The Half-Won, Half-Lost War

Victor Davis Hanson

... First, the good news. For all the talk of a recent Tet-like offensive in Basra, the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suffered an ignominious setback when his gunmen were routed from their enclaves. This rout helped the constitutional government of Prime Minister Maliki renew its authority, and has encouraged Sunnis to re-enter government. Two great threats to Iraqi autonomy — Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen and Sunni-supported al-Qaida terrorists — have both now been repulsed by an elected government and its supporters.

And that brings us to the bad news. We still censor ourselves in fears of terrorist threats, mortgaging the Enlightenment tradition of free and unfettered speech. Our State Department is advising its officials to avoid perfectly descriptive terms for our enemies like “jihadist” and “Islamo-fascist” in favor of vague terms like “violent extremist” or “terrorist” -- as if we could just as easily be fighting Basque separatists.

Even more worrying, Americans cannot find a substitute for imported oil. The result is that $110[124$]-a-barrel petroleum is slowing our economy, weakening our international financial clout -- and sending billions in capital into the hands of our otherwise unproductive enemies.

The way to shut down Iran's reactor or its subsidies for Hezbollah is not necessarily through bombing but by getting oil back down below $50 a barrel, which would cut the value of Iranian petroleum production by nearly $100 billion a year and weaken an already weak economy...

[our insane energy policy effects virtually everything - all to our detriment - as usual with VDH, Recommended > ]

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So vilified, yet so deserving of praise

As Israel celebrates 60 years of nationhood this Thursday, and looks ahead to the next 60 years, the world should appreciate what the Jewish state has accomplished. Built on the ashes of the Holocaust, Israel's birth was followed by a massive attack from all sides by the surrounding Arab nations. Threatening another genocide, they managed to kill 1 percent of Israel's population, but Israel survived – and even thrived. [snip]

"Israel is, by almost any measure, an astonishing success. It has a large, sophisticated, and growing economy ... the finest universities and medical centers in the Middle East. Israel has shown itself, with notable exceptions, to be adept at self-defense, and capable (albeit imperfectly) of protecting civil liberties during wartime.... Zionism may actually be the most successful national liberation movement of the 20th century... [snip]

Name a country, faced with comparable threats to its own citizens, that has ever tried harder to comply with the rule of law or human rights than Israel. No one has ever named such a country, nor could they. [snip] Imagine how much more Israel could contribute to the welfare of the world during the next 60 years if it were blessed with peace and were allowed to turn its swords into plowshares...

[an appropriate perspective to Israel's dramatic history and current circumstance - Recommended > ]

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Israel: Iran could have nukes by '09

With Iran racing forward with its nuclear program, Israel now believes the Islamic Republic will master centrifuge technology and be able to begin enriching uranium on a military scale this year, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The new assessment moves up Israel's forecasts on Teheran's nuclear program by almost a full year - from 2009 to the end of 2008. According to the new timeline, Iran could have a nuclear weapon by the middle of next year.

[Israel can't survive a single strike - it will cease to exist, and still the world does nothing]

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Arms dealer offered weapons to kill Americans in Colombia

The U.S. government has charged an international arms dealer with conspiring to sell a rebel group millions of dollars in weapons ''to be used to kill Americans in Colombia,'' federal prosecutors announced Tuesday. Viktor Bout, who was recently captured in Thailand, had agreed to sell the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) surface-to-air missiles, armor-piercing rocket launchers, ''ultralight'' airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other weapons...

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Schwab blasts Pelosi

U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab this afternoon condemned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her scuttling of a trade pact with Colombia, saying she is hurting U.S. workers over nothing more than partisan politics. "Delaying the vote on the Colombia [Free Trade Agreement] does not create one American job, it does not put one more dollar in anyones pocket, does not save one life, does not help one union to organize, or protect one endangered species"

[but if Pelosi lets the House vote on it it's passage will be (correctly) seen as a 'Bush win'. can't have that; party before nation]

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At the Turn of The Cycle

In climate, as in politics, ther are natural cycles. We may be seeing some new ones starting these days in both spheres. For those of you worried about the start of solar Cycle 24, good news. A small sunspot recently appeared in the sun's southern hemisphere. So it looks like the next sunspot cycle has well and truly started.

Meanwhile scientist Don J Easterbrook reports that the northern Pacific Decadal Oscillation has flipped, threatening 30 years of colder weather, and the American Thinker's Marc Sheppard wonders what happens as the global warming community admits that there are factors other than anthropogenic warming that affect the planet's climate...

[wait a minute WAIT A MINUTE...: weather changes?]

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LOSS OF FUEL ECONOMY

... in E-85, a blend containing 85 percent ethanol that can be used in specially equipped vehicles, the energy loss soars and more than offsets its lower cost, even though E-85 is about 60 cents per gallon less at retail than conventional gas:

• Mileage can suffer by about 25 percent with E-85, according to AAA.
• Over the course of a year, that amounts to an extra 300 gallons of E-85 to go the same distance as when using conventional gas.
• That means an average household, when the total cost of conventional gas and E-85 are compared, would spend nearly $100 more per year for E-85.

To those that have the flex-fuel vehicles that can use the fuel, it's tempting to purchase E-85 because at first glance it appears to be a great deal compared with conventional gasoline. But at least for now, it isn't.

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There v Here...

