ECONOMISTS VS ECONOMICS:

Revised Data Soften View of '01 Slump (SUDEEP REDDY , 8/01/09, WSJ)

Data for the 2001 recession had shown that the nation's gross domestic product declined 0.2% from the fourth quarter of 2000 to the third quarter of 2001. On Friday, the government said GDP actually grew 0.1% during the recession.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE THE OTHER REPUBLICAN PARTY...:

Democrats Show Strain of Heated Battles (NAFTALI BENDAVID and JONATHAN WEISMAN, 7/31/09, WSJ)

Many of the Democrats' internal disputes stem from growing friction between the party's conservative and liberal wings. Several years ago, then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D., Ill.), in an all-out push to retake Congress, aggressively recruited conservative Democratic candidates.

Now Mr. Emanuel, as White House chief of staff, finds the very lawmakers he courted slowing the more-progressive president's agenda. Some liberals complain Mr. Obama is overly protective of those newly elected Democrats and too willing to cut deals.

"The chickens are coming home to roost," said Rep. Maxine Waters, an outspoken liberal Democrat from California.

WHY SHOULDN'T HE INVITE EXTERMINATORS FOR A BEER TOO?:

Sudan pleased with US envoy's remarks on terrorism (OMAR SINAN, 7/31/09, Associated Press)

Sudan's U.N. ambassador said Friday that his government was pleased with an American envoy's assertion that there is no evidence to support the U.S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism.

THE ALWAYS SENSIBLE STUART TAYLOR:

Sotomayor, Gates And Race: Sotomayor and Gates share a habit of drawing dubious lessons about race from their own experiences. (Stuart Taylor, 8/01/09, National Journal)

Pushing for more integration of our elite institutions is a worthy goal. But, as studies show, the racial preferences used by selective colleges today are so great as to bring in academically ill-prepared students, clustering most blacks in the bottom 10th of their classes (in GPA) and most Hispanics in the bottom quarter.

The same is true at selective law schools, with the result that fewer than half of blacks entering law school (compared with 80 percent of whites) ever pass the bar. Our racial preference system thus annually produces many thousands of minorities without usable degrees but saddled by enormous educational debts.

Meanwhile, the best black and Hispanic students are stigmatized by erroneous but widespread suspicions that they owe their positions to preferences.

While Sotomayor has ignored the downside of racial preferences, Gates sees racism where there may well be none and waves aside the unprecedented racial progress that led last year to the election of a black president.

To be sure, Gates was right to complain that he should not have been arrested merely for mouthing off to a cop, and that mistreatment of blacks by police (not to mention overly punitive drug laws) remains a major problem.

But he was quite wrong to stereotype and smear as racist Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer -- who, as Gates himself admitted in an interview with his daughter for the Daily Beast, "obviously... didn't know it was my home" and "was terrified that I could be dangerous to him." Crowley also turns out to have an impeccable record on race.

Gates was even more wrong to suggest in subsequent interviews that America -- in which systematic oppression of blacks was once pervasive -- has not fundamentally changed, as he told The Root, of which he is editor in chief.

As Gates's Harvard colleague Orlando Patterson, also an African-American, said in 1991: "America, while still flawed in its race relations... is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; [and] offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa."

Indeed, Gates himself seems to understand this in his more lucid moments. "America is the greatest nation ever founded," he told the Daily Beast.

But in much of his rhetoric, Gates has emulated the countless other academics and politicians who encourage black people to blame whites for problems that no white person alive today did much to cause or has much power to fix. As professor Amy Wax, of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, has written in a penetrating new book, Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: "Although these problems can be traced to historical mistreatment [and] although discrimination still persists, [discrimination's] role in perpetuating black disadvantage is now minimal as compared with factors that lie within the control of blacks themselves.

"Behaviors such as low educational attainment, poor socialization and work habits, criminality, paternal abandonment, family disarray, and nonmarital childbearing now loom larger than overt exclusion as barriers to racial equality."

HOW ABOUT MAKING THE HOURS SPENT TAX DEDUCTIBLE?:

Americans Spent Nearly 10 Billion Hours on Government Forms Last Year (US News, July 31, 2009)

* 9.9 billion: Number of hours Americans spent on government paperwork last year

THE 40% PARTY CAN'T AFFORD NORMAL:

Gravity through polls for President Obama (Ben Smith, 7/31/09, Politico)

A slew of recent polls showing President Barack Obama’s job approval ratings at essentially normal levels and a partisan divide reasserting itself suggest that the political landscape was not as dramatically transformed last November as Democrats had hoped.

MORE:
In House, Freshman Democrats Make a Stand (CARL HULSE, 7/31/09, NY Times)

It took Representative Dan Maffei of New York two tries, $4 million and the retirement of a Republican incumbent to win his House seat last year. After all that, he wants to avoid becoming a one-term wonder because of an unpopular vote on health care.

“We can’t afford to make enemies,” said Mr. Maffei, a former Congressional aide and a Democratic member of the freshman class that played a role this week in slowing House consideration of a health insurance overhaul, upending plans by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to meet President Obama’s goal of approving a bill before the August recess.

Of 35 first-term Democrats, Mr. Maffei, who represents the Syracuse area, and 25 others occupy suburban, small-town and rural seats they took out of Republican hands, seats Republicans are eager to take back. As a result, junior Democrats want to be sure the emerging health care plan is one they can embrace, particularly after they have already had to cast a difficult vote on climate-change legislation.

AH, SO THIS IS WHAT THEY MEAN BY POST-RACIAL:

U.S. Diplomat Urges Revised Sudan Policy: Inclusion on Terrorism List Challenged (Colum Lynch, 7/31/09, Washington Post)

President Obama's top Sudan envoy said Thursday that there was no basis for keeping Sudan on the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism and that it was only a matter of time before the United States would have to "unwind" economic sanctions against the Khartoum government.

Retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration's remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee represented the most forceful critique yet by a U.S. official of the long-standing American effort to put economic and political pressure on Sudan's Islamic government. Sudan, which has harbored members of al-Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden, was designated a terrorism sponsor in 1993.

Gration's comments Thursday raised concerns among activists and Sudan's critics in Congress that the administration is offering to reward Sudan without securing assurances that the government will take steps to end conflict in the Darfur region and in the south.

AH, THE BENEFITS OF THE MAJORITY...:

House lawmakers endorse measure opposing abortion (AP, 7/30/09)

Lawmakers have amended a sweeping health overhaul bill to ensure it does not require coverage of abortions.

The anti-abortion measure was approved late Thursday in the House Energy and Commerce Committee as conservative Democrats banded with Republicans to support it.

HECK, PAM ANDERSON COULD STOP THESE CLOWNS:

Barbed Wire - Low-Tech Defence Against Pirates: I dare the pirates to crawl over razor wire in the clothes they wear, Per Gullestrup, chief executive of Danish Clipper Projects said. (Javno, 7/29/09)

Razor-sharp barbed wire strung along the deck railings of vessels can be an effective, low-cost foil to pirates at sea, and shipowners should adopt it widely, a Danish shipping executive said on Thursday.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY:

The Audacity of Hops (Jake Tapper, July 30, 2009, ABC News: Political Punch)

KAY CORLEONE WOULD BE RIGHT AT HOME:

China concerned about abortions (BBC, 7/30/09)

There are 13 million abortions each year, compared to 20 million births, according to newly published research.

Researchers believe the real figure could be even higher because there are many abortions at unregistered clinics.

Other countries have higher rates. They include Russia - which some years has more terminations than births.

BAD ENOUGH TO MAKE MARTYRS IN THE FIRST PLACE...:

Iran police arrest mourners in cemetery memorial (Parisa Hafezi, 7/30/09, Reuters)

Iranian police arrested mourners who gathered at a Tehran cemetery to commemorate victims of the unrest that followed the country's disputed June presidential election, witnesses said on Thursday.

The police forced Mirhossein Mousavi, a defeated candidate at the election, to leave the cemetery.[...]

Ahmadinejad is under pressure from his hardline supporters over his initial choice of vice-president and his decision to dismiss a hardline intelligence minister who criticized the president for defying Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

WE'RE FROM THE GOVERNMENT, WE'RE HERE TO HELP...:

Government Mail: U.S. Post Office Is Broke (Kurt Brouwer, July 29th, 2009, Fundmastery Blog)

In the past few months, the government has taken effective control of two major automobile companies (GM and Chrysler) as well as companies holding about half of all U.S. home mortgages (Fannie Mae and Fredddie Mac), not to government’s stake in major banks and insurance companies. And, Congress is debating a vast expansion of Federal government activity in huge swathes of the economy including energy (cap and trade) and healthcare (universal healthcare).

Yet, we hear from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the largest civilian government agency, the Post Office, is essentially broke.

KEEPING IT FRESH:

Iran oppn leaders to visit graves of slain protesters (Times of India, 7/30/09

In a fresh act of defiance, Iranian opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi will visit today the graves of slain
protesters who opposed the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The planned visit to a cemetery south of Tehran comes a day after Iranian authorities said they will put on trial 20 people accused of rioting in the violent aftermath of the bitterly disputed election.

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE TONSILS...:

Obama’s Great Health Scare: The president resorts to the politics of fear. (Karl Rove, 7/29/09, WSJ)

A Fox News Poll from last week shows that 84% of Americans who have health insurance are happy with their coverage. And because 91% of all Americans have insurance, that means that 76% of all Americans will be concerned about anything that threatens their current coverage. By a 2-1 margin, according to the Fox Poll, Americans want coverage from a private provider rather than the government.

Facing numbers like these, Mr. Obama is dropping his high-minded rhetoric and instead trying to scare voters. During last week’s news conference, for example, he said that doctors routinely perform unnecessary tonsillectomies on children simply to fatten their wallets. All that was missing was the suggestion that the operations were conducted without anesthesia.

This is not a healthy way to wage a policy debate. It also risks making the president look desperate at a time when his proposals are looking increasingly too expensive for Americans to accept.

CRUSADER-IN-CHIEF:

Obama’s empire: The 44th president of the United States was elected amid hopes that he would roll back his country’s global dominance. Today, he is commander-in-chief of an unprecedented network of military bases that is still expanding. (Catherine Lutz, 30 July 2009, New Statesman)

Unfortunately, many of the Obama administration's diplomatic efforts are being directed towards maintaining and garnering new access for the US military across the globe. US military officials, through their Korean proxies, have completed the eviction of resistant rice farmers from their land around Camp Humphreys, South Korea, for its expansion (including a new 18-hole golf course); they are busily making back-room deals with officials in the Northern Mariana Islands to gain the use of the Pacific islands there for bombing and training purposes; and they are scrambling to express support for a regime in Kyrgyzstan that has been implicated in the murder of its political opponents but whose Manas Airbase, used to stage US military actions in Afghanistan since 2001, Obama and the Pentagon consider crucial for the expanded war there.

The global reach of the US military today is unprecedented and unparalleled. Officially, more than 190,000 troops and 115,000 civilian employees are massed in approximately 900 military facilities in 46 countries and territories (the unofficial figure is far greater). The US military owns or rents 795,000 acres of land, with 26,000 buildings and structures, valued at $146bn (£89bn). The bases bristle with an inventory of weapons whose worth is measured in the trillions and whose killing power could wipe out all life on earth several times over.

Regardless of what he would choose to do in a political vacuum, Mr. Obama happens to be the elected leader of the Anglosphere, so he doesn't actually have a choice.

MORE:
Two cheers for the US empire!: What is historically distinct about US power is that it has quite remarkably enabled the spread of human liberty and representative government, through time and across cultures. (Thomas Donnelly, 30 July 2009, New Statesman)

The argument against US overseas military bases is almost always a surrogate argument against the exercise of US power. But you can't have one without the other. And the annoying thing about American hyperpuissance is that, compared to other probable outcomes, it produces what appears to be the least bad international system. And so, various allies continue to tolerate, and even encourage, the presence of US military installations in their countries. [...]

[T]hat there should be a liberal purpose to statecraft is a rather uniquely Anglo-American, almost Whiggish idea. What is historically distinct about US power is that it correlates quite remarkably with the spread of human liberty and representative government, through time and across cultures.

YEAH, BUT...:

TVs are getting brighter, thinner -- and cheaper: Irvine's Vizio Inc. is getting ready to release its LED-backlit TV for $1,500 less than its competitors' sets. (David Colker, July 30, 2009, LA Times)

The future of television could be sitting in an Irvine laboratory.

To illuminate images, these sets use light-emitting diodes behind the screen, resulting in TVs that can be far thinner, brighter and more eco-friendly than other flat-panel models.

LED-backlit TVs -- an evolution of the standard LCD set -- have been on the market since 2004. But the sets in this lab have something that could catapult the technology into the mainstream.

A far lower price.

FLATTERING TO W, BUT DISAPPOINTING:

Janet Napolitano sets new tone on terrorism (JEN DIMASCIO, 7/29/09, Politico)

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on Wednesday sought to set a new tone for the department’s efforts to fight terrorism on the home front.

“For too long, we’ve treated the public as a liability to be protected rather than an asset in our nation’s collective security,” Napolitano said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations.
[...]

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, agreed.

“We can’t hire enough security people, we can’t build enough fences, we can’t buy enough K9s necessary to be secure against every vulnerability,” Thompson said. “But we can put bright people in a room and come up with some protocols that will give us the level of security without as much financial investment as we have in the past.”

In more conciliatory tones, Napolitano said that “progress toward a more secure homeland doesn’t belong to any one political party,” and she adopted a mantra from Bush’s first Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, that “our physical U.S. borders should be our last line of defense, not our first.”

In fact, rather than new approaches, Napolitano’s address often suggested that her department is seeking to build on policies of the past, particularly in her expanded focus on international diplomacy.

"IMPORTANT AL QAEDA FIGURES" BEING A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS:

U.S. shifting drones' focus to Taliban: In Afghanistan, the military is moving away from targeting Al Qaeda in favor of stabilizing the country. (Julian E. Barnes, July 30, 2009, LA Times)

U.S. military leaders have concluded that their war effort in Afghanistan has been too focused on hunting Al Qaeda, and have begun to shift Predator drone aircraft to the fight against the Taliban and other militants in order to prevent the country from slipping deeper into anarchy.

The move, described by government and Defense Department officials, represents a major change in the military's use of one of its most precious intelligence assets. It also illustrates the hard choices that must be made because the drones are in short supply.

Senior government officials say that defeating Al Qaeda remains the overriding U.S. objective. However, they have determined that the best way to do that is by strengthening and stabilizing Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, rather than endlessly looking for important Al Qaeda figures.

IF THE GOP WELCOMES IT AS A SIGNIFICANT MOVE TO THE RIGHT...:

Health deal sparks fury on the left (Mike Soraghan, Jeffrey Young and Jared Allen, 07/29/09, The Hill)

The Blue Dogs’ deal, which cut $100 billion from the healthcare reform price tag, was instantly denounced by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who said, “It’s unacceptable. We’re not going to vote for anything that doesn’t have a robust public plan.”

Liberals aimed to win 50 signatures on a letter to their leaders opposing the deal to make it clear they could defeat the healthcare bill on the floor.

“Fifty is our threshold,” said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a co-chairman of the caucus. “That’ll kill anything.”

Liberals, Hispanics and African-American members — Pelosi’s most loyal base of support — are feeling betrayed after House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) reached an agreement with four of seven Blue Dogs on his committee who had been bottling up the bill over concerns about cost.

The compromise, which still must be reconciled with competing House and Senate versions, would significantly weaken the public option favored by liberals by delinking reimbursement rates to Medicare.

“Waxman made a deal that is unacceptable,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), one of about 10 progressives who met repeatedly with Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25597.html#ixzz0Mk9zNdsw

MORE:
Support Slips for Health Plan (LAURA MECKLER, 7/30/09, WSJ)

Support for President Barack Obama's health-care effort has declined over the past five weeks, particularly among those who already have insurance, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found, amid prolonged debate over costs and quality of care.

In mid-June, respondents were evenly divided when asked whether they thought Mr. Obama's health plan was a good or bad idea. In the new poll, conducted July 24-27, 42% called it a bad idea while 36% said it was a good idea.

Among those with private insurance, the proportion calling the plan a bad idea rose to 47% from 37%.

AS LONG AS IT ISN'T A STOCK FIDDLE:

Leaked CEO conversation suggests electricity revolution coming (Pat Pilcher, 30 July 2009, Independent)

Transcripts and audio files of a leaked phone conversation between the secretive CEO of Texas-based EEStor, Dick Weir, and an as yet undisclosed source have been doing the rounds online for the last 24 hours creating a stir amongst technologists and environmentalists around the world.

Whilst you'd be forgiven for thinking that a leaked phone conversation on the internet was merely yawn worthy, this particular conversation saw eeStore CEO, Weir confirming that they are mere months away from launching an uber capacitor which is an electrical component that would fully charge up in minutes yet hold enough juice to power electronic gadgets for days.

Should this leaked conversation be something more than a cleverly orchestrated PR stunt, and EEStor's invention actually work, the implications are nothing short of revolutionary.

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE UR ABROAD...:

Sanity From the Indian Subcontinent (R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., 7.30.09, American Prospect)

Did you see the look on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's face when during her visit to India she visited with that country's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh? It was that frozen smile we have seen from her before when the smiling lady is, as a matter of fact, mad as hell. You saw it during her husband's impeachment. Bill has seen it practically every day of their married life. Now we have seen it during her three-day visit to India, where, among other things, she hoped to have India at least show some respect for the Obama Administration's proposed carbon limits.

Instead of respect she got rebuff. As Minister Ramesh asseverated, "There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions." The pressure he alludes to has been coming from the United States to adopt some monstrous emissions regulation like our cap-and-trade bill now blessedly being euthanized in the Senate. "And as if this pressure was not enough," he went on, "we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours." So our cap-and-trade bill will not only impose economic costs (for Americans, $7.4 trillion in taxes, our largest tax increase ever) but it may start an international trade war by excluding imported goods from countries like India that reject our environmental diktats. China and Brazil do too.

WELL, IT WAS FUN WHILE IT LASTED...:

The Republican Recovery (W. James Antle, III, 7.30.09, American Spectator)

On the heels of two disastrous election cycles, the conventional wisdom was that Republicans were doomed to wander in the wilderness for decades unless their party underwent serious changes. Even on the right, there quickly emerged a cottage industry of conservative self-help books dedicated to helping the GOP rebuild and rebrand.

The prescriptions varied depending on the authors' policy prescriptions: embrace big government or repudiate compassionate conservatism, rethink the national security policy of the Bush years or return to the approach of the first Bush term, jettison polarizing social issues or use them to build bridges into minority communities. But there was some rough consensus that the party needed to formulate an economic agenda for the middle class, come to terms with its past failures and find its voice on issues like health care.

Republicans have done almost none of these things.

THE SHIP BE SINKIN':

Poll Shows Obama’s Clout on Health Care Is Eroding (ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN, 7/29/09, NY Times)

President Obama’s ability to shape the debate on health care appears to be eroding as opponents aggressively portray the effort as a government-takeover that could limit Americans’ ability to chose their doctor and course of treatment, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Americans are concerned that overhauling the health care system would reduce the quality of their care, increase their out-of-pocket health costs and tax bills and limit their options in choosing doctors, treatment and tests, the poll found. The percentage who describe health care costs as a serious threat to the American economy — a central argument being made by Mr. Obama — has dropped over the past month.

MOST DEARLY LOVED:

Mozart's Forward-Looking 'Magic Flute' (Ted Libbey, 7/28/09, NPR: Classical 50)

Mozart's Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) belongs to the genre called singspiel, which is similar to opera, but with spoken dialogue rather than recitatives. Notwithstanding its curious blend of fairy tale, Masonic ritual and commedia dell'arte, the text fits firmly into the style and traditions of the popular Viennese theater of the day. The music, however, is of a profundity altogether outside of tradition.

The mock-solemn overture to Die Zauberflote stands as one of the most brilliant instrumental movements Mozart ever fashioned. The numbers, ensembles and set pieces that follow are extraordinary, both in their variety and in the richness of their characterization, and they exhibit that uncanny finesse of Mozart's late style. The settings range from direct and folkish (as in Papageno's opening song) to ornately old-fashioned (the first-act rage aria of the Queen of the Night) to downright anachronistic (the cantus firmus duet of the Armed Men). But there's also a strangely forward-looking romanticism to the scoring and harmony, as well as a spirituality in the choruses of the priests that anticipates Wagner's Parsifal. Mozart dearly loved Die Zauberflote, perhaps more than any of his other operatic creations. He could not have known that it would become the foundation of German Romantic opera, but he knew the value of what he had written. He died two months and a few days after the opera's first performance.

COUNTERING THE COUP:

Why Iran's conservatives are airing their dirty laundry: In a striking move Tuesday, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei personally called for a detention center to be closed, citing mistreatment, while President Ahmadinejad sanctions repressive tactics. (Iason Athanasiadis, 7/29/09, The Christian Science Monitor )

On Tuesday, amid growing public anger about reports of torture of political prisoners following the deaths of two young protestors in regime custody last week, Iran released 140 political prisoners. Khamenei made the striking decision to personally announce the closure of a detention center, criticizing the treatment of prisoners held there.

"At this stage, there's cleavage in every part of the government," says Haleh Esfandiari, director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "It can be seen in the Intelligence Ministry between those who say that [presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi's] green movement was part of a velvet revolution and a plot to overthrow the regime, and those who argue that this is ridiculous."

Iranian hardliners warned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday to obey the country’s supreme leader, piling further pressure on the president following his disputed re-election and a series of controversial political decisions.

In a rare gesture to Ahmadinejad’s opponents, the authorities on Tuesday freed 140 protesters detained in the wave of massive public rallies.

PSSST...WHAT YOU SAW WAS WHO HE IS:

George W. Bush Still an Early Bird (Paul Bedard, 7/29/09, US News: Washington Whispers)

Retirement hasn't had any impact on former President George W. Bush's internal clock. Just as when he was in Washington, associates say he rises early and gets to his Dallas office virtually every day at 7 a.m.

FREE CRUSADER MANUAL:

Robert Bullard, "Military Pacification." (Tom, 7/29/09, Big Tent)

A note for all of you students of war and American history. One of the key documents in understanding historical American approaches to war, especially counterinsurgency, is Robert L. Bullard, "Military Pacification," Journal of the Military Service Institute of the United States, 46 (January-February 1910), 1-24. Bullard, who eventually commanded Second U.S. Army in World War I, served in the Philippines and Cuba and drew on his experiences in the islands and (less effectively or accurately) as a youth growing up in the Reconstruction South to shape his understanding of the issues of pacification. (Bullard is also the subject of an excellent biography by Allan Millett.) While he is wrong on several specific issues--let's just say William Dunning would blush with pride at some of the howlers in the article--his overall conception of pacification is very interesting and historically and militarily important.

For example, Andrew Birtle, author of the the best two volumes on American counterinsurgency, has used Bullard's formulation in those books and on several other occasions to help shape his overall argument.

Despite the importance of the article, no one has made it widely available...until now.

HE MEANT ZION-HATING:

Spokesman denies Bibi’s ‘self-hating Jews’ remark (JTA, 7/29/09)

A spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu denied that the Israeli prime minister used the term "self-hating Jews" to describe two top aides to President Obama. [...]

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz earlier this month published a story stating, without attribution, that Netanyahu called David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel "self-hating Jews."

AND YOUR UNSURPRISING FAVORITE:

Poll Results: The Best Music Of 2009 (So Far) (Bob Boilen, 7/29/09, NPR)

NPR listeners cast thousands of votes for the year's best music (so far) and kept the race tight. In the end, Animal Collective edged out every other artist for both Best Album and Best Song. Artists like Grizzly Bear, The Decemberists and Neko Case weren't far behind. One thing was clear: that 2009 has been one of the strongest years for new music in recent memory.

JOYCE'S BEQUEST---WRITERS WHO DEFY READING:

Moby-Dick in the Desert: Unplug the phone. There’s a new William T. Vollmann book. (Sam Anderson, Jul 26, 2009, New York)

I was sitting on the train one day chipping away at William T. Vollmann’s latest slab of obsessional nonfiction when my friend Tsia, who incidentally is not an underage Thai street whore, offered to save me time with a blurby one-sentence review based entirely on the book’s cover and my synopsis of its first 50 pages. “Just write that it’s like Robert Caro’s The Power Broker,” she said, “but with the attitude of Mike Davis’s City of Quartz.” This struck me as good advice, and I was all set to take it, but as I worked my way through the book’s final 1,250 pages, I found I had to modify it, slightly, to read as follows: Imperial is like Robert Caro’s The Power Broker with the attitude of Mike Davis’s City of Quartz, if Robert Caro had been raised in an abandoned grain silo by a band of feral raccoons, and if Mike Davis were the communications director of a heavily armed libertarian survivalist cult, and if the two of them had somehow managed to stitch John McPhee’s cortex onto the brain of a Gila monster, which they then sent to the Mexican border to conduct ten years of immersive research, and also if they wrote the entire manuscript on dried banana leaves with a toucan beak dipped in hobo blood, and then the book was line-edited during a 36-hour peyote séance by the ghosts of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Sinclair Lewis, with 200 pages of endnotes faxed over by Henry David Thoreau’s great-great-great-great grandson from a concrete bunker under a toxic pond behind a maquiladora, and if at the last minute Herman Melville threw up all over the manuscript, rendering it illegible, so it had to be re-created from memory by a community-theater actor doing his best impression of Jack Kerouac. With photographs by Dorothea Lange. (Viking has my full blessing to use that as a blurb.)

YOU MEAN TO SAY....:

Death of a Doctrine: Obama Discovers Engagement's Limits (Michael Gerson, July 29, 2009, Washington Post)

[E]ven lacking an ideology, the administration does have a doctrine. The defining principle of President Obama's foreign policy is engagement with America's adversaries. Much of the president's public diplomacy has been designed to clear a path for such talks -- expressing respect for legitimate grievances, apologizing for past wrongs and offering dialogue without preconditions.

Six months on, how fares the Obama doctrine? Concerning North Korea and Iran, the doctrine is on its deathbed.

North Korea responded to administration outreach by testing a nuclear weapon, firing missiles toward U.S. allies, resuming plutonium reprocessing and threatening the United States with a "fire shower of nuclear retaliation." During congressional testimony, Clinton admitted, "At this point [it] seems implausible, if not impossible, the North Koreans will return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again."

The Iranian regime's reaction to engagement was to cut the ribbon on a nuclear enrichment facility, add centrifuges, conduct a fraudulent election, and kill and imprison a variety of political opponents. Regarding administration overtures, Clinton recently told the BBC, "We haven't had any response. We've certainly reached out and made it clear that's what we'd be willing to do . . . but I don't think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now."

The problem is not engagement itself -- which was, after all, attempted in various forms by the previous administration. The difficulty is that the Obama foreign policy team has often argued that the reason for tension and conflict with nations such as North Korea and Iran is a lack of adequate American engagement -- which is absurd, and which has raised absurdly high expectations.

THIS STUFF ALL SEEMED SO EASY WHEN HE WAS A JUNIOR SENATOR...:

Obama Faces Court Test Over Detainee (WILLIAM GLABERSON, 7/29/09, NY Times)

The fate of one of the youngest detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison is emerging as a major test of whether the courts or the president has the final authority over when prisoners there are released. [...]

In the showdown over Mr. Jawad, Judge Huvelle, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, seems poised to assert the courts’ authority to release detainees who are not legally held, while the Obama administration has suggested it can continue detention when it claims it must.

For some former Bush administration officials, the fight over Mr. Jawad’s fate is a bittersweet moment in which the new administration is wrestling with some of the arguments that were advanced for years by Bush officials about the risks of opening the courts to the detainees.

The Obama administration must decide before Thursday’s court session whether to make Mr. Jawad’s habeas suit a test case, said Charles D. Stimson, who was a Defense Department official until 2007 and is now a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“This is the Obama administration’s time to decide,” Mr. Stimson said, “what they will do when a habeas judge orders a person released, but they can’t in good conscience let him go.”

TALK ABOUT GOING OFF THE RESERVATION...:

Health Care Reform and the Unpopular T-Word (DAVID LEONHARDT, 7/29/09, NY Times)

[M]ost of those ideas have a basic flaw.

They do not raise revenue as quickly as health costs rise. The plan to impose a surtax on top earners, for instance, pays a decent chunk of the bill over the next few years. But the revenue from the tax rises only as fast (roughly) as the United States economy grows. The same is true of most taxes.

Health costs, on the other hand, are growing much more quickly than the economy. Over the last decade, the economy has expanded by about 20 percent, and health spending has ballooned 50 percent. The gap isn’t about to start closing, either.

So no matter what Congress has done to pay for its plans, it can’t keep up.

The numbers show there is only one sure way out of the problem, and, after months of roundabout discussion, that solution has re-emerged: It’s a tax on health care.

THE GOP'S WILDERNESS YEARS WERE EVEN SHORTER THAN THE RECESSION:

Backlash: Democratic dangers mount (CHARLES MAHTESIAN & JOSH KRAUSHAAR, 7/29/09, Politico)

Democrats giddy with possibilities only six months ago now confront a perilous 2010 landscape signaled by troublesome signs of President Barack Obama’s political mortality, the plunging popularity of many governors and rising disquiet among many vulnerable House Democrats.

The issue advantage has shifted as well, with Democrats facing the brunt of criticism about the pace of stimulus package spending, anxiety over rising unemployment rates and widespread uneasiness over the twin pillars of Obama’s legislative agenda: his cap-and-trade approach to climate change and the emerging health care bill.
[...]

The polls tell only part of the story. National Republicans have recently met with success in persuading a number of top recruits to commit to 2010 races that not so long ago looked considerably less attractive — the surest signal that potential GOP candidates view the playing field as less tilted against them than just a few months earlier.

"CAUSE YOU WERE ALL YELLOW":

Coldplay to appear on The Simpsons (Ben Leach, 29 Jul 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Chris Martin and the band are being turned into cartoons for an episode in the 20th anniversary series, which starts in September.

Martin is the only band member to be given a speaking role in the episode, in which Homer Simpson invites the band to his house in Springfield after he wins the lottery.

HIP TO THAT JIVE:

Seniors Air Doubts to Obama: President Tries to Allay Fears Over Cuts to Medicare Spending, Says Waste Is Target (JANET ADAMY, 7/29/09, WSJ)

Concerns from seniors about possible benefit cuts are forcing the big seniors' group AARP, which supports the House bill, to walk a tightrope as it tries to keep members on board.

The group on Tuesday sponsored a forum in which Mr. Obama took questions from a small audience of seniors, as well as by phone and Internet.

Carolyn Engers from Joliet, Ill., told the president that she had just come from an AARP meeting where seniors said cuts to Medicare spending rank as one of their top concerns. "Even if I decide when I'm 80 that I want a hip replacement, am I going to be able to get that?" she asked.

WHAT DOES NEED HAVE TO DO WITH HEALTH CARE?:

Health Care in Crisis: Overmedicating America: In the U.S. today, doctors are too quick to prescribe drugs that their patients don't really need and often can't afford (Ed Wallace, 7/28/09, Business Week)

[T]he expensive overmedication of America really began 12 years ago, when the Federal Drug Administration allowed drug companies to advertise their products on TV. Americans could now diagnose themselves during commercial breaks, and then "ask their doctor" to prescribe the most expensive, no-generic-available wonder drugs.

The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that allows this practice, and it's not without controversy here. The pro argument is that some individuals who have been quietly suffering from one malady or another can be motivated to find a doctor and obtain medical help. The con argument is that many individuals with only one symptom—which might not necessarily indicate the problem the drug in the TV ad is for—may demand that medication from a physician, who in turn may see no harm in prescribing it.

Today, TV ads encourage consumers to self-diagnose and treat potentially serious medical problems as easily as they rid themselves of dandruff with the right shampoo. Sleepless nights, diabetes, seizures, allergies, depression, chronic bronchitis, high cholesterol, dry eyes, overactive bladders, tingling in your legs, baldness, and the list goes on and on. In some cases, the commercial even suggests that the drug's manufacturer will help you find a physician to gladly write the prescription for you.

EVEN THE UR WAITED UNTIL HE WAS IN OFFICE TO IMPLODE:

Ahmadinejad struggles with crisis of authority: Disarray in Iran intensifying (Barbara Slavin, July 28, 2009, Washington Times)

Iran's government appears to be imploding even before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is sworn in for a second term, with three Cabinet ministers dismissed, resigning or on their way out and the opposition vowing to continue protests over disputed presidential elections.

Iran specialists say Mr. Ahmadinejad -- who has alienated some hard-liners as well as reformists in Iran through poor economic management and an adventurist foreign policy -- is badly weakened as he heads into a second term and may not be able to complete another four years in office.

NO MAS:

Memo: No health vote before recess (Glenn Thrush, 7/28/09, Politico)

Democratic leaders have apparently thrown in the towel -- telling their Republican counterparts that there will be no health care vote on the House floor before the August recess starts this Friday, according a Republican memo obtained by POLITICO.

APPARENTLY, ONCE YOU SET THE DISH AT THE CENTER OF THE TABLE...:

Chicken Galileo (Boston Globe, July 29, 2009 )

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/4 cup chicken stock
Salt and pepper, to taste
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
6 sun-dried tomatoes (oil-packed)
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella, sliced about 1/2 inch thick
Handful of fresh basil leaves
1. In a medium bowl, combine the vinegar, 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, garlic, stock, salt, and pepper. Add the chicken, stir well, and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 30 minutes or for up to 2 hours.

2. Remove the chicken from marinade. With a sharp knife, cut horizontal slits in one side of each breast to form pockets. Don’t cut all the way through.

3. With your hand or the flat side of a knife, slightly flatten four of the sun-dried tomatoes. Chop the remaining 2 tomatoes. Into the pocket of each breast, insert a sun-dried tomato, a slice or two of mozzarella, some chopped sun-dried tomato, and a few basil leaves. Pinch the edges of each breast to close them.

4. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the breasts. Cook, turning once, for 7 minutes on a side or until cooked through.

5. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board. Slice them and arrange each one on a plate, fanning out the slices. Adapted from Cheryl Jost

IF I SPRAYPAINT MY NAME ON THE SPHINX AM I EGYPTIAN?:

Anger after Bible defaced in British gallery (AFP, Jul 28, 09)

Artist Jane Clarke, a minister at the Metropolitan Community Church, asked visitors to annotate the Bible with stories and reflections, as a way of making it more inclusive. [...]

