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and with Dan Shapiro and Dennis Ross, who hold the Palestinian and Iran dossiers on Obama’s National Security Council, respectively. According to a report of the meeting by Rabbi Jack Moline that has not been refuted by the White House, the three men told the Democratic rabbis that the administration has three priorities in the Middle East. First Obama seeks to isolate Iran. Second, he seeks to significantly reduce the US military presence in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq. And third, he seeks to resolve the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

These priorities are disturbing for a number of reasons. First, isolating Iran is not the same as preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. By characterizing its goal as “isolating” Iran, the administration makes clear that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is not its goal. Moreover, as Iran’s deal with Brazil and Turkey makes abundantly clear, Iran is not isolated. Indeed, its foreign relations have prospered since Obama took office.

In his write-up of the meeting, Moline indicated that Ross and Emanuel view Obama’s rejection of Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in Jerusalem as motivated by his goal of isolating Iran. So in the view of Obama’s Jewish advisers, his preferred method of isolating Iran is to attack Israel. …

Abe Greenwald has a surprising post about the aftermath of the Kuwait oil spill.

If it’s remotely possible, let’s inject some sanity into the oil leak that’s stopped the world from spinning. In 1991, as Saddam Hussein’s forces retreated from Kuwait, they dumped 8 million barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf. That still stands as the biggest oil spill in history. So, what were the lasting catastrophic effects? According to this New York Times article, written just two years later, there were none:

“The vast amount of oil that Iraqi occupation forces in Kuwait dumped into the Persian Gulf during the 1991 war did little long-term damage, international researchers say. …”

…Even if you take the highest estimates, the current spill would have to last for nearly a year before it did that kind of nonexistent ecological damage.

Mark Steyn discusses the arrogance of the governing class, who are mostly exempt from the misery they cause.

…Almost every problem we face today arises from the vanity of Big Government. Why has BP got oil wells 5,000 feet underwater in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico? Because government regulated them off-land, off-coast and ever deeper into the briny. … BP, not to mention its customers, would have been better to push back against government policies that drive energy suppliers into ever more unpredictable terrain in order to protect the Alaskan breeding grounds of the world’s largest mosquito herd. …

…It’s the same in Europe . Greece’s problem isn’t so very difficult to diagnose. Like many Western nations, its government has spent tomorrow today. As in New York and California, public-sector unions have looted the future. This is the entirely foreseeable consequence of government policy.

So what’s the solution? The international bailout (including a hefty contribution by U.S. taxpayers) is a massive subsidy to the Greeks to carry on doing all the stuff that’s got ‘em into their present mess. …

…The princelings of the new ruling class rarely have to live with the consequences of their narcissism. Nancy Pelosi can monkey with your health care, but hers will still be grand. Greek bureaucrats can regulate your business into the ground, but they’ll still have their pensions and benefits. …

Charles Krauthammer weighs in on the oil spill.

Here’s my question: Why were we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?

Many reasons, but this one goes unmentioned: Environmental chic has driven us out there. As production from the shallower Gulf of Mexico wells declines, we go deep (1,000 feet and more) and ultra deep (5,000 feet and more), in part because environmentalists have succeeded in rendering the Pacific and nearly all the Atlantic coast off-limits to oil production. (President Obama’s tentative, selective opening of some Atlantic and offshore Alaska sites is now dead.) And of course, in the safest of all places, on land, we’ve had a 30-year ban on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

So we go deep, ultra deep — to such a technological frontier that no precedent exists for the April 20 blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.

There will always be catastrophic oil spills. You make them as rare as humanly possible, but where would you rather have one: in the Gulf of Mexico, upon which thousands depend for their livelihood, or in the Arctic, where there are practically no people? All spills seriously damage wildlife. That’s a given. But why have we pushed the drilling from the barren to the populated, from the remote wilderness to a center of fishing, shipping, tourism and recreation?

Not that the environmentalists are the only ones to blame. Not by far. But it is odd that they’ve escaped any mention at all.

The other culprits are pretty obvious. It starts with BP, which seems not only to have had an amazing string of perfect-storm engineering lapses but no contingencies to deal with a catastrophic system failure. …

If you listen to Obama, you’ll hear that in the make-believe world of the pretend president, the BP spill could have been prevented if only the government was more involved. WSJ Editors have some thoughts.

… “I take responsibility,” President Obama said at his press conference yesterday—though responsibility for what? As he explained it, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was predominantly a failure of government, namely, the “scandalously close relationship between oil companies and the agency that regulates them.” Mr. Obama is referring to the Minerals Management Service, or MMS, and he claims the Administration had a plan to end this putative regulatory capture.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar “was in the process of making these reforms,” Mr. Obama continued. “But the point that I’m making is, is that, obviously, they weren’t happening fast enough. If they had been happening fast enough, this might have been caught.” In other words, this is really the fault of the Bush Administration, like everything else.

It would certainly be interesting to hear more details about this no doubt ambitious and unprecedented reform that no one knew anything about until this oil disaster. Mr. Obama made no mention of it when he announced in late March that new offshore areas would be opened to oil and gas development. …

In the New York Post, Charles Hurt comments on Obama’s faux responsibility.

…In a rare appearance before his adoring fans in the press corps yesterday, President Obama repeatedly took “full responsibility” for the blundering efforts to clog up the geyser of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico coating everything in sight.

At the same time, Obama repeatedly denied that his administration was complicit in allowing the catastrophe to happen in the first place, slow to realize the devastating nature of it, or ham-handed in the five-week effort to try to stem the toxic tide.  …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

This Memorial Day, we can pause and consider the following from Pickings March 1, 2090;

“Marine Private First Class Chance Phelps was killed in Rumadi, Iraq Good Friday 2004. Nine days later he was buried in Dubois, Wyoming. His escort home was Lt Col. Michael Strobl whose recollections formed the basis for an original HBO film Taking Chance which first aired in February 2009. Dorothy Rabinowitz reviewed the film for the WSJ.

It was impossible to imagine, beforehand, all the ways a film like “Taking Chance”  could work its power. There are no conflicts, no warring sides, no mysteries of character — the usual stuff of drama. The story’s outcome is clear from the beginning. Yet it’s no less clear that “Taking Chance” is not only high drama, but a kind that is, in the most literal way, breathtaking — watching parts of it can make breathing an effort, and those parts come at every turn. It’s no less obvious that this film, about a Marine killed in combat, could have gone wrong in all sorts of ways and did so in none of them. There is in this work, at once so crushing and exhilarating, not a false note.

The credit for that belongs to Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, U.S. Marine Corps, on whose journal the film is based; to producer, writer and director Ross Katz; and, not least, to Kevin Bacon, whose portrayal of the devoted Col. Strobl is a masterwork — flawless in its fierce economy, eloquent in its testimony, most of it wordless, to everything that is going on. …”

This year, 2010, there are four times you can watch this film on HBO over the weekend - Sunday May 30, 2010 at 11:30am on HBO2, 9:00pm on HBO. Memorial Day you can watch at 12:00am on HBOWest and at 4:30pm on HBO  Barack Obama diminishes himself by ignoring our success in Iraq. He would do well to watch this film. Perhaps he would come to understand some things about this country that, so far, have escaped his notice.

A Pickings reader sent a similar story from the point of view of an airline captain.

My lead flight attendant came to me and said, “We have an H.R. on this flight.” (H.R. stands for human remains.)

“Are they military?” I asked.

‘Yes’, she said.

‘Is there an escort?’ I asked.
‘Yes, I already assigned him a seat’.
‘Would you please tell him to come to the flight deck. You can board him early,” I said..

A short while later, a young army sergeant entered the flight deck.. He was the image of the perfectly dressed soldier. He introduced himself and I asked him about his soldier. The escorts of these fallen soldiers talk about them as if they are still alive and still with us. …

And on Memorial Day will the president be at the Tomb of the Unknowns? An answer from Contentions. Perhaps if there was a golf course at Arlington National Cemetery …

For someone who ran so successful a campaign, Barack Obama sure seems to have a tin ear for American politics.

How else can one explain his decision to take a vacation rather than attend the annual service at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington on Memorial Day? This will not bother his liberal friends, of course. David Corn asks, “does it matter if Obama throws some leaves on a tomb?” But it is likely to bother millions of average Americans — you know, the ones who cling to God and guns — and it powerfully reinforces Obama’s image as an American president who is fundamentally anti-American. …

Time to turn our attention to North Korea. David Warren is first.

… Perhaps the greatest tactical error in diplomacy is to make a threat you are not prepared to act on.

The Bush administration earned a reputation for being as good as its word, alas at the sacrifice of much public support. On North Korea, however, Bush was at a loss. But he didn’t make the kind of pointless threat we’ve now heard from the Hillary Clinton State Department: that it is mulling over punitive measures, all of which Pyongyang knows will be toothless.

The Obama administration has already squandered its predecessor’s legacy. In any paragraph of any Obama speech on foreign affairs, the reader will discover that the new policy is walk softly and throw away the big stick. The recent obscene display of joint anti-American crowing from the leaders of Brazil, Turkey, and Iran, is the sort of thing that could not have happened under previous U.S. administrations. It was a frightening harbinger of things to come.

The wilful naïveté reaches fatuous heights in the current U.S. demand that North Korea should find, try, and punish the perpetrators of the torpedo attack. Do they seriously expect the politburo in Pyongyang to put itself on trial for crimes against humanity? Don’t make them laugh.

South Korea’s government has taken several small steps to express its displeasure, and impose some modest costs on the murderers. It has withdrawn from several minor cooperative agreements with the North, and will resume propaganda radio broadcasts that were stopped as part of a previous paper agreement.

Pyongyang upped that ante yesterday, by theatrically severing relations with the South, thus sending Mrs Clinton into another begging frenzy towards Beijing.

A more effective response, from the West, would be to calmly allow that all previous agreements with Pyongyang are abrogated, and all negotiations concluded. Then, without eagerly consulting Beijing, silently but visibly build the allied military presence (including intelligence operations) in theatre. Instead of wondering what they will do next, let them wonder what we will.

The Times is next.

Something has snapped in Seoul. That something is the hope, clung to against abundant evidence to the contrary for most of the past two decades, that Kim Jong Il’s iniquitous regime could somehow be tamed by South Korea’s “sunshine policy” of aid and economic co-operation. The torpedo that sank the warship Cheonan in South Korean waters and sent 46 South Korean sailors to their deaths has shaken the country more than North Korea’s nuclear bomb-making, more than its testing of long-range missiles.

It is the lack of obvious motive for this unprovoked attack that has most rattled nerves. The order almost certainly came direct from the ailing “Dear Leader”, who was later seen promoting the military unit that carried out the attack. …

Ever wonder how Western governments got so broke, so fast? Mark Steyn has some thoughts.

Back in 2008, when I was fulminating against multiculturalism on a more or less weekly basis, a reader wrote to advise me to lighten up, on the grounds that “we’re rich enough to afford to be stupid.”