[there...]
Petrobras Hiring 14,000 Geologists, Oil Rig Workers

Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state- controlled oil company, plans to add 14,000 engineers, geologists and drillers within three years as it develops the biggest crude discovery in the Western Hemisphere since 1976. Petrobras, as the company is known, plans to expand its workforce 23 percent to about 74,000, surpassing Chevron Corp., the second-largest U.S. oil producer. The hiring binge is part of a $112.7 billion expansion that may allow Brazil to overtake the output of all OPEC members except Saudi Arabia...

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[here...]
Senate Democrats seek to tax oil companies

Senate Democrats on Wednesday called for a windfall profits tax on oil companies and a rollback of $17 billion in oil industry tax breaks as part of an energy package. The proposal also would impose federal penalties on energy price gouging and calls for stopping oil deliveries into the government's emergency reserve.

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Canadian Invasion

The United States and Canada share the longest unprotected border in the world, and Toronto's Globe and Mail has a story illustrating why that is so dangerous: More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year--in what a doctors' group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan. The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units (NICUs).

[but why? health care is 'free' there...]

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Naming the cause of medicine's failures

The trouble with making government the solution for our medical system’s failures is that government is without a doubt the chief cause of those failures.

Several months ago Greg Blankenship, founder and president of the Illinois Policy Institute, gave us a good name for one governmental cause of health care failure. In a fascinating column, Blankenship looked at the regulations that beset planning for medical care in his state, Illinois, and gave it a name: Protectionism.

And, like nationwide protectionism, special-interest influences come to play as a matter of course, with one or two businesses reaping most of the rewards. Blankenship likened the practice to a (fictional) fast food restaurant regulatory board getting captured by McDonald’s. Suddenly, Burger King outlets can’t get permission to expand. Economists have been writing on this for 50 years or more. Regulatory capture, it’s called . . . but here applied to the business of medicine.

And medicine is a business. Calling it a “service” and pretending it’s like government doesn’t make it any less a business. It only helps run the business into the ground...

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The Housing Crisis Is Over

The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now.

How can this be? For starters, most people forget that the current housing bust is nearly three years old. Secondly, a bottom does not mean that prices are about to return to the heady days of 2005. That probably won't happen for another 15 years. [crap]

It just means that the trend is no longer getting worse, which is the critical factor...

[offered as an alternate opinion to the 'we're still all doomed' MSM mantra. who knows]

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Groups Struggle to Clean Up Mess Illegal Immigrants Leave Behind

The latest battle in the war on illegal immigration isn't over the smuggling of undocumented workers, it's over the trash they leave behind. Government officials and border activists say the garbage dumped in the desert by illegal immigrants and their smugglers is staggering. And the cleanup is costing taxpayers millions. In 2006 alone, more than 1.18 million pounds of trash was collected along southern Arizona border, many in the meeting spots where immigrants rest, change clothes and wait to hitch a ride further north with a smuggler...

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There v Here...

[there...]
Japanese Envy India’s Schools
MITAKA, Japan — Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education. (Snip) many people here are lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.
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[here...]
Detroit schools grad rate: 32%
Just 31.9 percent of Detroit students graduate in four years, according to the first major study in Michigan conducted using a method now mandated by the federal government. The study, by the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University, looked at how many ninth-graders in Detroit and the state as a whole left high school with diplomas after four years.
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[we need universal vouchers - now]
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NYT: Constitution? Schmonstitution!

At least they're open about it: the New York Times disdains Supreme Court justices who hew to the principles upon which this country was founded. The Times's admission came in the course of an editorial calling on Obama and Clinton to put aside their bickering and focus on beating John McCain. That is vital, in the Times's view, given McCain's pledge to nominate Supreme Court justices in the mold of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Writes the Times [emphasis added]:

Mr. McCain predictably criticized liberal judges, vowed strict adherence to the Founders’ views and promised to appoint more judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. That is just what the country does not need.

[Q: if the Constitution is just a quaint historical artifact of how the founders thought 'back then', which now has to be translated to a 'current' meaning, why were they so explicit in stating within it how The People could change it in the future?
The whole 'modernization' argument is a dangerous canard]

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America Supports You: Chrysler Kicks Off Military Appreciation Month

Patriotism was in full gear at the Chrysler headquarters today, as hundreds gathered inside the star-spangled atrium of the automaker’s main hub to honor America’s men and women in uniform.

On the tiered floors of the glass-enclosed plaza here, employees hung over railings to watch while their chief executive kicked off Military Appreciation Month by signing an agreement strengthening Chrysler’s ties to Reserve and National Guard troops, and recognizing past and present servicemembers on the automaker’s roster.

“I just want to thank all the men and women who give of themselves, who are apart from their families, who are enduring tremendous hardship to maintain the freedom the democracy on which this country was founded,” said Robert Nardelli, Chrysler’s chairman and chief executive officer. “We are truly blessed.”

As an expression of Chrysler’s gratitude to servicemembers’ sacrifice, Nardelli today signed a 5-Star Military Support Agreement. The document promises Chrysler’s commitment to continue supporting employees who are called into active military service.

“A lot of times people ask, ‘Gee Bob, isn’t that an expense?’” Nardelli said of the pledge. “But I think it’s an investment. People say, ‘Well, isn’t this a burden?’ I say, ‘It’s a responsibility.’

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