On the first page of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, someone had written: "I am Bi, Female and Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this."

Clarke said: "I had hoped that people would show respect for the Bible, for Christianity and indeed for the Gallery of Modern Art. I am saddened that some people have chosen to write offensive messages.

"Writing our names in the margins of a Bible was to show how we have been marginalised by many Christian churches, and also our desire to be included in God's love."

ULTIMATELY?:

Obama’s Science Czar Said a Born Baby ‘Will Ultimately Develop Into a Human Being’ (Terence P. Jeffrey, 7/28/09, CNSNews.com)

President Obama’s top science adviser said in a book he co-authored in 1973 that a newborn child “will ultimately develop into a human being” if he or she is properly fed and socialized.

“The fetus, given the opportunity to develop properly before birth, and given the essential early socializing experiences and sufficient nourishing food during the crucial early years after birth, will ultimately develop into a human being,” John P. Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in “Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.”

Holdren co-authored the book with Stanford professors Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich.

GOTTA TRY SOMETHING TO ENTERTAIN THE SPECTATORS:

Soccer playing mum on bite ban (Gemma Jones, 7/29/09, The Daily Telegraph )

A SOCCER-PLAYING mother has been banned from the sport for more than 12 months for biting another player.

Alice Paul, the No. 15 player for Queens Park, told a judiciary hearing she "snapped" when a player elbowed her in the face during a tackle.

A referee who stopped the match against Maroubra United women's over 35s on July 5 at Coral Sea Park said he could see "clear teeth and bite impressions in the skin" of the victim.

OOPS! MISSED THAT POINT ENTIRELY:

A "Uniquely American" Abortion Debate: The notion that tax dollars shouldn't pay for abortions is an international aberration, an example of American exceptionalism run amuck. (Dana Goldstein, July 28, 2009, American Prospect)

Right now in the United States, an individual's range of health care options -- on reproductive care or anything else -- is determined by her ability to pay, or to transport herself to the location where a certain medical procedure is legal and available. It's not that abortion is uncontroversial in other Western nations -- far from it. It's just that in Europe, government-funded health care is supported across the political spectrum, and is how almost every citizen accesses care. Even the most influential and affluent Europeans would be affected by government limits on abortion access. Unsurprisingly, then, few such limits exist.

THE FINAL SAY RATHER THAN A DAILY PRESENCE:

Iran, Islam and the Rule of Law: Islamic political movements have been one form of revolt against arbitrary government. (FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, 7/27/09, WSJ)

The Iranian Constitution is a curious hybrid of authoritarian, theocratic and democratic elements. Articles One and Two do vest sovereignty in God, but Article Six mandates popular elections for the presidency and the Majlis, or parliament. Articles 19-42 are a bill of rights, guaranteeing, among other things, freedom of expression, public gatherings and marches, women’s equality, protection of ethnic minorities, due process and private property, as well as some “second generation” social rights like social security and health care.

The truly problematic part of the constitution is Section Eight (Articles 107-112) on the Guardian Council and the “Leader.” All the democratic procedures and rights in the earlier sections of the constitution are qualified by certain powers reserved to a council of senior clerics.

These powers, specified in Article 110, include control over the armed forces, the ability to declare war, and appointment powers over the judiciary, heads of media, army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another article lays out conditions under which the Supreme Leader can be removed by the Guardian Council. But that procedure is hardly democratic or transparent. [...]

So what kind of future should we wish for Iran, in light of the massive demonstrations? My own preference would be for Iran to some day adopt a new, Western-style constitution guaranteeing religious freedom, a secular state, and sovereignty vested firmly in the people, rather than God.

But a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence (we don’t have anything better) suggests this is not necessarily the agenda of the protesters. Many of them, including opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, say they want Iran to remain an Islamic Republic. They look at the radical regime change that occurred in next door Iraq and don’t want that for themselves. What they seem to wish for is that the democratic features of the constitution be better respected, and that the executive authorities, including the Guardian Council, and the military and paramilitary organizations, stop manipulating elections and respect the law.

Iran could evolve towards a genuine rule-of-law democracy within the broad parameters of the 1979 constitution. It would be necessary to abolish Article 110, which gives the Guardian Council control over the armed forces and the media, and to shift its function to something more like a supreme court that could pass judgment on the consistency of legislation with Shariah. In time, the Council might be subject to some form of democratic control, like the U.S. Supreme Court, even if its members needed religious credentials.

DON'T JUST COVET CAPITALISM, TRY IT:

Capitalism, Jewish Achievement, and the Israel Test: Israel has become one of the most important economies in the world, and is second only to the United States in its pioneering of technologies benefitting human life, prosperity, and peace. (George Gilder, July 27, 2009, The American)

Like the Jews throughout history, Israel poses a test to the world. In particular, it is a test for any people that lusts for the fruits of capitalism without submitting to capitalism’s imperious moral code. Because capitalism, like the biblical faith from which it largely arises, remorselessly condemns to darkness and death those who resent the achievements of others.

At the heart of anti-Semitism is resentment of Jewish achievement. Today that achievement is concentrated in Israel. Obscured by the usual media coverage of the “war-torn” Middle East, Israel has become one of the most important economies in the world, second only to the United States in its pioneering of technologies benefitting human life, prosperity, and peace.

But so it has always been. Israel, like the Jews throughout history, is hated not for her vices but her virtues. Israel is hated, as the United States is hated, because Israel is successful, because Israel is free, and because Israel is good.

As Maxim Gorky put it: “Whatever nonsense the anti-Semites may talk, they dislike the Jew only because he is obviously better, more adroit, and more capable of work than they are.” Whether driven by culture or genes—or like most behavior, an inextricable mix—the fact of Jewish genius is demonstrable.

IT'S THE RESUME, SILLY:

Obama: the king of low expectations: Healthcare controversies, dumb comments about the arrest of a Harvard professor, and ‘soccer mom jeans’: is Obama losing his Midas touch? 9Sean Collins, 7./28/09, Spiked)

[T]o add insult to injury, Americans have even started to question whether Obama is cool. The big controversy about Obama for most of July has been his jeans. Yes, jeans. At the baseball all-star game, Obama came on to the field wearing faded baggy flood-lengths, complete with ironed creases down the middle; some referred to them as ‘soccer mom jeans’ (6). Many cringed at the sight of Obama revealing his inner dork, and wondered what happened to the guy who was supposed to be not just a president, but also the epitome of hipness.

So, not the best of times for Obama. But the real question is: how serious are his problems? Not very, at least in the short term. The hyperventilated talk about his demise is overblown, premature at best, and a distraction from engaging with issues. Obama still dominates the US political agenda and holds a number of advantages over his opponents.

There is no doubt that Obama’s honeymoon is over. The euphoria that greeted his victory has evaporated, and his high standing in the polls has eroded. It is true that there is a risk he will not be able to oversee the passage of his healthcare reforms. Other major items on his legislative wishlist – including ‘cap and trade’ to reduce carbon emissions, immigration reform and financial services regulation – also may not be implemented. And, no matter what Obama manages to get through Congress, if the economy does not recover, his support will be limited.

The latest setbacks are noteworthy, but not the entire picture. Upon entering the White House, Obama said his number one goal was to deal with the economic crisis. And whatever one thinks of his policies, he has been extremely active and successful in implementing a wide array of programmes to address that crisis, such as the $787billion stimulus package, bank and auto bailouts, and so on. Obama’s record of activism certainly looks favourable when compared to the paralysis of, say, the British and Japanese governments.

WE PREFER THE ICE AGE, THANKS:

Incan Empire Aided by Global Warming (Rossella Lorenzi, 7/28/09, Discovery News)

A 400-year warm spell helped the ancient Inca to build the largest empire ever to exist in the Americas, a new study has established.

Beginning around 1100 A.D., the increase in temperature served as a "perfect incubator" for the Inca's expansion, an international team of researchers report in the current issue of the journal Climate of the Past.

"Climate warming does not always have to be a negative issue. Our research shows that it can favor societal development, " lead author Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a palaeoecologist from the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru, told Discovery News.

THE RETREAT BEFORE THE ROUT:

Key Democratic provisions fading fast (CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, 7/27/09, Politico)

Bipartisan negotiations on the Senate Finance Committee are moving closer to eliminating two health care provisions favored by many Democrats – a mandate on employers to provide insurance or pay a penalty, and a government insurance option, a senator and health care insiders said Monday.

That could bring even greater pressure on Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who has been challenged by more liberal senators who say he is sacrificing key Democratic priorities on health care reform to win the votes of a few Republicans. [...]

“We are working towards a way to get a bill that lowers health care costs, which provides affordable, high-quality health care to people and in a way that passes the Senate,” Baucus said. “I can’t tell you exactly what that is yet, but I can tell you we are getting very close to it.”

Democrats on the Finance Committee meet Tuesday morning, but already talk of a deal along these lines drew fire from one prominent Democrat – former national party chairman Howard Dean. If the co-op plan and free rider provision make it into the bipartisan compromise, "I fear for the future of health care reform because that is not health care reform," Dean said Monday on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show.

Instead, he called it “health insurance reform."

MORE:
Lobbyists gain upper hand in Obama battle (Bob Cusack, 07/27/09, The Hill)

Lobbying interests that President Obama campaigned against last year have gained the upper hand on the White House in recent weeks.

In stark contrast to Obama’s first few months in office, special interest groups this summer have aggressively opposed the president’s top domestic priorities. And they have succeeded in slowing legislation to revamp the nation’s healthcare system, won an essential change to climate change legislation and put off efforts to set up a consumer agency in the financial sector. [...]

An influential lobbyist who requested anonymity said Obama has “lost serious momentum and has really not played the expectations game well, especially with hard deadlines.”

A key facet of industry opposition is “creating delays” and, if negotiations break down, seizing the “opportunity to outright kill a proposal,” the lobbyist added.

THERE IS NO PAKISTAN:

Call for Pashtun nation is not far away (Mohan Guruswamy, 7/28/09, Rediff)

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his infinite wisdom has put Balochistan on the Indo-Pak agenda. But why stop at Balochistan? Just as Balochistan was annexed by Pakistan in 1948, the Pashtun homelands that now make up the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies were annexed by the British just 70 years before they departed from the subcontinent.

It is a pity that few people in India know what really Pakistan is all about. Even today, they dare not refer to the NWFP and FATA as Pashtunistan or Pathanistan or anything that would confer upon them a sub-nationality within Pakistan, as in the case of Punjab, Sind and Balochistan. [...]

In the recent times, Afghan and Pakistani forces now in the Tribal Agencies ostensibly in pursuit of Al Qaeda, have clashed at various points along the Durand Line. It is now only a question of time before the demand for the reunification of all their people becomes a rallying call for the Pashtun nation. Even the internal dynamics within Afghanistan now demand it. There is much unfinished business here. If the Pakistanis now insist on putting self-determination for Kashmir on the agenda, let's also put self-determination for Balochistan and Pashtunistan on the same agenda.

GIVEN THAT WE WERE OVERSUPPLIED THE ENTIRE TIME...:

Traders Blamed for Oil Spike (IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN and ALISTAIR MACDONALD, 7/28/09, WSJ)

The debate over speculators underscores the shifting nature of commodities trading in recent years. Before the mid-1990s, these markets were dominated by entities that had physical dealings with the underlying commodity, and "speculators" who often took the opposite position, providing liquidity to markets.

But a new group of investors has emerged in recent years. Those who want to bet on commodities prices have increasingly put their money in indexes that track the value of futures contracts, in which investors promise to pay a certain amount in the future for oil and other commodities. As of July 2008, financial investors had about $300 billion riding on these indexes, roughly four times the level in January 2006, according to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based watchdog.

Separately, these investors may buy derivatives, not directly traded on futures exchanges, that let them make contrary bets to offset their risks.

Crude-oil prices surged in July 2008 to a record $145 a barrel, then dropped to about $33 in December. Oil now trades at around $68 a barrel.

NASHVILLE, WHERE MASTADONS ROAM THE STREETS... (via Jim Yates):

Global cooling hits Al Gore's home: Nashville, the home of leading global warming prophet Al Gore, has enjoyed the coolest July 21 on record (Christopher Booker, 25 Jul 2009, Daily Telegraph)

It was delightfully appropriate that, as large parts of Argentina were swept by severe blizzards last week, on a scale never experienced before, the city of Nashville, Tennessee, should have enjoyed the coolest July 21 in its history, breaking a record established in 1877. Appropriate, because Nashville is the home of Al Gore, the man who for 20 years has been predicting that we should all by now be in the grip of runaway global warming.

His predictions have proved so wildly wrong – along with those of the Met Office's £33 million computer model which forecast that we should now be enjoying a "barbecue summer" and that 2009 would be one of "the five warmest years ever" – that the propaganda machine has had to work overtime to maintain what is threatening to become the most expensive fiction in history.

IF THE REST OF US ARE SO IGNORANT, WHY WAS HE THE ONE WHO GOT THE WAR WRONG?:

FIRST APPLIED LINGUISTICS, THEN APPLIED BIOLOGY (via Matt Murphy):

"A New Ethic for Medicine and Society" (National Right to Life News, March 11, 1998)

Editor's note. In the early days of abortion `reform,' pro-abortionists insisted their agenda was modest and unassuming. In contrast with this phony humility, few, if any expressions mare candidly admitted that the agenda of the pro-abortion movement, required the abandonment of the traditional Western ethic's commitment to the "equal value of every human life" than this reprint. This editorial first appeared in the September 1970 edition of California Medicine, a publication of the Western Journal of Medicine. Many younger pro-lifers have heard references to it. We reprint it in its entirety for their edification.

The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life regardless of its stage or condition. This ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage and has been the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy. The reverence for each and every human life has also been a keystone of Western medicine and is the ethic which has caused physicians to try to preserve, protect, repair, prolong and enhance every human life which comes under their surveillance. This traditional ethic is still clearly dominant, but there ia much to suggest that it is being eroded at its core and may eventually even be abandoned. This of course will produce profound changes in Western medicine and in Western society.

There are certain new facts and social realities which are becoming recognized, are widely discussed in Western society, and seem certain to undermine and transform this traditional ethic. They have come into being and into focus as the social by-products of unprecedented technological progress and achievement. Of particular importance are, first, the demographic data of human population expansion which tends to proceed uncontrolled and at a geometric rate of progression; second, an ever-growing ecological disparity between the numbers of people and the resources available to support these numbers in the manner to which they are or would like to become accustomed; and third, and perhaps most important, a quite new social emphasis on something which is beginning to be called the quality of life, a something which becomes possible for the first time in human history because of scientific and technological development. These are now being seen by a growing segment of the public as realities which are within, the power of humans to control and there is quite evidently an increasing determination to do this.

What is not yet so clearly perceived is that in order to bring this about hard choices will have to be made with respect to what is to be preserved and strengthened and what is not, and that this will of necessity violate and ultimately destroy the traditional Western ethic with all that this portends. It will become necessary and acceptable to place relative rather than absolute values on such things as human lives, the use of scarce resources, and the various elements which are to make up the quality of life or of living which is to be sought. This is quite distinctly at variance with the Judeo-Christian ethic and carries serious philosophical, social, economic, and political implications for Western society and perhaps for world society.

The process of eroding the old ethic and substituting the new has already begun. It may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion. In defiance of the long held Western ethic of intrinsic and equal value for every human life regardless of its stage, condition, or status, abortion is becoming accepted by society as moral, right and even necessary. It is worth noting that this shift in public attitude has affected the churches, the laws,

and public policy rather than the reverse. Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. [...]

It is not too early for our profession to examine this new ethic, recognize it for what it is and will mean for human society, and prepare to apply it in a rational development for the fulfillment and betterment of mankind in what is almost certain to be a biologically oriented world society.

THEY JUST WANT THEIR BELLIES SCRATCHED:

Blue Dogs: All Bark, No Bite: The Democrats’ self-styled fiscal conservatives don’t have a voting record to match their rhetoric. (MERRILL MATTHEWS, 7/27/09, WSJ)

So far this year, the House has seen at least four major spending bills. Here’s how the Blue Dogs voted:

• The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (Schip). One of the first things the Democratic leadership wanted the newly inaugurated President Obama to sign was a huge expansion of Schip. Democrats have been trying to pass the expansion for over a year, with some bipartisan support. President George W. Bush vetoed the legislation twice, and Congress sustained his veto both times by a hair.

Schip was created for low-income uninsured children not eligible for Medicaid. Under the old bill, children whose family incomes were 200% of the federal poverty level were covered. With the new bill, Democrats increased funding to cover children whose family incomes are up to 300% of the federal poverty level—or $66,000 a year for a family of four. The Bush administration and most conservatives thought it should remain at 200%. Did the Blue Dogs agree? Only two voted against the expansion.

• The $787 billion stimulus. The next major spending package was Mr. Obama’s stimulus bill. Not one House Republican voted for the bill. The Blue Dogs? Only 10 of 52 voted against it.

• President Obama’s 2010 federal budget. In April, Congress took a vote on the president’s $3.5 trillion budget for 2010—by far the biggest spending package in history. Again, not one House Republican voted for the bill, but only 14 Blue Dogs joined them in opposition.

• The cap-and-trade energy tax. In June, the House took an enormous step by pushing through the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax. The legislation will stifle economic growth by imposing huge new costs on every business and each American household. Eight House Republicans voted for the bill. Twenty-nine Blue Dogs voted against the legislation.

NOR IS CONCISION ANYTHING TO SNEEZE AT:

WE ARE ALL WRITERS NOW: Blogs, Twitter, Facebook: these outlets are supposedly cheapening language and tarnishing our time. But the fact is we are all reading and writing much more than we used to (Anne Trubek, MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE)

The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: “Do we really care about what you ate for lunch?”

Forget that most of the pundits lambasting Facebook and Twitter are familiar with these devices because they use them regularly. Forget that no one is being manacled to computers and forced to read stupid prose (instead of, say, reading Proust in bed). What many professional writers are overlooking in these laments is that the rise of amateur writers means more people are writing and reading. We are commenting on blog posts, forwarding links and composing status updates. We are seeking out communities based on written words.

Go back 20, 30 years and you will find all of us doing more talking than writing. We rued literacy levels and worried over whether all this phone-yakking and television-watching spelled the end of writing.

Few make that claim today. I would hazard that, with more than 200m people on Facebook and even more with home internet access, we are all writing more than we would have ten years ago. Those who would never write letters (too slow and anachronistic) or postcards (too twee) now send missives with abandon, from long thoughtful memos to brief and clever quips about evening plans. And if we subscribe to the theory that the most effective way to improve one’s writing is by practicing—by writing more, and ideally for an audience—then our writing skills must be getting better.

HE JUST BARELY MISSED A KEY POINT IN PASSING:

Utopia isn't a dirty word: As the left searches for meaning, it would do well to reflect on Christianity's utopian vision for humankind (Theo Hobson, 7/26/09, guardian.co.uk)

Modern Christianity has tried pretty hard to forget about this, but it cannot entirely. For Christians pray "your kingdom come, on earth as it in heaven", which sounds pretty utopian to me. Christian faith, properly understood, expects the transformation of everything, life's semi-imaginable perfection. This ideal cannot be translated into fully rational terms: it always veers into cosmic mythological stuff about predators turning cuddly, the defeat of death, the end of evil, the triumph of God over all contrary powers. This is not the supposedly rational utopia of Marxism. But I think "utopia" is a pretty good summary of the vision. As I explain in my forthcoming book Faith, this total utopian hope is a key part of the Christian vision. Christianity is the only grown-up utopianism. It is the only form of historical hope that is also realistic about our capacity for evil.

But isn't every account of utopia intrinsically dangerous? This assumption has recently been re-stated by John Gray, in his book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. He argues that Judeo-Christian hope is the source of all the destructive utopian projects of modernity. What defines the west is the "pursuit of salvation in history", and it is a poisonous mistake, for it fails to accept the reality of human nature.

From a Christian perspective, Gray is making a sort of category mistake. He is saying that utopia is impossible, on the basis of what we know about humans. But Christian utopianism takes this into account: it awaits divine action rather than seeking to force utopia into being.

THIS LOOKS LIKE A JOB FOR THE EMPIRE OF LIBERTY:

America to the Rescue (James Kirchick, 7/27/09 , Commentary)

That Zelaya and his domestic opponents would turn to America indicates the inexorable nature of our global hegemony. American liberals may be obsessed with apologizing for our past sins, especially in Latin America, and argue that our support for a coup in Chile in 1973 disqualifies us from doing anything proactive about Honduras in 2009. Actual Latin Americans, however, appear to disagree.

What’s clear is that without the United States serving as a benevolent regional hegemon, Honduras would be in a far worse place than the fraught standoff that characterizes the situation today. Whatever America’s history in the region, we have a far better chance of resolving the crisis than do any of the other nations vying for the role of referee. Honduras’s interim government rightly feels bullied by a bloc of left-wing Latin American populists, namely Chavez, who has threatened to invade Honduras if the interim government does not reinstate his ally. Micheletti accused neighboring Nicarauga (led by the former Sandinista rebel Daniel Ortega) of amassing troops on the border. For all we know, a small-scale war could have erupted without American intervention.

As for the regional organization that prophets of American decline would point to as the natural and rightful arbitrator, the OAS has largely discredited itself over the past few years by becoming the plaything of left-wing populists like Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. Ostensibly meant to promote democracy and good governance, it has recently made way for the readmission of Cuba, which it banned nearly five decades ago after Fidel Castro turned the country into a communist dictatorship.

From the Taiwan Strait to the Persian Gulf to Eastern Europe, the projection of American power keeps the world safe, allows for free commercial exchange, and protects global liberty.

AND THEY WONDER WHY LATINOS THINK REPUBLICANS HATE THEM?:

Grassley to vote against Sotomayor confirmation (TOM BEAUMONT, 7/27/09, dmreg.com)

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said today he planned to oppose the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court when the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on her nomination Tuesday.

The vote, which Grassley announced to The Des Moines Register, marks the first time Grassley will have opposed a high-court nominee in his 29 years on the committee.

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch’s decision to vote against the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor tomorrow is somewhat puzzling to one local political analyst. Matt Burbank, chair of the political science department at the University of Utah, notes that Hatch didn’t give many reasons for why he would vote “no.”

“This is somebody who, over the years, has indeed prided himself on looking carefully at what was going on in these hearings, and being fairly careful about trying to support presidential nominees when he can, so it is a little bit different, I’m a little bit surprised by his decision, actually,” said Burbank.

In his nearly 33 years in the senate, Hatch has never before voted against a Supreme Court nominee. In fact, he voted in favor of both of former Democratic President Bill Clinton’s picks.

IF BEING LAZY IS GENERALLY A BAD WAY TO APPEAL TO AMERICANS...:

Why do so many Brits fail in America?: After clashes with his US fans, is the US odyssey of David Beckham bound to end in jeers? (Luke Leitch, 7/28/09, Times of London)

David Beckham planned to crack America. Two years after his triumphal arrival in Los Angeles, however, the suspicion is that it might be America that’s cracking him. In little more than a week England’s most famous sportsman has twice succumbed to angry confrontation with a small, but extremely vocal, group of Galaxy fans, aggrieved that the man who signed a £128 million, five-year contract to play football for them has been playing — with obvious and offensive relish — for AC Milan too.

Simon Middleton, a brand strategy expert says: “David Beckham getting booed by the LA supporters is about not understanding the American psyche. One of the things Americans value hugely is authenticity and commitment. I think what they saw in his return is that he is not absolutely committed and they are suspicious of him.”

THEREBY DEMONSTRATING THAT HE IS WHAT HE "ISN'T":

Science Is in the Details (SAM HARRIS, 7/27/09, NY Times)

Dr. Collins is regularly praised by secular scientists for what he is not: he is not a “young earth creationist,” nor is he a proponent of “intelligent design.” [...]

What follows are a series of slides, presented in order, from a lecture on science and belief that Dr. Collins gave at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008:

Slide 1: “Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.”

Slide 2: “God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.”

Slide 3: “After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced ‘house’ (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the moral law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.”

Slide 4: “We humans used our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to that estrangement.”

Slide 5: “If the moral law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It’s all an illusion. We’ve been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially the strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?”

WHICH RAISES AN OBVIOUS QUESTION...:

An Incoherent Truth (PAUL KRUGMAN, 7/27/09, NY Times)

Reform, if it happens, will rest on four main pillars: regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition.

By regulation I mean the nationwide imposition of rules that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage based on your medical history, or dropping your coverage when you get sick. This would stop insurers from gaming the system by covering only healthy people.

On the other side, individuals would also be prevented from gaming the system: Americans would be required to buy insurance even if they’re currently healthy, rather than signing up only when they need care.

IS HE TRYING TO GET YOU TO STOP READING?:

Culture of Death: The right-wing assault on abortion reduction. (William Saletan, July 27, 2009, Slate)

A new fault line has opened in the abortion debate. The fight is no longer between pro-lifers and pro-choicers. It's between militants and pragmatists.

While some extremists have been raising hell and shooting doctors, pragmatists have been hashing out common-ground legislation.

LOUISVILLE PLUGGER (via Glenn Dryfoos)

EVERY DAY IS THE NEXT PEAK:

Earth's Mantle: Untapped Oil Source? (Michael Reilly, 7/27/09, Discovery News)

For decades, though, scientists have toyed with a tantalizing alternative theory of petroleum formation: What if chemical reactions between water and minerals deep in Earth's mantle could send black gold bubbling up into the crust?

Alexander Goncharov of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C and a team of researchers have shown that just such a thing is possible. They heated methane (CH4) up to 1,500 degrees Kelvin (2,240 degrees Fahrenheit) and mimicked the squeezing effect of being buried under over 100 kilometers (62 miles) of solid rock.

The results were astonishing -- methane readily transformed into butane (C4H10) and propane (C3H8), two common components of crude oil.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE B&E, NOT THE DNA:

Police: 911 call didn't mention Gates' race (AP, July 27, 2009)

The 911 caller who reported a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. did not mention race in the call, according to a statement issued by her attorney and backed up by Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas.

Lucia Whalen placed the 911 call July 16, saying she saw two men on Gates' front porch who appeared to be trying to force open the front door.

THAT'S ALL YOU GOT?:

The Recession is Over (Daniel Gross, 7/26/09, NEWSWEEK)

The Great Recession, which rolled over our financial lives like one of P.J. Keating's giant pavers, is most likely over. Home sales, while still far below the levels of a year ago, have risen for three straight months—a first since 2004. The stock market has rallied 44 percent since March, thanks to renewed optimism and improving earnings from big companies like Goldman Sachs and Apple. In June, seven of the 10 indicators in the Conference Board Leading Economic Index pointed upward, including manufacturing hours worked and unemployment claims. Macroeconomic Advisers, the St. Louis–based consulting firm, says the economy is expanding at a 2.5 percent annual rate in the current quarter. Economic activity "will increase slightly over the remainder of 2009," Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress.

Irrational exuberance, it's not. But even stagnation would be an improvement over recent history. The U.S. economy shrank at nearly a 6 percent annualized rate between September 2008 and March 2009, a shocking slowdown that pitched the global economy into recession for the first time since World War II. "This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression," Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said in January.

MORE:
A Nation Hard to Short (ROGER COHEN, 7/27/09, NY Times)

The other morning, I caught Warren Buffett on MSNBC. The Sage of Omaha was in sprightly form, perhaps buoyed by the market’s summer surge. He was asked where the market was headed in the next few months and he said he had no idea but he knew one thing: “It’s hard to short America in the long term.”

All the debt, personal and national, notwithstanding, I have to second that. As it happened, I’d been up very early that morning to talk to CNN’s excellent John Roberts about Iran. Waiting for the show, I looked east across Central Park to the rising sun just knotting its tie over the serried high rises of midtown and the Upper East Side.

It was a magnificent sight, the city resplendent. New York has recovered, if not its stride, at least its balance.

IN THE HOUSE:

The Senate Doctors Show

CONSERVATIVES VS TWELVERS:

Iran president clashes with conservatives; 2 protesters said to die in custody: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad angers fellow hard-liners by firing at least two ministers, but backtracks later and blames media for furor. (Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, July 27, 2009, LA Times)

New ruptures emerged in Iran's government Sunday when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad angered fellow conservatives by abruptly sacking as many as four ministers who had opposed his choice for vice president.

Ahmadinejad later backtracked on his decision, saying he had fired only one minister, and blamed the media for creating the uproar. [...]

The controversy marked the second time in recent days that Ahmadinejad has faced off against fellow conservatives and been forced to back down.

CAN'T LET ONE FAILURE DISTRACT ATTENTION FROM ANOTHER:

Gitmo Woes (Michael Isikoff, 7/25/09, NEWSWEEK)

White House officials last week tried to downplay their decision to postpone by six months a key report on what to do with Guantánamo detainees when the facility is shut down. But the delay reflects the daunting political obstacles facing President Obama as he struggles to meet his pledge to close the prison by January. Only a few weeks ago, the White House had considered a grand rollout of its Gitmo plans with a joint appearance on Capitol Hill by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr., Defense Secretary Robert Gates and CENTCOM Cmdr. David Petraeus. But the president's aides concluded that a briefing would likely backfire, diverting attention from health care and giving Republicans fresh ammunition. "There was no good reason to put it out there and have it attract fire," says a senior administration official who asked not to be identified talking about the internal deliberations.

YOU HAVE TO AT LEAST KNOW WHEN TO STOP DIGGING:

Obama's Insecure Slip: What led the president to wade into L’Affaire Gates? He thought he’d blown it with America on health care. (Tina Brown, 7/27/09, Daily Beast)

Obama’s unaccustomed carelessness in jumping on a racial landmine at the end of his health care press conference illustrates two things. First, his vanity as a performer. And second, his insecurity about his health care arguments.

The president, after a wordy, wonky, depressingly unconvincing briefing—one that he is pro enough to sense failed to make the sale to the press—eagerly took the question from Chicago reporter Lynn Sweet about the Henry Louis Gates affair. Obama saw it as a chance to be funny, to be real, to be his charming self—and to win back the room.

HEY, THE CHICKENS ARE HOME!:

In Bill O'Reilly's Sights: Run afoul of the conservative commentator, and feel the wrath of his avid Army (Rick Perlstein, 7/21/09, Newsweek)

Last week I was greeted with an uncomfortable curiosity: a brace of hate mail in my inbox, received within a 20-minute span. [...]

YouTube soon revealed all. Bill O'Reilly had run a segment on an article I published in the July 20 Newsweek, along with a picture—my author photograph—and a description of me—"this Perlstein," who had written "some book no one heard of," spit out with such venom that more than one friend of mine thought of Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat singing about throwing a Jew down a well. I was, Bill O'Reilly explained, an agent of "media corruption." In a subsequent newspaper column, O'Reilly summarized the problem thus: "Under the guise of hard news reporting, the media is pushing rank propaganda on the citizenry. Dr. Joseph Goebbels the Nazi propaganda minister, successfully developed this tactic in the 1930s."

Were I a conservative, and a fan of Sarah Palin, and a viewer of Bill O'Reilly—but not a particularly conscientious reader of Newsweek—I would have been mad at me, too.
What had I written, and what had Newsweek attempted to get away with? Here's how one friendly blogger summarized "Beyond the Palin": "Perlstein's entire article is ... a chronicle of the division within Republican ranks between the party's elites ... and its far more strident base." Any contempt present in the piece, he pointed out, came not in my own voice but those of the elite Republicans I quoted, who "treat part of the base with a certain amount of disdain, courting them with a wink and a nod when necessary, dissociating from them ... when they fail to deliver the electoral goods.... Indeed, Perlstein's article is not so much a liberal elitist sneer at the lumpen proletariat in fly-over country as much as it is a careful examination of conservative elites toward those they regard as such."

In truth the article was a little more than that. I also quoted author and former Bush speechwriter David Frum asking worriedly, "What's happening to Fox News?", and suggested that, in an era of occasional violence from the right-wing fringe, all responsible conservatives should all be asking that question. My friend David Neiwert, a Seattle-based journalist and author of the recent book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, explained to me the problem thus: "I'm hearing now, from supposedly mainstream conservative pundits"—he singled out Fox's Glenn Beck, who has been entertaining the notion that Obama might not be a natural-born American citizen—"the kind of extreme rhetorical appeals that I used to hear from militia movement leaders in the early 1990s, talk about how the evil liberal president literally intends to destroy our country."

MORE:
How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable (Jennifer Mesko, 7/22/09, CitizenLink)

s Republican Mark DeMoss and Democrat Lanny Davis ...are calling on liberals, conservatives, Democrats, Republicans and people of all faiths to take the "pledge," which reads:

I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior.
I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them.
I will stand against incivility when I see it.

To take the pledge, enter your first and last name and country at www.civilityproject.org.

DeMoss, president of his own public-relations firm — The DeMoss Group — said the project took shape during last year's election season.

"I had spent about two years volunteering for Mitt Romney, and I saw a lot of ugly rhetoric and behavior aimed at Mormons and then at me," he said. "And then the results of the Proposition 8 vote in California contributed to my thinking — when you saw gay activists responding to the (marriage-amendment) vote by vandalizing churches and temples.

"I decided to launch a project where I would talk not about unity, not about tolerance, not about getting along, not about compromise, but just about civility."

DeMoss' unlikely partner in the project is Lanny Davis, a longtime adviser to the Clintons who has served three terms on the Democratic National Committee.

Their paths crossed last year, as Davis was immersed in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. DeMoss was so impressed with Davis' civil tone that he wrote him a letter.

"I suspect that politically you and I may have nothing in common," he wrote. "But as I've watched you conduct yourself in the public arena, I've always appreciated how you handled yourself, how you handle your adversaries, how you show respect for those who disagree with you, and for modeling civility in an increasingly uncivil town."

Davis is used to getting mail — but not this kind.

"I'm getting all this hate mail, and I get this amazing letter from a perfect stranger who identifies himself as an evangelical Christian," Davis said. "I always try to give deference to somebody who disagrees with me. That is the point Mark made in his letter, that he noticed that about me, that I always try to be respectful of people who are of a different opinion.

"The letter was so beautifully written and moved me so greatly. It's now framed on my bookcase."

DeMoss invited Davis to join The Civility Project late last year.

