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In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Nile Gardiner comments on the Obami’s latest efforts at alienating a key ally.
…And The Times article does not even delve into the latest fallout from the joint Clinton-Kirchner press conference in Buenos Aires last week. Hillary Clinton’s astonishing statement of support for Argentine demands for UN-brokered negotiations with Britain over the Falklands has to be the biggest US diplomatic slap in the face for Great Britain in recent history. I suspect it played a key role in the Foreign Secretary’s decision not to visit Washington during his trip to the United States this week, a highly significant move in light of the pressing transatlantic concerns over the war in Afghanistan and the Iranian nuclear crisis.
The rising tensions between Great Britain and the United States over the Falklands is threatening to become a full-blown diplomatic row, with significant long-term damage to the Anglo-American Special Relationship. It is the last thing the alliance needs as US and British forces battle the Taliban and as well as al-Qaeda in a global war against Islamist terrorism.
The Obama administration’s reckless and destructive stance over the Falklands is a major strategic error of judgment by Washington, and yet another demonstration of a poorly conceived foreign policy doctrine that attaches little importance to preserving friendships and alliances, while currying favour with anti-American regimes. It is a monumentally foolish approach that will significantly undercut support for the United States among the British people. It is also a shameful betrayal of a decades-long partnership forged through several wars in the defence of the free world.
Charles Krauthammer gives us an insightful article on how the Dems return to power has tempered liberal thinking in some areas of governance.
As the Afghanistan war intensifies …it has come to be seen as Obama’s war.
Not so. It’s become America’s war. When the former opposition party — habitually antiwar for the past four decades — adopts, reaffirms and escalates a war begun by the habitually hawkish other party, partisanship falls away, and the war becomes nationalized.
And legitimized. Do you think if John McCain, let alone George W. Bush, were president, we would not see growing demonstrations protesting our continued presence in Iraq and the escalation of Afghanistan? That we wouldn’t see a serious push in Congress to cut off funds?
…When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That’s its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, the party adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born. …
In Forbes, Amity Schlaes has an informative piece on price controls.
…the Obama Administration’s move toward price controls on health insurance and credit cards. The Administration may not be calling its plans “price controls.” It would describe what it’s doing as establishing a Health Insurance Rate Authority and creating new offices and practices to protect consumers from predatory lenders. Still, such entities are laying the ground for price controls when they set premiums or the Visa interest rate. …
…Consider the last time the federal government aggressively controlled the price of something deeply important to consumers. …
…The Administration’s Cost of Living Council–yes, that was its name–ordained, tweaked and exhorted, all at different points. In the summer of 1973, for example, it froze gasoline prices. Many consumers welcomed the break. But their choice was not between high price and low price; it was between gas and no gas. …
David Warren opines on the fiscal crises of Iceland and Greece.
…Indeed, why should anyone pay off debts? It’s an old-fashioned concept, and from what I can see, the only reason Icelanders are discussing the question at all, is that the other Europeans are withholding aid and the succour of further loans until the “Icesave” issue is dealt with.
But consider: there’s another one born every minute. The Greeks have extricated themselves from their short-term fiscal emergency, even before their government has delivered on promised austerity measures, simply by floating new bonds to private investors at an exceptionally agreeable interest rate — and even while their civil servants demonstrate violently against the whole idea of fiddling with their extravagant bonuses and early retirement plans. I gather the new issue was over-subscribed.
And that would be an argument against letting Iceland default. The very idiots who lent them money in the first place might well turn around and lend them more. Still, that is the lenders’ problem. Stupidity on that scale has to be punished. …
Thomas Sowell discusses aspects of the economic crisis.
…You don’t lend when politicians are making it more doubtful whether you are going to get your money back — either on time or at all. From the White House to Capitol Hill, politicians are coming up with all sorts of bright ideas for borrowers not to have to pay back what they borrowed and for lenders not to be able to foreclose on people who are months behind on their mortgage payments.
…more and more Americans have no jobs. The unemployment rate has declined slightly, but only because many people have stopped looking for jobs. You are only counted as unemployed if you are still looking for a job. …
…The theory is that, if one thing doesn’t work, it is just a matter of trying another. But, in an atmosphere where nobody knows what the federal government is going to come up with next, people tend to hang on to their money until they have some idea of what the rules of the game are going to be.
