PARTY ON:

Our Boys blitz Taliban bash (JEROME STARKEY with Our Boys in Helmand, 12/31/07, The Sun)

BRITISH commandos launched a devastating blitz on the Taliban – as the evil terrorists held a party to celebrate Benazir Bhutto’s murder.

The dawn raid was staged after messages were intercepted about the sick knees-up in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Royal Marines crept into position as the fanatics partied the night away just hours after Ms Bhutto was killed in Pakistan. [...]

Ragtag Taliban sentries tried to hit back with machine gun fire – but stood no chance against the heroes of 40 Commando’s Charlie Company.

WHICH RAISES AN INTERESTING QUESTION:

In defense of waterboarding: No one should be prosecuted for waterboarding Abu Zubaydah (Mark Bowden, 12/23/07, Philadelphia Inquirer)

At the time of his capture in 2002, just six months after the Sept. 11 attacks, there was strong reason to believe Zubaydah knew virtually the entire organizational structure and agenda of al-Qaeda around the world. He was supervising ongoing plots to kill hundreds if not thousands of people. He was, for obvious reasons, disinclined to share this knowledge. Subjected briefly to waterboarding - less than a minute, according to published reports - he became cooperative and provided information that, according to the government, resulted in preventing planned attacks and capturing other key al-Qaeda leaders.

In the six years that have passed since the Manhattan towers collapsed, we have gained (partly through the interrogation of men like Zubaydah) a much clearer understanding of al-Qaeda and the threat it poses. While the chance of further murderous attacks is always with us, it is fair to say few of us feel the same measure of alarm we did then. The diminishment of this threat is at least in part due to the heroic efforts of the CIA, the military, and allies around the world in targeting terrorist cells.

In the process, the menace of Zubaydah himself has deflated. Today, he is just another little man in a orange jumpsuit at Guantánamo. Our national concern has shifted from stopping him to figuring out what to do with him.

And to second-guessing what was done to him. Waterboarding is a process by which a detainee is strapped down and forced to ingest and inhale water until he experiences the terror of drowning. It is not torture in the traditional sense of inflicting pain; it inflicts fear, intense, visceral fear, without doing physical harm. It is a method calculated to straddle the definitions of coercion and torture, and as such merely proves that both methods inhabit the same slippery continuum. There is a difference between gouging out a man's eyes and keeping him awake, and waterboarding falls somewhere in between.

In the unlikely event that Zubaydah knew nothing of value and that every bit of information he divulged was false, it was still reasonable to assume in 2002 that this was not the case. If his interrogators were able to stop one terror attack by waterboarding him, even if they violated international agreements and our national conscience, it was justified. All nations have laws against killing, but all recognize self-defense as a legitimate excuse. I think the waterboarding in this case is directly analogous, except that Zubaydah himself, although he richly deserves it, was neither killed nor permanently harmed.

ONLY MASSIVE GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION...:

The New Deal Jobs Myth: The candidates keep touting Depression-style public works programs. Why? (AMITY SHLAES, December 31, 2007, Opinion Journal)

[W]hat really stands out when you step back from the picture is not how much the public works achieved. It is how little. Notwithstanding the largest peacetime appropriation in the history of the world, the New Deal recovery remained incomplete. From 1934 on--the period when the spending ramped up--monetary troubles were subsiding, and could no longer be blamed alone for the Depression. The story of the mid-1930s is the story of a heroic economy struggling to recuperate but failing to do so because lawmakers' preoccupation with public works rather got in the way of allowing productive businesses to expand and pull the rest forward.

What was wrong with those public works jobs? Many created enduring edifices--New York's Triborough Bridge, for example, the Mountain Theater of Mount Tamalpais State Park outside San Francisco, the Texas Post Office murals, which were funded by Henry Morgenthau's Treasury. But the public jobs did their work inefficiently. That was because the jobs were scripted to serve political ends, not economic ones.

One of the saddest accounts of the public-works job culture I came across involved a model government farm in Casa Grande, Ariz. The men were poor--close to "Grapes of Wrath" poor--but sophisticated. They knew that the government wanted them to share jobs. But they saw that the only way for the farm to get profits was to increase output and to stop milking by hand. Five dairy crew men approached the manager to propose purchasing milking machines to increase output. They even documented their plea with a shorthand memo:

"Milking machine would save two men's labor at five dollars per day . . . Beginning in September would save three men's wages or $7.50 on account of new heifers coming in."

The men were willing to strike if they didn't get the machines, though they feared they might lose their precious places on the farm if they did strike. Their fears proved justified. "You're fired," the workers later recalled the manager replying when he saw their careful plan. The government man was horrified at the idea of killing the jobs he was supposed to create. "You're jeopardizing a loan of the U.S. government, and it's my job to protect that loan. You're through, everyone of you, get out."

A related problem was that the New Deal's emergency jobs were short term, lasting months, not years, so people could not settle into them. This led to further disruption. In the very best years of Roosevelt's first two terms, unemployment still stood above 9%. Nine percent is better than horrendous, but it hardly is a figure that induces hope.

One could interject that such arguments do not take into account the context--the paucity of other jobs, the dust storms, the deflations, the homelessness, the incomprehensible real privation of the period. But in the later part of the 1930s, the same model infrastructure projects did their part to prolong that privation. The private sector, desperate, was incredibly productive--those who did have a job worked hard, just as our grandparents told us. But the government was taking all the air in the room. Utilities are a prime example. In the 1920s electricity was a miracle industry. There was every expectation that growth in utilities might pull the country through hard times in the future.

And the industry might have indeed done that, if the government had not supplanted it. Roosevelt believed in public utilities, not private companies. He created his own highly ambitious infrastructure project--the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA commandeered the utility business in the South, notwithstanding the vehement protests of the private utilities that served that area.

Washington sucked up much of the available capital by selling bonds and collecting taxes to pay for the TVA or municipal power plants in towns. In order to justify their own claim that public utilities were necessary, New Dealers also undermined private utilities directly, through laws--not only the TVA law but also the infamous Public Utilities Holding Company Act, which legislated many companies out of existence. Other industries saw their work curtailed or pre-empted by government as well.

What about that oft-cited rising industrial production figure? The boom in industrial production of the 1930s did signal growth, but not necessarily growth of a higher quality than that, say, of a Soviet factory running three shifts. Another datum that we hear about less than industrial production was actually more important: net private investment, the number that captures how many capital goods companies were buying relative to what they already had. At many points during the New Deal, net private investment was not merely low, but negative. Companies were using more capital goods than they were investing in.

THE ROUTINIZATION OF CHAMPIONSHIPS:

Celtics down Lakers, plenty to take from it (Kelly Dwyer, Dec 31, 2007, Yahoo NBA Experts Blog)

With Rajon Rondo out, Doc Rivers started Tony Allen at point guard. I'll repeat: Doc Rivers started Tony Allen at point guard. Love Tony Allen, appreciate his game, enjoyed his breakout season last year - but he also entered the game turning the ball over on 18 percent of the possession he used up. That's not only bad, that's the worst mark of ANY guard in the entire NBA. And Doc Rivers started him, at point guard!

Somehow, it worked. Allen fouled out, did most of his damage against a clueless rookie (sorry for calling you "clueless," JC, happy birthday), and dished as many assists (four) as he had turnovers (four; and there was a backcourt violation he committed that wasn't called), but it worked. Or, let's change the wording on this: the Celtics won. If Rondo doesn't return for Boston's next game (at home, against the Rockets), then we might have a problem.

*When the C's made their moves last summer, one bonus for the team that no media outlet (mainstream or otherwise) mentioned was the idea that Paul Pierce's ability to get to the free throw line would likely put Boston over the top.

Kevin Garnett is brilliant, but his Timberwolves teams (as a result of his style of play, partially, but mostly because of his teammates; and, to a lesser extent, Flip Saunders' offense) always ranked amongst the worst teams in the NBA when it came to getting to the free throw line. Ray Allen can score, but he rarely gets fouled in instances outside of baseline defenders grabbing his jersey to keep up with him curling off screens.

But Pierce gets fouled, a lot, he puts teams in the penalty and he makes it possible for KG and Allen to grab late-period free throws with the work Paul puts in during the early part of the quarter.

In fact, during the first Boston possession of the game, the C's ran a quick post-up (front of the rim, in the paint) for Pierce that was the impetus behind this performance (with Antoine Walker throwing the pass) and Shaquille O'Neal's post-game declaration that Paul Pierce was " The [motherflippin'] Truth." Capital T.

GIPPERESQUE:

Thompson Makes His Move (Peter Robinson, 12/30/07, National Review: The Corner)

In the passage I found the most striking, Thompson does something no other Republican contender has attempted: appeal to Democrats.

You know, when I'm asked which of the current group of Democratic candidates I prefer to run against, I always say it really doesn't matter…These days all those candidates, all the Democratic leaders, are one and the same. They’re all NEA-MoveOn.org-ACLU-Michael Moore Democrats. They’ve allowed these radicals to take control of their party and dictate their course.

So this election is important not just to enact our conservative principles. This election is important to salvage a once-great political party from the grip of extremism and shake it back to its senses. It's time to give not just Republicans but independents, and, yes, good Democrats a chance to call a halt to the leftward lurch of the once-proud party of working people.

So in seeking the nomination of my own party, I want to say something a little unusual. I am asking my fellow Republicans to vote for me not only for what I have to say to them, but for what I have to say to the members of the other party—the millions of Democrats who haven't left the Democratic party so much as their party's national leadership has left them.

This is reminiscent of Reagan’s talk to the people of North Carolina in 1976. Simple, straightforward, modest production values—just the candidate in front of an American flag and an Iowa flag—but (to use the word again) compelling. Reagan’s 1976 talk enabled him to recover after a string of primary defeats, winning in North Carolina, then going on to come within a handful of delegates of wresting the nomination from Ford.

THE POWER OF UNIFIED AND EXPANDED ANGLOSPHERE:

India's Halt to Burma Arms Sales May Pressure Junta (Glenn Kessler, 12/30/07, Washington Post)

India has halted all arms sales and transfers to Burma, a development that could increase international pressure on the military junta that brutally crushed the pro-democracy "Saffron Revolution" led by monks this fall.

The Indian government's decision has not been officially announced, but diplomatic sources said it has been privately confirmed by New Delhi to top U.S. officials in recent weeks. In a little-noticed statement, first lady Laura Bush noted the decision in a video teleconference she held on Dec. 10 in recognition of International Human Rights Day. Ticking off actions taken by countries around the world in response to the crackdown, Bush said, "India, one of Burma's closest trading partners, has stopped selling arms to the junta."

UNLIKE AN AUTHORITARIAN REGIME...:

Iran's inner and outer circles of influence and power: The power of Shiite Muslim clergy has eroded in favor of various competing groups within a unique religious, civil, social and bureaucratic framework. (Borzou Daragahi, 12/31/07, Los Angeles Times)

Iran's supreme leader spoke not with the thunder of a man regarded in his country as God's representative on Earth, but with the exasperated tone of a corporate manager chastising his employees.

Ali Khamenei had ordered his deputies to start privatizing state-owned businesses: the telephone company, three banks and dozens of small oil and petrochemical enterprises.

Jealously guarding their own sources of power and patronage, however, his underlings all but ignored him.

Months passed. Then Khamenei gathered the country's elite for an extraordinary meeting. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Cabinet ministers were there, as were important clerics, the leader of parliament and provincial governors, and the heads of state broadcasting and the Iranian chamber of commerce.

With television cameras rolling, Khamenei told them to pass some laws, sell off some businesses -- and be quick about it. "Those who are hostile to these policies are the ones who are going to lose their interests and influence," he declared.

The system shrugged. By November, nine months after his public scolding and almost a year and a half after Khamenei had first issued his order, almost nothing had happened. According to the Middle East Economic Digest, only two out of 240 state-owned businesses Khamenei targeted had been sold off.

For years, Western analysts have struggled to understand the inner workings of Iran's leadership. To many, it is a government tightly controlled by the Shiite Muslim clergy. But the power of the clerics has steadily eroded. Increasingly, power is distributed among combative elites within a delicate system of checks and balances defined by religious as well as civil law, personal relations and the rhythm of bureaucracy.

Iran analysts struggle to discern which officials have authority and how much. And when Iranian officials make public pronouncements, it often is unclear whether they are expressing established policy or fighting among themselves -- speaking for their own faction or just themselves.

Concentric circles of influence and power that emanate from the supreme leader include the clergy, government and military officials -- and at their farthest fringes, militiamen and well-connected bazaar merchants -- altogether perhaps 15% of Iran's 70 million people.

Even the man regarded in Iran as the highest-ranking cleric in Shiite Islam finds himself constrained and challenged.

Those inside Iran's circle of power, says Ali Afshari, an analyst and former student activist now living in Washington, operate according to unique rules.

"It is not a democracy or an absolute totalitarian regime," he said. "Nor is it a communist system or monarchy or dictatorship. It is a mixture."

FACT FROM FICTION:

Remembering the truth about Benazir (Mohan Guruswamy, 12/31/07, rediff)

While we must feel sorry for her as a mother, a wife, and even as a friend and be shocked at the manner of her dying, we must also bear in mind her record as prime minister and her record of hostility towards India.

A recollection of some of this would set right the balance somewhat. First and foremost is the fact that it was her government, and at her specific instance, that gave Osama bin Laden shelter in the NWFP and then inserted in Afghanistan after the Taliban took over. It was her government that fostered the Taliban, a creation of her interior minister, Maj Gen Nasarullah Babar, and with a little bit of help from Britain's SIS, armed them and launched them on the regime in Kabul. We must not also forget her record in setting up Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as a mujahideen leader, a warlord whose trail of sadism and cruelty has not been matched by anyone else in Afghanistan.

She was also the prime minister who gave the ISI the go-ahead to wage jihad on India. She was the one who exhorted the Pakistan trained and financed terrorists to 'jag-jag mo-mo han-han' Jagmohan the then governor of Jammu and Kashmir, with an explicit chopping motion of the right hand across the open left palm. She was the one who shrieked 'Azadi-azadi' from across the LOC and extended Zia-ul-Haq's doctrine of death by a thousand cuts to Kashmir. Only, she wanted to greatly reduce the number of cuts. And lastly, we must not forget that she was the one who personally delivered the CDs bearing AQ Khan's nuclear bomb design to the North Koreans who in turn gave her country the medium range missiles which they now flaunt as Ghazni and Ghori, both Afghan towns whose sole contributions to history was two particularly rapacious and cruel raiders by the name Muhammad.

If this was the record of her behavior towards India, her record as prime minister vis-�-vis her own country was just as bad. She and her husband stole over $1.5 billion from Pakistan and she was facing prosecution in Switzerland [Images] at the time of her death. Her 320 acre estate in Sussex stands like a Taj Mahal as her tribute to her love for easy money and the good life. Talking about the good life, the bill for Evian water from France during her second term as prime minister totted up to a neat $6 million. It is said that she even bathed in Evian water!

Benazir Bhutto got two chances at leading Pakistan, not because of her English pals from her Oxford days, but because of her American pals at Harvard and later in the South Asia divisions of the US State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency.

HAMAS DELIVERS:

Middle East conflict toll 'falls' (BBC, 12/31/07)

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem says that the number of deaths in Israeli-Palestinian violence fell sharply in 2007 as compared to 2006.

But the group's annual report says that Israeli security forces killed 373 Palestinians, and 131 of these were not involved in hostilities. [...]

Palestinians killed 13 Israelis in 2007 - seven of them civilians.

THE GOOD OLD BOYS CIRCLE THE WAGONS:

Bloomberg Moves Closer to Running for President (SAM ROBERTS, 12/31/07, NY Times)

Buoyed by the still unsettled field, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is growing increasingly enchanted with the idea of an independent presidential bid, and his aides are aggressively laying the groundwork for him to run.

On Sunday, the mayor will join Democratic and Republican elder statesmen at the University of Oklahoma in what the conveners are billing as an effort to pressure the major party candidates to renounce partisan gridlock.

Former Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, who organized the session with former Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat of Georgia, suggested in an interview that if the prospective major party nominees failed within two months to formally embrace bipartisanship and address the fundamental challenges facing the nation, “I would be among those who would urge Mr. Bloomberg to very seriously consider running for president as an independent.”

IMAGINE IF THEY WERE STILL THE STUPID PARTY:

David Cameron in strong signal on EU treaty (Andrew Porter, 31/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

David Cameron has given the strongest signal yet that the Conservatives would consider holding a post-ratification referendum on the controversial EU Reform Treaty.

The Conservative leader said that the treaty - which critics claim is a revamped version of the defunct EU Constitution - is "wrong" and that his party would "address the issue".

COLLEGE IS JUST A NATIVE BOONDOGGLE:

Employers prefer migrants to UK graduates (Caroline Gammell, 31/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Labour's drive to boost the number of people going to university has produced a generation of poor quality graduates who are being outclassed by migrants, business leaders have warned.

More British students are gaining degrees but they are still struggling with basic English and maths, leaving employers more inclined to recruit people from Poland and central Europe, it was claimed.

TRIBALISM TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Taliban in turmoil after argument over sacking (Tom Coghlan, 31/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

The Taliban leadership are struggling to contain the fallout from an embarrassing public argument after a senior commander was sacked for disobeying orders but then refused to stand down.

Taliban spokesmen traded accusations in phone calls to news organisations after Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Islamist organisation, publicly sacked Mansoor Dadullah, the new overall ground commander fighting British forces in southern Afghanistan. [...]

The episode has drawn fresh attention to the potential fault lines within the organisation after reports in The Daily Telegraph that British intelligence had been negotiating with Taliban-aligned local commanders in Helmand province.

MI6 believed divisions were close to producing a tribal revolt in the north of Helmand last month ahead of an operation to retake the key town of Musa Qala.

ARISTOCRACY ISN'T DEMOCRATIC:

Teen with world on his shoulders (SAEED SHAH AND BILL JACOBS, 12/31/07, The Scotsman)

Benazir Bhutto's student son vows to continue fight for democracy after he is named co-chairman of party

"MY MOTHER always said democracy is the best revenge." With those words, spoken in English, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, a shy, 19-year-old student, took centre-stage in Pakistan's tumultuous and bloody politics yesterday.

NOT THE RETURN TO BUT THE FOUNDING OF NORMALCY:

Baghdad Zoo is a draw again: With the help of U.S. troops, a sanctuary that was damaged and depleted by the onset of the war is revived. (Ann M. Simmons, 12/30/07, Los Angeles Times)

But in 15 months, [Capt. Amy ] Cronin and her unit, the 15th Brigade Support Battalion, have gone from providing logistics and supplies to U.S. troops to helping refurbish an animal clinic, building horse stables and constructing new habitats for bears and porcupines at the Baghdad Zoo.

"It's really satisfying," said Cronin, 28, from Boiling Springs, Pa. "Typically support soldiers don't get to interact with Iraqis as much as infantry would. And this gives me the satisfaction of seeing the direct results of my work."

That has included projects to resuscitate the zoo, in a lush 3-square-mile park in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which also includes the headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition forces, the Iraqi parliament and other key administrative buildings. It used be among the largest animal sanctuaries in the Middle East.

TUT-TUT, THOSE DAYS ARE OVER:

Kibaki sworn in as election results roil Kenya: Rioting, violence and claims of voting fraud accompany the declaration of the president as winner. (Nicholas Soi and Robyn Dixon, December 31, 2007, LA Times)

President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner today of last week's presidential elections and was hastily sworn in to a new five-year term, amid ethnic violence over the vote count and widespread allegations of fraud.

The chief of the European Union election observers in the country, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, immediately issued a statement casting doubt on the credibility of the results in an election that is crucial to consolidating this East African nation's young democracy.

Earlier, opposition presidential candidate Raila Odinga called on the 76-year-old president to concede defeat and called for a recount of the votes.

There were reports of renewed violence and rioting as soon as Kibaki's victory was announced on television.

HOW ABOUT NONE UNTIL SYRIA HAS AN ELECTION?

French president severs ties with Syria until further notice (JPOST.COM STAFF AND AP, 12/30/07)

"I will not have any more contact with the Syrians until... we have received proof of Syria's intention to let Lebanon designate a president of consensus," said Sarkozy at a press conference in Cairo after meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. [...]

"France has taken the responsibility of talking with Syria," said Sarkozy. "One must recognize today that we cannot wait any longer, Syria must stop talking and now must act."

Syria has denied meddling with the election and has accused the French of working too closely with the US, which Damascus claims is trying to manipulate the Lebanese political process for its own interests - an accusation Washington denies.

LET US NOT FORGET...:

A failed state groping for a way back from the brink:
Poor education, political ineptitude and the power of the jihadis are the forces dragging Pakistan down (William Dalrymple, 12/30/07, Sunday Times of London)

Among Pakistani MPs, journalists and lawyers after news of the assassination there was not only real sorrow but also real fear. Pakistanis are used to crises buffeting their country but many of them at the end of last week seemed on the verge of despair.

[P]akistan now finds itself in a major existential crisis, at the heart of which lies the central question: what sort of country do Pakistanis want? A western-style liberal democracy, as envisaged by Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah? An Islamic republic like Mullah Omar’s Afghanistan? A military-ruled junta of the sort created by Generals Ayyub Khan, Zia and Musharraf?

The most pressing crisis now facing Pakistan comes in the shape of the country’s many armed and dangerous jihadi groups. For 25 years the military and Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) have been the paymasters of myriad mujaheddin groups intended for deployment first in Afghanistan and then Kashmir. While the military may have once believed that it could use jihadis for its own ends, the Islamists have followed their own agendas and have now brought their struggle onto Pakistani streets and into the heart of the country’s politics.

The assassination of Bhutto and the three recent attacks on Musharraf are just the tip of the iceberg. Every bit as alarming is the degree to which the jihadis now control much of the NorthWest Frontier Province. The Swat Valley – once one of the most popular destinations in South Asia for tourists – is now smouldering as government troops and jihadis battle for control.

A STRANGER TO TRUTH:

Romney and the candor gap (GLEN JOHNSON, 12/30/07, Associated Press)

When confronted with questions that might conflict with his message of the day or political record, the Republican candidate has shown a tendency to bob and weave or simply dismiss history. He has done so all year, providing an easy target for his opponents. [...]

This past week, Romney did it again over questions about whether he was planning to air negative ads — in particular on the subject of illegal immigration — against John McCain. The Arizona senator has been surging in New Hampshire, where Romney is angling for back-to-back victories after a hoped-for win in this week's Iowa caucuses.

"I haven't made any decisions on what issue ads might come forward, down the road, but those aren't what we shot today," Romney told reporters on Wednesday. "What we shot today was just me to camera."

On Friday, his campaign went on TV with a new commercial, a so-called contrast ad that did not feature Romney speaking, but a narrator comparing his record to McCain's on immigration and tax matters.

BE THE ALPHA ACT LIKE THE UNDER:

John McCain Busts a Move (Salena Zito, 12/30/07, Real Clear Politics)

"Townhall meeting by townhall meeting, bus ride by bus ride, and endless phone calls to local talk show hosts, are what have put McCain back on the map in New Hampshire," says David Carney, a GOP political strategist not affiliated with any campaign.

One of those local radio talk show hosts, former Democrat candidate for governor Arnie Arnesen, agrees. "(D)espite many voters' disappointment with his dismal campaign ... the charisma, smarts and straight talk of McCain did not evaporate with voters over the last eight years."

CLOWNS DON'T GET TO BE RINGMASTERS:

The Minutemen Circus (Ruben Navarrette, 12/30/07, Real Clear Politics)

Tired of playing cop, some in the Minuteman movement are trying to influence the 2008 presidential election by playing powerbroker. And like just about everything this bunch does, the results are sad -- but funny. [...]

Here's the funny part: Suddenly, other anti-illegal immigration activists are hounding [Jim Gilchrist, one of the co-founders of the Minuteman Project] with the same zeal with which he once hounded illegal immigrants at the border. After Gilchrist appeared with Huckabee at a news conference in Iowa, the vigilante leader was bludgeoned on the Internet by hard-core nativists who believe Huckabee is soft on illegal immigration and that Gilchrist is just out for Gilchrist.

You don't say.

COUNTER-NARRATIVE:

Letter from America (Richard Bernstein, December 30, 2007, NY Times)

Fixing the large problem of medical care is a matter of complicated, multi-page, somewhat abstract proposals put out by senators and presidential candidates, but getting cared for is a matter of individual patients and individual doctors, and the experience can be highly satisfactory.

I write this lying at home in the borough of Brooklyn in a rented hospital bed, seven days after an orthopedic surgeon at St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan performed these procedures on me:

He sawed off the top of my thigh bone, stripped away one by one the layers of muscle and cartilage around the joint, smoothed the pelvic socket above the leg and installed a precision-machined titanium and plastic prosthesis to replace the discarded joint. Then the surgeon reassembled the whole upper leg, reattaching muscle and cartilage as necessary.

It took roughly two hours to do all that while I lay unaware on the operating table. He did it all through a modest five-inch incision, with so little resulting bleeding that I didn't need a drop of the blood I had donated a week or so earlier, just in case.

And while I am still in recovery mode, walking on crutches and the like, if I am typical of other recipients of total hip replacement, I am soon going to be enjoying the full use of my right leg. And this was a leg damaged enough by osteoarthritis that for the last few months it was hard for me to put my socks on in the morning - much less play soccer with my son or even take a pain-free after-dinner stroll in my neighborhood.

Moreover, except for a private-room supplement at the wonderful St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, the entire cost - probably in the neighborhood of $25,000 to $30,000 - is going to be covered by my health insurance company. This includes not only the hospital treatment itself and all medications but post-operative physical therapy, and even the little "hip kit" you get with devices to help you put on your socks while still in the laid-up phase.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS:

Recalibrate Pelosi's GPS? (James G. Zumwalt, December 30, 2007 , Washington Times)

There is always danger involved in a democratic leader's decision to go to a foreign state to conduct direct talks with a tyrannical leader whose inability to respect the human rights of his own people is obvious. The danger lies in giving credibility to the tyrant and undermining support for that country's human-rights activists.

The month after Mrs. Pelosi's visit, the Syrian government launched an accelerated crackdown on free speech and peaceful activism, arresting several dissidents within a three-week period. Perhaps emboldened by Mrs. Pelosi's visit and her personal accolades about the Syrian president, Mr. Assad sentenced six of Syria's leading activists to extremely harsh sentences ranging from three to 12 years. The six — Michel Kilo, Mahmud 'Issa, Sulaiman Shummar, Khalil Hussain, Dr. Kamal al-Labwani and Anwar al-Bunni — were all convicted on politically motivated charges, most for simply signing a declaration calling for improved Lebanese-Syrian relations. These sentences made clear Mr. Assad's mandate that Syrian citizens are not to express political opinions, even though this right is guaranteed by an international agreement to which Damascus is a party. While the United States and the European Union criticized the sentences, Speaker Pelosi remained uncharacteristically silent.

Also the month after Mrs. Pelosi's visit came passage of a referendum to confirm a second seven-year term of office for Mr. Assad. In a general election reminiscent of the sham elections that took place in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's reign — with only one candidate on the ballot — Mr. Assad received 97.2 percent of the vote.

A CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL IS AN INTELLECTUAL, NOT A CONSERVATIVE:

Moral Clarity in Iowa (Kevin McCullough, December 30, 2007, Townhall)

What will be the deciding issue for Iowa GOP voters on January 3rd?

According to KCCI-TV in Des Moines who commissioned a poll to find out, Iowans indicated it will be the future moral direction of the country.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton reacts while talking to a resident of Clinton, Iowa during a campaign stop December 29, 2007. REUTERS/Andy Clark (UNITED STATES)
Related Media:
VIDEO: And the Winners Are

Northeastern Republicans and radio shows which emanate from the E-fax studios in Orange County California may despise it - but that is the number one issue on the minds of GOP voters in Iowa. The Beltway-Manhattan elite can cluck and curse all they want but the reality is the largest chunk of GOP voters in Iowa (and also much reflective of the rest of the red states) want a candidate with clarity on the moral tests that face our nation directly.

It would behoove the editors of the most prominent conservative online and broadcast outlets to take notice of what these voters have to say.

PANTS AFIRE:

More Mitt Malarkey: Romney repeats misleading claims about McCain's stand on immigration and his own record on taxes. (factcheck.org, Dec 29, 2007)

WHICH TRIBE DO YOU ALIENATE?:

Top Democrats Reticent on Primary Choices (Chris Cillizza And Shailagh Murray, December 30, 2007, Washington Post)

The silence is deafening. So many prominent politicians, particularly Democrats, have refrained from endorsing a presidential candidate. Are they drowning in a sea of good options, or terrified of making the wrong call?

THEY'VE BEEN RESONATING FOR THIRTY YEARS:

David Cameron’s policies ‘resonate’ with public, admits Jack Straw (David Cracknell, 12/30/07, Sunday Times of London)

A SENIOR cabinet minister has admitted David Cameron’s campaign is “resonating” with the public and the government must “adapt” if it is to keep power.

After a disastrous autumn for Gordon Brown, in which the Tories took a convincing lead in the opinion polls, Jack Straw accepted in an interview with The Sunday Times that there had been “problems” that must be put right next year and that “clear progress” must be made.

BARE IN THE WOODS:

Russian population dropped this year (Calibre, December 29, 2007)

Russia lost more than 200,000 people this year, the statistics service said Saturday.

The population decline of 0.15 percent was slightly smaller than in 2006, RIA Novosti reported. The country's population was estimated at 142 million as of Nov. 1, the Russian news agency said.

While the death rate continued to exceed the birth rate, the number of immigrants was up 87 percent. [...]

United Nations demographers say if current trends continue, Russia's population will be one-third smaller than it is now in 2050.

WHAT SEPARATES REAGAN AND W FROM LBJ AND NIXON:

Thompson: 'Not particularly interested in running for president' (CNN, 12/29/07)

Republican Fred Thompson has long faced criticism he lacks motivation to be President of the United States, but the Tennessee Republican's latest comments Saturday are likely to spawn fresh heat.

“I’m not particularly interested in running for president," the former senator said at a campaign event in Burlington when challenged by a voter over his desire to be commander-in-chief.

“But I think I’d make a good president," Thompson continued. "I have the background, capability, and concern to do this and I’m doing it for the right reasons.” [...]

"I am not consumed by personal ambition," Thompson also said Saturday. "I'm offering myself up."

"I'm only consumed by a few things and politics is not one of them."

WITH OR AGAINST:

Diplomats expelled 'at behest of the US' (Eleanor Mayne, 30/12/2007, Sunday Telegraph)

Two European diplomats accused of holding secret talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan were thrown out of the country following a complaint by the US, intelligence officials in Kabul have told The Sunday Telegraph. [...]

[A]ccording to a senior Afghan intelligence source, American officials had been unhappy about meetings between the men and high-level Taliban commanders in the volatile Helmand province.

The source claimed that the US alerted Afghan authorities after learning that the diplomats were providing direct financial and other support - including mobile phone cards - to the Taliban commanders, in the hope of persuading them to swap sides.

THE LITTLE TEASE:

JK Rowling drops hints of possible eighth Harry Potter book (RHODRI PHILLIPS, 29th December 2007, Daily Mail)

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has strongly hinted for the first time that she could write an eighth book in the series.

Rowling, 42, admits she has 'weak moments' when she feels she will pen another novel about the boy wizard.

One of her biggest fans – her 14-year-old daughter Jessica – has already put pressure on her to revisit the character.

IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS HANDS... (via Brad S):

Bush Rejects Defense Bill by Pocket Veto (BEN FELLER, 12/28/07, AP) — President Bush on Friday used a "pocket veto" to reject a sweeping defense bill because he dislikes a provision that would expose the Iraqi government to expensive lawsuits seeking damages from the Saddam Hussein era. [...]

Bush's decision to use a pocket veto, announced while vacationing at his Texas ranch, means the legislation will die at midnight Dec. 31. This tactic for killing a bill can be used only when Congress is not in session.

The House last week adjourned until Jan. 15; the Senate returns a week later but has been holding brief, often seconds-long pro forma sessions every two or three days to prevent Bush from making appointments that otherwise would need Senate approval.
He treated frogs better when he was a kid.

HE OUGHT TO GET A REFUND...:

Mitt Romney Down For The Count? (Thomas Edsall, 12/29/07, Real Clear Politics)

From a purely business point of view the past four weeks have marked an extraordinary setback for the Romney campaign.

Since January 1, 2007, the former Massachusetts governor has spent well in excess of $80 million, including at least $17.4 million of his own money, paying media fees in excess of $30 million, salaries of roughly $16 million, and consulting payments of more than $15 million.

HOW COULD HUMANISTS NOT BLAME HUMANS? (via Jim Yates):

Gore Milks Cash Cow (Jorg von Uthmann, Dec. 28, 2007, Bloomberg)

The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, ``Ma Verite Sur la Planete'' (``My Truth About the Planet''), doesn't mince words.

He calls Gore a ``crook'' presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore's French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.

Allegre doesn't deny that the climate has changed or that extreme weather has become more common. He instead emphasizes the local character of these phenomena.

While the icecap of the North Pole is shrinking, the one covering Antarctica -- or 92 percent of the Earth's ice -- is not, he says. Nor have Scandinavian glaciers receded, he says. To play down these differences by basing forecasts on a global average makes no sense to Allegre.

FINDING GRANT:

Courageous and liberal, yes – but an unreliable partner for the West (Bronwen Maddox, 12/29/07, Times of London)

As a potential saviour of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto was an uncomfortable candidate: dogged by corruption charges that might have resurfaced with new seriousness in Swiss courts in the new year and by a record of calamitous ineffectiveness during her two terms as Prime Minister. [...]

She was the best of an unattractive lineup; Pakistan has never been blessed in its politicians, who represent the worst of its society – feudal and fonder of patronage than principle. Western-educated and female, Ms Bhutto appeared to stand for the liberal values that the West wants to encourage in Pakistan.

But Britain and the US may have been too pragmatic by half in putting such weight on so imperfect a figure, and in hoping that her strengths would outweigh her enormous weaknesses: grandiosity, a sense of destiny that she interpreted as licence to do what she wanted and an indifference to the distinction between the interests of Pakistan and her own. They made light of the unpredictability of her policies; in office, she let public spending and debt rise to unmanageable proportions, and she was ambivalent towards the US and India.