AWAY GO TROUBLES DOWN THE DRAIN (via Jim Yates):

ObamaCare Dives Into End-Of-Life Debate: Medicare spends $100 billion annually on patients' final year of life. What the new bill says--and doesn't say--about treatment of the dying. (David Whelan, 07.24.09, Forbes)

Historically speaking, in the early 1980s, hospices and living wills, a type of advanced directive, became more commonplace in response to concerns about the cost of end-of-life care. The last Bush administration deliberately increased Medicare reimbursement rates for hospices to promote their use as an alternative to more expensive hospital stays. Hospices have become a big business. Chemed owns the $800 million (revenue) hospice chain Vitas. The Cincinnati company also puzzlingly owns Roto-Rooter plumbing franchises. It has one public competitor, Dallas' Odyssey, and many regional for-profit and nonprofit hospices.

Hospices, not surprisingly, support efforts in ObamaCare to promote their services. "It's a good provision," says Jon Keyserling, general counsel for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization in Alexandria, Va. "I've seen an inference that government doctors will be steering patients to choose less care, and that's not the intent," he says, referring to some of the controversy that's emerged around this part of the bill.

Opponents of ObamaCare argue that this five-page section of a 1,000-page bill is actually an attempt to pressure senior citizens into opting out of expensive live-saving therapy.

It brings to mind Boomsday, a 2007 satirical novel by ForbesLife editor at large Christopher Buckley, in which the government solves its fiscal problems by offering tax breaks to those who kill themselves before retirement age.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE KILLING:

Abortion and the echo of eugenics (Jeff Jacoby, July 26, 2009, Boston Globe)

WHAT DO Richard Nixon and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have in common? [...]

Nixon was meeting with an aide in the White House on Jan. 23, 1973, when the conversation - recorded on tapes newly released by the Nixon Presidential Library - turned to the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision the day before. Though generally against abortion, Nixon said it was “necessary’’ in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies. “There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,’’ he explained. “Or rape.’’

Ginsburg’s words were even creepier.

“Reproductive choice has to be straightened out,’’ she said in a recent New York Times interview. She was referring to the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of Medicaid funds for abortions - a law the Supreme Court upheld in Harris v. McRae in 1980. “Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. . . But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way.’’

CALL THE VOTE BEFORE THE GLOBAL ECONOMY GETS GOING AGAIN:

Australian Opposition To Vote Down Carbon Scheme (Javno, 7/26/09)

Australia's opposition leader reiterated on Sunday the coalition would vote against the government's proposed carbon emissions trading scheme next month unless it is changed, in a move which could trigger a snap election.

The controversial package of 11 bills is set for a vote in the upper house Senate on Aug. 13, and its progress is being keenly watched around the world. The government does not control the upper house and needs an extra seven votes to get it through.

If the scheme does not go through, the Labor government could have a trigger to call an early election, which polls suggest it would easily win. [...]

The opposition, which controls the largest Senate voting bloc, is struggling for support in polls and would prefer a late 2010 election on the issue of government debt and economic management, rather than fight early on climate change.

AS SOMEONE POINTED OUT THE OTHER DAY...:

Obama failing to make plan deficit-neutral (Matt Mackowiak, 7/26/09, Philadelphia Inquirer)

There is an important thread that connects the failed stimulus bill and current efforts to reform health care: the federal deficit. And there is only one group on Capitol Hill with the commitment, credibility, and political mind-set to block the current health-care legislation.

The Blue Dog Coalition is currently made up of 52 conservative and moderate Democratic members of Congress and has been in existence for 15 years. The organization exists, primarily, to join politically vulnerable Democrats and serve as a moderating influence on the larger and more liberal Democratic caucus.

On the organization's Web site, you'll find the following figured prominently: "Currently, the U.S. Debt is estimated at: $11,226,807,380,955.11. Your share of today's public debt is: $36,683.01." The Blue Dogs have kept a laserlike focus on the federal deficit in recent years. [...]

The question is, do regular people really care about the deficit? The answer appears to be yes. A poll released on July 20 conducted by the Washington Post and ABC News showed that public approval with President Obama's handling of the deficit is now at 43 percent, with more independents disapproving than approving (48 percent to 42). Interestingly, the public does not just disapprove of his handling of the deficit; they prefer deficit reduction to increased spending to revive the economy by 55 to 40 percent in the same poll.

THE BIGGEST REASON TO REAPPOINT HIM...:

The Great Preventer (NOURIEL ROUBINI, 7/26/09, NY Times)

Mr. Bernanke deserves to be reappointed. Both the conventional and unconventional decisions made by this scholar of the Great Depression prevented the Great Recession of 2008-2009 from turning into the Great Depression 2.0.

Mr. Bernanke understands that in the Great Depression, the collapse of the money supply and the lack of monetary stimulus during contractions worsened the country’s economic free fall. This lesson has paid off. Mr. Bernanke’s decision to keep interest rates low and encourage lending has, for now, averted the L-shaped near depression that seemed highly likely after the financial collapse last fall.

PRE-BROKEN:

AP Sources: US man was 'gold mine' of terror intel (ADAM GOLDMAN and DEVLIN BARRETT, 7/26/09, AP)

While an American citizen captured in Pakistan certainly presents a unique case, the circumstances of Vinas' treatment may point to a new emphasis in the fight against terror, one that relies more on FBI crimefighters and the civilian justice system than on CIA interrogators and military detention.

"This was by the numbers. It was a law enforcement operation and it worked," said a senior law enforcement official, one of several authorities who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to publicly discuss the case. [...]

Vinas, born in Queens and raised as a Roman Catholic on Long Island, was turned over to the FBI. Authorities have long been concerned about al-Qaida's interest in recruiting outsiders who can blend in easily. It was not the first time an American had gone to Pakistan for Jihad. Others had preceded him such as the imprisoned "American Taliban," John Walker Lindh and convicted terrorist Jose Padilla.

At first after his capture, Vinas appeared scared and dejected.

OUTPOSTS OF ANGLOSPHERIC EMPIRE:

India launches nuclear submarine (BBC, 7/26/09)

India has launched its first nuclear-powered submarine, becoming only the sixth country in the world to do so.

The 6,000 tonne Arihant was launched by India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at a ceremony on the south-east coast.

THE GANG THAT COULDN'T SPEAK STRAIGHT:

Hillary Clinton's Iran Indiscretion (Jim Hoagland, July 26, 2009, Washington Post)

The underlying subject for today is the evolving U.S. discussion on Iran's nuclear weapons capability. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew attention to that subject last week with a few ill-considered words in a televised town hall meeting in Thailand. Here is the New York Times account of what she said:

"We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment, that if the U.S. extends a defense umbrella over the region, if we do even more to support the military capacity of those in the Gulf, it's unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer, because they won't be able to intimidate and dominate, as they apparently believe they can, once they have a nuclear weapon."

These words are ill-considered not because they are wrong or wrongheaded. The problem is that they state an obvious truth in obvious language. "Defense umbrella" is a term codified by decades of Cold War experience and theory. It is strategic shorthand for the commitment that an attack on our ally is an attack on us and will be dealt with as such -- including the use of nuclear weapons if necessary.

The United States has not extended such an explicit guarantee to its Arab allies in the Gulf. But the Carter Doctrine of 1980 hinted at such a commitment. And there was a lively, inconclusive internal debate during George W. Bush's second term about extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and other regional powers to keep them from seeking their own nuclear weapons.

I wrote approvingly of that idea then and still support it. It was also echoed during a presidential campaign debate in 2008 when Clinton said the United States "should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel." Her remarks in Thailand did not come out of the blue. They are precisely what Washington should be -- and no doubt is -- considering.

But President Obama has yet to bless the thought.

TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AS BUDGET HAWKS...:

Defense secretary scores big wins on weapons cuts (RICHARD LARDNER, 7/26/09, AP )

Robert Gates is on a roll. Question is, how long will it last?

The politically savvy defense secretary scored big legislative wins when the Senate voted convincingly to end production of the high-priced F-22 jet fighter and killed an aircraft engine project that he says isn't needed.

Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, is on a campaign to change the way the Pentagon does business. In his sights are unnecessary or financially troubled weapons that siphon money away from the troops and gear required for irregular wars now being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yet getting Capitol Hill to go along with further deep cuts to big-ticket programs remains a huge challenge as lawmakers claw to protect the jobs these projects create in their states and districts. Others have serious disagreements with the Obama administration's strategic choices.

THERE IS NO IRAQ:

Now It’s a Census That Could Rip Iraq Apart (ROD NORDLAND, 7/26/09, NY Times)

When Iraqis were drafting their Constitution in 2005, the parties could not agree on who would control Kirkuk, the prized oil capital of the north. They couldn’t even agree on who lived in Kirkuk, which is claimed by the region’s Kurds, but also by its Turkmen minority and Sunni Arabs. For that matter, they couldn’t even agree on where Kirkuk was — in Tamim, Erbil, or Sulaimaniya Province.

So the Iraqis punted, inserting Article 140, a clause that called for a national census, followed by a referendum on the status of Kirkuk, all to be held by the end of 2007. What followed were a succession of delays, against a backdrop of sectarian violence and warnings that Kirkuk could blow apart the Shiite-Kurdish alliance that has governed Iraq since the Americans invaded. [...]

The problem with settling that is the Kirkuk referendum. There can’t be a referendum until Iraqis figure out who is eligible to vote in Kirkuk, which they can’t do until there’s a census. And any attempt to hold a census in this country may well end up, all by itself, provoking a civil war.

Even now, Sunnis don’t agree that they’re a minority of the nation, and that the Shiites are the majority, though it’s patently obvious.

THE REFORMATION ROLLS ON:

Morocco Challenges Mideast Holocaust Mind-Set (AP, 26/07/2009)

From the western edge of the Muslim world, the King of Morocco has dared to tackle one of the most inflammatory issues in the Middle East conflict — the Holocaust.

At a time when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the Holocaust has made the biggest headlines, King Mohammed VI has called the Nazi destruction of the Jews "one of the most tragic chapters of modern history," and has endorsed a Paris-based program aimed at spreading the word among fellow Muslims.

AS LONG AS HE ISN'T UNDERESTIMATING THEIR PSYCHOLOGICAL FRAILTY:

U.S., Mexico meet in Gold Cup final: Americans try to defend their Gold Cup title at home, where they thrive against CONCACAF teams. (Grahame L. Jones, July 26, 2009, LA Times)

Mexico, because of the greater experience its players, might have a slight edge, but it's not worth risking even the smallest of wagers.

The U.S., after all, is the defending champion and is 38-4-6 all time in Gold Cup play. It has also outscored its opponents by a better than 3-1 margin in the 10 editions of the 18-year-old event.

On top of that, there is the U.S. record on its own playing fields. It has not lost at home to a team from the North and Central American and Caribbean (CONCACAF) region since 2001, a stretch of 58 games.

That might have changed during this event, especially with U.S. Coach Bob Bradley electing to field essentially a second-string team after the usual starters had taken part in the Confederations Cup in South Africa.

But the backups showed their worth. [...]

Holden, 24 next Saturday, was born in Scotland and played at Clemson. He has been impressive for four seasons with two-time MLS champion Houston, and has benefited from having Dynamo Coach Dominic Kinnear as a mentor.

Kinnear, a former U.S. international, molded him into a player who made the U.S. team for last year's Beijing Olympics.

Bradley has praised the midfielder.

"Stuart is a player who has been on the verge of getting into our team for a while," he said.

FIRST THE MOUNTAIN CAME TO MOHAMMED...:

Iraq Plans to Send 10,000 Students to Colleges in U.S., Abroad (AP, July 25, 2009)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says his country plans to send up to 10,000 Iraqi students a year to colleges in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia over the next five years as a part of a new scholarship program.

Al-Maliki says stability in Iraq has allowed the country to focus on education after years of war. [...]

The country plans to start with about 500 students in U.S. and British schools this fall.

IT'S NOT LIKE ANYONE WOULD BELIEVE THE ADMINISTRATION IS BACKING OFF APPEASEMENT:

Biden Criticizes Russia in Move Called ‘Perplexing’ (ANDREW E. KRAMER, 7/26/09, NY Times)

Speaking on the heels of his trip to Georgia and Ukraine, Mr. Biden said flatly that the Obama administration would make no deals and accept no compromises with the Kremlin in exchange for better relations. Russia itself, he said, should find it in its own interest to repair relations.

The Kremlin immediately responded to the comments, made in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, with a demand for a clarification of the administration’s intentions toward Russia, saying essentially that it was receiving a mixed message so soon after President Obama had visited Moscow for the summit meeting.

Calling the criticism “perplexing” in light of the diplomatic overtures initiated by the United States and described as “pressing the reset button,” the chief foreign policy adviser to President Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Interfax news agency, “The question is: who is shaping the U.S. foreign policy, the president or respectable members of his team?”

NOT MUCH OF A BONE THEY THREW THE BLUE DOGS:

CBO deals new blow to health plan (CHRIS FRATES, 7/25/09, Politico)

[O]n Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office said the proposal to give an independent panel the power to keep Medicare spending in check would only save about $2 billion over 10 years- a drop in the bucket compared to the bill's $1 trillion price tag.

"In CBO's judgment, the probability is high that no savings would be realized ... but there is also a chance that substantial savings might be realized. Looking beyond the 10-year budget window, CBO expects that this proposal would generate larger but still modest savings on the same probabilistic basis," CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf wrote in a letter to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer on Saturday.

THE DEMONIZATION OF WORK:

Girl bears brunt of immigration sweep that took parents (Richard Ruelas, Jul. 23, 2009, The Arizona Republic)

Katherine Figueroa was at an aunt's house on that Saturday morning, playing a game with her cousin, when she heard the man on TV say there had been a raid at the car wash where her parents worked.

"Something came to me in my mind that they got my parents, they got them both," the 9-year-old said.

Katherine ran to the living room in time to see her father on the screen, his hands clasped with zip ties. The anchorman said deputies were arresting people suspected of being illegal immigrants. Katherine screamed, then started to cry.

"The sheriff got them working," she recalled, not bothering to wipe her tears. "They weren't doing anything. They were just working."

Katherine does not have a detailed opinion on immigration reform. Or the effectiveness of workplace raids. Or local police agencies enforcing immigration laws.

She just knows how her parents' arrests have upended her life.

ON THE 8TH DAY, THE SERPENT CREATED IRONY:

Irony Without Irony: Chaucer's Knight — the non-ironic version (James Bowman, June 30, 2009, The American Spectator)

When my oldest son was a Boy Scout in England 20 years ago, I once watched his troop play a game in which the boys formed a circle around a troop leader holding a soccer ball. The leader proceeded to throw the ball to the boys at random, saying as he did so either "head" or "catch." If he said "head," the boy was supposed to catch it; if he said "catch," the boy was supposed to head it. Anyone who slipped up and caught the ball when instructed to catch it or head the ball when instructed to head it, was out and had to leave the circle. Eventually, only one scout was left standing. That boy, as I have often had occasion to think since, must have been one of nature’s ironists. He and the others had certainly had an education in the central principle of all ironic — and, for that matter, non-ironic — discourse, namely that meaning depends on context. A boy who’d said that he would just love to play such a game could have meant either that he’d love to play it or that he’d absolutely hate it, and all but the most literal-minded would have been able to tell which it was on hearing the words spoken in their context.

The ability to read that context, to pick up the cues indicating irony or its absence, depends on a certain degree of social skill and experience in complex social interactions. Irony, that is, belongs to the world of face-to-face communication, even when we encounter it in a book or a movie. If we are able to recognize the irony in fictional contexts it is because we have previously experienced it, or something like it, in real ones. Maybe that’s why, as we have begun to spend more and more of our time interacting with each other remotely and electronically, rather than face-to-face, it seems that our irony-reading skills have tended to atrophy, or else to go haywire, producing, on the one hand, a leaden literalism or, on the other, the sort of paranoia which supposes that everything must mean something other than what it says. [...]

Of all the silly things to be against, irony must be among the silliest. It is like being against algebra. Irony is simply a rationalization of the way the world — in this case the rhetorical world — works, and has always worked. But people could sympathize with the sort of social insecurity that must have lain behind Mr Purdy’s attachment to puritanical plain-speaking, and, with the help of The New York Times, the book made enough of a splash that that gentleman, now a law professor at Duke University, has lately written another, even sillier book. It is called A Tolerable Anarchy and is a tract on behalf of liberal utopianism. I see it as a sort of sequel, which must have grown out of the earlier book’s implied preference for humanity in the abstract rather than all its confusing imperfections.

Two decades before his denunciation of irony and a few years before my son was inducted into the scouts, Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, a champion ironist who was also a part-time medievalist, wrote a book called Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary, which purported to show that the man described in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales as a parfit gentil knight was in fact a brutal and cold-blood killer with nothing chivalric about him. In fact, Mr Jones was pretty sure that there was nothing chivalric about medieval chivalry itself. The arguments over his detailed evidence for this shocking proposition have gone on for nearly three decades without anyone’s thinking to ask what would have been the point of Chaucer’s encoding the truth about his knight so successfully that it took some six centuries for a TV comedian to decode it?

But, not surprisingly, processing the central ironic truths about Creation turns out to be vital to organizing a decent society. Only a culture which accepts the imperfectability of Man and human institutions and organizes itself around these facts has any shot at happiness. Of course, modernity is pretty much defined by the Rationalist rejection of these truths and the pursuit, instead, of perfected societies, with predictably disastrous results.

Now, not only does the failure of the secularist's utopian thinking leave them miserable, and corpses stacked like cordwood, but it compounds the irony. After all, most of us have never turned away from the truth, so we've known all along where their misbegotten beliefs are leading them. In effect, while their experiments are too often mass murderous to be enjoyable, it is as if they were conducting them to amuse us. Their rejection of truth and insistence on acting upon falsehood is essentially funny. Not that they can be expected to appreciate the joke.

Indeed, the denunciation of irony is part and parcel of the phenomenon that all humor is conservative. And it's hilarious.

MORE:
Forgiveness and Irony: What makes the West strong (Roger Scruton, Winter 2009, City Journal)

What is needed is not to reject citizenship as the foundation of social order but to provide it with a heart. And in seeking that heart, we should turn away from the apologetic multiculturalism that has had such a ruinous effect on Western self-confidence and return to the gifts that we have received from our Judeo-Christian tradition.

The first of these gifts is forgiveness. By living in a spirit of forgiveness, we not only uphold the core value of citizenship but also find the path to social membership that we need. Happiness does not come from the pursuit of pleasure, nor is it guaranteed by freedom. It comes from sacrifice: that is the great message that all the memorable works of our culture convey. The message has been lost in the noise of repudiation, but we can hear it once again if we devote our energies to retrieving it. And in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the primary act of sacrifice is forgiveness. The one who forgives sacrifices resentment and thereby renounces something that had been dear to his heart.

The Koran invokes at every point the mercy, compassion, and justice of God. But the God of the Koran is not a lenient God. In His Koranic manifestation, God forgives sparingly and with obvious reluctance. He is manifestly not amused by human folly and weakness—nor, indeed, is He amused by anything. The Koran, unlike the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, is a joke-free zone.

This brings us to another of our civilization’s gifts to us: irony. There is already a developing streak of irony in the Hebrew Bible, one that the Talmud amplifies. But a new kind of irony dominates Christ’s judgments and parables, which look on the spectacle of human folly and wryly show us how to live with it. A telling example is Christ’s verdict in the case of the woman taken in adultery: “Let he who is without fault cast the first stone.” In other words: “Come off it; haven’t you wanted to do what she did, and already done it in your hearts?” Some have suggested that this story is a later insertion—one of many that the early Christians culled from the store of inherited wisdom attributed to the Redeemer after his death. Even if that is true, however, it merely confirms the view that the Christian religion has made irony central to its message. It was a troubled, post-Enlightenment Christian, Søren Kierkegaard, who pointed to irony as the virtue that united Socrates and Christ.

The late Richard Rorty saw irony as a state of mind intimately connected with the postmodern worldview—a withdrawal from judgment that nevertheless aims at a kind of consensus, a shared agreement not to judge. The ironic temperament, however, is better understood as a virtue—a disposition aimed at a kind of practical fulfillment and moral success. Venturing a definition of this virtue, I would describe it as a habit of acknowledging the otherness of everything, including oneself. However convinced you are of the rightness of your actions and the truth of your views, look on them as the actions and the views of someone else and rephrase them accordingly. So defined, irony is quite distinct from sarcasm: it is a mode of acceptance rather than a mode of rejection. It also points both ways: through irony, I learn to accept both the other on whom I turn my gaze, and also myself, the one who is gazing. Pace Rorty, irony is not free from judgment: it simply recognizes that the one who judges is also judged, and judged by himself.

The West’s democratic inheritance stems, I would argue, from the habit of forgiveness. To forgive the other is to grant him, in your heart, the freedom to be. It is therefore to acknowledge the individual as sovereign over his life and free to do both right and wrong. A society that makes permanent room for forgiveness therefore tends automatically in a democratic direction, since it is a society in which the voice of the other is heard in all decisions that affect him. Irony—the recognition and acceptance of otherness—amplifies this democratic tendency and also helps thwart the mediocrity and conformity that are the downsides of a democratic culture.

Forgiveness and irony lie at the heart of our civilization. They are what we have to be most proud of, and our principal means to disarm our enemies. They underlie our conception of citizenship as founded in consent. And they are expressed in our conception of law as a means to resolve conflicts by discovering the just solution to them. It is not often realized that this conception of law has little in common with Muslim sharia, which is regarded as a system of commands issued by God and not capable of, or in need of, further justification.

BUT THAT IGNORES THE SPECIAL RACIAL PLEADING...:

In risky field, suspicion is key tool, officers say (Maria Cramer, July 25, 2009, Boston Globe)

Underestimating a seemingly routine call can be deadly. Overreacting can lead to accusations of civil rights violations, litigation, and physical harm to an innocent person.

From the busiest departments to the sleepiest towns, patrol officers, sergeants, and lieutenants all had similar stories of the times they relaxed too quickly around a suspect or after defusing a tense situation. Officers also spoke of the fear that can strike even veteran police officers when they respond to a domestic violence call or pull a vehicle over in a traffic stop. In an FBI analysis, 19 percent of the 57 officers killed by criminals in 2007 had either just pulled someone to the side of the road or were trying to.

“There is always that feeling of, ‘Is this going to be more than the soccer mom late for practice?’ ’’ said Walpole police Officer Jaclyn Hazeldine. “You don’t know who’s got what in the car, and you can’t let your guard down.’’

Terrence Cunningham was a young sergeant in Wellesley in 1995 when he spotted a stopped car on Route 9 about 2 in the morning. He saw two men inside and, thinking they had car trouble, pulled up behind them and began to walk to the vehicle. Immediately, they ran out of the car and grabbed him, punching and kicking at him. It turns out that they were the look-out guys for a third man stealing car parts from a nearby Dodge dealership. An off-duty Boston police officer rescued the sergeant, but Cunningham, now the department’s police chief, was reminded of one of the job’s most painful realities.

“You never know what’s going to happen,’’ he said. “You always have to have a plan. If this thing goes upside down, what are you going to do?’’

MS FIORINA COULD HARDLY HAVE AN EASIER CAMPAIGN TO RUN :

Election 2010: California Senate: California Senate: Boxer 45%, Fiorina 41% (Rasmussen Reports, July 24, 2009)

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that Boxer attracts 45% of the statewide vote while Fiorina, her best-known possible Republican challenger, earns 41%. Seven percent (7%) say they’d vote for some other candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided. [...]

Twenty-one percent (21%) of voters statewide have a Very Favorable opinion of Boxer. That’s down six points since March. Thirty-six percent (36%) have a very unfavorable view of the incumbent, who has been in the Senate since 1993.

NOW THE GOP JUST HAS TO UNIFY AROUND CUTTING SPENDING TO THE 18% OF GDP THAT TAXES AVERAGE:

Democrats’ Divide Fuels Turmoil on Health Care (ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, 7/25/09, NY Times)

Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the discord among Democrats suggested that the bill, as now written, would face long odds on the House floor.

“If the Democrats cannot get agreement in the committee, with 36 Democrats and 23 Republicans,” Mr. Barton said, “if they can’t get an agreement with the deck stacked in committee, how in the heck are they going to get an agreement on the floor?”

On Friday morning, Mr. Waxman said there had “been a significant breakthrough” in resolving one of the Blue Dogs’ concerns, about geographic disparities in Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. Many Blue Dogs come from rural districts that they say are underpaid by Medicare.

Under the agreement, Medicare would also take steps to “reward value,” defined as the efficient delivery of high-quality care.

Despite this agreement, Mr. Waxman sounded impatient at midday.

“We have to take up the legislation next week or acknowledge the fact that Democrats do not control the committee any longer,” Mr. Waxman said. “I will not allow Blue Dogs to turn over control of the committee to Republicans, which they have threatened to do. I am troubled that some Democrats would rather align themselves with Republicans than work out their problems with fellow Democrats.”

THE REAPER:

Corruption arrests in N.J. hurt Gov. Corzine's re-election bid, thrill GOP (David Saltonstall, 7/25/09, NY DAILY NEWS)

Christie, a former U.S. attorney running a strong challenge to Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, wasted little time putting up a new TV ad touting his suddenly spot-on law-and-order background.

"I put corrupt public officials in jail - Republicans and Democrats," Christie said in the ad. "As governor, I'll make the same tough, independent decisions."

Left unmentioned was that Christie, who left his Justice Department post seven months ago, initiated the probe that led to bribery charges against dozens of political insiders, most of them Democrats.

The sweep is unquestionably bad news for Corzine, who was not implicated, but will have to explain how such wide-ranging corruption was allowed to flourish on his watch, experts said.

"It is huge," said Steve Adubato, Jr., a Jersey political analyst and co-host of a popular public affairs show, "Inside Trenton." "It now frames the governor's race very clearly around the issue of political corruption."

THE COST OF NOT REMOVING HUGO IN THE FIRST PLACE:

Behind the Honduran Mutiny (JOSE DE CORDOBA, 7/25/09, WSJ)

[A] close look at Mr. Zelaya's time in office reveals a strongly antidemocratic streak. He placed himself in a growing cadre of elected Latin presidents who have tried to stay in power past their designated time to carry out a populist-leftist agenda. These leaders, led by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, have used the region's historic poverty and inequality to gain support from the poor, but created deep divisions in their societies by concentrating power in their own hands and increasing government control over the economy, media and other sectors.

Mr. Zelaya, a 56-year-old former rancher and logger with a handlebar moustache, joined this group, which includes Mr. Chávez, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. This past week, Mr. Ortega laid out plans for a referendum to rewrite Nicaragua's Constitution and allow him to be re-elected indefinitely, something Mr. Chávez has already achieved in oil-rich Venezuela.

It was such a move that led to trouble in neighboring Honduras. For the past year, Mr. Zelaya led a drive to rewrite the constitution to abolish term limits. On the day of his ouster, he was planning a referendum to call a constitutional assembly, even though the vote had been declared illegal by the country's Supreme Court.

The crisis has put the Obama administration in a difficult spot. Mindful of past U.S. support of coups in Latin America, it condemned the ouster and has led efforts to find a negotiated solution. But its insistence Mr. Zelaya return to power has angered many middle-class Hondurans, who feel the ouster defended the country's institutions from a Chávez-style power grab.

"This is a showdown which will determine if the Chavista model triumphs or not," says Moises Starkman, who advised Mr. Zelaya on special projects and now works for the interim government in the same capacity. [...]

Two years into his term, Mr. Zelaya reshuffled his government, bringing into his cabinet a hard-line cadre of ministers dominated by Patricia Rodas, his foreign minister. The daughter of a famous right-wing Liberal party leader, Ms. Rodas has a reputation as a doctrinaire, hard-line Marxist from her university days.

Even as leftist associates increased their influence on Mr. Zelaya, the world economy also pushed him leftwards. In 2007, Honduras was hit hard by record high oil prices. The country imports all its fuel needs, and also has no refining capacity. That means four companies -- Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and the local Dipsa -- control the market, importing the fuel directly and distributing it through their own service stations. As oil prices climbed, Honduras, whose power plants run on fuel, was forced to hike electricity prices, and ration power.

At first, Mr. Zelaya, desperate for relief, tried to lower the cost of imports by buying oil products in bulk, but the plan failed because the government didn't have its own oil-storage facilities. So, in 2007, Mr. Zelaya decreed a cut in fuel prices. But this move led to fuel shortages as importers complained that the price cuts undermined revenues. By mid 2008, the oil companies threatened to halt all new investment in Honduras.

Neighboring Nicaragua, which had been getting cut-rate fuel from Caracas since 2005 under a program called Petrocaribe, had no such problems. A brainchild of Mr. Chávez, Petrocaribe sells Venezuelan oil at market prices but allows its 18 member countries to finance a part of the oil at very low interest rates. As of 2007, Petrocaribe had provided $1.2 billion in financing -- similar to the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank's soft loans in that period.

As Mr. Zelaya fought with foreign oil companies, Mr. Chávez offered cheap oil. Few here opposed the country's entry into the Venezuelan oil pact when the Congress approved it in March of 2007. "I pushed hard for Petrocaribe," says Adolfo Facusse, the head of Honduras' industrialists' chamber and now an opponent of Mr. Zelaya. Since then, Petrocaribe has provided Mr. Zelaya's government some $126 million in savings, officials say.

Mr. Zelaya, who at first had kept his distance from Mr. Chávez, was quickly ensconced in the Venezuelan's tight embrace.

VIDEO SAVED THE UKELE STAR:

Ukuleles have gone viral: YouTube videos, online how-tos and social networking fuel the musical instrument's renewed popularity. (Dan Fost, July 25, 2009, LA Times)

[U]kulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, already big in Hawaii, the uke's homeland, became a nationwide sensation with his wailin’ on Harrison’s “My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which has attracted more than 3 million hits on YouTube since 2006 and earned him tours with Jimmy Buffett, a recording session with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and various television appearances.

As with so many groups the Internet has helped to foster, Ukulele lovers have been searching for like-minded folks among isolated pockets of uke players and creating online communities. Beloff's website Flea Market Music hosts a directory of more than 3,000 ukulele players so they can find one another in their local communities. Good ukes, once hard to find, are popping up on EBay.

"There are a lot of ukulele specialty websites," uke maker Upton said. "For years, music stores didn't carry them."

The website Ukulele Underground posts YouTube videos and ukulele reviews and hosts spirited discussions about concerts, techniques, instruments and everything else a ukulele fan would want. Last year, the Underground staff posted a video lesson on how to play Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on the uke, saying, "We're blasting [Don Ho's] 'Tiny Bubbles' right out of the water."

The novelty aspect still exists, as anyone who listens to the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain can attest. Picture eight men in tuxedos, strumming and picking the tune of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." [...]

Ukuleles were a rage in the 1920s and again in the 1950s, when radio and television host Arthur Godfrey made the instrument a hit. But falsetto-voiced Tiny Tim turned it nearly into a joke, and ukes fell out of favor. In 1993, C.F. Martin made only four ukuleles and quit the business the next year. It resumed manufacturing in 2001 -- the year George Harrison died.

The online Ukulele Hall of Fame Museum appeared in 1996. Given the Web's role in the instrument's comeback, the museum's existence in the virtual world seems appropriate.

The Internet has certainly been kind to Shimabukuro, 32.

In 2006, he sat in Central Park in New York and played a sizzling version of Harrison's "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," thinking it was only for an obscure local television show called "Ukulele Disco."

"To this day, I don't know how it got on YouTube," he said. "Because of that four-minute video clip, I've been having opportunities to travel, to record with Yo-Yo Ma, to tour with Jimmy Buffett, to record with Fleck and the Flecktones. It's just been a dream come true. It's been a real blessing."

Shimabukuro now autographs young people's ukuleles at his shows, where he plays mostly his own compositions in a variety of genres: flamenco, bluegrass, Latin jazz and even Eddie Van Halen-style hard rock. If he's a pied piper of the ukulele, it's a mantle he is happy to wear.

"If everyone owned an ukulele," he said, pronouncing it "ooh-koo-LAY-lay" in the Hawaiian fashion, "this world would be such a peaceful place."

EVEN THE PROFESSOR REALIZES HIS LECTURES ARE PUNISHMENT:

He Said/V.I.P. Said: A Prejudometer cranked up to eleven. (Mark Steyn, 7/24/09, National Review)

For everyone other than the president, what happened at Professor Gates’s house is not entirely clear. The Harvard prof returned home without his keys and, as Obama put it, “jimmied his way into the house.” Someone witnessing the “break-in” called the cops, and things, ah, escalated from there. Professor Gates is now saying that, if Sergeant Crowley publicly apologizes for his racism, the prof will graciously agree to “educate him about the history of racism in America.” Which is a helluva deal. I mean, Ivy League parents re-mortgage their homes to pay Gates for the privilege of lecturing their kids, and here he is offering to hector it away to some no-name lunkhead for free.

As to the differences between the professor’s and the cops’ version of events, I confess I’ve been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. “It’s like Shakespeare’s ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’ ” he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.

As it happens, “My luv’s like a red, red rose” was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. Sixteenth-century English playwright, 18th-century Scottish poet: What’s the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case. Certainly no journalist reporting Gates’s testimony was boorish enough to point out the misattribution.

CRAFTING INSPIRATION:

DEMOCRATS GOING TO THE DOGS:

BLUE ON BLUE:

House healthcare talks break down in anger (Jared Allen, Mike Soraghan and Lauren Burke, 07/24/09, The Hill)

House healthcare negotiations dissolved in acrimony on Friday, with Blue Dog Democrats saying they were “lied” to by their Democratic leaders.

The seven Blue Dogs on the Energy and Commerce Committee stormed out of a Friday meeting with their committee chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), saying Waxman had been negotiating in bad faith over a number of provisions Blue Dogs demanded be changed in the stalled healthcare bill.

BLACK ON BLACK:

Iranian leader 'orders dismissal' (BBC, 7/24/09)

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to dismiss his choice to serve as vice-president, state TV says.

Appointing Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie was "against your interest and the interests of the government", the ayatollah wrote to Mr Ahmadinejad.

AT THE END OF THE DAY, WAS POL POT ANYTHING MORE THAN A GLORIFIED TONSILLECTOMIST?:

IT'S NOT LIKE THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO DEBATE LEGISLATION....:

House Dems threaten floor vote to break impasse (ERICA WERNER, 7/24/09, Associated Press)

Dissension within Democratic ranks over President Barack Obama's health care initiative all but paralyzed the House Friday, typifying just how many political land mines are littering the path to enactment. [...]

Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said negotiations with fiscally conservative Democrats on his panel cannot continue indefinitely. But a floor vote would put fellow Democrats in an exposed position, having to cast a vote on a $544-billion upper-income tax increase that the Senate is unlikely to embrace to help pay for covering the millions of uninsured Americans. [...]

Two House panels have already passed legislation. Waxman is stymied because seven conservatives on his committee — part of a group called the Blue Dog Democrats — are sticking together.

HECK, HE APOLOGIZES TO EVERY FOREIGNER HE MEETS:

Police unions call for apology from Obama, Patrick (Jonathan Saltzman and Andrew Ryan, 7/24/09, Boston Globe)

Police unions today called on President Obama and Governor Deval Patrick to apologize to "all law enforcement personnel," saying they "deeply resent the implication" of their comments about racial profiling and the arrest of an African-American scholar last week at his home near Harvard Square.

Speaking at a press conference at the Hotel Marlowe packed with local and national media, the union officials also said that the disorderly conduct charge should not have been dropped against professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.

TEARING THE CHORDS ASUNDER:

Why Obamacare Is Sinking (Charles Krauthammer, July 24, 2009 , Washington Post)

[Y]ou can't fake it in legislation. Once you commit your fantasies to words and numbers, the Congressional Budget Office comes along and declares that the emperor has no clothes.

President Obama premised the need for reform on the claim that medical costs are destroying the economy. True. But now we learn -- surprise! -- that universal coverage increases costs. The congressional Democrats' health-care plans, says the CBO, increase costs on the order of $1 trillion plus.

In response, the president retreated to a demand that any bill he sign be revenue-neutral. But that's classic misdirection: If the fierce urgency of health-care reform is to radically reduce costs that are producing budget-destroying deficits, revenue neutrality (by definition) leaves us on precisely the same path to insolvency that Obama himself declares unsustainable.

THE SPIRITUAL HEIRS OF JIMMY CARTER:

Indo-US ties: The thrill is gone (Rediff, 7/24/09)

The growing uneasiness is as much the result of administration change in Washington as it is of the economic crisis affecting the US.

George W Bush, deeply suspicious of communist China, was personally keen on building strong ties with India. Hence, he was willing to sacrifice long-held US non-proliferation concerns to embrace nuclear India and acknowledge it as the primary actor in South Asia, de-hyphenated from Pakistan.

The Barack Obama administration's concern with protecting the non-proliferation regime, dealing with the immediate challenge of the growing Taliban threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and solving the unprecedented economic challenge have led it to a very different set of priorities and an agenda in which India has a marginal role. The only context in which Obama has mentioned India thus far was the need to resolve Kashmir so as to find a way out of the West's troubles in Afghanistan. Talk of a strategic partnership between the two democracies has all but disappeared.

DON'T PLAY THE DOZENS WITH THE MAN:

Officer Tells His Side of The Story in Gates Arrest (Krissah Thompson and Cheryl W. Thompson, 7/24/09, Washington Post)

Sgt. James Crowley said Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was combative from the moment the officer arrived at his house last week to respond to a call about a possible burglary. As the confrontation escalated, Crowley said he warned Gates that he risked arrest.

"The second warning was with me holding a set of handcuffs in my hands -- something I really didn't want to do," Crowley said in a radio interview. "The professor at any time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or going back inside his house." [...]

When Crowley arrived and questioned whether Gates lived in the home, the 58-year-old academic became upset, eventually demanding the officer's name and badge number so he could file a complaint. Crowley said Gates referred to Crowley's mother as a way of showing his displeasure.

When the officer repeatedly asked Gates to speak with him outside, the professor responded, "Ya, I'll speak with your mama outside," Crowley wrote in a police report.

"I'm still just amazed that somebody of his level of intelligence could stoop to such a level, and berate me, accuse me of being a racist or racial profiling," Crowley said in a radio interview Thursday with WEEI-AM. "And then speaking about my mother, it's just -- it's beyond words."

Crowley, 42, said that, when he first saw Gates, in "my mind, I'm thinking, 'He does not look like someone who would break into the house.' " At the same time, however, "from the time that he opened the door, it seemed that he was very upset, very unhappy that I was there."

Of Obama, Crowley said in an interview with Boston's WBZ-AM: "I support the president of the United States 110 percent. I think he's way off base wading into a local issue without knowing all the facts as he himself stated before he made that comment."

WYCHECRAFT:

Former NFL coach Sam Wyche mulls House run in South Carolina (JOSH KRAUSHAAR, 7/23/09, Politico)

Sam Wyche, the longtime National Football League coach who led the Cincinnati Bengals to a Super Bowl, is now looking to pursue a career in congressional politics.

Wyche told POLITICO he’s exploring a campaign to succeed Rep. Gresham Barrett (R-S.C.), who is leaving his House seat to run for governor. [...]

He said he plans to reach out to Steve Largent, J.C. Watts and Tom Osborne – three other former pro football players who made the transition to Congress. But he cautioned that he’s only in the very early stages of exploring a campaign, and is just now beginning to discuss his interest with statewide party officials.

BARRACK WHO?:

Presser draws 24.7 million; 14 percent drop (Michael Calderone, 7/24/09, Politico)

That's a 14 percent drop from the April 29 prime-time presser, and 50 percent less than the first one of his presidency.

MORE:
Obama Complains About the News Cycle but Manipulates It, Worrying Some (PETER BAKER, 7/24/09, NY Times)

fter six months in office, perhaps no other president has been more attuned to, or done more to dominate, the news cycle he disparages. Mr. Obama has given roughly three times as many interviews as George W. Bush and held four times as many prime-time news conferences as Bill Clinton had by comparable points in their terms.

In the past four days, Mr. Obama gave “exclusive” interviews to Jim Lehrer of PBS, Katie Couric of CBS and Meredith Vieira of NBC. He gave two interviews to The Washington Post on one day, one to the editorial page editor and one to news reporters. He held a conference call with bloggers. His hourlong session in the East Room on Wednesday night was his second news conference of the day. And on Thursday, he invited Terry Moran of ABC to spend the day with him for a “Nightline” special.

The all-Obama, all-the-time carpet bombing of the news media represents a strategy by a White House seeking to deploy its most effective asset in service of its goals, none more critical now than health care legislation. But longtime Washington hands warn that saturation coverage can diminish the power of his voice and lose public attention.

REMEMBER WHEN FOLKS THOUGHT JAPAN WAS THE NEXT SUPERPOWER?:

Love in 2-D (LISA KATAYAMA, 7/26/09, NY Times Magazine)

Nisan is part of a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters. These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture— the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games in Japan in the last decade. It’s impossible to say exactly what portion of otaku are 2-D lovers, because the distinction between the two can be blurry. Like most otaku, the majority of 2-D lovers go to work, pay rent, hang out with friends (some are even married). Unlike most otaku, though, they have real romantic feelings for their toys. The less extreme might have a hidden collection of figurines based on anime characters that they go on “dates” with during off hours. A more serious 2-D lover, like Nisan, actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a prepubescent anime character on it is his girlfriend.

According to many who study the phenomenon, the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. According to a government survey, more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex. One of the biggest best sellers in the country last year was “Health and Physical Education for Over Thirty,” a six-chapter, manga-illustrated guidebook that holds the reader’s hand from the first meeting to sex to marriage.

Most 2-D lovers prefer a different kind of self-help. The guru of the 2-D love movement, Toru Honda, a 40-year-old man with a boyishly round face and puppy-dog eyes, has written half a dozen books advocating the 2-D lifestyle. A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls “romantic capitalism.” Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. “Pure love is completely gone in the real world,” Honda wrote. “As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.” Honda insists that he’s advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?

Honda’s fans took his message to heart. When he admitted to watching human porn at a panel discussion in Tokyo in 2005, several hundred hard-core 2-D lovers in the audience booed with shock that their dear leader had nostalgia for the 3-D world. Later, in an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Honda clarified his position, saying that he was worried 2-D love was becoming an easy way out for young otaku, who might still have a shot at success in the real world. “I’m not saying that everyone should throw away hopes of real romance right away. I am simply saying that guys like me who have gotten to a point of no return can be happy living in 2-D.”

In Japan the fetishistic love for two-dimensional characters is enough of a phenomenon to have earned its own slang word, moe, homonymous with the Japanese words for “burning” or “budding.” In an ideal moe relationship, a man frees himself from the expectations of an ordinary human relationship and expresses his passion for a chosen character, without fear of being judged or rejected.

SCHROEDINGER'S UMP:

Umpire Cooper has a full plate of no-hitters (CHRIS DE LUCA, 7/24/09, suntimes.com)

Some umpires can work their entire careers and never find themselves behind the plate for a no-hitter. Eric Cooper has been the plate umpire for three of them, including two by White Sox left-hander Mark Buehrle, who pitched a perfect game Thursday against the Tampa Bay Rays. [...]

How's this for strange? Cooper has been behind the plate for each of Buehrle's last three shutouts -- the perfect game Thursday, the no-hitter April 18, 2007, at U.S. Cellular Field against the Texas Rangers and a 6-0 victory against the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 17, 2005, at the Cell.

Cooper, 38, also was behind the plate for Boston Red Sox right-hander Hideo Nomo's no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles on April 6, 2001.

THANK GOODNESS THE GIPPER...:

Researchers produce cells they say are identical to embryonic stem cells
Scientists in China use cells from adult mice to breed new mice. The breakthrough results are hailed as an advance toward eliminating the need for fetal stem cells in a variety of applications. (Thomas H. Maugh II, July 23, 2009, LA Times)

Two groups of Chinese researchers have performed an unprecedented feat, it was announced today, by inducing cells from connective tissue in mice to revert back to their embryonic state and producing living mice from them.

By demonstrating that cells from adults can be converted into cells that, like embryonic stem cells from fetuses, have the ability to produce any type of tissue, the researchers have made a major advance toward eliminating the need for fetal cells in research and clinical applications.

SPORTS IS SUPPOSED TO BE ENTERTAINMENT TOO:

U.S. defeats Honduras, 2-0: Clarence Goodson and Kenny Cooper each score a goal for the defending champion American team, which will face Mexico in the final on Sunday. Mexico beats Costa Rica on penalty kicks. (Associated Press, July 23, 2009)

First the big boys in South Africa, now the JV at home. No matter who the United States puts on the field these days, they're finding a way to win.

Clarence Goodson scored at the end of the first half and Kenny Cooper at the end of the second to give a young American team a 2-0 victory over Honduras on Thursday night and a spot in its third straight CONCACAF Gold Cup final. The Americans, winners of the last two Gold Cup titles, will play Mexico in Sunday's final at Giants Stadium. In the other semifinal, Mexico defeated Costa Rica, 5-3, on penalty kicks after the teams were tied 1-1 after 120 minutes. [...]

U.S. Coach Bob Bradley did a complete makeover of his roster after the Confederations Cup, letting most of his top players return to their MLS teams or take time off ahead of the European season. In their place, he brought in a bunch of youngsters, many making their first appearances with the senior national team.

While they might not have the flair of Landon Donovan, Tim Howard or Carlos Bocanegra, the kids have been more than all right.

The Americans have gone unbeaten in the tournament, and several young players have emerged who could play a role in next year's World Cup. Holden had assists on both goals Thursday, adding to the two he scored in earlier games.

WHY NOT JUST ADMIT THAT HIS TELEPROMPTER MISLED HIM?:

Obama eases stance on arrest of black Harvard professor (Peter Wallsten, Peter Nicholas and Richard Simon, July 24, 2009, LA Times)

A day after saying that police "acted stupidly" in arresting a black Harvard University professor in his own home, President Obama appeared to soften his stance Thursday, spreading the blame more equally between the police and the arrested man.

Obama had previously implied during a news conference Wednesday that Henry Louis Gates Jr., his personal friend and one of the nation's preeminent African American scholars, had been a victim of racial profiling by the police.

But Thursday, the president praised police officers and couched the incident as an unfortunate clash of tempers.

CONSERVATISM'S LIVELY DEATH:

Budget Deal Boosts California's Republicans (STU WOO, 7/23/09, WSJ)

Despite being decisively outnumbered in the statehouse, Republican lawmakers are emerging as the winners in California's spending plan, which contains no new taxes and implements the deep cuts and program overhauls the party had sought for years.

"They have realized Reagan's vision of a smaller state and local government," said Bruce Cain, a political-science professor at the University of California at Berkeley. "They forced [Democrats] to make very deep cuts in services, to schools and to state salaries and state benefits."

MARTIN LUTHER LIVES IN DALLAS:

Waking from its sleep: A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world; it will be complete only when the last failed dictatorship is voted out (The Economist, 7/23/09)

WHAT ails the Arabs? The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) this week published the fifth in a series of hard-hitting reports on the state of the Arab world. It makes depressing reading. The Arabs are a dynamic and inventive people whose long and proud history includes fabulous contributions to art, culture, science and, of course, religion. The score of modern Arab states, on the other hand, have been impressive mainly for their consistent record of failure.

They have, for a start, failed to make their people free: six Arab countries have an outright ban on political parties and the rest restrict them slyly. They have failed to make their people rich: despite their oil, the UN reports that about two out of five people in the Arab world live on $2 or less a day. They have failed to keep their people safe: the report argues that overpowerful internal security forces often turn the Arab state into a menace to its own people. And they are about to fail their young people. The UNDP reckons the Arab world must create 50m new jobs by 2020 to accommodate a growing, youthful workforce—virtually impossible on present trends.

Arab governments are used to shrugging off criticism. They had to endure a lot of it when George Bush was president... [...]

In almost every Arab country, fertility is in decline, more people, especially women, are becoming educated, and businessmen want a bigger say in economies dominated by the state. Above all, a revolution in satellite television has broken the spell of the state-run media and created a public that wants the rulers to explain and justify themselves as never before. On their own, none of these changes seems big enough to prompt a revolution. But taken together they are creating a great agitation under the surface. The old pattern of Arab government—corrupt, opaque and authoritarian—has failed on every level and does not deserve to survive. At some point it will almost certainly collapse. The great unknown is when.

HERE ARE A FEW THINGS WE CAN SAFELY PREDICT...:

The Obama cult: If Barack Obama disappoints his supporters, they will have only themselves to blame (Lexington, 7/23/09, The Economist)

Mr Obama has inspired more passionate devotion than any modern American politician. People scream and faint at his rallies. Some wear T-shirts proclaiming him “The One” and noting that “Jesus was a community organiser”. An editor at Newsweek described him as “above the country, above the world; he’s sort of God.” He sets foreign hearts fluttering, too. A Pew poll published this week finds that 93% of Germans expect him to do the right thing in world affairs. Only 14% thought that about Mr Bush.

Perhaps Mr Obama inwardly cringes at the personality cult that surrounds him. But he has hardly discouraged it. As a campaigner, he promised to “change the world”, to “transform this country” and even (in front of a church full of evangelicals) to “create a Kingdom right here on earth”. As president, he keeps adding details to this ambitious wish-list. He vows to create millions of jobs, to cure cancer and to seek a world without nuclear weapons. On July 20th he promised something big (a complete overhaul of the health-care system), something improbable (to make America’s college-graduation rate the highest in the world by 2020) and something no politician could plausibly accomplish (to make maths and science “cool again”). [...]

All presidential candidates promise more than they can possibly deliver. This sets them up for failure. But because the Obama cult has stoked expectations among its devotees to such unprecedented heights, he is especially likely to disappoint. Mr Healy predicts that he will end up as a failed president, and “possibly the least popular of the modern era”. It is up to Mr Obama to prove him wrong.

WHAT'S WHITE AND WHITER AND READ ALL OVER?:

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Maureen Dowd (Jeffrey Lord, 7.21.09, American Spectator)

It seems the "American workplace" (to use the Times description) that is the New Haven fire department has a higher percentage of minorities than the American workplace that is…yes indeed… the New York Times editorial board its very self. To be quite specific:

• The New Haven fire department, according to press accounts, is 43% black and Latino. Or, if you prefer the term of art, 43% of the fire department is "minority."

• The New York Times editorial board, according to the information provided by The New York Times, is -- wait for it -- 12% black and Latino. Or, again, 12 % "minority" if you prefer the term.

• The New York Times Op-Ed page team of columnists, an elite group of which Ms. Dowd is a star, is 19% black and, again according to the Times listing of its Op-Ed page columnists, 0% Latino.

That's right. At the core of the beating intellectual heart of the left-wing establishment where such things are studied with the detail of Talmudic scholars, the New Haven fire department is doing more than three times better on race than the very liberal elites who have set themselves up as its sniffy critics. Perhaps instead of seething about "Firefighters and Race" the Times would have been better served by pondering "Editorial Writers and Race." Or perhaps: "Too Black to Write; New York Times Column Writing and Race."

IF IT HAD ANY MOMENTUM, HE KILLED IT:

Obama strives to personalize healthcare debate for Americans (Peter Nicholas, Christi Parsons and Noam N. Levey, July 23, 2009, LA Times)

During much of the hourlong news conference, Obama relied on jargon that Washington insiders embrace but that might leave the typical television viewer mystified. Discussing government spending, he mentioned "the supplemental" -- referring to a war-funding bill. He used the word "incentivize" several times.

The purpose of Obama's appearance was to regain momentum for proposals to make major changes to the healthcare system, one of his top domestic priorities.

Even fellow Democrats now say that the deadline Obama set for the House and Senate to pass a bill before their August recess is unrealistic.

And mounting opposition from powerful interest groups has been equally worrisome for the White House. On Wednesday, the American Hospital Assn. urged its members to lobby against an administration proposal for an independent agency that would set Medicare payment rates. Supporters say the agency would help control costs.

In the House, centrist Democrats have slowed progress in one key committee with complaints that the bill does not do enough to bring down healthcare costs. In the Senate, finance committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) has been working with a small, bipartisan group of senators to develop a separate proposal.

That effort was dealt a minor setback Wednesday when Utah Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, one of the Republicans in the group, said he could no longer support it.

The president’s remarks on his chosen subject, health care, were cautious and choreographed, hemmed in on one side by the calculations of his professional wordsmiths, on the other by the delicacy of negotiations with two houses of Congress.

He never detailed his own plan, or named a single victim of America’s broken system, and he spoke largely in the abstractions of blue pills, red pills, and legislative processes. It’s not easy to turn delivery system reform into a rallying cry for change, but at times, it was as if Obama wasn’t even trying. [...]

[I]nstead of shaking the rafters, he spent most of his hour just checking rhetorical boxes, with language so poll-tested and focus-grouped, it was bleached of life.

MORE:
Obama Moves to Reclaim the Debate on Health Care (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and JEFF ZELENY, 76/23/09, NY Times)

While Mr. Obama declared, “it’s my job, I’m the president,” he did not use the appearance at the White House to make any fresh demands on Congress, which is struggling to meet his timetable for both chambers to pass legislation before members break for August recess. Mr. Obama did not repeat that demand Wednesday night.

Instead, he sounded cerebral as he delved into policy specifics for nearly an hour and tried to link them to the concerns of ordinary Americans.

As he sought to reassure the public that a new health care system would be an improvement, he also acknowledged that there would be changes that could be unsettling, a point that is often raised by critics of overhauling the health care system.

“Can I guarantee that there are going to be no changes in the health-care delivery system? No,” Mr. Obama said. “The whole point of this is to try to encourage changes that work for the American people and make them healthier.”

Health legislation is Mr. Obama’s highest legislative priority, and his success or failure could shape the rest of his presidency. But while he is under increasing pressure from leading Democrats to delve more deeply into the negotiations by taking positions on specific policy issues, he largely resisted doing so Wednesday night.

It's your lucky day, Cleveland.

Dr. Obama's Traveling Medicine Show is in town.

Step right up, folks. Press in close around the wagon and hear the good doctor pronounce with preternatural poise on the prodigiously potent properties of his potion, a panacea so powerful that he predicts -- nay, promises! -- that it will prevail even over the laws of economics.

But only if you believe.

REPUBLICAN LIBERTY:

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli: Machiavelli’s name has long been a byword for all that is rotten in politics. Yet, Richard Reeves and Dan Leighton argue, the Florentine’s forgotten writings show him to be the founder of republican thought and a champion of democratic power (Richard Reeves and Dan Leighton - 23 July 2009, New Statesman)

Machiavelli's name has become synonymous with duplicity, cunning and the exercise of bad faith in politics. This crude caricature, however, does little justice to the subtlety and democratic potential of his thinking. Indeed, Machiavelli is a, if not the, foundational figure for the current revival of civic republican political thought, spearheaded by the historian of ideas Quentin Skinner and the political philosopher Philip Pettit. Most recently, David Marquand has shown how democratic republicanism has been a crucial component of English political identity, and an animating force at important moments of radical democratic change in our history.

Although Machiavelli gained his satanic reputation for advising princes on how to hold on to power, the contemporary republicans inspired by him know that he saved his best advice for citizens seeking to maintain their liberty. To understand this "other", republican Machiavelli, we need to look not to his infamous tract The Prince, published by Penguin in a gripping new translation by the novelist Tim Parks, but to his less well-known, yet arguably more influential, Discourses on Livy. [...]

For Machiavelli, however, good judgement relates to actions that help maintain a "free city", one in which citizens are free from the subjection of any particular individual or group, be it an external invader or a tyrant who emerges from within the community's own political system. If the city is not to fall into the hands of tyrannical individuals or groups, government must be organised in such a way that it remains in the hands of the citizen body as whole.

The biggest threat to a free life (uno vivere libero) comes from the ever-present threat of corruption. Corruption is understood here as the placing of factional or private interest ahead of that of the public. For Machiavelli, the ultimate public interest that the mass of people share is to be secure from the arbitrary interference of others. It follows that, as Skinner has pointed out, to gain maximum freedom, "we must turn ourselves into servants of the public interest".

Contemporary republicans have seized on these ideas to show that they offer a distinct concept of liberty, one more capacious than the kind provided by conventional liberal notions. To republicans, we are not free if there is a power that has the potential to interfere with us - even where that power is not, for the time being, interfering (think of an unregulated employer, in the case of an employee, or a party whip, in the case of a backbench MP). In short, those with less power will live in constant anxiety that those with more could interfere with them at any point - unless that power is removed or is held in check by a counter-power. For republicans, popular government under the rule of law is the best source of such a counterweight to arbitrary power.

Classical republican writers maintained that to be free means to not be dominated--that is, not to be dependent on the arbitrary will of other individuals. The source of this interpretation of political liberty was the principle of Roman law that defines the status of a free person as not being subject to the arbitrary will of another person--in contrast to a slave, who is dependent on another person's will. As the individual is free when he or she has legal and political rights, so a people or a city is free insofar as it lives under its own laws. [...]

Classical republican theorists also stressed that the constraint that fair laws impose on an individual's choices is not a restriction of liberty but an essential element of political liberty itself. They also believed that restrictions imposed by the law on the actions of rulers as well as of ordinary citizens are the only valid shield against coercion on the part of any person or persons. Machiavelli forcefully expressed this belief in his Discourses on Livy (I.29), when he wrote that if there i

ONE DOWN...:

Osama bin Laden son 'probably killed in US drone attack': Saad bin Laden was not targeted, but likely to have been in wrong place at wrong time, US intelligence report claims (Declan Walsh, 7/23/09, guardian.co.uk)

One of Osama bin Laden's sons was probably killed in a US drone strike on a target in Pakistan's tribal areas earlier this year, according to a US report.

Saad bin Laden, who was in his late 20s, is believed to have been hit by a Hellfire missile fired by a CIA-operated Predator unmanned aircraft. [...]

Bin Laden, who is believed to be sheltering along the mountainous tribal belt along the Afghan border, is believed to have at least 12 sons. While some returned to Saudi Arabia, at least six – including Saad – stayed at his side to fight.

NOTHING ABOUT BRAWLING WITH TOWNIES? (SELF-REFERENCE ALERT):

At Camp Sankaty Head, Young Caddies Learn to Carry That Weight (STACEY STOWE, 7/23/09, NY Times)

At Sankaty Head Golf Club, a circa 1923 links course that features a working lighthouse and hugs the shoreline in Siasconset, some wait a dozen years to join a membership roster that includes Jack Welch, the former chairman and chief executive of General Electric, and Bob Wright, the former chairman of NBC Universal.

But for 79 years, Sankaty has widened its circle to visitors from places as far flung as the streets of Washington Heights and the countryside of Ireland. Each June, about 60 boys, ages 13 to 19, report to Camp Sankaty Head, stationed between the 11th and 13th fairways. The club is one of the last remaining caddie camps in the nation.

“They’re trained from Day 1 how to rake bunkers, tend pins, mark balls,” said Mark Heartfield, Sankaty’s head pro for the last 22 years. “But it’s not just a caddie camp. We really have a camp to help kids mature.”

For 10 weeks, the boys rise at 7 a.m. to the clang of a brass bell. They shower, dress in gray T-shirts, khaki shorts and red caps, and assemble outside three shingled huts for flag-raising.

Chores, like weed-whacking and mopping, are assigned at the all-camp meeting known as quarters in keeping with the military-style routine followed by Norman L. Claxton, who became camp director in 1962. A former Navy captain, Claxton was, by many accounts, a beloved authoritarian who never forgot what it was like to be a boy.

The caddies work six days a week, assigned at “the bench” above Sankaty’s parking lot. Carrying one bag — a tank in camp parlance — nets $70, in addition to a tip that averages about $20. In the evenings, caddies are allowed to play the 6,670-yard course, which Golfweek magazine ranked this year among the top 100 classic, or pre-1960, courses nationwide. [...]

About a dozen boys are from poor families. Sankaty has hosted boys whose prior camp was juvenile hall. Room and board is $5 a day, but the fee is returned at summer’s end to those in need.

Money management is a cornerstone of the camp. Each evening, the caddies deposit their tips and record their loops — the number of times around 18 holes. A typed list of campers and their earnings is posted on a wall of the mailroom, a section of the dining hall that doubles as a bank. Most campers earn about $3,500 over the summer, but the best caddies earn as much as $9,000.

THANKS, W!:

Goldman Buys Back TARP Warrants for $1.1 Billion (Matthew Jaffe, July 22, 2009, ABC News)

When the government dished out funds from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to help ailing banks, the Treasury Department then received warrants to buy common stock in these banks. As banks like Goldman now pay back the bailout money, the government then has to work out deals to repurchase the warrants.

A Treasury official said today, "In just 9 months, the taxpayers have been repaid the full $10 billion that the government originally invested, along with $318 million in dividends; and Goldman is repurchasing the warrants for $1.1 billion, generating a total of $1.418 billion in payments to the government. That amounts to an annualized return of 23.15 percent on the taxpayer's investment."

"The capital infusion has helped drive greater stability in the financial system, private capital has replaced taxpayer investments at many banks, and the taxpayers have gotten a good return on their investment," the official said. "And the process we designed to value the warrants and protect the taxpayers worked well."

PRACTICE IS BELIEF:

    -OBIT: IN MEMORY OF LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI (University Diaries, July 18, 2009)

Leszek Kolakowski's death reminds us that Terry Eagleton's recent attack on the atheism of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins is only the latest instance of a curious but now familiar trajectory, in which a left thinker in his or her latter days (think of Christopher Lasch among Americans, and, among the British, Gillian Rose) embraces, if not the truth of religion, the validity and endurance and even inescapability of its cultural power.

A formidable intellectual, Kolakowski is part of the tradition of scathing post-communist critique associated, among his Polish compatriots, with Czeslaw Milosz. In remembering him here, I'd like to focus instead on his delicate and moving embrace of religion. But I hope it will become clear that his disenchantment with various forms of radical - and even liberal - politics, and his growing appreciation of religious faith are connected.

I say delicate embrace because, like Lasch and Eagleton and, let's say, Philip Rieff, Kolakowski came to believe that communal faith and its rituals and prohibitions, as well as the personal experience of the sacred that underlies faith, was foundational to culture, and to the recognition and maintenance of human dignity; yet Kolakowski ultimately seemed to be saying something like what Freeman Dyson says, in an 2002 essay in the New York Review of Books: "I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian. To me, to worship God means to recognize that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension."

THE event which in modern history came the closest to the image, once predicted in socialist theory, of a working-class revolution was the emergence and the 14-months-long struggle of Solidarity in Poland. No other upheaval - including the Bolshevik takeover in 1917 and the Chinese revolution - deserves this label. Solidarity was precisely that: a powerful revolutionary (though peaceful) social movement, triggered by the conflict between industrial workers and owners of the means of production, that is to say the state, embodied in the Communist Party, police and administrative apparatus.

And this (unsuccessful) working-class revolution, the only one that has ever occurred, was directed against a socialist state and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope. So much for the (highly scientific) Marxist historical predictions.

A Conservative Believes:

1. That in human life there never have been and never will be improvements that are not paid for with deteriorations and evils; thus, in considering each project of reform and amelioration, its price has to be assessed. Put another way, innumerable evils are compatible (i.e. we can suffer them comprehensively and simultaneously); but many goods limit or cancel each other, and therefore we will never enjoy them fully at the same time. A society in which there is no equality and no liberty of any kind is perfectly possible, yet a social order combining total equality and freedom is not. The same applies to the compatibility of planning and the principle of autonomy, to security and technical progress. Put yet another way, there is no happy ending in human history.

2. That we do not know the extent to which various traditional forms of social life--families, rituals, nations, religious communities--are indispensable if life in a society is to be tolerable or even possible. There are no grounds for believing that when we destroy these forms, or brand them as irrational, we increase the chance of happiness, peace, security, or freedom. We have no certain knowledge of what might occur if, for example, the monogamous family was abrogated, or if the time-honored custom of burying the dead were to give way to the rational recycling of corpses for industrial purposes. But we would do well to expect the worst.

3. That the idee fixe of the Enlightenment--that envy, vanity, greed, and aggression are all caused by the deficiencies of social institutions and that they will be swept away once these institutions are reformed-- is not only utterly incredible and contrary to all experience, but is highly dangerous. How on earth did all these institutions arise if they were so contrary to the true nature of man? To hope that we can institutionalize brotherhood, love, and altruism is already to have a reliable blueprint for despotism.

A Liberal Believes:

1. That the ancient idea that the purpose of the State is security still remains valid. It remains valid even if the notion of "security" is expanded to include not only the protection of persons and property by means of the law, but also various provisions of insurance: that people should not starve if they are jobless; that the poor should not be condemned to die through lack of medical help; that children should have free access to education--all these are also part of security. Yet security should never be confused with liberty. The State does not guarantee freedom by action and by regulating various areas of life, but by doing nothing. In fact security can be expanded only at the expense of liberty. In any event, to make people happy is not the function of the State.

2. That human communities are threatened not only by stagnation but also by degradation when they are so organized that there is no longer room for individual initiative and inventiveness. The collective suicide of mankind is conceivable, but a permanent human ant-heap is not, for the simple reason that we are not ants.

3. That it is highly improbable that a society in which all forms of competitiveness have been done away with would continue to have the necessary stimuli for creativity and progress. More equaliity is not an end in itself, but only a means. In other words, there is no point to the struggle for more equality if it results only in the leveling down off those who are better off, and not in the raising up of the underprivileged. Perfect equality is a self-defeating ideal.

    -Leszek Kolakowski (kirjasto)

    -WIKIPEDIA: Leszek Kołakowski

    -GOOGLE BOOK ARCHIVE: Leszek Kołakowski

    -

    -GOOGLE BOOK: Metaphysical horror‎
by Leszek Kołakowski

    -GOOGLE BOOK: God Owes Us Nothing: : A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism

    -LECTURE: The Death of Utopia Reconsidered (Leszek Kolakowski, Tanner Lectures)

    -EXCERPT: The Alienation of Reason (Leszek Kolakowski, The Culture of Logical Empiricism)

    -ESSAY: The general theory of not-gardening (Leszek Kolakowski, November 1990, Harper's)

    -OBIT: Leszek Kolakowski dies at 81; exiled Polish philosopher: After criticizing communism and falling out of favor, he taught at Western universities, including Oxford and UC Berkeley. The author of more than 30 books was also a MacArthur grant recipient. (LA Times, July 21, 2009)

Kolakowski, who had lived and taught mainly at Oxford since his expulsion from Poland as a dissident in 1968, was the author of more than 30 books, of which the most influential was "Main Currents of Marxism" (1978). The massive, three-volume work is considered the definitive history and critique of Marxism, which he branded "the greatest fantasy of the 20th century." [...]

A contrarian by nature, he was appalled by the chaos of Berkeley in the late 1960s, terming the student movement "simply barbaric." English historian E.P. Thompson and other critics on the left considered him politically incorrect, to which he issued a rejoinder, titled "My Correct Views on Everything" (1973).

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said Monday that Kolakowski's body would be returned to the country and buried with military honors.

Kolakowski came to treat all utopian visions of society with suspicion, believing that their victory would lead to “a totalitarian nightmare and the utter downfall of civilisation”.

However, he also rejected what he considered to be their opposite, namely armchair scepticism, which he thought would condemn us to a “hopeless stagnation”. Thus utopian ideals for society such as the concept of human fraternity could be regarded as a guiding sign and a regulative rather than a constitutive idea. In light of his belief that no perfect model exists for society’s ills, the important thing was to find practical, workable solutions.

    -PROFILE: PRIZE WINNER: Leszek Kolakowski, an anti-Communist Polish philosopher at Oxford University in England, was awarded the first $1 million John W. Kluge prize for lifetime achievement in the humanities. Jeffrey Brown reports on Kolakowski and the new honor. (Online Newshour, 11/05/03)

    -PROFILE: When Philosophy Makes a Difference (SARAH LYALL, February 14, 2004, NY Times)

    -ARCHIVES: Leszek Kolakowski (Harper's)

    -ARCHIVES: Leszek Kolakowski (FindArticles)

    -REVIEW: of MODERNITY ON ENDLESS TRIAL By Leszek Kolakowski (Arthur C. Danto, NY Times Book Review)

    -REVIEW: of THE PRESENCE OF MYTH By Leszek Kolakowski (Karsten Harries, NY Times Book Review)

    -REVIEW: of The Two Eyes of Spinoza by Leszek Kolakowski (Roger Kinball, New Criterion)

    -REVIEW ARCHIVES: Leszek Kolakowski (NY Review of Books)

    -REVIEW: of Modernity on Endless Trial, by Leszek Kolakowski (Peter L. Berger , Commentary)

    -REVIEW: of Modernity on Endless Trial (Pierre Jorgensen, National Catholic Reporter)

    -REVIEW: of Modernity on Endless Trial (Robert Royal, First Things)

    -REVIEW: of Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown by Leszek Kolakowski and My Correct Views on Everything by Leszek Kolakowski (Tony Judt, NY Review of Books)

    -REVIEW: of Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown (Franklin Hugh Adler, Antioch Review)

    -REVIEW: of God Owes Us Nothing: A Brief Remark on Pascal's Religion and on the Spirit of Jansenism (Avery Dulles, National Review)

    -REVIEW: of God Owes Us Nothing (Stephen J. Duffy, Theological Studies)

    -REVIEW: of Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?: 23 Questions from Great Philosophers by Leszek Kolakowski (John Schwenkler, Commonweal)

    -REVIEW: of Why is there Something (Nicholas Fearn, Independent)

SKIPPING OUT:

Grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini 'leaves Iran to avoid presidential inauguration' (Robert Tait, 7/21/09, guardian.co.uk)

The grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, father of Iran's Islamic revolution, is reported to have left the country to avoid attending Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidential inauguration.

