Click on WORD or ODF for full content
Daniel Hannan, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, shares a snapshot of India’s importance to the Anglosphere.
The Anglosphere, for anyone who still doesn’t know, is the community of free, English-speaking nations linked, not by governmental decree, but by shared values. …
…When passing through Delhi recently, I pointed out that the city feels more familiar, less foreign, than it did a decade ago – partly because the Indian middle class is ballooning, partly because the English language is more widespread and partly because of migration.
Communities of Indian descent remain in almost every corner of the Commonwealth, including those which British settlers evacuated long ago: Fiji, South Africa, Malaysia, East Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada – and increasingly, of course, the US. …
…Almost all post-colonial governments begin by emphasising their distance from the former occupiers, and India was no exception. But technological change and rapid embourgeoisement are realigning India with the other Anglophone democracies. David Cameron, to his credit, grasps that power is shifting eastward, and sees the opportunity for Britain. Barack Obama, by contrast, seems to scorn the vast ally which Bush had secured. Fortunately, Indians seem content to wait for a different attitude from Washington. They are a patient and courteous people.
Notwithstanding his consternation at O’Donnell’s Delaware win, Charles Krauthammer likes the idea of a Dem campaign against the tea parties.
… what sane Democrat wants to nationalize an election at a time of 9.6 percent unemployment and such disappointment with Obama that just this week several of his own dreamy 2008 supporters turned on him at a cozy town hall? The Democrats’ only hope is to run local campaigns on local issues. That’s how John Murtha’s former district director hung on to his boss’s seat in a special election in Pennsylvania.
Newt Gingrich had to work hard — getting Republican candidates to sign the Contract with America — to nationalize the election that swept Republicans to victory in 1994. A Democratic anti-Tea Party campaign would do that for the Republicans — nationalize the election, gratis — in 2010. As a very recent former president — now preferred (Public Policy Polling, Sept. 1) in bellwether Ohio over the current one by 50 percent to 42 percent — once said: Bring ‘em on.
The Dems are abandoning ship, writes Bill Kristol.
It would be unbecoming for us at The Weekly -Standard?—we do have to uphold standards, after all!—to chortle with glee as the Democratic party melts down. It would be unkind to whoop at the top of our lungs as Obama White House big shots quit or get fired, and to cheer with gusto as the GOP leadership behaves sensibly, the Tea Party goes from strength to strength, and momentum builds towards a huge Election Day repudiation of big government liberalism.
So, instead, we’ll simply point out, calmly and quietly, that the Democratic party is in meltdown, the Obama White House is in disarray, and the voters are in rebellion against both of them.
…This White House will have lost, by the end of this year, a remarkably high percentage of its original senior staff members. The White House counsel, communications director, budget director, and chair of the council of economic advisers are already gone—to say nothing of the estimable Van Jones, special adviser for green jobs, enterprise, and innovation. The chief of staff, national security adviser, and top economic policy director will follow shortly. Almost all of them were oh-so-convinced they were the best and brightest, oh-so-contemptuous of others who had labored in those jobs, and oh-so-disdainful of the American people. If we were less good-hearted and generous in spirit, we would be tempted to say: Goodbye and good riddance. …
Craig Pirrong in Streetwise Professor answers Thomas Friedman’s delusions of grandiose central planning.
…What has made the American economy more productive than any in history is the largely uncoordinated actions of millions of individuals, often in competition with one another. Competition among freely assembled cooperative organizations–firms. Guys in their basements and garages. Not governments and mandarins and bureaucrats who act like those paid to whip Chinese boat haulers in the old days.
America’s current economic problems are largely a manifestation of the unceasing efforts of the government to impose central direction and control. And the current political firestorm sweeping the country is directly attributable to millions of people pushing back.
Carlson’s 2d Marine Raider Battalion used the Chinese expression “Gung ho” as a motto: it was soon adopted by the rest of the Marine Corps. Gung ho means “Pull together,” or “work together in harmony.” That’s Tom Friedman’s idea of how an economy and a polity should work. It also happens to be the idea held by Obama, and a good part of Congress and the bureaucracy.It is appealing to a certain kind of mind that makes analogies between tribes or firms or military units or other formal organizations on the one hand, and entire economies on the other. A kind of mind that has no comprehension of emergent order, spontaneous organization, ordered liberty, or decentralized coordination through competition and the price system. ”Gung ho” makes sense as an ethos for a military unit: it makes no sense as an organizing principle for an economy. …
Jonah Goldberg heard from a reader who is more informed on China than Thomas Friedman.
From a reader:
Dear Mr. Goldberg:
I have appreciated your past articles exposing Thomas Friedman’s ridiculous envy of so-called “progress” in China. But his latest article demonstrates beyond doubt that he has no clue about the real China or its people. Contrary to his protestation, his opinions are based on illusion and have no credibility whatsoever. …
…If Thomas Friedman bothered to visit with real Chinese families and saw how they actually lived, he would realize that his admiration for China is misplaced. He would no longer stand in awe of its buildings but rather would admire those Chinese citizens who have managed to remain inspired by the dream of freedom and liberty despite the oppression of their government.