BUILDING HOPE:

Iraqi sees signs of hope in his war-torn nation (BILL HESS,. 12/29/07, Herald/Review)

What was once known as the Triangle of Death in this war-torn county is now the Triangle of Hope, an Iraqi adviser to an American Army unit said.

“We are building schools, roads and we have repaired a bridge,” Hashim Khidir, said of an area that is part of 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) responsibility south of Baghdad. [...]

Khidir helps provide engineering expertise to the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry, 3rd Bridge Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division (Assault). But he said many other projects are helping to build a base for democracy in his homeland.

THE THREAT TO IRAN IS IRANIANS:

Iran's elite military force fears security threat from within (Najmeh Bozorgmehr, December 28 2007, Financial Times)

It has been accused of playing a role in arming Shia militia in Iraq and threatened with being labelled a "terrorist organisation" by the US, but Iran's Revolutionary Guard - the country's elite military force - believes that domestic security threats represent a much greater danger to the country than the international crisis surrounding its nuclear programme.

Mohammad-Ali Jafari, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander, said shortly after he took his new job in September: "The main mission of the guards is currently fighting domestic threats and in case there is a foreign threat we will join the [conventional] army."

SOMETIMES THE 80s SEEM LIKE CENTURIES AGO:

Growth of a revolutionary boomtown: Timisoara, the cradle of Romania's 1989 revolution, is enjoying an economic revival. Nick Thorpe reports on urban wealth and a city balancing between empires old and new. (Nick Thorpe, 12/29/07, BBC)

The twilight of 2007 finds the city embedded in the European empire.

There are very few Jews left and the number of Hungarians is dwindling but the Italians have arrived in force.

Marco Petriccione, country manager of the Banko Italo Romena, has been here for five years.

His was the first Italian bank to set up here, to absorb the business demands of 6,000 Italians.

Romanians go to Italy to work, usually in menial jobs, but the Italians come here as employers attracted by low Romanian wages - still under an average of £300 (406 euros) a month.

At first they manufactured shoes and textiles.

Look out for the "designed in Italy" on that expensive label but read "made in Romania" between the lines.

But as wages rise here, those companies are going further east, to the Republic of Moldova, for example.

In their place, big Italian electricity companies like Enel and Ansaldo are arriving to fill the growing demand for energy and infrastructure.

In St George's Cathedral, on Piata Unirii, I once watched a nun mopping the floor early in the morning, the splash of her bucket mingling with the prayers of the faithful.

This time, there are no candles but, in the dim electric light, the huge gilded figures of angels seem to soar out of the shadows, chastising the congregation for their latest sin - shopping.

"Whenever I ring my friends, they tell me they're shopping," my colleague Mircea complains.

"It's the national sport now in Romania."

CONSERVATIVES VS. LIBERTY WAS NEVER GOING TO LAST:

Harry Dent | b. 1930: The Southern Strategist (RICK PERLSTEIN, 12/30/07, NY Times Magazine)

For most of the post-Civil-War era, the Grand Old Party survived in the Southern popular imagination as the Yankee enemy, eager to conspire with newly enfranchised slaves to overturn the entire “Southern way of life.” In 1957, Republican congressmen were instrumental in passing the first federal civil rights law in almost a century. The idea of a Southern state delivering its electoral votes to “the party of Lincoln” would have seemed outrageous before the 1960s — before, that is, the national Democratic Party made a commitment to the enforcement of civil rights for blacks.

By then, Harry Dent was a top political aide to Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond ran for president as a third-party “Dixiecrat” in 1948 after the Democratic convention passed a civil rights plank. Shortly before the 1964 presidential election, a Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, passed the most sweeping civil rights law in United States history. This time, Thurmond didn’t form a third party. The Republican presidential nominee, the conservative Barry Goldwater, opposed the civil rights law, which was political heresy at the time, as the conventional wisdom was that Republicans could not win the presidency without courting the black vote. Dent, a Southerner through and through — he was a lay preacher and established the Senate’s breakfast prayer group — persuaded his boss to drop out of the Democratic Party for good, join the Republicans and campaign for Goldwater. Goldwater lost in a landslide, winning just six states, five of them in Dixie. The “solid Democratic South” had been breached. American politics would never be the same.

THEY HAVE MINUTEMEN, WE HAVE HALF-MINUTE MEN:

Influx fuels rise in U.S. population (Sean Lengell, December 29, 2007, Washington Times)

A new immigrant — legal or illegal — is expected to enter the United States every 30 seconds by January, the U.S. Census Bureau says.

The agency estimates this foreign influx will increase the total U.S. population by one person every 13 seconds.

The U.S. also is expected to register one birth every eight seconds and one death every 11 seconds by next month.

The Census Bureau is projecting the nation's Jan. 1 total population will be 303,146,284 — a 0.9 percent increase from New Year"s Day 2007.

The estimate is similar to recent annual population increases of about 1 percent.

THE EYE-ROLLERS:

An American in Iran (Max Rodenbeck, 1/17/08, NY Review of Books)

There is not much to see, really, but as I turn to leave, a young man approaches with a smile, and introduces himself as an engineer working for a European company in Iran. The only reason he is here, the engineer quickly explains, is to please his mother-in-law, who is visiting from the provinces. He himself was born in the year of the revolution, and his father died in the war with Iraq. But he finds all this "martyrdom stuff" overdone. He reckons that the current government won't last long, because people like him who cynically disdained to vote in 2005 will be sure to do so next time around, in parliamentary elections next March, and presidential ones in 2009; at least, so long as George W. Bush does not attack Iran and provoke a backlash. President Ahmadinejad's comments about the Holocaust and Israel were "stupid," says the engineer. He has no doubt that the country will change, no matter how hard such usulgaran, or fundamentalists, try to stop it. But it will do so gradually and peacefully: "We've tried revolution, and nobody wants that again."

Over and again, traveling this Mexico-sized and intensely proud country, one is impressed by a similar weariness with politics, mixed with resentment at state efforts to stir the embers of revolutionary fervor. The eye-rolling is not caused by some overpowering attraction to Western culture. Iranians cherish being different. They clearly prefer their own food and music and poetry, not to mention religion. Nor is the sullen mood necessarily due to anger at repression of women, or dissidents, or minorities. While it is true that the regime's habit of banning books and throwing activists in jail has grown sharply nastier under Ahmadinejad, still, the level of fear remains far lower than in the 1980s. Apart from the tiresome dress code and some lingering discriminatory laws, women in Iran are freer than in neighboring countries. Headscarved women work, drive, jog in public parks, and run for public office. Minorities are mostly better off, too, enjoying freedom of worship, language rights, and quotas in parliament. (With the notable exception of the Bahais, a modern branch of Shiism regarded by mainstream mullahs as heretical.) Unlike their restive brothers across the border in Turkey, Iranian Kurds have rarely felt much need to revolt. Political dissent of other kinds still risks punishment but is less dangerous here than in, say, Saudi Arabia or Syria. At least Iranians can vote, and know that their vote makes a difference.

The weariness cannot be ascribed solely to a shaky economy either. It is true that prices, and especially rents, are rising painfully fast for people on fixed incomes. Corruption is rife, the gap between rich and poor is as great as under the Shah, and businessmen complain bitterly of the incompetence and erratic policies of the Ahmadinejad administration. But living standards and public services have steadily, if slowly, improved in recent years. The effects of sanctions are not widely felt, so far. Life is hard for many, but appears decent by regional standards.

Yet there does appear to be one factor that unifies a very large portion of the Iranian public in a sort of generalized melancholy. This is the desire to escape from a mental ghetto in which they are encouraged to see enemies everywhere, to sustain evidently hypocritical notions of purity, and to put up with the finger-wagging of preachers and police and chador-encased proctors. It is a repressed demand not so much for political change as for personal freedom.

PAKISTAN IS, AND HAS BEEN FROM THE START, WHERE THE WAR ENDS:

'Al Qaeda has become Pakistani phenomenon' (PTI, December 29, 2007)

"Clearly, Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan does not just comprise Arabs and Uzbeks and Tajiks. It also comprises Pakistanis; and among such Pakistanis it comprises Pathans and Punjabis and possibly Urdu speakers who constitute the Pakistani Taliban," the Daily Times said in an article.

"Certainly, it is known that a number of Pakistani sectarian and jihadi Sunni organisations have joined the Al Qaeda network after the government launched efforts to disband them since the 'peace process' started with India. So Al Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or foreign element."

The government on Friday held the Al Qaeda responsible for a series of suicide bombings meant to destabilize Pakistan, including the attack in Rawalpindi on Bhutto on Thursday that killed her and nearly 30 others. It said it had intelligence intercepts of Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, congratulating another person for the attack.

"Why is it difficult to believe that the same Islamist network that tried to eliminate President (Pervez) Musharraf, (former premier) Shaukat Aziz, (ex-interior minister) Aftab Sherpao and Benazir Bhutto on October 18 may be responsible for her murder on December 27," the newspaper article said.

"The first three have overtly been involved in the 'war against terror' while Bhutto had pledged many times to wipe out the extremists and terrorists if she was returned to power. All were seen as American agents or puppets."

OUCH!:

BECAUSE, GOD FORBID HE SHOULD RUN WHEN HE MIGHT BE MILDLY QUALIFIED:

Obama: 2008 or bust (Lauren Appelbaum, 12/28/07, First Read)

Obama told his supporters if he doesn't win in 2008, he won't be trying again later on.

Poland's Oscar nominated Kawalerowicz dies aged 85 (AFP, 12/28/07)

Oscar-nominated Polish film director Jerzy Kawalerowicz died aged 85 in the Polish capital Warsaw late Thursday after suffering a hemorrhage, Poland's Association of Cinematographers confirmed Friday.

Among the fathers of the 1950's "Polish school" of cinematography, Kawalerowicz directed 17 feature films during his life-time. [...]

The 2001 screen production of "Quo Vadis", a novel by Poland's 19th century Nobel-prize winning author Henryk Sienkiewicz, was his most recent work.

DISORDER IN ONE'S MIND DOESN'T ALTER REALITY:

Home Thoughts From Abroad: Some U.S. soldiers have spent so much time in Iraq, it feels like home. (Lawrence Kaplan, Dec. 26, 2007, Slate)

Whether measured in terms of tactics and techniques improved, operational schemes perfected, or the clan loyalties of every house on every street cataloged and memorized, the accumulation of experience counts for everything in this war. In Iraq, roughly half of all casualties tend to be suffered during the first three months of a unit's 15-month deployment. When I last visited Bravo Company, it was getting hit by IEDs twice a day and mortared routinely. "The whole area was a meat grinder," Sgt. Johnson recalled, pointing to the canals and dikes that order the surrounding "triangle of death" into neat grids. But engagement with local tribes, intelligence tips, and targeted raids had quieted the area to the point where the company hadn't been hit by a single IED strike in four months. Similarly, the brigade as a whole had lost more than 50 soldiers during its first eight months in Iraq, but only one during the last four months.

What is true in microcosm is also true writ large. In a war where it's nearly impossible to detect intellectual coherence, the Army's learning curve tells a clear story.

GOT TO BE IN THE FINAL THREE:

Thompson eyes 'strong showing' in Iowa (Stephen Dinan, December 28, 2007, Associated Press)

Fred Thompson is flooding this state with his best asset — himself — hoping voters are tired of the other Republican presidential candidates and willing to take a second look at his own candidacy before next week's caucuses. [...]

Iowa's first-in-the-nation presidential nominating contest is next Thursday, and the campaigns' bets are now in — and Mr. Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, has the most to gain or lose.

"We had to have a very strong showing in some of the early states so we could go to South Carolina in a competitive mode, and we decided Iowa is the best for that," said William B. Lacy, Mr. Thompson's campaign manager, who said Iowa is "just tailor-made" for the kind of barnstorming tour Mr. Thompson is conducting. He said the hope is with Mr. Huckabee and Mr. Romney "fighting it out at the top, to just slide right up through the middle."

YOU CAN'T STABILIZE SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T EXIST:

Benazir's death won't have long-term impact (A K Verma, December 28, 2007, rediff)

No individual leader in Pakistan has been a match for the accumulated problems of the country. Some of these problems have existed from the day Pakistan came into existence. A national identity, universally acceptable within the country, remains elusive. The polity and the ruling elites have not been able to reach a consensus on what should be the acceptable goals for the nation. Although the State is an Islamic republic, identifiable and articulate groups want it converted into an Islamist entity. The strength of such groups is on the ascendancy as Talibanisation creeps in on an incremental scale.

Benazir's assassination is the result of this phenomenon.

Benazir, as prime minister for the third term or just as the leader of the Pakistan People's Party, the most popular political party in Pakistan, in all likelihood, would have been unable to stem the tide.

The mutually antagonistic relationship between Islamist and non Islamist groups in Pakistan has reached a stage where no liberal and secular leader can be considered safe from risks such as faced by Benazir.

Benazir had created vast followings in the Sind and Punjab provinces but not in Baluchistan or the North West Frontier Province. In fact, no Pakistani leader has had popular support in all the four provinces simultaneously. An underlying cause is the absence of pervasive unity between different cultural and linguistic groups in Pakistan.

Language is often a major marker of identity of a group. In the absence of social justice and developmental equality, this marker acquires a deeper imprint. Even though emergence of Bangladesh from Pakistan as an independent nation highlighted this paradigm, Pakistan's politicians learnt no lessons. Every region of Pakistan places its own regional identity above that of Pakistan as a nation.

A NICE BUMP, BUT...:

Bhutto death makes McCain man of the moment (Roger Simon, Dec 28, 2007, Politico)

John McCain, older than dirt and with more scars than Frankenstein as he likes to say, suddenly wasn’t looking so bad.

Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in Pakistan and the political conversation in America had changed.

Which means at least for a little while Republicans here were not thinking about which presidential candidate was tougher on immigration or which had the best Christian conservative credentials.

NOT THAT THEY'VE HAD MUCH SHOT ANYWAY...:

Obama & the Burden of Liberalism (Kimberley Strassel, 12/28/07, Opinion Journal)

If the Democratic race has been about anything, it's been about promises of "change." Mr. Obama has made it his signature issue, tapping into a national unease with the status quo, and riding it to within striking distance of Hillary Clinton. What the charismatic young Illinois senator has not yet had to do is explain what shape this change will assume, or how he intends to bring it about. And lucky for him, because it's far from clear Mr. Obama is anything but same old, same old. [...]

Washington is gridlocked in part because congressional Democrats have attempted to govern with an agenda that is too liberal even for many in their own party. Mr. Obama is captivating, though probably not captivating enough to convince Republican rivals to sign up for Nancy Pelosi's game plan. His only real tool for changing Washington presumably rests in convincing his own party to move toward a more innovative middle. Yet nothing in Mr. Obama's history, or current campaign, suggests he intends to forge a new Democratic direction.

As a candidate, Bill Clinton recognized Democrats' national image problems, and ran on a message of "opportunity, responsibility, community." President Bill Clinton abandoned most of that within his first 100 days, caving to liberals. But it remains the case that his signature policy achievements--welfare reform and trade--were the result of his ability to shift Democrats toward the center. When Mr. Obama was last heard talking about trade, it was to complain that Americans had lost their jobs for "a cheaper T-shirt" and to promise to "amend" Mr. Clinton's Nafta with stricter labor agreements.

This is no Joe Lieberman, who seeks to keep his party from jumping off a foreign policy cliff. Mr. Obama criticizes any Democrat who supported the Iraq war. This is no Daniel Moynihan, who favored private Social Security accounts as a means of alleviating wealth inequality. In 2005, Mr. Obama suggested private accounts were a form of "social Darwinism." This is no former Louisiana Sen. John Breaux, who wanted to transform Medicare into a system that would help seniors buy insurance on the private market. Mr. Obama has blasted Medicare Advantage, and boasts of his votes to pour more money into today's failing government-run system.

As for Mr. Obama's claim he is no slave to "rigid ideology," consider his voting record. National Journal in March released its 2006 annual rankings of Congress based on key roll call votes, and Mr. Obama was found to be more liberal than 86% of his senatorial colleagues.

NO ONE LIKES IT BUT VOTERS:

Criticism Aside, 'FairTax' Boosts Huckabee Campaign (Jonathan Weisman, 12/28/07, Washington Post)

To former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, supporting a national retail sales tax is more than a policy proposal. It has provided much-needed muscle for his campaign, filling rallies and events with fervent supporters hoping to replace the entire income and payroll tax system.

There's one problem: A national sales tax won't work, at least not according to tax experts and economists of all political stripes. [...]

"Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly," Huckabee says on his Web site. "But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all -- personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. . . . Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth."

THE DISCIPLINE OF DEMOCRACY:

Inflation Fuels Anger Toward Ahmadinejad (ALI AKBAR DAREINI, 12/27/07, AP)

A sharp rise in inflation has provoked fierce criticism of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - not only from his reformist opponents, but also from senior conservatives who helped bring him to power but now say he is mismanaging the economy.

Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005 on a populist agenda promising to bring oil revenues to every family, eradicate poverty, improve living standards and tackle unemployment. Now he is being challenged for his failure to meet those promises.

Reformists and even some fellow conservatives say Ahmadinejad has concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy - and they have become more aggressive in calling him to account.

PINKY DIED FOR THEIR COMPLACENCE:

With Bhutto Gone. . .: Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Steve Schippert, co-founder of the Center for Threat Awareness and managing editor for ThreatsWatch.org. (Jamie Glazov, 12/28/07, FrontPageMagazine.com)

FP: What does the assassination of Bhutto mean for Pakistan going forward? What perils now lie ahead?

Schippert: Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday is a devastating blow for Pakistan and a great loss as such for the West. For all her faults readily pointed out by her critics - rightly or wrongly - she remained the best hope for a representation of reasonable and moderate Pakistanis within their own government.

Now, the only significantly popular alternative is another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. And he has advocated a Pakistani position of unceremonious distancing of Pakistan from the United States and cozying up to the Taliban-al-Qaeda alliance of terrorists and insurgents nested in Pakistan's tribal regions. He is also said to have benefited from a significant contribution in his failed first run for prime minister from none other than Usama bin Laden - to the tune of $3 billion rupees. For the West, he is not a trustworthy ally at all against al-Qaeda in his midst.

The elections slated for January 8th will almost certainly be delayed by Musharraf, who can be expected to announce another phase of emergency powers if violent street protests do not abate - effectively enacting a state of emergency with the constitution suspended and martial law in place.

It should be noted that instability and disunity are a requirement of any successful insurgency campaign....

MORE:
Al Qaeda is right under Musharraf's nose (B Raman, December 28, 2007, rediff)

Since 9/11, there has been hardly any jihadi terrorist strike anywhere in the world in which there was no Pakistani connection.

Since 2002, there has been hardly any jihadi terrorist strike in Pakistani territory in which there was no connection of the Pakistan army's general headquarters. By GHQ, one does not mean the entire army; one means some elements in the GHQ.

It is clear that slain Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto did not want for enemies. While her supporters initial reaction to news of her assassination (more...) on Thursday had been to point the finger at President Pervez Musharraf, the president blamed Islamic militants for the attack.

The terrorist network al-Qaida was quick to claim responsibility for killing the veteran politician who had twice been prime minister and was hoping to serve a third term following forthcoming elections on Jan. 8. Pakistani broadcaster ARY TV reported that the terror network had said it had carried out the gun and bomb attack which killed Bhutto and at least 16 others.

MORE/MORE:
Pakistan After Bhutto (SIMON ROBINSON, 12/28/07, TIME)

Even as Pakistan buries assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto today, mourning Pakistanis are beginning to think about what comes next for their beleaguered nation. Bhutto supporters vented their anger late into Thursday night, burning shops, police stations and buses in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi, the site of yesterday's suicide attack. Rioting continued on Friday. "It has released bottled up national energies," says lieutenant general Hameed Gul, the former director general of Pakistan's intelligence organization, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). "[The assassination] is going to really excite the people, bring them out."

WHICH IS WHY THE ENERGY BILL'S DEADLINE SHOULD BE SHORTENED:

New efficient bulb sees the light (BBC, 12/28/07)

A new type of super-efficient household light bulb is being developed which could spell the end of regular bulbs.

Experts have found a way to make Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) brighter and use less power than energy efficient light bulbs currently on the market.

...WHILE LIBERTY'S CENTURY ROLLS RIGHT ALONG...:

Vote Counting Under Way in Kenyan Presidential Elections (VOA News, 28 December 2007)

Vote-counting is under way in Kenya following presidential and parliamentary elections, and the first official results are expected later Friday.

About 14 million Kenyans were eligible to cast ballots Thursday in a close presidential race between the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, and his main challenger, Raila Odinga.

Witnesses say voter turnout appeared to be high, but no official figures have been released. According to unofficial returns announced on Kenyan television, Odinga is holding a commanding lead over Mr. Kibaki.

THE NFL MALAISE:

Steroids and the Culture of Narcissism (Paul Beston, 12/28/2007, American Spectator)

[Christopher] Lasch is best-known for his 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, which achieved further notoriety when Jimmy Carter called on the author to advise him for his infamous "crisis of confidence" speech that year. Though he tended to look at life in America with the dialectical skepticism of a Marxist, Lasch's insights into how daily life had been degraded and trivialized, so that individuals were only capable of a crippling self-regard, still have value. The book has a chapter on how this diminishment has affected the sports world as well. Though written nearly 30 years ago, it is a penetrating examination of the traits that have gradually eroded sport's once uplifting qualities -- and which eventually may have helped give rise to a full-fledged doping culture.

Lasch differed with critics such as Michael Novak, whose own sports study had appeared a few years earlier, and who felt that sport's decline had to do with its becoming too mixed up in the affairs of the world, indistinguishable from business and politics. That critique is familiar to us today, with stories of athletes and their agents, stadium deals, and "collective bargaining agreements" between management and players' unions that represent a work force earning many multiples of the average American's wages. Alex Rodriguez, in signing a contract extension with the New York Yankees worth hundreds of millions of dollars, spoke of his desire to win a World Series -- and noted that this was an achievement that he had not yet added to his "resume." Try to imagine Lou Gehrig or, closer to our own time, Pete Rose, talking that way.

BUT AS CORRUPTING an influence as money has been, Lasch argued that what was really ailing sports wasn't that they had become wrapped up in the world of commerce but that they had been, on the contrary, sectioned off from the rest of the culture, fetishized into a fantasy world of entertainment and spectacle, thereby severing the ties they once had to our common lives. "It is only when games and sports come to be valued purely as a form of escape," he wrote, "that they lose the capacity to provide this escape." This was a complex and seemingly self-contradictory point: that the more sports focused on entertainment, the less of it they actually provided.

ONE OF THE FEW MISSTEPS IN THE WoT:

Ethiopia leaves key Somali town (BBC, 12/28/07)

Ethiopian troops have withdrawn from a key town in central Somalia.

Islamist insurgents say they now control Guriel, where Ethiopia had a big military base to secure the road linking the two countries.

ROWS AND FLOWS OF ANGEL HAIR:

Mitt fights his own past words in N.H. (Jonathan Martin, Dec 27, 2007, Politico)

That Romney has changed or at least modified his stance on a variety of issues is, of course, not new.

But as the primary campaign ramps up into its frantic final days before the first contests, and as Romney is forced to fend off a challenge from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa and Arizona Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire, the problem is presenting itself anew.

Lacking a pure conservative record of his own, Romney is unable to get off any clean shots at his rivals without them — or the media — pointing to a past quote or stance that calls into question his own consistency.

Take last weekend in New Hampshire, when Romney took after McCain for opposing President Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

The Associated Press account of the day included Romney’s attack, McCain’s counter and then additional evidence muddying the original charge.

In 2003, the story noted, Romney told the Massachusetts congressional delegation that when it came to the Bush tax cuts, he wouldn’t “be a cheerleader” for proposals he didn’t support.

“But I have to keep a solid relationship with the White House,” Romney noted to his state’s representatives in Washington.

Similarly, when Romney raised McCain’s unpopular immigration views in a campaign appearance Wednesday, the Arizonan’s campaign was ready.

“Last Year, Romney Supported ‘Path Toward Citizenship’ for Illegal Immigrants, Said Republicans Breaking With President Bush on Immigration ‘Made a Big Mistake,'" McCain’s aides reminded in a press release over 2006 stories in the Lowell Sun and Associated Press.

Also included was the November 2005 story from the Boston Globe where Romney deemed McCain’s immigration approach “quite different” from amnesty and “reasonable.”

AND SOMEWHERE INSIDE THE TUBE...:

'Test tube universe' hints at unifying theory (Roger Highfield, 26/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

A "universe in a test tube" that could be used to assess theories of everything has been created by physicists.

The test tube, the size of a little finger, has been cooled to a fraction of a degree above the lowest possible temperature, absolute zero, which is just over 273 degrees below the freezing point of water.

Inside the tube an isotope of helium (called helium three) forms a "superfluid", an ordered liquid where all the atoms are in the same state according to the theory that rules the subatomic domain, called quantum theory.
...tiny little Dawkins's and Hitchens's stamp their tiny little feet and shriek that it isn't Created.

Comments

---

FACING THE TRUTH IS NEVER A BAD THING:

Pakistan faces horror of civil war after Benazir Bhutto is assassinated in suicide attack (Isambard Wilkinson, Pakistan Correspondent, Richard Edwards and David Blair, 27/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Pakistan was facing the spectre of civil war last night after Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, was assassinated in a suicide attack.

The nuclear-armed state faced its worst political crisis in decades, which could threaten President Pervez Musharraf's grip on power and his role in the US-led war on terrorism.

NOT THAT ANYONE EVER HAD A PLAUSIBLE THEORY OF HOW HE COULD LOSE:

How McCain Wins (Rick Davis, 12/27/07, Real Clear Politics)

If you've been watching the news or reading the paper in the past couple days, you're sure to have noticed a new tone emerging when reporters and pundits discuss John McCain. "He can win", "McCain Momentum", "McCain Comeback" are all phrases that seem to be standard whenever John McCain is mentioned. We couldn't agree more.

While in our minds we've been doing the same things: going to the townhall meetings, listening to voters and talking about the issues they care about; we're just glad they're talking about it.

We've been hearing something else over the past couple days as well. A shift in terminology from "can McCain make a comeback" to "McCain can win". This is enormously important and has the benefit of being both true and highly plausible. While it has been well-documented that John McCain is the best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton or any Democrat in the general election, there have been lingering doubts about his ability to defeat his main opponents in the Republican Primary. Those doubts are being erased and his path to victory is becoming more clear.

DISDAIN FOR THE BRIGHTS IS THE HEALTH OF THE STATE:

Revisiting the Stupid Party (Lee Harris, 27 Dec 2007, Tech Central Station)

The nineteenth century English philosopher John Stuart Mill bequeathed to modern conservatism a lasting inferiority complex when he dismissed the conservatives of his day as "the stupid party." No one likes to be called stupid, as we can all agree, though Mill himself may not have understood this, since it is highly unlikely that anyone had ever called him by this disparaging epithet. In his famous Autobiography, Mill tells us that he was reading Plato in the original Greek when he was five, and by the time he was twelve, he was capable of discussing the fine points of economic theory with the leading authorities of his day—facts that may well have seriously skewed Mill's judgment about the intelligence of other people. Stupid, for Mill, may have meant those who only learned how to read Plato in Greek at the ripe old age of eleven, in which case the charge of belonging to the "stupid party" loses much of its sting.

Yet the sting of Mill's insult remains today, and it explains, in part, the conspicuous braininess of contemporary conservatism. Conservative think-tanks abound in PhD's and experts in every field imaginable, whose intelligence, as measured by IQ tests and academic credentials, is certainly a match for those of their ideological opponents. But has the emergence of a conservative intelligentsia proven to be an unmixed blessing? Or is the very phrase conservative intelligentsia an oxymoron?

Let's begin by noting that the eagerness to appear intelligent to others is a fairly recent development among conservatives. By and large, the English Tories whom Mill dubbed as the original stupid party did not share this desire in the least. If you read the delightful novels of Anthony Trollope, you will find them teaming with hilariously dim-witted Lords who feel no need to apologize for their mediocre minds, as long as they have their aristocratic pedigrees. Their stupidity, as many of them no doubt hazily realized, was their best defense against the inroads of clever madmen intent on turning their world upside down—men like John Stuart Mill, for example, to whom tradition meant nothing, and who was willing to throw out the solid heritage of the past in the pursuit of the latest fad, dubbed by him "experiments in living." Against the blueprints for a better world concocted by the brilliant they opposed the redneck wisdom encapsulated in the adage: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Today, no self-respecting conservative wants to be thought stupid, not even by the lunatics on the far left. Yet there are far worse things than looking stupid to others—and one of them is being conned by those who are far cleverer than we are.

POD PEOPLE:

Quinoa: A Sacred, Super Crop (Nicole Spiridakis, October 31, 2007, NPR.org)

What was a sacred crop to the Incas has been classified as a "super crop" by the United Nations because of its high protein content. It is a complete protein, which means it has all nine essential amino acids. It also contains the amino acid lysine, which is essential for tissue growth and repair, and is a good source of manganese, magnesium, iron, copper and phosphorous.

While many think of quinoa as a grain, the yellowish pods are actually the seed of a plant called chenopodium quinoa, native to Peru and related to beets, chard and spinach. The plant resembles spinach, but with 3- to 9-foot stalks that take on a magenta hue. The large seed heads make up nearly half the plant and vary in color: red, purple, pink and yellow.

In the Andes Mountains, where they have been growing for more than 5,000 years, quinoa plants have overcome the challenges of high altitude, intense heat, freezing temperatures and little annual rainfall. Peru and Bolivia maintain seed banks with 1,800 types of quinoa. It has been grown in the U.S. since the 1980s, when two farmers began cultivating it in Colorado. [...]

When preparing quinoa, rinse the seeds before cooking to remove any lingering soapy saponin. The coating, which protects growing seeds from birds and the intense rays of the high-altitude sun, can make your quinoa taste bitter. (A quick rinse in cold water, after placing in a strainer, should do the trick). Then add one part quinoa to two parts liquid in a saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce to simmer and cover. In a mere 15 minutes, the seeds will be plump, fluffy and ready to eat.

THE IVORY CHEF:

Food Network's Sandra Lee offers bio, quick (Margi Shrum, 12/27/07, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

[A] while back, I discovered Sandra Lee on the Food Network. The purveyor of a style of easy cooking that she dubs "semi-homemade," she is at first glance about the closest thing to Barbie in the kitchen that you'll see.

She even wears shirtwaist dresses.

Her sets are color-coordinated. If her outfit has blue in it, the dessert has blue icing and all of the tchotkes in her kitchen are blue, as is the tableware, linens, curtains, etc.

But who knew that behind Ms. Lee's scenery there not only is not a Barbie, there's barely a Ken.

In her autobiography, "Sandra Lee: Made From Scratch" (Meredith, $24.95), Ms. Lee writes about rising from the ashes of an incredibly dysfunctional childhood.

NO MATTER HOW MUCH LIPSTICK YOU PUT ON THE PIG...:

The Speaker's Grand Illusion (David Broder, 12/27/07, Real Clear Politics)

After one year of Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, public approval ratings for Congress have sunk below their level when Republicans were still in control. A Post poll this month put the approval score at 32 percent, the disapproval at 60.

In the last such survey during Republican control, congressional approval was 36 percent. So what are the Democrats to make of that? They could be using this interregnum before the start of their second year to evaluate their strategy and improve their standing. But if Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House and leader of their new majority, is to be believed, they are, instead, going to brag about their achievements.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE BASE AND THE BELTWAY:

Iowa Republican Campaigns Driven By the Religion Factor? (Randy Sly, 12/28/2007, Catholic Online)

The focus on faith especially is seen in the issues that are driving decisions for heartland voters. Abortion remains high on the list and the surge in Huckabee’s popularity is, in many ways, finding strong support from the 21 percent of evangelical Protestants who indicated they are less likely to vote for a Mormon.

While this number is down from the 30 percent during a summer poll, Iowa still has about 37% of its caucus-goers that describe themselves as Evangelicals who go to church, are Pro-Life, and politically conservative. In fact, analysts are saying that the responses in Iowa are pointing specifically to “Evangelical” as the single-most important factor in candidate support. [...]

Not only have many Iowa Republicans shifted to a strong Huckabee preference, 61 percent indicated they have firmly made up their mind. Only 49 percent of Romney’s supporters made that declaration. By an almost 2 to 1 margin, Republicans also said that the more they hear about Huckabee, the more they like him.

INSTEAD OF ROBOTS?:

63% of Japanese favor allowing immigration of unskilled foreign laborers (Mainichi Daily News, 12/17/07)

More than 60 percent of people in Japan support accepting entry-level workers from overseas, in spite of the government's policy of generally refusing such workers, a survey by the Mainichi has found.

In a nationwide telephone poll conducted by the Mainichi, 63 percent of respondents agreed with accepting foreign entry-level workers.

EVERY PEOPLE SHOULD FACE SUCH A "CRISIS":

Diet in Decline: Can America's Overnutrition Crisis be Reversed?

PEERING INTO THE ABYSS:

Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally (SALMAN MASOOD and GRAHAM BOWLEY, 12/27/07, NY Times)

The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated near the capital, Islamabad, on Thursday. Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto, who was appearing at a political campaign rally, was fired upon at close range by a gunman, and then struck by shrapnel from a blast that the government said was caused by a suicide bomber.

Ms. Bhutto, who had twice been the country’s prime minister and was a leading contender to be the next prime minister after elections in January, was declared dead by doctors at a hospital in Rawalpindi at 6:16 p.m. local time. At least a dozen more people were killed in the attack, and some reports said there were at least 20 dead.

THERE IS NO SPAIN:

The undoing of Spain? (Richard W. Rahn, December 26, 2007, Washington Times)

Despite being citizens of one of the oldest nation-states, many Spanish identify more with their regions than the central state. Spain has four official languages — Castilian Spanish, Catalan, Galician and Basque, as well as several unofficial languages. The outside world has been well aware of the actions of the Basque separatists because of the ETA terrorists, who have just killed two Spanish police officials in the Basque area of France (which adjoins the Basque area of Spain).