Hassan Khomeini, a supporter of the defeated reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has travelled to an unnamed "neighbouring country" to escape official pressure to be present at next month's swearing-in ceremony, according to the pro-reformist news website, Salaamnews.

His absence would be a blow to the authorities' hopes of using the hallowed Khomeini family name to confer legitimacy on the event in the face of allegations that Ahmadinejad owes his re-election to fraud.

WHICH IS WHY GOVERNMENT SECRECY IS SO COUNTERPRODUCTIVE:

Mindless Collectives Better at Rational Decision-Making Than Brainy Individuals: New experiments show how ant colonies don't fall prey to irrational choices as humans sometimes do (Charles Q. Choi, 7/22/09, Scientific American)

Humans often make irrational choices when faced with challenging decisions. Ant colonies, however, can make perfectly rational selections when confronted by tough dilemmas. This isn't because lone ants are especially knowledgeable—they're not. Instead, when ants are grouped together, a kind of "wisdom of the crowds" avoids the kind of mistakes that individuals can make, new research shows.

DON'T BE THE LAST ONE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD...:

..to climb aboard The Schweeb.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH:

Health Insurance No One Needs (MATT MILLER, 7/22/09, NY Times)

EVERYONE who wants universal health coverage (me included) finds irresistible the rallying cry that all Americans should have the same health benefits that members of Congress have. But Congress’s health insurance — that is, the heavily subsidized preferred provider plan that most members have — is not an ideal model, because it is quite rich. As with other fee-for-service plans, it does little to encourage people to be smart health care shoppers.

Congress’s health plan pays for routine expenses like office visits and vaccinations, for example, which is like auto insurance covering oil changes or new windshield wipers. As a result, the premiums are steep — upwards of $13,000 a year for a family (69 percent of which is paid by the government). To provide the 50 million Americans who are now uninsured with such a plan would require scary tax increases. [...]

One approach would be to require senators and representatives, most of whom earn $174,000 a year, to maintain tax-sheltered health savings accounts, which they would use to finance their primary and preventive care. Today, families may put up to $5,950 annually in such an account — and any amount they don’t use on health care that year can remain in the account.

To make such an approach work for all Americans, we’d need to supplement the accounts of people who couldn’t afford to save the full amount, and of less healthy people, whose costs are higher.

An alternative strategy for Congress would be the new “fitness club” model offered by some doctors, in which members pay $65 a month for same-day or next-day access to primary care services. This would involve no insurance companies, so it would save administrative expenses.

We could then pair one of these primary care plans with high-deductible insurance coverage for catastrophic care, but limit total annual out-of-pocket payments to, say, 15 percent of family income. For a member of Congress whose family had no other income, that limit would be $26,000. If this kind of plan were extended to other Americans, a family earning $25,000 a year would have a limit of $3,750.

GOOD TO SEE SOMEONE'S REPRESENTING THE HONDURAN PEOPLE AND CONSTITUTION:

Our Man in Honduras: The backers of the Honduran coup have an inside man in Washington. (Roberto Lovato, July 22, 2009, American Prospect)

"If you want to understand who the real power behind the [Honduran] coup is," says Robert White, president of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, during a recent interview, "you need to find out who's paying Lanny Davis."

Davis, an ally of the Clinton family who is best known as the lawyer who defended Bill during the presidential impeachment proceedings, was recently on Capitol Hill lobbying members of Congress and testifying against exiled President Manuel Zelaya before the House Foreign Relations Committee. White, who previously served as the United States ambassador to El Salvador, thought that such information about Davis' clients would be "very difficult to find."

But the answer proved easy to find. Davis, a partner at the law firm Orrick, Herring, & Sutcliffe, openly named them -- and his clients are the same powerful Hondurans behind the military coup.

THEY HAVE TO DESTROY HIS PRESIDENCY IN ORDER TO SAVE IT:

Dems Start To Push Back Hard To Prevent A 'Waterloo' (Anna Edney with Kasie Hunt and Peter Cohn, July 22, 2009, CongressDaily)

A telling episode recounted by Senate Finance ranking member Charles Grassley reveals the Obama administration might be more worried than they are letting on that a Republican senator's comparison of the healthcare overhaul to Waterloo might be dangerously close to the truth.

Grassley said he spoke with a Democratic House member last week who shared Obama's bleak reaction during a private meeting to reports that some factions of House Democrats were lining up to stall or even take down the overhaul unless leaders made major changes.

"Let's just lay everything on the table," Grassley said. "A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn't going to pass if there weren't some changes made ... and the president says, 'You're going to destroy my presidency.' "

SEE WHAT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION HAS DONE TO IVY LEAGUERS:

Henry Louis Gates should skip the racial histrionics: Instead, teach kids to cooperate with cops (Michael Meyers, 7/21/09, NYDailyNews.com)

The most famous black professor at Harvard lives in a very safe neighborhood because, in part, residents look out for and report suspicious activities, and because cops respond quickly to reports of possible break-ins. Yet that's not how Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, took it when cops showed up at his door after a neighbor reported two black men (Gates and his driver) seemingly pushing into a vacant residence, which turned out to be Gates' home.

He was arrested for disorderly conduct, and the rest is now histrionic history. (The charges have since been dropped, but the incident is not going away.)

Gates was returning from a trip to China, and he couldn't get in through a jammed front door, so he apparently went around the back, shut off an alarm and worked with his driver to get the door open.

In any neighborhood - especially one of the safest in America - that kind of behavior would be cause for suspicion and a call to the cops, no matter the color of the guys "breaking" in.

But when police showed up, the "he said, he said" has Gates indignant and, according to the cop, refusing to present himself and his ID, then complying and at some point getting loud - with Gates saying, according to the police report, "Why, because I'm a black man in America?"

PSSSST...SERPICO IS HEROIC:

REVIEW: of Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone By STANISLAO PUGLIESE (George Scialabba, Barnes & Noble)

Though the Cold War ended less than 20 years ago, Communism now seems a distant memory. So thoroughly did the Soviet and Chinese Communists betray the ideals in whose name they seized power, and so ruthlessly did they silence nearly everyone who protested that betrayal, that the ideals themselves are in danger of being forgotten. But many of the wisest and bravest men and women of the 20th century began by embracing Communism, and some of the century's best political writing was occasioned by their efforts later in life to understand what, if anything, of that youthful commitment remained valid. [...]

Idealism without illusions, an unsentimental passion for justice -- this is Silone's legacy. He called himself "a Socialist without a Party, a Christian without a Church." What he meant by both Socialism and Christianity, he explained, was "an extension of the moral values of private life" -- generosity, solidarity, candor -- "to all of social life." It is a simple vision but still a very long way from realization. Few people in his time did more than Silone to keep it alive.

A few last, anticlimactic words must be added. In recent years, two Italian historians have accused Silone -- one of the best-known and most hated opponents of Fascism -- of having been a Fascist informer. Stanislao Pugliese reviews their case and the subsequent controversy with scrupulous fairness. The evidence is slender, but it seems clear that Silone had a correspondence with a Fascist police official.

.

HAPPY ABOUT THE DEPARTURE FROM THE OBAMA DOCTRINE:

Last chance saloon in Helmand (Aziz Ahmad Shafe, Mohammad Ilyas Dayee and Aziz Ahmad Tassal, 7/24/09, Asia Times)

Operation Khanjar has met very little resistance since it got under way early in July; the overwhelming firepower of the US forces doubtless had the Taliban thinking better of a face-to-face fight. But even more surprising than the lack of a counter-punch has been the reception given the troops by the Helmandis, who have been battered and let down over the past eight years.

"These Americans are very good people," said Tak Mohammad from Nawa district. "They wave and speak to us in a very friendly way. And they have helped us finally to get rid of these cruel oppressors."

BETWEEN THE FIXES AND THE OFFICIATING...:

Four League Two players suspended after betting on match (Mirror.co.uk, 22/07/2009)

Disciplinary chiefs have expressed "serious concerns" that a Football League match may have been fixed after four players were banned for between five months and a year for betting on the outcome.

The four players have been suspended and fined after betting on the outcome of the League Two match between Accrington and Bury on May 3 2008 - three of the players were with Stanley at the time and the other at Bury, who won the game 2-0.

WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS NOW:

How Evolution Can Allow For Large Developmental Leaps (ScienceDaily, July 21, 2009)

According to a team led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), in close collaboration with Patrick Piggot and colleagues from the Temple University School of Medicine, such changes may at least sometimes be the result of random fluctuations, or noise (nongenetic variations), working alongside a phenomenon known as partial penetrance. Their findings were recently published online in the journal Nature. [...]

In their Nature paper, Elowitz and Eldar, along with their colleagues, studied partial penetrance in a species of bacterium known as Bacillus subtilis. Specifically, they looked at the spores B. subtilis produces as a survival mechanism when times get tough. These spores are smaller, dormant clones of their so-called "mother cell." They're attached to the mother, but are separate entities with their own DNA.

A bacterial spore is designed specifically to do nothing but survive. "It doesn't grow, it doesn't do anything," says Eldar. "It just waits for the good times to return."

The wild-type B. subtilis bacterium always sporulates the same way: it creates a single spore, smaller than the mother cell, but with an exact single copy of the mother's chromosome.

What the scientists looked at was a "mutant in which the sporulation process was altered," Eldar explains. "Usually, these cells talk with each other, with the small spore telling the large mother cell, 'I'm here, and I'm doing OK.' In the wild-type cell, this chatter is loud; in the mutant, it's just a whisper, and the mother can't always hear."

IF HE'S GOING TO BE A CARBON COPY OF W...:

Obama's disappointing secrecy: He promised openness. Instead, like Bush's, his administration wants the power to keep Congress in the dark on some intelligence activities. (Benjamin Friedman, July 21, 2009, CS Monitor)

The White House website says that citizens have a right to know what their government is doing and that accountability makes government more effective. That's absolutely right. In some areas, such as the liberalization of policy on Freedom of Information Act requests, the administration has embraced this principle.

Disappointingly though, the administration's commitment to openness and accountability does not extend to intelligence activities.

MORE:
Meanwhile, he'll get most stuff right, Democrats irked by Obama signing statement (ANNE FLAHERTY, 7/21/09, Associated Press)

President Barack Obama has irked close allies in Congress by declaring he has the right to ignore legislation on constitutional grounds after having criticized George W. Bush for doing the same.

Four senior House Democrats on Tuesday said they were "surprised" and "chagrined" by Obama's declaration in June that he doesn't have to comply with provisions in a war spending bill that puts conditions on aid provided to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. [...]

"During the previous administration, all of us were critical of (Bush's) assertion that he could pick and choose which aspects of congressional statutes he was required to enforce," the Democrats wrote in their letter to Obama. "We were therefore chagrined to see you appear to express a similar attitude."

IT'S NOT A DOCTRINE, IT'S A DISGRACE:

The Obama Doctrine (Amitai Etzioni, 7/16/09, Huffington Post)

In contrast to the thesis -- much promoted by the president himself -- that he is not an ideologue but a pragmatic, Obama has laid out a strong new normative foundation for his foreign policy. He seeks to promote peace and security but leave democratization and liberalization to the people who find their regimes oppressive. This is in direct contrast to the Bush Neocon thesis that forced regime change is essential because only democracies are reliable partners in peace.

These bouts of isolationism and indifference to evil aren't unusual following our most interventionist periods, but we always shrug them off because we come to despise ourselves for them.

DICK CHENEY WINS AGAIN:

White House declines to disclose visits by health industry executives: Citing an argument used by the Bush administration, the Secret Service rejects a request from a watchdog group to list those who have visited the White House to discuss healthcare overhaul. (Peter Nicholas, July 22, 2009, LA Times)

Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul. [...]

As a candidate, Obama vowed that in devising a healthcare bill he would invite in TV cameras -- specifically C-SPAN -- so that Americans could have a window into negotiations that normally play out behind closed doors.

Having promised transparency, the administration should be willing to disclose who it is consulting in shaping healthcare policy, said an attorney for the citizens' group. In its letter requesting the records, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics asked about visits from Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America; Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans; William Weldon, chairman and CEO of Johnson & Johnson; and J. James Rohack, president of the American Medical Assn., among others.

"It's extremely disappointing," said Anne Weismann, the group's chief counsel. Obama is relying on a legal argument that "continues one of the bad, anti-transparency, pro-secrecy approaches that the Bush administration had taken. And it seems completely at odds with the president's commitment . . . to bring a new level of transparency to his government."

THE LIBERAL LAMENT:

The Health-Care Wimps: Obama may be impervious to the demons of 1994, but his party is still haunted by the failure of Hillarycare. Eric Alterman on why the Democrats need conquer their fear to win this health-care battle. (Eric Alterman, 7/21/09, Daily Beast)

What is the problem with the Democrats? Why, with a commanding majority in the House and a fillibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate, are they unable to make good on the Obama administration’s central political priority: a new, universal health-care system for the nation, something Democrats have been trying and failing to pass since Harry Truman proposed one in 1948?

Well, any question that begins with the phrase “What’s wrong with the Democrats…” tends to have multiple and overlapping responses. But in this case, most of them can be summed up in a single word: “fear.” Democrats fear 1994, when popular discontent with the Clinton administration, symbolized by “Hillarycare,” led to catastrophe in the midterm elections. Those who lost their seats were almost all among the most vulnerable Democrats from red or purple states—of the kind who managed to squeak out victories in 2008. Hence the Republican focus in their attacks on the districts of moderate Democrats.

THE LEMMINGS ARE ON THE TRACK:

Liberal Suicide March (DAVID BROOKS, 7/21/09, NY Times)

We’re only in the early stages of the liberal suicide march, but there already have been three phases. First, there was the stimulus package. You would have thought that a stimulus package would be designed to fight unemployment and stimulate the economy during a recession. But Congressional Democrats used it as a pretext to pay for $787 billion worth of pet programs with borrowed money. Only 11 percent of the money will be spent by the end of the fiscal year — a triumph of ideology over pragmatism.

Then there is the budget. Instead of allaying moderate anxieties about the deficits, the budget is expected to increase the government debt by $11 trillion between 2009 and 2019.

Finally, there is health care. Every cliché Ann Coulter throws at the Democrats is gloriously fulfilled by the Democratic health care bills. The bills do almost nothing to control health care inflation. They are modeled on the Massachusetts health reform law that is currently coming apart at the seams precisely because it doesn’t control costs. They do little to reward efficient providers and reform inefficient ones.

The House bill adds $239 billion to the federal deficit during the first 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It would pummel small businesses with an 8 percent payroll penalty. It would jack America’s top tax rate above those in Italy and France. Top earners in New York and California would be giving more than 55 percent of earnings to one government entity or another.

Nancy Pelosi has lower approval ratings than Dick Cheney and far lower approval ratings than Sarah Palin. And yet Democrats have allowed her policy values to carry the day — this in an era in which independents dominate the electoral landscape.

Trust in President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies to identify the right solutions to problems facing the country has dropped off significantly since March, according to a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO poll.

Just as Obama intensifies his efforts to fulfill a campaign promise and reach an agreement with Congress on health care reform, the number of Americans who say they trust the president has fallen from 66 percent to 54 percent. At the same time, the percentage of those who say they do not trust the president has jumped from 31 to 42.

The president’s party has taken a similar hit since the last Public Trust Monitor poll, with only 42 percent of respondents saying that they trust the Democratic Party, compared with 52 percent who do not. The party’s numbers are nearly the inverse of March’s survey, in which 52 percent said they trusted Democrats and 42 percent did not.

REPUBLICAN IN DEED ONLY:

Budget accord reached: Calling for deep cuts and avoiding broad tax hikes, Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders agree on ways to close California's $26.3-billion deficit. (Shane Goldmacher and Evan Halper, July 21, 2009, LA Times)

Their agreement, which could go before the full Legislature within days, does not include any broad-based tax increases, relying instead on deep cuts in government services, borrowing and accounting maneuvers to wipe out the deficit.

The plan has not been formally released. But as outlined by lawmakers and their staffs, the proposal would reshape some aspects of government in California, significantly scaling back many services that have been offered to residents -- particularly the elderly and the poor -- for years.

Tens of thousands of seniors and children would lose access to healthcare, local governments would sacrifice several billion dollars in state assistance this year and thousands of convicted criminals could serve less time in state prison. Welfare checks would go to fewer residents, state workers would be forced to continue to take unpaid days off and new drilling for oil would be permitted off the Santa Barbara coast.

"We've accomplished a lot in this budget," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as he emerged from his office with legislative leaders shortly before 7 p.m. to announce the deal, after an all-day negotiating session of the "big five" -- the governor and legislative leaders.

IF NAPOLEON HAD TREATED AS SOON AS IT STARTED SNOWING IN RUSSIA HE'D BE EMPEROR TODAY:

Democrats Ready To Deal on Health (GREG HITT and LAURA MECKLER, 7/21/09, WSJ)

As President Barack Obama's health-care push enters a critical phase, senior Democrats in Congress are scrambling to keep their own party members on board.

Democrats are considering scaling back proposed taxes on the rich, reconsidering taxing employer health benefits, and possibly trimming the total cost of the package to make subsidies for the uninsured less generous than advocates have sought. [...]

Republicans, sensing new vulnerability in the popular president, are stepping up their health-care attacks. In a speech Monday, Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, accused Mr. Obama of "conducting a reckless experiment with our economy." Conservatives have increasingly portrayed the Democratic plans as "rationing" by "bureaucrats," rhetoric that in the past undermined public support for health-care overhaul.

Starkly framing the political stakes, South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint told supporters last week that health care was Mr. Obama's Waterloo. If Republicans could stop the fast-moving effort, "it will break him," Mr. DeMint said.

CHANGE IS BAD:

Interview: John Nettles on Midsomer Murders: As Midsomer Murders returns to ITV1 its star John Nettles reveals why DCI Barnaby will soon be investigating his final murder. (Clive Morgan, 17 Jul 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Television detectives of a certain age are fast becoming an endangered species. John Thaw’s Inspector Morse is gone, if not forgotten, Detective Chief Inspector Jack Frost (David Jason) is retiring and now charismatic DCI Tom Barnaby, the old-fashioned sleuth in ITV1’s Midsomer Murders, is preparing to bow out.

‘It’s the end of an era for me,’ says John Nettles, who plays Barnaby, ‘and while I’m very sad to be handing in Barnaby’s police badge, he has solved some 200 murders, which I think meets the targets of modern policing.’

However the decision to quit was not an easy one for the 65-year-old actor and former Bergerac star. ‘I suddenly realised that I’m going to be the oldest detective in the business now that David Jason has thrown off the mantle,’ he says. ‘But it was a very difficult decision to make. I’ll have been doing Midsomer Murders for 14 years by the time Barnaby leaves. I’ve formed familial ties with the people involved in the show and they will be hard to break.’

Viewing figures for repeats of the BBC One show regularly leave prime-time programmes trailing in the dust and New Tricks star Amanda Redman thinks she knows why.

Glamorous in a pale silk top with her blonde hair in a neat bob, set off by a deep tan, Redman, who turns 50 in August, explains: "We get really positive feedback from real officers, saying that out of all the police dramas on television, we're the most true to what they know happens in real life.

"They say the banter and the humour is absolutely correct as well as the police procedure - we're really strict on that."

She's right about the quality of the banter. The chemistry between the four main characters - DS Sandra Pullman (Redman) and retired police officers Jack Halford (James Bolam), Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman) and Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong) keeps viewers entertained.

THE UR CAN GUARANTEE HIS RE-ELECTION BY BAILING ON HIS AGENDA:

Stocks Are Far From Fair Value: Indicators show the economy turning around. (Brian S. Wesbury and Robert Stein, 07.21.09, Forbes)

To determine fair value for the stock market we use historical norms for the relationship between stock prices, interest rates and corporate profits. These norms suggest that with interest rates at current levels and corporate profits where they were in the first quarter of 2009, stocks today are at no more than 50% of fair value. Yes, that's right, stocks would have to roughly double from here to get to fair value.

That said, we are also forecasting higher interest rates as the economy grows robustly over the next 18 months and the inflation problem returns. But even using a 10-year Treasury yield of 5.5% suggests the stock market is at no more than 75% of fair value.

Despite this, it is unlikely that stock prices will quickly move all the way back to fair value. Investors have to remain concerned about the prospects for a huge expansion of government in the form of health care spending and regulation as well as limits on carbon emissions. But with each passing week, it appears more and more likely that our new president's legislative agenda on these issues is not going to be altogether successful.

A GUN VOTE WON'T COVER THE DEFICIT HE'S RUN UP:

Harry Reid green-lights controversial gun vote (GLENN THRUSH, 7/21/09, Politico)

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is supposed to be the protector of the Senate’s skittish Democratic flock — the guy who soothes intraparty spats and shields his 60-member majority from dangerous, career-threatening votes.

Yet Reid — whose low approval ratings in Nevada make him a tempting GOP target in next year’s midterms — put many of his members in a sticky situation when he OK’d a floor vote on a controversial GOP amendment that could significantly alter the nation’s gun control laws.

Reid says the bill deserves a hearing and reflects his commitment to supporting gun rights in a state that sanctifies the Second Amendment. Other Democrats say he approved the vote out of personal political necessity — to avoid the ire of the National Rifle Association during the 2010 elections.

H1NOONE:

Global swine flu deaths top 700 (BBC, 7/21/09)

H1N1 swine flu has killed more than 700 people around the world since the outbreak began four months ago, says the World Health Organization (WHO).

SPIEGEL: Do you consider the swine flu to be particularly worrisome?

Jefferson : It's true that influenza viruses are unpredictable, so it does call for a certain degree of caution. But one of the extraordinary features of this influenza -- and the whole influenza saga -- is that there are some people who make predictions year after year, and they get worse and worse. None of them so far have come about, and these people are still there making these predictions. For example, what happened with the bird flu, which was supposed to kill us all? Nothing. But that doesn't stop these people from always making their predictions. Sometimes you get the feeling that there is a whole industry almost waiting for a pandemic to occur.

SPIEGEL: Who do you mean? The World Health Organization (WHO)?

Jefferson: The WHO and public health officials, virologists and the pharmaceutical companies. They've built this machine around the impending pandemic. And there's a lot of money involved, and influence, and careers, and entire institutions! And all it took was one of these influenza viruses to mutate to start the machine grinding.

SPIEGEL: On your Italian homepage, there is a "pandemic countdown" that expires on April 1. Don't you think the situation calls for just a bit more seriousness?

Jefferson: I'm just using it ironically to expose the false certainty that we are fed. Will one-third of the world's population get swine flu? Nobody can say for sure right now. For now, at least, I don't really see any fundamental difference, no difference in the definition between this and a normal flu epidemic. Swine flu could have even stayed unnoticed if it had been caused by some unknown virus rather than an influenza virus.

SPIEGEL: Do you think the WHO declared a pandemic prematurely?

Jefferson: Don't you think there's something noteworthy about the fact that the WHO has changed its definition of pandemic? The old definition was a new virus, which went around quickly, for which you didn't have immunity, and which created a high morbidity and mortality rate. Now the last two have been dropped, and that's how swine flu has been categorized as a pandemic.

THEY WENT TO THE MOON AND ALL I GOPT WAS FREE SOFTWARE...OH...AND TANG, THE TITTIE BOX AND FOODSTICKS:

Free apps commemorate moon landing (ThriftMac)

The Mac Observer notes that Carina Software will be giving away copies of its astronomy programs on July 20 only in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Voyager and SkyGazer allow you to explore the heavens and the night sky from your Mac.

WORKING ON U.R.P.T.:

Obama's Gitmo Task Force Blows Its Deadline (Michael Isikoff, 7/20/09, Newsweek)

An Obama administration task force set up to develop a plan for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay will miss its first deadline this week—and put off a key report until the fall—amid continued divisions over how to resolve one of the president's thorniest policy dilemmas.

The task force, set up on Obama's second day in office, was charged with preparing a report to the president by Tuesday, July 21, outlining a long-term detention plan for detainees captured in counterterrorism operations after Sept. 11. But continued debate within the task force over the legal basis for holding detainees who are not charged with any crimes—and where to house them once they are moved from Guantánamo—has forced the task force to postpone its report by a "few months," a senior administration official told NEWSWEEK.

A separate task-force report on interrogations—also due this week—is being put off as well, said the official, who, like others quoted in this article, asked not to be named talking about private deliberations.

Three months ago, when President Barack Obama announced he was extracting $100 million in spending cuts from his cabinet secretaries, the reviews were not terribly kind, not with a budget well in excess of $3 trillion and a budget deficit shooting toward $1.8 trillion. [...]

Well, on this, the 91st day, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki and White House budget office spokesman Ken Baer released identical statements when queried about the results. “The recommendations have been gathered by the Cabinet Secretaries who will be reporting them to the President shortly,” they said in separate responses. When pressed, Psaki said we should see the exact cuts “in the coming days.”

HAULING OFF THE ASHES:

Andrew Flintoff carries England to historic Lord's victory (Times of London, 7/20/09)

Andrew Flintoff led England off the field after helping his side to wrap up the second npower Test at Lord's 15 minutes before lunch. Bowling flat out in a ten-over spell, he claimed the third five-wicket haul of his Test career - and the first since the 2005 Ashes - as England beat Australia at Lord's for the first time since 1934.

Australia began the day still 209 short of what would have been a record first-innings chase of 522 to win, but the loss of Brad Haddin to Flintoff's fourth ball in the second over of the day, ending a stand of 185 with Michael Clarke, effectively removed any prospect of a turnaround. Mitchell Johnson made 63 at No 8, but Flintoff and Graeme Swann combined to earn England a 115-run win.

Flintoff did not look like a man struggling against a career-threatening knee injury when he struck Clarke with a ball timed at 92.9mph, but it was Swann who ended the brilliant innings of the Australia vice-captain. Clarke was fooled by the flight of Swann's second ball, came forward and effectively yorked himself for 136, playing inside a ball that dipped.

MAN, THESE POOR CLOWNS CAN'T HIDE ANYWHERE:

Mali ex-rebels to tackle al-Qaeda areas (BBC, 7/20/09)

The main group of Tuareg ex-rebels in Mali has agreed to help the army tackle al-Qaeda's North African branch.

Both groups roam across the Sahara Desert and so correspondents say the deal could prove significant.

The agreement was brokered by Algeria's ambassador to Mali. Algeria is where al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb stages most of its attacks.

COLONEL NICHOLSON, I PRESUME?:

Ali Khamenei warns of 'collapse' after Iran referendum calls (Julian Borger, 7/20/09, guardian.co.uk)

Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, warned today that continuing divisions would lead to the collapse of the country's ruling elite, after a former president called for a referendum on the government's legitimacy.

NATURAL PARTY:

BET co-founder, Dem donor Johnson backs McDonnell (BOB LEWIS, July 20, 2009, AP)

A billionaire co-founder of television's Black Entertainment Television network and an important Democratic donor is endorsing Republican Bob McDonnell for governor.

Sheila Johnson of The Plains was the second-largest individual donor to Governor Tim Kaine and a benefactor to Democrats Mark Warner and Jim Webb. She arranged an appearance with McDonnell in Richmond Monday afternoon.

THE DEMOCRAT WAR ON SCIENCE:

CEI Injects Suppressed EPA Global Warming Report into White House Science Proceeding (Christine Hall, July 17, 2009, CEI)

Will the federal government consider its own research on global warming as it doles out tax-funded research dollars? The Competitive Enterprise Institute today asked the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to do just that.

In a comment submitted today to the agency on its ocean research report, CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis asks it to consider a study initially suppressed by the EPA. That study severely criticized EPA’s approach on global warming. One of the major conclusions of the suppressed report was the ocean cycles appear to be the single best explanation of global temperature variations.

“OSTP should be especially concerned about the possibility that other agencies and institutions may be so committed to certain points of view on these issues, that their procedures and assessments fail to fairly reflect new and contrary findings,” Lewis writes in the comments submitted to OSTP.

APPROVE THE PLACEBO (via The Other Brother):

Human Genome's Lupus drug succeeds in trial (Toni Clarke, 7/20/09, Reuters)

Human Genome Sciences Inc said on Monday that its experimental lupus drug had succeeded in a late-stage clinical trial, shocking many who had written the product off and fueling a 195 percent jump in the company's stock. [...]

Results of the 52-week trial -- the first of two requested by U.S. regulators -- showed 57.6 percent of patients taking a high dose of Benlysta experienced an improvement in their symptoms, compared with 43.6 percent who took a placebo.

THE LEAST ABDULLAH COULD HAVE DONE IS CURE HIS SCROFULA:

Revisiting Obama's Riyadh meeting (Laura Rozen, 07/17/2009, FP: The Cable)

[T]wo sources, one a former U.S. official who recently traveled there and one a current official speaking anonymously, say the meeting did not go well from Obama's perspective. What's more, the former official says that Dennis Ross has told associates that part of what prompted Obama to bring him on as his special assistant and NSC senior director for the "Central Region" last month was the president's feeling that the preparation for the trip was insufficient. [...]

"The bottom line is that the Saudis were not prepared," the former official continued, for Obama to ask them to take steps toward Israel. Obama changed his trip to go to Saudi Arabia, he pointed out.

"Senior sources in the Saudi national security team," he said, "think the president's trip was poorly prepared." From their perspective, "he was coming and asking them for big favors with no preparation," but "the Saudis never give big" in that situation.

The former official said that Ross has told associates that Obama was "upset" about the meeting "because he got nothing out of it."

HERE'S THE THING PEOPLE DON'T GET ABOUT AEROFLOT:

Russia Still Blue Over Moon Landing 40 Years Later (AP< July 20, 2009)

For a dozen years before the July 20, 1969, moon landing, Moscow racked up an extraordinary array of superlatives. It was the first to send a craft into orbit, with the Sputnik satellite in 1957. The first human to go into outer space was Russian Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Moscow sent the woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; and Alexei Leonov was the first person to venture outside a spacecraft into the endless cosmos, in 1965.

Russia even got to the moon first when the unmanned Luna 2 crashed in 1959. But the drama of the first human footprint on an extraterrestrial body eclipsed everything the Soviets had worked so hard to achieve.

"Beginning with the first flight with a primitive capsule, and then getting to the moon, it was a great achievement for humanity," Russian astronaut Sergei Krikalev said.

"Of course, we would have liked to see the first man on the moon be Soviet, Russian, but that's life ... Our own achievements were very many," he told Associated Press Television News.

UNACCUSTOMED AS WE ARE TO DEFENDING FDR... (via Ed Driscoll)

Barack Hoover Obama (Ken Silverstein, Harper's)

Kevin Baker has an excellent piece in the July issue of the magazine (available to subscribers) about the similarities between our current president and our thirty-first, Herbert Hoover:

The comparison is not meant to be flippant. It has nothing to do with the received image of Hoover, the dour, round-collared, gerbil-cheeked technocrat who looked on with indifference while the country went to pieces. To understand how dire our situation is now it is necessary to remember that when he was elected president in 1928, Herbert Hoover was widely considered the most capable public figure in the country. Hoover—like Obama—was almost certainly someone gifted with more intelligence, a better education, and a greater range of life experience than FDR.

WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS NOW:

The Origin of Dachshunds and Other Dogs With Short Legs (US News, July 20, 2009)

A single evolutionary event appears to explain the short, curved legs that characterize all of today's dachshunds, corgis, basset hounds and at least 16 other breeds of dogs, a team led by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, reported today. In addition to what it reveals about short-legged dogs, the unexpected discovery provides new clues about how physical differences may arise within species and suggests new approaches to understanding a form of human dwarfism.

In a study published in the advance online edition of the journal Science, the researchers led by NHGRI's Elaine Ostrander, Ph.D., examined DNA samples from 835 dogs, including 95 with short legs. Their survey of more than 40,000 markers of DNA variation uncovered a genetic signature exclusive to short-legged breeds. Through follow-up DNA sequencing and computational analyses, the researchers determined the dogs' disproportionately short limbs can be traced to one mutational event in the canine genome - a DNA insertion - that occurred early in the evolution of domestic dogs.

THEIR NATURAL PARTY:

Key Latino leader considers backing Christie (Max Pizarro, 7/19/09, PolitickerNJ.com)

Martin Perez, the president of one of the state's largest Latino organizations, has stunned many of his allies with public declarations of praise for Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie.

Earlier this year, at a gala dinner celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey (LLANJ), Perez irked members of his organization with an effusive introduction of Christie, who entered the room while Gov. Jon Corzine was speaking. Some LLANJ members viewed it is a ceremonial faux pas.

But then a few weeks later, Perez was quoted in the New York Times saying Corzine was "ineffective" as governor. That caused several LLANJ members to wonder if Perez was putting his membership in an organization that supports school vouchers, E3 (Excellent Education for Everyone) ahead of the traditional political alliance between the state's Latino community and the New Jersey Democratic Party.

CIRCLE OF LIFE:

Don't Be So Square: Why American drivers should learn to love the roundabout. (Tom Vanderbilt, July 20, 2009, Slate)

Here is a narrative that has been playing out over the last several years in any number of American towns: Traffic engineers notice that a particular intersection has a crash problem or is moving traffic inefficiently. After a period of study, the engineers propose a roundabout. The engineers, armed with drawings and PowerPoint slides, visit a community meeting. They try to explain the benefits of their proposed design in clear language, though they may occasionally drop phrases like entry path overlap or inscribed circle diameter. Townspeople raise concerns. Roundabouts are not safe, they say. They are confusing. They are bad for pedestrians. They will hurt local businesses. They are more expensive than traditional solutions. The local newspaper reports this, adding some man-in-the-street comments from "area drivers," who profess not to like roundabouts, even making dark references to "circles of death." Then, the roundabout is built, the safety record improves, traffic congestion doesn't seem any worse than before, and the complaints begin to fade faster than white thermoplastic lane markings in the heat of summer.