Two years later, we’re a lot less rich. In fact, many Western nations are, in any objective sense, insolvent. Hence last week’s column, on the EU’s decision to toss a trillion dollars into the great sucking maw of Greece’s public-sector kleptocracy. It no longer matters whether you’re intellectually in favour of European-style social democracy: simply as a practical matter, it’s unaffordable.

How did the Western world reach this point? Well, as my correspondent put it, we assumed that we were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid. In any advanced society, there will be a certain number of dysfunctional citizens either unable or unwilling to do what is necessary to support themselves and their dependents. What to do about such people? Ignore the problem? Attempt to fix it? The former nags at the liberal guilt complex, while the latter is way too much like hard work: the modern progressive has no urge to emulate those Victorian social reformers who tramped the streets of English provincial cities looking for fallen women to rescue. All he wants to do is ensure that the fallen women don’t fall anywhere near him.

So the easiest “solution” to the problem is to throw public money at it. You know how it is when you’re at the mall and someone rattles a collection box under your nose and you’re not sure where it’s going but it’s probably for Darfur or Rwanda or Hoogivsastan. Whatever. You’re dropping a buck or two in the tin for the privilege of not having to think about it. For the more ideologically committed, there’s always the awareness-raising rock concert: it’s something to do with Bono and debt forgiveness, whatever that means, but let’s face it, going to the park for eight hours of celebrity caterwauling beats having to wrap your head around Afro-Marxist economics. The modern welfare state operates on the same principle: since the Second World War, the hard-working middle classes have transferred historically unprecedented amounts of money to the unproductive sector in order not to have to think about it. But so what? We were rich enough that we could afford to be stupid.

That works for a while. …

Joel Kotkin thinks Houston points the way out.

Do cities have a future? Pessimists point to industrial-era holdovers like Detroit and Cleveland. Urban boosters point to dense, expensive cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco. Yet if you want to see successful 21st-century urbanism, hop on down to Houston and Texas, the Lone Star State.

You won’t be alone: Last year Houston added 141,000 residents, more than any region in the U.S. save the city’s similarly sprawling rival, Dallas-Fort Worth. Over the past decade Houston’s population has grown by 24%–five times the rate of San Francisco, Boston and New York. In that time it has attracted 244,000 new residents from other parts of the U.S., while older cities experienced high rates of out-migration. It is even catching up on foreign immigration, enjoying a rate comparable with New York’s and roughly 50% higher than that of Boston or Chicago.

So what does Houston have that these other cities lack? …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Many are making the case for the oil spill becoming Obama’s Katrina. Here’s Karl Rove expounding on the subject. It doesn’t seem fair to drop this on the kid president, but we suppose it is a healthy thing when people have growing understanding about the limits of government. Just like it was a good thing when Bill Clinton’s antics lowered respect for the political class.

… Initially, Team Obama wanted to keep this problem away from the president (a natural instinct for any White House). It took Mr. Obama 12 days to show up in the region. Democrats criticized President George W. Bush for waiting four days after Katrina to go to New Orleans.

Now the administration is intent on making it appear he has engaged all along. But this stance is undermined by lack of action. Where has its plan been? And why has the White House been so slow with decisions?

Take the containment strategy of barrier berms. These temporary sand islands block the flow of oil into fragile wetlands and marshes. Berm construction requires approval from the Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Louisiana officials asked permission on May 11. They have yet to hear back. The feds are conducting a review as oil washes ashore.

The federal government was even slower on the question of dispersants, chemicals used to break up the oil and hasten its evaporation from the surface of the water. On May 8, Louisiana sent a letter to BP and the EPA begging BP not to use dispersants below the surface of the water. Subsurface use of dispersants keeps oil slicks from forming. But when it doesn’t come to the surface to evaporate, the oil lingers below, gets into underwater currents, and puts at risk fisheries that supply a third of America’s seafood.

On May 13, EPA overruled the state and permitted BP to use dispersants 4,000 feet below the surface. Then, a week after BP released 55,000 gallons of dispersants below the surface, EPA did an about-face, ordering BP to stop using the dispersant and to “find a less-toxic” one. Louisiana officials found out about this imprecise guidance in the Washington Post. BP refused, EPA backed off, and Louisiana’s concerns about their marine fisheries remain. …

Tunku Varadarajan will have none of Rove’s arguments saying it’s not Obama’s fault. However Tunks does say the president has been running around for years saying the government can fix anything.

… let me note that “shit happens.” And there is no way known to man to predict everything that can go wrong. Milton Friedman (as the sage Henry Manne reminded me in a recent conversation) had a notion that the euro would collapse; but Friedman thought that it would happen not because of any excess or fraud by any one or more countries—he believed the European Central Bank had some possibility of controlling fiscal policy in the E.U. countries—but by the inability of a central bank to adjust to differing monetary needs. He did not foresee the Greek debacle, and no U.S. government seems to have foreseen the Gulf oil spill.

But back to basics: BP did the dastardly deed, of this there is little doubt; and yet Obama is getting pilloried, especially by his own side. James Carville—than whom there is no man on American soil (or even in American coastal waters) more partisan—has lit into his president, saying, “The president doesn’t get down here in the middle of this… I have no idea why they didn’t seize this thing.” (Seize what, fistfuls of oleaginous goo?) Carville went on, bizarrely, to say that Obama “could’ve demanded a plan in anticipation of this”—(my underline, and I want what the Ragin’ Cajun is smoking!) He added, for caustic measure, that “it just looks like he’s not involved in this. Man, you got to get down here and take control of this.”

Proof, at last, that Carville is deranged, but proof also of another thing: Once you set out, as a president or a party, to propagate a message that the government has (or is) the panacea for all ills, then failure to deal with an ill leads to your being hoist with your own panacea-petard. …

Tony Blankley shares his thoughts on some primaries, and on the mood in Washington.

…Democrats look fearfully westward across the Potomac River, wondering how harsh will be the people’s judgment against them for their disgraceful behavior.

Republicans look fearfully inward, wondering whether their own inadequate performances in the preceding decade entitle them to the public trust. (The answers are: to the Democrats, very harsh, and to the Republicans, no, they are not entitled to the trust.) …

Peter Wehner posts on Obama’s remarks about the success in Iraq.

…I’m delighted Obama was wrong in both his analysis and his predictions and that, unlike so many things since he’s been president, in Iraq he has not made the situation he inherited markedly worse. And perhaps at some point, Mr. Obama — who promised that, unlike past presidents he would be quick to admit the errors of his ways — will admit he was profoundly mistaken about the surge. If he had had his way, after all, the Iraq war would have been lost, mass death and genocide would have engulfed that nation by now, and jihadists would have chalked up their most important victory against America.

It’s also worth pointing out, I suppose, that a gracious, classy, and large-spirited president would have tipped his cap to his predecessor, whose political courage and wisdom on the surge has made success in Iraq possible. But that would require Obama to act against his basic character.

Apparently the president is still charming to some people. In the Jerusalem Post, Shmuley Boteach comments on a meeting with Jewish representatives.

…An invitation to the White House is a big deal and can play all kinds of tricks on people’s convictions, which might explain why so many of those who visited emerged with newfound praise for the president even though the administration has changed none of its positions on Israel. The president is still demanding that Jews build no new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood that is entirely Jewish. He has yet to repudiate his administration’s position that the Arab-Israeli conflict, and by implication Israeli intransigence, fuels the Taliban and other Arab extremists. And he has yet to apologize to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the humiliating treatment he dished out in March.

Most of all, the president has not reversed his biased policy of apportioning the blame for the lack of movement in the peace process squarely on Israeli settlements rather than decades-old Arab refusal to accept Israel as a permanent and legitimate fact. We have yet to hear the president forcefully condemn the Hamas charter calling for the destruction of the State of Israel or the Palestinian Authority recently naming a public square after Dalal Mughrabi, who led the 1978 Coastal Road terrorist massacre which killed 37 Israelis.

Still, some rabbis seemed quite swayed. Rabbi Aaron Rubinger, for example, who runs a Conservative synagogue in Orlando, said, “Our president is every bit as committed to Israel’s safety and security as any previous administration.” …

Rick Richman gives reasons why Obama won’t be giving a speech to the Israelis. His fourth reason is the showstopper.

…Fourth, even if Obama gave a comparable speech, it would not be believed. His actions — reneging on his pledge of an undivided Jerusalem; failing to honor U.S. understandings regarding settlements; ignoring the commitments in the 2004 Bush letter, given in exchange for the Gaza withdrawal; failing to visit Israel when he visited Turkey, failing again when he visited Egypt, and failing again over the past 12 months; slurring Israel in his Cairo speech; telling U.S. Jewish groups that closeness to Israel had resulted in “no progress” in the peace process; attempting to attend the Durban II conference; awarding a presidential medal to Durban I’s Mary Robinson; granting legitimacy to the anti-Semitic UN Human Rights Council; demanding compliance with Palestinian preconditions for peace negotiations; repeatedly humiliating Israel’s prime minister during his U.S. visits; castigating Israel for planning Jewish homes in the Jewish area of the Jewish capital; endless patience with Iran combined with public impatience with Israel; etc. — represent a record that cannot be corrected merely with a speech, even if it begins with “Let me be clear.” …

In light of the sinking of a South Korean ship, Christopher Hitchens writes about North Korean aggression.

…North Korea is thought to have enough purely conventional weapons to destroy South Korea’s capital, Seoul, which is located very close to the cease-fire line or “border.” It has also built a series of dams, which, if opened or blown, could flood and drown a good part of South Korea. (A recent apparently accidental such flood, on a smallish scale, at least served to remind the South Koreans what the stakes were.) So this is the way we live now: conditioned by the awareness that no North Korean provocation, however egregious, can be confronted, lest it furnish the occasion or pretext for something truly barbarous and insane.

Another version of our complicity with the Dear Leader is to be found with his oppression and starvation of his “own” people. It is felt that we cannot just watch them die, so we send food aid in return for an ever-receding prospect of good behavior in respect of the Dear Leader’s nuclear program. The ratchet effect is all one way: Nuclear tests become ever more flagrant and the emaciation of the North Korean people ever more pitiful. We have unwittingly become members of the guard force that patrols the concentration camp that is the northern half of the peninsula. …

Thomas Sowell explains that discrimination is not the cause of all inequality.

A heartbreaking social statistic is that children on welfare have only about half as many words per day directed at them as the children of working-class families– and less than one-third as many words as children whose parents are professionals. This is especially painful in view of the fact that scientists have found that the actual physical development of the brain is affected by how much interaction young children receive.

…Inequalities have so many sources that this fact undermines the simple dichotomy between believing that some people are innately inferior and believing that discrimination or other social injustices account for economic and social differences. Yet people who are afraid of being considered racists, or believers that the lower classes are born inferior, often buy the notion that only the sins of “society” can explain why some people end up so much better off than others. …

Ed Morrissey doesn’t think that reminding the electorate about Bush will score the Obami any votes.

