Unbecoming the whistleblower

I know IBD pointed at this too but did the outspoken James Hansen of NASA climate fame receive some good time lovin’ from George Soros?

Whoopsie!

Convicted attorney Lynne Stewart to speak at at legal ethics review.

Who’s whine is this anyway?

MoveOn challenges a CafePress merchant who mocks it–and succeeds in silencing a dissenting voice.

Defenseless senior citizen cuffed for not having her compulsory medical checkup, er, for not watering her lawn.

What an absolute disgrace.

I’ve never been happier to see Gloria Allred on a case although I wonder if Allred would pursue such an egregious miscarriage of justice if Betty Perry had neglected her own health instead of her lawn.

To Syria via Turkey

Still, no one knows exactly what happened between Israel and Syria earlier this month.  It’s such a big secret that nobody is fessing up.  Can’t just be Israel attacking Hezbollah supply lines, could it? Rumors abound of a North Korean cargo ship delivering “concrete” to Syria–a country that doesn’t exactly need to import such a commodity. Phantom nuclear sites. Bizarre flight patterns by Israeli F-15’s.  Some sources suggest that Israel fears Syria is pursuing missile technology with a Pyongyang only too anxious to rekindle the Baathist missile fetish most recently indulged in 2001 with another, infamous Baathist regime.

It’s such a big secret that it must have something to do with a heretofore, undisclosed Syrian nuke program and its alleged North Korean benefactors.  Regardless of being burdened with simultaneous cases of Iranian and North Korean cheating,  how could an international oversight group like the IAEA be completely unaware of a Syrian weaponization program already considered so dangerous that the Israelis risk international condemnation in order to destroy it?  And how could the DPRK manage such an underground relationship while already under such intense scrutiny?  If there is indeed such a working relationship between Pyongang and Damascus there must also be an accompanying corruption of an unprecedented magnitude at the international watchdogs.  But, as the Syrians and North Koreans both claimed today, maybe there really is no working relationship.

Maybe it’s such a big secret because of a completely different reason. While we’re left scratching our collective heads in a media blackout that may last for weeks, allow me to fill the speculative void with a little collusion talk of my own.   Could Israel be helping the United States attack Syrian targets directly responsible for the movement of jihadis and weapons across the Iraqi border?  Since Israel has been in a near constant state of war with Damascus for so many years and has bombed Syrian targets prior to and probably during last summer’s war against Hezbollah, why wouldn’t the Bush Administration–so far reluctant to attack terrorist assets beyond Iraqi borders–borrow the airpower of a friendly ally already at war with America’s common enemy?  Direct attacks by American warplanes would face so many symbolic and jurisdictional burdens.  And, although it may have been Israeli jets dropping the jellybeans, they could have been piloted by American volunteers, a la Eagle Squadron (I know, I’m really pushing it here).   Syria and Iran wanted a proxy way,  and we may be giving it to them.  But I digress. . .

Interestingly, the Israeli attack–along with a surge in diplomatic pressure on jihadi “source” states like Saudi Arabia– coincides with the beginning of a positive trend.  The numbers of jihadists entering Iraq via Syria are declining and the number of suicide bombings are trending downward as well, although the exact reasons why aren’t yet clear.   Perhaps the surge has a meaning or two that have not been thoroughly discussed.

Time to let Belgium partition itself

All joking aside, this is actually a serious problem that requires serious answers. Can we trust that Belgian leaders will rise above their cultural differences and forge a broadly supported political solution to spare the nation from partition chaos?  It’s not likely in this media cycle, and a restless EU and NATO are taking a good, hard look at their sunk costs in the embattled nation.

What’s Joe Biden’s take?

Police Chief “Betray Us” Johnson

The Philadelphia Surge has failed before it hath begun.

