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Neal Boortz comments on our Honduras policy.
North Korea launches a missile and it takes Barack Obama and the UN five days to respond. Iran holds fraudulent elections, kills protesters and it takes weeks before Barack Obama can stand up and say that he is “concerned” about the situation.
Then the people of Honduras try to uphold their constitution and laws of the land from being trampled by a Chavez-wanna be … and it takes Barack Obama one day to proclaim that this was not a legal coup.
Why the sudden decisiveness? …
Peter Wehner writes in Commentary on the important milestone in Iraq.
… The ultimate wisdom in initiating the Iraq war is still to be validated by contingent events still to unfold. What is happening today is a transition, not a final triumph. And while Iraq is today a legitimate, representative, and responsible democracy, it remains fragile. Hard-earned progress can still be undone. The Iraqi military will have to prove it can provide security to its citizens. Relations between the Iraqi government and the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in the north, particularly over the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, are tense. None of us can foretell the future, and almost all of us have been wrong about some aspect of the war or another.
Still, it is worth pointing out that those who wrote off the war as unwinnable and a miserable failure, who made confident, sweeping arguments that have been overturned by events, and who had grown so weary of the conflict that they were willing to consign Iraqis to mass slaughters and America to a historically consequential defeat — they were thankfully, blessedly wrong. And the Land between the Rivers, which has known too much tyranny and too many tears, may yet bind up its wounds.
And Max Boot reminds us of the continuing challenges in Iraq.
Amid the hullabaloo regarding the handover of Iraqi cities to Iraqi security forces yesterday, it is easy to lose sight of the war still going on. Despite dramatic drops in violence in Iraq since 2006-2007 — and a corresponding increase in violence in Afghanistan — Iraq remains by several statistical measures the more violent of the two.
So far this year 101 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq versus 86 in Afghanistan. Figures for civilian casualties are less exact but they also indicate more deaths in Iraq — 893 in Iraq compared to 680 in Afghanistan. …
Michael Barone says the firefighter case shows us the more disgusting side of racial politics.
… Ricci is also something else: a riveting lesson in political sociology, thanks to the concurring opinion by Justice Samuel Alito. It shows how a combination of vote-hungry politicians and local political agitators — you might call them community organizers — worked with the approval of elite legal professionals like Judge Sotomayor to employ racial quotas and preferences in defiance of the words of the Civil Rights Act.
One of the chief actors was the Rev. Boise Kimber, a supporter of Mayor John DeStefano; the mayor testified for him as a character witness in a 1996 trial in which he was convicted of stealing prepaid funeral expenses from an elderly woman. DeStefano later appointed Kimber the head of the board of fire commissioners, but Kimber resigned after saying he wouldn’t hire certain recruits because “they just have too many vowels in their name.” After the results of the promotion test were announced, showing that 19 white and one Hispanic firefighter qualified for promotion, Kimber called the mayor’s chief administrative officer opposing certification of the test results.
The record shows that DeStefano and his appointees went to work, holding secret meetings and concealing their motives, to get the Civil Service Board to decertify the test results. Kimber appeared at a board meeting and made “a loud, minutes-long outburst” and had to be ruled out of order three times. …
Krauthammer’s take on events in Iraq.
… Nonetheless, it [Iraq] is a democracy, and that’s what makes it unique and distinctive, and an amazing achievement in a sea of autocracies and dictatorships—having an effect, by example, on Lebanon, on the Gulf states, and even on Iran, where Iranians look to their west and see a country which is also Shiite, Arab, (which the Persians consider culturally inferior), and yet it has a democracy, it has elections, it has an Ayatollah Sistani who says the clerics ought to stay out of politics, and the Iranians are living under a sixth-century dictatorship run by mullahs.
So it’s a remarkable achievement, and we ought to emphasize what we have achieved in terms of democracy.
And it’s a pity that the president ignores that because the democratic nature of Iraq will establish the basis for a strategic alliance between America and Iraq in the future. …
Contentions post tells us about the EPA report that was suppressed.
… Dr. Carlin’s paper is substantial and deserves to be read in its entirety. But his takeaway is clear: the best explanations for global temperature fluctuations are changes in the amount of energy emitted by the sun, and, especially, oscillations in the temperatures of the oceans. The explanatory power of CO2 levels is much weaker, and, over the past decade, almost non-existent.
So why, when the House has just passed a “global warming” bill, is this report only available via a leak from CEI? Because, as Dr. Carlin puts it, “I’ve been involved in public policy since 1966 or 1967…. There’s never been anything exactly like this. I am now under a gag order.” The internal EPA e-mails between Dr. Carlin and his superiors that were leaked along with the report back up this claim. …
Daily Mail, UK reports the continuing evidence of the value of statins.
Statins cut the risk of heart attacks by 30 per cent even in healthy people, researchers say. The cholesterol-busting drugs also reduce the chances of death from all causes by 12 per cent. The findings, from a review of studies involving people without heart disease, will renew the heated debate over whether everyone over the age of 50 should be prescribed the powerful drugs.
At present they are given only to those at significant risk of a heart attack or stroke. Many experts say wider access to the cheap drug could save hundreds of thousands of lives while also saving the NHS billions every year. But others warn of the dangers of ‘mass medicalisation’ of the population. …
Slate tells us how McDonald’s conquered France.
… And the company was very adept at catering to French proclivities, a point brought home to me on a visit to a McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées in June 2007. I was part of a group of journalists being given a guided tour by Jean-Pierre Petit, who had succeeded Hennequin as the chief executive of McDonald’s France. We had come to this particular McDonald’s because Petit wanted to show us the newest addition to the company’s product line in France: McCafé, a stand-alone espresso bar offering lattes, macchiatos, and the like, along with fruit tarts, macarons, and other classic French sweets. The company was planning to open McCafés all over France, and the Champs-Élysées location was home to one of the first. Some of the other journalists eagerly ordered espresso drinks and pastries, but I wouldn’t be so easily gulled—this was still McDonald’s. Petit began making the rounds with a plate of macarons and insisted I try one. I took a pistachio. Not bad, I thought, but no Ladurée. As if reading my mind, Petit immediately chimed in, “We get the macarons from Holder, the company that owns Ladurée.” Touché.