Soviet Reunion

Russia's attack on neighboring Georgia over two tiny separatist provinces is really about something much bigger — Russian leader Vladimir Putin's desire to restore the former USSR's might.

Russia's ill intentions clearly are on display in Georgia. In a fit of nationalist fury, it wants to teach Georgia and other former satellite countries that once made up the Soviet Bloc that its pro-Western rapprochement days are over

What better way than to invade a former republic, humiliate its leaders and then taunt the West for failing to come to its aid?

As if that wasn't enough, Russia immediately began threatening its other neighbors. A top Russian diplomat ominously warned Monday that Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Poland would "pay" for criticizing Russia's "imperialist" policy toward Georgia...

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Russia: Baltics, Poland To Pay For Georgia Stance

[HT:LW]
RIGA, Latvia - Russia's ambassador to Latvia Monday warned the Baltic states and Poland that they would pay for their criticism of the Kremlin over the conflict in Georgia, the Baltic news agency BNS reported. "One must not hurry on such serious issues, as serious mistakes can be made that have to be paid for a long time afterwards," Alexander Veshnyakov was quoted as saying by BNS.

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McCain, not Obama, was right about Georgia

John McCain had visited the Caucasian nation three times in a dozen years. When fighting erupted, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate got on the phone to gather details and issued a statement Friday summarizing the situation, tagging Russia as the aggressor and demanding it withdraw its forces from the sovereign territory of Georgia.

It took first-term Sen. Barack Obama three tries to get it right. The presumed Democratic candidate for commander in chief issued an even-handed statement, urging restraint by both sides. Later Friday, he again called for mutual restraint but blamed Russia for the fighting. The next day his language finally caught up with toughness of McCain's.

Making matters worse, Obama's staff focused on a McCain aide who had served as a lobbyist for Georgia, charging it showed McCain was "ensconced in a lobbyist culture." Obama's campaign came off as injecting petty partisan politics into an international crisis. This was not a serious response on behalf a man who aspires to be the leader of the Free World.

After all, what's so bad about representing a small former Soviet republic struggling to remake itself as a Western-style democracy?

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Tanks darken the grey atmosphere

A FLEET of armored personnel carriers with camouflaged 40-millimeter guns quickly surrounded the Olympic venues amid stepped-up security yesterday morning - and suddenly the tone of the Beijing Games took a nasty turn.


The president of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates, said he was unsure why the tanks had been placed outside the media center and noted the less-than-euphoric mood.

The vice-president of the Beijing organizing committee, Wang Wei, said yesterday he did not know why the tanks had been put in place...

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Plame Lawsuit Against Cheney Dismissed, Will Media Care?

[HT:GP]
Valerie Plame was dealt another setback Tuesday when a U.S. court of appeals upheld a federal judge's decision to dismiss her lawsuit against members of the Bush administration.Given the media's fascination with this former CIA operative who has claimed for years she was illegally outed by the White House for political reasons, it will be interesting to see just how much attention this ruling gets in the next 48 hours.

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Arabs Not Honoring Financial Pledges to Palestinians

Despite billions of dollars pledged to it late last year, the Palestinian Authority is caught in a serious financial crunch, mainly due to the failure of Arab countries to fulfill their commitments, reports said on Tuesday. Economic growth and stability is seen as crucial to the Palestinian Authority’s ability to maintain control in the West Bank and to make peace with Israel. [ah, no money, no peace. right]

P.A. Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad was quoted as saying that the P.A. could be in trouble financially if donor countries, especially the Arab states, don’t transfer the funds that they pledged at the donor conference in Paris. Prof. Mordechai Kedar, Arabic expert from the BESA Center for Strategic near Tel Aviv, said the Arab States have in the past made pledges at conferences and not fulfilled them because they don’t trust the Palestinians.

It took Europe years to realize that the money it was sending to the P.A. was being funneled into private foreign accounts by P.A. officials. But the Arabs knew it right away. “The system that they run is costly – probably not the most efficient,” said Sadan who was formerly involved in attempts to help the Palestinians build their economy. “They have a state-like organization but they don’t have any revenues..."