Philly wants 10,000 men to patrol the streets in a show of force to reduce rampant crime and violence.  Doesn’t Philly know that such tactics are a continuation of a failed policy?  Doesn’t Philly know that the plan’s architect–embattled Chief of Police Sylvester Johnson–is simply an agent for the incompetent status quo, which has so far claimed the lives of more than 1,000 civilians.  Philly is at a crossroads, and is ready for a change in strategy.

Think his detractors can get a huge ad discount at a sympathetic Philadelphia Inquirer?

Discouraging news for the Maupin family

The family of Matt Maupin returned from D.C. with more information about the search for their missing son, but no good news.  Army PFC Maupin is currenty the only confirmed MIA soldier in the Iraq theater.

Might have been arms for Hezbollah. . .

. . . or maybe arms destined for Iraq? U.S. confirms Israeli airstrikes on Syria. Assuming Washington blessed the raid in advance, was it because of an imminent threat to Israeli security or because there was an exceptional window of opportunity to disrupt supply lines threading to both Lebanon and Iraq?

Phoney war Part Tres

What’s going on between Israel and Syria?

Yep, that explains everything

State media explaining 9/11 to the innocents.

Calling out a traitor?

I think the latest adolescent belch from MoveOn is extraordinarily rich. After defending like-minded, nuanced-thinkers from charges of “unpatriotism” over the last six years, MoveOn decides to take the advice of its “let’s push back” brigade, takes a swing, and misses by orders of magnitude.

Congratulations. You’ve just unsupported the troops.

** Update**  The anti-Petraeus wave among Democrats didn’t really become noticeable until just recently.  Why all of a sudden was there this urgent need to smear him as a liar?

The latest liberal whine

Anbar? Not really an American success.

ThinkProgress accuses Bush of claiming responsibility for the Anbar Awakening when it was really the local sheiks who helped turn the tide in the province months earlier.  (Interestingly, he says no such thing in the speech linked in the article–he’s only congratulating the local troops for their service).   The local sheiks who turned against al Qaeda didn’t do so until they were sure that the several thousand battle-hardened marines camping out in places like Fallujah and Ramadi weren’t leaving anytime soon.  The hard lessons learned there found themselves rolled into the Surge strategy in an attempt to replicate that success in other troubled provinces.  So, yes, dammit, we can claim some responsibility for success in Anbar.

Greg Packer resurfaces

AP’s most oft-quoted man on the street resurfaces again, after being banned for several years. Couldn’t they at least get him remark on the upcoming Iraq report or arctic melting?

These bears are on thin ice

Polar bears didn’t develop as a species until around 40,000 to 200,000 years ago, and are a result of a genetic evolution that allowed the carnivores to adapt to rapidly changing (cooling)  environmental conditions accompanying the last ice age.  Now that ice age is over, and the polar bear is facing some dismal prospects.  So why is George Bush getting blamed for their demise?

I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!

E.J. Dionne, Jr. impersonates Stuart Smalley in a little peptalk to progressives. Now is the time for victory (cue up the “Right here, Right now” for background motivational soundtrack). The left could very well win big in November 2008 –after all, Britons jettisoned Churchill immediately after the war for no clear reason. Here are some of the roadsigns pointing to what Dionne claims will lead to a liberal advantage in popular politics:

Even before support for Bush’s Iraq policies collapsed and even before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, three other controversies weakened the foundations of his presidency — and of the conservative cause.

First, Bush’s decision to push for the partial privatization of Social Security was a choice rooted in ideology that called forth a vigorous defense of social insurance. The more Bush discussed that boutique idea, inspired by conservative think tanks, the less the public liked it. Bush was proposing to weaken guaranteed pensions at a moment when many Americans were experiencing new levels of economic insecurity described by the Yale University political scientist Jacob S. Hacker in The Great Risk Shift (Oxford University Press, 2006). Hacker notes that more and more financial risk has been thrown onto individual Americans as collective safety nets, particularly those provided by private employers for pensions and health care, have been shredded. On May 16, 2005, BusinessWeek, hardly a socialist bastion, sought to explain, as the headline put it, “Why so many Americans aren’t buying into Bush’s Ownership Society.” It turned out that one of the liberal-left’s oldest commitments, to a certain degree of social provision, was both up-to-date and popular in an increasingly uncertain economic time.