…Gee, maybe that’s because Obama has had the job himself for those sixteen months, and most people don’t see any improvement in the economy.  Instead, they see a runaway Democratic Congress making George Bush look like Ebenezer Scrooge, while noting that terrorist attacks have suddenly started coming to fruition after a year of political correctness run amuck in counterterrorism efforts.  National debt is skyrocketing, and Obama’s planned budget deficits dwarf anything seen during the Bush years. …

Peter Wehner has a fascinating post on the drop in crime.

…The New York Times begins its story by saying, “Despite turmoil in the economy and high unemployment, crimes rates fell significantly across the Unites States in 2009.” Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said, “That’s a remarkable decline, given the economic conditions.”

Actually, it’s not all that remarkable. Crime rates, for example, fell significantly during the Great Depression. As David Rubinstein of the University of Illinois has pointed out, if you chart homicide beginning in 1900, its rates began to rise in 1905, continued through the prosperous 20s, and crested in 1933. They began to decline in 1934, as the Great Depression began to deepen. And between 1933 and 1940, the murder rate dropped by nearly 40 percent, while property crimes revealed a similar pattern. One possible explanation is that times of crisis, including economic crisis, create greater social cohesion. …

Sending the kids outside to play may help them do better in school. The Times of India has the story. They want the kids to get down and dirty.

The finding will be presented at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

“Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breath in when they spend time in nature,” says Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, New York, who conducted the research with her colleague Susan Jenks.

Previous research studies on M. vaccae showed that heat-killed bacteria injected into mice stimulated growth of some neurons in the brain that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Spengler writes on one of the great differences between Islam and the West. It is Islam’s acceptance of violence towards women.

More than the Koran’s sanction of wife-beating, the legal grounds on which the Koran sanctions it reveals an impassable gulf between Islamic and Western law. The sovereign grants inalienable rights to every individual in Western society, of which protection from violence is foremost. Every individual stands in direct relation to the state, which wields a monopoly of violence. Islam’s legal system is radically different: the father is a “governor” or “administrator” of the family, that is, a little sovereign within his domestic realm, with the right to employ violence to control his wife and children. That is the self-understanding of modern Islam spelled out by Muslim-American scholars – and it is incompatible with the Western concept of human rights.

The practice of wife-beating, which is found in Muslim communities in Western countries, is embedded too profoundly in sharia law to be extracted. Nowhere to my knowledge has a Muslim religious authority of standing repudiated wife-beating as specified in Surah 4:32 of the Koran, for to do so would undermine the foundations of Muslim society.

By extension, the power of the little sovereign of the family can include the killing of wayward wives and female relations. Execution for domestic crimes, often called “honor killing”, is not mentioned in the Koran, but the practice is so widespread in Muslim countries – the United Nations Population Fund estimates an annual toll of 5,000 – that it is recognized in what we might term Islamic common law.

Muslim courts either do not prosecute so-called honor killings, or prosecute them more leniently than other crimes. Article 340 of Jordan’s penal code states, “He who discovers his wife or one of his female relatives committing adultery and kills, wounds, or injures one of them, is exempted from any penalty.” Syria imposes only a two-year prison sentence for such killings. Pakistan forbids them but rarely punishes them. …

…In Islam, the family father has the ability to be a petty tyrant in his own home. That may explain the great mystery of modern Islam, namely why nearly a billion and a half human beings have failed over eight centuries to produce scientific or cultural figures whose names the world recognize. Even in Joseph Stalin’s Russia, individuals could find refuge in their families, and in creative pursuits not discouraged by the state, for example pure science and classical music. Islam can make the family itself an oppressive institution.

Now, we have four items from fly-over country; Denver, Las Vegas, Kansas City, and Indianapolis.

David Harsanyi, when looking at the Rand Paul flap, asks, “Didn’t we have enough to debate?”

… The fact is, nearly everyone — including, it seems, most libertarians and Paul himself — agree that the Civil Rights Act was necessary in untangling repressive, government-codified Southern racism. The problem is that some of this kind of well-intentioned and important legislation has been used to validate the infinite creep of Washington intrusion into commerce and life.

While it is inarguable that many in the South used the Constitution as a pretext to solidify their racism then, today it is often the mainstream left that uses racism to smear those with an earnest belief in the document.

After all, today’s political battles are about “extremist positions,” issues like socializing medicine, nationalizing the energy sector and other various hyper-regulatory projects that are baking in Washington’s oven.

We’ve got plenty on our plates without debating the past.

In the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sherman Frederick wants to know the truth.

I’d like to hook up the president to a lie detector and ask him this one simple question:

“On any given day, Mr. President, do you wake up feeling more proud of, or more embarrassed by, the United States of America?”

…The position of the United States, as now articulated by the Obama administration, is China’s widespread crackdown on Internet use, free speech and religion, its use of prisoners for organ harvesting, its persecution of Tibet and the execution of more people than all other countries in the world combined, is on par with Arizona’s immigration law? …

In the Kansas City Star, E. Thomas McClanahan looks at reasons why the Obami are embarrassed by American exceptionalism.

…Since the ’60s at least, those on the leftish end of the spectrum have had an annoying tendency to place themselves above the nation and what it stands for. They have a profound discomfort with the notion that the country must be defended, an effort that sometimes requires military force.

Some of the more exotic of the species, the Jane Fondas and Susan Sontags, blatantly identified with our adversaries. In the late 1960s, both of these characters popped up in Hanoi and blathered about the nobility of the North Vietnamese struggle against the vile imperialist Amerikans.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that a lot of the people who came to Washington with Obama carry intellectual residue from this era. How else to explain the comical difficulty they have in coming up with a straightforward term for an enemy that turned airlines into missiles and revels in the slaughter of innocent civilians?

For decades, various people on both the right and left have mined this rich lode. One of the latest is Paul Berman, a member of the editorial board of Dissent, the leftist magazine, and author of the new book, “The Flight of the Intellectuals.” Berman is also an increasingly rare species: He is a liberal hawk. …

In the Indianapolis Star, Deroy Murdock comments on how out of control and out of touch the government is.

…As if from a ruptured pipeline, Washington continues to gush taxpayer dollars.

The Education Department requested $26 billion in emergency funds on May 13, supposedly to prevent 300,000 teacher layoffs. This is atop last year’s $100 billion in stimulus spending for school districts, including $48 billion to prevent teacher layoffs.

Meanwhile, Obamacare — essentially DisneyWorld for federal busybodies — will require $115 billion more than advertised in March. According to the Congressional Budget Office, if lawmakers appropriate all of this legislation’s promised spending, its price will leap from $938 billion to $1.053 trillion, an anticipated 12.5 percent cost overrun just six weeks after enactment.

About the only budget cut Obama has managed is a $53.2 million, 25 percent slash in New York City’s counter-terrorism funding, unveiled 11 days after the Pakistani Taliban successfully sent terror suspect Faisal Shahzad to Times Square to park a car bomb just outside “The Lion King.” …

Fred Barnes interviews Jeb Bush who is optimistic about the road ahead for Republicans and for America.

…“My guess is, post-November, should things go well, you’re going to see the emerging Cantor-Ryan wing of the Republican party—the policy activists—in their ascendency,” Bush says. “They’ll be in the ascendency in the Senate as well. And you’ll have activist conservative governors. In 2011, I think you’re going to see all sorts of efforts to act on the belief in entrepreneurial capitalism and limited government.”

He’s read Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap” for reform, “all 95 pages of it. It’s fantastic. Paul Ryan is the only elected official that’s actually laid out a plan. He has a very thoughtful, realistic approach to dealing with this fiscal crisis, and he’s the only guy out of 300 million people that I’ve seen that has done so.” …

…Bush has done a back-of-the-envelope calculation about what an economic growth strategy could produce. Obama’s policy won’t generate more than 1.5 percent growth annually, he says. But with “lower taxes, more rational regulation, limiting the power of government in general, particularly in Washington, investing in research, innovation, education—and get out of the way, trust capitalism to work and you can achieve easily 2 percent more per year,” Bush insists. “You end up with $3.5 trillion of extra economic activity, more than the entire economy of Germany.”

Not bad, and there’s an additional benefit: unifying conservatives. “We have all these factions inside the conservative cause, people focused on social issues, or libertarian leave-me-alone issues or paleocons or neocons or traditional conservatives,” Bush says. “It seems to me if you ask what is the one thing that we all agree on, [it’s] that we passionately agree that entrepreneurial capitalism works.” …

Michael Barone says there’s a gathering revolt against government spending.

…The rebellion against the fiscal policies of the Obama Democrats, in contrast, is concentrated on spending. The Tea Party movement began with Rick Santelli’s rant in February 2009, long before the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts in January 2011.

…The Tea Party folk are focusing on something real. Federal spending is rising from about 21 percent to about 25 percent of gross domestic product — a huge increase in historic terms — and the national debt is on a trajectory to double as a percentage of GDP within a decade. That is a bigger increase than anything since World War II.

…Will Republicans come forward with a bold plan to roll back government spending? …

…Unlike the Conservatives, Republicans have no elected party leader. But House Republicans like Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Peter Roskam are setting up web sites to solicit voters’ proposals for spending cuts, while Paul Ryan has set out a long-term road map toward fiscal probity. Worthy first steps. I think voters are demanding a specific plan to roll back Democrats’ spending. Republicans need to supply it.

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Mark Steyn comments on how Obama’s ideology distorts reality, this time in his refusal to understand what led to the death of Daniel Pearl.

…”Obviously, the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.”

Now Obama’s off the prompter, when his silver-tongued rhetoric invariably turns to sludge. But he’s talking about a dead man here, a guy murdered in public for all the world to see. Furthermore, the deceased’s family is standing all around him. And, even for a busy president, it’s the work of moments to come up with a sentence that would be respectful, moving and true. Indeed, for Obama, it’s the work of seconds, because he has a taxpayer-funded staff sitting around all day with nothing to do but provide him with that sentence.

Instead, he delivered the one above, which in its clumsiness and insipidness is most revealing. First of all, note the passivity: “The loss of Daniel Pearl.” He wasn’t “lost.” He was kidnapped and beheaded. He was murdered on a snuff video. He was specifically targeted, seized as a trophy, a high-value scalp. And the circumstances of his “loss” merit some vigor in the prose. Yet Obama can muster none.

Even if Americans don’t get the message, the rest of the world does. This week’s pictures of the leaders of Brazil and Turkey clasping hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also monuments to American passivity. …

Marty Peretz risks his son’s wrath by citing the above by Mark Steyn.

… Apparently, the president doesn’t believe that this killing had anything to do with Pearl being a Jew … and an American besides. What he also doesn’t seem to believe is that Pearl was a target—like thousands of other targets, named and nameless—of the Islamic jihad.