Spain, unlike most countries, has become increasingly decentralized during the last few decades, with the central government shrinking relative to the regional governments. A small central government, with most government activities conducted at the regional and local level, can work just fine, as it has been the case in Switzerland for the last several hundred years, provided there is a national consensus as to how the power is to be shared. But this consensus has not yet occurred in Spain.

THE COURSE OF HUMEMEN EVENTS:

What Jefferson & Adams Might Tell Mitt (David Ignatius, 12/27/07, Real Clear Politics)

A bracing text for this Christmas week is the famous correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Their letters are a reminder that the Founders were men of the Enlightenment -- supreme rationalists who would have found the religiosity of much of our modern political life quite abhorrent.

It's not that these men didn't have religious beliefs: They were, to their deaths, passionate seekers of truth, metaphysical as well as physical. It's that their beliefs didn't fit into pious cubbyholes. Indeed, the deist Jefferson took a pair of scissors to the New Testament to create his "Jefferson Bible," or "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth," which cut out the parts he regarded as supernatural or misinterpreted by the Gospel writers.

It's useful to examine the musings of these American rationalists in this political season when religion has been a prominent topic. Politicians and commentators have suggested that for the Founders, the very idea of freedom was God-given -- or, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, that human beings are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Yet this famous passage begins with a distillation of the Enlightenment's celebration of human reason: "We hold these truths to be self-evident. ... "

My Christmastime reading of the Adams-Jefferson letters was prompted by this year's most interesting political speech, but one I also found troubling -- Mitt Romney's Dec. 6 speech on "Faith in America." It was a fine evocation of our twin heritage of religion and religious freedom, until he got to this ritual denunciation of the bogeymen known as secularists.

A DEMOCRAT MAJORITY BUILT ON OPPOSITION TO THE DEMOCRATS:

Freshmen Padding Their Independence: Procedural Votes Become Safe Nays (Paul Kane, 12/27/07, Washington Post)

[T]he bloc of freshmen has begun casting votes against such minor procedural motions in an effort, Democratic sources and Republican critics say, to demonstrate their independence from their leadership. The number of votes that the potentially vulnerable newcomers to Capitol Hill cast against House leaders is tallied and watched closely by interest groups and political foes.

Such is the political life of many of the 42 freshman House Democrats, a sizable number of them moderates and conservatives who must straddle the fence between supporting their party's interests and distancing themselves from a mostly liberal leadership as they gear up for their first reelection battle next fall.

THE KEY TO BEING TWO-FACED...:

Rough Patch on the Slopes (Alec MacGillis, December 27, 2007, Washington Post)

As Romney noted several times during the visit, he and his family used to drive to Pats Peak from their home in the Boston suburbs to teach his sons to ski.

And mingling with Massachusetts folks is a bit complicated for Romney these days. He left the State House early this year, with many of the state's residents feeling aggrieved by the way he turned his focus to a presidential run for the second half of his term. That feeling has grown only stronger since he hit the campaign trail and began casting Massachusetts as a left-wing bastion that he had to try to bring under control, "the most liberal state in the country" as he put it in one of his television advertisements.

Derek Rhodes, an information technology director from North Andover, Mass., said he had noticed how much Romney's positions had shifted rightward since he started running for president, something Rhodes, a Democrat, chalked up to expedience...

PROVING, ONCE AGAIN, THAT THE CW IS ALWAYS WRONG:

For McCain, It Could Be State of Resurgence: Wide-Open Caucuses Offer Hope To a Candidate Who Has Lagged (Michael D. Shear, 12/27/07, Washington Post)

McCain had been left for dead politically this summer, and now his decision to return to a state he skipped altogether in his 2000 bid for the White House is one of the many signs that the GOP contest for president is still in search of a front-runner. [...]

McCain still trails in Iowa -- most polls peg his support in the single digits -- in part because of his opposition to ethanol subsidies and his support of immigration reform. But armed with an endorsement from the Des Moines Register and buoyed by his success in New Hampshire, McCain on Wednesday launched a three-day tour of Iowa's rural towns.

"We're getting down to the final days, and we're happy with the way things are going, but we've still got a very tough fight here in Iowa," McCain told reporters in Council Bluffs. "We're working hard, and we have a very good organization, but we have a very long way to go."

McCain plans to return to New Hampshire on Friday, where advisers hope a come-from-behind victory over Romney will catapult him into the lead in succeeding primaries. In an e-mail to supporters Wednesday titled "How we win," campaign manager Rick Davis mapped a path to victory: a "strong finish" in Iowa; the "top spot" in New Hampshire; a "well-positioned" showing in Michigan; carrying South Carolina; and a "unique ability" to compete in Florida.

THE OTHER 7:

G. P. Sippy, Indian Filmmaker Whose ‘Sholay’ Was a Bollywood Hit, Dies at 93 (HARESH PANDYA, 12/27/07, NY Times)

The Indian filmmaker and director G. P. Sippy, whose 1975 blockbuster “Sholay” (“Embers”) remains the most famous Hindi movie and the biggest commercial success for Bollywood, died on Tuesday in Mumbai. [...]

Directed by Mr. Sippy’s son Ramesh, “Sholay” revolutionized Hindi filmmaking and brought true professionalism to Indian script writing. Written by Mr. Sippy’s favorite scriptwriting team, Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar, “Sholay” was loosely styled on “The Seven Samurai” and “The Magnificent Seven,” and has been called India’s first “curry western.” In “Sholay” two close friends who are small-time thieves are recruited by a former police officer to fight a ruthless bandit leader. Its stirring score is by Rahul Dev Burman.

On its release, the film ran for a record 286 straight weeks at the Minerva Theater in Mumbai, then called Bombay. It also broke all previous earning records for commercial cinema in India. In 1999 BBC India declared it “the film of the millennium.” “Sholay” made Mr. Sippy and many of its cast members — including Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri and Amjad Khan — into some of Bollywood’s biggest stars.

Though “Sholay” consolidated Mr. Bachchan’s position as the king of Hindi actors, it was Amjad Khan, playing the ferocious villain Gabbar Singh, who stole the movie.

PARALLEL PROCESSING:

Iranian in India encourages dialogue (Somini Sengupta, December 27, 2007, IHT)

Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian philosopher, described his Indian sojourn this way, and even as he agreed to an interview this month on the condition that he not be asked to talk about his home country, which imprisoned him last year, it kept creeping into the conversation, quite uninvited, like a gnome.

In Iran, Jahanbegloo, 50, was accused of collaborating with Americans to destabilize the state, kept in solitary confinement for four months and released on bail.

Out of jail, but with the charges still pending, he returned here to finish his latest book, "India Revisited: Conversations on Contemporary India," a collection of 27 interviews with 27 remarkable Indians that the Indian arm of Oxford University Press has just published. The book is ostensibly about Indian subjects - dance, caste, Parsee, democracy - but it inexorably engages many of the issues that vex Jahanbegloo's homeland, including tradition, pluralism, the West and freedom.

TO KNOW THEM IS TO OPPOSE THEM:

MIKE AND MITT, WE HARDLY KNOW YE (AP, 12/27/07)

Fifty percent of all voters and 40 percent of Republicans say they don't know enough about Huckabee to say if they like him or not. Forty-one percent of voters and 32 percent of Republicans are clueless about Romney, while 15 percent overall and 8 percent of Republicans don't know enough about Giuliani to venture an opinion.

HAD THE FALL NOT HAPPENED

Christianity and Liberty Defined (Steven Gillen, Religion & Liberty)

The key to reconciling Christianity and classical liberalism by means of reconciling their definitions of freedom can be found in the Christian understanding of human nature. Most Christians believe that, as the result of the Fall of Man, the bodies and souls, i.e., the natural and spiritual selves, of human beings were, to a great extent, divorced from and set against one another. From this dualistic perspective, it is logical to speak of two different kinds of freedom corresponding to the two types of human existence—natural freedom and spiritual freedom (akin to Hayek's “individual freedom” and “metaphysical freedom,” respectively).

Had the Fall not happened, there would be a dichotomy between neither spiritual freedom and natural freedom nor positive freedom and negative freedom. In a perfect world, negative freedom would still mean what Hayek maintained and would be the necessary condition for positive freedom. But positive freedom would mean the power of individuals to surrender their self-love for the love of God and the promotion of the welfare of others and would be the material realization of spiritual freedom in the Christian sense. Perfect freedom then would be complete spiritual freedom manifested in the material world in the form of positive freedom and permitted by the complete condition of negative freedom.

However, from a Christian perspective, the Fall did happen and the fully Christian society described by C. S. Lewis cannot exist outside a perfect world. Therefore, we must choose which definition of freedom, positive or negative, will underlie public policy in the City of Man, not the City of God. The issue most pertinent to this choice is not so much which definition of freedom, positive or negative, ought to be accepted as closer to the Christian ideal, but which definition in practice establishes the necessary though insufficient conditions for spiritual freedom that the state can uphold in the material world. Of the two definitions of freedom, only negative freedom establishes such practicable conditions since only freedom understood as the absence of coercion, the absence of fraud or force, can be proven by material standards and deterred or punished by material means.

FILLING THE EMPTINESS OF FLATLANDER LIVES:

Patriots' historic game to be available to all of America (AP, 12/26/07)

The New England Patriots' shot at history Saturday night will be available to every television viewer in the country after months of wrangling.

Their game against the New York Giants, in which the Patriots could become the first NFL team to go 16-0 in the regular season, was originally scheduled to be shown only on the NFL Network. Fewer than 40 percent of the nation's homes with TVs receive the channel.

The league announced Wednesday that the NFL Network feed will be simulcast on NBC and CBS.

THE ELECTRONIC MAGINOT LINE (via Bryan Francoeur):

Iran to Get Russian Anti-Missile Defense (ALI AKBAR DAREINI, 12/26/07, Associated Press)

Russia is preparing to equip Iran with a powerful new air defense system that would dramatically increase its ability to repel an attack, Iran's defense minister said Wednesday.

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING:

For those who use RSS, The Other Brother has set it up so you can get a comment feed: http://feeds2.feedburner.com/BrothersjuddBlogComments

ON THE BRIGHT SIDE... (VIA GLEE DRYFOOS AND THE OTHER BROTHER):

Escaped tiger kills man at S.F. Zoo: Animal mauls two more victims before being shot to death by police. (Charles Piller and Tim Reiterman, 12/26/07, Los Angeles Times)

A tiger escaped from its enclosure in the San Francisco Zoo on Christmas Day, mauled one man to death and left two others seriously injured. The tiger was shot and killed by police after it charged officers.

A police spokesperson said the zoo was evacuated after the incident, which occurred late in the afternoon near the Terrace Cafe at the east end of the zoo. The zoo was being searched for other possible victims Tuesday evening, even though there were no missing person reports. Police helicopters circled the area with searchlights as ambulances stood by.

CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE:

'Gen X is least prone to adultery' (IST, 25 Dec 2007)

The term Generation X may soon come to be known as "generation with no sex", with a research revealing that people who are currently aged between 20 and 40 are less prone to adultery and multiple sexual partners than generations before and after them.

The new research shows that adultery is less common among people born between 1965 and 1985. They are also likely to have fewer sexual partners than the generation either directly before or after them.

The research was conducted by Edward Laumann, the professor of sociology at the University of Chicago.

According to the scientists, these people are less inclined to believe in "free love", and place more emphasis on commitment due to the emergence of AIDS and a boom in divorces among their parents.

THE FINISHING TOUCH:

Can Fred Win?: Huckabee has a headstart, but Thompson’s a strong finisher (Frank Cagle, 12/26/07, Knoxville Metro Pulse)

Favorite son Fred Thompson got into the presidential race running against Rudy Giuliani. Now he’s running against Mike Huckabee. The arc of this campaign keeps changing and now Fred finds himself in Iowa this holiday season fighting to stay in the race. [...]

Should Iowa voters get tired of the Romney-Huckabee slugfest, some of them are likely to turn to Thompson. Thompson’s picked up the endorsement of the most influential conservative congressman in Iowa, and he turned in an outstanding debate performance in Des Moines. Even normally critical pundits had to concede it.

So if the Huckabee momentum is significantly slowed in Iowa and Romney wins as had been expected for the past year, Huckabee lacks the momentum to do a lot of damage in New Hampshire. The Granite State has never been particularly kind to Southerners; that’s one reason Thompson hasn’t spent a lot of time there.

Should McCain turn out the independent vote and do really well in New Hampshire, it further undercuts the Huckabee boomlet. So when they get to South Carolina, Thompson may be back where he began, with South Carolina as his break-out state.

But there are a lot of ifs and buts in all this—and anything can happen. It’s why we let the people vote instead of letting the pollsters and the pundits pick the president.

When Thompson gets his ads on the air and hits his stride he can make up a lot of ground. So don’t give up on Fred. He started way behind and he started slowly in his first Senate race in Tennessee. But he came on in the end for a strong finish.

WHAT DO MERE PARTIES MATTER TO ANGLOSPHERICS?:

Beginning of a more beautiful friendship (Greg Sheridan, December 27, 2007, The Australian)

IT was good to see Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Aussie troops just before Christmas. That is the right place for a leader to be. Rudd bolstered the troops' morale, showing them that we all care about them.

The trip also had geo-strategic purposes. In Iraq, Rudd is withdrawing our combat troops, but he underlined Canberra's continuing commitment to help Iraq, not least through military assets, and indeed help the US project in Iraq.

In Afghanistan, Rudd said Australia was committed "for the long haul" to fighting the Taliban.

These are admirable and important statements. They indicate clearly that, contrary to the wishes of some commentators, Rudd is not withdrawing from Australia's global engagement in security matters, including involvement in the Middle East.

It also means the US-Australia intimacy of recent years, especially the military intimacy and its all-important intelligence aspect, will continue.

6 BILLION VERUKA'S:

Console yourself and celebrate the genius of capitalism (Leo Lewis, December 27, 2007, The Australian)

AFTER a vile-tempered traipse across Tokyo, I finally laid hands on a Wii Fit Balance Board, and the store assistant slid it over the counter in a thick brown paper bag. It was horrible: the must-have toy of the season bundled discreetly like porn or hard liquor. "It's so people in the street don't see you managed to get the last one," muttered the sales girl, darkly.

Something else was wrong: I wasn't overjoyed, just relieved that the retail ordeal was over and oddly furious that, in this day and age, it had taken so much trouble to get what I wanted. "Why can't those clowns at Nintendo make an extra million more units?" fumed my shopping wing man, as if these machines could fly off a conveyor belt like tins of soup.

A million units? Can we really be spoiled this rotten? Has mass production truly lost its capacity to amaze? It is, after all, easy to overlook the wonders of capitalism at this time of year, when we feel like its servants. The true miracle of Christmas is not that you or I have beaten the crowds and triumphantly snapped up the last unit in the production run, but that a single one of these units exists at all.

THEIR GENERATION'S SEAVER, KOOSMAN & RYAN:

Appreciating Maddux, Glavine (Peter Gammons, December 26, 2007, ESPN)

In time, more names will come out, and some, like Roger Clemens, will have time to prove their innocence. But as we look askew at all the numbers and records and glory of "The Steroid Era," two men born three weeks apart in 1966, drafted in the same second round in 1984, and, ironically, paired for the infamous "chicks dig the long ball" commercial seem even greater today than they did when the 2007 season ended.

At this point in sports history, we cannot assume anyone's innocence, but no one has ever tied Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine to any scandal involving steroids, HGH or anything else. We have watched Maddux extend his career creating new pitches to mix with a fastball that on its good days hit 83 mph on the radar gun. And we have watched Glavine stoically speed-walk to 303 wins; only in the last two years has he adjusted to coming inside with his fastball and changeup and using his curveball better.

And here they are, without one question raised about whether or not they belong in Cooperstown. Before they retire in the next year or two, if they remain unquestioned, then their first-ballot elections may produce a higher percentage than one can now imagine. They will be held up as a couple of guys who won with resolution, creativity and guile in an era of power pitching and hitting.

RESCUE DAWNS IN THE GRANITE STATE:

No ordinary candidate (Jeff Jacoby, December 26, 2007, Boston Globe)

WHEN HE ran for president eight years ago, John McCain was asked by an interviewer what he thought of the Confederate flag - a touchy topic in South Carolina, where at the time a debate was raging over whether the banner should continue to fly above the state capitol.

McCain answered from the heart: "As we all know, it's a symbol of racism and slavery." But his reply infuriated many South Carolina voters, and after the interview McCain's aides pushed him to undo the damage. So he let them draft a statement "clarifying" his position, and when reporters asked him about the flag in the days that followed, he made a show of pulling the paper from his pocket and reading his revised remarks. "As to how I view the flag," it began, "I understand both sides." It went on to acknowledge that some people may deem the flag "a symbol of slavery" - McCain's original, authentic opinion - but that "personally, I see the battle flag as a symbol of heritage."

By the fourth or fifth time the question came up, McCain later wrote in his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For" (coauthored with Mark Salter), he could have delivered the new response from memory.

"But I persisted with the theatrics of unfolding the paper and reading it as if I were making a hostage statement. I wanted to telegraph reporters that I really didn't mean to suggest I supported flying the flag, but political imperatives required a little evasiveness on my part. I wanted them to think me still an honest man, who simply had to cut a corner a little here and there so that I could go on to be an honest president. I think that made the offense worse. Acknowledging my dishonesty with a wink didn't make it less a lie. It compounded the offense. . . .

"I had not just been dishonest. I had been a coward, and I had severed my own interests from my country's. That was what made the lie unforgivable. All my heroes, fictional and real, would have been ashamed of me."

Now try, if you can, to imagine Hillary Clinton writing those words. Or Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee. Is it conceivable that John Edwards, who fiercely indicts the moral shortcomings of others, would ever speak so bluntly and harshly about his own? Would Ron Paul? Would Barack Obama? Among America's leading politicians, I cannot think of any who is so forthright about his own failings, or so willing to let the world see him struggle with his conscience.

Now McCain's second presidential campaign is in the midst of a remarkable revival.

WE'VE GOT TO RECONSIDER OUR BUSINESS MODEL....:

Ad money begins to trickle in for bloggers (Candice Choi, 12/26/07, The Associated Press)

Zach Brooks pocketed $1,000 this month blogging about the cheap lunches he discovers around midtown Manhattan ($10 or less, preferably greasy, and if he is lucky, served from a truck).

The site, Midtownlunch.com, is just 18 months old and gets only about 2,000 readers daily, but it is already earning him enough each month for a weekend trip to the Caribbean - or in his case, more fat-filled culinary escapades in the city.

In the vast and varied world of blogging, Brooks is far from alone.

It is no longer unusual for blogs with just a couple thousand daily readers to earn nearly as many dollars a month. Helping fill the pockets of such bloggers are programs like Google's AdSense and many others that let individuals - not just major publications - tap into the rapidly growing pot of advertising dollars with a click of the mouse.

THIS MUCH WE KNOW...:

Changing courses at the Food Network (Elizabeth Jensen, 12/26/07, The New York Times)

Industry executives are scratching their heads over why the network cancelled Emeril Live – which they speculate became too expensive for its softening ratings – without having a new deal in place, given the role his program played in the network's success.

Food Network executives assert that Lagasse, who declined to comment, remains a valued member of the family. "All good things come to an end, and it was time to do something new," said Brooke Johnson, the network's president. "Right now, we're figuring out what that something new is," she said.

The cancellation of Emeril Live comes at a time when the Food Network is undergoing a transformation. Having taken food and chefs from what was once the domain of low-key public television to new celebrity heights, the network finds itself trying to retain the considerable revenue generated by what has become big business, even as it faces competition from all sides.

The network's total day ratings have dipped to an average of 544,000 people from 580,000 a year ago. More significant, its signature weekend block of instructional programs, known collectively as "In the Kitchen," has lost 15 per cent of its audience in the last year, to 830,000 viewers on average. This has left the network owing refunds to advertisers, Johnson confirmed.

THE BUTLER DID IT:

Raise a glass of barley wine (Josh Rubin, 12/26/07, Toronto Star)

Picking up a bottle of Mill Street Barley Wine would be a good idea.

For one thing, it's clearly meant for sharing and sipping slowly, as it comes in a 500-millilitre ceramic bottle, and checks in at a hefty 10 per cent alcohol.

The rich, sweet, golden-coloured brew is made in the tradition of strong English ales first brewed by butlers for wealthy clients who wanted to impress friends. When you flip the top on the bottle, you'll be hit with a whiff of honey and caramelized fruit. The taste follows through on the promise of the beer's aroma. After notes of honey, caramel and even pineapple, there's a decent amount of hoppy bitterness on the finish.

PUTTING THE X IN CHRISTMAS:

Embracing Kwanzaa faith: What began in 1966 continues today teaching such things as community responsibility and self-determination (Nancy Ancrum, 12/26/07, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS)

Maisie McNaught's first encounter with Kwanzaa pretty much embodied its seven principles in one go.

More than 20 years ago, as a new mother looking to forge family traditions, she discovered a book on the African-inspired holiday at a black-owned bookstore. She joined forces with six other families to host dinners each night from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1 and got her husband to make a special holder called a kinara for the seven symbolic candles.

In the process, McNaught and her friends were Kwanzaa in action, exhibiting unity, self-determination, collective responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose and creativity.

"We could barely pronounce the Swahili words, but we decided to celebrate this thing," she says.

That confident plunge into the unknown was evidence of the final precept: faith.

"The principles of Kwanzaa seemed like the principles you need to teach your kids," says McNaught, 58, who sells African-made garments at her Miami Gardens, Fla., shop, Kulture Klothes by Isis.

HARDLY A COINCIDENCE...:

Busting Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe: No, your hair and nails don't grow after death, report says (Ed Edelson, 12/07, Business Week)

Somewhere in the back of your mind is the idea that you should drink at least eight glasses of water a day to stay healthy.

You may have nodded in agreement when someone mentioned scientific studies showing that, on average, you use just 10 percent of your brain.

And you may have lectured your children about the danger of reading in dim light, which could cause permanent eye damage.

None of this is true. But the ideas continue to circulate (and be believed even by some physicians), say Drs. Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine. They've taken the time and trouble in a two-page report in the Dec. 22-29 British Medical Journal to puncture seven such medical myths.

HOME AGAIN, NATURALLY:

The Romney backlash: Conservatives are coming home (Manchester Union-Leader, 12/26/07)

THERE IS A reason Mitt Romney has not received a single newspaper endorsement in New Hampshire. It's the same reason his poll numbers are dropping. He has not been able to convince the people of this state that he's the conservative he says he is.

Like a lot of people in New Hampshire, we wanted to believe Romney. We gave him the benefit of the doubt. We listened very carefully to his expertly rehearsed sales pitch. But in the end he didn't close the deal for us. Now, two weeks before the primary, the same is happening with voters.

Republicans and right-leaning independents in New Hampshire gave Romney a chance. His events have not been sparsely attended. Nor have they been scarce. He's made more campaign stops here this year than any other Republican, even John McCain.

And after a year of comparing Romney to McCain, of sizing up the two in person and in the media, Granite Staters are turning back to McCain. The former Navy pilot, once written off by the national media establishment, is now in a statistical dead heat with Romney here.

YOU EVER NOTICE...:

Creative vigilantes: Magicians, chefs, and stand-up comics protect their creations without the law. What they can teach lawyers - and Congress - about the future of intellectual property. (Daniel B. Smith, December 23, 2007, Boston Globe)

LAST FEBRUARY, JOE ROGAN, the beefy host of the gross-out extravaganza "Fear Factor," got on the stage at the Los Angeles club The Comedy Store and unleashed a tirade against the comedian Carlos Mencia, who sat beside him on a stool, angrily protesting. According to Rogan, Mencia had been stealing other comedians' material for years, and the only way to stop him was by making his habits widely known. This Rogan did his best to achieve; shortly thereafter, he posted a video of the exchange - liberally peppered with indecencies and spliced with supporting material - on his website. From there it spread quickly over the Internet.

For most people who caught the Rogan-Mencia incident, it was little more than a minor entertainment - another B-celebrity dust-up. But for the legal scholar Christopher Sprigman, it was clear and hitherto ignored evidence that the country's recent approach to intellectual-property law has been wrongheaded.

Over the past 15 years, the rise of digital technology and the global economy has made it ever easier to copy, distribute, and profit from the fruits of other people's creativity - from the new Fergie album spreading across peer-to-peer networks to pirated "Spider-Man" DVDs showing up on the streets of Shanghai. In response, American lawmakers have instituted increasingly sweeping laws, seeking to stymie intellectual-property theft with lengthier copyright terms and more stringent consequences for violators. Without these measures, they reason, innovators will lose money, and innovation will suffer.

In something as simple as the public outcry of a Hollywood jokester, Sprigman, an associate professor of law at the University of Virginia, sees an approach that he hopes could put the lie to this thinking, and turn the heads of lawmakers.

WHAT DO THE SECULAR HAVE BUT THE SELF?:

Calls for population controls selfish (Pamela Bone, December 21, 2007, The Australian)

Three of my grandmother's 11 children died in infancy. None of my mother's did. The reason the world's population suddenly ballooned in the 20th century was not that people started breeding like rabbits but that they stopped dying like flies. Indeed, the number of children born to each woman across the world has halved since the 1970s.

This does not stop the periodical panics about population growth. The latest, in response to debates about climate change, is a call for a carbon tax to be imposed on babies.

Writing in The Medical Journal of Australia, Barry Walters, an associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia, has proposed that families choosing to have more than a defined number of children should be charged a carbon tax, while people buying condoms or having sterilisation operations should receive carbon credits.

I am sure Walters is a very good obstetrician, but I don't think I would want him delivering my babies, especially the ones I had over the defined number. Does he swear "another bloody little consumer" under his breath every time he pulls one out?

There is no doubt more people means more consumption, more waste, more traffic, more congestion and more emissions of carbon dioxide. But there seems to me something selfish about the calls for curbs on population. I can be here on this earth but not you, unborn others.

EVEN IF THEY MANAGE TO HOLD IT TOGETHER FOR AWHILE...:

A Web Troll's Toll on the Clinton Campaign (T.W. FARNAM, December 24, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

In Norse mythology, trolls steal babies and leave their own shape-shifting offspring behind. On the Internet, they just steal attention.

As candidates increasingly use the Internet to build political bridges, their message boards have become homes for trolls, users of an online community who leave messages that are ideologically opposed, off-topic or off-color.

Brian O'Neill, a 33-year-old part-time bartender and full-time college student, has been marauding on Sen. Hillary Clinton's Web site for the past few months, even though his posts attacking the candidate are frequently scrubbed from the site within hours. Mr. O'Neill turned to Mrs. Clinton's site after being booted from online forums of former Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee.

Although Mr. O'Neill says he isn't familiar with the term "troll," he has been labeled as one -- and not just once. [...]

Although the number of trolls can't be measured, they regularly haunt online political sites, which have mushroomed in recent years. Technorati, which follows blogging trends, now tracks 40,000 English-language politics blogs. "The ability of trolls to gain attention, to secure an audience, if ever briefly, is much greater than before," says Derek Gordon, a former vice president at the company.

Sites try various weapons to combat trolls. Campaign trolls popped up en masse in 2004 on Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean's Web site. Dean supporters batted them back with a "troll goal," donating money to the campaign's coffers each time they spotted an offending post. The supporters crowed about each sighting, eliminating the trolls' incentive to disrupt.

Most campaigns and individual bloggers invite readers to report offensive comments, and others approve each comment before it appears. At the liberal discussion Web site Daily Kos, "trusted users" can block people whose comments regularly offend members.

Daily Kos has another tactic: the recipe. When a troll attempts to start a conversation at that site, loyalists post recipes instead of engaging them. With so many trolls, the recipes have proliferated -- enough so that Daily Kos compiled a 144-page "Trollhouse Cookbook," including crab bisque inspired by President Bush's second inauguration and "Liberal Elite Cranberry Glazed Brie."

While that approach seems comical, the problem is real. Michael Lazzaro, a Daily Kos contributing editor who goes by "Hunter," says about 10 people are banned each week, but many return by setting up new accounts. One person, easily identified by his writing, has opened more than 100 accounts since 2005, he says. "He basically comments for awhile really nicely and then out of the blue he'll start ranting about women or Jews or something like that," Mr. Lazzaro says.

NO PROB':

Never Mind the Mullahs: Iranian exile Marjane Satrapi (Vivienne Walt, November/December 2007, Mother Jones)

Published in 2003, Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis depicts Iran's recent history through the saucer eyes of a feisty girl whose childhood is upended by the 1979 Islamic revolution. At first, nine-year-old Marji is thrilled by the tumult around her, but as she enters adolescence she chafes under the restrictions of the new regime. Between art classes where chador-clad women pose as models, the teenage Satrapi and her friends secretly flirt, smoke dope, and swig homemade wine. You gotta love this girl: After convincing the fearsome female morality police not to lock her up for wearing a punk-rock jacket and a Michael Jackson button, she sneaks home, rips off her head scarf, and plays air guitar to a clandestine rock cassette. Persepolis' irreverence and acerbic wit made Satrapi a cult heroine among reformist Iranians and readers worldwide. One reviewer described her as "the Persian love child of [Art] Spiegelman and Lynda Barry." [...]

MJ: What led you to create Persepolis?

MS: I'd heard so many stupidities about my country since I left Iran. People had watched this stupid movie Not Without My Daughter [in which Sally Field plays an American who rescues her daughter from her estranged in-laws in Iran]; I heard so many things like that. I did not make Persepolis for Iranians. It was my answer to the rest of the world, to say, "Let me give you another point of view."

MJ: Is there a reason why this had to be a graphic novel?

MS: Writing is not for me. I completely lose my sense of humor when I write. I become extremely pathetic, very sensational. Images give me possibilities that I don't have with words. [...]

MJ: What do you make of the fact that you are so popular among Americans?

MS: I'm very happy about it. The U.S. is threatening Iran, and then here is this Iranian whom they love. There is no problem between people; the problem is on the political side.

MJ: Likewise, I am always amazed how many people in Iran have read the latest books coming out of the States, or have relatives in L.A., and so on.

MS: Absolutely. I think the most pro-Western country in that region is Iran. The government, no. But the people love Westerners.

ECONOCONS TO THE BACK OF THE BUS:

Same Party, Different Style: Romney, Huckabee Present a Stark Choice For Iowa Republicans (LAURA MECKLER and ELIZABETH HOLMES, December 26, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

In Iowa, the Republican presidential race has come down to two former governors who offer caucus goers a stark choice. It's the pulpit vs. the boardroom, poverty vs. privilege, passion vs. preparedness.

Mike Huckabee loves homespun tales and self-deprecating jokes. Mitt Romney basks in PowerPoint slides and statistics. Mr. Huckabee, a firefighter's son, is a Southerner born and bred. Mr. Romney, son of a CEO-turned-governor, roamed from Michigan to Massachusetts to Utah.

They embody two wings of the Republican Party -- social conservatives and economic conservatives -- that sometimes sit uneasily.

WHILE THE TRAIN JUST KEEPS CHUGGIN' RIGHT ALONG:

Traffic jam mystery solved by mathematicians: Mathematicians from the University of Exeter have solved the mystery of traffic jams by developing a model to show how major delays occur on our roads, with no apparent cause. (Physorg, 12/19/07)

Many traffic jams leave drivers baffled as they finally reach the end of a tail-back to find no visible cause for their delay.

Now, a team of mathematicians from the Universities of Exeter, Bristol and Budapest, have found the answer and published their findings in leading academic journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.

The team developed a mathematical model to show the impact of unexpected events such as a lorry pulling out of its lane on a dual carriageway. Their model revealed that slowing down below a critical speed when reacting to such an event, a driver would force the car behind to slow down further and the next car back to reduce its speed further still.

The result of this is that several miles back, cars would finally grind to a halt, with drivers oblivious to the reason for their delay. The model predicts that this is a very typical scenario on a busy highway (above 15 vehicles per km). The jam moves backwards through the traffic creating a so-called ‘backward travelling wave’, which drivers may encounter many miles upstream, several minutes after it was triggered.

QUIET ENOUGH TO HEAR:

Stunningly Silent: Into Great Silence reaches into the depth of monastic life (Thomas Hibbs, 12/21/07, National Review)
Nietzsche once trenchantly quipped that “...our modern noisy, time-consuming industriousness, proud of itself, stupidly proud, educates and prepares people more than anything else does, precisely for unbelief.”The truth in that statement is perhaps never more on display than during the Christmas season. Slogans urging us to “keep Christ in Christmas,” or “recall the reason for the season,” sound about as hollow as the Christmas jingles that reverberate in our ears every time we enter a store. Those in search of an antidote might consider watching the newly released DVD Into Great Silence, Philip Groening’s movingly observed study of the daily lives of Carthusian monks at La Grande Chartreuse, founded in the French Alps in 1084.

A prize winner at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, the film has received universal acclaim for its minimalist style, its cinematography and especially its attentiveness to the spiritual dimension of existence to which the Carthusian life aspires. Given that contemporary entertainment fosters an attention deficit in all of us and that the film makes no effort to provide even the scaffolding of a plot, this is not, initially at least, an easy film to watch. But as it unfolds, the virtue of taking one’s time becomes evident. The virtue is most profoundly captured in one of the texts interspersed through the film: “Behold the silence that allows the Lord to speak a word in us: That He is.”

BIRDS DO IT (via The Mother Judd):

Birds, Bugs Named as Steroid Users! (NATALIE ANGIER, 12/25/07, NY Times)

I am a baseball fan of the most fitful and narrow-minded sort. I love the Yankees, but really only when they’re winning, I hate the Red Sox, especially when they’re winning, and the other teams, as far as I’m concerned, can all go take a whiff.

Nevertheless, I care enough about the future of America’s beloved pastime to offer players who have been accused of using anabolic steroids, human growth hormone and other disreputable performance-enhancing drugs some exciting new excuses, culled from the behavioral and pharmaceutical annals of the nonhuman community. Among them: (a) this stuff isn’t for me, it’s for my wife, and any minute now I’ll explode out the contents of my stomach to give it to her; (b) this stuff isn’t mine, it belongs to the poor slob I pretended to befriend and then killed and ate; and (c) don’t blame me — my first dope pusher was my mother.

Frown though we may on steroid-style supplementation as cheating, or as competitiveness taken to unsporting and unnatural extremes, in nature such pious niceties do not apply.