The notion of subsidizing your own Social Security benefits wasn’t fundamentally a terrible idea. It had some unknowns, and maybe some flaws. But mainly it had some promise. It offered a phased approach to providing solvency for a program that bean counters of every persuasion concede needs immediate attention. The loudest voices against the proposal were not those concerned about losing the full impact of their benefits, but those concerned with how to pay for it without raising taxes. The absence of a negotiated solution (the national debate lasted just a few months) did not vindicate any established liberal tenets of guaranteed income, as Dionne would like us to believe. It only underscored the difficulty of sustaining such welfare at the current levels. Hardly a repudiation of a creative idea.

And, thinking back, Bush handed potential Democratic compromisers a possibility of a tax increase to cover the transition–and they didn’t bite. Perhaps they were punting the idea forward to a future political season, when they might be blowing the fiduciary whistle. Today, Democrats talk a mean game about a imagined lack of personal sacrifice by the public during wartime, but they sure as hell didn’t budge on assuming a little extra personal sacrifice to save the largest social program in American history.

Second, the decision of the president and a Republican Congress to use federal power to overrule a state-court decision allowing the death of Terri Schiavo, who was deemed brain-dead, was far more damaging than it seemed at the time. Even social moderates and conservatives were uneasy with heavy-handed federal intervention in a matter that seemed more properly handled within families and by state governments. Even opponents of physician-assisted suicide did not view the case as clear-cut. They sensed that the moralistic language used by conservative politicians was inspired not by deep conviction but by the frantic pursuit of a key constituency’s votes.

Perhaps liberals might have been watching in disgust as the unusual events in Congress unfolded, but the rest of the country knew they were witnessing a slow-motion euthanasia sanctioned by courts overriding a state government acting at the family’s behest. (emphasis Dionne’s) On what basis does Dionne possibly mean the “moralistic language used by conservative politicians” was not “inspired by deep conviction”? One either supports the prolonged starvation of a brain-dead woman or doesn’t.  So what if conservatives (and the 47 Democrats that voted with them in the Palm Sunday Compromise) made a private bill effort to intervene and go on the record as supporting the family of this young woman in this complicated case?

Pandering? C’mon. It’s not like they were calling for voting rights for felons and illegal immigrants.

Last was the controversy over leaking the name of Valerie Plame, the CIA operative married to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The case came to symbolize the administration’s approach to its critics on Iraq. At the very moment when doubts about the war were building, here was an incident that seemed to embody all that was wrong with the administration’s approach to selling a war that, initially at least, a majority of Americans did not consider either wise or necessary.

Only in the inside-the-beltway world of liberal narrative writers would this case mean what Dionne says it means.  In retrospect, the facts now available to us (courtesy of the Libby trial) indicate that the episode can be better summarized as a careless foray in media madness by a not-so-neocon State Department executive zapping a Kerry partisan who penned a critique that was, incidentally, largely discredited in an offical forum.  The egg is on who’s face here?

I list these problems not because I believe that liberals face an impossible situation, but precisely because I am hopeful about the prospects of a progressive renewal. Its success will require the left to face its contradictions honestly, explain its principles clearly, and offer solutions fearlessly.

I’m not so sure voters will be keen on underwriting the kind of progressive renewal Dionne is hoping for, but a lot can happen between now and next fall.

Some weekend crazies

I’m sure there’s more to this than the crazy headline suggests but, man, there’s some weeeiiirrrd stuff  always happening in the UK.   Alas, in theory, here too.

A happy Labor Day to you all

About stemming the loss of manufacturing jobs and “rebuilding” the local economies that once housed them:

Only comprehensive economic disaster relief has any hope of resuscitating the declining communities where manufacturing once thrived.

I just *don’t * know * about that.