Kedar noted that the Palestinians have received more aid over the years than Europe had received at the end of World War II. Between 1999 and 2005, the P.A. received more than $6 billion in foreign aid. The U.S. has been the largest single donor.

[why no revenues? Because their only industry is violence and victimhood. 70 years and counting... {6 billion in graft - who needs an economy?}]

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Alarmists use weather to promote global warming scam

Claims that recent severe weather and flooding in the US are proof of human CO2 impacts on global climate are scientific nonsense. They are part of a pattern of keeping weather and climate issues in the public mind.

My grandmother admonished me with, “Your sins will find you out.” It is a maxim that should now befall proponents of the false theory that human CO2 is causing global warming or climate change. Exposure rarely emerges from the original event, but as Watergate showed it's the coverup that bares the truth...

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Journo Review: Dissent When We Tell You

[HT:CB]
One of the worst side effects of the media's ideological diversity problem is their often flagrant double standards.

Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum looks at how Columbia Journalism Review urges journalists to be more willing to cover unpopular views but later in the very same issue article patronizingly lectures reporters to stop letting global warming skeptics trick the public.

Things are made worse by the fact that in the magazine's dissent editorial, CJR puts forward Jeremiah Wright as a figure who should not be shunted to the sidelines. In other words, Jeremiah Wright and his brand of smarmy pseudo-Marxist racial diatribes are more legitimate than disspasionate scientists who are urging us to be cautious about jumping to conclusions that humans can effect the entire world's temperature. Astonishing.

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Media’s Global Warming Obsession Doesn’t Phase America

In spite of the media's near-constant nagging on global warming, only 25 percent of Americans view climate change as the world's biggest environmental threat, according to a new ABC News poll. Fewer than half - 47 percent - viewed global warming as "extremely" or "very" important to them.

Sixty-three percent said there is "a lot of disagreement among scientists" on the causes of global warming. Only 33 percent of respondents said they think "things people do" are mostly responsible for climate change, down from 41 percent in April 2007. And even with the media ignoring the debate, 62 percent of Americans realize scientists disagree on how serious a threat climate change actually poses.

The media tend to run to the government for fixes to global warming problems, but Americans seem have more faith in markets. Forty-three percent said the government would do a better job reducing warming, while 45 percent said businesses are better equipped to address the problem through market-based competition.

The poll results suggested the media have some work to do to build their own credibility. Only 38 percent of respondents said "most" of written and broadcast news is accurate.

[given that legitimate science is insultingly absent from the alarmists mantras, I'd say the media's propaganda is working all too well: the 'believers' should be in the low single digits. I.e., the battle rages - there's too much money on the line for embarrassment to push them off their course...]

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Patients 'should not expect NHS to save their life if it costs too much'

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Guidelines (Nice) has ruled for the first time that saving a life cannot be justified at any cost, in a review of its guidelines. It rejected the so-called "rule of rescue" which stipulates that people facing death should be treated regardless of the costs. The rule is based on the natural impulse to aid individuals in trouble.

The ruling contradicts the advice of Nice's Citizens Council, which offers advice from a representative sample of the general public, and said that a rule of rescue was an essential mark of a humane society. The report said that where individuals are in "desperate and exceptional circumstances" they should sometimes receive greater help than can be justified by a "purely utilitarian approach".

Nice defended its ruling last night saying that the Citizens Council provided useful input to its decisions but that the organisation's role was to determine how best to allocate the health service's limited resources...

[the inevitable result of government run health care, where 'general public' does not mean customer]

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From Crayons to Condoms

We are seeing a dramatic shift in education from “effective” education, meaning concrete academics, to “affective” education, meaning the teaching of attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviors. Our schools have become laboratories for social engineering and are no longer places where knowledge is transmitted. Whole language, death education, New Math, cooperative learning, inventive spelling and many other fads that have little to do with education.

