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David Warren on the G8 summit.
… There is little, even in the wonderland of international power politics, quite as fatuous as the G8, when the world’s leaders meet, as they have been doing since 1973, to solve everyone’s domestic problems in an informal, results-oriented atmosphere. Thirty-five years later, they’re still dealing with the oil crisis.
They can create problems, they can compound problems, they can expand problems, and they can, through the extraordinary “outreach” of their bureaucracies, systematically undermine the people’s efforts to cope with these problems — but they cannot solve anything. The fault lies in an “imperfect” nature, which does not respond to the fairy-weave of the politician’s wand, or to the incantations of the tribal shaman for that matter. By toil alone is the harvest realized; by toil, the bread is baked; by toil is it bought and sold.
Governments can appropriate wealth, but the notion that they can somehow create it, or even reapportion it with any degree of foresight, is one of the great stupid ideas.
Journalists — attracted to power as the moth to the flame — are especially susceptible to the illusion that politicians have the ability to fix things; and to the converse, equally superstitious idea, that their failure to fix connotes a bad will.
Should there be drought, the shaman commands rain. …
Gordon Chang says forget the G8, there is only the G1. And Claudia Rosett blogs on the G8.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady writes on the FARC hostage rescue and why some NGO’s are NFG.
As we learn more about the Colombian military’s daring hostage rescue last week, one detail stands out: In tricking FARC rebels into putting the hostages aboard a helicopter, undercover special forces simply told the comandantes that the aircraft was being loaned to them by a fictitious nongovernmental organization sympathetic to their cause called the International Humanitarian Mission.
It may have taken years for army intelligence to infiltrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and it may have been tough to convincingly impersonate rebels. But what seems to have been a walk in the park was getting the FARC to believe that an NGO was providing resources to help it in the dirty work of ferrying captives to a new location.
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com.dowjones.video.articlePlayer.draw(“1646108104″,”320″,”290″,”left”,”452319854″, “The Colombian military tricked the FARC into releasing their most valuable hostages. Mary Anastasia O’Grady, who writes the "Americas" column, talks with Kelsey Hubbard about how the once-powerful guerrilla group was duped. (July 7)”)
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I am reminded of President Álvaro Uribe’s 2003 statement that some “human rights” organizations in his country were fronts for terrorists. Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd got his back up over Mr. Uribe’s statement, and piously lectured the Colombian president about “the importance of democratic values.”But as the helicopter story suggests, Mr. Uribe seems to have been right. How else to explain the fact that the FARC swallowed the line without batting an eye? …
O’Grady’s piece raised a question about Nancy Pelosi’s conduct. Power Line has details.
… some Americans seem remarkably oblivious to the evil that FARC, Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leftists represent. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Mary O’Grady writes about the fact that some “human rights” organizations are in fact allies of, and fronts for, terrorist groups. That’s a fair point, but I want to focus on the latter part of her column, in which she describes efforts by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez to turn the hostages into “a public-relations coup that would give him and the FARC ‘continental and world renown.’”
O’Grady’s account is based on documents that were captured from a FARC laptop in a raid by the Colombian military that we wrote about here. Based on those documents, it appears that Chavez had a couple of schemes to set up prisoner exchanges involving the FARC hostages. This is the most interesting one: …
Maybe Pelosi’s shenanigans are some of the reason for the approval rating of Congress falling to 9%. Ed Morrissey has the story.
When Democrats won majorities in both chambers of Congress, they pointed to the falling approval ratings of the legislature as a mandate for change. They have certainly provided it — albeit in the wrong direction. Rasmussen’s latest polling shows the approval ratings for Congress have reached a new low, and a new achievement … single digits:
The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category. …
The percentage of Democrats who give Congress positive ratings fell from 17% last month to 13% this month. The number of Democrats who give Congress a poor rating remained unchanged. Among Republicans, 8% give Congress good or excellent ratings, up just a point from last month. Sixty-five percent (65%) of GOP voters say Congress is doing a poor job, down a single point from last month.
Voters not affiliated with either party are the most critical of Congressional performance. Just 3% of those voters give Congress positive ratings, down from 6% last month. …
Ed Morrissey also posts on the Dem energy policy.
Democrats in Congress promised to make energy policy a high priority when they returned after the Independence Day break. Instead, they have quietly scrubbed the schedule of any votes on their energy bill, afraid Republicans will make them vote on increased domestic oil production and force them to choose between popular sentiment for drilling and their environmentalist allies. Their strategy? Well, the Hill chooses a good quote:
“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’ ” said a Democratic aide. …
John Stossel likes the Supreme gun ruling.
… But there is something else that many analysts of the decision have missed.
The Bill of Rights did not create rights. It acknowledged them. Right before the July 4 holiday, it shouldn’t have been necessary to remind the four Supreme Court dissenters of what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. … “
The Framers of the Second Amendment did not say, “The people shall have the right to keep and bear arms.” They wrote, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” …
Walter Williams hearts speculators.
Despite Congress’ periodic hauling of weak-kneed oil executives before their committees to charge them with collusion and price-gouging, subsequent federal investigations turn up no evidence to support the charges. Right now oil company executives are getting a bit of a respite as Congress has turned its attention to crude oil speculators, blaming them for high oil prices and calling for tighter control over commodity futures trading.
Let’s look at the futures market and for simplicity use corn futures discussed in my May 28th column titled “Futures Market.” While corn is different from oil, both obey the laws of supply and demand, just as humans are very different from bricks but both obey the laws of gravity. …
Sacré bleu! French winemakers say, “Screw You!” Daily Telegraph has the story of the cork’s demise.
While New World wines have adopted the screw top for years – with up to 90 per cent of New Zealand wines and 60 per cent of Australian bottles using them – giving up the time-honoured cork has met with much stiffer resistance in France beyond the cheaper end of the market.
But according to one wine expert, two of the world’s top names – Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in Burgundy, whose bottles can sell for tens of thousands of pounds, and Bordeaux’s legendary Chateau Margaux – are now looking into screw tops.
Romanée-Conti would not comment on the sensitive issue, with tops still viewed as heresy by many purists. But the director general of Chateau Margaux, Paul Pontallier, confirmed that the Bordeaux domaine was trying them out. …
The Onion reports Bill Clinton has put his inaugural gown away.