BLAME W:

On eve of disaster, joy for retailers: Final shopping days before Christmas bring turnaround (ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, 12/25/07, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Just weeks ago, the holiday shopping season seemed headed for disaster. But in the waning hours before Christmas, the nation's retailers got their wish -- a last-minute surge of shopping that helped meet their modest sales goals, according to data released late Monday by research firm ShopperTrak RCT Corp.

And with post-Christmas shopping to come, some malls and stores were downright optimistic.

While consumers jammed stores at the start of the season in search of discounts and hot items such as Nintendo Co.'s Wii game console, a challenging economy prompted them to hold out until the end for bigger discounts.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: NOTHING LIKE A FINE IMPORTED RED:

Keeping the faith: In the San Luis Valley, roots, community strengthened in tradition of Las Posadas (Fernando Quinteron, December 24, 2005, Rocky Mountain News)

This was the third year Mireya Molina played Mary in Las Posadas, an annual procession re-enacting the futile search for shelter in Bethlehem, which takes place in nine villages in the San Luis Valley on the nine evenings before Christmas.

Her boyfriend, Manuel Orozco, played Joseph. The two are seniors at Centennial High School in nearby San Luis.

"It's OK," she said about her coveted role as Mary as two elderly men hoisted her up on an uncooperative donkey named Donkey. "I didn't think I'd be doing it again, but here I am. Mary."

Selena Sanchez was more enthusiastic about the role.

She played Mary two years ago.

"It's neat to ride on the donkey and have people following you around," said Sanchez, who, along with her mother, Brandee Gallegos, was among dozens of bundled-up parishioners of Holy Family Church who met around a bonfire outside the chapel to begin the procession.

"They're keeping an important tradition alive," said Gallegos of Las Posadas. "It brings our community together and celebrates our faith."

Faith runs deep and strong here, nourished by generations of cultural and religious tradition tracing back to the area's Hispanic roots and kept intact by the area's relative isolation.

Las Posadas at Christmastime is the highlight of the community's celebration of faith.

N.B.: Is anyone else reminded of the great novel, Red Sky at Morning?

(Originally posted: 12/24/05)

FROM THE ARCHIVES: MUSIC OF THE ANGLOSPHERE:

America's Messiah (Michael Linton, December 1997, First Things)

But why, from Bangor to San Diego, do average Americans who would otherwise not listen to a note of classical music year after year make performances of this oratorio sell-outs? Why do they go? And what is the effect of Messiah's popularity upon our musical culture?

Certainly the primary reason for the oratorio's appeal lies in the quality of Handel's music itself. Messiah must rank as one of the greatest musical achievements of the eighteenth century. For all its misuse (I particularly remember Mobil using it to hail their motor oil), the "Hallelujah Chorus" remains a masterpiece of musical structure, the magnificence of the music not being the result of bombast, but rather the logical outcome of Handel's manipulation of antiphonal effects, stunning unisons, divided familiar-style and contrapuntal writing, and superimposed textures. The final chorus ("Worthy is the Lamb") contains choral writing the imagination of which would not be rivaled until Wagner composed Lohengrin four generations later, and the aria "Behold and See" is a model of economy and pathos. In its fifteen measures Handel seems to set the anguish of the whole world.

But it's not just the music. Great though Messiah may be, it can be argued that Handel's best work lies elsewhere. With some justification, cognoscenti are quick to prefer his Italian operas to his English oratorios. During Handel's lifetime, Judas Maccabaeus was more popular than Messiah, and the Reverend Charles Jennens, who provided Handel with Messiah's word book, liked the music in Samson much better. Late in life, the composer himself is reported to have said that his oratorio Theodora contained better writing. While Messiah is a masterpiece, it is but one of many from Handel's pen, masterpieces that have not endured so steadfastly as Messiah. Why?

I think the answer lies in the fact that for the last two hundred years, English-speaking Christianity, and in particular, American Christianity, has found a singularly eloquent vehicle for self-reflection in Messiah. Despite much talk to the contrary, religion remains deeply important to most Americans. But as many writers have noted, that religiosity is not denominational or even confessional in nature. Instead, it is individualistic, a matter of personal belief and individual choice not dictated by bishops, mediated by ritual, or regulated by the state. Furthermore, American Christianity is deeply eschatological, the sense of the impending eschaton being not so much a dread premonition of a coming doom, but rather a purposeful optimism. Americans work for and expect the eventual establishment of the kingdom of God, that "city on a hill."

Messiah speaks to such a Christianity. Although reminiscent of the lectionary texts from Advent through Trinity from the Book of Common Prayer, the oratorio cannot be said to be denominational (although the lack of passages dealing with Mary certainly gives it a distinctly Protestant cast). Its biblical texts are equally accessible to Episcopalians and National Baptists, Methodists and Pentecostals, and until fairly recently, could be said to be known by heart by almost all. Unlike Bach's cantatas and passions, the oratorio requires neither a liturgical setting nor a particular occasion for it to be grasped. And despite the current custom of abridged Christmas performances (an aberration largely the result of reduced attention spans), the oratorio is not seasonal. If the work points to anything at all, it is neither Christmas nor Easter but rather the Second Coming and the individual's faith in Christ's eventual triumph.

Messiah is a concert work for the concert hall, and very much in the mold of the modern Protestant sermon, which entertains its listener for the purpose of edifying him. Like his contemporary George Whitefield (who was also criticized for using theatrical devices for religious ends), Handel uses the conventions of the theater to compel his listener into a personal encounter with the scriptural texts. Messiah, contrary to most critics' readings, is highly dramatic. But its drama is an interior one, a personal confrontation between the individual listener and the story of salvation that Handel unfolds before him. To a population where that confrontation is the fulcrum of their lives, performances of Messiah become almost autobiographical.

It is because of the religious character of Americans that Messiah is so important here. And because of that religious character, it can be said that Messiah forms the foundation of America's art music culture. Not only do performances of the oratorio undergird the finances of many of the country's performing organizations, the work itself is the entrance of tens of thousands into the realm of classical music. It is not only the one classical piece that almost everyone will recognize (hence Madison Avenue's shameless exploitation of it), but in many cases it is the only major classical piece that most amateur musicians will themselves perform. My own case is not unusual. Messiah was the first piece of classical music I heard live, the first one I performed as an amateur singer, and the first one I conducted as a professional musician.

The cultural significance of Handel and his Messiah for American music cannot be overstated.

[originally posted: 12/24/06]

LIVE FLESH:

It's Not About the Manger (Chuck Colson, December 25, 2007, Townhall)

What image does the mention of Christmas typically conjure up? For most of us, it is a babe lying in a manger while Mary and Joseph, angels, and assorted animals look on.

Heartwarming picture, but Christmas is about far more than a Child’s birth—even the Savior’s birth. It is about the Incarnation: God Himself, Creator of heaven and earth, invading planet earth, becoming flesh and dwelling among us.

It is a staggering thought. Think of it: The Word—that is, Logos in the Greek, which meant all the knowledge that could be known—the plan of creation—that is, ultimate reality—becomes mere man? And that He was not born of an earthly king and queen, but of a virgin of a backwater village named Nazareth? Certainly God delights in confounding worldly wisdom—and human expectations.

We here at Brothers Judd wish each of you a very Merry Christmas and a joyous 2008.

WE ARE ALL FREE MARKETEERRS NOW (via The Mother Judd):

Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage (IAN URBINA, 12/24/07, NY Times)

This is the season of frenetic shopping, but for a devious few people it’s also the season of spirited shopdropping.

Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.

Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.

Self-published authors sneak their works into the “new releases” section, while personal trainers put their business cards into weight-loss books, and aspiring professional photographers make homemade cards — their Web site address included, of course — and covertly plant them into stationery-store racks.

“Everyone else is pushing their product, so why shouldn’t we?” said Jeff Eyrich, a producer for several independent bands, who puts stacks of his bands’ CDs — marked “free” — on music racks at Starbucks whenever the cashiers look away.

Though not new, shopdropping has grown in popularity in recent years, especially as artists have gathered to swap tactics at Web sites like Shopdropping.net, and groups like the Anti-Advertising Agency, a political art collective, do training workshops open to the public.

TURNS OUT THERE'S PLENTY OF ROOM AT THE INN AFTER ALL:

Feds won't enforce rule on firing illegal immigrants (MARY LOU PICKEL, 12/25/07, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Employers will get a pass this year on rules that would have required firing illegal immigrants.

The Social Security Administration says it will not mail out "no-match" letters this year to more than 138,000 employers nationwide.

In its announced clampdown on companies that hire illegal workers, the federal government has arrested nearly four times as many people in the past year as it did two years ago, but only a tiny fraction of those arrests involved criminal charges against those who hired the workers, according to a year-end tally prepared by the Department of Homeland Security.

Fewer than 100 owners, supervisors or hiring officials were arrested in fiscal 2007, compared with nearly 4,900 arrests that involved illegal workers, providers of fake documents and others, the figures show. Immigration experts say the data illustrate the Bush administration's limited success at delivering on its rhetoric about stopping illegal hiring by corporate employers.

BUT WHERE'D THE MCDUCK PART COME FROM?:

Real Scrooge 'was Dutch gravedigger' (Richard Alleyne, 24/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

He is synonymous with the traditional image of the Victorian English Christmas but Ebenezer Scrooge may have his roots much further afield.

According to Sjef de Jong, a Dutch academic, the Charles Dickens character may have been inspired by the real life of Gabriel de Graaf, a 19th century gravedigger who lived in Holland.

De Graaf, a drunken curmudgeon obsessed with money, was said to have disappeared one Christmas Eve, only to emerge years later as a reformed character.

SCREW THE PEOPLE:

As Cuba's economy withers, its ecology thrives (Cornelia Dean, December 25, 2007, IHT)

Through accidents of geography and history, Cuba is a priceless ecological resource. That is why many scientists are so worried about what will become of it after Fidel Castro and his associates leave power and, as is widely anticipated, the American government relaxes or ends its trade embargo.

INSTEAD OF GOING TO SEE ANTI-AMERICAN TWADDLE?:

'National Treasure' takes in the loot (Tirdad Derakhshani, 12/25/07, Philadelphia Inquirer)

National Treasure: Book of Secrets, with Nicolas Cage back to star in the sequel to Disney's 2004 surprise hit, unlocked the wallets of moviegoers over the weekend and came away with enough loot to lead box-office sweepstakes with a take of $45.5 million.

HOW SWEET THE SOUND:

The amazing grace of Christmas morn (Wesley Pruden, December 25, 2007, Washington Times)

The malls and the Main Streets fall silent. The ringing cash registers and the happy cries of children echo across the silent land. But the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago lives, liberating the hearts of sinners and transforming the lives of the wicked.

The redeeming grace of the Christmas message is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the incredible life of an English slaver named John Newton.

YET THE PUNDITS CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHY THE CANDIDATES PLAY TO THE 87%:

Questions and Answers About Americans’ Religion (Frank Newport, 12/24/07, Gallup)

This time of year provides an opportunity to answer frequently asked questions about exactly where America stands today in regard to religion, based on Gallup's extensive archives.

Christmas is obviously a Christian holiday. But what percentage of Americans today identify with a Christian religion?

About 82% of Americans in 2007 told Gallup interviewers that they identified with a Christian religion. That includes 51% who said they were Protestant, 5% who were "other Christian," 23% Roman Catholic, and 3% who named another Christian faith, including 2% Mormon.

Because 11% said they had no religious identity at all, and another 2% didn't answer, these results suggest that well more than 9 out of 10 Americans who identify with a religion are Christian in one way or the other.

WE ARE ALL INTELLIGENT DESIGNISTS NOW:

Is this the fabric of the universe?: Roger Highfield describes a heroic mathematical enterprise that could lay bare the fundamentals of the cosmos (Roger Highfield, 3/19/07, Daily Telegraph)

"The group of symmetries of this strange geometry called E8 is one of the most intriguing structures that Nature has left for the mathematician to play with," commened Prof Marcus du Sautoy of Oxford University, currently in Auckland. "Most of the time mathematical objects fit into nice patterns that we can order and classify. But this one just sits there like a huge Everest."
advertisement

What makes this group of symmetries so exciting is that Nature also seems to have embedded it at the heart of many bits of physics. One interpretation of why we have such a quirky list of fundamental particles is because they all result from different facets of the strange symmetries of E8. I find it rather extraordinary that of all the symmetries that mathematician’s have discovered, it is this exotic exceptional object that Nature has used to build the fabric of the universe. The symmetries are so intricate and complex that today’s announcement of the complete mapping of E8 is a significant moment in our exploration of symmetry."

For the feat, the team used a mix of theoretical mathematics and intricate computer programming to successfully map E8, (pronounced "E eight") which is an example of a Lie (pronounced "Lee") group. Lie groups were invented by the 19th century Norwegian mathematician Sophus Lie to study symmetry.

Underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group. Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects. Today’s feat rests on the drive by mathematicians to study symmetries in higher dimensions. E8 is the symmetries of a geometric object that is 57-dimensional. E8 itself is 248-dimensional.

"E8 was discovered over a century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure could ever be understood," said Prof Jeffrey Adams, Project Leader, at the University of Maryland. "This groundbreaking achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge, as well as a major advance in the use of large scale computing to solve complicated mathematical problems."

"This is an exciting breakthrough," said Prof Peter Sarnak at Princeton University. "Understanding and classifying the representations of E8 and Lie groups has been critical to understanding phenomena in many different areas of mathematics and science including algebra, geometry, number theory, physics and chemistry. This project will be invaluable for future mathematicians and scientists."

The ways that E8 manifests itself as a symmetry group are called representations.

IF YOU COULD DO IT IN A FOOD PROCESSOR WHO WOULDN'T?:

Carving the turkey like a 1791 gentleman (Nick Britten, 24/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

For anyone who finds the very prospect of carving a turkey tomorrow brings them out in a sweat, help is at hand.

A 200-year-old book has recently been discovered detailing the traumas faced by the head of the table when preparing and carving the bird, and giving crucial advice on how to get it right and impress your guests.

It says manners and etiquette are vital, and the ability to carve with "ease and grace" gains great respect among fellow diners.

SORRY ABOUT THE GIFT WE GAVE YOU IN '45...:

A Child's Special Gift (Dr. Paul Kengor, December 25, 2007, Townhall)

Among the more egregious communist affronts on religion in Czechoslovakia was the state's notorious anti-religious indoctrination of school children, which was in full swing well into the late 1970s. Karl Marx was hailed as the new messiah. Vaclav Havel, who went to jail in protest of such nonsense, dubbed this unceasing campaign of mendacity "the communist culture of the lie." It was what Mikhail Gorbachev had in mind when he acknowledged that "atheism took rather savage forms" in the communist world.

As for Joseph Pekara, however, he lived to see better times. He watched communism's collapse, and lived long enough to import some of his own ideals to America, including a little something to remember fondly this special time of year.

Like the man who made him that prize possession, Joseph likewise grew to make wooden crafts, wanting to harness the joy of his childhood and share it with other children. Ultimately, among his final signature, masterpiece works is an intricate, animated, wood-carved village, 17-feet x 6-feet x 8-feet, with 82 life-like moving figures, that today rests at the Slovak Folk Crafts (www.SlovakFolkCrafts.com) shop in Grove City, Pennsylvania, owned by Anne and Dave Dayton. The remarkable old-time village-a marvel of old-time engineering-depicts folk life as it existed in Western Slovakia for centuries. It was carefully transplanted to Western Pennsylvania in sections, and is believed to be the largest animated woodcarving in the United States. The final section was completed just six weeks before Joseph died in April 2005.

Joseph today lives on in that model, and does so especially at Christmas. That's because the genesis of the display was Christmas-a crèche. The village was constructed around a rightful centerpiece: a manger scene-an image once verboten in many villages in Joseph's country during the communist occupation.

But there's more to the story.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: IT'S FUN, IT'S A WONDERFUL TOY:

Slinky survives decades of ups, downs (Diana Nelson Jones, December 24, 2003, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

The first Slinkys -- 60 feet of gunmetal gray coiled steel wire -- appeared in plain brown boxes under Christmas trees in 1945. Then it cost $1. It sells today for $1.97 in the chain superstores, about 50 cents less than in smaller toy stores. Slinky still walks down the stairs, as long as it recognizes your staircase design, but a corporate companion now walks alongside it. [...]

In 1943, Richard James was working on a spring design for the Navy that would keep ship instruments from gyrating with the movement of the sea. A spring in his workshop either fell off a table or was somehow jostled and it took a step. Anyone who has ever seen Slinky take a step knows how cute that is. The wildly creative James quickly saw the possibilities.

He marketed Slinky as a toy two years later, and built a robust business. He would take an even bigger step in 1960, a jarring one for his family.

Tom James, who became the manager of special products under Poof, remembers the day his father dropped the bomb: "Pop came down the stairs one morning, and said, 'I'm going to Bolivia to become a missionary. Who's coming with me?' Mom, with six kids, had just had Becky. We had this 31-room home in Bryn Mawr, but he had bankrupted the business. He gave all the money to this mission.

"I had just graduated from high school. I was 18, and I took him to his plane.

"Pop used to say, 'Money means nothing to me,' and he would tear it up. I'd find it and tape it back together."

Richard James died years later in Bolivia. Meanwhile, Betty James had picked up the pieces. She and the children moved to this town of 5,700 in Huntingdon County, where she grew up. Largely under her tutelage, millions of Slinkys have been sold to date, thanks to the baby boom generation's devotion to the toys of its youth for its own offspring.

[originally posted: 2003-12-24]

CONSTANT CONIFER:

Christmas Tree Survives War, A-Bomb (ERIC TALMADGE, 12/21/07, Associated Press)

Warren Nobuaki Iwatake's family has seen more than its share of calamity.

When he was still a child his father was lost at sea off Hawaii. With no breadwinner, his family was forced to move to Japan, where Iwatake was drafted during the war. He lost a brother when the bomb fell on Hiroshima.

But through it all one thing has remained constant.

The tree.

His parents bought it in 1937, and his family has brought it out every Christmas since, without fail, even when that meant risking arrest.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: IF ONLY IT CAME GIFT-WRAPPED:

Christmas brings joy � if you don�t buy into it: Study shows religion not shopping makes you happy as gift-giving declines amongst friends (Jenifer Johnston and Mona McAlinden, 07 December 2003, Sunday Herald)

A new academic study has found that those who celebrate the Christian trappings of Christmas feel far better than those who worship at the altar of crass materialism.

�Religious people seem to have a greater purpose in life, which is why they are happier,� says Dr Stephen Joseph of the University of Warwick, who carried out the survey.

Joseph marked his interviewees on what made them optimistic, unhappy and stressed. �We used a general sample of people � some were rich, some poor, some religious, some not. People who strive for materialistic things at the expense of other intrinsic things such as friends or family were the unhappiest. Christmas straddles both sides of the problem � you are buying a lot of material things and overlooking the Christian message.�

On the streets yesterday there was little sign that shoppers would take that message to their hearts. After a reportedly slow start, the build up to Christmas seems to be gathering steam.

(Originally posted: 12/07/03)

FROM THE ARCHIVES: HANG YOUR BOOTSY BY THE TREE:

Rockin' — and swingin' and swayin' — around the Christmas tree: Best holiday CDs (Patrick MacDonald, 11/23/06, Seattle Times)

"Christmas Is 4 Ever," Bootsy Collins (Shout). Have a funky Christmas with Bootsy, baby! He brings his own brand of fun to the holidays with this seamless, 13-song collection that plays like a seasonal audio spectacular, with plenty of humor, sentimentality, nostalgia and his usual winking sexiness. "I'm coming down your chimney" and "All lit up by the Christmas tree" take on new meaning when delivered with Bootsy's familiar oily charm. Snoop Dogg is as funny as ever as guest star on the new song, "Happy Holidaze." Some other guests phone in their performances — literally. Those phone messages sound out of place, but the rest of the disc is a kick. [...]

"How Cool Is That Christmas," Rachael Ray (Epic). She's everywhere! So it's no surprise that Ms. Ubiquitous has a seasonal product in the stores. This compilation is pretty good and has lots of variety, with cuts from Elvis Presley, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Doris Day. There's jazz from Jane Monheit, humor from Buster Poindexter, kitsch via the Bing Crosby/David Bowie oddity, "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth," and a silly song strictly for kids, Lou Monte's "Dominick the Donkey." [...]

"Elvis Christmas," Elvis Presley (RCA/Sony). What's Christmas without Elvis? And with this new collection, you get it all on one CD — the 1957 "Elvis' Christmas Album" and 1971's "Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas," 23 cuts in all. The songs have been digitally remastered and sound great. Merry Christmas, baby!

[originally posted: 12/24/06]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: BETTER THAN EVER:

Rudolph and Santa, as Good as New (BRENDA GOODMAN, 12/23/06, NY Times)

Since Dec. 8, visitors have been flocking to see Rudolph and Santa Claus at the Center for Puppetry Arts here, where they will be on display until Jan. 13. [...]

Shortly after “Rudolph” was completed, the tiny Rudolph and Santa puppets were taken home by a Rankin-Bass employee. She gave them to her children, who fed Rudolph crayons and red Play-Doh. Over time, his glowing red nose was lost and his felt fur deteriorated. Santa’s fluffy white eyebrows and half his mustache vanished.

In 2005, the nephew of the original rescuer found the puppets in a family attic and brought them to be appraised on the PBS series “Antiques Roadshow.” Created for about $5,000 each in 1964, they were valued at $8,000 to $10,000 for the pair. The family sold both figures to Kevin A. Kriess, the president of TimeandSpaceToys.com and a lifelong fan of the Rankin-Bass films. Mr. Kriess declined to reveal the purchase price, but said he had promised the family he would restore the puppets and show them publicly.

For restoration, he turned to another stop-motion studio, Screen Novelties, in Los Angeles. There, Robin Walsh, a puppet maker, ordered kid mohair for Santa’s beard, consulted museum restoration experts for the best ways to clean painted wood and grimy wool, and discovered, by freezing frames from “Rudolph,” that Santa’s mouth had once been painted. The broken lead wires in the puppets’ arms and legs also needed to be replaced.

The hardest thing, Ms. Walsh said, was getting over her fear of handling the puppets.

“I was holding my childhood in my hands,” she said.

Found a set of little molded-plastic ornaments for $5 at CVS the other day and they took pride of place on our tree.

[originally posted: 2006-12-23]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: I'LL POP THE CORN, YOU MULL THE CIDER:

Behind the scenes of 'It's a Wonderful Life': The holiday fixture is a film classic, but the production wasn't always angelic. (Stephen Cox, December 23, 2006, LA Times)

It's no mystery why this year the American Film Institute named Capra's postwar classic "It's a Wonderful Life" the most inspiring motion picture ever made.

To most, it's an enriching, sentimental Christmas favorite not to be missed — almost sacrilege when viewed during any other season.

It's all the more remarkable that this homespun movie, which was not initially envisioned as a "holiday" film, has become so entrenched in popular culture, such a beloved tradition for families to share.

Oddly enough, the film was unceremoniously released during Christmas week of 1946. Never mind the yuletide flavor, the wintry snowdrifts in Bedford Falls and the holly wreath George Bailey carries slung around his arm — this Jimmy Stewart-Donna Reed romance was originally scheduled to open in January 1947. But RKO Studios knew it had something special and rushed it into theaters a few weeks early to meet the deadline for Academy Award consideration that year.

Capra shot much of the film on a specially constructed quaint-town set located at RKO's ranch in the San Fernando Valley — a site that has long been overtaken by property development. In media interviews at the time, Capra did not portray it as a holiday film. In fact, he said he saw it as a cinematic remedy to combat what he feared was a growing trend toward atheism and to provide hope to the human spirit. In a moment of possible revisionism decades later, Capra said that he also realized that with the holiday season comes an inherent vulnerability in all humans, and that this uplifting tale might just ride on that sentiment.

Without question, however, is the fact that audiences trusted Capra to deliver such patriotisms, all neatly wrapped with a ribbon and bow. Like "Meet John Doe" (1941), about a lie that sparks a political movement. Some critics accused Capra of presenting a "naive" faith in the common man within a syrupy-slick presentation. So skillful in his flair for filmmaking and eliciting emotion, his titles were once called "Capra-corn."

But the Oscar-winning director has had the last laugh.

"It's a Wonderful Life" keeps popping its way back into homes on television, in commercials, on DVD, routinely broadcast twice each season on NBC. (It's being broadcast Sunday night.)

Capra, an Italian-born filmmaker who gave us such early classics as "It Happened One Night" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," died in 1991, but not before witnessing "It's a Wonderful Life" take on iconic wings of sort when television began airing it regularly in the 1970s.

The movie transcended time and soared well beyond his imagination.

"It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen," Capra told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. "The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president. I'm proud ... but it's the kid who did the work. I didn't even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea."

In probably his best-loved role, and a dark one at that, Stewart plays selfless everyman George Bailey through a tumultuous timeline that climaxes in near suicide on Christmas Eve. In answer to his desperate prayer at the bar, George is rescued by an unlikely angel with a smiling marshmallow face — a little fellow named Clarence — who convinces him that life is precious and that each man's life touches another with untold influence.

"I think, as the story unfolds," Stewart explained years ago, "it becomes clear that the movie is about hope, love and friendship."

[originally posted: December 23, 2006]

ALL THE HONOR LIES IN BEING PINOCHET, NOT ALLENDE:

Chávez Faces Challenge From Former Comrade (JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA, December 24, 2007, Wall Street Journal)

Venezuela's political future is shaping up as a battle between two former comrades-in-arms: President Hugo Chávez and former defense minister Raúl Baduel, one of Mr. Chávez's closest friends going back to their days together in the barracks.

In recent weeks, Mr. Baduel has emerged as perhaps the most significant rival to Mr. Chávez since he became president in 1999. The 52-year-old retired general was instrumental in tilting public opinion against Mr. Chávez's attempts to rewrite the constitution to give himself greater powers, including the right to unlimited re-election. Along with allies in the military, he is widely seen as having pressured Mr. Chávez to concede defeat in a Dec. 2 referendum on the changes.
[Raul Baduel]

Mr. Baduel's rise could constrain Mr. Chávez's well-known twin ambitions to stay in power for good and turn the world's sixth-biggest oil exporter into a Cuban-style socialist state. His opposition to Mr. Chávez also seems to reflect some dissatisfaction with the president within the armed forces. The president has politicized the military, forced tasks upon it such as running soup kitchens instead of preparing for battle and changed its traditional view of the world -- turning its longtime ally, the U.S., into its main foe.

Mr. Baduel's role on the night after the vote is fast becoming the stuff of legend in Venezuela. The country's electoral commission dragged its feet for hours in announcing the results. Shortly after midnight, Venezuelan TV showed soldiers preventing opposition representatives from entering the vote-counting hall, sparking rumors that Mr. Chávez was planning to rig the vote.

Then Mr. Baduel appeared on television, wearing a windbreaker and surrounded by grim-faced aides. "For the good of the country, the [election agency] cannot yield to any pressures which could lead to undesired situations," said Mr. Baduel, whose 36-year military career included stints in elite parachute, jungle and antiguerrilla units. His message was clear: Fraud could lead to civil war. Minutes later, the electoral commission stunned the country by announcing that Mr. Chávez had lost -- the first electoral defeat for the seemingly invincible president. Immediately it made Mr. Baduel a key player in shaping the country's future.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ONE FOR HARRY:

Three retired gentlemen share fresh coffee and light conversation at Bill Van Druten's kitchen table. A lush houseplant stretches in the kitchen sunshine. It sparkles with a handful of holiday trinkets and small decorations. That's as "Chistmassy" as Van Druten gets, since he's decidedly non-Christian -- and non any other religion as well.

Van Druten is an atheist. To him, Noah's Ark, Jesus and miracles are as much myth as Zeus and Thor.

Van Druten says it's "a little shocking" that some people assume eveyone is religious. Good Christians, Muslims, or Hindus might be inclined to hide their children when Van Druten's around, but he says the Freethinkers aren't much of a danger. They're not trying to convert anyone.

"It isn't a question of converting anybody," Van Druten says. "But we're interested in anybody that recognizes the superstitious nature and problems that religion bring to us now. We're interested in getting that word out, but it isn't a proselytizing sort of thing." [...]

Many Freethinkers hold membership in activist organizations of atheists, humanists, or rationalists. Retired art teacher Dale Hagen belongs to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which fights religious intrusion into government.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: POETRY IN LOCOMOTION:

The Tenth Art: A new track for the old tradition of model railroading. (William Bryk, NY Press)

A toy train circling beneath the tree is an enduring element of the American Christmas. It first entered the culture a century ago when Joshua Lionel Cowen, founder of Lionel Corporation, invented practical and cheap electric toy locomotives, cars and track–and the marketing for them. Coca-Cola’s classic magazine advertisements showing Santa Claus resting from his labors, sipping Coke and grinning at a Santa Fe diesel locomotive on its three-railed track further established the model train as part of the secular Christmas iconography.

Well into my childhood, most department stores seemed to erect at least a small model- train display during the Christmas season. I remember the wonderfully elaborate layout in the Montgomery Ward store at 150 Broadway in Menands, just across the city line from Albany, NY. The store was nestled in the chain’s regional headquarters, a 1929 Art Deco skyscraper–well, it’s eight stories tall–like those in the glamorous old movies about New York on television. The display had tunnels and signals and flashing lights and whistles and a gleaming Santa Fe streamliner, all silver and scarlet like the ones in the soft-drink ads. Even now, associating Montgomery Ward with Christmas seems appropriate: One of their advertising copywriters, after all, created Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

From the late 1950s on, our tastes in recreation changed, television in particular proving a powerful substitute for many activities and hobbies that once amused and occupied us, and holiday-season model-railroad displays largely disappeared.

This is a pity. Model railroading–all miniature modeling, in fact–resembles poetic metaphor.

[originally posted: 2003-12-20]

WHERE THE CATACOMBS ENDURE:

Keeping the faith in China (By James Reynolds, 12/25/07, BBC News)

At an underground church service in China, you pray as quickly as you can - and hope the police do not come running in.

At the end of an alleyway in the north of Beijing, 40 Chinese Christians gather in a small classroom. At the beginning of the service, they bow their heads and pray.

Their priest, Zhang Minxuan, stands in front of them. Twenty years ago he was a barber with no interest in religion. Then he got into trouble with the Communist Party and was jailed. After that he became a Christian.

Since then he has led an underground church and been detained a dozen times.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: LEAVING US NO OTHER OPTION BUT TO SHARPEN HORSESHOES (via Bryan Francoeur):

Pray for Coal: The most dangerous toys of all time (Paige Ferrari, December 2006, Radar)

In the spirit of the holidays, Radar presents the most dangerous toys of all time, those treasured playthings that drew blood, chewed digits, took out eyes, and, in one case, actually irradiated. To keep things interesting, we excluded BB guns, slingshots, throwing stars, and anything else actually intended to inflict harm. Below, our toy box from hell.

1. Lawn Darts

Removable parts? Suffocation risk? Lead paint? Pussy hazards compared to the granddaddy of them all. Lawn Darts, or "Jarts," as they were marketed, would never fly in our current ultra-paranoid, safety-helmeted, Dr. Phil toy culture. Lawn darts were massive weighted spears. You threw them. They stuck where they landed. If they happened to land in your skull, well, then you should have moved. During their brief (and generally awesome) reign in 1980s suburbia, Jarts racked up 6,700 injuries and four deaths.

The best part about Jarts was that they eliminated all speculation from true outdoor fun. (Is this dangerous? Hell yes, now chuck it!) And they were equal opportunity: All it took to play lawn darts was a sweaty grip. For good measure, it was also nice to have a small sibling around to stand on the other side of the house and tell you how your throw looked (and by how much you cleared the chimney).

The actual rules of lawn darts, as laid out by the manufacturer, were never important. No one is known to have used Jarts for their intended purpose. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that an accident involving a wayward spear and the semi-permeable head of a seven-year-old resulted in the toys' being banned from the market in 1988. Sadly, today's underage boys will never know the primal excitement of a summer's evening spent impaling friends before suppertime.

[originally posted: 2006-12-14]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: 'TOON TUNES:

‘Nuts' for Christmas (WILL FRIEDWALD, December 18, 2006, NY Sun)

Jazz musicians have never lacked for genius at interpreting the great Christmas songs, from Benny Goodman's swinging "Jingle Bells," to Louis Armstrong's heartfelt reading of "The Night Before Christmas," to Duke Ellington's radical rethinking of "The Nutcracker Suite." Yet surprisingly few jazz composers, even among those who worked mainly in song form, have written a memorable Christmas song. Perhaps the most famous example of Christmas music that has been part of the jazz domain from the ground up is the remarkable score written by the pianist Vince Guaraldi for the 1965 animated television special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which has now been reissued in a deluxe edition with bonus tracks and alternate takes on Fantasy Records.

Like the Raymond Scott themes heard in vintage Looney Tunes and the Broadway-styled scores of the classic Disney musicals, Guaraldi's distinctive melodies are known to several generations.

[originally posted: 2006-12-18]

SADLY, A LIGHT RINSE SUFFICES:

My Falling Trade Deficit with Safeway (John Tamny, 12/19/07, Real Clear Markets)

In his book Labyrinths of Prosperity, Canadian economist Reuven Brenner professed that, "Macroeconomics is a tautology and a myth, a dangerous one at that, sustaining the illusion that prosperity is necessarily linked with territory, national units, and government spending in general."

Perhaps nowhere is the absurdity of macroeconomics more apparent than in the discussion of the trade deficit. To read the vast majority of media accounts concerning the number, a country is better off economically if its trade deficit is falling, while it faces future economic pain if its deficit is rising.

The problem here is that countries do not for the most part engage in trade. Individuals trade with other individuals, and once that reality is considered, the very notion of a deficit when it comes to the beneficial exchange of goods becomes ridiculous.

While the word brainwashing is perhaps too extravagant when applied to the notion of trade deficits, it could be said that readers of the mainstream media have been bombarded so consistently and so long about the major negatives of trade imbalances, that the debate is now settled. Our alleged trade imbalances will eventually destroy our economy.