It is appalling to have to come to grips with the raw facts of Obama’s ignorance. Or with his feigning of ignorance. Disguising the enemy is… well, you finish the sentence.

I am always a bit wary when I cite Mark Steyn. Not because I don’t like his writing, which, within measure, I do. But because my son gives me the cold shoulder for a few days after I cite him. So, here, Jesse, I court your coolness. I wouldn’t have had to do it if any liberal columnist had noticed this appalling performance by the president of the United States. …

Rick Richman further analyzes Obama’s inane thoughts.

…Pearl was beheaded by the architect of 9/11, on video, immediately after he pronounced himself an American Jew. No one watching it was reminded of how valuable a free press is; nor did it capture anyone’s imagination, other than that of the jihadists who downloaded it to congratulate themselves, re-energize their efforts, and recruit others. It came five months after jihadists flew two aircraft into the World Trade Center, murdering 3,000 people, and two months before a jihadist murdered another 30 people (the demographic equivalent of 1,350 people in a country the size of Israel) during a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya. These were not moments reminding us of the importance of tall buildings and nice hotels. …

David P. Goldman comments on global affairs.

Iran openly supports terrorists–Hamas in Gaza, Hizbollah in Lebanon, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and sundry suicide squads in Iraq–and is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. North Korea demonstrated what a terrorist state can do with nuclear weapons, namely, whatever it wants. How will the world respond to North Korea’s unprovoked sinking of a South Korean naval vessel? Not at all. What will Iran do once it has nuclear weapons? Use your imagination. …

Jennifer Rubin reviews the Democrats’ troubles with Alexi Giannoulis, and ends on a comment to Republicans.

…Republicans should take note for 2010 and 2012. The reason the Democrats are in disarray and the race is competitive is not merely because the Democratic nominee has a load of problems; it is because the Republicans were wise enough to select a top-notch candidate well-suited to the state. (Politico notes: “Kirk already is popular in the politically competitive Chicago suburbs he represents and has a strong relationship with the state’s pro-Israel voters and donors.”) It’s really not enough in a deep Blue State to luck into a flawed Democratic candidate. For Republicans to win, they need smart candidates well-attuned to the electorate. Otherwise, golden opportunities will slip through their fingers.

Jennifer Rubin also discusses the WSJ editorial criticizing Rand Paul.

The Wall Street Journal editors aptly makes this point:

‘[Rand Paul] has now renounced the doubts he expressed last week about some parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and has declared the matter closed. But before we move on, it’s important to understand why Mr. Paul was wrong even on his own libertarian terms.

The federal laws of that era were necessary and legal interventions to remedy the unconstitutional infringement on individual rights by state and local governments. On Thursday Mr. Paul finally acknowledged this point when he told CNN, “I think there was an overriding problem in the South so big that it did require federal intervention.”

As the editors note, Paul’s difficulty in supporting civil rights legislation not only casts doubt on the Tea Party supporters who have strived to repudiate media claims that they are racists, but it has “let them change the campaign subject from the Obama Administration’s willy-nilly expansion of the corporate state.” …’

Christopher Booker, in the Telegraph, UK, comments on the outcome of the European intelligentsia’s grand plan for the Euro. About which you may remember, Milton Friedman said would not survive its first crisis.

…When the 10-year-long construction of the euro began in the 1990s, all these warnings were ignored. The cart was put before the horse. So fixated were the Eurocrats on the need to get their grand project in place that the “rules” were treated as mere window dressing. The member states were locked together willy-nilly in a one-size-fits-all system, with a single low interest rate, enabling countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece to live on a seemingly limitless sea of borrowed money. And now, entirely predictably, judgment day has come.

If the euro does disintegrate, as Mrs Merkel warns, the consequences would be incalculable. Replacing all the national currencies was a gargantuan task, by far the most ambitious ever attempted in the name of European integration, and there is no Plan B. Without a currency, trade would collapse – leaving Britain, dependent on Europe for 50 per cent of its trade, just as seriously affected as everyone else. A system failure on this scale would make the 1930s pale into insignificance. …

Matt Ridley explains the new theory in human evolution: collective intelligence; kind of like “spontaneous order” brought to us by the Austrian School of economics.

Human evolution presents a puzzle. Nothing seems to explain the sudden takeoff of the last 45,000 years—the conversion of just another rare predatory ape into a planet dominator with rapidly progressing technologies. Once “progress” started to produce new tools, different ways of life and burgeoning populations, it accelerated all over the world, culminating in agriculture, cities, literacy and all the rest. Yet all the ingredients of human success—tool making, big brains, culture, fire, even language—seem to have been in place half a million years before and nothing happened. Tools were made to the same monotonous design for hundreds of thousands of years and the ecological impact of people was minimal. Then suddenly—bang!—culture exploded, starting in Africa. Why then, why there?

The answer lies in a new idea, borrowed from economics, known as collective intelligence: the notion that what determines the inventiveness and rate of cultural change of a population is the amount of interaction between individuals. …

… But the sophistication of the modern world lies not in individual intelligence or imagination. It is a collective enterprise. Nobody—literally nobody—knows how to make the pencil on my desk (as the economist Leonard Read once pointed out), let alone the computer on which I am writing. The knowledge of how to design, mine, fell, extract, synthesize, combine, manufacture and market these things is fragmented among thousands, sometimes millions of heads. Once human progress started, it was no longer limited by the size of human brains. Intelligence became collective and cumulative.

In the modern world, innovation is a collective enterprise that relies on exchange. As Brian Arthur argues in his book “The Nature of Technology,” nearly all technologies are combinations of other technologies and new ideas come from swapping things and thoughts. …

…Dense populations don’t produce innovation in other species. They only do so in human beings, because only human beings indulge in regular exchange of different items among unrelated, unmated individuals and even among strangers. So here is the answer to the puzzle of human takeoff. It was caused by the invention of a collective brain itself made possible by the invention of exchange.

Once human beings started swapping things and thoughts, they stumbled upon divisions of labor, in which specialization led to mutually beneficial collective knowledge. Specialization is the means by which exchange encourages innovation: In getting better at making your product or delivering your service, you come up with new tools. The story of the human race has been a gradual spread of specialization and exchange ever since: Prosperity consists of getting more and more narrow in what you make and more and more diverse in what you buy. Self-sufficiency—subsistence—is poverty. …

Mark Steyn has an unbelievable post from Kate McMillan on two items that show just how haywire the government has gone. First, a customs official says maybe the Feds will ignore referrals of illegals from Arizona, but on the other hand …

…At the Morses Line Port of Entry, on the U.S.-Canada border, the border station is located smack-dab in the middle of a Vermont dairy farm.

On average, 2 1/2 cars pass through an hour. The pace is so slow that U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents who man it have been known to fill out their days by driving golf balls in an adjoining meadow, shooting skeet or washing their cars. …

The government, which got $420 million from the federal bailout to modernize land ports like this, wants to spend about $7 million to build an expanded station. …

…Owners of the Rainville dairy farm were told last week that if they won’t sell the hayfield for $39,500, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will use eminent domain to seize it. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

More on Thailand from David Warren.

There is much to be said for ignorance. My reader is to understand I don’t mean a mere inability to answer the sort of quiz questions that can be graded to generate educational statistics. No, I mean a more thorough, peasant ignorance of the way the world works, and in particular, of the way it works today.

Or alternatively, let’s say: there is much to be said for freedom from a world-weary cynicism; and from all the spite, malice, and violent reprisal that it spawns.

I have been thinking this in relation to Thailand: a country that was once my second home. Or let us call it Siam: the name was changed for very political reasons on June 23, 1939, changed back after the world war, then changed to Thailand again in 1949. When people start changing the names of things, you know trouble is brewing.

My acquaintance with the country goes back to childhood, when my father was working as an adviser to the Royal Thai Government, …

Mark Steyn starts at Greece and extrapolates to our country.

From the Times of London: “The President of Greece warned last night that his country stood on the brink of the abyss after three people were killed when an anti-government mob set ?re to the Athens bank where they worked.”

Almost right. They were not an “anti-government” mob, but a government mob, a mob comprised largely of civil servants. That they are highly uncivil and disinclined to serve should come as no surprise: they’re paid more and they retire earlier, and that’s how they want to keep it. So they’re objecting to austerity measures that would end, for example, the tradition of 14 monthly paycheques per annum. You read that right: the Greek public sector cannot be bound by anything so humdrum as temporal reality. So, when it was mooted that the “workers” might henceforth receive a mere 12 monthly paycheques per annum, they rioted. Their hapless victims—a man and two women—were a trio of clerks trapped in a bank when the mob set it alight and then obstructed emergency crews attempting to rescue them.

Unlovely as they are, the Greek rioters are the logical end point of the advanced social democratic state: not an oppressed underclass, but a pampered overclass, rioting in defence of its privileges and insisting on more subsidy, more benefits, more featherbedding, more government.

Who will pay for it? Hey, not my problem, say the rioters. Maybe those dead bank clerks’ clients, assuming we didn’t burn them to death, too. The problem facing the Western world isn’t very difficult to figure out: we’ve spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we’ve already burned through. When you’re spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you’ve no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it. …

Mort Zuckerman continues his Jeremiad about public sector unions and their elected enablers.

… How did we get into such a mess? States have always had to cope with volatility in the size and composition of their populations. Now we have shrinking tax bases caused by recession and extra costs imposed on states to pay for Medicaid in the federal health-care program. The straw (well, more like an iron beam) that breaks the camel’s back is the unfunded portions of state pension plans, health care and other retirement benefits promised to public-sector employees. And federal government assistance to states is falling—down by roughly half in the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

It is galling for private-sector workers to see so many public-sector workers thriving because of the power their unions exercise. Take California. Investigative journalist Steve Malanga points out in the City Journal that California’s schoolteachers are the nation’s highest paid; its prison guards can make six-figure salaries; many state workers retire at 55 with pensions that are higher than the base pay they got most of their working lives.

All this when California endures an unemployment rate steeper than the nation’s. It will get worse. There’s an exodus of firms that want to escape California’s high taxes, stifling regulations, and recurring budget crises. When Cisco CEO John Chambers says he will not build any more facilities in California you know the state is in trouble.

The business community and a growing portion of the public now understand the dynamics that discriminate against the private sector. Public unions organize voting campaigns for politicians who, on election, repay their benefactors by approving salaries and benefits for the public sector, irrespective of whether they are sustainable. And what is happening in California is happening in slower motion in the rest of the country. It’s no doubt one of the reasons the Pew Research Center this year reported that support for labor unions generally has plummeted “amid growing public skepticism about unions’ power and purpose.” …

Peter Wehner pays homage to Campbell Brown’s candor.

… The entire statement is honest, unvarnished, devoid of spin, and gracious — and therefore quite impressive. The problems she faced rested more with her network than with her. But in exiting CNN, Ms. Brown set a standard others in the media, and in politics, should strive for.

