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Mark Steyn comments on the president’s UN address. Says countries are not all alike.
…”I have been in office for just nine months – though some days it seems a lot longer. I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world. These expectations are not about me. Rather, they are rooted, I believe, in a discontent with a status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences.”
Forget the first part: That’s just his usual narcissistic “But enough about me, let’s talk about what the world thinks of me” shtick. But the second is dangerous in its cowardly evasiveness: For better or worse, we are defined by our differences – and, if Barack Obama doesn’t understand that when he’s at the podium addressing a room filled with representatives of Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Venezuela and other unlovely polities, the TV audience certainly did when Col. Gadhafi took to the podium immediately afterward. They’re both heads of state of sovereign nations. But, if you’re on an Indian Ocean island when the next tsunami hits, try calling Libya instead of the United States and see where it gets you.
This isn’t a quirk of fate. The global reach that enables America and a handful of others to get to a devastated backwater on the other side of the planet and save lives and restore the water supply isn’t a happy accident but something that derives explicitly from our political systems, economic liberty, traditions of scientific and cultural innovation and a general understanding that societies advance when their people are able to fulfill their potential in freedom. In other words, America and Libya are defined by their differences.
…The day after the president of the United States addressed the U.N. General Assembly, the prime minister of Israel took to the podium, and held up a copy of the minutes of the Wansee Conference, at which German officials planned the “Final Solution” to their Jewish problem. This is the pathetic state to which the United Nations has been reduced after six decades: The Jew-hatred of Ahmadinejad and others is so routine that a sane man has to stand up in the global parliament and attempt to demonstrate to lunatics that the Holocaust actually happened.
One sympathizes with Benjamin Netanyahu. But he’s missing the point. Ahmadinejad & Co. aren’t Holocaust deniers because of the dearth of historical documentation. They do so because they can, and because it suits their own interests to do so, and because in the regimes they represent the state lies to its people as a matter of course and to such a degree that there is no longer an objective reality only a self-constructed one. In Libya and Syria and far too many “nations,” truth is simply what the thug in the presidential palace declares it to be. But don’t worry, Obama assures them, we’re not “defined by our differences.” …
In BigGovernment.com, Maura Flynn posts on a story that our MSM has conveniently overlooked. Alex Spillius reported on Sarkozy’s remarks at the UN.
…Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”
Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”
The rest of Sarkozy’s remarks were, well, remarkable:
“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.
“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.
“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel. …
…Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naive.” …
David Warren comments on Iran and the UN.
…We learned this week that Iran has a second uranium enrichment facility, in addition to the one the International Atomic Energy Agency knew about at Natanz. It is built inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom. The second would be in defiance of a Security Council resolution, threatening sanctions. So is the first, for that matter. But the Iranian government casually admitted to it, in the approach to the direct, unconditional talks Barack Obama has promised them.
The new facility may or may not be complete (probably not, but it has never been inspected). It apparently contains about 3000 centrifuges. My own Persian is severely limited, but I gather from a person whose Persian isn’t, that the Iranian announcement contained little ambiguities of number and tense, designed to leave the impression that the previously undeclared facility could be one of several.
But why should we worry? Why should Israel, in particular, which has been repeatedly threatened with nuclear annihilation by Ahmadinejad, worry? For after all, he’s just crazy. …
…Somewhere in the grey area are those who think the U.N. is a world legislature, whose members propose to negotiate peace agreements with madmen, who make concessions before the negotiations even start, and apply crude public pressure, but only to their allies. The current U.S. president is in that grey area.
David Harsanyi voices his thoughts on the President’s comments on the Middle East.
…This week, President Barack Obama spoke to the United Nations’ General Assembly and insisted that Israel and the Palestinians negotiate “without preconditions.” (Well, excluding the effective precondition that Israeli settlements are “illegitimate,” according to the administration — so no pre-conditions means feel free to rocket Israel while you talk.)
This tact, Obama hopes, will lead to “two states living side by side in peace and security — a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people.” …
…And the last time Israel withdrew from disputed lands without pre-conditions to allow the potential of the Palestinian people to shine through was in Gaza. The Arabs, hungering for the light of freedom, used the gift to elect Hamas — now an Iranian proxy and always a terror organization — to rain rockets down on the civilians that voted to allow the first democratic Arab entity in history. …
…And when he uses the word “occupation” he is negotiating for the Palestinians. None of the lands up for discussion are “occupied” territory. The president, a highly educated man, knows well that there has never been an ultimate agreement on borders, nor has there ever, in history, been a Palestinian state to occupy. …
David Brooks tries to explain the importance of Afghanistan to the administration. Jennifer Rubin has the details.