The above idea makes for good headlines, but if we as individuals stop and think about how we go about our daily lives, we’ll quickly see that what has the media and many economists so hot and bothered is quite irrelevant. It is, because in the end, all trade must balance.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: HOOK, LINE, AND SANTA:

Liberals' efforts to purge 'Christmas' have backfired (MARK STEYN, December 26, 2004, Chicago SUN-TIMES)

A few Decembers back, I was in Santa Claus, Ind., and went to the post office -- a popular destination thanks to its seasonal postmark.

''Merry Christmas!'' I said provocatively.

But Postmistress Sandy Colyon was ready for me. ''A week ago,'' she said, ''I'd have had to say 'Happy Holidays,' but we've been given a special dispensation from the postmaster-general allowing us to say 'Merry Christmas.' So Merry Christmas!''

That's ''Christmas'' at the dawn of the third millennium -- a word you have to get a special memo from the head office authorizing the use thereof. There was more hoo-ha than usual this ''holiday season'' about the war to expunge the C-word from American vocabularies, and, now that we can stick the bland nullity of ''Happy Holidays!'' away in the closet until the start of Ramadan 2005, it's worth considering who are the real winners and losers in this struggle. [...]

Flipping the dial on my car radio, I noticed more stations than ever were playing nonstop 24-hour ''holiday music'' for the month before C-day -- not just ''Winter Wonderland'' and ''Jingle Bell Rock,'' but Bing and Frank doing ''Go Tell It On The Mountain'' and Andy Williams singing ''O Holy Night.'' And not just the old guys, but all the current fellows, especially the country singers: Garth Brooks' new album -- "The Magic Of Christmas" -- includes ''Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!'' but also ''Baby Jesus Is Born'' and ''O Little Town Of Bethlehem.''

The seasonally litigious rest their fanatical devotion to the de-Christification of Christmas on the separation of church and state. America's founders were certainly opposed to the ''establishment'' of religion, whose meaning is clear enough to any Englishman: The new republic did not want President George Washington serving simultaneously as supreme governor of the Church of America, as the queen today is simultaneously head of the Church of England, or the bishop of Virginia sitting in the U.S. Senate, as today the archbishop of York sits in the House of Lords. Two centuries on, these possibilities are so remote to Americans that the ''separation'' of church and state has dwindled down to threats of legal action over red and green party napkins.

But every time some sensitive flower pulls off a legal victory over the school board, who really wins? For the answer to that, look no further than last month's election results. Forty years of ACLU efforts to eliminate God from the public square have led to a resurgent, evangelical and politicized Christianity in America. By ''politicized,'' I don't mean that anyone who feels his kid should be allowed to sing ''Silent Night'' if he wants to is perforce a Republican, but only that year in, year out, it becomes harder for such folks to support a secular Democratic Party closely allied with the anti-Christmas militants. American liberals need to rethink their priorities: What's more important? Winning a victory over the New Jersey kindergarten teacher's holiday concert, or winning back Congress and the White House?

In Britain and Europe, by contrast, the formal and informal symbols of religious faith remained in place in national life and there were no local equivalent to America's militant litigants, and the result is the total collapse of Christianity: Across the continent, the churches are empty.

(Originally posted: 12/26/04)

HE SEES YOU, DO YOU SEE HIM?:

You can track Santa via Norad again this year.

NOT VLAD PUTIN?:

ESR's Twelfth Annual Person of the Year (Enter Stage Right)

It's that time of year again! We want to know who you think made the biggest impact during 2007!

Last year's winners were none other than U.S. President George W. Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper...Who will it be this year? (See below for a complete list of winners.)

All you have to do is tell us their name and a few good reasons why you think your nominee should be named the ESR Person of the Year for 2007. Only one entry per person, multiple submissions will be deleted. Nominations will be accepted until December 31, 2007 and the results will be posted January 7, 2007.

"The rapid transformation of Libya from within is setting an example for how other pariah states can get right with the West."

ANOTHER GIANT GONE:

Jazz legend Oscar Peterson dies (BBC, 12/24/07)

Jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson has died of kidney failure at his home in Toronto, at the age of 82.

Peterson was one of jazz's most recorded musicians, and was famous for his fast-playing virtuoso style.

He made more than 200 albums and won eight Grammy awards, including a lifetime achievement honour in 1997.

He released his first single at the age of 19 and performed with greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and Nat "King" Cole.

MORE:
-WIKIPEDIA: Oscar Peterson
-OBIT:
Canadian jazz great Oscar Peterson dies (CBC News, 12/24/07)
-100 Jazz Profiles: Oscar Peterson (BBC Radio 3)

COUNTDOWN:

The only Iran war is within Iran: UN concern over repression in Iran is a signal that the regime's worst enemy isn't the US but itself (CS Monitor, December 20, 2007)

But the hard evidence is that Iran's 70 million people – two-thirds of whom are younger than 33 years old – are alienated from their government and tired of nearly three decades of "revolution" with little to show for it. They also resent the reckless, wasteful spending of billions of dollars in oil revenues.

Public frustrations could explode in the lead-up to March elections for parliament or the 2009 presidential vote. Riots erupted last June, for instance, when subsidized gasoline prices were raised.

THE DANGER OF PLAYING TO TYPE:

Romney slipping in New Hampshire (Maeve Reston, 12/24/07, Los Angeles Times)

As recently as last week, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney seemed to be holding a secure lead in New Hampshire, even as he was losing ground to rival Mike Huckabee in Iowa.

But a Boston Globe survey released Sunday showed that the former Massachusetts governor's numbers were slipping in the Northeast as well: Romney, the poll said, now holds a three percentage point lead over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in New Hampshire, down from 15 points in November.

The threat to Romney's early state strategy -- which aimed for a 1-2 victory in Iowa Jan. 3 and and New Hampshire Jan. 8 -- appears serious enough that Romney has started criticizing McCain by name at a time when most campaigns are trying to stay positive.

WHO'S PAT ROBERTSON?:

Romney Strategy in Peril With Huckabee's Ascent: Bid for Early States Appears in Jeopardy (Michael D. Shear, 12/24/07, Washington Post)

It was then that Romney put in motion his strategy to become president: Win Iowa and New Hampshire by wooing fiscal and social conservatives, and use that momentum to overwhelm the competition in the primaries that followed. But with less than two weeks before Iowans vote, that strategy is in danger of unraveling because former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has seized the conservative mantle and has emerged as the front-runner. His sudden rise in the past month -- sparked by passionate support from the same Christian conservatives Romney has been unable to win over -- has raised questions about Romney's strategy.

"In Iowa, someone was always going to challenge Romney as a conservative alternative," said GOP consultant Scott Reed, who managed Robert J. Dole's presidential campaign in 1996. "Huckabee has caught the eyes of social conservatives in Iowa, and the issue is if they have grown enough in numbers to deliver a win."

Romney's advisers bristle at the notion that he could have run his campaign differently. They are particularly sensitive to charges that the former governor changed his positions on abortion, immigration and gay rights to be more in tune with Republican voters, particularly in Iowa.

WHY ARE WE STILL PAYING SO MUCH FOR SNEAKERS? (via Jay Ostrander)

MORE:
-BAND SITE: Flight of the Conchords
-SHOW SITE: Flight of the Conchords (HBO)
-MYSPACE: Flight of the Conchords
-INFO: Flight of the Conchords (IMDB)
-REVIEW ARCHIVES: Flight of the Conchords (Metacritic)

MONEY DOESN'T MATTER:

Giuliani hits rocky stretch as vote nears (Adam Nagourney, December 24, 2007, NY Times)

Rudolph Giuliani has entered a turbulent period in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, marked by what his aides acknowledge are missteps, sharp shifts in strategy and evidence that reports about his personal life have hurt his national standing.

A $3 million investment in radio and television advertising in New Hampshire, a belated effort to become competitive in this state, is now viewed by the campaign as a largely wasted expenditure.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: HOW ARE THY LEAVES SO VERDANT?:

Tracing the Christmas tree's roots (Religion News Service, December 21, 2004)

The Christmas tree remains a powerful symbol for many of us, a mandala of sorts, evoking emotions that can be traced through thousands of years of humankind and across many faiths.

"Christmas trees probably add more to mark the period of 'peace on Earth, goodwill toward men' than any other product of the soil," says Ann Kirk-Davis, whose family has been raising and selling Christmas trees for generations. "This enduring tree symbol — which is even older than Christianity and not exclusive to any one religion — remains a firmly established part of our holiday customs, engaging not only our senses of sight, touch and smell, but also our sense of tradition."

The Christmas tree has evolved from centuries-old traditions.

Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Chinese and other cultures used evergreens to mark the winter solstice, celebrate the end of the harvest year and symbolize the spirit of renewal. Druids used holly and mistletoe as symbols of eternal life.

In the 7th century in Germany, St. Boniface used the triangular shape of the tree to symbolize the Holy Trinity. In the Middle Ages, evergreens were decorated with red apples — the paradise tree — to mark the pagan festival of Adam and Eve.

In Riga, Latvia, in 1510, Martin Luther, inspired by the stars shimmering through the trees as he walked through the woods one wintry night, cut down a small tree, took it home and decorated it with candles for his children.

[originally posted: 2004-12-23]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: SOLE DELIGHT:

CHRISTMAS DAY [William Drummond (1585-1649)]

Bright portals of the sky,
Emboss'd with sparkling stars,
Doors of eternity,
With diamantine bars,
Your arras rich uphold,
Loose all your bolts and springs,
Ope wide your leaves of gold,
That in your roofs may come the King of Kings.

O well-spring of this All!
Thy Father's image vive;
Word, that from nought did call
What is, doth reason, live;
The soul's eternal food,
Earth's joy, delight of heaven;
All truth, love, beauty, good:
To thee, to thee be praises ever given!

O glory of the heaven!
O sole delight of earth!
To thee all power be given,
God's uncreated birth!
Of mankind lover true,
Indearer of his wrong,
Who doth the world renew,
Still be thou our salvation and our song!

[originally posted: 2003-12-25]

CHOOSING THE NAZIS OVER THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS:

The Year of Acting Dangerously (Barry Rubin, December 23, 2007, GLORIA)

While 2007 didn't greatly change the Middle East compared to some of its predecessors, here are some of its significant trends which will continue to dominate the year to come.

1. Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip. This is the most important single Middle East event of 2007 because it is a clear, probably irreversible, shift in the balance of power. Four decades of a movement dominated by nationalists has come to an end. Given Fatah's continuing weaknesses it is conceivable that Hamas will take over the West Bank within a few years and marginalize its rival. To Islamists, this is a great victory. In fact, it is a disaster for Palestinians and Arabs. It deepens divisions and destroys any real (as opposed to the silly superficial events that take up governments' time and media space) diplomatic option for them. A negotiated resolution of the Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and with it prospects for a Palestinian state, has been set back for decades. Much Western sympathy has been lost. In years to come, struggles between Arab nationalists and Islamists, as well as between Sunnis and Shias, will dwarf the Arab-Israeli conflict. During 2008 we will have to assess whether the Palestinian Authority still ruling the West Bank can meet the Hamas challenge.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ENOUGH VERBAL ROPE?:

A Visit from Saint Nicholas (Clement Clarke Moore?)

T'was the night before Christmas,
when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, --not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN!
On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONDER and BLITZEN!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
"HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-NIGHT."

In a chapter of his just-published book, Author Unknown, Don Foster tries to prove an old claim that had never before been taken seriously: that Clement Clarke Moore did not write the poem commonly known as "The Night before Christmas" but that it was written instead by a man named Henry Livingston Jr. Livingston (1748-1828) never took credit for the poem himself, and there is, as Foster is quick to acknowledge, no actual historical evidence to back up this extraordinary claim. (Moore, on the other hand, did claim authorship of the poem, although not for two decades after its initial--and anonymous--publication in the Troy [N.Y.] Sentinel in 1823.) Meanwhile, the claim for Livingston's authorship was first made in the late 1840s at the earliest (and possibly as late as the 1860s), by one of his daughters, who believed that her father had written the poem back in 1808.

Why revisit it now? In the summer of 1999, Foster reports, one of Livingston's descendants pressed him to take up the case (the family has long been prominent in New York's history). Foster had made a splash in recent years as a "literary detective" who could find in a piece of writing certain unique and telltale clues to its authorship, clues nearly as distinctive as a fingerprint or a sample of DNA. (He has even been called on to bring his skills to courts of law.) Foster also happens to live in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Henry Livingston himself had resided. Several members of the Livingston family eagerly provided the local detective with a plethora of unpublished and published material written by Livingston, including a number of poems written in the same meter as "The Night before Christmas" (known as anapestic tetrameter: two short syllables followed by an accented one, repeated four times per line--"da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM," in Foster's plain rendering). These anapestic poems struck Foster as quite similar to "The Night before Christmas" in both language and spirit, and, upon further investigation, he was also struck by telling bits of word usage and spelling in that poem, all of which pointed to Henry Livingston. On the other hand, Foster found no evidence of such word usage, language, or spirit in anything written by Clement Clarke Moore--except, of course, for "The Night before Christmas" itself. Foster therefore concluded that Livingston and not Moore was the real author. The literary gumshoe had tackled and solved another hard case.

Foster's textual evidence is ingenious, and his essay is as entertaining as a lively lawyer's argument to the jury. If he had limited himself to offering textual evidence about similarities between "The Night before Christmas" and poems known to have been written by Livingston, he might have made a provocative case for reconsidering the authorship of America's most beloved poem--a poem that helped create the modern American Christmas. But Foster does not stop there; he goes on to argue that textual analysis, in tandem with biographical data, proves that Clement Clarke Moore could not have written "The Night before Christmas." In the words of an article on Foster's theory that appeared in the New York Times, "He marshals a battery of circumstantial evidence to conclude that the poem's spirit and style are starkly at odds with the body of Moore's other writings." With that evidence and that conclusion I take strenuous exception.

[originally posted: 2004-12-24]

FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE THING THEY NEVER GET IS WE MEAN IT ALL:

Give me seasonal schmaltz: Christmas captures the defining characteristic of Americans - their lack of cynicism and scepticism (Gerard Baker, 12.23/04, Times of London))

[A]bove all, the annual fuss about taking Christ out of Christmas misses the central point about the holiday season in America. This time of year captures, perhaps better than any other, the defining characteristic of Americans in the modern world � their lack of cynicism and scepticism, their enduring hope and faith in themselves, their country and even the world around them.

In Britain and most of Europe, Christmas has become that special occasion for wallowing in cynicism. We love to complain about the shopping, the train delays and the weather. Popular culture disdains the spirit of the season, and plays up instead the secularist, sceptical, mocking, lost innocence tone of British life.

With a few ghastly exceptions from Sir Cliff, popular music in Britain at this time of year is blunt and unsentimental, even when charitable. But Americans indulge their sentimentality, pander to their idealism, reaffirm their belief in the spiritual contingency of human nature and their popular culture reflects that.

Nothing is too schmaltzy or saccharine. Even Hollywood for a brief moment casts aside its usual predilections and expresses a wide-eyed child-like thrill at the coming of Christmas. Radio stations become an endless loop of Christmas songs � not the typical �So Here it is Merry Christmas� British classic � but shameless repeats of Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Harry Belafonte.

It�s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra�s hymn to sentimentalism, will doubtless get a look in somewhere in the British TV schedules, but in America it will own its usual spot, slap in the middle of NBC�s prime time on Christmas night and I guarantee that there will not be a dry eye in the country when once again George Bailey hears the bell ringing for Clarence, the angel who gets his wings.

[originally posted: 2004-12-25]

BUZZWORTHY (via Mike Daley):

MORE:
-BAND SITE: The Bees
-MYSPACE: The Bees
-YOUTUBE: Bees Music
-REVIEW ARCHIVES: The Bees: Octopus

SELF-REFERENCE ALERT:

Romney in fight to keep hopes alive in Iowa race (Finlay Lewis, 12/23/07, COPLEY NEWS SERVICE)

Evangelical conservatives are expected to constitute more than 40 percent of the Republican caucus-goers on Jan. 3. They have been a major factor in powering the former Arkansas governor past Romney in many Iowa polls and have helped lift him to the top tier of GOP presidential candidates nationally.

Their movement into the Huckabee camp is a big reason Romney now finds himself fighting to keep his presidential hopes alive in Iowa after months of running a textbook campaign rooted in his own formidable financial and personal assets. [...]

Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University, said in an interview that Romney suffers by comparison with Huckabee, whose years in the pulpit helped hone a folksy style that connects with voters. Goldford suggested what Romney says on the stump often sounds “canned.”

“Romney, at times, comes across as though he's briefing the board on the latest corporate venture even when he's trying to sound personable,” Goldford said. “He just can't get away from corporate-speak.”

Also, Romney's changing positions on social issues such as abortion – he is now opposed – have some questioning his core values.

The stakes in Iowa are huge given that Romney has bet his candidacy on back-to-back victories in the Iowa caucuses and the nation's first primary five days later in New Hampshire. He and his strategists hope that will generate irresistible momentum for subsequent contests in South Carolina and Florida leading up to the Feb. 5 showdown when large states stretching from California to New York hold primaries.

Some analysts say a loss to Huckabee in Iowa, particularly if it's by a substantial margin, could complicate Romney's prospects in New Hampshire despite leading in most polls there.

The consequences could be magnified by the David-and-Goliath nature of the campaign. Huckabee is being outspent on Iowa television ads by a nearly 10-to-1 ratio and counting on the intensity of his evangelical supporters to make up for the advantages of Romney's well-financed statewide organization.

BY BLAME SHE MEANS CREDIT:

Pelosi's first year as House speaker marked by little change on war (Zachary Coile, 12/23/07, SF Chronicle)

[B]y Wednesday afternoon, her party was facing two of its biggest defeats. To keep the alternative minimum tax from hitting 20 million Americans next year, Democrats had to abandon their pledge not to pass any legislation that increased the deficit.

Then Pelosi, whose party took control of Congress pledging to change course in Iraq, watched the House approve $70 billion in war funding, part of a budget deal that avoided a government shutdown. Members of her own party denounced it as a capitulation to the White House.

"The war in Iraq is the biggest disappointment for us, the inability to stop the war," Pelosi told reporters in a group interview in her ceremonial office just hours before the war vote. She quickly pegged the blame on congressional Republicans.

BLAG MAN:

A governor under siege: Weakened and isolated, Blagojevich suffers new blow with federal probe (David Mendell and Ray Long, 12/22/07, Chicago Tribune)

Federal prosecutors for the first time have put Blagojevich inside their widespread investigation of pay-to-play in his administration. Blagojevich told one convicted federal informant, "You stick with us and you will do very well for yourself," according to a court document prosecutors filed.

The governor's office denied that he is the "Public Official A" described in the court document as offering state business to convicted political insiders.

In 2008, the spotlight will shine even more brightly on Blagojevich as one of his biggest fundraisers, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, goes to trial in February on charges he tried to trade his access to Blagojevich for kickbacks and contributions to the governor's campaign fund.

These days, the governor conducts much of his public business from his North Side home, reluctant to venture forth into Springfield or other public arenas where he might feel exposed.

And even before Friday's federal bombshell, Blagojevich had few successes in 2007.

While he has tried to put the blame on lawmakers, his credibility in Springfield already was damaged from a record-setting legislative stalemate that has left unresolved key aspects of the people's business. The Chicago Transit Authority is in near meltdown. Education reform remains in limbo. And the state's deteriorating roads and bridges still aren't being repaired for lack of a way to pay for it.

A Tribune poll this month found only one in four Democrats in Illinois approve of their Democratic governor's job performance.

As each month passed this year, new revelations pushed a governor under siege deeper into his bunker.

THE ONLY PRINCIPLED CANDIDATE....

Paul defends asking for special projects (JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press)

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul on Sunday defended his efforts in Congress to bring home money to his Texas district, despite his long-held aversion to big government and congressional votes to reign in federal spending.

THEY TURNED US INTO NEWTS:

Vox Huckabee: The Republican as class warrior (Terry Eastland, 12/31/2007, Weekly Standard)

As he has throughout the year, Huckabee grounds his pro-life position in the Declaration's recognition of the inalienable right to life. But now, in the heat of the
campaign, with the Iowa caucuses just days away, he also uses the Declaration to argue that, in light of its recognition that all men are created equal, any man (or woman) can become president. Even someone like him, the son of working class parents in Hope, Arkansas, the first in his "entire male lineage" to graduate from high school, much less go to college. He put himself through college in just "two years and three months," since four years would have cost too much.

Now, as it happens, there are some who don't recognize that any American can become president. One "Republican muckety-muck," as Huckabee called the unfortunate former Bush aide Dan Bartlett, "made the comment that nobody would ever elect a guy with the last name 'Huckabee.' It was a name that sounded too much like a hick." Bartlett didn't quite say that--he actually praised Huckabee as "the most visionary" candidate while noting that he had the "negativity of something he can't change like his given last name." Huckabee says he doesn't care about what Bartlett said. But plainly he does.

"To me," he tells the rally in Marshalltown, "'Huckabee' sounds like an old-fashioned, hard-working family that believes that if you work real hard in this country you can get somewhere. If that doesn't mean anything anymore, then the Founding Fathers were wrong. But I don't believe that. I believe they were right. I think you are worth as much as anyone else."

As the case of Bartlett shows, Huckabee is not shy about criticizing members of his own party. He couldn't care less, it seems, whether he wins many votes (at least in Iowa and the early primaries) from the Republican "establishment" (his term) or from the Republican rich (often one and the same). And he makes humorous reference to his name to distinguish himself from those Republicans.

DOWN THE RABID HOLE:

The 'Cheshire Cat' fence (Michelle Malkin, December 23, 2007, Washington Times)

Do you know the story of the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence? It's an object lesson in gesture politics and homeland insecurity. It's a tale of hollow rhetoric, meaningless legislation and bipartisan betrayal.

And in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, it's a helpful learning tool as you assess the promises of immigration enforcement converts now running for president. [...]

Next time you hear a leading presidential candidate try to woo you with his nine-point immigration enforcement plan or his secure ID plan or his Secure Borders platform, point to the Incredible Disappearing Border Fence. Poof. That is what happens to election-season homeland security promises. Why would theirs be any different?

THE SURGE WINDS DOWN:

Iran Cited In Iraq's Decline in Violence: Order From Tehran Reined In Militias, U.S. Official Says (Karen DeYoung, 12/23/07, Washington Post)

The Iranian government has decided "at the most senior levels" to rein in the violent Shiite militias it supports in Iraq, a move reflected in a sharp decrease in sophisticated roadside bomb attacks over the past several months, according to the State Department's top official on Iraq.

Tehran's decision does not necessarily mean the flow of those weapons from Iran has stopped, but the decline in their use and in overall attacks "has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision," David M. Satterfield, Iraq coordinator and senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said in an interview.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker said that the decision, "should [Tehran] choose to corroborate it in a direct fashion," would be "a good beginning" for a fourth round of talks between Crocker and his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad.

WHAT DOES HE KNOW?:

Savior or Saboteur? (MAUREEN DOWD, 12/23/07, NY Times)

Inside the Bill gang and the Hillary gang, there is panic and perplexity. Is Bill a loyal spouse or a subconscious saboteur?

Should Hillaryland muzzle him? Give him a minder? Is he rusty? Or is he freelancing because he relishes his role as head of the party his wife is trying to take over?

“For the first time since the Marc Rich pardon,” said a friend of the Clintons, “Bill is seriously diminishing his personal standing with the people closest to him.”

WHILE HIS RIVALS ARE COLLAPSING:

FREDDY FOR PRIME TIME (CHARLES HURT, December 21, 2007, NY Post)

Over the past month, Thompson has walked away from several very strong performances in GOP debates. In the latest one, he held command over the entire field and won the day by refusing to play "hand shows" on stage at the direction of the moderator.

"I said, 'Nope,' and everybody pulled their hand down and looked around," Thompson later recalled.

"I just said to my buddies up there, 'How are you going to stand up to the leaders of Iran and North Korea if you can't stand up to an overbearing moderator?' "

Thompson also has quietly racked up scores of endorsements from anti-abortion chapters around the country. Those groups are some of the most effective vote herders the GOP has.

And earlier this week, he netted a surprise endorsement from Iowa Rep. Steve King, known in some GOP circles as "the Kingmaker."

After enduring months of criticism for sporadic and lackluster campaigning, Thompson is now going full-bore on a bus tour of 50 cities and towns around Iowa that his campaign says will reach some 75 percent of projected Republican caucus-goers before Jan. 3.

More than anything else, long-suffering supporters say their spirits have finally been lifted by Thompson's swagger and enthusiastic demeanor on the trail.

WHEN CITING YOUR RECORD IS A SMEAR...:

Racial Undercurrent Is Seen in Clinton Campaign (Chris Cillizza And Shailagh Murray, December 23, 2007, Washington Post)

It has unfolded mostly under the radar. But an important development in the 2008 Democratic battle may be the building backlash among African Americans over comments from associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton that could be construed as jabs at Sen. Barack Obama's race.

These officials, including Clinton aides and prominent surrogates, have raised questions or dropped references about Obama's position on sentencing guidelines for crack vs. powder cocaine offenses; on his handgun control record; and on his admitted use of drugs as a youth. The context was always Obama's "electability." But the Illinois senator's campaign advisers said some African American leaders detect a pattern, and they believe it could erode Clinton's strong base of black support.

A DEFT ANTI-RUDY COMBO:

Huckabing Crosby (Mark Steyn, 12/23/.07, National Review)

This guy Huckabee is some kind of genius. A week ago, you had to be the pope or the queen to do your own big televised Christmas message. But now, since Huck climbed into his red sweater and hired George Lucas to do the notorious “floating cross” effect, every single-digit nickel’n’dime presidential candidate is donning his gay apparel and trolling the ancient Yuletide carol.

CAN'T STOP THE TECTONICS:

McCain closing gap with Romney: In N.H. poll, Obama inches ahead of Clinton (Scott Helman, December 23, 2007, Boston Globe)

Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination was all but dead this summer, has made a dramatic recovery in the Granite State 2 1/2 weeks before the 2008 vote, pulling within 3 percentage points of front-runner Mitt Romney, a new Boston Globe poll indicates.

McCain, the darling of New Hampshire voters in the 2000 primary, has the support of 25 percent of likely Republican voters, compared with 28 percent for Romney. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has slid into third place, with 14 percent.

IMPOSSIBLE AS IT SEEMS...:

Margaret Thacher's grandson becoming American Football star (Kate Devlin, 23/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

His birth famously prompted her to declare "we have become a grandmother".

Eighteen years on Margaret Thatcher's grandson is now prompting devotion in fans of American football as he becomes a rising star of the game.

Michael Thatcher, whose father Mark Thatcher separated from his mother after being accused of planning a coup in Equatorial Ginuea, has helped carry his high school team to the finals of the state championships with a extraordinary catch during the quarter final play offs.

Michael, who has lived with his American born mother, Diane Burgdorf, in Dallas, Texas, since 2004, was praised by seasoned commentators for his sensational catch.

In front of a 10,000 strong crowd he hurtled towards the ball, caught it with his fingertips before rolling over and lifting the ball triumphantly in the air.

Such was the unexpected brilliance of the catch that it caused one commentator to exclaim: "Can the guy run, can he catch, can he do everything? Wow!" [...]

Randy Allen, coach of the Scots, the Highland Park high school team in Dallas, recalled when Michael started at the school he still had a South African accent.

"He was so small and didn't understand [American] football at all," said Allen. "He thought about quitting, but he stuck at it."

Now 6ft 1in and weighing in at just over 12 stone, Michael is still considered thin to be a running back, his position on the team.

But he is working on it. "(Michael's) is a story about hard work, dedication and discipline," Allen said.

WE JUST WANT TO PUMP YOU UP:

Kenya showing democratic muscle: With a reputation for political stability, it is expected to see another peaceful election this week, even though the incumbent is trailing (Edmund Sanders, 12/23/07, Los Angeles Times)

[K]enya is earning a reputation as an oasis of political stability in Africa, thanks to a succession of fair and stable elections, even when results defied the wishes of the government. In 2002 voters rejected then-President Daniel Arap Moi's handpicked successor. Three years later they defeated a government-backed constitutional referendum. In both cases, there was little violence or backlash.

Now Kenyans say they are looking forward to exercising their democratic muscles again.

DEMOCRATS VS. POLITICAL PARTICIPATION:

Ordeal leaves Iranian dissident with doubts: After 40 days in a notorious Tehran prison, a student activist wonders if he should have heeded his father's warnings to avoid politics (Borzou Daragahi, 12/23/07, Los Angeles Times)

The belief that he was part of a groundswell of change that had kept him going in prison was crushed as soon as he got out. Though his student friends honored him as a hero, Iran was in the midst of a massive crackdown on dissent and freedom of speech. More newspapers had been shut down. More activists arrested, including three of his friends at the university.

The same international news agencies that had enthusiastically covered the student protests hadn't bothered to report his imprisonment, some of them fearful of losing their press accreditation in Iran.

One of Zamanian's friends had called an Italian broadcaster who reported on the student demonstrations to tell her the student she'd put on camera was now in jail. The reporter said she wasn't interested, that the story was old news.

Instead of becoming a cause celebre, Zamanian found with dismay he'd been ignored and forgotten by much of the world.

One European diplomat in Tehran described the student movement as "the charge of the light brigade," a hopeless but valiant effort to change Iran from within.

"There really is no national movement," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "There are no political leaders. They're fighting for their country, but there really is no hope."

Zamanian finds himself baffled by the West's attitude toward Iran, speaking about democracy one day, raising the specter of armed conflict another, then offering to cut deals with the government the next.

He finds himself disgusted by the Iranian exile groups, including those in Los Angeles who beam their messages to the country via satellite. They urge Iranians not to take part in the political process, in effect handing the hard-liners a victory that has resulted in a more domestically repressive and internationally belligerent Iran, he says.

What is the goal here? he wonders. What is the strategy?

"They've worsened conditions," he says. "Today the West promotes negotiations. Tomorrow they brandish the threat of war. The best thing they could do is clarify their position."

VS. AGITPROP:

Smiley's model: John Bingham not only wrote fascinating spy novels -- he also inspired one of John Le Carre's singular characters (Sarah Weinman, December 23, 2007, LA Times)

Without Le Carré, current spymasters such as Robert Littell, Charles McCarry, Stella Rimington and Daniel Silva might not have careers. But Le Carré himself owes his career to a colleague of his own. When the author still toiled in intelligence circles under his real name, David Cornwell, his career overlapped for a time with that of John Bingham, Lord Clanmorris (1908-88).

During a 30-year career of undercover agenting and high-ranking bureaucracy, Bingham wrote 17 novels and a work of nonfiction, sometimes using the pen name Michael Ward. He may be best known, though, as an unwitting inspiration for the fictional composite that would become Smiley, the character who eventually made Le Carré a literary star.

As a result, perhaps, the relationship between Le Carré and Bingham soured. "As far as he was concerned, I was a literary defector who had dragged the good name of the Service through the mud," Le Carré wrote in a 2000 essay that accompanied last summer's reissue of three of Bingham's novels.

It may be tempting to view Bingham's first two novels -- "My Name Is Michael Sibley" (Simon & Schuster: 258 pp., $13 paper) and "Five Roundabouts of Heaven" (Simon & Schuster: 208 pp., $13 paper) -- as grotesque foreshadowings of the bitter end of his friendship with Le Carré, since both books mine the dark undercurrents of long-standing male relationships.

ON MISSING THE IMPORTANCE OF HONG KONG:

Dubai: Iran's Hong Kong (Arnaud de Borchgrave, December 21, 2007 , Washington Times)

Today, some 500,000 Iranians are residents of the U.A.E. — 400,000 in Dubai alone, out of more than 2 million people. Many immigrated after the Iranian revolution when the shah was overthrown, planning to continue to Europe and North America. But many were taken by the relaxed lifestyle and incentives offered new residents. Iranian investments in Dubai recently topped $350 billion. Some 7,500 Iranian-owned companies operate out of Dubai.

A sleepy contraband port of 25,000 devoted to gold smuggling as recently as 1971, Dubai's tallest building then had three floors. It now is a booming city state that boasts the world's tallest skyscraper (still under construction); its tallest hotel in the shape of a giant sail headed into the Gulf; its most luxurious hotels (where some junior suites start at $5,000 a night and go up to $25,000); an 18-hole downtown golf course; an indoor ski slope with ski lift; and the world's largest theme park, Dubailand.

Man-made islands in the shape of as palm tree, dotted with pricey villas, have quadrupled Dubai's 25-mile-long coastline. A 50-mile subway and a $33 billion Dubai World Central airport with six runways and a capacity of 100 million passengers per year are also under construction. And 55 double-decker Airbus 380 super jumbos are on order. Fifty percent of the world's cranes are now in use in Dubai; 25 percent in Shanghai; 25 percent in the rest of the world.

Some of Dubai's districts are known as "Little Tehran." Iranians have their own clubs, and Iranian restaurants do a thriving business throughout the Emirates.

Little understood among advocates of tighter economic sanctions against Iran is that the U.A.E. is Iran's first trading partner. Iran imports more than $10 billion from the U.A.E. and orders many embargoed items with documents that guarantee Dubai as their final destination. Heavy equipment, machines, mobile phones, auto parts, communication systems are all legal commerce.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government gave the U.A.E. a list of Iranian companies it considers "bogus" that seek to violate the U.S. embargo on Tehran. Ties between the two sides of the Gulf in Dubai are tighter than between the city-state and Washington.

Dubai is to Iran's theocracy what British-ruled Hong Kong was to China's communist overlords — a gigantic entrepot. Dubai's chamber of commerce map of its trading relations runs South-South, from Morocco to Indonesia, thus erasing the traditional North-South divide between rich and poor.

JUST ANOTHER LIBERAL RAG....:

Boston Herald endorses McCain (The Associated Press, 12/23/07)

"There are times in this nation's history so perilous that they cry out for a steady, experienced leader, a person so trusted that we would put the fate of this country in his hands. This is one of those times, and Sen. John McCain is that person," the newspaper said.

It did not mention Romney, who led Massachusetts from 2003 to January of this year.

The newspaper also did not endorse anyone in the Democratic presidential race, breaking its tradition of choosing candidates in both parties.