Rand Paul gets the once over from Jennifer Rubin. You would think politicians from Kentucky would have more horse sense. OK, we know the following isn’t possible, but it’s beginning to look like Rand Paul may be the demon spawn of the union of Ron Paul and Jim Bunning.

Rand Paul is learning what it means to have the bright, hot light of national media on him. After an obnoxious outing on ABC, during which Paul whined and railed at the mainstream media for outing his views on federal anti-discrimination legislation, he changed his tune and told Wolf Blitzer on CNN point blank that he would have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. With little explanation of the quick evolution in his views, he said he’s a definite yes on whether he’d have voted for the Act in 1964. On the Americans With Disabilities Act, he flailed around for a bit, and then came down on the side of maybe.

Should we be surprised, then, that Paul abruptly cancelled on short notice his appearance on Meet the Press? I suppose he could try to hide from every unsympathetic reporter in the country, but such a decision will simply underscore the fact that he can’t be trusted to go out in public. …

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written a new book reviewed by Tunku Varadarajan.

On a recent visit to Washington, I hopped into a cab at Union Station. Those who have used such transport in D.C. will be aware that the chances of landing an African cabbie are 9 in 10, and this African cohort is predominantly Eritrean, Ethiopian, or Somali. My driver on this occasion was Somali, and after a few pleasantries—How long have you lived in America? Do you still have family in Mogadishu? How old are your children?—I asked the man a less banal question: “What do you think of Ayaan Hirsi Ali… you know, the Somali lady?” He swiveled his head to fix me with his gaze, and then turned it back to the road. “Very bad person,” he said, after a strained pause. “We think she is a bitch. We hate her.”

We did not exchange another word for the rest of the brief ride to the Willard Hotel. …

The Economist illuminates the activities surrounding the oil spill in the Gulf.

IT IS not the invasion of Normandy, but by peacetime standards the flotilla stationed about 65km (40 miles) off the Louisiana coast is a mightily impressive one. Where once the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig floated in solitary splendour, there are now two similar rigs, along with the Discoverer Enterprise, a drilling ship; the Viking Poseidon, which knows how to install things on the sea floor; four mother ships for remotely operated underwater vehicles; various barges and supply vessels; and the Q4000, a rig that specialises in repairing and closing wells. If the well that the Deepwater Horizon was in the process of closing off four weeks ago continues to spray oil into the sea for months to come, it won’t be for a lack of expensive, sophisticated and improbable-looking hardware a mile up above it.

It is that mile which is the problem. The oil industry has been fixing blowouts for more than a century. The challenge is doing it under 150 atmospheres of pressure with the tools and lights of a robot mini-submarine that gets its power and instructions by way of a cable. Under these conditions well-laid plans can come to naught, as they did when icy methane hydrates that form when natural gas gets mixed up with cold water at high pressure scuppered plans to funnel the leaking oil up to Discoverer Enterprise. The hydrates did not just clog the pipes, they also buoyed up the 125-tonne cofferdam that had been lowered over the leak, lifting it right off the sea bed. ”’

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

So how are things in the Middle East you ask? We have a number of posts from Contentions, The Spine, and The Weekly Standard. Charles Krauthammer’s column completes the section. First Michael Totten tells us about John Brennan’s ideas about the “moderates” in Hezbollah. The ax fell on the wrong one when it landed on Blair. Should have been Brennan.

… There are no moderates within Hezbollah, at least not any who stand a chance of changing Hezbollah’s behavior. Sure, the terrorist militia has sent a handful of its members to parliament, as Brennan says, and once in a while they sound more reasonable than its secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, but these people are employees. They don’t make policy.

If you want to catch a glimpse of Hezbollah’s org chart, just rent a car in Beirut and drive south. You’ll see billboards and posters all over the place in the areas Hezbollah controls. Some show the portraits of “martyrs” killed in battle with Israel. Others show the mug shots of Hezbollah’s leadership, most prominently Nasrallah and his deceased military commander, truck bomber, and airplane hijacker Imad Mugniyeh. Alongside the pictures of Hezbollah’s leaders, you’ll also see Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the two “supreme guides” of the Islamic Republic regime in Iran.

It’s obvious, if you know who and what you’re looking at, that Hezbollah is still subservient to Khamenei. …

Marty Peretz posts on missile defense and sanctions.

… It used to be that the president sent out Ms. Clinton to do the retreat on Iran, and she’s been doing it for about 17 months. Pathetically, actually, and with some embarrassment on her face. Now it’s Susan Rice’s turn. It’s only fair. For our U.N. ambassador actually believes that the processes of the organization are more important than the results. So it was given to Ms. Rice to explain and explain away why the sanctions agreed upon by the five permanent members of the Council plus Germany omitted and efforts “that would stop the flow of oil out of Iranian ports, or gasoline into the country.”

This last quote comes from an absolutely clarifying New York Times news article by David E. Sanger and Mark Landler.  Basically it says that nothing will happen. This is, as the dispatch says, “the fourth round of sanctions against Iran.”  But there is only one truly fresh provision.

“The newest element of the sanctions would require countries to inspect ships or aircraft headed into or out of Iran if there are suspicions that banned materials are aboard.  But as in the case of North Korea, there is no authorization to board these ships forcibly at sea, a step officials from many countries could start a firefight, and perhaps touch off a larger confrontation.”

This is an ideal Ricean solution. You state a goal but provide no means at all to achieve it. …

Then Peretz turns his attention to the Brennan “Hezbollah Follies”. Remember, in the beginning Peretz was an Obama acolyte.

The dispatch is from Reuters. And the dateline is Wonderland.

Flush with success in turning Iran away from nukes and Syria away from Tehran, the administration seems to be setting its sights on turning Hezbollah away from Hezbollah.

If this is truly the goal of the administration, look for an another spectacular humiliation. No, worse: It will be a spectacular self-abasement. After all, there’s no evidence that the Lebanese terror fraternity is looking to become mild and modest. Actually, it’s mostly an idea in the head of John Brennan, the president’s chief aide on terrorism and homeland security. Pudding-headed notions go far in today’s Washington. So, hey, why shouldn’t he try? Obama himself is trying a less daring experiment, to turn Islam towards the West … or, rather, the West towards Islam. Or whatever.

But, if Brennan really wants to be helpful, why doesn’t he figure out how Faisal Shahzad got on an Emirates flight bound for Dubai even though his very name—not just a description—had been on a drastic alert list for hours.

What does this have to do with John Brennan, aside from the fact that the man happens to be the president’s counselor on such matters?

Plenty! …

A Weekly Standard Blog post reacts to Obama’s assertion of “more confidence” in Brennan.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence—nor of the institution of DNI, for that matter. A fine naval officer, Blair seemed out of his milieu as DNI, often unaware of basic facts that someone in his position should know. Part (of) the problem is inherent in the DNI concept—the conceit that some all-seeing super-bureaucrat could, simply by virtue of high rank, a big staff and an even bigger budget, fix all the problems with America’s intelligence community. But some of the problems resided with Blair himself. The Obama administration has come to the same conclusion and asked Blair to resign.

So far so good. But reading through the report by ABC’s Jake Tapper one comes across this hair-raising assertion: “… the White House made it clear that it had more confidence in others, such as counterterrorism and homeland security adviser John Brennan …”

More confidence in Brennan? Really? To understand how terrifying that assertion is, one does not even have to look much past this week. …

It remains for Charles Krauthammer to sum up the remains of Obama’s fecklessness.

… The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

That picture — a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam — is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.

They’ve watched President Obama’s humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.

They’ve watched America acquiesce to Russia’s re-exerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured by Russia last month into extending for 25 years its lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and over Georgia (Russia’s de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama “reset” policy).

They’ve watched our appeasement of Syria, Iran’s agent in the Arab Levant — sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it tightens its grip on Lebanon, supplies Hezbollah with Scuds and intensifies its role as the pivot of the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance. The price for this ostentatious flouting of the United States and its interests? Ever more eager U.S. “engagement.”

They’ve observed the administration’s gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland, and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see not just U.S. passivity as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez organizes his anti-American “Bolivarian” coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active U.S. support in Honduras for a pro-Chávez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.

This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat — accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.

Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the U.N. General Assembly last September that “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.” (NATO? The West?)

Given Obama’s policies and principles, Turkey and Brazil are acting rationally. …

Turning to the homeland, we have more analysis of last week’s voting. Karl Rove first.

… Democrats are increasingly likely to distance themselves from Mr. Obama, either ignoring him or running against him. Which brings us to Pennsylvania’s 12th District. Democrats are right to crow about keeping that seat, left vacant by the death of Jack Murtha. Murtha’s longtime aide, Mark Critz, won with a message that he was pro-life, pro-gun and anti-ObamaCare, while benefiting from a sympathy vote for Murtha’s legacy.

In a district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 137,000 voters, 62% to 29%, Mr. Critz also benefited from Gov. Ed Rendell’s clever decision to schedule the special election on the same day as party primaries.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says “This is the type of race [the] GOP has to win.” He is right, but just how many other Democrats will be running this year as pro-life, pro-gun, anti-ObamaCare, and against cap and trade?

The Democratic theory that voter anger would fade or burn out once health care was passed was wrong-headed and was undermined Tuesday. That anger remains and likely will persist through the November elections.

Republican intensity also continues: The Democratic turnout in Kentucky declined 8% from the last midterm, while GOP turnout rose 27%. …

Jennifer Rubin posts on the Dem “strateegery”.

The Washington Post tries to throw Obama and the Democrats a lifeline. It’s understandable that the liberal media — which witnessed a complete repudiation of Obama and his agenda at the polls — would scramble to help him out. After all, they invested so much credibility in helping to elect him. But the advice they offer is simply daft:

“Strategists at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue say it is now clear that, although Obama’s name will not be on the ballot, it will fall to him to build the case for the activist approach that he has pressed his party to take over the past 16 months. And just as important, they say, he must take the lead in making the argument against the Republicans.”

Are they joking? The president who in 17 months could not sell ObamaCare to the American people and whose agenda has shifted the country to the right is now expected to remind the entire populace, when his poll numbers are sliding downward, that Democrats believe in big government, lots of regulation, and higher taxes? The Republican reaction is likely to be: Oh, please do! …

Peter Wehner comments too.

… We have, in fact, seen a fascinating phenomenon take place: the more Barack Obama – supposedly the Democrat Party’s answer to the Republican Party’s “the great communicator,” Ronald Reagan – speaks out in behalf of a topic, the more unpopular it becomes. If Democrats are staking their future on Obama becoming their “salesman in chief,” the GOP has a very bright future ahead of itself.

George Will closes the section on politics.

The candidate who on Tuesday won the special election in a Pennsylvania congressional district is right-to-life and pro-gun. He accused his opponent of wanting heavier taxes. He said he would have voted against Barack Obama’s health-care plan and promised to vote against cap-and-trade legislation, which is a tax increase supposedly somehow related to turning down the planet’s thermostat. This candidate, Mark Critz, is a Democrat.