David Harsanyi looks at the Colorado state legislature’s attempt to overburden companies doing business on the internet.
…Actually, if anyone ever needed an obvious illustration of how government overreach can damage an economy, they need look no further than the Colorado legislature’s foolish attempt to wheedle a few extra bucks out of consumers via an Internet sales tax.
After legislation forcing online companies to collect sales tax passed, Amazon.com moved to protect its consumers and long-term interests by severing its ties with Colorado. Unfortunately, this meant closing its associates program, which involved an estimated 5,000 jobs. …
…And as a recent Tax Foundation study on “Amazon laws” concluded, online companies would have to deal with more than 8,000 different tax computations should every state join Colorado’s effort. Amazon would be nuts not to fight. …
In Contentions, Liam Julian comments on the Education Department focusing on affirmative action rather than improving schools that are failing.
…The latest emission comes with Secretary Arne Duncan’s announcement this week that his department’s Office of Civil Rights will “reinvigorate civil rights enforcement” in the nation’s schools in an effort “to make Dr. King’s dream of a colorblind society a reality.” There is an obvious contradiction in trying to create a colorblind society through an inherently hyper-color-aware approach. And there’s a panoply of problems with a big, brash federal office opening “equity” investigations into the discipline decisions, course allotments, teacher assignments, etc. of individual schools. Here’s just one:
Duncan said that the country must ensure “that low-income Latino and African American students” have the same access to AP (Advanced Placement) classes as do other students. This assumes that black and Latino pupils are mostly denied access to AP courses because of their ethnicities; the reality is that black and Latino high-school students are simply less likely than their white and Asian counterparts to have attained the requisite academic skills that would enable them to handle AP assignments. The solution is not to police the AP roll; the solution is to worry about the lousy elementary schools and middle schools where so many black and Latino kids are permitted to sit through years of classes while learning next to nothing in them.
Packing into AP courses students unprepared for AP coursework can have only deleterious results: Either an unprepared pupil will grow frustrated and fail, or his teacher will accommodate him by making the class easier. The first outcome is unfair to one group of students, the second outcome is unfair to another. This is not civil rights.
The WaPo editors comment on the latest funding battle in the D.C. voucher program.
DON’T BE FOOLED by the excuses offered by Senate Democratic leaders about why no vote has been scheduled to reauthorize the District’s federally funded private school voucher program. The truth is that opponents know how bad it would look to vote against a program that has helped low-income, minority children get a better education. So instead they take no action and hope the program dies a slow, quiet death. Those championing vouchers are right to call out Senate leaders for their cowardly refusal to — at the very least — allow a fair hearing for this successful program. …
…Unless Congress acts soon or the D.C. government decides to assume responsibility, the voucher program, which has benefited so many students since its inception in 2004, is in grave danger. The Obama administration closed the program to new students; children currently enrolled, while supposedly assured of getting vouchers until they graduate from high school, face uncertainty as the program’s administrator pulls out. This is exactly what the program’s chief antagonists, the teachers unions… Given that a rigorous, federally mandated study confirmed the program’s effectiveness and that local leaders such as D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee have supported it, we understand why Mr. Reid sits on his hands. What possible explanation could Democrats devise for killing something that has been so crucial in the lives of thousands of poor D.C. children? How would it look? No, better to do nothing and hope the issue goes away. …
In Pajamas Media, Christopher Monckton directs scathing commentary at the global warming crowd, and the editors of Nature in particular.
The once-respected science journal Nature recently published a whining editorial to the effect that climate scientists are not criminals, really; that attacks on them by increasingly-skeptical news media are soooo unfair; and that the fundamental science showing that the planet is doomed unless the economies of the West are shut down at once is unchallengeable.
No doubt most climate scientists are not criminals. However, some are. Many of the two dozen Climategate emailers, who have for years driven the IPCC process, tampered with peer review in the learned journals, and fabricated, altered, concealed, or destroyed scientific data are criminals. Whether they or Nature like it or not, they will eventually stand trial, and deservedly so.
After all, the biofuel scam that is one of many disfiguring spin-offs from the “global warming” scare — driven by the poisonous clique of mad scientists whom Nature so uncritically defends — has taken millions of acres of farmland away from growing food for people who need it and towards growing biofuels for clunkers that don’t. Result: a doubling of world food prices, mass starvation, and death, leading to food riots in a dozen major regions of the globe. …