(I still have to travel to China so please keep my name confidential in all respects. By the way, doesn’t that request say all that needs to be said about China?)…
It has come to pass that the DOJ disinclination in the Black Panther’s case has broken into mainstream discourse with publication Saturday in WaPo.
A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration.
Christopher Coates’s testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was the latest fallout from the department’s handling of a 2008 voter-intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans accuse Justice officials of improperly narrowing the charges, allegations that they strongly dispute.
Filed weeks before the Obama administration took office, the case focused on two party members who stood in front of a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008, one carrying a nightstick. The men were captured on video and were accused of trying to discourage some people from voting.
Coates, former head of the voting section that brought the case, testified in defiance of his supervisor’s instructions and has been granted whistleblower protection. Coates criticized what he called the “gutting” of the New Black Panthers case for “irrational reasons,” saying the decision was part of “deep-seated” opposition among the department’s leaders to filing voting-rights cases against minorities and cases that protect whites.
“I had people who told me point-blank that [they] didn’t come to the voting rights section to sue African American people,” said Coates, who transferred to the U.S. attorney’s office in South Carolina in January. “When you are paid by the taxpayer, that is totally indefensible.” …
John Stossel has an interesting discussion about the fairness of earning pay and the “fairness” of taking other people’s money.
…Arthur Brooks, who heads the American Enterprise Institute.
“…the fairest system is the one that rewards the makers in society as opposed to rewarding the takers in society.”
Brooks wrote “The Battle,” which argues that the fight between free enterprise and big government will shape our future.
“The way that our culture is moving now is toward more redistribution, toward more progressive taxation, exempting more people from paying anything, and loading more of the taxes onto the very top earners in our society.”
But it seems “kind” to take it away from wealthier people and give it to those who need it more.
“Actually, it’s not,” Brooks says. “The government does not create wealth. It uses wealth that’s been created by the private sector.” …
We have the second part of Jeff Jacoby’s discussion of recycling. He expels the myths of recycling.
…Most of the stuff we throw out — aluminum cans are an exception — is cheaper to replace from scratch than to recycle. “Cheaper’’ is another way of saying “requires fewer resources.’’ Green evangelists believe that recycling our trash is “good for the planet’’ — that it conserves resources and is more environmentally friendly. But recycling household waste consumes resources, too.
Extra trucks are required to pick up recyclables, and extra gas to fuel those trucks, and extra drivers to operate them. Collected recyclables have to be sorted, cleaned, and stored in facilities that consume still more fuel and manpower; then they have to be transported somewhere for post-consumer processing and manufacturing. Add up all the energy, time, emissions, supplies, water, space, and mental and physical labor involved, and mandatory recycling turns out to be largely unsustainable — an environmental burden, not a boon.
“Far from saving resources,’’ Benjamin writes, “curbside recycling typically wastes resources — resources that could be used productively elsewhere in society.’’
Popular impressions to the contrary notwithstanding, we are not running out of places to dispose of garbage. Not only is US landfill capacity at an all-time high, but all of the country’s rubbish for the next 100 years could comfortably fit into a landfill measuring 10 miles square. Benjamin puts that in perspective: “Ted Turner’s Flying D ranch outside Bozeman, Mont., could handle all of America’s trash for the next century — with 50,000 acres left over for his bison.’’…
After seeing the movie Top Gun, it is hard to believe where military aviation is heading. The Economist fills us in.
JET fighters may be sexy in a Tom Cruise-ish sort of way, but for guerilla warefare—in which the enemy rarely has an air force of his own with which to dogfight—they are often not the tool for the job. Pilotless drones can help fill the gap. Sometimes there is no substitute for having a pilot on the scene, however, so modern air forces are starting to turn to a technology from the yesteryear of flying: the turboprop. …
…Turboprops are also hard to shoot down. Air Tractor, another firm that makes cropdusters, branched out into warplanes last year. One reason was that a fleet of 16 unarmed versions of its aircraft had been used by America’s State Department to dust South American drug plantations with herbicide—an activity that tends to provoke a hostile response from the ground. Despite the planes’ having been hit by more than 200 rounds, though, neither an aircraft nor a pilot has been lost.
…Not surprisingly, then, many countries with small defence budgets are investing in turboprops. Places that now fly them, or are expected to do so, include Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco and Venezuela. And the United States. For the biggest military establishment in the world, too, recognises the value of this new old technology. The American air force plans to buy more than 100 turboprops and the navy is now evaluating the Super Tucano, made by Embraer, a Brazilian firm.
In aerial combat, then, low tech may be the new high tech….