And that just about exhausts the good news for Democrats on a surreal Tuesday when their presumptive candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut — the state’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal — chose to hold a news conference at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall to discuss why he had falsely said he fought in a foreign war. National Democrats may try to find a less damaged candidate for Connecticut, but first they may have to do that in Illinois.

Their candidate to hold the Senate seat Obama held, Alexi Giannoulias, has a problem: The failure of the bank owned by his family — it made loans to Tony Rezko, the convicted developer who helped Obama with a 2006 property transaction — may cost taxpayers many millions. Proving his credentials as a disciple of the president, Giannoulias blamed the bank’s failure on George W. Bush. …

Roger Simon comments on Rand Paul’s civil rights stinkbomb.

Recent primary winner and son ‘o Ron, Rand Paul has made a fool of himself, and shamed many of his supporters, criticizing the 1964 Civil Rights Act on the The Rachel Madow Show. One is tempted to question Paul Jr’s IQ, but he is a medical doctor and at some point he must have passed physical chemistry.

So what caused this breakdown? Well, on one level it’s a demonstration of an extraordinary lack of media sophistication, in itself dangerous in a political candidate, especially in our instant information times. But I think it is something more. This is a prime example of the danger of extreme ideological beliefs. No matter what they are, they blind us. …

Stephan Thernstrom has a perfect example of the foolish thinking of our country’s foundation elite.

… the nation’s seventh-largest philanthropic foundation might have spent its $75 million to attack the real problems that impede the development of many minority children (and many white ones as well). Improving our schools, the traditional avenue of social mobility for young Americans, deserves the highest priority.

The recently released results of the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading tests reveal that 52% of black 4th-graders and 51% of Hispanics lack even the most basic reading skills; in the 8th grade the figures are 43% and 39% respectively. Blacks and Latinos without a strong education are second-class citizens in a land of opportunity.

Some schools do far better than this, however. Kellogg could have offered to pick up the tab for the Washington D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that the Obama administration has killed off, or contributed to excellent charter schools like MATCH in Boston. It could have supported the further expansion of charter school networks that have proven results—KIPP and Uncommon Schools, among them.

If Kellogg wants to do something constructive for disadvantaged children, it should back such innovative efforts to improve their cognitive skills. The foundation cannot see that point, alas, because it has bought into the simplistic notion that all disparities in educational achievement are attributable to continuing racism—and thus is financing antiracist programs devoted to publicizing “past wrongs and group suffering.” Nothing good is likely to come from this.

David Harsanyi thinks the rubes should leave the “tubes” alone. The rubes would be the government. The tubes would be the internet moniker applied by Ted Stevens of the Alaskan senatorial delegation who described the internet as “a series of tubes.”

As there is no real problem with the Internet, it’s not surprising that some of our top minds have been diligently working on a solution.

In a 2001 interview (one that’s only recently gone viral and caused a brouhaha), Cass Sunstein, now the nation’s regulatory czar, is overheard advocating for government to insist all websites offer opposing viewpoints — or, in other words, a Fairness Doctrine for the Web. This was necessary because, as hundreds of millions of Internet users can attest, ferreting out competing perspectives online is all but impossible. (A search for “Cass Sunstein” on Google, for instance, barely generated 303,000 results in 0.19 seconds.)

What if websites refused to acquiesce to this intrusion on free speech? “If we could get voluntary arrangements in that direction it would be great,” said Sunstein at the time, “and if we can’t get voluntary arrangements maybe Congress should hold hearings about mandates.” After all, Sunstein went on to say, “the word voluntary is a little complicated. And sometimes people don’t do what’s best for our society.” Mandates, he said, were the “ultimate weapon designed to encourage people to do better.”

Actually, the word “voluntary” isn’t complicated at all. And mandates do not “encourage” people to do better; mandates “force” people to do what those writing regulations happen to think is better. We’re intimately familiar with the distinction. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

John Tierney reviews Matt Ridley’s new book, The Rational Optimist. Ridley posits that markets have created the wealth, technology, health, and standard of living we currently enjoy. Market forces will continue to improve living standards, if unfettered by the dead hand of government.

… “At some point,” Dr. Ridley writes, “after millions of years of indulging in reciprocal back-scratching of gradually increasing intensity, one species, and one alone, stumbled upon an entirely different trick. Adam gave Oz an object in exchange for a different object.”

The evidence for this trick is in perforated seashells from more than 80,000 years ago that ended up far from the nearest coast, an indication that inlanders were bartering to get ornamental seashells from coastal dwellers. Unlike the contemporary Neanderthals, who apparently relied just on local resources, those modern humans could shop for imports.

“The extraordinary promise of this event was that Adam potentially now had access to objects he did not know how to make or find; and so did Oz,” Dr. Ridley writes. People traded goods, services and, most important, knowledge, creating a collective intelligence: “Ten individuals could know between them ten things, while each understanding one.”

As they specialized and exchanged, humans learned how to domesticate crops and animals and sell food to passing merchants. Traders congregated in the first cities and built ships that spread goods and ideas around the world.

The Phoenician merchants who sailed the Mediterranean were denounced by Hebrew prophets like Isaiah and Greek intellectuals like Homer. But trading networks enabled the ancient Greeks to develop their alphabet, mathematics and science, and later fostered innovation in the trading hubs of the Roman Empire, India, China, Arabia, Renaissance Italy and other European capitals.

Rulers like to take credit for the advances during their reigns, and scientists like to see their theories as the source of technological progress. But Dr. Ridley argues that they’ve both got it backward: traders’ wealth builds empires, and entrepreneurial tinkerers are more likely to inspire scientists than vice versa. From Stone Age seashells to the steam engine to the personal computer, innovation has mostly been a bottom-up process. …

…Our progress is unsustainable, he argues, only if we stifle innovation and trade, the way China and other empires did in the past. Is that possible? Well, European countries are already banning technologies based on the precautionary principle requiring advance proof that they’re risk-free. Americans are turning more protectionist and advocating byzantine restrictions like carbon tariffs. Globalization is denounced by affluent Westerners preaching a return to self-sufficiency.

But with new hubs of innovation emerging elsewhere, and with ideas spreading faster than ever on the Internet, Dr. Ridley expects bottom-up innovators to prevail. His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

…“We cannot absolutely prove,” he wrote, “that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason.”

In Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein laughs at nanny-state assumptions.

Jack Conway, Kentucky’s attorney general and one of the two leading candidates for the Senate seat on the Democratic side [said about Rand Paul, who has won the Republican nomination for Kentucky Senator]: “He wants to do away with the Department of Agriculture. He wants to do away with the Department of Education.”

Lt. Gov Dan Mongiardo, the other major Democratic candidate said, “Rand Paul says here’s your gun, here’s your land, God bless you, good luck. That’s his form of government.”

But surely his Democratic opponents have something bad to say about Dr. Paul?

So, why the loss in PA-12? Weekly Standard Blog post suggests some answers.

… The only competitive statewide primary Tuesday was on the Democratic side, and that helped boost Democratic turnout (Dems outnumbered Republicans 2 to 1 at the polls in PA-12). That advantage will be gone in the fall. Critz ran as a conservative Democrat–his ads portrayed him as a pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, anti-cap & trade candidate, who would have voted against Obamacare. That’s an advantage many Democratic incumbents in GOP-leaning districts won’t have in November. Their voting records will tell a different story.

And for that matter, PA-12 didn’t lean that much in the GOP’s favor. Yes, as Democrats and MSNBC reporters are enthusiastically pointing out, it is the only district that flipped from voting for John Kerry in ’04 to John McCain in ’08. But McCain only carried it by 900 votes. And that was after Obama had personally insulted western Pennsylvanians as bitter xenophobes who cling to their guns and God because of economic alienation. Fifty-eight percent of voters in the district were still willing to vote for Democrat John Murtha in 2008. …

Christopher Hitchens reviews some Iranian current events, including one Ayatollah’s threats to other Muslim countries. With Obama literally bowing out of world leadership, the West may no longer be the biggest concern for Iran’s neighbors.

…On May 15, we were subjected to a tirade by Ayatollah Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi, leader of Iran’s Hezbollah party and proprietor of the newspaper of the same name, which carried his incendiary article. The need of the hour, intoned the ayatollah, was for a “Greater Iran” that would assume hegemonic control over much of the Middle East and Central Asia (stretching from Afghanistan to Palestine, according to the broad-brush ambitions disclosed by his polemic). This new imperialism would, he urged, possess two very attractive attributes. It would abolish the Jewish state, and it would assist in the arrival of the long-awaited Mahdi, or hidden imam, whose promised reign of perfection has been on hold since his abrupt disappearance in the ninth century. …

…It seems to me obvious that the Iranian mullahs do not desire to immolate their profitable system of corruption and exploitation in a last-ditch fight with states that can actually obliterate them. There may be some Mahdi-fanciers who dream of this apocalypse, and they should not be completely discounted. But what could be clearer in the medium run than that Tehran wants the bomb in order to exert nuclear blackmail against other Muslims? …

David Warren gives us an interesting inside look into the unrest in Thailand.

…The same thing happens in the East, faster through the absence of constitutional inertia. Bangkok and Thailand offer an especially vivid example: one country has become two worlds. We have watched the emergence of a conflict between Yellow Shirts (essentially urban) and Red Shirts (essentially not), which may be progressing toward civil war. …

…This is backed with some marketing savvy, as the Red Shirt slogans have shifted from supporting Thaksin Shinawatra, the freely-elected demagogue who was “Toxin” to Bangkok voters. He was deposed and exiled after urban Yellow Shirt demonstrations. They also deposed his party after it won the election, and then a compliant Supreme Court banned Thaksin’s party, lest it embarrass Bangkok by winning yet again.

Now the Red Shirts demand “democracy” in the abstract. There have been shows of loyalty to the king, to defeat the charge of “republicanism.” And, for the most part, the crowds from upcountry have remained edifyingly peaceful. But stubborn; more stubborn than Bangkok can understand. …

In Jewish World Review, Paul Greenberg follows Mark Steyn’s lead last week in discussing the cultural decline in Great Britain.

…A country can rebound from economic difficulties and even political demoralization — see the New Deal, or the Reagan Years — but how restore the social fabric, the very culture of a country, once it’s been allowed to deteriorate? The collapse of educational standards may be only the most pervasive and influential symptom of what ails us.

…It is such visions of the American future that may explain the rise of the latest political phenomenon on this side of the pond–the Tea Party, a variegated collection of Americans who have only this much in common: Like Howard Beale in Network, they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take this anymore! They’re opening the nearest window and shouting their rage. Yes, they’re reactionaries — but they have much to react against. What intelligent observer wouldn’t?

No, the Tea Partiers may not know what to do about the problem, but at least they know we’ve got one. And they’re not going to be all nice and quiet about it.

Mark Steyn writes a cautionary tale: how big government in England and Canada is eroding Western culture and values, increasing the power of the governing over the governed.