BUT YOU BETTER HAVE A FASTBALL...:

Fastball, slider, changeup, curveball—an analysis (John Walsh, December 20, 2007, Hardball Times)

These numbers confirm (and quantify) what we already knew: pitchers tend to throw more sliders and curves and fewer changeups, when they have the platoon advantage (pitcher and hitter of the same hand). In any case, pitchers throw a majority of fastballs (59% of pitches thrown) no matter what side of the plate the batter is standing on.

We can also look at how pitch selection varies depending on the count:

+------+------+------+------+------+
| Cnt | FB% | SL% | CB% | CU% |
+------+------+------+------+------+
| 3-0 | 0.84 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.08 |
| 3-1 | 0.80 | 0.10 | 0.03 | 0.07 |
| 2-0 | 0.75 | 0.11 | 0.04 | 0.10 |
| 3-2 | 0.66 | 0.17 | 0.08 | 0.09 |
| 1-0 | 0.63 | 0.15 | 0.08 | 0.13 |
| 2-1 | 0.64 | 0.16 | 0.08 | 0.13 |
| 0-0 | 0.63 | 0.15 | 0.12 | 0.09 |
| 1-1 | 0.53 | 0.19 | 0.13 | 0.14 |
| 0-1 | 0.52 | 0.20 | 0.15 | 0.12 |
| 2-2 | 0.51 | 0.21 | 0.16 | 0.12 |
| 1-2 | 0.48 | 0.22 | 0.19 | 0.11 |
| 0-2 | 0.51 | 0.21 | 0.18 | 0.09 |
+------+------+------+------+------+

I've placed the rows in this table in order of how advantageous the count is for the hitter, 3-0 being the best hitter's count and 0-2 being the worst. Now look at the fastball percentage: there is an almost perfect progression from lots of fastballs (84% on 3-0) down to about 50% fastballs on the worst hitter's counts.

What's clearly happening is that when behind in the count pitchers will try to throw a strike to move the count in their favor. Presumably, the fastball is the easiest pitch to control, so that's the pitch they choose. When they are ahead in the count, the cost of throwing a ball is reduced, so they can try the fancy stuff.

A possible exception may be given by the 0-2 count, where the fastball percentage goes back up a tick, instead of continuing downward. I wonder if pitchers are employing a little game theory here: throwing a few more fastballs than expected in order to confound the batter.

Now that we have some idea about pitch selection, let's have a look at what happens to these different pitches. [...]

I don't know about you, but I've learned a lot researching this article. I didn't realize the averge fastball was thrown comfortably above 90 mph. I can remember, not all that long ago, when 90 mph was considered throwing hard; now it's below average.

The changeup, despite was you sometimes read, is not the slowest pitch thrown (the curveball is). I read recently a claim that somebody's changeup was 20 mph slower than his fastball—no way! The average difference between fastball and changeup is 9 mph. I haven't checked, but I'm confident that nobody has a 20 mph difference between the two pitches.

Pitchers throw the changeup three times more often when facing an opposite-hand batter, but throw the fastball equally as often, regardless of the handedness of the batter. This is not a good stategy, as you will see when you read my article on platoon splits for different pitch types in the Hardball Times Basebll Annual 2008 (plug!).

Fastballs appear to have the worst BABIP and sliders the best, although a rigorous link between BABIP and pitch type needs more study.

SHORT PEOPLE GOT NO REASON:

Australia Practitioner Defends Decision to Do Abortion at 32 Weeks,/a> (Steven Ertelt, December 12, 2007, LifeNews.com)

The man who did a late-term abortion at 32 weeks into a woman's pregnancy on an unborn baby diagnosed with dwarfism is defending his decision. Lachlan de Crespigny has been prevented by the courts from talking about the case until now, and he told Australian media he has no regrets about doing the controversial abortion.

FURTHER ALONG THE MAP:

Hamas Reportedly Drafting Terms of a Truce with Israel (Robert Berger, 22 December 2007, VOA News)

Israel Radio says Hamas is drafting terms for a truce and trying to get other Palestinian factions to halt rocket attacks on Israel. [...]

Even if Hamas wants a truce, it may have a hard time bringing other militant factions on board. The Islamic Jihad, which has been hit hard in the recent fighting, said it is not time for a cease-fire, but rather, for revenge.

FUNNY SORT OF RECESSION:

Bush’s Very Good Year (Lawrence Kudlow, 12/23/07, Real Clear Politics)

Calendar year 2007 looks set to produce 3 percent growth in real GDP, nearly 3 percent growth in consumer spending, and over 3 percent growth in after-tax inflation-adjusted incomes. Meanwhile, headline inflation (including food and energy) will have run at 2.5 percent, with only 2 percent core inflation.

Jobs are rising over 100,000 per month and the stock market is set to turn in a respectable year despite enormous headwinds. Low tax rates, modest inflation, and declining interest rates continue to boost Goldilocks, which is still the greatest story never told.

-ISM ISN'T WORKING:

Pakistan's Islamic Parties Struggling: 5 Years After Win, Backers Frustrated (Griff Witte, 12/23/07, Washington Post)

In 2002, Ibrar Hussein voted for an Islamic takeover.

Fed up both with Pakistan's military-led government and with the mainstream, secular opposition, Hussein decided that religious leaders should be given a chance to improve living conditions in this sprawling frontier city.

But five years after support from people like Hussein propelled the Islamic parties to power in the provincial government -- and to their strongest-ever showing nationally -- the 36-year-old shopkeeper is rethinking his choice.

"You can see the sanitation system here," Hussein said, pointing with disgust to a ditch in front of his shop where a stream of greenish-brown sludge trickled by. "People were asking for clean water, and they didn't get it. We were very hopeful. But the mullahs did nothing for us."

Hussein's disenchantment is just one reason why, with Pakistan on the eve of fresh parliamentary elections, the religious parties are struggling to appeal to voters.

WOULD HAVE CARRIED 50 IF HE'D DONE THIS IN '03:

40,000 troops may be home by July (Sara A. Carter, December 22, 2007, AP)

The Pentagon expects that more than 40,000 U.S. troops will be home by July if the situation in Iraq remains stable, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.

BUCKING FOR THE AFRICA SEAT ON THE NEW SECURITY COUNCIL:

Kenya Tests New Style of Politicking: Campaigns Reflect Effects of Technology, Increased Openness (Stephanie McCrummen, 12/22/07, Washington Post)

While massive rallies remain the staple of electoral politics here, the new style of campaigning is being driven by such factors as the proliferation of cellphones and Internet connections and the flow of information from abroad. Kenyans in the United States are e-mailing in tips derived from the U.S. presidential race. A younger, more media-savvy electorate is also exerting influence, with Odinga's campaign, for instance, hiring a 20-year-old music producer from a recording company called Blue Zebra to work on its events.

But most significantly, many people here see such developments as reflecting a more open political system in Kenya, an East African nation that only recently emerged from two decades of repressive rule under President Daniel arap Moi, whom Kibaki defeated in 2002.

Odinga, the opposition front-runner, was jailed during the Moi years for advocating multiparty democracy. Now he is Kibaki's main opponent.
ad_icon

There is a new diversity in the news media. Moi controlled the only state-run television, whereas now there are three private broadcasters and dozens of radio stations.

And the idea of surveying opinions is no longer unthinkable. "We have expanded the space in terms of freedom of expression," said George Waititu, managing director of the Steadman Group, the largest polling firm in sub-Saharan Africa. "The electorate has a bigger voice to talk back. So I think it is an indicator of the state of democracy here."

2009 WOULD HAVE BEEN AMPLE:

No Joke, Bulb Change Is Challenge for U.S. (CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH, 12/22/07, NY Times)

The new energy bill signed this week makes it official. When 2012 hits, stores can no longer sell the cheap but inefficient incandescent light bulbs that are fixtures in most homes.

Even so, light bulb manufacturers say that worries about greenhouse gases and the high cost of energy had them moving away from conventional incandescents way before Congress weighed in. For quite some time, they note, they have been trying to soften the light emitted by compact fluorescent lights, bring down the cost of light-emitting diodes — and yes, find ways to increase the efficiency of incandescents.

YOU CAN EITHER SERVE THE KIDS OR THE UNIONS:

Schoolhouse Rock: D.C. education chief says school choice shouldn't be reserved for the rich. (COLLIN LEVY, December 22, 2007, Opinion Journal)

"I see it as a social justice issue--I want them all to be in excellent schools. The kids in Tenleytown are getting a wildly different educational experience than the kids in Anacostia, so our schools are not serving their purpose."

So says D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who has brought an unusual sense of urgency to her new job. [...]

So far, in her quest to turn around the public school system, she's taken on the unions, the city council and, most recently, hundreds of angry central-office workers.

This week, the city council gave preliminary approval to Chancellor Rhee's request for authority to fire nonunion employees in the central office. She knew it was going to be a political firestorm, but she's worked hard to convince her skeptics that protecting an ossified bureaucracy isn't in anyone's best interests. "I think it's a critical piece of this equation," she says of the personnel legislation, "and if someone like me can come in, guns blazing, and make all the hard calls . . . we can actually see how much progress we can make for the kids." [...]

The alliance she and the mayor formed that day is now one of the strongest cards in the chancellor's hand. Their agreement was that as long as she acted in the best interests of the kids, he would back her up no matter how loud the screaming of the unions and community groups. "And since then, he has been unwavering," Ms. Rhee says with a note of awe in her voice. "He has never ever said to me, well, we need to think of the political ramifications."

That commitment is facing one of its toughest public tests, with the chancellor's plan to close 23 schools citywide--18 more than any other chancellor in the city's history dared propose. Parents and community groups are screaming bloody murder.

ODDLY?:

I’m a Believer: a review of THERE IS A GOD: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind By Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese (ANTHONY GOTTLIEB, 12/23/07, NY Times Book Review)

Oddly, Flew seems to have turned into an American as well as a believer.

RIGHTWING HATRED OF HIM ISN'T JUST ABOUT CHRISTOPHOBIA...:

Mike Huckabee governed against the grain: He shepherded many changes in Arkansas, but left some supporters feeling abandoned (ADAM NOSSITER and DAVID BARSTOW, 12/22/07, New York Times)

In more than a decade of presiding over this state, Mike Huckabee produced a legacy like few other Republican governors in the South, surprising even liberal Democrats with his willingness to upend some of Arkansas' more parochial traditions.

A review of his record as governor shows that beginning in 1996 he drove through a series of changes that transformed education and health insurance in Arkansas, achievements that were never tried by most of his predecessors, including Bill Clinton. [...]

[T]he novice governor found the sea legs in 1997 to help enact, with overwhelming support in the heavily Democratic Legislature, a major expansion of health insurance for children of the working poor whose families did not qualify for Medicaid. It was one of the first such expansions in the nation, coming before the federal government authorized them, and it baffled some Republicans in the Legislature.

"None of us understood what he was trying to do," said Peggy Jeffries, then a Republican state senator and now executive director of the Arkansas affiliate of the Eagle Forum, a national group of conservatives.

Easily elected to a full term in 1998, Huckabee was emerging as something of an unquantifiable presence in the state capital, sometimes exerting leadership, other times not, and often floating above the details and minutia of governing.

But he confounded Republicans again when he pushed for a fuel tax increase to finance an ambitious road-building program, and eventually won support for what historians say was the largest highway bond program in Arkansas history.

IF AL GORE HAD THIS MUCH SENSE HE'D HAVE BEEN PRESIDENT:

Hillary Clinton Embraces Her Husband's Legacy (Anne E. Kornblut and Alec MacGillis, 12/22/07, Washington Post)

After months of discussion within her campaign over how heavily she should draw on her husband's legacy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing out her Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns in a tight embrace of Bill Clinton's record, helping fuel a debate about the 1990s with Sen. Barack Obama that she thinks she can win.

As part of the Clinton strategy, the former president is playing an increasingly prominent public role as an advocate for his wife. He appears to have overcome concerns within the campaign over how closely she should associate her candidacy with his time in office and over whether his appearances could draw attention away from her.

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF BADLY KEPT SECRETS:

Blair converts to Catholicism (THOMAS WAGNER, 12/22/07, Associated Press)

Tony Blair, who often kept his religious views private while serving as Britain's prime minister, has converted to Catholicism , officials said Saturday.

Blair, who had long been a member of the Church of England, converted to the Catholic faith during a Mass held on Friday night at a chapel in London, the Catholic Church said.

I'M WORKIN' MY WAY BACK TO YOU:

UK and US relations 'excellent' (BBC, 12/22/07)

Gordon Brown and George Bush have developed an "excellent relationship", the US ambassador to Britain has said.

Robert Tuttle also said booming cross-Atlantic tourism and educational exchanges showed the "strength and depth of the special relationship".

SEEMS LIKE A PRETTY TRANSPARENT PLOY:

Mystery Deepens About Giuliani Headache (ABC NEWS, 12/21/07)

His campaign will not release any concrete medical information to the press -- raising questions about the former New York mayor's health and the transparency of his campaign.

THE EXPRESS ROLLS ON:

SENTINEL EDITORIAL ENDORSEMENT IN THE 2008 N.H. REPUBLICAN PRIMARY: John McCain (Keene Sentinel, 12/20/07)

Recently, we have been impressed by McCain's attitude toward illegal immigration, expressed at considerable political cost in a bill that was defeated earlier in the year. He now notes that any improvement in the situation will have to begin by better policing of the borders, but he continues to speak with humane concern of the people, and the families of people, who have put down roots here.

We are also intrigued, although not fully persuaded by, McCain's recent venture into health-care reform. Like many other Republicans, he puts a lot of faith in private insurance companies, and he rejects the idea of health-insurance mandates. But he is proposing an end to restrictions on insurance availability from out of state providers, as well as significant tax relief for people who negotiate their own insurance arrangements. He has a quiver of proposals for reducing the cost of health care. And he wants to create a federal insurance fund to insure people who are turned down - or priced out of the market - by private insurers. "And it'll be expensive," he volunteers, with typical candor.

Where McCain most distinguishes himself from the rest of this year's Republican pack is in the areas of life experience and force of character. He is not a single-issue candidate off on a frantic ideological jag. Although his political ideology has evolved through experience over the years, he has not changed his previous political positions en masse to appeal to the presumed prejudices and preferences of voters. Nor has he tried to craft a candidacy around an artificial persona who promises to save us all from terrorists, or from the devil. And, perhaps most important, he campaigns with decency.

What we see in McCain is a grown-up; a known quantity with a 30-year record of public service; a conservative who is confident in his abilities and yet smart enough to seek counsel.

NOW THAT'S THROWIN' YOUR HAT IN THE RING:

Kenya's presidential race signals democratic growth (Jeffrey Gettleman, December 21, 2007, IHT)

The neck-and-neck race between Odinga and Kibaki, which could result in a run-off, seems to be evidence of how far Kenya's democracy has come from just a decade ago, when it was still under the grip of Moi, who has been widely criticized as a dictator and who is now campaigning for Kibaki.

Today there is a free press, 2,548 candidates running for Parliament and genuine issues separating the leading parties, like strong central government versus federalism. Electoral politics here are not saddled by the deep cynicism that dogs Nigeria, Africa's most populous democracy, or the one-party domination of South African politics.

Odinga, who has been a member of Parliament for the past 15 years, has taken full advantage of Kenya's open system and used his flair for appealing to the masses to reel in millions of Kenyans who feel marginalized by the Kikuyu elite. He has also charmed many Muslims upset at the Kibaki government's various crackdowns in Muslim areas as part of its counterterrorism campaign.

"The best way to explain this is not who is popular but who is so unpopular," said Chweya Ludeki, a political science professor at the University of Nairobi. "Raila's harvesting from Kibaki's unpopularity and the perception that the president has favored his ethnic group."

Though the cabinet includes members of many tribes, the ministries that matter - like defense, justice, finance and internal security - are all run by Kikuyus. The government's response has been that it hires the most qualified people.

Many of Odinga's supporters are worried that these politicians might try to steal the election. Already the government's own human rights commission accused Kibaki's party of using public resources, like government planes and vehicles, for campaign events.

There have also been some pretty nasty cheap shots. Even Odinga's foreskin was thrown into the fray.

THE NIGHT THEY DROVE OLE DIXIE DOWN:

Hasta La Vista (DANA MILBANK, 12/21/2007, Washington Post)

Tom Tancredo is an angry man.

We know this because he has proposed dropping bombs on Mecca. We know this because he sang "Dixie" at a South Carolina gathering full of Confederate flags and white supremacists. And we know this because he wants to expel 12 million people now living in the United States.

Now, the Republican congressman from Colorado has a new reason to be angry: The voters of Iowa, inexplicably, do not want him to be their president.

"I know I cannot win," he confessed at a lightly attended news conference in the Marriott hotel here, where a balky sound system -- made in China! -- marred the announcement that he was quitting the presidential race.

PITY THE POOR AMERICANS, BUYING MORE FOR LESS....:

Consumer Spending Surges in November (Martin Crutsinger, 12/21/07, AP)

Consumers put aside worries about slumping home sales and soaring gasoline prices and headed to the malls in November, pushing spending up by the largest amount in 3 1/2 years.

The Commerce Department reported Friday that consumer spending surged by 1.1 percent last month, nearly triple the October gain. The gain reflected various promotional efforts by retailers such as heavy discounting and longer store hours at the start of the holiday shopping season.

APPLYING DARWINISM

Hoosier Eugenics: A Horrible Centennial (Eric Schansberg, 12/17/07, SchansBlog)

Sir Francis Galton was responsible for first describing eugenics (in 1865) and then coining the term (in 1883). Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, suggested the study of eugenics to pursue a better human race by applying the basic principles of agricultural breeding to humans.

In time, eugenics became synonymous with "self-directed human evolution" through the conscious choice of who should (and should not) have children. In particular, eugenicists have often been concerned about "inferior" people (e.g., the poor, those with darker skin) having more children than "superior" people (e.g., middle-upper income classes, those with lighter skin).

Galton built upon Darwin's ideas by asserting that the mechanisms of natural selection had been thwarted by human civilization. For example, charity and welfare allowed the poor to reproduce more often.

So, should one help the poor or was that only "making things worse"? In Galton's view, since many human societies tried to protect the weak, they were acting to limit the natural selection that would result in the extinction of the weakest individuals — and thus the strengthening of the human race.

Galton and other eugenicists recommended policy changes in order to improve society, to save it from mediocrity, reversion or even catastrophe. As such, eugenics differed from its cousin, Social Darwinism. While both emphasized hereditary influences on intelligence, Social Darwinists argued that society itself would naturally deal with the problem. Interestingly, the laissez-faire attitudes of Social Darwinists extended from political economy to natural selection while the statist presumptions of eugenicists inclined them to pursue more aggressive methods.

Galton's ideas picked up steam as scientists and physicians lent their credibility and support to his notions. One particularly amazing example: In a medical journal in 1902, Dr. Harry Sharp described the illegal vasectomies he gave inmates in a Jeffersonville, Indiana, reformatory. He argued that it was good for the inmates as well as achieving a greater social good. (Sharp sterilized as many as 456 men over an eight-year period.) Sharp's efforts were well-received and increasingly supported by doctors, agricultural breeders, sociologists and public health officials.

One of the nation's most prominent eugenicists was David Starr Jordan, a past president of Indiana University. Given the intellectual coherence of eugenics with the ideas of that time, plus powerful proponents like Jordan and the extensive lobbying of Sharp, the Indiana Legislature passed its eugenics law on March 9, 1907. It promised to prevent the “procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.” The law was repealed in 1921 but reinstated in 1928 — after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Virginia's similar law in 1927 (Buck v. Bell).

In that case, Carrie Buck was a 17-year old girl who was forcibly sterilized at the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded in Lynchburg because she had been pregnant and her mother had been mentally ill. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the decision and penned this now-stunning quote:

“It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

Eventually, 30 states adopted sterilization laws by the early 1930s. The number of involuntary sterilizations peaked in the 1930s and slowed to a trickle by the 1960s, the last being performed in 1981. In all, more than 60,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in the United States (more than half in California).

Such laws were never overturned by the Supreme Court. But forced sterilization became obsolete scientifically, ethically and sometimes legally. For example, the impact of Indiana’s laws ended in 1974, when the second piece of legislation permitting compulsory sterilization was repealed by the Indiana General Assembly.

Beyond the United States, forced sterilization was practiced in many developed countries during the 20th century, including for example 60,000 victims in Sweden between 1935 and 1976. But the most staggering legacy of such legislation is that it served as a model for the law adopted by the Nazi government in 1933. In part of its plan to establish a master race, in the memorable words of Ken Myers, Nazi eugenics promoted “the best, the brightest, and usually, the blondest.”

Looking back, the contemporary excitement about research in genetics is understandable if deplorable. The general bent in the late 19th century toward utopianism and the deification of human progress — in all of its glories and manifestations — is well documented. Placing a higher value on the community than the individual is a familiar debate, and one that often played out in favor of the "greater social good" through socialism and communism in the 20th century. (In these matters, who should decide who is “unfit” to live — parents, society or the government?)

Ironically, eugenics found many avid supporters among proponents of Progressivism and among many liberal Protestants with their Social Gospel. (This is sadly, stunningly and thoroughly documented by Christine Rosen in her 2004 work, “Preaching Eugenics.”) And although there were voices crying out in the Wilderness (G.K. Chesterton in "Eugenics and Other Evils," 1922) their cries were mere whistles into an unsympathetic wind.

ONE WOULD PREFER...:

RUDY RETURNS FROM ST. FLUEY (CARL CAMPANILE and TIM PERONE, December 21, 2007, NY Post)

In 2000, just before he was to face Hillary Rodham Clinton in a race for the US Senate, Giuliani announced he had prostate cancer and dropped out. As he underwent cancer treatment, he slowed down his pace - a bit.

Giuliani's latest illness comes amid an ailing week for the campaign.

His status as national front-runner has disappeared in several recent polls following negative stories about the indictment of his protégé, ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik; his use as mayor of public funds for trysts with then-girlfriend Judith; his business dealings; and his spat with rival Mitt Romney over immigration.

IF YOU MEET THE UNICYCLIST IN THE ROAD...PUNCH HIM (via Bryan Francoeur):

Humour 'comes from testosterone' (BBC, 12/21/07)

Men are naturally more comedic than women because of the male hormone testosterone, an expert claims. [...]

Research suggests men are more likely to use humour aggressively by making others the butt of the joke.

And aggression - generally considered to be a more masculine trait - has been linked by some to testosterone exposure in the womb.

Professor Shuster believes humour develops from aggression caused by male hormones.

He documented the reaction of over 400 individuals to his unicycling antics through the streets of Newcastle upon Tyne.

COMEBACK?:

McCain Rises from the Dead (Peter Brown, 12/21/07, Real Clear Politics)

For those who believe in miracles, there is the legitimate possibility that John McCain could win the Republican presidential nomination. If so, he'll make Bill Clinton's comeback kid of 1992 look like a piker.

WE'RE ONLY HUMEMEN:

Divine Evolution (Michael Gerson, December 21, 2007, Washington Post)

Leon Kass, in his masterful work "The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis," observes, "The biblical account is perfectly compatible with the fact of a slowly evolving cosmos, with life arriving late, beginning in the sea and only later emerging on earth, progressively distinguished into a variety of separated kinds."

But this overly hyped debate on biology hides a deeper conflict that could not be more important.

Some scientists claim that a belief in evolution and orderly material laws somehow disproves the existence of immaterial things such as God and the soul -- as if biology or physics could refute concepts they don't even examine. There is no telescope that reveals the absence of the divine; no MRI that yields a negative test for the soul. G.K. Chesterton summarizes this naive theory as follows: "Because science has not found something which obviously it could not find, therefore something entirely different . . . is untrue. . . . To me it is all wild and whirling; as if a man said -- 'The plumber can find nothing wrong with our piano; so I suppose that my wife does love me.' "

There is a large distinction between the scientific theory of evolution and naturalism. Naturalism -- the belief that the material world is all that is or ever will be -- is a philosophy, and a dangerous one. As C.S. Lewis points out, this belief system begins by denying the existence of God, but it cannot end there. "The masters of the method soon announce that we were just as mistaken (and mistaken in much the same way) when we attributed 'souls' or 'selves' or 'minds' to human organisms, as when we attributed Dryads to the trees. . . . Man is indeed akin to the gods: that is, he is no less phantasmal than they."

NOT THE LEAST ATTRACTIVE ASPECT OF HIS CANDIDACY...:

An Interview With Fred Thompson's Wife, Jeri Thompson (John Hawkins, 12/231/07, Right Wing News)

Now, the other candidates obviously planned their runs at the presidency out quite a long ago.

Since high school, probably.

Right. But, Fred entered the race after the grassroots pleaded for him to get in. So, tell us about the first time you and Fred had a serious discussion about him running for the presidency this year. When was it and can you tell us a little bit about it?

Well...I know one of the conversations we had, we were sitting around our kitchen table and we do have these two small children....So, looking at a three and a half year old at the top of the stairs, he said to me..."A lot goes through your mind from the time Hayden is at the top of those steps to the time she's at the bottom. I feel our country is at a crossroads and we need to do something." I agree.

Now, early on the campaign there were allegations that you were at the root of some staff shake-ups with your husband's campaign. Is that true?

No. Early on, back when he first started, when he had a contract with NBC and a contract with ABC, and we had the two small kids...we were doing the best we could to try to juggle the move from sort of a grassroots movement into a presidential campaign and...anything I did was at the request of Fred. Anything I did was certainly something that he wanted to be done. My job isn't any different than (that) of any other wife in any other strong marriage. That's to be a partner and to be supportive and to try to do what I need to do to help him get to where he needs to be.

So, what is your role with the campaign. What do you do on a day to day basis? Do you do anything that the campaign manager would normally do? Anything like that?

No. Well, I...do media as people are interested, like you, in talking to me. I spoke to a radio station out of New Hampshire this morning. I spoke to a radio station in central Florida earlier today. I try to do what I can...to make sure that he gets fed and goes to bed at a reasonable hour.

HOW DO YOU POLITICIZE THE POLITICAL?:

Return of the Skeptical Environmentalist: In his new book Cool It, Bjørn Lomborg shows how ‘the science’ on global warming – covering everything from polar bear extinction to the disappearance of Greenland – has been distorted and politicised. (Tony Gilland, 12/21/07, Spiked Review of Books)

Essentially, Lomborg’s argument is that, on the basis of our current understanding of climate systems and the role played by CO2, we will eventually have to cut CO2 emissions significantly. Right now, however, is a bad time to be worrying about it because the harmful effects of climate change in the medium-term future are manageable, and can be managed far more cheaply than can the massive cuts in CO2 that would be required to avoid those effects.

So according to Lomborg, we could get all the world’s current energy from solar cells taking up space equivalent to 2.6 per cent of the area of the Sahara – the reason we don’t is because ‘it would be horrendously costly’. Based on the fact that solar energy has come down in price by about 50 per cent per decade over the past 30 years, Lomborg estimates: ‘Even at a much slower pace, it will probably become competitive before mid-century for many uses, and before the end of the century for most uses.’ He points out that this is only one such opportunity, and proposes that all nations should commit themselves to spending 0.05 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in R&D on non-carbon emitting energy technologies as a long-term approach to tackling global warming.

In Cool It’s penultimate chapter, ‘The Politics of Global Warming’, Lomborg discusses how the science of climate change is becoming politicised. He argues that when the chairman of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, argues for dramatic CO2 cuts, the IPCC scientists ‘effectively become agenda-driven advocates’, who misuse ‘their standing as scientists to pursue a political agenda’ which will eventually undermine the credibility of the scientific discipline.

To back up this point, he cites the influential statement from the IPCC’s 2001 report that most warming in the past 50 years is due to humans. The wording of the text changed from ‘there has been a discernible human influence on global climate’ to this line finally included in the official summary: ‘Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.’ Yet when asked by New Scientist about the scientific background for this change, Tim Higham, spokesman for the UN Environment Program, responded: ‘There was no new science, but the scientists wanted to present a clear and strong message to policymakers.’

THE WAR ON NORMAL:

Humanity, thou art sick: With shyness diagnosed as ‘social phobia’, and dissent as Oppositional Defiant Disorder, more and more emotions are being psychologised. Or perhaps I’m just suffering from Book Review Hyperactivity Dementia (Helene Guldberg, 12/21/07, spiked)

‘In my mother’s generation, shy people were seen as introverted and perhaps a bit awkward, but never mentally ill.’

So writes the Chicago-based research professor, Christopher Lane, in his fascinating new book Shyness: How Normal Behaviour Became a Sickness. ‘Adults admired their bashfulness, associated it with bookishness, reserve, and a yen for solitude. But shyness isn’t just shyness any more. It is a disease. It has a variety of over-wrought names, including “social anxiety” and “avoidant personality disorder”, afflictions said to trouble millions’, Lane continues.

Lane has taken shyness as a test case to show how society is being overdiagnosed and overmedicated. He has charted - in intricate detail - the route by which the psychiatric profession came to give credence to the labelling of everyday emotions as ‘disorders’, a situation that has resulted in more and more people being deemed to be mentally ill.

WHO?:

Hu Jintao (ORVILLE SCHELL, 12/20/07, TIME)

[W]e would miss something important about Hu's leadership if we were to simply assume that his restraint was a sign of weakness. In reality, the way Hu has negotiated a difficult situation says much about him as a person and about his evolving and distinctive political philosophy. Even though China's revolutionaries spent decades trying to expunge "feudal" culture, Hu has ended up as something of a closet traditionalist whose sense of a political true north derives as much from the Chinese classics, to which he has turned in search of models of concord, as it does from Mao and Marx.

In February 2005, for example, Hu quoted Confucius to party officials, declaring that "harmony is something to be cherished." He and Premier Wen Jiabao regularly proclaim an aspiration to hexie shehui, or a harmonious society. And they often use another slogan, heping jueqi, or peaceful rise, a phrase designed to soothe foreigners worried about the double threat of China's fireball economy and rapidly modernizing military.

Such traditional-sounding rhetoric about harmony and peace — the antithesis of Maoist phrases about class contradictions and anti-imperialist struggle — has been spilling from party propaganda organs. Weary of struggle and strife, contemporary Chinese react almost autonomically to such rhetoric, which evokes the datong, the great harmony, a utopian ideal from the ancient Book of Rites. Hu hopes to attain a latter-day datong through what he calls a "scientific outlook on development," or a pragmatic refocusing on the challenges of poverty, social justice and the environment. Much of his political demeanor seems to suggest a yearning for leadership in the style of a Confucian junzi, or gentleman — one who governs by virtuous example and thus radiates benevolence throughout society.

How, in practice, Hu can use such classical nostrums to help him rule China is far from clear. Rebranding the office of the party General Secretary through rhetorical associations with the past is not guaranteed to help deal with Sudan, Burma, Taiwan and the U.S., never mind China's domestic challenges. Hu, says Yale historian Jonathan Spence, "uses a language that preaches caution and the avoidance of extremes, but seems to have little sense of how to implement changes that will boldly address China's formidable problems." Indeed, just beneath Hu's exhortations about harmony, peaceful rise and benevolent leadership, old Maoist structures remain.

NOTHING COSTS MORE...:

DVD price war breaks out (Gary Cleland, 21/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Technology firms trying to corner the market in rival types of new video player have slashed their prices in America, in a move which could soon benefit British shoppers.

HIS TURN:

McCain Surging In Hew Hampshire (Newsmax, December 20, 2007)

Arizona Sen. John McCain has surged in New Hampshire in the past month and is now tied with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the state race for the Republican presidential nomination, a poll showed on Thursday.

The survey by the American Research Group found McCain, a strong backer of President George W. Bush's Iraq war strategy, had 26 percent support, up from 11 percent in a poll in late November.

He was tied with Romney, who had dropped 10 percentage points since the last survey.

UNFINISHED BUSINESS:

Bush critical of Syria: The president says Damascus is destabilizing Lebanon and says he has lost patience with Assad. (Paul Richter, 12/21/07, Los Angeles Times)

President Bush accused Syria on Thursday of contributing to the deepening political crisis in Lebanon, declaring that he had lost patience with Syrian President Bashar Assad "a long time ago." [...]

The U.S. allies in Lebanon had been disheartened by Washington's eagerness to have Syria attend last month's Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md. They took the move as a sign that Washington was moving toward a more conciliatory approach with Damascus.

Bush's tougher language at a news conference Thursday appeared to be an effort to repair Washington's ties with the pro-Western groups, analysts said.

HE'S NOT THERE TO PROVIDE HEROIC MEDICINE...:

Nicolas Sarkozy Is in a Hurry: The French President is moving fast, but can he act quickly enough to prevent France's ailing economy from getting any worse? (Carol Matlack, 12/21/07, Business Week)

Nicolas Sarkozy hit the ground running, and he hasn't stopped. In the past week alone, France's new President has met with the Pope at the Vatican, launched negotiations to overhaul labor laws, led an environmental-protection delegation to the endangered Camargue region—and still found time for a stroll through Disneyland Paris with his new girlfriend, ex-supermodel and singer Carla Bruni.

But can Sarkozy, 52, move fast enough to keep France's sick economy from getting even sicker? [...]

[H]e has barely scratched the surface of other problems that are growing more acute by the day. France's economy is set to grow an anemic 1.9% this year, compared with a European Union average of 2.9%. The national debt is rising rapidly, and the EU has warned that by 2009 France's public finances will be the shakiest of any of its 27 member countries.

THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE IDIOTS, NOT JUST STUPID:

Bush boxed in his congressional foes: Democrats took the Hill but were stymied by a steadfast president (Janet Hook, 12/21/07, Los Angeles Times)

Rather than turn tail for his last two years in the White House, Bush has used every remaining weapon in his depleted arsenal -- the veto, executive orders, the loyalty of Republicans in Congress -- to keep Democrats from getting their way.He has struck a combative pose, dashing hopes that he would be more accommodating in the wake of his party's drubbing in the 2006 midterm voting. [...]

[O]n a host of foreign and domestic policy issues, backed by a remarkably disciplined Republican Party in the House and Senate, Bush has been able to confound Democrats. It has been a source of great frustration to the party that came to power with sky-high expectations and the belief it had a mandate for change. And it is a vivid reminder of how much clout even a weakened president can have -- especially one as single-minded as Bush.

"We have custody of Congress, but we don't have control," said Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village). "Bush has shown, time and again, that he's a very stubborn guy. November 2006 didn't change that."