David Brooks takes a rare venture into foreign policy and makes a compelling case for Obama to stick to Obama’s plan to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and follow the advice of Obama’s generals. Brooks acknowledges the habitual desire for a war on the cheap, a remote war where young brave Americans don’t die, and the public’s ire about a difficult undertaking of indeterminate length can be sidestepped. But he observes:
” …There is simply no historical record to support these illusions. The historical evidence suggests that these middling strategies just create a situation in which you have enough forces to assume responsibility for a conflict, but not enough to prevail.
The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands—that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together. …”
Stuart Taylor thinks Obama damages his advocacy by stretching the truth too often.
…* “Absolutely not a tax increase.” That was Obama’s response when asked by ABC News about what Baucus calls the “excise tax” of as much as $3,800 a year (since lowered to $1,900) on families who defy his bill’s mandate to buy comprehensive health insurance.
The mandate itself is a kind of tax. CBO projected that by 2016, the original Baucus bill would require an individual earning $32,400 a year to pay $4,100 in premiums before getting any subsidy, plus an average $1,500 in deductibles and co-payments. (The much cheaper catastrophic coverage that many people would prefer would not satisfy the mandate.) Baucus has been scrambling to lower these premiums by raising subsidies. But the only ways to get the money are to raise other mandated premiums or taxes, make more Medicare cuts, or incur bigger deficits.
So much for Obama’s campaign pledge that “no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase.” Maybe it’s a good idea to require young, healthy people to buy more-costly insurance than they want or need and then use their premiums to subsidize older, sicker people. But it’s deceptive to pretend that this is not a tax. …
In WSJ, Kimberley Strassel explains the Democrats’ dilemma in Virginia.
Not so long ago, Democrats were thrilled by the long length of Barack Obama’s coattails. Creigh Deeds would be a lot more thrilled today if he could just step off.
Mr. Deeds is the Democratic state senator running for governor of Virginia, and while he’s at it, running away from his commander in chief. It ought to worry Democrats that their top recruit for the year already views their Washington agenda as a liability. It ought to worry Mr. Deeds that there seems no escape.
The Virginian’s problem is that he’s a little too important to party leaders. The Obama White House isn’t half as worried about what Virginia means for next year’s elections as it is what Virginia means for this year’s health fight. A wipeout in the Old Dominion could send Blue Dogs scampering for cover. If health care isn’t done by Nov. 3, it may not get done. Mr. Obama needs Mr. Deeds to win. …
In The Corner, Stephen Spruiell posts on the market inefficiencies caused by the government mandates and incentives to go green.
Spain (unemployment rate: 18.5 percent and climbing) is willing to do anything to address the problem of joblessness — except, of course, cut taxes or weaken organized labor’s stranglehold on the economy. So naturally, the country’s socialist leaders have turned to the snake oil of “green jobs.” How’s that working out?
In some instances, the government’s good intentions have distorted the energy market.
Take, for example, the recent Spanish solar bubble.
Though wind power remains the dominant alternative energy here, the government introduced even more generous inducements in recent years to help develop photovoltaic solar power — a technology that uses sun-heated cells to generate energy. Lured by the promise of vast new subsidies, energy companies erected the silvery silicone panels in record numbers. As a result, government subsides to the sector jumped from $321 million in 2007 to $1.6 billion in 2008.
When the government moved to curb excess production and scale back subsidies late last year, the solar bubble burst, sending panel prices dropping and sparking the loss of thousands of jobs, at least temporarily. …
Orin Kerr posts on Volokh Conspiracy about computer forensics.
The Justice Department filed a memo today making the case for detaining terrorist suspect Najibullah Zazi. It’s a pretty riveting read. Of particular interest to me was the important role of computer forensics. By analyzing Zazi’s computer, the government was able to reconstruct Zazi’s web browsing history and show the details of the alleged plot to gather the chemicals for the bomb. I’m not at all surprised by the role of the computer search, but it’s a high-profile example of how computer forensics is becoming an increasingly important part of major criminal cases