…in December Tohseef Shah sprayed the words “KILL GORDON BROWN,” “OSAMA IS ON HIS WAY” and “ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD” on the war memorial at Burton-upon-Trent. But the Crown Prosecution Service decided his words were not “religiously motivated.” Phew! Thank goodness for that, eh? So a week or so back he walked out of court a free man, except for £500 in compensation to the municipal council for cleaning off his non-religiously motivated “ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD” graffito. …

…in today’s advanced Western society, there are no absolute rights—for all individual freedoms must be “balanced” against the state’s commitment to “multiculturalism” or “equality” or whatever other modish conceit tickles its fancy. … Real “rights” are restraints upon the state—“negative” rights, as constitutionalists have it; they delineate the limits of the sovereign’s power. But in the modern era “rights” are baubles in the state’s gift, and the sovereign confers them at the expense of individual liberty. Truly, this is an Orwellian assault on the very foundations of freedom. …

David Goldman offers an odd juxtaposition of stories and commentary on some cultural crossroads. We highlight the most positive aspect.

…The strictures of traditional society are a flimsy defense against modernity. The moment that members of traditional society cease to live under a regime of compulsion, they tend to adopt the habits of the ambient culture. The most dramatic expression of this trend is the collapse of Muslim birth rates, especially among Muslims who have emigrated to the West. As Martin Walker wrote in the Woodrow Wilson Center Quarterly in 1999, “the birthrates of Muslim women in Europe—and around the world—have been falling significantly for some time. Data on birthrates among different religious groups in Europe are scarce, but they point in a clear direction. Between 1990 and 2005, for example, the fertility rate in the Netherlands for Moroccan-born women fell from 4.9 to 2.9, and for ­Turkish-­born women from 3.2 to 1.9. In 1970, ­Turkish-­born women in Germany had on average two children more than ­German-­born women. By 1996, the difference had fallen to one child, and it has now dropped to half that number.”

There is a straight-line correlation between literacy and birth rates in the Muslim world, as I documented here, which suggests that the moment that Muslims enter modernity, for example, through reading, the habits of traditional society die quickly. Islam is fragile, and that helps explain why radical Islam is so aggressive.

Thomas Sowell brings the truth into sharp focus.

One of the many shallow statements that sound good — if you don’t stop and think about it — is that “at some point, you have made enough money.”

The key word in this statement, made by President Barack Obama recently, is “you.” There is nothing wrong with my deciding how much money is enough for me or your deciding how much money is enough for you, but when politicians think that they should be deciding how much money is enough for other people, that is starting down a very slippery slope.

Politicians with the power to determine each citizen’s income are no longer public servants. They are public masters. …

David Harsanyi comments on the blatant authoritarian condescension of the intelligentsia.

…”One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks,” according to Friedman. “But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.”

Of course, some form or another of Friedman’s rationale has been used in nearly every embryonic dictatorship. Now, if only Venezuela and Sudan funded more solar farms, Friedman could embrace their progressive forms of governance, as well.

Friedman isn’t alone. The lure of enlightened autocracy is why MSNBC’s Chris Matthews can casually ask, as he did on his show this week, why the oil industry hasn’t been nationalized yet. It is why Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan can stand in front of the Supreme Court, as she did last year, and defend book banning (for the administration, via bipartisan legislation). …

…It seems that the negative externalities of our freewheeeling ways have become too much for some of the enlightened to bear. Progressivism is the belief that we have too much freedom with which to make too many stupid choices. …

In the WSJ, Julia Martin reviews Samuel Zipp’s new book about a previous generation’s intelligentsia wreaking havoc on city neighborhoods and economies.

The disaster that befell many American cities in the post-World War II era is drearily familiar. We know that the building of interstate highways, combined with the Federal Housing Authority’s red-lining of inner-city neighborhoods, encouraged the flight of the urban middle class to the suburbs. We also know that the federal government then ensured the ruin of much of what was left by pursuing “urban renewal”—that is, by demolishing working-class neighborhoods, destroying the traditional street grid and gouging the classic urban fabric with fortress-like public-housing projects.

In “Manhattan Projects,” Samuel Zipp offers a fresh perspective on this dispiriting tale. Unlike many of his scholarly predecessors, who regarded the anti-urban agenda of policy makers as a given (why else would they have so destroyed our cities?), Mr. Zipp tells his story from the point of view of policy makers who loved cities—and who thought they were making a “benevolent intervention.” …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

In Canada’s National Post, Conrad Black comments on various struggling economies in the West, while Canada has avoided these fiscal issues.

…Here is the most chronic problem in Europe: Barely 30% of Europeans work to sustain the rest. Working hours have been steadily reduced in most countries; holidays have multiplied, and perhaps even more than elsewhere, Europe has fled to service industry and public-sector employment, which is often not really productive work, or may be just disguised welfare, or at least workfare.

…For decades, Europe has played Turkey as a 50-pound fish on a 20-pound line, reeling it in when Turkey was needed and rejecting the Turks as a Muslim rabble at other times. The predictable has happened, as Turkey is now enjoying greater economic growth than any other country in (or partly in) Europe. It is an Islamic regime that is casting aside Kemal Ataturk’s guardians of secularism, the army and the judiciary, who became thoroughly corrupt in the 70 years that they have held the clergy at bay. Turkey has virtually turned its back on Europe and on its former allies, Israel and the United States, and is now asserting influence over its former Arab satrapies. How far it will vanish into the Islamic world, where no matter what happens it will be a force for comparative moderation, is an open question. …

…Canada has the highest economic growth rate of any advanced economy, with the possible exceptions of Australia and Israel, and relatively modest debt (for which everyone should be grateful to Jean Chretien and Paul Martin). The country’s financial and political institutions are working as well as any in the world and Canada is finally getting some recognition for what it has achieved. Let’s get used to it.

Joel Kotkin, in the Daily Beast, looks at the model for many liberal dreams.

…Although the financial crisis may have originated on Wall Street, it’s been Europe and the Euro that now represent the big threat to drive world markets back into recession. …

…You can blame the spendthrift Greeks for this trouble, or even the lack of geeks in Europe (anyone found a continental Google or Apple lately?). But Euro-stagnation is nothing new. It’s deeply rooted and longstanding. Indeed, since 1970 it has not been the U.S. that has faded before the onslaught from the East, but the core 15 nations of the European Union. Over that 40-year period the EU-15’s share of world GDP has plummeted from roughly 37 percent to under 28 percent; the American chunk, roughly 27 percent, has stayed remarkably even. Basically Asia, and particularly China and India’s gain, largely has been at Europe’s expense, not our’s.

In stating the case for European superiority, much has been made by boosters of Europe’s different institutional framework, tax or regulatory structure. No question these have advantages and disadvantages compared with those of the United States, but there’s little case for arguing that the “Euro-model” has been a rip-roaring economic success. It’s imploding on its weak periphery, and the collapse is threatening even bigger players, including the United Kingdom.

Europe’s problems extend well beyond policy, into the realm of culture and demographics. Even in France, people and what they do actually matter more than abstract ideas. A culture that believes in itself, not only to have children, but also start businesses and innovate will overcome one, however theoretically well managed, that does not. This is the fundamental problem of Europe as whole, although it does not apply equally to every individual country in the union. …

David Harsanyi looks at the cap-and-trade scam.

…Praising the legislation, President Barack Obama made his customary case, twinning the fictitious economic benefits of statism with freshman-class utopianism, claiming that “we will put Americans to work in new jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced — jobs building solar panels and wind turbines; constructing fuel-efficient cars and buildings; and developing the new energy technologies that will lead to even more jobs, more savings, and a cleaner, safer planet in the bargain.”

Like most parents, I too hope my children one day toil in a non-productive factory assembling taxpayer-subsidized wind turbines rather than turning to imported Canadian fossil fuels and constructive high-income professions. Unlike profits, you see, dreams can never be outsourced.

…The fabricated cap-and-trade “market” is a well-documented concoction of rent-seeking corporations who will work diligently with Washington to ensure taxpayers always foot the bill. As the legislation stands now, oil companies will also have to pay emissions allowances — outside the cap-and-trade market — which is nothing more than another gas tax. …

Mort Zuckerman discusses how the public sector unions, and the politicians they back, have destroyed state budgets. Government workers receive salaries, benefits, and pensions that taxpayers pay for, but taxpayers themselves don’t receive in the private sector.

…A Citizens Budget Commission report in 2005 showed that for most job categories in the greater New York City region, public sector workers received higher hourly wages than private sector workers. And according to a 2009 survey by the same group, this doesn’t even count the money that New York City pays in full premiums for comprehensive health insurance policies for workers and their families. Only 8 percent of workers in private firms enjoy that subsidy. Moreover, in virtually all cases, the city also pays the full healthcare premium costs for retirees and their spouses. And the city pensions are “defined benefit” plans, which are more expensive since they guarantee specific benefits on retirement.

On the other hand, private sector workers in the survey were mostly in “defined contribution” plans, which means that, unlike their cushioned brethren in the public sector, they do not have a pre-determined benefit at retirement. If New York City were to require its current workers to pay contributions toward health insurance equal to the amounts paid by the employees of local private sector firms, the taxpayer savings would approximate $628 million a year. In New Jersey, Christie says government employee health benefits are 41 percent more expensive than those of the average Fortune 500 company.

What we suffer is a ruinously expensive collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers, purchased with taxpayer money. …

California is a horrible warning for the nation of how dreams can turn to dust. In most states, politicians face a contracting local economy and shortfalls in tax receipts. Naturally, they look to cut expenses but run into obstruction from politically powerful unions that represent state and local government employees, teachers, and healthcare workers who have themselves caused pension and healthcare insurance costs to soar. It is not an accident that in framing the national stimulus program, Congress directed a stunning percentage of the $787 billion to support public service employees. …

Jennifer Rubin criticizes the president for refusing to say that Islamic fundamentalists killed Daniel Pearl.

At a signing ceremony for the Freedom of Press Act, it is ironic and shameful that Obama could not bring himself to identify the killers who beheaded the man who fearlessly reported on the jihadist terrorists. Obama had this to say:

All around the world there are enormously courageous journalists and bloggers who, at great risk to themselves, are trying to shine a light on the critical issues that the people of their country face; who are the frontlines against tyranny and oppression. And obviously the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is, and it reminded us that there are those who would go to any length in order to silence journalists around the world.

If you didn’t know already, you’d never figure out that he was talking about the Islamic fundamentalists who butchered Pearl. …

John Steele Gordon also comments on issues surrounding the signing of the Freedom of the Press Act.

…He might also have taken questions from the press. As Chip Reid of CBS points out, the reporters were herded out of the room after the ceremony. “There was some rich irony at the White House today — President Obama signed the Press Freedom Act,” he wrote, “and then promptly refused to take any questions.” This is nothing new: as his presidency has evolved, Obama has become more and more remote from the press, except when he is in total control. …

In Reason, Peter Suderman looks at some of what’s ahead, thanks to the politicians who brought us Obamacare.