It was a picture-perfect start for Nancy Pelosi as she took the speaker's podium last January in her tailored aubergine suit surrounded by children to emphasize her singular status as the first woman, mother and grandmother to lead the House of Representatives.

What Pelosi did not know, as she beamed at her fellow Democrats cheering their return to power, was that the glum Republicans witnessing the tableau would remain persistently unified against her and her ambitious new majority in the legislative year ahead.

Defying expectations and surprising even themselves, Republicans were able to slow and sometimes halt Democratic momentum by refusing to break with President George W. Bush and his war strategy, no matter how unpopular, and by resisting social initiatives, no matter how appealing.

LONG LOST COUSINS:

India still reeling over US deal (Siddharth Srivastava, 12/22/07, Asia Times)

In terms of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, the stalled pact would never have occupied so much political space had Manmohan not treated it like his own baby.

Maybe then the left parties, too, would not have made such a big song and dance about it. The Indo-US nuclear deal does, however, does have an important aspect: the arrival of the US as India's most important business, strategic, defense and diplomatic ally for the years head.

The role and socialist influence of Cold War ally Russia has receded. For the first time, an American warship forms part of India's defense arsenal, with transport planes and more to follow. If the civilian nuclear power deal goes through, America will have significant stakes here too.

American cultural and capitalist icons are part of Indian society: Domino's, McDonald's, Google, Yahoo, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Harley Davidson will soon motor into the Indian market and one of India's main Bollywood actresses, Aishwaria Rai, has chose Oprah Winfrey to promote a movie.

FROM EITHER A SPENCERIAN OR DARWINIAN POINT OF VIEW...:

Stand By Steyn (Robert Spencer, 12/21/07, HumanEvents.com)

To be sure, the article was pretty strong stuff. Here’s a bit of it: “There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.” Even worse, it goes on to say: “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.”

“A Muslim continent”! “The number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes”! No wonder the CIC was upset. And not just the CIC: writer Jim Henley, whose articles have appeared in The New Republic and The American Spectator Online, quoted the “mosquitoes” line and called Steyn a “racist.” There were just two problems: The “Muslim continent” statement is not only factual, it’s stated in words no one can characterize as inflammatory. (Also, it’s been said by Libya’s strongman Muammar Qaddafi). Second, “The number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes” was not Steyn’s phrase. He was quoting Mullah Krekar, a jihadist who currently resides in Norway, although officials have been trying for years to get him out of the country.

And that sums up the problem with the Canadian human rights commissions’ action against Steyn: he was simply reporting on contemporary European reality.

IF ONLY THE NEWS AND POST PUBLISHED FROM SEATTLE....:

M's keeping mitts on Morrow: Pitcher 'highly, highly unlikely to leave,' Bavasi says (JOHN HICKEY, 12/22/07, Seattle P-I)

[General manager Bill] Bavasi said something Thursday at the news conference introducing Silva that may indicate Bedard is not coming West.

The Orioles have been asking for both outfielder Adam Jones and reliever-turned-starter Brandon Morrow in the deal.

"He (Morrow) is highly, highly unlikely to leave," Bavasi said. "I'm not saying he couldn't be traded, but it's unlikely."

Bavasi said Morrow, who has been starting in Venezuela after working out of the Mariners bullpen in 2007, is thought of so highly that the Mariners have a difficult time envisioning a future without him.

BOWLING FOR BOOKS:

Yes, it's that time of year again: The 2007-2008 version of the Annual Brothers Judd Bowl Game Pick'em has finally arrived. To sign up, please go to the following website:

http://games.espn.go.com/bowlmania/frontpage

Once you are there, you can either sign up for an ESPN account or log in if you already have one. Then simply search for the Brothers Judd group and join us. It's pretty basic:

Group name: Brothers Judd
Password: ericjulia

Remember to rank your picks if you so choose, and be aware that all picks have to be finalized by the morning of December 20th. The winner (or winners) will receive either a free book or a brand-new 2007 Chevy Camaro. I promise to send one of those two prizes.

Have fun!

BOY, THOSE PORKBUSTERS REALLY TAUGHT THE GOP A LESSON, HUH?:

U.S. Congress finds earmarks a hard habit to break (Carl Hulse, December 20, 2007, NY Times)

Despite an intense campaign by critics in and out of Congress against home-state projects, the year-end budget plan sent to President George W. Bush on Wednesday was stuffed with almost 9,000 of them.

JUST ANOTHER LIFESTYLE CHOICE:

Risky Sex Returns Syphilis to Europe (MARIA CHENG, 12/20/07, AP)

Syphilis is back: The sexually transmitted disease long associated with 19th Century bohemian life is making an alarming resurgence in Europe.

"Syphilis used to be a very rare disease," said Dr. Marita van de Laar, an expert in sexually transmitted diseases at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. "I'm not sure we can say that anymore."

Most cases of syphilis are in men, and experts point to more risky sex among gay men as the chief cause for the resurgence.

AS STORMFRONT GOES...:

Liberty! Liberty!: Why I’m for Ron Paul (John Derbyshire, 12/20/07, National Review)

WHERE'S PADDY CHAYEFSKY WHEN YOU NEED HIM?:

Vanessa Redgrave helps Guantanamo suspects (Philip Johnston, 20/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Two suspected al-Qa’eda operatives released from Guantanamo Bay have walked free from court although they are still wanted in Spain on terrorism-related offences.

One of the men, who is accused of distributing extremist propaganda produced by Osama bin Laden, had half of his £50,000 bail surety met by the actress Vanessa Redgrave.

JUST ONE SET OF FOOTPRINTS IN THE SAND:

Alive and Kicking: Reports of the demise of social conservatism are greatly exaggerated. (Jeffrey Bell, December 20, 2007, Weekly Standard)

There are several things about social conservatism that have made it easy to underestimate. For one thing, it is still comparatively new. Fifty years ago, the term was seldom used. Then as now there were many millions of Americans with conservative moral and social values, but there was no such thing as a mass political movement or political philosophy built around such values.

This was in part because social institutions like marriage and moral ideas like the sanctity of unborn human life had not yet come under broad-based assault, and therefore had not become a factor in the national political debate. As recently as the 1950s, the divide between liberals and conservatives had nothing to do with whether marriage should be redefined or abortion should be treated as a constitutional right. Beginning in the 1960s, when politics did begin to call moral and social values into question, it generated dismay and protests among holders of traditional values.

Similar challenges and social changes--the legalization of abortion and the enactment of "no fault" (unilateral) divorce, among others--were taking place at the same time in Western Europe, and dismay was expressed there as well. But nowhere else did this dismay lead to anything remotely resembling the social conservative political movement of the United States. Conservative parties in Europe largely capitulated to social liberalism and continued to base their critique of the left on economic and foreign-policy issues.

Japan's social revolution happened a generation earlier--abortion was legalized there in 1948--while the social/moral revolution in newly affluent Ireland is still playing itself out. But the bottom line is the same: The United States is (so far) the only First World democracy to have a social-conservative political movement of any consequence. The loneliness of American social conservatism on the global democratic scene is a second factor that renders it easy to regard lightly, as a kind of parochial oddity, destined soon to succumb to the secularizing, relativistic trend that has pretty much triumphed in every other affluent democracy.

The third major element that often makes social conservatism look anemic is the reluctance of Republican elites, including conservative ones, to talk about social issues. Even George W. Bush, the most influential and effective ally of social conservatives in national politics since Ronald Reagan, looks uncomfortable discussing such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage. In his 2000 campaign, Bush checked all the right boxes of the social conservative agenda, but preferred in campaign appearances to talk about mobilizing faith-based groups to help solve social problems. This appealed to social conservatives and served as a kind of substitute for putting rhetorical meat on the bare bones of Bush's social-conservative issue commitments. Moreover, most other Republican leaders have shown even less willingness to talk about social issues than has President Bush.

But there are several offsetting factors at work that have made and will continue to make social conservatism hard to marginalize. For one thing, social conservatism is the only mass-based political persuasion that fully believes in the core ideas of the American founding. It has taken over that role from parties, professions, and ideologies that used to perform it, and as a result it is touching a deep chord with millions of American voters.

Most social conservatives believe that the central principle asserted in the Declaration of Independence is true: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." While almost all Americans respect these words at least as a sentiment or metaphor, it is a fact that most--not all--social conservatives believe them to be literally true, while most--not all--opponents of social conservatism do not believe them to be literally true.

As long as these key assertions of our nation's founding document continue to be taken literally by many Americans, social conservatism will resonate among Americans in a way that competing philosophies cannot--and in a way that, given the very different founding narratives of most countries in Europe and elsewhere, cannot easily be replicated beyond these shores.

A second factor making social conservatism relevant is a simple fact: The global left today defines itself mainly in terms of social issues rather than economics.

APTITUDE TEST:

Obama's 'present' votes become issue: Clinton camp says they indicate he's not a leader (RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and CHRISTOPHER DREW, 12/19/07, New York Times)

In 1999, Barack Obama was faced with a difficult vote in the Illinois Legislature — to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults, a position that risked drawing fire from blacks, or to oppose it, possibly undermining his image as a tough-on-crime moderate.

In the end, Obama chose neither to vote for nor against the bill. He voted "present," effectively sidestepping the issue, an option he invoked nearly 130 times as a state senator.

IT'S THE NATURE OF THE UTOPIAN PARTY...:

Party base slams top Democrats for yielding (S.A. Miller, December 20, 2007, Washington Times)

Congress' Democratic leaders are being panned by prominent groups within the party's base for falling short of campaign promises and for repeatedly backing down from battles with President Bush.

"They were too ready to capitulate in anticipation of a fight," said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union. [...]

"On the basis of getting things done, it's pretty hard to suggest that they have been a big success," said Chris Miller, director of Greenpeace's global warming campaign.

He did credit Mrs. Pelosi for "setting a high bar" for environmental legislation, even if she failed to clear it.

SO HIS ANSWER IS, "YES":

With Talk of Edwards Love Child, Mud Fight Begins (NICHOLAS WAPSHOTT, December 20, 2007, NY Sun)

CBS anchor Katie Couric has been asking presidential hopefuls whether voters should trust an adulterer. The way they answered, their directness or lack of it, their body language, and the coy looks on their faces proved a psychologist's dream. [...]

[Y]esterday, despite denials, the National Enquirer suggested a friend of John Edwards was pregnant with his child.

So Ms. Kouric's questions last night came right on cue. Some answered with a laugh, others with a shrug, some with compassion, others with piety. [...]

Mr. Edwards gave little sign that he was in the hot seat. "It's fundamental to how you judge people and human character, whether you keep your word, whether you keep what is your ultimate word, which is that you love your spouse, and you'll stay with them."

IT GETS HARDER AND HARDER TO NOT JUSTIFY INTERVENTION:

Growing security gives Haitians a sense of hope (ANDRES OPPENHEIMER, 12/20/07, miamiherald.com)

Few are willing to declare victory over the wave of abductions that almost paralyzed this country in recent years, but a sharp decline in kidnappings coupled with a budding sense of political stability have brought back a measure of hope -- at least in business and political circles.

''We have a window of opportunity,'' says Rudolph Henry Boulos, a member of the Haitian Senate. ``There is political stability and more security. With that, we can focus on building economic stability.''

Much of the credit for the growing sense of normalcy goes to the 9,800-member, Brazil-led United Nations peacekeeping force that arrived after the 2004 revolt that prompted then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's departure.

Thousands of Sunni Muslim faithful bowed their heads at dawn Wednesday in mosques around Baghdad for the first prayers of the Eid al-Adha holiday -- a time of renewed hope after months of reduced bloodshed, yet tinged with sadness for those not there to share it.

It was the largest turnout in years at Abu Hanifa, Baghdad's largest Sunni mosque, where worshipers spilled into the yard and the streets outside. After the service, long lines formed to buy slices of pastry eaten with syrup and cream, a traditional holiday breakfast.

Relatives long separated by the killing that raged in Baghdad's bloodied streets were reunited again.

"I visited family and friends all over Baghdad," marveled Sabah Abdul-Wahab, a young chef, who spent last year's four-day holiday confined with his parents and siblings in the upmarket Karada district. "I also went to Zawra Park, and the place was filled with families having picnics and just relishing the newfound security."

Later, goats, sheep and cows were slaughtered for family feasts commemorating the prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for God. One proud man was spotted posing for a snapshot with his arm around the neck of a cow before dispensing with the beast.

U.S. commanders say violence across Iraq is at its lowest level since the first year after the 2003 American-led invasion.

HOW CAN IT BE INSULTING...:

Kerrey Apologizes to Obama Over Remark (NEDRA PICKLER, 12/20/067, AP)

Former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey has apologized to Barack Obama for any unintentional insult he committed by raising the Democratic presidential candidate's Muslim heritage while endorsing rival candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.

HERE IT COMES:

Giuliani OK After Checkup at Hospital (HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH, Dec. 20, 2007, AP)

Republican Rudy Giuliani planned to head home to New York City on Thursday after spending the night in a St. Louis hospital getting checked out for flu-like symptoms, his campaign said.

RWR AND SONS (via Mike Daley):

The “March of Freedom” From Reagan to Bush: Two presidents, one idea (Paul Kengor, December 2007/January 2008, Policy Review)

Ronald Reagan left the presidency the third week of January 1989. By the end of that year, Solidarity candidates had swept 99 of 100 seats in a free and fair election in communist Poland, the Berlin Wall had crashed in a soon-to-be-reunified Germany, Vaclav Havel had left prison for the presidency of Czechoslovakia, and the continent ’s worst living dictator, Romania’s Nicolai Ceausescu, had been lined up against a wall by the masses and shot on Christmas Day — a day he had sought to ban. Two years later, the Soviet Union itself ceased to exist, and the Cold War was over.

Now, as a retired Reagan began what he called “the sunset of my life” in California, a sunrise of freedom set the world aglow.

During the 1970s, Reagan had often bemoaned the lack of freedom in the world, turning in his speeches to data from Freedom House marking the number of free and unfree nations. As president, he dedicated himself to improving those numbers.

By the early 1990s, we could look to the same source to demonstrate the degree of success of the “march of freedom”: In 1980 there were 56 democracies in the world; by 1990, there were 76. The numbers continued upward, hitting 91 in 1991, 99 in 1992, 108 in 1993, and 114 in 1994. Thirteen years after he’d entered the Oval Office, the number of free nations had doubled; by 1994, 60 percent of the world’s nations were democracies.

By the end of the violent twentieth century, which had seen over 50 million perish in two world wars and over 100 million murdered by communist governments, 120 of the world’s 192 nations were free. Outside of Western Europe, 90 percent of Latin American and Caribbean nations were considered democracies, along with 91 percent of Pacific Island states and 93 percent of the nations of East Central Europe and the Baltic area — i.e., the former Soviet region.

Yet there was one part of the world immune to this wave of freedom: the Middle East — the least democratic region on the planet and, perhaps not coincidentally, the most violent. A 1999-2000 survey by Freedom House (done, importantly, before September 11, 2001) found that an astonishing zero of the 16 Arab countries in the Middle East were democratic, the worst rate on the globe.

Freedom’s dungeon

Now, against great odds, another Republican president is attempting to extend Ronald Reagan’s march of freedom to that one area on earth where it has been most resisted.

Agree or not, September 11, 2001 taught George W. Bush something significant: Regardless of whether Iraq was in any way linked to that event, or to al Qaeda, or to terrorism generally — for the record, throughout the 1990s the Clinton State Department rightly listed Iraq as one of the world’s two chief sponsors of terrorism and devoted more attention to Iraq than to any other country in its final annual report — the forty-third president concluded that the pathology of Middle East dictatorship and violence had to be addressed, especially in a world in which wmd technology was coming increasingly within reach of any tyrant.

How to turn the Middle East around? The president concluded that there was only one hope: freedom — political and economic freedom. Indeed, in the academic field of international relations, one of the few practical debates of the 1990s was the “democratic peace” thesis. The argument postulates that democracies, generally speaking — and depending on their level of maturity and stability — do not fight one another and are a safer bet to be peaceful. Thus, to the extent that the hostile Middle East becomes more democratic, it is likely to become more peaceful.

George W. Bush began to sow the seeds for such a transformation, beginning in the Middle East ’s two most repressive states: Afghanistan and Iraq. After removing the Taliban in the fall of 2001, Bush removed Saddam’s regime in the spring of 2003. It is in those countries that Bush hoped to recommence the march.

WHY DO YOU THINK WE BOUGHT THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE? (via The Mother Judd):

Shift Away From Ad-Free Has a Price (LOUISE STORY, 12/13/07, NY Times)

WHEN children log onto Webkinz.com, the popular virtual world for children who buy Webkinz stuffed animals, they can send messages to their friends, decorate their virtual rooms and take trivia quizzes.

Now, they may also see advertisements.

The Webkinz site began running movie ads on its site in October, with ads for “Bee Movie” and later for “Alvin and the Chipmunks.” The ads run on the right side of the home page after users log in. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, an advocacy group based in Boston, is demanding that the site remove the ads.

“One of the reasons why parents buy Webkinz for their children is the expectation that the site will be free from advertising,” said Susan Linn, the campaign’s director.

WE ARE ALL DESIGNISTS NOW (via Mike Daley):

Chief scientist in sports cars warning to women (Richard Gray, 17/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Women must stop admiring men who drive sports cars if they want to join the fight against global warming, the Government's chief scientist has urged.

Professor Sir David King said governments could only do so much to control greenhouse gas emissions and it was time for a cultural change among the British public.

And he singled out women who find supercar drivers "sexy", adding that they should divert their affections to men who live more environmentally-friendly lives.

AND A SUCCESSFUL ONE:

Look What's Growing in Spanish Harlem (Marc Silver, 12/18/07, NPR.org)

The album called The Harlem Experiment lives up to its name, with a sometimes-unexpected match of artists and songs to evoke the musical hotbed of New York's famously diverse neighborhood. But perhaps its biggest experiment of all was taking a cute pop tune from the '60s called "Spanish Harlem" and asking a white British singer to perform it, with only a 1932 vintage guitar as backup.

DEFLATION IS GLOBAL:

Interest rates could fall to 4pc by end of 2008 (Harry Wallop, 20/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

Interest rates could drop to as low as four per cent next year after the Bank of England indicated a "substantial loosening" of policy to revive the flagging housing market.

IT WOULDN'T BE ANOTHER YEAR OF W WITHOUT A TAX CUT:

House drops Democrats' guidelines to pass minimum tax relief (Noam N. Levey and Jonathan Peterson, 12/19/07, Los Angeles Times)

House lawmakers today agreed to spare more than 20 million taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax this year, bowing to Republican demands that the $50 billion in tax relief not be offset with any other tax increases.

On the last day of legislative business this year, the House voted 352-64 to "patch" the so-called AMT, ensuring that millions of middle-class households -- some with incomes as low as $75,000 -- will be sheltered from the bite of the AMT.

The bill, which the Senate has already approved, is expected to be signed by the president.

THE SHAPE OF THE RACE:

Mormonism an issue for Romney in South Carolina (DAVID LIGHTMAN, 12/19/07, McClatchy Newspapers)

Something about Mitt Romney just isn't right with Bill Burdette. And something about Mike Huckabee is.

"Romney's from Utah and he's Mormon," said the 41-year-old software engineer from Iva, S.C. "Huckabee's from the South and he's Baptist."

Understand, Burdette said, he's not choosing his candidate based on religion, but Huckabee, a Baptist minister who was the governor of Arkansas for 10 and a half years, is someone he's comfortable with.

That's Romney's problem throughout this crucial early-voting state, where a win Jan. 19 by the former Massachusetts governor would give him a huge boost in his quest for the Republican presidential nomination.

An estimated 63 percent of Republican primary voters in South Carolina are "born again" or evangelical Christians, so a Romney win would be hailed as dramatic proof that his Mormon faith wasn't a big factor in voter judgments.

Except that evidence from polls and visits throughout the state shows that it is.

IA:
Huckabee
Romney
Thompson

That would be a body blow for Governor Romney and a surprisingly good showing for the Senator.

NH:
McCain
Romney

Which would end the Romney candidacy.

SC:

Would become an elimination race with Senators McCain and Thompson probably having to win to survive, though Governor Huckabee could likely survive a 2nd place finish if he played it like a comeback after NH.

That will leave two conservatives to fight it out for the big pots that follow.

KIND OF LIKE THE USSR DECLARING WAR ON JAPAN AFTER WE BEAT THEM?:

Is Cuba's Castro Cracking?: Fidel Castro announced Monday he might be ready to take a reduced role in leading Cuba, after taking a backseat due to illness for the past year and a half. On Wednesday German commentators mull whether this might be the opportunity Europe has been waiting for. (Der Spiegel, 12/019/07)
In a statement read on Cuban television Monday, Fidel Castro raised the possibility that he might not hold on to the country's top job forever. "My basic duty is not to cling to office, nor even more so, to obstruct the rise of people much younger," the statement read, "but to pass on experiences and ideas whose modest value arises from the exceptional era in which I lived."

Castro-watchers have been confused as ever by the mixed signals from the 81-year-old dictator, who has been sidelined due to illness for the last year and a half. Earlier in December, he was nominated for a seat in the National Assembly, a step towards nomination for another term as president. Castro has held the position for almost half a century.

German opinion on the communist leader's announcement was united on one front: the chance for Germany and Europe to take action on Cuba is now.

CRAZY TALK:

Would you give up Clay Buchholz? (Kevin Thomas, 12/19/07, Portland Press-Herald: Clearing the Bases)

Some thoughts as the Hot Stove League has cooled down (for now):

One of the latest rumors about the hunt for Johan Santana is that the Twins want Clay Buchholz in any trade with the Red Sox. Boston's answer should be easy. No. Period.

Buchholz shows the potential to become a right-handed Santana.

Meanwhile, if the various reports are true and putting Buchholz in the deal allows the Sox to pull out both Jon Lester and Jacoby Ellsbury then it ought to be a no-brainer. After all, you wouldn't do that 2 for 1 by itself.

CIRCLE THE FIRING SQUAD:

China's new anti-corruption website crashes (Isambard Wilkinson, 19/12/2007, Daily Telegraph)

A Chinese government website set up for the public to complain about corruption crashed within a day of launching under the volume of cases reported.

The website was constructed by the National Bureau of Corruption Prevention to collect information on corrupt activities as part of an ongoing purge by the Beijing authorities.

"The enthusiasm that greeted the launch of the website reflects the growing frustration felt by the general public towards corruption at government level," reported the state news agency, Xinhua.

THE RARE TIME...

Ron Paul Keeps Donation from White Supremacist (AP, 12/19/07)

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn't plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday.

Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, ''White Pride World Wide.'' The site welcomes postings to the ''Stormfront White Nationalist Community.''

SO TOO DOES THE BUG HATE THE WINDSHIELD:

Reid’s Relationship With Bush Enters Deep Freeze (DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, 12/19/07, NY Times)

Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has called President Bush a loser and a liar and has referred to him derisively as King George. Mr. Reid has also apologized — but only, he likes to point out, for the “loser” line.

Mostly, Mr. Reid, Democrat of Nevada, calls the president “this guy,” as in an interview last week, when he said, “I am mystified, dumbfounded about how difficult it is to work with this guy.”

In private conversations about Mr. Bush with friends and Senate colleagues, Mr. Reid has even used the word “hate,” though he clarifies that it is political not personal hatred that he feels.

AND THEN IT'S DOWN TO JUST THE THREE CONSERVATIVES:

Election 2008: New Hampshire Republican Primary: New Hampshire: Romney 31% McCain 27% (Rassmussen Reports, December 19, 2007)

In many places around the country, Mitt Romney is facing a challenge from Mike Huckabee. However, in New Hampshire, Huck-a-mania never took hold. But, following endorsements from the Manchester Union Leader, the Boston Globe, and Senator Joe Lieberman, John McCain is now challenging Romney in the state he won eight years ago.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the state shows Romney with 31% support, McCain at 27% and no one else close. Rudy Giuliani attracts 13% and Huckabee barely reaches double digits at 11%. This is the first time any candidate has been within single digits of Romney in several months.

SHOULDN'T AL GIVE W THAT NOBEL?:

Has global warming stopped? (David Whitehouse, 19 December 2007, New Statesman)

Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?

Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.

With only few days remaining in 2007, the indications are the global temperature for this year is the same as that for 2006 – there has been no warming over the 12 months.

But is this just a blip in the ever upward trend you may ask? No.

The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.

FINALLY, LOVERS KNOW NO SHAME:

An Astonishing Turnaround on Iraq (Fred Barnes, 12/19/07, Campaign Standard)

An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings attached. Think about this a moment. Last winter, after Democrats captured the Senate and House, it seemed likely they'd succeed in limiting or ending the Iraq war, probably by setting a firm timetable for withdrawal of American troops. After all, both President Bush and the war itself were highly unpopular. The Democratic triumph in the election made that clear, even to those who doubted opinion polls. And Democrats made the anti-Iraq crusade their top priority in the new Congress. Now, the 70-vote approval of the war by the Senate represents the breathtaking dimension of their failure.

THEY HAVEN'T MADE A SACRIFICE TO ZEUS SINCE JOHN ANDERSON WAS OFFERED UP:

Giuliani-Huckabee contest could split GOP (W. James Antle III, Dec 19, 2007, Politico)

A Giuliani-Huckabee race may be a surprise, but for Republicans it would not be a welcome one. Ideologically and geographically, the two candidates are almost perfectly positioned to tear apart their party.

Giuliani, the Northeastern social liberal, is strongly favored by many fiscal conservatives and national security hawks. He is a tax-cutter who emphasizes supply-side doctrines in his ads, and many on the right hope his law-and-order record in New York will translate into success in the war on terror.

Writing in the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery acknowledged Giuliani's deficiencies on abortion and other social issues but argued "in a time of national peril" such litmus tests are "a luxury we cannot afford."

By contrast, Huckabee, the Southerner and onetime Baptist preacher, is reliably conservative on abortion, same-sex marriage and the role of religion in the public square.

MORE:
Handle Huckabee with Care (Lee Harris, 18 Dec 2007, Tech Central Station)

Today in a world in which it is inadmissible to say a word against anyone's religion, there is an open season on Christian fundamentalists. You may call them ignorant boobs and idiots, and there is no one in the public forum to call you down for it.

Much of this attack takes the odious form of snobbery. It is true that the Southern Baptist church has seldom been the home of the elite, social or intellectual. On the contrary, it began as the religion of the poor and the uneducated, those who farmed their own land and made things with their own hands. The Southern Baptist religion was never the opium of the people—it was more like their methamphetamine, revving them up, stirring them to revival, exhorting them to missionary work. In the nineteenth century, there were many rural Baptist congregations where the preacher was not even paid, on the grounds that a paid preacher might start giving himself airs. The preacher man was simply the man who stood up and preached from the heart. If the congregation liked what they heard, he could stick around; if not, he was gone. Nobody told the Southern Baptists what they could and couldn't think—not even each other, which is why they kept dividing off into new congregations so frequently. You still can't tell them what to think, which is perhaps why the intellectual elite distrusts them—they stubbornly refuse to take the word of those who are so clearly their cerebral superiors.

Today there is high drama in the Republican Party. A Baptist preacher, running for the Presidency on a shoe-string budget, has gained a momentum that no one in the Republican establishment anticipated, and that no one knows quite what to do about. If the Republican establishment cannot stop him, it will face a difficult future. It will be forced either into opposition to its own nominee, or worst, its own President; or it will have to follow the lead of a man who simply isn't "one of us." And, indeed, a candidate who appears to have figured out how to win votes without requiring other people's money is an obvious affront to any establishment—a fact that may explain the fury of the Anybody But Huckabee tsunami that may well pose a much greater danger to the Republican establishment than it poses to the intended object of their fury, and here's why.

More and more, the attack on Huckabee has become a not very subtle attack on his Christian fundamentalism. This would pose no problem if the Republicans could dispense with the vote of Christian fundamentalists, but it cannot hope to win the indispensable states in the South without them. This is simple arithmetic. Now all would be well if the Christian fundamentalists were the clueless morons that they are alleged to be by those cultured despisers, but they are not. At the very minimum they have the same intelligence of sheep who, if fleeced once too often, will begin to think that they are merely being used, and not looked after. The Left has long charged the Republican establishment with cynically manipulating Christian social conservatives in order to further the agenda of the vested interests, duping the hicks with promises of cultural conservatism in order to get them to swallow tax breaks to the greedy rich. If the Republican establishment is really interested in self-immolation, they need only give Christian conservatives a good reason to suspect them of such crass manipulation of their deeply held convictions by those who look down on them with contempt and derision.

AND EVEN WORSE LATER THAN THAT:

For Hillary, Electability Now Equals Vulnerability Later (Dick Morris, 12/19/07, Real Clear Politics)

In the New York Times/CBS poll of Dec. 11, Hillary was overwhelmingly rated as the most likely of the Democratic candidates to defeat the Republicans in the 2008 general election.

Asked, regardless of how they were voting, which candidate was most likely to defeat the GOP, 63 percent of Democratic primary voters said Hillary Clinton was the most likely to win in November, while only 14 percent chose Obama and 10 percent selected Edwards.

Good news for Hillary? Yes, for now. But it could indicate a potential for disaster should she stumble in the early primaries and caucuses.

Her husband had the huge advantage of facing Paul Tsongas, who was running to his Right, which enabled Mr. Clinton to stay in the center as he dispatched the Senator and kept him viable for the general. Though, even with that, he still required the presence of Ross Perot to win the election.

A NORTHEASTERN LIBERAL WHO CAN'T COMPETE IN THE NORTHEAST...:

Now we know why Rudy pulled back some dollars from NH (Jonathan Martin, 12/19/07, Politico)

A new Granite State poll out this morning from UNH/CNN has Mitt Romney still enjoying a solid lead, but with John McCain inching up and taking command of second as Rudy Giuliani drops a bit.

The numbers:

Romney: 34
McCain: 22
Giuliani: 16
Huckabee: 10
Paul: 5

The survey is the starkest indication as to why, after an expensive, month-long TV investment, Rudy's campaign decided to cut their ad presence in the state. His buy just didn't move the needle.

WELCOME TO STRIDE RIGHT:

McCain Calls for End To Alternative Minimum Tax (SETH GITELL, December 19, 2007, NY Sun)

A relaxed Senator McCain, campaigning Barack Obama-style without a necktie, is offering New Hampshire voters a recipe that combines a morsel of the maverick, a bit of the bipartisan, a hint of the hawk, and a tablespoon of the tax-cutter.

Mr. McCain added to his campaign today a call to eliminate the alternative minimum tax and to make the research and development tax credit permanent along with a ban on taxes on the Internet and cell phones.

John McCain greets this autumn morning from his bed at the Sheraton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the same hotel in the same town he has gone to sleep in and woken up in so many times before, but today there’s no call for spotlights. It really is sunny outside. He climbs on board the bus -- no longer the luxurious, expensive Straight Talk Express, a shabbier ride, beat-up and worn, adorned only with a McCain banner strung up in the rear window. “Frankly, I don’t relish it,” he says of the loss of his front-runner status. But despite his protestations, this seems to be how he likes it best of all, John McCain and a couple of old buddies -- ”Morning, Orson!” -- and a seat in the back, shrugged free of the demands of the machine, carried on down the road instead by pink chicken and fortunes in cookies: The game isn’t over until it’s over.

“I still believe I can out-campaign anybody,” he says, sounding more motivated than he has sounded in months, motivated by anger, motivated by war. Portsmouth to Rochester, Rochester to Franklin, Franklin to Concord, Concord to Hudson, Hudson to Nashua, and at every stop, before big crowds and small, McCain grips the microphone and makes a few jokes -- ”I tried to enlist in the marines, but my parents were married” -- before he lifts himself out of this small VFW or that smoky Legion Hall and launches into his practiced, impassioned plea.

“I think it’s pretty obvious the American people ran out of patience,” he says, referring to the first of his wars. “And we did pay a price for our failure. We’re friends with the Vietnamese now, but we shouldn’t forget that thousands were executed, hundreds of thousands were put in reeducation camps, I don’t know how many fled on boats, died at sea. And in Cambodia, there was a genocide of incredible consequences. We have a tendency to forget that. But the Vietnamese never said we’re going to follow them home. They had no radical extremist cause that they thought was part of the struggle between them and us. That’s the difference. . . . I want us out, too, but I want us out with honor. And as terrible as the consequences of failure in Vietnam were, I don’t think they are as consequential as failure in Iraq.”

Whenever he talks like this, McCain almost always looks down at his right wrist, not because it’s partially frozen by the wounds that war inflicted on him but because around it is a bracelet, about as thick as a ruler, with a photograph of a young soldier on it. Next to it is written:

SPC Matthew J. Stanley.

Army 12/16/06

Wolfeboro Falls, NH.

The date is the day Stanley, twenty-two and newly married, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq. McCain was given the bracelet by Stanley’s shaken mother, Lynn Savage, who took it off her wrist at a New Hampshire campaign stop a few months ago and put it on his. Today, she has joined him on the bus, and it’s her turn to tell a war story, her voice trembling only a little.

“I thought maybe, if I just offered the bracelet, he might take it and remember the reason why we need to finish what we’re doing and not let my son die in vain and not let thousands of others die in vain. . . . I just wanted it to be a gesture, to connect with him, so that he would understand. I’m sure he had friends who were killed during the war and he might know what their

parents went through. And I thought maybe it would just be a connection, and it really was -- he was very emotional when I gave it to him. That wasn’t my intention. But as long as it remains a reminder for him to honor my son and all the other soldiers who have fallen, it’s a wonderful thing. Never let the memories die, that’s so important.”

And then she will stop and smile a thin, sad smile.

This is what’s left for John McCain, the man and the message stripped down to the base coat. Instead of trying to be all things to all people, he’s trying to be one or two things for just a few, and maybe enough of them will hear him and think well of him for it. He’s run out of the time and the money and the love that allows a man to speak of beginnings. He’s finally realized that beginnings are a young man’s game.

Now, like most old men, he’s become obsessed with how the story will end.

After another fifty miles, after another meandering, mirthful conversation in the back of the bus, he shouts up front how long we have until the next stop.

“Twenty minutes? Oh, my God.”