Under the guise of “tolerance” and reducing “hate crimes,” students are often indoctrinated with the idea that there is no difference between homosexuality and heterosexuality even though what is being taught may violate the personal or religious beliefs of many of the students and their families. Homosexual, bi-sexual, and transgendered 'panels' are often brought in to discuss their lifestyles. However, heterosexuals are not usually a part of any discussion.

Certainly no student should ever be bullied, harassed, or ridiculed. However, classes are not needed for that; any student who harms or bullies another child for any reason should be disciplined. If we really want to address tolerance then we need to respect – and yes, tolerate -- differences of opinion. Unfortunately, that is not being done in many classrooms across America. Far too often, students who voice any opinion different than that being taught are labeled “intolerant"...

[heard these folks on the radio a month ago - this is just the tip of the iceberg - Recommended > ]

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U.S. Productivity Increases 2.2%, Labor Costs Cool

``Productivity still looks pretty good,'' said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. ``It's encouraging on the inflation front. We are seeing good cost control from businesses. It's good news for the Fed.''

``Historically, productivity growth has tended to suffer during periods of energy-price shocks,'' David Greenlaw, chief U.S. fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley in New York, said in a note to clients. ``The current year-over-year growth rate of just a shade under 3 percent demonstrates an impressive degree of resilience.''

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BusinessWeek 'Recession in America' Blog Goes Belly-up

Looking for new and innovative ways to spread the doom-and-gloom news associated with the economic downturn, BusinessWeek magazine launched a recession blog on its Web site back in May to give a personalized glimpse into "recession" hardships. [snip]

However, activity on the blog has been scarce of late. Nearly three months later, there are just 22 posts. Meanwhile, the nation's Gross Domestic Product grew at a 1.9 percent pace for the second quarter of 2008, according to government estimates announced July 31.

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Mexican soldiers enter U.S., hold agent

TUCSON, Arizona — Four Mexican soldiers crossed into a remote area of Arizona and briefly held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before realizing where they were and returning to Mexico, U.S. authorities said.

Border Patrol spokeswoman Dove Crawford said the incident early Sunday on the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation, about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of Tucson, was in an area where the border likely was marked only with barbed wire...

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S.B. County seeks accountability from San Francisco on probationers

California
San Francisco was criticized again Tuesday by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors for failing to provide a 12-month tally of the juvenile offenders placed in the county's group homes. County authorities said they still hope San Francisco will cooperate but have decided to petition the state attorney general for assistance.

(Snip) The five originally were from Honduras and are believed to be undocumented immigrants.

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Keep the kids in school

That was big of Sen./ Rev. James Meeks to dare someone to arrest the kids he's leading out of the city's public schools in an ill-conceived protest, when he's the guy who should be pinched.

As for the students, truant officers ought to round them up and take them back to school where they belong. Of course, no one will do any of that because they don't want to appear mean, racist or elitist. And that's exactly the point of Meeks' plan to haul Chicago students out of the first week of school - to protest, at downtown offices and at Winnetka's New Trier Township High School, the "inequities" of the state education funding formula.

"I dare the business community [?] to arrest our children and send them to jail [?] because all they want is a quality education," Meeks said.

But if resource inequities account for the poor performance, why don't their white male, Hispanic and black female counterparts do as badly? After all, they are going to the same public schools in Chicago...

[we need independant, universal vouchers]

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EDUCATION FOR PROFIT

By many measures, the University of Phoenix is the most successful institution for higher education in American history, says Katherine Mangu-Ward, an associate editor at Reason. For example:

• The University of Phoenix has more than 325,000 students -- 22 times the number at the University of Chicago.
• On campuses scattered across 39 states, and online as well, it offers everything from associate's degrees in sports management to a Spanish-language MBA.
• The University of Phoenix is now an educational and commercial powerhouse listed on NASDAQ with a market capitalization of $7.4 billion.

In recent years, says Mangu-Ward, the University of Phoenix has become the poster child for everything the mainstream academic establishment thinks is wrong about for-profit higher education. But much of what academic traditionalists see as problems, Phoenix advertises proudly as solutions: The university aims to meet under-served demand for post-secondary education, tailor-made to fit the individual demands of busy adults...

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