According to best estimates, the United States is now home to about 2,000 "modern roundabouts"—more on that phrase in a moment—most of which were built in the last decade. As engineer Ken Sides noted in the ITE Journal, however, in 2008 Australia built its 8,000th roundabout; by Sides' calculation, the United States would need to build roughly 148,519 more roundabouts to match the Australian rate per capita. Interestingly, Australia—a country whose traffic landscape is rather similar to ours—has, since 1980, cut its traffic-fatality rate to nearly half the U.S. figure. The rise of roundabouts has no doubt played some part.

Why are Americans so suspicious of roundabouts? The simplest answer is that we have grown used to (and feel comfortable with) binary, on-off traffic control. We suspect such signals are more efficient than the "fuzzy logic" that seems to govern roundabouts. Roundabouts require drivers to make their own decisions and assess others' actions, rather than relying on third-party signals.

SUFFER NOT:

Why Socrates Died: An original and thought-provoking examination of the trial and execution of Socrates. (Kevin Hartnett, July 20, 2009, CS Monitor)

The Peloponnesian War, like failed wars of any era, placed significant stress on Athenian society and it was over these fault lines, Waterfield argues, that Socrates stumbled. The city lost more than a quarter of its population to disease in just four years, and massacres and other wartime brutalities tested Athens’ sense of its own virtue. Dissent generally divided by age, with a cadre of grasping young aristocrats arguing that Athens’ loss to Sparta proved the inefficacy of majority rule. Many of them were known to have studied under Socrates.

Socrates himself was equally critical of both the willy-nilly democrat and the vain aristocrat. He believed that it was the job of the state to guide citizens towards knowledge and that power should be vested in the wise in order to accomplish this.

WHO WAS THE CRO-MAGNON AL GORE?:

Ancient Climate-Change Event Puzzles Scientists (Phil Berardelli, 7/14/09, ScienceNOW)

Over the past couple of decades, researchers have been gathering data about a mysterious event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The data, derived from drill cores brought up from the deep seabed in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, show that the surface temperature of the planet rose by as much as 9°C within 10,000 years during the PETM, which itself started out warmer than our current world. Temperatures stayed at this elevated level for nearly 100,000 years.

On the surface, the culprit appeared to be CO2. For reasons unknown, atmospheric concentrations of the gas rose by about 700 parts per million, from 1000 ppm to 1700 ppm--more than four times higher than today's level of 385 ppm--during the PETM. That much of an infusion of the well-established greenhouse gas should have been plenty to spike temperatures.

But a new analysis doesn't fully support this scenario. Oceanographer Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and colleagues ran carbon-cycle simulations of the oceans and atmosphere based on the data yielded by the sediment cores. They even simulated what would happen to global temperatures when they increased the atmosphere's sensitivity to doubling CO2 levels--to 2000 ppm--during the PETM. The most they could achieve was a warming of 3.5°C, they report online this week in Nature Geoscience. That means some other phenomenon must have pushed up temperatures by as much as 5.5°C, the team says. So at present, the unexplained warming represents a gap in understanding about what causes significant and rapid climate change.

"It's possible that other greenhouse gases such as methane could have contributed to the [PETM] warming," Zeebe says. It's also possible that the models are underestimating the climate response to CO2 increases. If that's the case, it "would mean our understanding of the climate system is incomplete," he says.

SMOOT PEDDLERS:

Europe Thumps U.S., Again: First lower taxes, now freer trade. (WSJ, 7/20/09)

Last week Brussels and Seoul finished the outline of a new trade agreement, and the two sides will now write up the technical language to codify it. As for the pending U.S.-Korea trade agreement, Congress has done . . . nothing.

South Korea has made negotiating trade deals a centerpiece of its foreign and economic policy. The U.S. FTA, signed in 2007 but still not ratified, is one example. Negotiations are planned or under way with a long list of countries, including India, Canada and Australia. On the EU side, the Commission is vigorously defending the pact against domestic critics, including the European auto industry. EU approval isn't a sure thing, but Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt is aiming to finish it by December.

Compare that to the U.S., where the FTA with Korea is bogged down in Big Labor politics. Bashing the deal became de rigueur in the Democratic Party primary before last year's Presidential election. Candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both claimed the deal wouldn't open Korea's auto market to U.S. imports, all evidence to the contrary. Now, with Democrats running both the White House and Congress, prospects are bleak for any trade deal. Colombia has also been left hanging, even though its goods already enter the U.S. duty free under the Andean preferences program.

OF COURSE, IT'S ALSO POLITICS THAT'S GOING TO KILL IT:

'REFORM' WILL COST US MORE FOR LESS (SALLY PIPES, July 20, 2009, NY Post)

Candidate Barack Obama promised Americans savings of $2,500, expanded coverage and no generalized tax increase in the form of an individual mandate. Yet President Obama is endorsing the 1,000-plus-page bills working their way through this liberal Congress -- which promise to expand government while exploding costs.

In its current form, "health-care reform" will bury future generations in government debt even as politicians and bureaucrats struggle to stop the hemorrhaging by cutting back Medicare and hammering the private sector with taxes. The entire effort is a case study in exactly why politics should be kept out of the examination room.

MORE:
Governors Fear Medicaid Costs in Health Plan (KEVIN SACK and ROBERT PEAR, July 19, 2009, NY Times)

The nation’s governors, Democrats as well as Republicans, voiced deep concern Sunday about the shape of the health care plan emerging from Congress, fearing that Washington was about to hand them expensive new Medicaid obligations without money to pay for them.

The role of the states in a restructured health care system dominated the summer meeting of the National Governors Association here this weekend — with bipartisan animosity voiced against the plan during a closed-door luncheon on Saturday and in a private meeting on Sunday with the health and human services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius.

“I think the governors would all agree that what we don’t want from the federal government is unfunded mandates,” said Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont, a Republican, the group’s incoming chairman. “We can’t have the Congress impose requirements that we are forced to absorb beyond our capacity to do so.”

The governors’ backlash creates yet another health care headache for the Obama administration, which has tried to recruit state leaders to pressure members of Congress to wrap up their fitful negotiations.

THE SECOND PUTT WAS JUST A MISS...:

The Most Painful Putts in Golf History (David Biderman, 7/20/09, WSJ)

At age 59, Tom Watson was one shot shy of making history Sunday in the British Open. Then his putt fell short, positioning him on the losing end of a four-hole playoff. Sure, the putt was makeable, but it will never be considered one of the worst misses in golf history -- many others have him beat.

STRANGE OOMENS:

Disaster fears as 'monster' eclipse looms: THE world's most populous nations will gaze skywards on Wednesday as the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st Century lays a carpet of darkness across India and China, from Mumbai to Shanghai. (AFP, 7/20/09)

The excitement this time around is largely due to the unusually long duration of the instant of greatest eclipse, or "totality" - when the sun is wholly covered.

At its maximum, this will last six minutes and 39 seconds - a duration that will not be matched until the year 2132.

The up-to-258km-wide shadow cast along the "path of totality" will first make landfall on the western Indian state of Gujarat shortly before 6:30am (11am AEST).

It then races across India, blacking out the holy city of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges, squeezing between the northern and southern tips of Bangladesh and Nepal before engulfing most of Bhutan, traversing the Chinese mainland and slipping back out to sea off Shanghai.

Its next landfall is Japan's southern Ryukyu Islands, after which it curves southeast through the Pacific Ocean where the maximum duration of totality will occur.

AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I THOUGHT UICORN RIDERS COULD FLY...:

Poll Shows Obama Slipping on Key Issues: Approval Rating on Health Care Falls Below 50 Percent (Dan Balz and Jon Cohen, 7/20/09, Washington Post)

Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama's stewardship on the issue has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. [...]

Since April, approval of Obama's handling of health care has dropped from 57 percent to 49 percent, with disapproval rising from 29 percent to 44 percent. [...]

Obama's approval rating on his handling of the deficit is down to 43 percent, as independents now tilt toward disapproval (42 percent approve; 48 percent disapprove).

More broadly, 55 percent of Americans put a higher priority on holding the deficit in check than on spending to boost the economy, compared with 40 percent who advocate additional outlays even if it means a sharply greater budget shortfall. This is a big shift from January, when a slim majority preferred to emphasize federal spending.

Independents, who split 50 percent to 46 percent for more spending in January, now break 56 percent to 41 percent for more fiscal discipline. But a larger shift has been among moderate and conservative Democrats, who prioritized more spending by about 2 to 1 in January and March. Now they are about evenly divided in approach.

Nearly a quarter of moderate and conservative Democrats (22 percent) now see Obama as an "old-style tax-and-spend Democrat," up from 4 percent in March. Among all Americans, 52 percent consider Obama a "new-style Democrat who will be careful with the public's money." That is down from 58 percent a month ago and 62 percent in March, to about where President Bill Clinton was on that question in the summer of 1993.

Concerns about the federal account balance are also reflected in views about another round of stimulus spending. In the new poll, more than six in 10 oppose spending beyond the $787 billion already allocated to boost the economy. Most Democrats support more spending; big majorities of Republicans and independents are against the idea.

Support for new spending is tempered by flagging confidence on Obama's plan for the economy. Fifty-six percent are confident that his programs will reap benefits, but that is down from 64 percent in March and from 72 percent just before he took office six months ago. More now say they have no confidence in the plan than say they are very confident it will work. Among independents and Republicans, confidence has decreased by 20 or more points; it has dropped seven points among Democrats.

Approval of Obama's handling of the overall economy stands at 52 percent, with 46 percent disapproving, and, for the first time in his presidency, more Americans strongly disapprove of his performance on the economy than strongly approve.

The White House is being forced to acknowledge the wide gap between its once-upbeat predictions about the economy and today's bleak landscape.

The administration's annual midsummer budget update is sure to show higher deficits and unemployment and slower growth than projected in President Barack Obama's budget in February and update in May, and that could complicate his efforts to get his signature health care and global-warming proposals through Congress.

The release of the update — usually scheduled for mid-July — has been put off until the middle of next month, giving rise to speculation the White House is delaying the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess.

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPY:

Iran`s Khatami Wants Referendum On Legitimacy: `People should be asked whether they are happy with the current situation`, ebsites on Monday quoted Khatami as saying. (Javno, 7/20/09)

"The only way out of the current situation is to hold a referendum," websites on Monday quoted Khatami as saying. "People should be asked whether they are happy with the current situation ... If the vast majority of people are happy with the current situation, we will accept it as well." [...]

The election also exposed deep rifts within Iran's ruling elite with defeated reformist candidate Mirhossein Mousavi, Khatami and Rafsanjani continuing to dispute the result even after it was endorsed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure who traditionally has the last word on matters of state.

The Iranian army has arrested 36 officers who planned to attend last week's Friday prayer sermon by former president Hashemi Rafsanjani in their military uniforms as an act of political defiance, according to Farsi-language websites. [...]

Security forces used teargas and arrested dozens of those in attendance in a sign of the authorities' nervousness over the event.

The officers were rounded up on Friday morning by army intelligence agents who had caught wind of the plan. They are said to have been arrested at their homes and taken to an unknown location.

Peiknet, a Farsi website, said the officers had agreed the action at a weekly prayer meeting the night before at the Shah Abdolazim religious shrine in Shahr-e Rey, on Tehran's southern outskirts. "They decided to attend the Friday prayer in their military clothes as a sign of protest against the cruel massacre of people by the basij and revolutionary guards and to show their objection against this process and support for the people," the site said. It named 24 of the officers, who included two majors, four captains, eight lieutenants, six sergeants and four warrant officers.

The arrests expose the authorities' sensitivity to signs of mutiny among the various branches of the security forces.

Reports last month suggested that a senior revolutionary guard commander, General Ali Fazli, had been arrested for refusing to obey orders to suppress protests against election result. The reports were later denied but some sources say Fazli remains under pressure to toe the line.

THANKS, W:

US and India to sign defence pact (Reuters, 7/20/09)

The United States and India are expected to sign an agreement on Monday that would take a major step towards allowing the sale of sophisticated US arms to the South Asian nation, three senior US officials said.

Known as an ”end-use monitoring” agreement and required by US law for such weapons sales, the pact would let Washington check that India was using any arms for the purposes intended and preventing the technology from leaking to others.

THE MAN WHO KILLED LITERATURE:

Frank McCourt; storyteller hit gold in ‘Angela’s Ashes’ (William Grimes, July 20, 2009, NY Times)

Mr. McCourt, who taught in the city’s school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he described as “a modest book, modestly written.’’

In it, Mr. McCourt described a childhood of terrible deprivation. After his alcoholic father abandoned the family, his mother - the Angela of the title - begged on the streets of Limerick to keep him and his three brothers meagerly fed, poorly clothed, and housed in a basement flat with no bathroom and a thriving population of vermin. The book’s clear-eyed look at childhood misery, its incongruously lilting, buoyant prose, and its heartfelt urgency struck a remarkable chord with readers and critics.

“When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all,’’ the book’s second paragraph begins in a famous passage. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

“People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.’’

“Angela’s Ashes,’’ published by Scribner in 1996, rose to the top of the bestseller lists and stayed there for more than two years, selling 4 million copies in hardback. The next year, it won the Pulitzer Prize for biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award.

THE LAST GOLFER:

Tom Watson's historic run at the 2009 British Open is one for the ages (Mike Lupica, July 19th 2009, NY Daily News)

When Watson was young, he putted the way kids do before they know putting is supposed to be hard. He didn't care how far past the cup he rammed the birdie putts he didn't make, because whether it was six feet or eight feet or even 10 feet coming back, he seemed to make them all.

He made all the putts the rest of us miss.

Until he stopped making them. He stopped making short putts. Watson had the yips, and after a while it was as terrible watching him stand over a 3-footer as it had been once with Ben Hogan. Watson stopped making putts and he stopped winning, even though he could hit the ball like a dream, the way he has so far at Turnberry. He was driving it better than ever and hitting irons as well as he ever had, and he couldn't win.

And Watson stayed in there. He didn't quit, he didn't go to a long putter or a belly putter or a cross-handed grip or the grip known as the "claw." He was still the tough kid from Kansas City who used to beat balls in the winter when no one else was around because he wanted to be great. He would figure this out.

A friend once asked why he didn't go to the belly putter or the long putter that other shaky golfers used, and got the look that Watson used to stare down even Jack Nicklaus with.

"It's not golf," Watson said.

URKELIZATION:

Obama Loses His Cool Teleprompter troubles and All-Star gaffes (STEVE RHODES, Jul 17, 2009, NBC Chicago)

The most viewed story on the Chicago Tribune website as of this writing is a column asking if President Obama wore Mom Jeans to the mound when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Tuesday night's All-Star Game.

So much for the president being the coolest guy on Earth. [...]

Pundits mostly pile on Obama for a series of gaffes at the All-Star Game, but date the shaky week to the crashing of a teleprompter on Monday that left Obama "in absolute discomfort."

But Obama's series of goofs began long before this week. In March, for example, another teleprompter meltdown led to the Irish prime minister repeating Obama's statement word-for-word - while Obama thanked himself for being there.

In May, a teleprompter blew over in high winds in Colorado and Vice President Joe Biden, referring to Obama's reliance on the devices, joked, "What I am going to tell the president when I tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?!"

WHEN YOU GET THROWN BY THE UNICORN...PANIC:

Barack Obama feels the heat, changes the play (BEN SMITH, 7/19/09, Politico)

Finally, we’re starting to see him sweat.

President Barack Obama made his personal icy cool the trademark of his campaign, the tenor of his White House and the hallmark of an early run of successes at home and abroad. But as the glamour wears off and a long, frustrating summer wears on, he is being forced to improvise — stooping to respond to political foes and adjusting his tactics and demeanor for the trench warfare of a legislative agenda. [...]

Obama’s political operation has dispensed with its post-inauguration cocktails for Republicans – or more often, ignoring them outright — in favor of the old politics of engage, attack and cajole. Obama’s even engaging in a little Democrat-on-Democrat politics, as his ex-campaign arm is beaming TV ads into the home states of moderate fence-sitters on health care.

The tightly programmed White House also is champing at the bit, kicking off what officials say will be a relentless three-week push on health care, starting with the hastily scheduled Friday address. But its first event might have backfired a bit. Its main consequence was proving that the magnetism of Obama’s personal appearances has worn off, as it drew little media attention and a dismissive tweet from the key Senate Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa: “Waste of time.”

The sum has been a new sense of uncertainty and strain, and a growing murmur among Democrats in Washington nervous about the White House’s tactics, and a rising tide of concern in the states as local Democratic parties eye midterm elections that are traditionally a challenge for a new president.

ONLY THE TSAR CAN STOP THE BOLSHEVIKS:

Iran Following Path of Former Soviet Union- Yazdi (Manal Lutfi, 7/19/09, Asharq Alawasat)

Ebrahim Yazdi, the Secretary-General of the "Freedom Movement of Iran" which is one of the parties of Iran's reformist movement warned that Iran is following in the path of the of the former Soviet Union, being a "strong totalitarian regime with a very high effective but corrupt secret police."

Yazdi clarified to Asharq Al-Awsat that "the former Soviet Union collapsed because the leadership moved too late to respond to the demands of the people and implement reform…I believe Iran is following this same path but with two key differences; firstly Iran is not an empire that can be broken up into different republics and countries. Secondly, the collapse of the Soviet Union signaled the end of the Marxist ideology…however Islam will not disappear as Marxism did. Islam is a part of our identity and culture. I am not worried about Islam, for Islam has a God to protect it…however I am afraid for the Republic of Iran and [the fate of] democracy in my country."

He added "I know that we need Jacob's patience, Noah's longevity, and Mohamed's tact [to overcome this]."

Yazdi also informed Asharq Al-Awsat that the Reformist movement is looking at a number of different ideas to continue its protest against the results of the recent presidential elections, and that some of these ideas include forming a "consultative council" comprised of Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohammad Khatami. He added that this consultative council "will place Ali Akber Hashemi Rafsanjani in a better position to aid the Reformists via official institutes."

MAKING THE ATTACK WORK FOR YOU:

Giuliani Would Be Strong Contender for Governor (Congressional Quarterly, July 17, 2009)

Former New York City Mayor and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani could make a race out of the 2010 governor's contest, if early polling is any indication.

A Rasmussen poll of likely voters conducted July 14 showed that not only is Giuliani leading unpopular Democratic incumbent David A. Paterson by more than 20 percentage points, but he's also within single digits of highly popular Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

AND OUTLASTED TELEVISION:

Walter Cronkite, 92, Dies; Trusted Voice of TV News (DOUGLAS MARTIN, 7/18/09, NY Times)

Walter Leland Cronkite Jr. was born on Nov. 4, 1916, in St. Joseph, Mo., the son of Walter Leland Cronkite Sr., a dentist, and the former Helen Lena Fritsche. His ancestors had settled in New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony that became New York. As a boy, Walter peddled magazines door to door and hawked newspapers. As a teenager, after the family had moved to Houston, he got a job with The Houston Post as a copy boy and cub reporter. At the same time, he had a paper route delivering The Post to his neighbors.

“As far as I know, there were no other journalists delivering the morning paper with their own compositions inside,” he wrote in his autobiography.

When he was 16, Mr. Cronkite went with friends to Chicago for the 1933 World’s Fair. He volunteered to help demonstrate an experimental version of television.

“I could honestly say to all of my colleagues, ‘I was in television long before you were,’ ” he said in an interview with CBS News in 1996.

Mr. Cronkite attended the University of Texas for two years, studying political science, economics and journalism, working on the school newspaper and picking up journalism jobs with The Houston Press and other newspapers. He also auditioned to be an announcer at an Austin radio station but was turned down. He left college in 1935 without graduating to take a job as a reporter with The Press.

While visiting Kansas City, Mo., he was hired by the radio station KCMO to read news and broadcast football games under the name Walter Wilcox. (Radio stations at the time wanted to “own” announcers’ names so that popular ones could not be taken elsewhere.)

He was not at the games but received cryptic summaries of each play by telegraph. These provided fodder for vivid descriptions of the action. He added details of what local men in the stands were wearing, which he learned by calling their wives. He found out in advance what music the band would be playing so he could describe halftime festivities.

At KCMO, Mr. Cronkite met an advertising writer named Mary Elizabeth Maxwell. The two read a commercial together. One of Mr. Cronkite’s lines was, “You look like an angel.” They were married for 64 years until her death in 2005.

In addition to his son, Walter Leland III, known as Chip, Mr. Cronkite is survived by his daughters, Nancy Elizabeth and Mary Kathleen; and four grandsons.

In his last years, Joanna Simon, a former opera singer and sister of Carly Simon, was his frequent companion.

OKAY, WE PROVED WE HAD THE SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY....THEN WHAT?:

One Giant Leap to Nowhere (TOM WOLFE, 7/19/09, NY Times)

How could such a thing happen? In hindsight, the answer is obvious. NASA had neglected to recruit a corps of philosophers.

From the moment the Soviets launched Sputnik I into orbit around the Earth in 1957, everybody from Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on down looked upon the so-called space race as just one thing: a military contest. At first there was alarm over the Soviets’ seizure of the “strategic high ground” of space. They were already up there — right above us! They could now hurl thunderbolts down whenever and wherever they wanted. And what could we do about it? Nothing. Ka-boom! There goes Bangor ... Ka-boom! There goes Boston ... Ka-boom! There goes New York ... Baltimore ... Washington ... St. Louis ... Denver ... San Jose — blown away! — just like that.

Physicists were quick to point out that nobody would choose space as a place from which to attack Earth. The spacecraft, the missile, the Earth itself, plus the Earth’s own rotation, would be traveling at wildly different speeds upon wildly different geometric planes. You would run into the notorious “three body problem” and then some. You’d have to be crazy. The target would be untouched and you would wind up on the floor in a fetal ball, twitching and gibbering. On the other hand, the rockets that had lifted the Soviets’ five-ton manned ships into orbit were worth thinking about. They were clearly powerful enough to reach any place on Earth with nuclear warheads.

But that wasn’t what was on President Kennedy’s mind when he summoned NASA’s administrator, James Webb, and Webb’s deputy, Hugh Dryden, to the White House in April 1961. The president was in a terrible funk. He kept muttering: “If somebody can just tell me how to catch up. Let’s find somebody — anybody ... There’s nothing more important.” He kept saying, “We’ve got to catch up.” Catching up had become his obsession. He never so much as mentioned the rockets.

Dryden said that, frankly, there was no way we could catch up with the Soviets when it came to orbital flights. A better idea would be to announce a crash program on the scale of the Manhattan Project, which had produced the atomic bomb. Only the aim this time would be to put a man on the Moon within the next 10 years.

Barely a month later Kennedy made his famous oration before Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” He neglected to mention Dryden.

INTUITIVELY, not consciously, Kennedy had chosen another form of military contest, an oddly ancient and archaic one. It was called “single combat.”

The best known of all single combats was David versus Goliath. Before opposing armies clashed in all-out combat, each would send forth its “champion,” and the two would fight to the death, usually with swords. The victor would cut off the head of the loser and brandish it aloft by its hair.

The deadly duel didn’t take the place of the all-out battle. It was regarded as a sign of which way the gods were leaning. The two armies then had it out on the battlefield ... unless one army fled in terror upon seeing its champion slaughtered. There you have the Philistines when Little David killed their giant, Goliath ... and cut his head off and brandished it aloft by its hair (1 Samuel 17:1-58). They were overcome by a mad desire to be somewhere else. (The Israelites pursued and destroyed them.)

More than two millenniums later, the mental atmosphere of the space race was precisely that.

Between 1962 and 1972, the U.S. space program spent $176 billion (inflation-adjusted in 2009 dollars). In magnitude, that comes close to the mammoth federal expenditures on building the interstate highway system over the same period (outlays from the Federal Highway Trust Fund totalled $220 billion in 2009 dollars from 1962-72).

We know what we got from the interstate highway system—fast, easy transportation, the creation of the suburbs, an entire transformation of our way of life. What did we get economically from the space program, especially the manned portion? Much, much less. Government investment in space, rather than opening up new opportunities, turned out to be a one-off. Lots of communication satellites, yes, but what else? There’s no manufacturing in space, and unless I’m wrong, there’s been little research done in space which has had great practical applications (please let me know if I’m wrong about this).

I’m sorry to be a grump about this. I don’t think the expenditures on space were a bad idea. I don’t think the moon landing was a bad idea. To the contrary—I’m glad we did it.

I’m just making the economic point that we used large amounts of scarce scientific and technical labor and money for one activity which at least up to now, has not produced big economic payoffs.

THE SOONER HE DITCHES OBAMACARE AND CAP-N-TRADE...:

Obama no longer stressing August deadline for passing health reform bill (JONATHAN MARTIN, 7/18/09, Politico)

In his most recent remarks, President Obama has stopped mentioning what had been his mantra — that the House and Senate finish their health-care bills by the August recess — and switched to a less specific call to fast action.

WHAT DID HIS APPOINTMENT OF HER HAVE TO DO WITH LIBERALISM?:

Little for Liberals in Confirmation Hearings: As Sotomayor and White House Avoid Ideology, Some on Left See Wasted Chance (Amy Goldstein and Paul Kane, 7/18/09, Washington Post)

The hearings were a moment of history that liberals had awaited for 15 years: an opportunity for a Democratic president's Supreme Court nominee to inject into the public dialogue fresh ideas about the Constitution and the law, beginning to recalibrate a court that has gravitated to the right.

Yet Sotomayor did not articulate such a vision. In answering Cardin, and in scores of other times during four intense days in the witness chair, she eluded efforts of Democrats and Republicans alike to draw out any statement of liberal thought.

Sotomayor's inscrutability last week has raised fundamental questions: about the Obama administration's approach to future nominations, the direction of the court, the way Senate Democrats are using the benefits of their majority and the influence of the American left.

At the heart of those questions is another one, which has ignited a debate among legal scholars, advocates and members of Congress. Did the hearings reveal a true absence of liberal ideas in the 55-year-old judge President Obama chose to fill his first Supreme Court vacancy? Or did they reflect sheer political pragmatism by someone, coached by White House staff members and following the model of other recent nominees, seeking to maximize support by avoiding controversy?

Either way, Sotomayor's reticence, if not her nomination, has disappointed legal thinkers on the left. The hearings "did serious damage to the cause of progressive thought in constitutional law," said Geoffrey R. Stone, a University of Chicago Law School professor who was dean there when Obama joined its faculty. Doug Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal think tank, called them "a totally missed opportunity. . . . The progressive legal project hit rock bottom [last] week."

EXCEPT THAT PUBLIC POLICY...:

Why not try ownership?: Reform bill too ambitious for real problem (Deroy Murdock, July 19, 2009, Washington Times)

Rather than endorse such big-government overkill, pro-freedom members of Congress should promote a simple concept: Let every American own and control an individual health insurance policy that can be transported among jobs, self-employment, graduate school and life's other twists and turns. [...]

What Americans need is a thriving market in individually owned and controlled health insurance plans. When you book an airline flight, Priceline.com does not ask, "What is your group number?" You decide when and where to fly and then buy your ticket. At least with personal travel, your boss does not fund this. The same is true for car insurance, home insurance and often life insurance. Why must Americans shop for health insurance at work rather than online or through independent agents?

Health care reform should give Americans the option of using money tax-free to purchase whatever kinds of health insurance make them happy. If employers offer such plans, lovely. If not, individuals should be encouraged, through tax-free health savings accounts, to buy their own policies and maintain them throughout their careers. This dramatically would reduce the tragedy of "job lock," whereby employees put up with bosses and duties they cannot stand merely to keep employer-furnished health coverage.

As Rep. John Shadegg, Arizona Republican, has argued, Americans also should be free to buy health plans across state lines. Today, such policies usually must be purchased within consumers' own states, subject to state-level insurance regulations. If New York residents may arrange home loans through Illinois-based banks, for example, why are we allowed to buy health plans only through insurers that operate in the Empire State?

NO ONE FLIES AEROFLOT:

The Airbus 330 - an accident waiting to happen: With its human-proof computer systems, it is the most technically advanced aircraft in the world. So why has the Airbus 330's gleaming new fleet been so dogged by technical problems... and disturbing evidence of flawed cabling been so comprehensively ignored? 9David Rose, 19th July 2009 , Daily Mail)

Eight months after QF72’s emergency, in the early hours of June 1, 2009, another A330 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris went down with the loss of all 216 passengers and 12 crew – France’s worst air disaster.

The full story may never be known. Like most of the wreckage, AF447’s black boxes – its data and voice recorders – are thought to be resting 15,000ft below the surface in an underwater mountain range. However, before it crashed the plane transmitted a series of automatic messages, from which it’s possible to determine several events leading up to the accident. These are detailed in the newly published official report. Having analysed this as well as reports on the Qantas flight and on other similar incidents, Live has found worrying parallels. Interviews with pilots, lawyers and crash investigators suggest there may be an underlying problem with A330s. It’s impossible to conclude what this is, but there are two prime suspects – either flaws in the software, or with the wiring found inside huge numbers of modern aircraft.

‘It looks to me like there’s only one reason why AF447 crashed and QF72 survived,’ says Charles-Henri Tardivat, a former crash investigator who’s now part of a team from the London law firm Stewarts Law, which represents the victims’ families. ‘On QF72, the same things started happening that preceded the Air France crash. They were able to recover control because they were flying in daylight and perfect weather. They could see what was happening, even without their instruments. But AF447 was caught in a violent storm at night. The A330 is a very well-built aircraft, but there obviously is a problem somewhere. With so many of them out there, we need to find it.’

In an A330 cockpit, everything is computerised, and when the system is working properly – under what Airbus terms ‘normal law’ – it should be impossible for the crew to make a mistake. For example, when a plane is cruising at high altitude, the window between a dangerous overspeed that might place intolerable stresses on the airframe and a stall is quite narrow – less than 70mph. In older planes, pilots discover the aircraft is at risk of stalling through cockpit alarms and when their control sticks start to shake, and they have to react very quickly. On a modern Airbus, if the airspeed falls to a dangerous level, the system will increase the engines’ thrust without human intervention.

‘Airbus think they’ve designed a computer that’s smarter than a pilot,’ one airman says. ‘If a pilot moves the controls so as to turn the aeroplane upside down, the computer will refuse.’

It’s possible for the pilots to override the computer, effectively switching to manual control – what Airbus calls ‘direct law’. But even then, they remain dependent on electronics. ‘In older aeroplanes the throttles in the cockpit are hooked to the fuel controllers on the engines by a steel throttle cable,’ another pilot says. ‘On an Airbus, nothing in the cockpit is real. Everything is electronic. The throttles, rudder and brake pedals and the side-stick are hooked to rheostats that talk to a computer, which talks to an electric hydraulic servo valve, which in turn – hopefully – moves something.’

In the Nineties, when fly-by-wire was in its infancy, several Airbuses crashed because of conditions that hadn’t been programmed into the software. A more recent incident involved a brand new A340 being tested on the ground in Toulouse in November 2007. With the engines running at high power – and, contrary to specified procedure, no wheel chocks in place – a technician was taken by surprise when the plane started to move. Instead of reducing the thrust, he released the parking brake in order to use normal braking – but failed to keep the pedals fully pressed.

Seeing a concrete blast wall straight ahead, he tried to steer away from it – but since the A340 automatically inhibits centre-wheel braking when the nose wheels are steered, he didn’t succeed. By the time the plane hit the wall, it had reached 36mph. Four people were seriously injured. The aircraft was a write-off.

Australia’s Transport Safety Bureau, which is still investigating QF72, isn’t yet sure why the aircraft plunged so violently. But the plane’s survival means the incident can be reconstructed from the cockpit – in this case, the black boxes were recovered.

The event began at 12.40, just after the first co-pilot went for his break. The first sign was the sudden disconnection of the autopilot, accompanied by a ‘master caution’ alarm which sounded almost continuously for the rest of the flight. Three seconds later, the ECAM – the Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor, the display panel that alerts the crew to faults – warned that a critically important system had failed. This was one of the plane’s three ADIRUs, Air Data Inertial Reference Units, which gather data from the plane’s sensors about its speed, direction, position, altitude and angle of attack. Losing the ADIRUs is the digital equivalent of flying blind.

The captain tried to re-engage both the primary and back-up autopilots, but to no avail. Messages suggested the computers were going haywire. Two minutes after the crisis began, the first downward lurch occurred, caused by an ‘uncommanded’ movement of the elevators on the tailplane. ‘The captain reported that he applied back pressure on his side-stick to arrest the pitch-down movement,’ says the Bureau report. ‘Initially this action seemed to have no effect, but then the aircraft responded.’

However, the ECAM was still going crazy, with ‘multiple’ fault warnings – including one saying that one of the three primary computers had failed. While the crew tried to reboot it, the plane lurched downwards again, and as before, it at first failed to respond to the controls. At 12.49, they issued a radio alert and made for Learmonth air base.

The ECAM was still displaying contradictory, rapidly scrolling messages about the plane’s speed and altitude, and the computers were still not functioning. Unable to rely on Airbus’s much-vaunted technology, the pilots had to position themselves for a ‘straight-in visual approach to [the] runway’ from a distance of 15 nautical miles.

Behind that bald language lies a terrifying fact: had they not been able to see the runway from that considerable distance, they might not have been able to land. No less frightening is the fact that the Bureau is still ‘evaluating’ all the data to ascertain what went wrong. Meanwhile, the plane has been cleaned, refurbished and is back in service.

QF72 isn’t the only A330 to have encountered unexplained electronic problems. On flights from Paris to Martinique in August and September last year, two planes flown by Air Caraibes Atlantique also experienced the sudden disconnection of their autopilots. Forced to proceed on ‘alternate law’ – a hybrid of manual and automatic flying in which many of the normal computerised protections are lost – the pilots also had to deal with the loss of ADIRUs, and bogus ECAM messages.

A CAPTIVE OF HIS CULTURE:

The Genesis enigma: How DID the Bible describe the evolution of life 3,000 years before Darwin? (Christopher Hart, 18th July 2009, Daily Mail)

The revelation came to Professor Andrew Parker during a visit to Rome. He was in the Sistine Chapel, gazing up at Michelangelo's awesome ceiling paintings, when a realisation struck him with dizzying force.