… And, perhaps more importantly, a planned investigation into the write-downs revealed that many big corporations are considering dropping their health care coverage and dumping employees onto the public dole.

When Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) heard about the write-downs, he called a hearing with AT&T and other companies claiming big hits. But soon after the subpoenaed corporate documents were turned in, the hearing was canceled. Why? Likely because, as Fortune magazine reported, the documents showed that the companies were considering dropping coverage for many employees—directly contradicting one of the president’s key promises, that, under ObamaCare, “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Even with penalties in place for employers who decline to provide health insurance, documents showed that Caterpillar could reduce its health care costs by as much as 70 percent and AT&T could save as much as $1.8 billion by shifting their employees into public programs.

Small businesses, meanwhile, have discovered that their tax preparation costs just went way up. The PPACA will require small business owners and the self-employed to fill out 1099s for every company they do more than $600 worth of business with. That means any freelancer who buys a mid-range laptop from Best Buy will technically be required to fill out a 1099, no matter if the retailer is an indifferent chain giant. As with the drug subsidy modification, the idea is to beef up compliance and raise additional revenue—about $17 billion worth.

At the same time, cost projections continue to spiral upwards. The Congressional Budget Office now reports that the law will require an additional $115 billion in previously unreported (and yet unpaid-for) discretionary spending. Medicare’s actuary has reported that total medical spending in the U.S. will actually go up and that crucial cuts to Medicare—cuts being used to pay for the law’s new entitlement spending—aren’t likely to happen, but that Medicare benefits are likely to be reduced. And in Massachusetts, the state whose 2006 health care overhaul served as the model for ObamaCare, insurers have gone to war with the governor, and the state treasurer is warning that the program could drive the state into bankruptcy. …

In the WSJ, Melinda Beck reports that some germs may be good for you.

…According to the “hygiene hypothesis,” first proposed in 1989, exposure to a variety of bacteria, viruses and parasitic worms early in life helps prime a child’s immune system, much like sensory experiences program his brain. Without such early instruction, the immune system may go haywire and overreact with allergies to foods, pollen and pet dander or turn on the body’s own tissue, setting off autoimmune disorders.

Many of these microorganisms evolved symbiotically with humans over millions of years—the so-called “old friends” theory. But where they’ve been eradicated, a key part of human development has been thrown off. …

…Some scientists are searching for ways to harness the immune-priming effects of microorganisms without the fatal diseases. Parasitic worms known as helminthes are leading the way.

Clinical trials are under way in the U.S. and Europe testing Trichuris Suis Ova (TSO)—-a species of pig whipworm—as a treatment for peanut allergies, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease and MS. A study is being designed to test it with asthma. It’s also being tested with adults who have autism, which some researchers believe could be related to immunological function. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Jay Nordlinger blogs that the Obama administration is still apologizing to the world.

We, the United States, have been having human-rights talks with China. Our side is apparently led by Michael Posner, an assistant secretary of state. I will quote from an Associated Press report:

“Posner said in addition to talks on freedom of religion and expression, labor rights and rule of law, officials also discussed Chinese complaints about problems with U.S. human rights, which have included crime, poverty, homelessness and racial discrimination.

He said U.S. officials did not whitewash the American record and in fact raised on its [their?] own a new immigration law in Arizona that requires police to ask about a person’s immigration status if there is suspicion the person is in the country illegally.”

I hope I have read that incorrectly, or am interpreting it incorrectly. Did we, the United States, talking to a government that maintains a gulag, that denies people their basic rights, that in all probability harvests organs, apologize for the new immigration law in Arizona? Really, really? …

If anyone was questioning whether Hollywood is in touch with the rest of America, read Jim Hoft’s post in Gateway Pundit.

Woody Allen wants Barack Obama to be dictator for a few years so that he can completely socialize America. The article published today, May 15, 2010, did not make it into any English-language paper. …

And, the money quote:

“…sería bueno…si pudiera ser un dictador durante algunos años, porque podría hacer un montón de cosas buenas rápidamente.”

The translated quote:

“…it would be good…if he could be a dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly.”

Of course, this comes as a complete shock.

What is it with these leftist loons and their passion for socialist dictators?

Michael Barone asks why our government can’t state the obvious. Barone’s answer leaves us wanting, but his review is interesting.

If you want to watch someone squirm, take a look at the two-minute videotape of Attorney General Eric Holder dodging Republican Rep. Lamar Smith’s question whether “radical Islam” motivated the Times Square bomber.

Holder, who last year called America “a nation of cowards” for refusing to talk frankly about race, plainly didn’t want to say what is plain to everyone else, that Faisal Shahzad, back from five months in Waziristan, launched his terror attack because of his Islamist beliefs.

…Why the reluctance to state the obvious truth, that we are under attack from terrorists motivated by a radical form of Islam?

My theory is that these well-intentioned folk see the American people as a howling mob. They think that if Americans find out that Islamists are attacking us, they will go out and slaughter innocent Muslims. They think that Americans are incapable of understanding the simple truth that while most terrorists are Islamists, the large majority of Muslims are not terrorists. …

Investor’s Business Daily Editors say it’s time for a new Attorney General.

…Just this week, Steve Emerson’s respected Investigative Project on Terrorism noted with concern that terrorist experts have detected a shift in terrorists’ attention — from weak spots overseas to the U.S. homeland. It’s only a matter of time.

Even so, there was Holder, in congressional testimony last week, virtually unable to make his mouth form the words “radical Islam” when queried if that was behind the recent upswing in terrorism. It is, of course, but the White House refuses to say so.

Anyone with a normal ration of common sense and intelligence can see that radical Islam is a serious problem. Why can’t Holder?

…By his own admission, Holder’s decision making is driven by politics — not by concerns for the Constitution or public safety. Rule of law depends on a nonpolitical attorney general. Holder must go.

In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby writes on a glimmer of hope in Philadelphia. Some people who otherwise are certifiable liberals are backing school vouchers.

…Three months ago, the executive committee of ADL’s Philadelphia chapter voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution endorsing vouchers. Now it is urging the entire organization to follow suit.

“We believe school choice to be an urgent civil rights issue,’’ the committee argued in a brief being circulated among ADL’s 30 regional offices. Despite decades of increased spending on K-12 education, “the evidence that our public education system is failing to educate our children is staggering.’’ ADL should reverse its longtime position “as a moral imperative,’’ the Philadelphia leadership urges, and “issue a resolution in favor of school choice.’’

As it happens, the ADL regional board isn’t the only liberal voice in Philadelphia calling for expanded school choice. State Senator Anthony Williams, a black Democrat and a candidate in Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial primary this week, is the founder of a charter school, a champion of vouchers, and an ardent believer in the power of competition to improve the quality of education. His position puts him sharply at odds with the state’s largest teachers’ union, which opposes choice and has endorsed his main opponent. But Williams — like the local ADL leadership — sees school choice as the great civil rights battle of the day.

“Anybody who was for Brown v. Board of Education — it baffles me that they would be against vouchers,’’ he told me last week. “Brown condemned schools that were separate and unequal. Well, that’s exactly what we’re back to now — schools that are segregated by income, by ZIP code, by race.’’ …

In City Journal, Heather Mac Donald has an amazing article on how the NY Times reports crime in New York City. We highlight the positive part of the article. How liberals are trying to mess this up constitutes the rest of the story.

…The proactive policing revolution that began under NYPD Commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994 declared that the police would actually lower crime—an unheard-of idea in the annals of policing. To accomplish that feat, the department began rigorously scrutinizing crime data on a daily basis and deploying officers to crime hot spots. Once there, officers were expected to be on the look-out for suspicious behavior. If there had been a string of robberies at ATMs in East Flatbush, for example, and an officer saw two guys apparently casing an ATM user from across the street, who then walked quickly away when they spotted the uniform, the officer was expected to stop and question the two men. If thieves had been preying on senior citizens in Harlem, someone walking closely behind a retiree in the 28th precinct and looking furtively over his shoulder would likely be stopped by an officer deployed there in response to the crime spike. Those stops may not have resulted in an arrest, if no evidence of a crime were found, but they may have disrupted a crime in the making.

This data-driven, proactive style of policing, which came to be known as Compstat, led to the largest crime drop in recent memory. The biggest returns were in New York’s minority neighborhoods, because that’s where crime was and still is the highest. Blacks and Hispanics have made up 79 percent of the 78 percent decline in homicide victims since 1990. Over 10,000 black and Hispanic males are alive today who would have been dead had homicide rates remained at early 1990s levels. …

Robert Samuelson discusses how to deal with US budget issues, from the political center.

…In a classroom, limiting government debt in relation to GDP can be defended. The idea is to reassure investors (a.k.a. “financial markets”) that the debt burden isn’t becoming heavier so they will continue lending at low interest rates. But in real life, the logic doesn’t work. Governments inevitably face deep recessions, wars or other emergencies that require heavy borrowing. To stabilize debt to GDP, you have to aim much lower than the target in good times, meaning that you should balance the budget (or run modest surpluses) after the economy has recovered from recessions. …

…The virtue of balancing the budget is that it forces people to weigh the benefits of government against the costs. It’s a common-sense standard that people intuitively grasp. If the Deficit Commission is serious, it will set a balanced budget in 2020 as a goal, allowing time to phase in benefit cuts and tax increases. It will then invite think tanks (from the Heritage Foundation on the right to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities on the left) and interest groups (from the Chamber of Commerce to AARP) to present plans to reach that goal. Their competing visions could jump-start a long-overdue debate on government’s role. …

Historian H.W. Brands, in Forbes, writes about a time when America rebounded from bleak economic conditions.

Amid the current uncertainty about America’s future, it might be useful to recall a time when the country really was in trouble. At the end of the Civil War the nation was a wreck. The economy of the South had capsized, with billions of dollars of “property” erased upon the freeing of the slaves. Towns and cities had been burned and wide swaths of countryside ravaged. A large part of the labor force of the North had been drawn into the military, depriving shops and farms of their workers. The federal debt had quadrupled in just four years, reaching the unprecedented level of nearly a third of GDP. The financial crisis had forced the federal government off the gold standard; fiat greenbacks drove gold dollars into hiding. The country was deeply in debt to foreign lenders, who held the nation’s economic fate in their hands.

Things got worse. Speculators warred for control of railroads, deranging share prices and rail traffic. A cabal of financiers in 1869 tried to corner the gold market and nearly succeeded, panicking Wall Street in the process. In 1873 Jay Cooke & Co., the firm that had sold the bonds that kept the Union afloat during the war, went bust, triggering the worst panic yet and plunging the nation into its first full-blown industrial depression.

The country had nowhere to go but up.

And it did, during the final quarter of the 19th century, thanks to a revolutionary amalgam of technique, technology, geography and demography. …