But the truth is, he would like to stay on this beat-up bus forever. He knows too well what will happen when it stops. “I talk to Bob Dole,” he says, his voice quiet as a lake. “I was with him the last two weeks of his campaign, constantly. One of the things that was very moving -- and admittedly, he didn’t give great speeches and I understand that -- but you’d see in the crowd these older men with the crossed skis, the 10th Mountain Division hats on. And after the speech you’d kind of see Bob go over and they’d come over, and it was fascinating to see that. It was very touching to see that. It makes me emotional even now when I think about it.”

Suddenly, McCain smiles his own thin, sad smile, and his eyes brim with tears.

He has rarely attended his own military reunions; when he has, he says, he could pick out the guys who had retired by how much closer they seemed to death. Maybe that’s why he’s always looked ahead, always pushed forward, always tried to sell us on our futures and never on his past. Until now -- until now, he never dwelled much on history, partly because he has so much of it to get lost in, mostly because he wanted to seem strong and vigorous. But now he wants to remember, and he would like for you to remember, too.

Forty years ago, John McCain was filmed in black and white, wrapped in a body cast and smoking what might have been his last cigarette. This footage was little seen until what’s left of his staff -- Rick Davis, Brooke Buchanan, everything cut back to the bone -- convinced him it was finally time to play that card in an ad called Courageous Service. (“I’m slightly embarrassed by it,” McCain says.) There he lies, all of thirty-one, interrogated by an invisible man with an Indo-French accent -- What is your name, what is your rank, where were you educated, what is your official number? . . . “Six-two-four,” McCain says, his smoke burning down, “seven-eight-seven.” And then the screen fades to black.

The clip is powerful, because the John McCain we know today seems so far removed from that John McCain. It speaks of such long journeys. There’s a subtler message hidden behind it as well: It serves to remind us, gently, that after he refused early release, he spent more time in a Vietnamese prison camp than America has spent in Iraq -- that old men, and old soldiers especially, use a different abacus when making sums out of sacrifice.

IN STATE WE DISTRUST:

Free Steyn (The Editors, 12/19/07, National Review)

Our readers know Mark Steyn well. His witty and learned commentary appears in every issue of National Review, and in many other English publications across the world. What Steyn’s American readers may not know is that a Muslim advocacy group in his native Canada is doing its best to muzzle him.

On December 4, the Canadian Islamic Congress announced that it had filed a complaint with three of Canada’s “human rights commissions” over an October 2006 article that Steyn had published in Maclean’s, Canada’s leading news weekly. “This article completely misrepresents Canadian Muslims’ values, their community, and their religion,” said Faisal Joseph, an attorney representing the complainants, in a press release. “We feel that it is imperative to challenge Maclean’s biased portrayal of Muslims in order to protect Canadian multiculturalism and tolerance.”

The article in question was adapted from Steyn’s recent book America Alone, which argues that Western society may be irrevocably altered — and not for the better — by unassimilated Muslim immigration. It’s no surprise that this thesis is controversial, probably in part because Steyn makes his points so well. But the real threat to tolerance here is the CIC, which would have the state impose penalties on those whose writings it disagrees with.

MORE:
The future belongs to Islam: The Muslim world has youth, numbers and global ambitions. The West is growing old and enfeebled, and lacks the will to rebuff those who would supplant it. It's the end of the world as we've known it. An excerpt from 'America Alone'. (MARK STEYN, Oct 20, 2006, Macleans)

On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory "of courses": of course, not all Muslims are terrorists -- though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists -- though enough of them share their basic objectives (the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to function wittingly or otherwise as the "good cop" end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists' demands. An IRA man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality -- because he knows that at the ballot box the Ulster Loyalists win the elections and the Irish Republicans lose. When a European jihadist blows something up, that's not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He's jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way.

You may vaguely remember seeing some flaming cars on the evening news toward the end of 2005. Something going on in France, apparently. Something to do with -- what's the word? -- "youths." When I pointed out the media's strange reluctance to use the M-word vis-à-vis the rioting "youths," I received a ton of emails arguing there's no Islamist component, they're not the madrasa crowd, they may be Muslim but they're secular and Westernized and into drugs and rap and meaningless sex with no emotional commitment, and rioting and looting and torching and trashing, just like any normal healthy Western teenagers. These guys have economic concerns, it's the lack of jobs, it's conditions peculiar to France, etc. As one correspondent wrote, "You right-wing shit-for-brains think everything's about jihad."

Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.

In June 2006, a 54-year-old Flemish train conductor called Guido Demoor got on the Number 23 bus in Antwerp to go to work. Six -- what's that word again? -- "youths" boarded the bus and commenced intimidating the other riders. There were some 40 passengers aboard. But the "youths" were youthful and the other passengers less so. Nonetheless, Mr. Demoor asked the lads to cut it out and so they turned on him, thumping and kicking him. Of those 40 other passengers, none intervened to help the man under attack. Instead, at the next stop, 30 of the 40 scrammed, leaving Mr. Demoor to be beaten to death. Three "youths" were arrested, and proved to be -- quelle surprise! -- of Moroccan origin. The ringleader escaped and, despite police assurances of complete confidentiality, of those 40 passengers only four came forward to speak to investigators. "You see what happens if you intervene," a fellow rail worker told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "If Guido had not opened his mouth he would still be alive."

No, he wouldn't. He would be as dead as those 40 passengers are, as the Belgian state is, keeping his head down, trying not to make eye contact, cowering behind his newspaper in the corner seat and hoping just to be left alone. What future in "their" country do Mr. Demoor's two children have? My mother and grandparents came from Sint-Niklaas, a town I remember well from many childhood visits. When we stayed with great-aunts and other relatives, the upstairs floors of the row houses had no bathrooms, just chamber pots. My sister and I were left to mooch around cobbled streets with our little cousin for hours on end, wandering aimlessly past smoke-wreathed bars and cafes, occasionally buying frites with mayonnaise. With hindsight it seemed as parochially Flemish as could be imagined. Not anymore. The week before Mr. Demoor was murdered in plain sight, bus drivers in Sint-Niklaas walked off the job to protest the thuggery of the -- here it comes again -- "youths." In little more than a generation, a town has been transformed.

Of the ethnic Belgian population, some 17 per cent are under 18 years old. Of the country's Turkish and Moroccan population, 35 per cent are under 18 years old. The "youths" get ever more numerous, the non-youths get older. To avoid the ruthless arithmetic posited by Benjamin Franklin, it is necessary for those "youths" to feel more Belgian. Is that likely? Colonel Gadhafi doesn't think so:

There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the American mainland was attacked for the first time since the War of 1812. The perpetrators were foreign -- Saudis and Egyptians. Since 9/11, Europe has seen the London Tube bombings, the French riots, Dutch murders of nationalist politicians. The perpetrators are their own citizens -- British subjects, citoyens de la République française. In Linz, Austria, Muslims are demanding that all female teachers, believers or infidels, wear head scarves in class. The Muslim Council of Britain wants Holocaust Day abolished because it focuses "only" on the Nazis' (alleged) Holocaust of the Jews and not the Israelis' ongoing Holocaust of the Palestinians.

How does the state react? In Seville, King Ferdinand III is no longer patron saint of the annual fiesta because his splendid record in fighting for Spanish independence from the Moors was felt to be insensitive to Muslims. In London, a judge agreed to the removal of Jews and Hindus from a trial jury because the Muslim defendant's counsel argued he couldn't get a fair verdict from them. The Church of England is considering removing St. George as the country's patron saint on the grounds that, according to various Anglican clergy, he's too "militaristic" and "offensive to Muslims." They wish to replace him with St. Alban, and replace St. George's cross on the revamped Union Flag, which would instead show St. Alban's cross as a thin yellow streak.

In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies. In other Continental countries, things are likely to play out in more traditional fashion, though without a significantly different ending. Wherever one's sympathies lie on Islam's multiple battle fronts the fact is the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards?

"We're the ones who will change you," the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." As he summed it up: "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

KILLING THE MESSENGER:

ET too bored by Earth transmissions to respond (Tom Simonite, 12/18/07, New Scientist)

Messages sent into space directed at extraterrestrials may have been too boring to earn a reply, say two astrophysicists trying to improve on their previous alien chat lines.

Humans have so far sent four messages into space intended for alien listeners.

THE AQI MODEL:

Al Qaeda in North Africa takes new tack amid losses : The group that claimed responsibility for blasts in Algeria has failed to reach broader goals (Sebastian Rotella, 12/19/07, Los Angeles Times)

In fact, the Algerian military has recently inflicted damage on the group, chopping away at its rural strongholds and capturing or slaying leaders, experts say. Moreover, the network has suffered from infighting and struggled to mold a North Africa-wide offshoot of Al Qaeda, according to authorities.

"Al Qaeda in the Maghreb has not been able to show it has achieved its announced goal of regional federation," said a senior British anti-terrorism official. "I am not seeing real operational control by Al Qaeda central."

As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visited Algiers on Tuesday to pay homage to 17 employees killed at a U.N. complex there, North African and European security forces were on alert against a network striving to reassert itself. The strikes against the U.N. and the Constitutional Court continued a strategic shift from guerrilla combat against Algerian security forces to an Iraq-style campaign of suicide attacks and roadside bombings against national and foreign targets. [...]

Experts believe the Algiers bombings were a gambit by Abdelmalek Droukdel, the network's leader, to demonstrate viability and overcome battlefield defeats by adopting a new form of warfare. With skillful propaganda, target selection and militants willing to die, even a weakened network can have an international impact and, in some ways, become more dangerous.

READ IT IN THE FUNNY PAPERS:

This Girl's Life: The Islamic revolution, and puberty, through the 2D eyes of Marjane Satrapi (Nick Pinkerton, December 18th, 2007, Village Voice)

Satrapi and Paronnaud say they were inspired in part by silent-era German Expressionism, which is evident in the film's dynamic gouges of black; some of their most striking scenes are in silhouette, suggesting Lotte Reiniger's lacework-detailed Orientalist animation of the '20s. Persepolis, hand-penned by a team in Satrapi's adopted home of Paris, is almost entirely black-and-white—the exception is a framing device that finds a grown-up expatriate Marjane reminiscing from Orly airport. The books were largely drawn in pure China-ink simplicity, but the film is ambitious with effects. As fundamentalism lowers its pall over Tehran, Persepolis imparts the cultural sea change with a schoolyard of upturned girl's faces in an inky ocean of newly imposed cloaks and headdresses; when little Marjane, punked-out inasmuch as Islamic law will allow, is accosted on the street by two female zealots, the women appear lamia-like, solid black bodies coiling around their prey.

The guts of the thing, though, are in Satrapi's embroidery of quotidian details: the thrill of scoring contraband Western pop off the streets; the routine absurdity of a university "Life Drawing" class where all that's exposed is the model's face, the rest concealed under a tent of hijab; the smuggling of illegal homemade wine into house parties that could turn fatal with a knock on the door; the horny teenagers recruited into martyrdom with government-issued plastic keys to a Live Nude Girls "Paradise" (that capacity for make- believe gone very awry). The accessibility of her firsthand address—how Satrapi refits epic national tragedy to an identifiably personal scale—has made Persepolis college curriculum and its maker something of a spokeswoman. She's even earned a tribute of sorts from back home. Her movie's Jury Prize–winning stand at Cannes got a response from an Iranian government- affiliated cultural foundation; the film stands accused of presenting "an unrealistic face of the achievements and results of the glorious Islamic Revolution."

THE SPREADING MEADOW:

The Big Question: What was the Magna Carta, and are its contents relevant to us today? (Andy McSmith, 19 December 2007 , Independent)

What was special about it?

Until 1215, the King of England was an absolute monarch. In theory at least, the will of the King was the law of the land. In practice, there were always powerful nobles who would challenge his power, if they thought they could get away with it. There were no rules in the contest between King and barons, except one – whoever had the strongest army got what he wanted. Then on 15 June, 1215, King John met a delegation of barons on Runnymede island, and between them they drew up a document, written in Latin, which they called the Big Charter, setting out the limits and terms of the King's powers. It is seen as the symbolic beginning of the rule of law in England. For the first time, the English had something in writing to protect them against arbitrary rule.

The Magna Carta was a medieval catalogue of liberties, rights, and safeguards from governmental intrusion. It did not arise, however, apart from convulsion. King John’s heavy taxation led to mounting opposition, and several preliminary charters were drafted by leading clergymen. By Christmas of 1214, the barons and clergymen were united in opposition to John, but the revolution was stalled until Easter of 1215 by a promise from John to grant select concessions. After that time, civil war broke out, only to be calmed by the June 1215 accords.

Reflecting the medieval theology of its time, this document was a benchmark of civic liberties, rooted in the Christianity of the day. Although it is seldom admitted by modern secularists, medieval political theories were robust and fairly well developed. The charter addressed subjects ranging from inheritance laws to the payment of widows’ debts, from fair standards of trade to judicial protocols. This signal event, rather than indicating the crudity of unenlightened people (clause 42 included an early form of open immigration policy, though clause 51 banished foreign knights and mercenaries), was a sign of maturity in political thought. Moreover, it was an example of the impact of Christian teaching on matters of government. It is not difficult to detect the religious fabric of the Magna Carta. Its preamble explicitly refers to the counsel of the clergy, including Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, and other bishops. Some experts believe that if the charter was not actually drafted by Archbishop Langton, he at least was the animating force behind it.

The Magna Carta begins with an overt religious affirmation (“John, by the Grace of God, King of England”) and places the signers in impressive company for an eternal purpose: “We, in the presence of God, and for the salvation of our own soul, and the souls of all our ancestors … to the honor of God, and the exaltation of the Holy Church and amendment of our Kingdom.…” One of the first clauses granted freedom to the English church to elect its own leaders–a controversial idea for its day but one that later stood in the vanguard in other reformation movements. The free church was to have a prominent role in politics, and one clause even guaranteed that the King could summon archbishops, bishops, and abbots for counsel.

Beyond questions of the relationship between the church and the monarchy, the Magna Carta set forth a number of important principles of limited government. For example, trials were to be fair, fines were not to be levied for inconsequential matters, personal property was not to be confiscated without remuneration, taxes were to be raised only by “common counsel,” and imprisonment was not to be allowed without “legal judgment of [one’s] peers or by the laws of the land.” Moreover, previous unjust fines or confiscation of property were to be remitted, and a representative council of twenty-five barons was created “for god and for the amendment of our kingdom.”

This ground-breaking pinnacle of pre-modern thought did not create an international movement at first. What began as a council of twenty-five barons at Runnymede’s meadow later expanded into a global movement supporting responsive and free government.

To underscore the dramatic advance of the Magna Carta, we can say that it was not so much customs that were guaranteed but human freedoms–a seismic shift in political presuppositions. Whereas earlier treaties focused on “dignities” or customs, the charter discussed liberties. To further ensure its longevity, the Magna Carta was re-confirmed and republished in many languages and on different occasions. It was even ordered to be read twice a year in cathedral churches in 1297 and renewed yearly at Easter in other parishes. Into the early seventeenth century, it had been reiterated so often that Puritan parliamentarian John Selden once argued against a 1628 resolution: “Magna Carta has been confirmed thirty-two or thirty-three times, and to have it confirmed thirty-four times I do not know what good it will do.”

Puritans in seventeenth-century England would later appeal to the Magna Carta as part of their justification for the overthrow of the monarchy. Prior to this surge of Puritan political thought in England, medieval advances had set the stage for limited reform. In his History of Political Theories from Luther to Montesquieu, William Dunning argues that the propriety of councils to blunt the power of tyranny had become an acceptable notion by the Reformation. From the Magna Carta on, these political notions would dominate. Earlier, medieval constitutionalists had asserted that, as Dunning writes, “the king, while subject to no man, is always subject to law.” Notwithstanding, Dunning admits that such rights of Englishmen prior to the seventeenth century were neither well defined nor clearly expressed in constitutions. The period from these medieval constitutionalists to the seventeenth century saw halting strides toward popular sovereignty. Principled formulation for limited government, however, was not grounded in lasting theory nor accepted by the masses until after the Reformation.

A century after Calvin’s reformation in Geneva, many of his ideas–ideas that became part of the fabric of America–were further pioneered in London. Not only did the British Puritans introduce new ideas of ecclesiastical government, but they also permitted those views–ground-breaking for the time–to have an impact on their view of what the state could and should do. Toward the end of the Elizabethan period, the Puritans had convinced many people of the following notions: Monarchy, if not in service of the populace, was not immune from reformation attempts; the church was its own lawful governmental sphere, and hence free from civil interference; neither the church nor the state was divinely mandated to possess absolute power–indeed, republican or federal structure was more conformable to God’s plans; the church was free to resist, oppose, or seek the deposition of ungodly rulers in some cases; and freedom of speech, assembly, and dissent was condoned and would soon expand into numerous segments of society.

MORE:
THE REST IS GLOSS (Brothers Judd, 6/15/05)
The Secret History of the Magna Carta: Its most far-reaching provisions aren’t the ones we remember. (Peter Linebaugh, Boston Review)

King Ranch Casserole adds Texas flavor to holiday meal (ANNE GREER McCANN, 12/17/07, The Dallas Morning News)

KING RANCH CASSEROLE
4 to 5 cups tortilla chips, coarsely crushed

2 cups sliced white mushrooms

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons chicken-flavored soup-base seasoning powder

4 Tyson Oven Roasted Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts (2 breasts per package)

2 (10-ounce) containers Buitoni Alfredo Sauce (see note)

1 cup sour cream

1 ½ cups fresh pico de gallo, drained

12 ounces grated Monterey Jack cheese (plain or pepper Jack)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Using your hands or a wooden spoon, coarsely crush the tortilla chips. This is easier to do if you leave them in the bag (open it slightly to let the air out).

Place mushrooms and butter in a glass bowl. Toss with soup powder and microwave on High (100 percent power) for 2 minutes. Drain to remove excess moisture.

Cut the chicken into bite-size chunks. Combine the alfredo sauce with sour cream and mix well. Coat a 9x12-inch glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Cover the bottom of the pan with about 2 cups of the crushed chips. Top with half of the chicken, all of the mushrooms, half of the sauce, half of the pico de gallo and half of the cheese. Repeat with 2 cups crushed chips and remaining chicken, sauce, pico de gallo and cheese.

Bake the casserole 35 to 40 minutes, or until hot.

MAKE THE NEIGHBORS DEMOCRACIES:

'India's democracy is something of a miracle' (Matthew Schneeberger, December 19, 2007, Rediff)

One of the world's leading figures on democracy, foreign aid and democratic governance, Dr [Larry] Diamond believes there are many problems that must be engaged and solved. "Frankly, this most recent trip to India has shed light on how serious these problems are," he said in the course of a lecture at the American Centre in Mumbai on Tuesday evening.

Beginning his talk with the question, 'How can India survive as a democracy when surrounded by non-democracies?' Dr Diamond spent the next one hour answering it.

"Today, there are pervasive problems worldwide for democracy. Mainly, there is a lot of bad governance by self-seeking leaders who put family, party and private interests above public ones. This is particularly true in South Asia. If democracy here is survive, it has to perform better. There must be more transparency and accountability of governance," he said. [...]

Asked about the hot-button India versus China debate, Dr Diamond didn't mince his words.

"Only 30 years ago, people said India would go the way of China, to the Maoists. That didn't happen. Instead, 20 years from now, China's political system will look like India's," he said. "Even if China were to sustain growth of 6 or 7 per cent, forget about 8 or 10, there will be a massive upheaval in the next 10 to 15 years."

That's because, he said, polling data show that the Chinese people are increasingly placing value on personal autonomy and are much less likely to defer to authority. "I just hope it doesn't end in a military crackdown or a right-wing, nationalist uprising. But, regardless, it's inconceivable that China will still be an authoritarian State in a few decades."

THAT'S NOT GONNA HELP:

Giuliani's Kerik Woes Resurface Through Informant: Candidate Distancing Himself From Former Confidant (John Solomon and Matthew Mosk, 12/19/07, Washington Post)

In the heady days of the 1990s when Rudolph W. Giuliani was mayor of New York and Bernard B. Kerik was one of his most trusted lieutenants, Lawrence Ray enjoyed his own wild ride.

Ray was one of Kerik's closest friends and the best man at his 1998 wedding. As Kerik was rising to become New York's police commissioner, Ray was in touch with him regularly -- lending him money, discussing possible business opportunities, and using Ray's contacts in Russia to arrange a meeting for Giuliani with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Much has changed since then. Giuliani is now a leading Republican presidential candidate. Kerik has pleaded guilty to state ethics charges and is under federal indictment. And Ray, a convicted felon now in prison on a parole violation, has turned on his former friend. He has provided to state and federal authorities half a dozen boxes of e-mails, memos, faxes, financial statements, photographs and other materials about Kerik's alleged wrongdoing.

That evidence, reviewed by The Washington Post, shows that Kerik brought Ray into contact with Giuliani on a handful of occasions documented in photos and that he invoked Giuliani's name in connection with a New Jersey construction company with alleged mob ties that is now at the heart of the criminal cases.

"I WANT IT NOW":

The Great Perception Gap (ROBERT SAMUELSON, 12/19/07, The Washington Post)

There is a vast gap of perception between the real economy of production and jobs and the financial economy of loans and investments. The real economy, though weakening, is hardly in a state of collapse.

In 2007, it has grown about 2%; payroll jobs are up by 1.3 million. Even economists who expect a recession generally think it will be mild. [...]

What ultimately matters is the connection between the financial economy and the real economy. In housing, that's clear. Subprime losses reduced mortgage lending, housing construction, sales and prices. In some other markets, something similar has occurred. If too many junk bonds were sold at foolishly low interest rates to finance "private equity" deals — buyouts of companies — then the process had to reverse someday through higher rates and fewer bonds being sold. That's not turmoil so much as the distasteful reality of recognizing losses on dubious investments.

Despite all the bluster, evidence of a widespread credit crunch is so far scant. Though credit standards have tightened, bank lending is still increasing. Many U.S.companies have paid down short-term debt, and corporate cash flow is running at a respectable $1.2 trillion annual rate. This insulates many firms from strains in credit markets.

THANK YOU, SIR, MAY I HAVE ANOTHER MITCH-SLAP:

Senate approves $70 billion for Iraq-Afghanistan (John Bresnahan, 12/18/07, Politico: The Crypt)

The Senate, by a vote of 70-25, approved $70 billion for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, adding another political victory to the recent string of wins by President Bush and GOP congressional leaders.

21 Democrats, including Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (Mich.), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) voted for the bill, while Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) was the only Republican to vote against it.

AND WE'RE LEFT TO BEAT THE RATIONALISM OUT OF THEM:

Middle East: Europe to blame for authoritarianism in Islamic world, says expert (AKI, 12/11/07)

A leading historian says Europe is to blame for the authoritarianism that exists in Islamic countries.

Speaking at an international Islamic conference in Rome, Bernard Lewis said many Muslim countries have adopted a political model imported from Europe in the 19th century. [...]

Lewis said many Muslim countries imported a model from Europe from the 19th century when Islam felt it was behind the West and advancing by drawing inspiration from it.

In early decades of the last century, France reinforced its presence in the south of the Mediterranean and the German Nazis began to be very active in the region pushing its way as far as Iraq and exporting a kind of "remodelled Nazism".

He said it was that period that gave birth to the radicals of the Baath party that led to the leadership of Saddam Hussein and the current party in power in Syria.

IF KATRINA TAUGHT ONE LESSON...:

High Noon in New Orleans: The Bulldozers Are Ready (NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF, 12/19/07, NY Times)

Ever since it took over the public housing projects of New Orleans more than a decade ago, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been itching to tear them down.

Now, after years of lawsuits and delays, it looks as if the agency will finally get its Christmas wish. The New Orleans City Council is scheduled to vote on Thursday on whether to sign off on the demolitions of three projects. HUD already has its bulldozers in place, engines warm and ready to roll the next morning.

Arguing that the housing was barely livable before the flooding unleashed by Hurricane Katrina, federal officials have cast their decision as good social policy. They have sought to lump the projects together with the much-vilified inner-city projects of the 1960s.

But such thinking reflects a ruthless indifference to local realities.

SOMETIMES IT'S DRY, SOMETIMES IT'S WET:

Consistent rain is a dam relief (Asa Wahlquist, December 19, 2007, The Australian)

FOR three years, Goulburn in southern NSW endured the tightest water restrictions in the country. But as rains continue to bring relief to swathes of eastern Australia, the town's dams are more than half full, kids are playing on the ovals again and the deputy mayor even has his vegetable garden growing again.
Sullivan

Rain has replenished Goulburn's water storages, which were perilously low at less than 13 per cent in June. That has brought an end to the arduous Level 5 restrictions, but Goulburn residents have retained their water conservation mindset.

LIVE BY THE CRACKERS, DIE BY THE CRACKERS:

Cornered House leaders throw bone to Blue Dogs (Alexander Bolton, December 19, 2007, The Hill)

Members of the conservative Democratic “Blue Dog” coalition are poised to defeat a Democratic rule for debate on Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) relief and potentially hand their leadership a major embarrassment. [...]

The centrist House Democrats are prepared to oppose the Senate-passed version of AMT relief, which House leaders have planned to consider, because its cost would not be paid for by other tax increases. Blue Dogs argue the bill would violate “pay as you go” or “Paygo” budget rules the party adopted after winning control of Congress.

“To pass a rule to waive Paygo, [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)] will have to have Republican votes,” said Boyd.

Reps. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) and Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) said they would likely oppose the leadership’s rule for AMT debate.

“I think it’s a pipe dream,” said Cooper of his leaders proposal to add revenue-raising measures to a future package of tax relief extensions in exchange for Blue Dog support on the AMT.

EVERYTHING WILL BE DIFFERENT....:

Congressional Spending Bill preserves Pro-Life protections (Catholic News Agency, 12/18/07)

The bill continues the Hyde Amendment’s prohibition against the use of federal funds for most abortions. Other rules forbid funding for embryo-destroying research and organizations involved in coercive abortion programs.

The new bill also protects the consciences of health care providers or entities that do not want to provide, pay, or refer for abortions. Furthermore, any family planning organizations that receive federal grants must comply with state reporting laws on child abuse, child molestation, sexual abuse, rape, or incest.

In another victory, legal attempts to weaken the Mexico City policy, which forbids U.S. funding for organizations that promote or commit abortions, were removed from the bill.

HE IS WHO THE LEFT THINKS BILL CLINTON WAS:

Bush orders 'significant reduction' in US nuclear weapons stockpile (The Associated Press, December 18, 2007)

President Bush has approved "a significant reduction" in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, cutting it to less than one-quarter its size at the end of the Cold War, the White House said Tuesday.

At the same time, the Energy Department announced plans to consolidate the nuclear weapons complex that maintains warheads and dismantle those no longer needed, saying the current facilities need to be made more efficient and more easily secured and that the larger complex is no longer needed.

"We are reducing our nuclear weapons stockpile to the lowest level consistent with America's national security and our commitments to friends and allies," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

TOO BOLSHIE FOR MOTHER JONES?:

John Edwards' Fighting Words: The candidate is running an impassioned, anti-corporate campaign, but will Edwards' pugilistic populism turn off Iowa voters? (Jonathan Stein, 12/18/07, Mother Jones)

And then there's Edwards' palpable dislike for corporations. "There are very powerful forces, well-financed forces, standing between you and the future your children should have," the candidate proclaimed at a campaign event in Des Moines. "That's what this election is about. Unless and until you have a president of the United States who's willing to stand up with some backbone and some guts and fight and stand up to these corporate interests," there will never be real change.

The Des Moines Register, in its recent endorsement of Hillary Clinton, said that it found Edwards' "harsh anti-corporate rhetoric" distasteful. Getting things done would be difficult for such a one-sided crusader, it implied. I asked Edwards about this before a rally in Cedar Rapids. "I just have a fundamental disagreement with the Register," he replied. "I respect their views; they're just very different from mine. I think most Americans see that corporate power and corporate greed are keeping the American dream from getting to their children. We have a fight on our hands."

His campaign, no surprise, dismisses the argument that Edwards' anti-corporate rhetoric makes him less electable in the general. (Corporations, though, will have all the money they need to fund attack ads against him, and millions of Americans happily go to work for corporations every day.) "His message is very optimistic about America and its future," says spokesman Dan Leistikow. "Most Americans want a president who is going to fight for them and who recognizes that for the middle class, their interests have been ignored."

Not all those Iowans looking him over at campaign events are so sure. When I asked James Moriarty, an attorney from Cedar Rapids and Edwards supporter, if the candidate's anti-corporate message would hurt him in the general, he said, "I hope not." He paused and added, "I think the difference between Wal-Mart making $12 billion and making $3 billion is a lot of people who could lead better lives and provide for their families better."

An undecided voter named Scott Schultz, who is torn between Edwards and Barack Obama, noted, "You can't be so anti-corporate that it alienates the corporations, and they go bankrupt or say, 'Okay, I'll go to Mexico.' I think you have to work with these corporations. You have to have a strong hand with them, but by the same token, you kind of do have to work with them. You can't just say, 'They're bad, evil.' To me, that's how the Republicans have been working, but, you know, in reverse."

"We need to be all united together," said Schultz's wife, Kim, an educator. "It reminds me a little of the George Bush 'my way or the highway' attitude." She added, "I understand his passion, though. Sometimes I feel the same way, too."

MORE:
The Socialist Bacillus and the Investor Class (Tom Bethell, 12/19/2007, American Spectator)

One-third of poll respondents say they don't have any retirement money saved at all. But many do, and what most people are doing is saving in a tax-deferred instrument called a 401(k).

It circumvents one of the great impediments to saving -- the taxation of interest. Since the value of your money is also eroded by inflation, you cannot possibly get ahead of the game by saving money in a normal interest-bearing account. Twenty or 30 years from now, it won't buy nearly as much. Understandably, then, a lot of young people don't even think about saving. The tax code rewards you if you get into debt (with a mortgage), and punishes you if you save. I know it's cockeyed. But that's the way things have been for many decades.

If the government wants us to save for our retirement, why not end the taxation of interest right away? Because the left would set up their customary howls of envy and resentment. It makes them feel good and some spend their whole lives at it. So, to get around that unpleasantness, lawmakers have inserted this saving inducement into the law, named after subsection 401(k) of the tax code.

How many Americans have such accounts? One Federal Reserve study said that about half of U.S. households-there are 110 million of them-have 401(k)s. And about 70 percent of that money goes into equities. Which is to say, into the stock market. So, more and more of us own stocks. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform tells me that about 60 percent of American adults now have money either directly invested in the stock market, or indirectly in retirement accounts.

We are reaching the point where a majority of voters have a direct, personal interest in the performance of the stock market. We may already have passed it.

YOU SHOULD HAVE HEARD THEM SWING:

Frank Morgan, 73, a Bebop Progenitor (WILL FRIEDWALD, December 18, 2007, NY Sun)

Morgan emulated Parker in more ways than one. In addition to being the exemplar of bebop's purest and most expressively baroque form, he also acquired Parker's infamous drug habit. This stunted what could have been one of the all-time great careers in jazz, as Morgan wound up spending most of what should have been his most productive years in prison. Yet he blossomed in the mid-1980s, and spent the last two decades touring and recording to make up for lost time. [...]

Parker not only inspired the young Morgan to play alto sax, but recommended that he begin his training on clarinet. Parker even picked out Morgan's first horn. "I am a bebopper stone through, I was a be-bop criminal. I'm a bebop actor. I want to do that throughout my life," Morgan told allaboutjazz.com.

Morgan remained close with Parker until his death in 1955. He once told critic Gary Giddins, "Bird once said to me that he believed in playing the blues on everything. You could say he was playing the blues all the time, whether it was 'Parker's Mood' or 'April in Paris.'"

When he was 14, Morgan's family moved to Los Angeles, where he was taught by the famous classical reed instructor Merle Johnston and encouraged by jazz great Benny Carter. He also continued to learn from Parker, and saw him play whenever he came to Hollywood. [...]

Though his drug habit landed him in the California penal system for most of the next two decades, Morgan was surprisingly not bitter about it in later interviews. He played in prison bands, occasionally sharing the stage with fellow bebop alto great (and addict) Art Pepper. "The greatest big band I ever played with was in San Quentin," he told Mr. Giddins. "We played every Saturday night for what they called a Warden's Tour … People would take that tour just to hear the band."

SUPPOSE YOU MADE A MOVIE THAT WAS PRO-AMERICAN?

Making History Exciting: The sequel to the hugely popular National Treasure, like the original, brings history alive for kids and families—and star actor Nicolas Cage likes being a part of that. (Peter T. Chattaway, 12/18/07, Christianity Today)

National Treasure surprised audiences and industry observers alike when it came out three years ago. Originally produced for Disney's adult-oriented Touchstone label, it was released under the Walt Disney banner after its family-friendly thrills earned a PG rating, and its box-office success—it quickly became Nicolas Cage's top-grossing movie ever, beating the R-rated The Rock—marked the beginning of a movement at Disney back to films that are fit for the whole family, and not just for the kids. [...]

The first film revolved around a series of clues hidden in the documents and artifacts left behind by America's founding fathers in the 18th century. The second film turns to the 19th century and involves the American Civil War and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln—and Cage says he agreed to make the sequel partly because, "right off the bat, that's more interesting for me, historically, personally."

Cage says he thinks of each film in the National Treasure series as a self-contained historical mystery, and of his character, Benjamin Gates, as an "archaeological version" of detectives like Sherlock Holmes. Plus, he says, the films are "wonderfully positive" because the hero succeeds without using a gun, and because they can "inspire especially the youngsters to look into their history books."

What's more, he says, the films might also inspire people to have greater respect for their ancestors. "In a lot of so-called primitive cultures, there's a tremendous respect for our ancestors, that we don't see as much, for whatever the reason, in modern American culture," says Cage. "And with Ben, I wanted to make it clear that … he really believes in a chivalrous way that everything he is, is on account of his ancestors, and they're not dead to him. So they're still there with him and he's honoring them—and I think I try to embrace that in my own life."

In the first film, Benjamin Gates stole the Declaration of Independence in order to protect it; in the new one, he must somehow get access to the President of the United States (played by Bruce Greenwood) in order to obtain certain extremely top-secret information. Through it all, he maintains his respect for the man and the office he represents—and he says other people want to believe in the President, too.