'A Biblical enigma exists that is on the one hand so cryptic it has remained camouflaged for millennia, and on the other so obvious one cannot miss it.'

The enigma is that the order of Creation as described in the Book of Genesis, and so powerfully depicted in the Sistine Chapel by the greatest artist of the Renaissance, has been precisely, eerily confirmed by modern evolutionary science.

EXCEPT THAT LOSING ON HEALTH CARE AND SS REFORM DIDN'T EVEN SLOW BILL OR W:

Alliances In Health Debate Splinter: Once-Friendly Groups Split as Details Emerge (Dan Eggen and Perry Bacon Jr., 7/18/09, Washington Post)

In one sign of the changing political climate, the Democratic National Committee this week began running cable television ads targeting many of the party's wavering senators, declaring that "it's time for health-care reform." The DNC, acting through its Organizing for America grass-roots project, has also ramped up a nationwide schedule of meetings and rallies drawing on Obama's 13 million-name campaign e-mail list.

Another leading liberal group, Health Care for America Now, announced an $800,000 ad campaign yesterday with the American Federation of State, Federal and Municipal Employees that is targeting centrist lawmakers in nine states, including Indiana, Ohio, Louisiana and North Dakota. The group is running a telephone campaign that has prompted as many as 16,000 calls a day from reform supporters to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Republicans, conservative groups and many business organizations have responded by accelerating efforts to derail the legislation, portraying Democratic proposals as costly and dangerous experiments that will put the country on a path to inefficient, "government-run" health care. Their main goal is to slow down the pace of the legislation in Congress in the hope of fomenting wider opposition.

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said yesterday during a conference call with conservative activists. "It will break him."

LABOUR DERANGEMENT SYNDROME:

Labour ministers plan reputation trashing of Army chief General Sir Richard Dannatt (James Kirkup, 17 Jul 2009, Daily Telegraph)

Sir Richard has publicly called for more troops and helicopters in Afghanistan, piling pressure on Gordon Brown over his support for the Armed Forces.

Visiting Afghanistan this week, he again called for more “boots on the ground” and revealed he had been forced to borrow a US helicopter because no British aircraft were available.

His words infuriated ministers, and after Sir Richard’s retirement on August 28, some Labour MPs plan to raise questions about the general’s role in recent decisions on defence policy.

One minister said: “Once he’s gone, we can have a go at him. He can write his book and talk all he wants, but he’ll be fair game then.”

In retirement, Sir Richard is likely to remain a thorn in Labour’s side.

WHY WOULD ANYONE EXPECT THE HOUSE GOP TO UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE?:

If Only It Were a Tax (Lee Lane, July 18, 2009, The American)

With the current plan, government would require most sources of man-made GHG emissions to have a valid permit for each ton that they discharge into the atmosphere. Government would issue the permits and, by limiting the number it issued, would establish a cap on total U.S. emissions. The price of permits would rise to whatever level would balance the demand for permits with the supply that government has issued.

Under this system, hard-to-predict forces such as technology trends, economic growth rates, fuel prices, and even weather will determine GHG permit prices. As a result, a GHG cap can easily cost more than the price of the harm that it avoids. Former Vice President Al Gore, for example, has proposed a cap that has been calculated to cost $17 trillion more than the expected future damages from unchecked climate change. The current plan is also very likely to overshoot that mark. Further, with cap-and-trade, permit prices will fluctuate widely, and businesses will have to incur unnecessary costs to hedge against these price swings.

The carbon tax is free from these defects. With it, businesses know the current and future price for emitting a ton of GHG—at least until Congress changes the tax rate. Since the tax rate is set in advance, there will be no punishing cost spikes just because technology changed too slowly or the economy grew too fast. And since the tax rate will change slowly and predictably, hedging costs will be minimized.

This comparison casts our national discourse on climate in a somewhat ironic light. President Obama and his allies are promoting a tool for GHG control that is distinctly more costly than a simple carbon tax. Yet most Republican congressmen and conservative pundits, instead of pointing out that a tax would be a far better option, are hard at work trying wrongly to convince voters that the current plan is a tax.

THE PROBLEM IS IT'S TOO FRUITY:

Obama losing some support among nervous Dems (BETH FOUHY, 7/18/09, AP )

Another Democrat, Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, tells his local newspaper that Obama is too liberal and is "very unpopular" in his district. [...]

Obama continues to be comparatively popular. But now recent national surveys have shown a measurable drop in his job approval rating, even among Democrats. A CBS news survey out this week had his national approval rating at 57 percent, and his standing among Democrats down 10 percentage points since last month, from 92 percent to 82 percent.

With the economy continuing to sputter and joblessness on the rise, many of Obama's staunchest Democratic supporters are anxious for his agenda to start bearing fruit.

AT LEAST THEY KNOW WHOSE SIDE WE BELONG ON:

‘Death to China’ heard at Rafsanjani sermon. Why?: Protesters also targeted Russia. Both countries had quickly recognized President Ahmadinejad's reelection victory last month. (Kristen Chick, 07.17.09, CS Monitor)

“Death to China!” and “Death to Russia!” chanted supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi during a sermon by influential former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to news reports. Mr. Rafsanjani used the speech to criticize the government’s crackdown on dissent following the contested June 12 election.

The Associated Press reports that the slogan broke out after hard-line supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yelled out the familiar “Death to America” chant during the speech. And Nico Pitney of The Huffington Post posted a YouTube video showing an outdoors rally in Tehran today, in which he says the protesters are chanting in Farsi “Russia, do us a favor and let go of our country!”

SHOW ME A WITCH TRIAL AND I'LL SHOW YOU A WITCH:

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane: This debut novel blends the history of the Salem witch trials with the tale of a 1991 Harvard student who makes some surprising discoveries about her family’s past. (Marjorie Kehe, July 18, 2009, CS Monitor)

It seems an odd and disturbing question, particularly coming from a renowned Harvard scholar: “Have you not considered the distinct possibility that the accused were simply guilty of witchcraft?”

JUST ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL REGIME CHANGE:

Sound, Stable Indonesia: A terrorist attack can't derail a booming economy. (Ian Bremmer and David Kiu, 07.17.09, Forbes)

The resilience of Indonesia's currency and markets in the face of the terrorist attacks underscores the quiet confidence investors have developed towards Indonesia.

The country already figures among the world's top three exporters of coal, natural gas, crude palm oil and natural rubber. It is home to the world's largest gold mine and second-largest copper mine. Its 237 million people give Indonesia a larger population than Brazil or Russia. The growth of its workforce over the next two decades will likely prove more promising than for any of the four BRIC countries. Its still relatively low Internet and credit penetration give the country room to grow.

More importantly, Indonesia is a political success story. Legislative and presidential elections this year were largely free and fair--a noteworthy achievement for a country burdened little more than a decade ago with a military dictatorship that pervaded nearly every aspect of political and economic life. The Indonesian military has withdrawn from politics in recent years, a development that has eluded neighboring Thailand and the Philippines. Despite the recent bomb attacks, the first in four years, Indonesia has largely beaten back the rise of Islamist extremism and al-Qaida-inspired terrorism that have embroiled other countries like Pakistan. The peace agreement in Aceh has helped contain separatist violence.

In short, Indonesia has traveled a long way from the crossroads it faced following the Asian financial crisis and the fall of Suharto in the late 1990s.

UNITY, BUT POST-AHMEDINEJAD:

Iranian protesters galvanized by sermon: They clash with security forces in Tehran after a sermon by top cleric Hashemi Rafsanjani, who criticized the election and called for rule of law, unity and dialogue. (Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, July 18, 2009, LA Times)

Mousavi's backers widely interpreted Rafsanjani's speech as anything but a call for unity. They chanted boisterous anti-government slogans for hours in defiance of menacing security forces and plainclothes Basiji militiamen.

Immediately after his speech, Tehran residents could be heard from rooftops and balconies in various districts shouting support for Rafsanjani.

"The main goal of Rafsanjani's sermon today was to improve his own position so that he can pressure Khamenei," said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran analyst. "He got large numbers to come to the streets and to listen to him. He showed that he is not a spent force."

Even before the speech, security forces were taking away young men in police vans. Helmeted Basiji militiamen aboard motorcycles began pushing toward crowds of young men and women brandishing eye-catching ribbons in green, the color of the opposition movement. Some women defiantly wore chadors in bright green instead of the traditional black.

After the sermon, downtown Tehran erupted in violence. Security forces attacked demonstrators, older and grayer than recent gatherings, who were chanting "Death to the dictator!" and "God is great."

Tear gas filled streets as protesters sought to enter the gates of the university, which riot police had locked. The crowds swarmed through downtown, chanting slogans, lighting cigarettes and holding them in front of their faces to counter the effects of the tear gas.

Masked demonstrators also set fire to trash in the middle of roadways to burn off the tear gas, videos posted on YouTube showed. One group shut down two highways, while a second handed flowers to smiling policemen and kissed them on the cheeks, according to witnesses.

Another large group gathered in front of the Ministry of Interior, which is under the control of Sadegh Mahsouli, a wealthy ally of Ahmadinejad.

"Mahsouli! Mahsouli! Give my vote back," they chanted, according to a video posted to YouTube.

Demonstrators also began to head north to approach the headquarters of state broadcasting, which has barely reported on the unrest and aired a cooking show on television during Rafsanjani's speech.

"Last Thursday five of my friends were arrested, and they are in . . . Evin Prison, and it's my duty to come and participate," said Nahid, a 22-year-old law student who asked that her last name not be published.

Reformist websites estimated that more than 1 million people participated. That number could not be confirmed, but even supporters of the hard-line camp who attended the prayer session to show support for Khamenei acknowledged that the crowds were huge.

"Mousavi caused all these problems," said a 50-year-old man who identified himself only by his first name, Hossein. "This is his fault."

As night fell, the boisterous roar of "God is great" could be heard from rooftops across the capital in what has become a daily gesture of protest against Ahmadinejad, who is to be sworn in for a second term early next month.

COMMON SENSE? NANCY PELOSI?:

Soak the rich : America's House of Representatives turns its back on common sense over health care (The Economist, 7/16/09)

On Tuesday July 14th Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, unveiled a grand strategy for health reform that is so far to the left of American political discourse that even moderate Democrats in the Senate (never mind the incensed and irrelevant House Republicans) held their noses.

Put simply, the House bill hopes to achieve near-universal health coverage by soaking the rich. Unlike some earlier Senate drafts, which either did not cover most of the nearly 50m uninsured or whose costs were reckoned to be a whopping $1.5 trillion or so, this new effort is a serious runner. According to a preliminary judgment by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which “scores” such plans, the House bill is likely to cost about $1 trillion and cover some two-thirds of the uninsured. That is a good proportion, as many of the remainder are illegal immigrants who have no chance of getting subsidised coverage under any reform.

And the plan does this in apparently “budget neutral” fashion, a requirement that everyone in Washington agrees on. The snag? Rather than finance this large expansion of coverage through savings found within the health system, as Mr Obama had prudently requested, the Democratic party’s leadership plans to pay for it by imposing an ill-advised tax on business and a steep “surcharge” on the wealthy. Companies with payrolls bigger than $250,000 per year must provide health cover for employees or face a hefty fine. The bill also plans to raise over $500 billion by increasing taxes on those making over $350,000 a year by up to 5.4%.

By embracing these two taxes, the House rejected the financing method recommended by most economists.

THE HUMILIATION IS THE POINT:

When Humor Humiliates: For gelotophobes, even good-natured laughter can sound a lot like ridicule (Susan Gaidos, August 1st, 2009, Science News)

It started as a quiet dinner conversation, punctuated with laughter. Soon, the rapid-fire “ha-ha-has” took on the tone of gunfire. Convinced it was directed at him, the young man got up to confront the noisy diners.

Naturally, the guests at the next table had no idea what the problem was. They were simply enjoying themselves and … laughing. Embarrassed by his outburst, the young man left the restaurant and never returned.

By most accounts, laughter is good medicine, the best even. But for some, such as the embarrassed diner, a good-natured chuckle isn’t funny at all. Morbidly averse to being the butt of a joke, these folks will go out of their way to avoid certain people or situations for fear of being ridiculed. For them, merely being around others who are talking and laughing can cause tension and apprehension.

Until recently, such people might have been written off as spoilsports. But in the mid-1990s, an astute German psychologist recognized the problem for what it is: a debilitating fear of being laughed at. Over the past decade, psychologists, sociologists, linguists and humor experts have examined this trait, technically known as gelotophobia. Though it sounds like an ailment involving Italian ice cream, scientists worldwide now recognize it as a distinct social phobia. Studies of causes and consequences of gelotophobia were among the topics presented in June in Long Beach, Calif., at a meeting of the International Society for Humor Studies.

Most people fear being laughed at to some degree and do their best to avoid embarrassment. One thing that sets gelotophobes apart is their inability to distinguish ridicule from playful teasing. For them, all laughter is aggressive, and a harmless joke may come across as a mean-spirited assault.

“They seem to have problems interpreting humor correctly,” says psychologist Willibald Ruch of the University of Zurich. “They probably do not understand the positive side of humor, and cannot experience it in a warm way but rather as a means to put others down

THANKFULLY THE TIMES STYLEBOOK SUBSTITUTED A G FOR THE APOSTROPHE:

The Shuffle President (MATT BAI, 7/16/09, NY Times)

Obama is the nation’s first shuffle president. He’s telling lots of stories at once, and in no particular order. His agenda is fully downloadable. If what you care most about is health care, then you can jump right to that. If global warming gets you going, then click over there. It’s not especially realistic to imagine that politics could cling to a linear way of rendering stories while the rest of American culture adapts to a more customized form of consumption. Obama’s ethos may disconcert the older guard in Washington, but it’s probably comforting to a lot of younger voters who could never be expected to listen to successive tracks, in the same order, over and over again.

MORTALITY, LIVE WITH IT:

The Horcrux of the Matter: The Half-Blood Prince is the best Harry Potter film yet. (Thomas S. Hibbs, 7/17/09, National Review)

Thoughout the Potter series, Snape has shared freely his genuine disdain for Harry, and here he suggests more clearly than ever before his subservience to the Dark Lord — but attentive viewers will come away with more questions than answers about Snape’s true loyalty. Snape has been pressed into service by Mrs. Malfoy to watch over her son, whom Voldemort has charged with a grave and secret task. In a puzzling scene in which Snape comes upon a seriously injured Draco — who has just lost a battle he initiated with Harry — Snape heals Draco, but inexplicably issues not a word of criticism for Harry.

For his part, Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) — whose sun-starved complexion is suggestive of someone consigned to cold and dark places — manages to seem by turns odious and sympathetic. In the scene that immediately precedes his fight with Harry, Malfoy is alone, weeping. By the end of the film, it is clear that Draco’s inability to comply readily with the wishes of Voldemort has less to do with cowardice than with his residual conscience. Given these nuances in characterization, the battle here between good and evil is not as black-and-white as in the previous Potter films. The only unremittingly malevolent character in this episode is Bellatrix Lestrange — aside from Lord Voldemort himself, of course.

And here, at last, we learn of the origin of Voldemort’s turn toward evil — as being rooted in his desire for power that can overcome even death. In the scene in which Slughorn finally recalls his interactions with young Tom Riddle, the future Lord Voldemort asks Slughorn about horcruxes — objects that are enchanted with slices of the spellcaster’s soul, preserving his life force for recovery and revival. Such power comes at tremendous cost, however: A horcrux can only be created by the performance of intrinsically evil acts, such as murder. There is no moral way to overcome mortality, it turns out. Saving oneself involves destroying others — and in the process, destroying oneself. As Slughorn observes in horror, “Murder rips the soul apart; it is a violation of nature.”

WE'LL WAIT:

Crowe considering new Master & Commander movie (SIMON HAYDON, 7/17/09, Associated Press)

Russell Crowe is in the early stages of negotiations to reprise the role of Jack Aubrey as a British sea captain in a new movie version from the Master & Commander series of novels.

Crowe told The Associated Press on Friday that a script based mostly on the eleventh novel of Patrick O'Brian's 20-novel series, The Reverse of the Medal, had been written, but that discussions were at a very early stage.

"There's still a long way to go," the New Zealand-born actor told AP at a cricket match between England and Australia in London. He said talks had been taking place with the owner of the rights to the novels.

AND JACOBY DIDN'T EVEN NEED TO SWIPE A BASE:

McDonald’s promises Mocha Monday madness (Boston Globe, July 15, 2009)

McDonald's is opening a new front in the ongoing java wars against such joe rivals as Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts.

To show how serious it is about its McCaf� products, McDonald's said it will give away free 7-ounce Iced Mochas and 8-ounce Hot Mocha each Monday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at participating restaurants through Aug. 3.

You don't have to buy anything else, such as an Egg McMuffin to qualify for this freebie, a local spokeswoman for McDonald's swore. Free is free, she said, and the only limit is one free product per visit per customer.

WHEN RAFA RANTS WE ALL WIN:

Rafsanjani condemns Iranian regime's handling of post-election unrest (Mark Tran, 7/17/09, guardian.co.uk)

One of Iran's most powerful clerics today attacked the Iranian government for its handling of protests and unrest that followed the disputed presidential election result. But even as Hashemi Rafsanjani made his comments, police were firing teargas and wielding batons to disperse tens of thousands of opposition supporters.

In a closely watched speech at Friday prayers, Rafsanjani abandoned his neutral stance since the 12 June poll and rounded on the regime.

"Today is a bitter day," he said at Tehran University. "People have lost their faith in the regime and their trust is damaged. It's necessary that we regain people's consent and their trust in the regime."

Rafsanjani criticised the arrest and detention of protesters, and attacked the lack of freedom of expression. He expressed sympathy for the families of dead protesters, and ended his remarks by saying: "I hope this sermon will pave a way out of this current situation. A situation that can be considered a crisis."

THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS AN ANTI-WAR FILM:

The Hurt Locker as Propaganda: For a supposedly anti-war film, Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker serves as a remarkably effective military recruiting tool. (Tara McKelvey, July 17, 2009, American Prospect)

The Hurt Locker sets itself up as am anti-war film. It opens with a quote, "War is a drug," from Chris Hedges, a Nation Institute senior fellow and author of War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning. Yet for more than two hours, the film imbues Baghdad's combat zone with excitement and drama. In one scene, a bomb-defuser, Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), searches for a detonator in a car loaded with explosives, and later he tries to save an unfortunate Iraqi man who has been forcibly strapped with homemade bombs. The tense moments are set to creepily compelling music selected by composers Marco Beltrami (he did the scores for the Scream series) and Buck Sanders, and the cinematography captures the beauty that is found in the desert landscape and even in the casing of a bullet. It is easy to understand why the soldier, William James, would take so much pleasure in his work as a daredevil bomb-defuser in Iraq, and find so little to be happy about in the difficult, messy world of America when he comes home.

Back in the United States, James finds himself in a supermarket aisle, trying to decide between Lucky Charms and Cheerios. He stares at those brands and then at dozens of others on the shelves, feeling overwhelmed by the dizzying array of breakfast cereals, in a scene of American consumerism gone amuck. He then spends part of the day cleaning soggy leaves out of the gutter of his house. It is a dull, dreary world. A moment later, however, a soldier is shown striding down a wide, dusty Iraqi road in a NASA-like bomb suit, filled with a sense of purpose, courage, and even nobility that does not exist in suburban America.

The film draws a sharp contrast between the tedium of American life, with its grocery-shopping, home repairs, and vapid consumerism, and the heart-pounding drama of the combat zone in Iraq.

WHICH IS THE LEAST OF THEIR WORRIES:

50% Oppose Government Health Insurance Company (Rasmussen Reports, July 17, 2009)

Just 35% of U.S. voters now support the creation of a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurers.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% of voters oppose setting up a government health insurance company as President Obama and congressional Democrats are now proposing in their health care reform plan. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

In mid-June, 41% of American adults thought setting up a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurance companies was a good idea, but the identical number (41%) disagreed.

BRIGHTER AND BRIGHTER:

Eyebrows should be raised by Obama science czar's support for eugenics (Mark Hemingway, July 15, 2009, Washington Examiner)

Over the weekend, a blogger at Zombietime.com unearthed a book written over 30 years ago by John Holdren, President Obama's "science czar."

The book, Ecoscience, was co-written with neo-Malthusian prophet of doom and scientific laughingstock Paul Ehrlich. In it, Holdren advocates a series of bizarre and horrifying measures to deal with an overpopulation threat that never materialized.

Among the suggestions in the book: Laws requiring the abortion or adoption of illegitimate children; sterilizing women after having two children; legally requiring "reproductive responsibility" to those deemed by pointy-headed eugenicists to "contribute to general social deterioration"; and incredibly, putting sterilizing agents in the drinking water.

Naturally, these population control measures would be enforced by "an armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force." Very recently, Holdren was still listing the book on his C.V.

THERE'S ALWAYS A JEW TO BLAME:

Democrats' Rube Goldberg Healthcare Bill Could Raise Taxes to Pre-Reagan Levels (Peter Roff, 7/16/09, Thomas Jefferson Street blog)

That's just a few of the problems with the House bill which, in point of fact, makes the HillaryCare bill of the early 1990s look like a sane and reasonable approach to reform. It's almost as though the writers of the bill sat down, looked at every promise about healthcare reform that President Obama had made to date, and deliberately tried to break it for him.

HE'S NOT THEIR PRESIDENT, HE IS OURS:

Remember the Neediest! (Laura Miller, Jul 16, 2009, Newsweek)

Last week, as President Obama was announcing his pick for surgeon general—a Roman Catholic African-American and MacArthur "genius" award winner who has spent her career caring for the poor on Alabama's Gulf Coast—I was on the phone with the Princeton professor and public intellectual Cornel West. He was reiterating his complaint, which he had aired weeks earlier to Bill Moyers, that Obama is too much in the thrall of what he calls the "neoliberal elites" (by which he means primarily Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner) and, as such, his economic reforms have not gone far enough to help the poor. This is a disappointment to West, who campaigned avidly for the president. "The moment of euphoria is over," West told me. "We need intense pressure on [Obama]. Poor people are suffering. Working people are suffering."

One moment, two religious realities. During his campaign, Obama said he would set a new tone in the American conversation about values, and as he's governed he has artfully tapped religious leaders and believers of all persuasions to help him do that. He is nothing if not methodical and purposeful in this regard: his selection of Francis Collins, a geneticist who is also an evangelical Christian, to run the National Institutes of Health reflects an insistence that belief in God and in science are not mutually exclusive. His more recent choice of Regina Benjamin as surgeon general makes good on his pledge to support altruistic work on behalf of those the Bible calls "the least of these." In general, though, these moves appear designed—as did the selection of Rick Warren as inaugural invocator—to placate those on the right who continue to fear an insidious liberalism on the part of the president. At a recent meeting of Catholic reporters, the president addressed those fears. When asked whether he would protect health workers' rights not to perform abortions in a "conscience clause," he said he would. "I think that there have been some who keep on anticipating the worst from us, and it's not based on anything I've said or done, but is rather just a perception somehow that we have some hardline agenda that we're seeking to push."

WHAT IF WE CONSIDER DIVORCE, HOMOSEXUALITY, ABORTION, EUTHANASIA, ETC. AS BROKEN WINDOWS?:

'Broken Windows' Works: Crime, disorder and punishment. (George L. Kelling, 07.16.09, Forbes)

[C]ritics of Broken Windows had one good point: New York provided, at most, anecdotal and correlational evidence of a relationship between disorder and crime. There were very few experimental studies--the most certain method of establishing causality--showing that the first caused the second.

But that changed last year, when University of Groningen researcher Kees Keizer and his colleagues published a paper in Science. In six experiments in the Netherlands, Keizer observed and compared the behavior of people under artificial conditions of order and disorder. Invariably, he found that disorderly conditions encouraged further and more serious levels of disorderly behavior. In one experiment, for example, Keizer placed an envelope conspicuously containing five euros in a mailbox. When the mailbox was clean, 13% of people who passed it stole the money; when it was covered with graffiti, 27% took it.

Also in 2008, Harvard University researcher Anthony A. Braga and his colleagues published the results of a complex set of field experiments in criminology. Researchers and police identified small neighborhoods in Lowell, Mass., and randomly assigned them to experimental and control conditions. In each of the experimental areas--where police were maintaining order, Broken Windows-style--crime dropped more sharply than in the control areas and, moreover, did not simply move to adjacent neighborhoods. The article also built on an earlier experiment, with the same results, that Braga had conducted in Jersey City a decade earlier.

We have seen a significant defeat in Parliament for proposals to legalise assisted suicides, and learnt of the joint suicides at the Dignitas apartment in Switzerland of the eminent conductor Sir Edward Downes, and his wife, Lady Downes. While there are many ethical, medical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide, at its heart lies the notion that we have an absolute moral entitlement to have whatever kind of death we choose. This is surely the triumph of the philosophy that proclaims individual rights above all other considerations and the relativist insistence that what is good is a matter of personal judgment.

The consequences of this attitude lie at the root of the weakening of social structures, including the decline of the family as the core unit, the rise of anti-social behaviour, the pursuit of profit at all cost and the increasing intolerance of non-materialist, philosophical or ethical views. It can be summarised as the age of convenience; the pursuit of what we want despite its cost and impact on others.

NO FAITHFUL, NO FERTILITY:

Why Japan Isn’t Rising: It's mellowing as its population ages. (Daniel Gross, Jul 16, 2009, Newsweek)

Japan's population peaked in 2004 at about 127.8 million and is projected to fall to 89.9 million by 2055. The ratio of working-age to elderly Japanese fell from 8 to 1 in 1975 to 3.3 to 1 in 2005 and may shrivel to 1.3 to 1 in 2055. "In 2055, people will come to work when they have time off from long-term care," said Kiyoaki Fujiwara, director of economic policy at the Japan Business Federation.

Such a decline is cataclysmic for an indebted country that values infrastructure and personal service. (Who is going to maintain the trains, pay for social benefits, slice sushi at the Tsukiji fish market?) The obvious answers—encourage immigration and a higher birthrate—have proved difficult, even impossible, for this conservative society. In the U.S., foreign-born workers make up 15 percent of the workforce; in Japan, it's 1 percent. And, official protestations to the contrary, they're not particularly welcome. One columnist I met compared the standard Japanese attitude toward immigrants to that of the French right-winger Jean--Marie Le Pen. In the 1990s, descend-ants of Japanese who had emigrated to South America early in the 20th century returned to replace retiring factory workers. Now that unemployment is on the rise, Japan is offering to pay the airfare for those who wish to return home.

Japan doesn't particularly want to import new citizens, but it doesn't seem to want to manufacture them, either. It's become harder to support a family on a single income, and young people are living at home for longer. And Japan isn't particularly friendly to working mothers—pre-K day care is not widely available, and the phrase "work-family balance" doesn't seem to have a Japanese translation. (The directory of the Japanese Business Federation, a showcase of old guys in suits, makes the Republican Senate caucus look like a Benetton ad.) The upshot: a chronically low birthrate. Too often, demographic change was described to me as a zero-sum game—rather than being seen as potential job creators, women and immigrants are often seen as taking jobs from men.

Chalk it up to age, or to culture, but Japan strikes me as strangely passive about the huge changes it is facing.

NO ONE FLIES AEROFLOT:

What’s Safe to Fly? (Katie Paul, 7/16/09, Newsweek)

Turns out, it's not how old the plane is that determines the safety of your flight, but where the plane was made and where it's operated, according to an IATA report. The association indexes aircraft accident rates by region of manufacture and region of operation. Companies like America's Boeing, Europe's Airbus, and even Brazil's Embraer are considered Western-built jets. Makers like Tupolev are of the Eastern-built variety, which are almost all designed in the former Soviet republics or China.

The IATA data show that Western-built jets crash at a rate of .81, which means that there is one loss per 1.2 million flights; among turboprops, the number is 2.43. Eastern-built planes are not broken down among plane type (jets and props are calculated together), but in any case the crash rate is a whopping 12.11, which works out to one accident per 83,000 flights.

Obviously correlation does not prove causality (the Caspian Air flight didn't crash because it was made in Russia). And where you fly also has an even greater impact on air safety, since some countries have stricter regulations, more sophisticated aviation infrastructure, and better air-control systems than others. In fact, usually those are the very places where Eastern-built aircraft are operated, which is why parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the former Soviet republics remain more dangerous places to fly.

YOU BET IT IS:

A Braw Brawl For Tom And Jack:
It was the best two rounds of golf ever played, Watson and Nicklaus battling head to head in the British Open until youth overtook age on the next to last hole (Dan Jenkins, July 18, 1977, Sports Illustrated)

Go ahead and mark it as the end of an era in professional golf if you're absolutely sure that Jack Nicklaus has been yipped into the sunset years of his career by the steel and nerve and immense talent of Tom Watson.

You could argue that way now, in these hours after Tom Watson has become the new king of the sport in a kingly land; when Watson has already become the Player of the Year, not to mention the future; when he has done it in the most memorable way in the annals of golf; and when he has done it for the second time in this season to the greatest player who ever wore a slipover shirt—Jack Nicklaus.

You could also say it very simply with numbers. In the last two rounds of last week's British Open, Tom Watson shot 65 and 65 to beat Nicklaus by one stroke. Oh, by the way, they were playing together. Oh, yes, and another thing: Watson's 72-hole total was 268, which was a new record by only eight shots. And, incidentally, the victory gave Watson his second major title of the year (and the third of his fresh and exciting career); he had taken the Masters, of course, standing up to Nicklaus in a slightly different pressurized situation. And, let's see, the British Open gave Watson his sixth win of the year and some $300,000 in Tour earnings.

But all of that doesn't even begin to examine what the stakes were on the gorgeous links of Turnberry on Scotland's west coast in the most atmospheric, ancient and, some would argue, most treasured of golf's four major tournaments. Actually, what took place was the most colossal head-to-head shotmaking and low scoring in the history of golf.

Watson and Nicklaus started to lap the field on Friday, when their identical rounds of 68-70-65 had given them a three-stroke bulge on the nearest pursuers. But just when everyone was ready to concede that Friday's duel had outspectaculared anything ever witnessed from the days of the gutta-percha ball to those of the Apex shaft, Tom and Jack went out and did it all over again in Saturday's final round, spinning out the unbelievable drama and suspense to the very last delicate rap of Watson's putter on a two-foot birdie putt, which gave him a second consecutive 65 to Nicklaus's shabby, horrid and humiliating 66.

On each of the last two days, Watson came back from what looked to be certain doom to catch Nicklaus and finally do him in. Watson just would not go away, not in the face of Nicklaus's birdies, or his icy stare or his mighty reputation. When Watson was two behind in the third round, he fought back to tie Jack, and in so doing broke the Nicklaus rhythm and the tempo of his short putts. On Saturday, Watson came back again twice, once from three strokes down to tie, and again from two back, finishing the round with four blazing birdies over the last six holes.

Watson was two shots behind the premier player of the game with those six holes left. Who can give Nicklaus two shots over six holes and beat him by one? Who could even contemplate it? Only Tom Watson in this day and time, a Tom Watson who has the best complete game in golf and has been proving it all year. A Tom Watson who has the most reliable, solid swing around, who has the well-educated patience to hold himself in control, the strength and vigor of youth, and now the confidence and determination to make himself worthy of the No. 1 role he has seized.

Here's how it was at the most torturous time of all, out there at the par-3 15th hole in the last round after Watson had just stabbed Nicklaus through the front of his yellow sweater with a 60-foot birdie putt from the hardpan 10 feet off the green. That astonishing shot hit the flagstick and dived into the cup and brought Watson into a tie once more.

They went to the 16th tee, and Jack and Tom looked at each other. The blond and the redhead. Yesterday and today. Then and now. Dominguín and Ordóñez.

And Tom smiled at Jack. "This is what it's all about, isn't it?"

WHEN DANIEL DRAVOT BLEEDS:

The Great Awakening (Peter Wehner, 07.16.2009, Commentary: Contentions)

This would be damaging enough to any president, but it is particularly damaging to Obama. The reason is that this represents the first significant crack in his image. Obama, we were told, is the man with the golden touch, a person of Socratic wisdom and piercing intellect, the next Lincoln, a “sort of God.” He is, we were assured, a man in command of both facts and theories, at once competent and curious, urbane and sophisticated, free of dogma and drawn to experts, a public official who can see things few others do and solve problems in ways few others can. Obama’s administration, in turn, has been stocked with the best and the brightest, people of Ivy League educations and dazzling intellects. They would show us how to govern in ways that would inspire admiration, and even awe. So it is quite damaging that the one piece of legislation which, at this early date, we can make a preliminary judgment on — the stimulus package — has been an utter failure.

EASY TO FORGET...:

Verleger Sees $20 Oil This Year on ‘Devastating’ Glut (Grant Smith, 7/16/09, Bloomberg)

Crude oil will collapse to $20 a barrel this year as the recession takes a deeper toll on fuel demand, according to academic and former U.S. government adviser Philip Verleger.

A crude surplus of 100 million barrels will accumulate by the end of the year, straining global storage capacity and sending prices to a seven-year low, said Verleger, who correctly predicted in 2007 that prices were set to exceed $100. Supply is outpacing demand by about 1 million barrels a day, he said.

“The economic situation is not getting better,” Verleger, 64, a professor at the University of Calgary and head of consultant PKVerleger LLC, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “Global refinery runs are going to be much lower in the fall. If the recession continues and it’s a warm winter, it’s going to be devastating.”

Crude oil last traded at $20 a barrel in February 2002.

FIRST, DO NO HARM:

CBO Chief: Health Bills To Increase Federal Costs (David Clarke and Edward Epstein, 7/16/09, CQ)

The health care overhauls released to date would increase, not reduce, the burgeoning long-term health costs facing the government, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said Thursday. [...]

The Democrats and President Obama have cited two goals in their overhaul proposals — expanding coverage to the estimated 47 million Americans who currently lack it and bringing down long-term costs because the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending threatens to swamp the federal budget in coming years.

Under questioning from Chairman Kent Conrad , D-N.D., Elmendorf told the Senate Budget Committee that the congressional proposals released so far do not meet that second test.

“In the legislation that has been reported, we do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount and, on the contrary, the legislation significantly expands the federal responsibility for health care costs,” he said.

DOING ROMAN HRUSKA PROUD:

Sotomayor draws praise from GOP critics (JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MARK SHERMAN, 7/16/09, AP)

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., described Sotomayor's judicial record as "generally in the mainstream" and said he thought she would keep an open mind on gun rights. He proclaimed her "not an activist." [...]

Graham was not in the Senate when Sotomayor was confirmed for the appeals court in 1998, but several other Republican senators were.

Among them, Sens. Robert Bennett of Utah, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Susan Collins of Maine, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Olympia Snowe of Maine all voted in favor of her confirmation.

Hatch is a member of the Judiciary Committee that is conducting this week's hearings.

On Thursday, another Republican member of the panel, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, also called Sotomayor's rulings "pretty much in the mainstream," although he said her assertions of impartiality at the hearings were strikingly at odds with her past remarks.

"You appear to be a different person almost in your speeches and in some of the comments that you've made" before the Judiciary panel, Cornyn said.

YES, HE DID:

Death of the World's Greatest Entertainer (Larry Elder, July 16, 2009, Townhall)

Jackson came up hard. Davis came up harder. Try reading Davis' best-selling (15 million copies) autobiography, "Yes I Can," written with his longtime friend and confidant, Burt Boyar. It tells the journey of an astonishingly gifted and successful performer, a highly intelligent, self-educated, voracious reader, a man both confident and insecure -- in an era of segregation, lynchings and civil rights marches.

Davis worked hard. Davis played hard. His personal life and decisions and excesses attracted and repelled both blacks and whites. Yet however Davis' audience may have felt about him, it could never question his unparalleled talent.

"Yes I Can" describes some of the horrific racism endured by the legendary performer. For example, during World War II, Davis served in one of the Army's first integrated units. Once, some white members of his unit surprisingly invited Davis, sitting alone in a bar, to come over and join them for a drink. One of the guys handed him a beer. Suspicious, Davis refused to drink it. Good thing. The liquid in the mug was not beer, but urine.

During the Jackson memorial, we heard how he brought people of different races together. While Davis headlined at The Sands in Las Vegas in the late 1950s, the NAACP threatened a strike against the casinos because they wouldn't hire blacks in more prominent, visible positions. Davis told The Sands' president, Jack Entratter, "You've got to hire more blacks up front, not hidden in the kitchen." Entratter copped out, deferring to racist owners and high rollers. Davis told him, "Then you'll be embarrassed, because I'll be right out front picketing with them." Entratter gave in, and The Sands was not struck. Davis also marched for civil rights in places like Selma and the 1963 March on Washington.

He vigorously campaigned for John F. Kennedy in 1960. At the time, Davis -- despite the danger to his career, if not his life -- was engaged to white rising-star actress May Britt. To avoid alienating voters, Davis postponed their wedding until after the election. His reward? The newly elected President withdrew Davis' invitation to the inaugural to appease those offended by the recently married high-profile interracial couple. And 20th Century Fox, to which Britt was under contract, invoked the morals clause and let her go, effectively ending her career.

A brief word about Jackson's "moonwalk." Davis performed that move -- a derivative of soft shoe -- in front of audiences long before Michael was born. Indeed, young Michael frequently visited the Davis' home to watch tapes of Davis dancing and performing. As Davis told his friend Boyar: "It's such a gas when the kids like what you do enough to copy you. It's so flattering."

BUYING THE ROPE:

Candidly Speaking: The case against Obama (ISI LEIBLER, 7/15/09, Jerusalem Post)

President Obama is adept at warming the cockles of the hearts of his Jewish constituents, many of whom seem as mesmerized by him as their forebears were by Franklin D Roosevelt. He repeatedly articulates his commitment to the welfare of Israel and admiration for American Jewry.

Yet if one probes beneath the veneer of bonhomie and analyzes the substance of his policies, they reflect an unprecedented downturn in relations towards Israel with hints of worse to come. This was reaffirmed by Obama in the course of his recent meeting with Jewish leaders (which included representatives of extremist fringe groups like Peace Now and J Street but excluded those likely to be critical of his approach). In an extraordinary patronizing manner with his Jewish aides beaming at him he told Israelis to "engage in self reflection" and made it clear that he believed he had a better understanding of what is best for them than their democratically elected government. Alas, with the exception of Malcolm Hoenlein and Abe Foxman, it appears that the majority of the others endorsed his position or remained silent. Yet only a few days earlier even a passionate Democrat like Alan Dershowitz had expressed concern "that the coming changes in the Obama administration's policies could weaken the security of the Jewish state".

THIS COLUMN is a response to American Jews devoted to Israel who remain under the charismatic spell of their president and challenged me to demonstrate how his policies are harming Israel.

BICURIOUSITY:

‘Gay’ Penguin Flies Straight (Matt Barber, 7/15/09, Townhall)

The highly contentious “nature vs. nurture” debate over whether gay penguins choose the homosexual lifestyle or are hatched that way has reached a hard boil.

San Francisco’s Fox affiliate KTUV reports: “The San Francisco Zoo’s popular same-sex penguin couple has broken up.

“Male Magellan penguins Harry and Pepper have been together since 2003. The pair nested together and even incubated an egg laid by another penguin in 2008, but their relationship hit the rocks earlier this year when a female penguin, Linda, befriended Harry after her long-time companion died. Zookeepers say Harry and Linda are happy and were able to successfully nest this year,” reported KTUV.

SOMEBODY DIDN'T GET THE MEMO:

Health Care Vote Illustrates Partisan Divide (ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, 7/15/09, NY Times)

A party-line Senate committee vote on legislation to remake the nation’s health care system underscored the absence of political consensus on what would be the biggest changes in social policy in more than 40 years.

The bill, which aims to make health insurance available to all Americans, was approved, 13 to 10, by the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The panel was the first Congressional committee to approve the health legislation.

“If you don’t have health insurance, this bill is for you,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, who presided over more than three weeks of grueling committee sessions. “It stops insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It guarantees that you’ll be able to find an insurance plan that works for you, including a public health insurance option if you want it.”

The bill would also help people who have insurance, Mr. Dodd said, because “it eliminates annual and lifetime caps on coverage and ensures that your out-of-pocket costs will never exceed your ability to pay.”

MORE:
Wanting The Impossible On Health Care (John Zogby, 07.16.09, Forbes)

Here are some examples from the Texas/Zogby survey:

--84% are satisfied with their current health care.

--53% agree that health care is a human right.

--But only 39% would be willing to pay any more in taxes to insure every American. Opinion is split on whether taxes should be increased on families earning more than $250,000 per year as a way to accomplish that goal.
Read All Comments

--People also oppose cost-cutting measures such as rationing expensive care, increasing deductibles and co-pays, raising the age for Medicare from 65 to 66 and decreasing payments to doctors and hospitals. [...]

--A plurality opposes requiring everyone to purchase health insurance, with assistance for those who cannot afford it, by a 48% to 42% margin.

--However, when asked to rate the importance of insuring all, reducing costs or improving care, insuring all had the highest percentage of first-choice rankings with 42%. For both the other two, 28% ranked them first.

--Taxing employee health benefits for those who have expensive plans is very unpopular, with 52% saying it's a poor idea and just 7% saying it's an excellent one.

--There is consensus on the damage being done to our economy by health care costs, as 79% believe rising health care costs are hurting American businesses.

--As for requiring employers to offer coverage choices and paying two thirds of the costs, 16% call that an excellent idea but 32% call it poor.

AS IF THEY WERE HUMAN:

Fetuses found to have memories (Jennifer Harper, July 16, 2009, Washington Times)

They weigh less than 3 pounds, usually, and are perhaps 15 inches long. But they can remember.

The unborn have memories, according to medical researchers who used sound and vibration stimulation, combined with sonography, to reveal that the human fetus displays short-term memory from at least 30 weeks gestation - or about two months before they are born.

"In addition, results indicated that 34-week-old fetuses are able to store information and retrieve it four weeks later," said the research, which was released Wednesday.

ONE AND DONE:

Freshman Dems seeking action on the rising deficit (Jared Allen, 07/15/09, The Hill)

Freshman Democrats, worried that the ballooning budget deficit is stoking voter anxiety, are urging House leaders to put forward a “credible” plan this year to cut it.

They say the need is urgent and a serious deficit-reduction measure must be added by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other leaders to an already jam-packed legislative agenda.

“My constituents are very concerned about the deficit,” said freshman Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), elected with 47 percent of the vote in a swing district last year. “This is really starting to resonate.”

In Rasmussen’s latest Generic Congressional Ballot, voters not affiliated with either party prefer the Republican candidate over the Democrat by a 39% to 19% margin. [...]

Independents prefer smaller government with fewer services and lower taxes. Overwhelming majorities of Independents (70%) and Republicans (90%) agree compared to Democrats (49%).

Independents have concerns about the size of President Obama’s budget and the deficit it will create. Majorities of Independents (56%) and Republicans (87%) are somewhat or strongly opposed compared to Democrats (70%) who somewhat or strongly support the President’s budget.

Independents believe that big spending programs create few private sector jobs. By a +13 margin, Independents hold this opinion over the idea that the federal government has to do more during times of economic crisis, and spending by the government stimulates the economy and creates jobs.

Independents have serious reservations about the costs of a cap-and-trade program. By a +17 margin, Independents believe raising taxes on energy while the economy is in recession far outweighs any benefits from companies that may lower energy consumption and rely on more alternative fuels.

Independents believe the “harsh interrogation of detainees” was justified. Independents (53%) believe the “harsh interrogation of detainees” was justified, while the majority of Democrats (57%) believe it was not justified.

Independents do not want a criminal investigation into harsh interrogation techniques. Two out of every three Independents (66%) agree that a criminal investigation will divide the country, criminalize policy disagreements, and have a negative impact on future efforts to keep America safe.

Independents favor a health care system where most Americans receive private insurance versus federal government coverage. Majorities of Independents (61%) and Republicans (87%) prefer a private insurance system, while a majority of Democrats (52%) prefer a federal government system.

Independents do not want health care reform to increase taxes or the deficit. Majorities of Independents (62%) and Republicans (75%) agree with the statement “reforming health care is important, but it should be done without raising taxes or increasing the deficit,” while only 38% of Democrats agreed (versus 57% of Democrats who agreed instead that “reforming health care is so important that the government should invest new resources to make sure it is done right”).

RIGHT NOTES:

Sotomayor Hits Pro-Business Note as Senate Testimony Nears End (Greg Stohr and William McQuillen, July 16, 2009, Bloomberg)

“In business, the predictability of law may be the most necessary,” Sotomayor said, pointing to her eight years representing companies in private practice.

Business lawyers said the comments signaled an appreciation of the practical needs of companies, bolstering her 17-year record as a trial and appellate judge. Sotomayor has often been receptive to business arguments, as when she voted in 2006 to block class-action status for a suit that accused banks of rigging initial public offerings.

Her testimony was “music to my ears,” said Roy Englert, a Washington appellate lawyer who has represented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce before the Supreme Court.

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE IS OVER:

Sox fans at a loss during All-Star break (Peter Schworm, July 16, 2009, Boston Globe)

Chris Phelan watched the Home Run Derby, basically a glorified batting practice, and then the highlights. Bereft of box scores, he scoured the Web for trade rumors and midseason retrospectives, desperate for any scrap of news or analysis. He even caught some of Jon Lester’s no-hitter from May 2008, mercifully replayed in the absence of Red Sox action.

All for naught. Three drawn-out days without his beloved Sox, and the toll was starting to show.

“It’s tough right now,’’ he acknowledged, swaying from side to side as though searching for his equilibrium. “I don’t know what to do with myself. I’m just trying to stay busy, trying to suck it up.’’

WHAT'S THE POINT OF OUR GREATNESS IF WE DON'T DARE GREAT THINGS? (via Glenn Dryfoos)

On Hand for Space History, as Superpowers Spar (JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, 7/14/09, NY Times)

Apollo 8 proved to be a tonic at this crucial time. The astronauts — Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr., and William A. Anders — flew to the Moon and circled it 10 times in orbits within 60 miles of the lifeless surface. Apollo’s television camera recorded the gray plains and wide craters, one scene after another of everlasting desolation. On the fourth orbit, as Apollo emerged from behind the Moon, Borman, the commander, exclaimed: “Oh, my God! Look at that picture over there! Here’s the Earth coming up. Wow, that is pretty!”

The astronauts gasped at the sight of Earth, a blue and white orb sparkling in the blackness of space, in contrast to the dead lunar surface in the foreground. People at home saw the full Earth only in black-and-white television images. Even so, the sight moved the poet Archibald MacLeish to write in The Times on Christmas Day: “To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”

After the mission, NASA released the color pictures the astronauts had taken of “Earthrise.” These were even more inspiring and humbling, the mission’s prized keepsake. Time magazine closed out the troubled year with the Earthrise photograph on its cover, with a one-word caption, “Dawn.”

In a 2008 book, “Earthrise: How Man First Saw the Earth,” Robert Poole contends that the picture was the spiritual nascence of the environmental movement, writing that “it is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment when the sense of the space age flipped from what it meant for space to what it means for Earth.”

Another Apollo 8 surprise was in store, prepared by the astronauts. Late Christmas Eve, on one of the final orbits, Anders announced, “The crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you.” While a camera focused on the Moon outside the spacecraft window, Anders read the opening words of the creation story from the Book of Genesis.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth,” Anders began. “And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

Lovell then took over with the verse beginning: “And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.”

Borman closed the reading: “And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas; and God saw that it was good.”

At the conclusion, a hushed audience throughout the lands of Earth heard Borman sign off from the Moon: “And from the crew of Apollo 8 we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”

My father and other ministers, priests, and rabbis never read the Scripture to a more rapt audience. This message, truly from on high, was like a gift of hope: There is still beauty to behold, still an aspiration to goodness and greatness. Those who believe in other gods, or no god at all, shared in the spirit of the moment, its solemnity and its evocation of wonder. And believers, if only in hope, experienced emotions of relief and an upwelling of optimism, where there had been despair.

Looking back, three of the nine Apollo lunar missions stand out from the others as especially emotional experiences. Apollo 11 made history. A bold commitment was fulfilled, and those alive then have never forgotten where they were and their feelings when humans first walked on the Moon. Apollo 13, unlucky 13, was an epic suspense unfolding in real time to a global audience. Three astronauts went forth, met disaster, faced death and barely limped back to the safety of home. And Apollo 8, as the first flight of humans beyond Earth’s low orbital confines, restored momentum and magnitude to the adventure of reaching for the Moon.

SOME LUNCHES ARE FREER THAN OTHERS:

Chris Anderson’s Free Contains Apparent Plagiarism (Waldo Jaquith, June 23rd, 2009, VQR Blog)

"Free Lunch”

Occupying the bulk of pages 41–42, Anderson here explains the origin of the phrase “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” writing about the nineteenth- century phenomenon of saloons offering free lunches with the purchase of alcohol. The great majority of this text exists phrase for phrase on the Wikipedia entry “Free Lunch,” including a block quote and several quotes from contemporary newspaper accounts.

Much of the text in question—though not all of it—was originally written by Wikipedia contributor Dpbsmith (Dan Smith) between November 19 and November 26, 2006.

Transcription errors are present in most of the quotes and citations within this Wikipedia entry, a result of contributors making mistakes while entering information from nineteenth-century newspaper articles. Those errors have been reproduced verbatim in Free. That includes citing an 1875 New York Times article as having been published in 1872 and omitting words and phrases from quotations. (Disclosure: I contributed to this Wikipedia entry two years ago, but my tiny modification is not included within Free.)

THE DAY THE MUSIC WAS MURDERED (via Glenn Dryfoos):

With Help, Conductor and Wife Ended Lives (JOHN F. BURNS, 7/15/09, NY Times)

The controversy over the ethical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide for the terminally ill was thrown into stark relief on Tuesday with the announcement that one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, Sir Edward Downes, had flown to Switzerland last week with his wife and joined her in drinking a lethal cocktail of barbiturates provided by an assisted-suicide clinic.

Although friends who spoke to the British news media said Sir Edward was not known to have been terminally ill, they said he wanted to die with his ailing wife, who had been his partner for more than half a century.

The couple’s children said in an interview with the London Evening Standard that on Tuesday of last week they accompanied their father, 85, and their mother, Joan, 74, on the flight from London to Zurich, where the Swiss group Dignitas helped arrange the suicides. On Friday, the children said, they watched, weeping, as their parents drank “a small quantity of clear liquid” before lying down on adjacent beds, holding hands.

“Within a couple of minutes they were asleep, and died within 10 minutes,” Caractacus Downes, the couple’s 41-year-old son, said in the interview after his return to Britain.

ALL THAT'S REQUIRED TO WIN IS THE WILL TO FIGHT:

Lions and Jackals: Pakistan’s Emerging Counterinsurgency Strategy (Haider Ali Hussein Mullick, 7/15/09, Foreign Affairs)

In the fall, Major General Tariq Khan, at the time commanding a squadron of the Pakistani army's paramilitary force, the Frontier Corps, realized that his troops needed to radically change tactics. With that in mind, he launched Operation Shirdil (Lion Heart) in Bajaur, a tribal area that abuts Afghanistan and was a hub of the Taliban. With the aid of junior officers, he shifted from clearing operations to population security. He ordered troops to patrol the streets and worked with tribal lashkars (militias) and jirgas (councils) to identify and capture irreconcilable Taliban. Most importantly, he worked to build troop morale and encourage camaraderie between Punjabi officers and Pashtun soldiers. What might be called the Bajaur Experiment was a success; at the same time the Pakistani government and military were signing a peace deal with the Taliban in the Swat Valley, top Taliban commanders surrendered unconditionally to the Frontier Corps in Bajaur.

But while the Bajaur Experiment was clearly effective against the Taliban and bolstered troop morale, questions remained about its sustainability and replicability. On one hand, Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, had already initiated in 2008 a decisive shift toward this kind of counterinsurgency against domestic extremists in arms procurement and military curriculum. But on the other, the top-down approach was slow and was halted by bickering among a dysfunctional Defense Ministry, a turf-conscious Interior Ministry, and ineffective parliamentary committees for defense and national security. And in practice, Central Command still faced a lack of adequate training and equipment for troops. Further, it remained unwilling to conduct a domestically unpopular counterinsurgency program against Pakistanis and sever ties with anti-India Taliban in Afghanistan.

This would change in April, when the Taliban started to surge outward from Swat Valley toward the capital. The government -- confronted with the Taliban onslaught and international pressure -- managed to build a broad political consensus for counterinsurgency. Bolstered by popular support for the war -- a recent poll by World Public Opinion put it at 81 percent -- the military was finally willing to identify the Taliban as the biggest existential threat to Pakistan. Soon, the army kicked off a 150,000-troop campaign in the tribal badlands, of which 30,000 troops were dedicated to the Swat and Malakand areas. The high-spirited Bajaur veterans were ready to share their experiences with junior officers and asked to become part of the decision-making process. With that, a counterinsurgency strategy based on the Bajaur Experiment began to spread from the bottom up.

As in Bajaur, officers decided to execute a presence-oriented approach: troops cleared areas; established small bases inside populated areas, instead of drawing back to large bases; enforced curfews; and aided fledgling local governments. Unlike past operations, where the military failed to block escape routes during actions on the Taliban's mountain hideouts, this time they applied a "corner, choke, and contain" strategy. Junior officers also built better local intelligence networks and were careful to evacuate refugees before using heavy artillery against Taliban strongholds. Due to increasing anti-Taliban sentiment and a more positive and lasting military presence on the ground, tribal lashkars were willing to help.

Encouragingly, the culture of the military was also changing. Frontier Corps officers had often been considered incompetent and compromised because of their ethnic links to the predominantly Pashtun Taliban. But now Punjabi junior officers followed Khan's lead and began reaching out to Pashtun soldiers to foster a sense of trust and goodwill. With public support for their campaign, a new presence-oriented strategy, and a more inclusive military culture that valued innovation and dissent, troop morale was on the rise and victory followed.

WHY NOT 0% FOR EVERYONE...:

The 0% Tax Rate Solution: It's better policy, and politics, than the proliferation of tax credits. (PETER FERRARA, 7/15/09, WSJ)

[I]t was primarily Republicans who abolished federal income taxes for the working class and almost abolished them for the middle class. Now Mr. Obama has led enactment of a refundable $400 per worker income tax credit and other refundable credits, which probably leaves the bottom 60% paying nothing as a group on net.

Many conservatives are deeply troubled by this, arguing that everyone should be contributing something to the tax burden. They worry that, not paying for any of the tab, this majority will see no reason not to vote for limitless spending burdens. But are conservatives now going to campaign on increasing taxes on the bottom 60%, arguing that is good tax and social policy? Steve Lonegan recently demonstrated in the New Jersey gubernatorial primary that this is not a viable political position. He proposed a 3% state flat tax which, while very good tax policy, would increase taxes slightly for the bottom half of income earners. His victorious opponent Chris Christie pounded away in advertising on that point.

But what if Republicans proposed a federal tax reform with a 0% income tax rate for the bottom 60% of income earners? With that explicit 0% tax rate framing the issue, abolishing the refundable tax credits that actually ship money to lower income earners through the tax code would become politically viable. Trading an explicit 0% tax rate for the bottom 60% in return for eliminating the refundable tax credits would likely be at least revenue neutral, and probably result in a net increase in revenue.

OIL FOR FOOD:

In taste test, oil pie crust rises to the occasion (Devra First, July 15, 2009, Boston Globe)

We did a blind taste test of five crusts: all butter, butter and shortening, all shortening, lard, and oil. The crust with oil was the surprise victor: Two people said it was their favorite (one by a nose over the butter/shortening combo). One said it was her second favorite (just after the butter/shortening combo). And two preferred the butter crust, though it posed philosophical questions about what is really a pie. No one favored the lard or all-shortening versions. Here’s what they had to say:

This is the original Wesson Oil pie with a few variations. The dough is so wet, you’ll think there’s been a mistake. There hasn’t. Roll it out between sheets of waxed paper.

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1. Set the oven at 425 degrees. Have on hand a deep 9-inch pie pan.

2. In a 1-cup measure, pour the oil just over the 1/2 cup line. Add the milk to make a good 3/4 cup of liquid.

3. In a mixing bowl, mix the flour and salt. Add the oil mixture (do not stir while pouring). When it is all added, use a rubber spatula to stir the oil in gently. The mixture looks very wet; it’s OK.

4. With a wet paper towel, wet the counter. Spread waxed paper on it. Add 2/3 of the dough. Set another piece of waxed paper on top.

5. Roll the dough into a round about 1/8-inch thick. Gently remove the top waxed paper, working from the edges to the center. Set the pie pan near you. In one steady motion, pick up the paper under the dough and quickly flip it over into the pie pan. Gently remove the remaining waxed paper sheet, working from the edges to the center.

YET ANOTHER REASON WE SHOULD HAVE DONE THE BA'ATHIST REGIME IN SYRIA:

George W. Bush an unexpected source of inspiration: Pakistani-born writer, political activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali thought he had switched for good from non-fiction to fiction in 1990 after the Berlin Wall fell but switched back when the United States decided to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. (Martin Roberts, Jul 15, 2009, Mindfood)

Ali had published the first three titles in his Islam Quintet of novels, which chart the encounter between Islam and western Christendom over the centuries, when 9/11 happened and the U.S. government led by then President George W. Bush took the decision to invade both countries.

"George Bush was quite an inspiration to me to start writing non-fiction again," Ali told a news conference at the Semana Negra book festival in Gijon, northern Spain, which draws one million people a year.

"My publishers would ask me, 'When are you going to finish the Quintet?' and I would say, 'Ask George Bush. Is he going to make a war on a third country?"

THE MOST REVEALING THING...:

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a Question of Eugenics: Does Ginsburg see eugenic culling as a compelling state interest? (Jonah Goldberg, 7/15/09, National Review)

Here’s what Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine: “Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe v. Wade] was decided,” Ginsburg told her interviewer, Emily Bazelon, “there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

The comment, which bizarrely elicited no follow-up from Bazelon or any further coverage from the New York Times — or any other major news outlet — was in the context of Medicaid funding for abortion. Ginsburg was surprised when the Supreme Court in 1980 barred taxpayer support for abortions for poor women. After all, if poverty partly described the population you had “too many of,” you would want to subsidize it in order to expedite the reduction of unwanted populations.

Left unclear is whether Ginsburg endorses the eugenic motivation she ascribed to the passage of Roe v. Wade or whether she was merely objectively describing it. One senses that if Antonin Scalia had offered such a comment, a Times interviewer would have sought more clarity, particularly on the racial characteristics of these supposedly unwanted populations.

MORE:

A new Benedict for a new Dark Ages: The Pope's latest encyclical is another skirmish in his war on the moral relativism which undermines our culture. (Thaddeus J. Kozinski, Tuesday, 14 July 2009, MercatorNet)

We tend to associate barbarism with images of primitive savages looting and pillaging villages, razing the walls of cities, and enslaving women and children. However, the Holy Father is suggesting here an entirely new kind of barbarism, one with a distinctly spiritual character. Civility is the quality of soul and society by which we recognize not only that other people exist, but also that they have the right to our courtesy, dignity, and respect. Civilization, then, as the opposite of barbarism, is founded upon the recognition of the dignity and rights of the other. Thus, a culture in which "the highest goals [are] one’s ego and one’s own desires" is the very definition of barbaric.

G.K. Chesterton notes, "The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality." Today’s barbarism is of a distinctly spiritual nature. It is not so much a physical as a philosophical barbarism that has overtaken Western culture, a barbarism of the soul that is camouflaged by a quite "civilized" bodily façade. Fr John Courtney Murray observed:

The barbarian need not appear in bearskins with a club in hand. He may wear a Brooks Brothers suit and carry a ball-point pen with which to write his advertising copy. In fact, even beneath the academic gown there may lurk a child of the wilderness, untutored in the high tradition of civility, who goes busily and happily about his work, a domesticated and law-abiding man, engaged in the construction of a philosophy to put an end to all philosophy, and thus put an end to the possibility of a vital consensus and to civility itself.

The most dangerous philosophical barbarians today are not the relatively few fanatical atheists and dogmatic relativists in academe, the courts, the government, and the media, but the much more prevalent "practically minded" sort. These do not deny the existence of other people, but live as if they didn’t exist or had no worth compared to their own; they are not certain that God does not exist, or that the true, the good and the beautiful are illusions; yet if He did happen to exist, and if transcendentals were real, it wouldn’t really matter much to their lives.

AND REDDER:

California could lose a House seat after 2010 census: Experts think the size of the state's delegation will probably remain unchanged, but even that would break a historical pattern. The population is growing at a slower pace than in some other states. (Richard Simon, July 14, 2009, LA Times)

Here's yet another result of the bad economy: California's congressional delegation is unlikely to grow and could even lose a seat after next year's census for the first time since stagecoach days.

If the state loses a seat, it could weaken California's clout in Washington and reduce the amount of federal money flowing to the state. It could also set off a game of political musical chairs, forcing two incumbents to run against each other.

As if that weren't enough, the state that stands to gain the most new seats is California's longtime rival, Texas, the second most populous state.

ALITO IN A SKIRT:

Where Did Sotomayor's Empathy Go? (Stephanie Mencimer, 7/15/09, Mother Jones)

America finally got to hear from President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday and she turned out to be...kind of dull. [...]

Kyl did elicit one noteworthy tidbit from Sotomayor when he asked what she thought of Obama's argument that the last five miles of judging are determined by what's in the judge's heart. Sotomayor was having none of that mushy stuff. "It's not what's in the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It's the law," she said briskly.

TOO BAD IT'S NOT AS EASY AS BREAKING THE BAKER'S WINDOWS:

Reflective roof paint repels the heat: Hyperseal paints can reduce the costs and energy needed for cooling by lowering the amount of heat a building absorbs from the sun. White roofs may be the new green. (Tiffany Hsu, July 15, 2009, LA Times)

On bright days, the rooftop of the Anaheim Hilton is so blindingly white that it looks like a mirror positioned directly at the sun. That dazzling glare might just be the greenest thing to happen to the top of a building since solar panels.

The white coating deflects nearly 85% of the heat that hits it, reducing the surface temperature by as much as 50 degrees. That means less energy is needed to cool the hotel's interior, cutting air-conditioning costs and carbon emissions.

This is no ordinary coat of paint. Designed by an 82-year-old former military scientist from the Inland Empire, the tinted topcoat is filled with tiny hollow glass balls that deflect heat, layered over a waterproof undercoat made of recycled rubber.

The Hilton spent more than $150,000 on the project, which was completed in March. That's $300,000 less than the cost of a conventional repair to the old, leaky roof, said Jerome Annaloro, director of property operations at the hotel. If the reflective material cuts utility costs this summer the way management anticipates it will, Annaloro said, he will recommend white roofs for the entire Hilton chain.

"I was skeptical at first . . . but the product spoke for itself," he said. "It's a win-win."

Americans spend about $40 billion a year to cool buildings, according to U.S. government figures. So-called cool roofs are being touted as a simple, inexpensive way of lowering surface temperatures on the tops of structures by as much as 100 degrees, cutting operating costs and slowing climate change.

HASN'T HE SURRENDERED ENOUGH LEADERSHIP TO THE HILL?

Obama's Fiats Anger Lawmakers (JONATHAN WEISMAN, 7/15/09, WSJ)

With $108 billion in International Monetary Fund loan guarantees in jeopardy last month, White House economic officials begged, cajoled and cut deals with Democrats to secure passage of legislation boosting the fund's power. Days later, President Barack Obama announced he wasn't bound by any of the agreements.

The ensuing flap over the president's June 24 signing statement is the latest in a series of clashes between the White House and Congress over an issue Mr. Obama once fought against himself: presidential fiat.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama pledged that he wouldn't abuse the presidential signing statement, a declaration issued by the president when he signs a bill to give his interpretation of that law. President George W. Bush used so many signing statements -- more than 750 -- that the American Bar Association criticized it as an abuse of power.

After Mr. Obama's issuance of his second signing statement last month, even some Democrats say he isn't keeping his word on reining in unilateral presidential actions.

THE UR VS THE DEMOCRATS:

DNC Targets Democratic Senators on Health Care (Rick Klein, July 15, 2009, ABC News)

The Democratic National Committee is launching a new television advertisement today to press Congress to support President Obama’s health care plan -- and is targeting moderate Democrats to come on board. [...]

The ad -- placed by the DNC’s Organizing for America arm, the offshoot of the Obama campaign’s lists of supporters -- uses the voices and images of five people who shared their stories with the DNC in the hopes of pressuring Congress to act.

More interesting than the message is who it’s being aimed at. One version of the ad will be placed in Washington, DC, and on news and information Websites -- a typical strategy to reach opinion leaders.

A slightly different version -- ending with a request for viewers to “call your senators” -- will air in Florida, Nebraska, Indiana, Louisiana, North Dakota, Arkansas, Maine, and Ohio, according to a Democratic Party official.

With the exception of Maine and Ohio, each of those states is home to at least one moderate Democratic senator whose vote on health care is in question. Maine is represented by two moderate Republicans who top the list of potential GOP votes on health care reform; Ohio has one such Republican senator, in addition to a liberal Democrat.

FROM THE "ACCURACY IN HEADLINES DEPARTMENT":

Nancy boys call off England tour in fear of "swine flu" (ESPN Soccer Net, July 15, 2009)

WHO WOULD KNOW THE MIND OF AMERICA...:

All-Star Game proves national pastime a unifying event: Presidents, All-Stars remind us why America loves baseball (Phil Rogers, July 15, 2009, Chicago Tribune)

Wearing a White Sox jacket, blue jeans and sneakers, Obama softly tossed a pitch that Albert Pujols caught just as it was about to hit the ground in front of home plate.

As a pitch, it wasn't much. But as a symbolic gesture, this ceremonial pitch before the All-Star Game, a 4-3 American League victory on the strength of Curtis Granderson's eighth-inning triple and Adam Jones' sacrifice fly, spoke louder than the roar from the pregame flyover.

So, too, did the joy with which Obama carried himself for his few minutes on the green grass, when he greeted Stan Musial and other St. Louis Hall of Famers, at one point trading salutes with Lou Brock.

During his half-inning in the Fox television booth, Obama said that the experience was "such a reminder of what's great about our country."

In regard to its role within the framework of America, baseball gets it. And perhaps more to the point, America still gets baseball.

All five living presidents were happy to participate in a pregame video tribute honoring exceptional work in public service.

Bush was cheered so loudly by the crowd of 46,760 that his words were practically drowned out.

The President: We're out of money.

Meanwhile, that opening with all the presidents was very moving, but I was surprised by the depth of one reaction. First, Mr. Obama came on. He's a hard guy to not like, even if awfully hollow, and there's still a certain pride in electing our first black president. Then W, and he's done such a good job of leaving the stage to his successor that he already induces nostalgia. Then Bill Clinton and it's sort of like, hey, randy Uncle Billy showed up! Then GHWB and he seemed especially appropriate to the occasion, having played 1b at Yale, met Babe Ruth, and played in a Cracker Jack Old-Timers game. Then Jimmy Carter....and waves of revulsion....

STEP AWAY FROM THE DONUTS:

Tip for Casey: To Swing a Faster Bat, Lighten Up That Lumber: With Major League Baseball's All-Star game taking place tonight, a researcher explains why, when it comes to swinging a baseball bat, heavier isn't necessarily better (Adam Marcus, 7/15/09, Scientific American)

Tune into tonight's baseball All-Star game and you'll see a familiar ritual: Batters standing in the on-deck circle will swing a weighted bat (or even a heavy, pipelike club) while they wait to hit. The exercise is intended to improve players' bat speed, with the idea being that the regular bat feels lighter after taking cuts with the heavier one. But a new study suggests batters who add ounces to their practice swings may be making an error.

Practicing with a heavier bat significantly slows down the velocity of the bat head—depriving the batter of slugging power, exercise researchers at California State University, Fullerton, say. Swinging light or normal weight lumber just before stepping up to the plate helps players become accustomed to swinging fast, repetition that is key to athletic training, the researchers say.

IF HE WERE HITTING THEY COULD LET HIM USE A TEE (via Bryan Francoeur):

Obama preps for the pitchers mound (Kristi Keck, 7/15/09, CNN)

Asked about plans to practice before the game, Obama said Tuesday, "I want to loosen up my arm a little bit."

"The last time I threw a pitch was at the American League championship series, and I just wanted to keep it high," the president said of his opening pitch at the 2005 Chicago White Sox-Anaheim Angels game.

Aiming high is a good strategy, says St. Louis Cardinals scout Matt Blood, but it takes more than on-point aim to make the perfect pitch.

"Throw it with som