Month: December 2010

I’m pretty sure we’d go all Marie Antoinette on any politicians so stupid as to try this crap in America.

Why are many European carmakers now planning to build electric vehicles? Because many European cities are widely expected to ban high-emissions vehicles from their city cores over the next decade–perhaps even vehicles with any emissions at all.

Now, Paris may be the first city to experiment with such a policy. Next year, it will begin to test restrictions on vehicles that emit more than a certain amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometer–the measure of a car’s contribution to greenhouse gases.

An official within the Parisian mayor’s office, Denis Baupin, identified older diesel-engined cars and sport-utility vehicles as specific targets of the emissions limit.

“I’m sorry,” Baupin said on RTL Radio, “but having a sport utility vehicle in a city makes no sense.” He suggested that Parisian SUV owners replace their sport utilities with vehicles that are “compatible with city life.”

We know what to do with mayor’s assistants who judge us for the cars we drive.

Off with their heads!!

But more interesting is what these simple regulations wind up impelling people to do.

London’s congestion-charging scheme, which levies a fee of £10 (roughly $15.50) to enter a large area of the central city during weekday business hours, permits zero-emissions vehicles to enter free.

Residents and travelers have responded by buying thousands of electric cars, including the low-speed fiberglass G-Wiz–despite major safety concerns with the vehicle.

Electric cars such as the 2011 Nissan Leaf are expected to sell for the same reason. In fact, Nissan plans to build up to 50,000 Leafs a year at its plant in Sunderland, England, starting in early 2013.

These kinds of policies will be late in coming to America if they ever arrive at all. The Republican Party appears to be little more than a jingoistic extension of an ExxonMobil board meeting. We’re more likely to start giving out free Hummers than we are to tell Hummers that they aren’t welcome in Times Square.

For some reason I read the following E.J. Dionne column with the mistaken belief that it had been authored by George Will. It seemed like Will was making an inordinate amount of sense. Eventually I realized that it violated a basic law of the universe for George Will to make that much sense and that it must have been authored by someone else.

But everything is relative. It’s not a very enlightening piece by Dionne’s standards. Take this:

What, then, can Obama and his discouraged allies do to regain the initiative?

For starters, they must restore a functional relationship between the White House and its sometimes-friends, sometimes-critics on the left. Too often, the White House has been caught whining about its progressive critics. The president’s aides act as if whatever Obama happens to decide is the only sensible and realistic thing to do. For the left to ask Obama to be bolder in testing the limits of the possible means it is doing its job of pushing the president to do more, and to do it faster. Conservatives have mastered this approach. Why can’t liberals do the same?

But too often, progressives have spent more time complaining about what wasn’t done than in finding ways to build on what has actually been achieved. It took decades to complete the modern Social Security system, and years to move from tepid to robust civil rights laws and from modest to comprehensive environmental regulation. Impatience is indispensable to getting reform started; patience is essential to seeing its promise fulfilled.

Considering that this bit is supposed to be about regaining the initiative, it’s pretty weak to lecture the White House about its tendency to defend itself and “the left” about never being satisfied. Those things aren’t going to change. We can be critical of that reality, but we ought not offer it up as something to fix so that we can get our mojo back.

There are two things that will help us get our mojo back: Speaker Boehner and Obama’s reelection campaign. That’s all we need. An improving economy would be nice, but realistically we are going to be fighting over who is to blame for high unemployment and who has a better plan to get something through Congress that will create jobs.

When I found out that Tucker Carlson was impersonating Keith Olbermann in emails to Stu Bykovsky, I thought the proper punishment should probably be death. I mean, I am fervently into second chances and I think forgiveness is super-important, but a society that can’t kill its sockpuppets and email impersonators is a society that has lost faith in itself. Do we want to live in this new feminized America?

On the other hand, Michael Vick? Who wants to defend the guy? But he’s not Dick Cheney. He’s not George W. Bush. Tucker Carlson thinks he should have been executed. Ben Roethlisberger raped someone. Should he be executed? I’m tired of this stupidity. Call me when people start calling for the execution of the people who brought us the war in Iraq.

It’s kind of funny that no one knows anyone in New Hampshire. After several cycles in a row of laundering, the new players in the Granite State are all fresh faces with no power-brokering experience. So, who is a Tim Pawlenty supposed to suck up to? Mike Huckabee has to introduce Chuck Norris to someone.

The truth could be that New Hampshire’s Republicans get their news and opinions from distant sources — primarily Fox News, talk radio, and national Web sites like NewsMax and RedState.

It might not be necessary, this time around, for candidates to bother sucking up to local pols, or traipsing through house parties and farmers’ markets in Coos County — as long as you get favorable treatment from Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Erick Erickson.

That new reality might be why, other than Romney and to some extent Pawlenty, none of the 2012 wannabes made any serious effort to help Granite State Republicans in the 2010 midterms — and why a lot of insiders don’t think it did Romney and Pawlenty much good. It might in fact be a whole new ballgame in New Hampshire — one in which the new players aren’t even part of the game.

Right. None of that door-knocking retail politics is going to matter. Everyone can run their campaign from home, like Sarah. The truth is that without a contested contest on the Democratic side the moderates will be voting in the Republican primary. And we know how that turns out, don’t we?

MANCHESTER, N.H. (Feb. 20) — After a tough and testy campaign, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan scored a narrow, stunning victory tonight over Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.) in the first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary.

With votes counted from 100 percent of the Granite State’s 300 precincts, Buchanan was ahead of Dole 27 percent to 26 percent. Former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander was locked in third place, with 23 percent.

The three men were bunched so closely that analysts predicted a protracted battle for the GOP nomination in this year’s punishing, compressed schedule of primaries and caucusess. Millionaire publisher Malcolm S. “Steve” Forbes Jr. finished a distant fourth with 12 percent and faced an uncertain future.

Buchanan told cheering campaign volunteers the New Hampshire voters who supported him said no to negative advertising, attacks and smears against him.

“They voted their hopes, not their fears,” Buchanan said. “They stood up to the negativists inside the Beltway.” Buchanan called his win “a victory for the good men and women of Middle America.”

So, remember, we don’t know nothing about nothing.

Experts widely concede that Israel cannot maintain its occupation and colonialism of the Palestinian territories (and siege of Gaza) except that it remains on a war footing.
Alain Gresh, writing in Le Monde diplomatique, went further in this analysis entitled, Israel: the next war:

The US’s failure under Barack Obama to impose peace between Israel and the Palestinians makes a new war likely

…..

Israel’s refusal to accept Obama’s proposal to halt settlements on the West Bank (but not in East Jerusalem) for three months in return for unprecedented promises – or bribes, according to columnist Thomas Friedman (2), who is not known for sympathy to the Arabs – confirmed that Obama is unable to exert any real pressure on Israel and that Netanyahu rejects any compromise. Netanyahu, like his predecessors, claims to want peace but he wants the humiliating peace imposed by conquest and based on denial of Palestinian rights. In secret negotiations over the past year, he has repeatedly told the Palestinians they had to accept Israel’s “security concept”, keeping Israeli troops stationed in the Jordan valley along the “barrier” (on the Palestinian side) and the occupation of a substantial part of the West Bank (3). He did not say how long the occupation would last.

This deadlock is forcing the Israeli army to draw up plans for further wars based on the “security concept” – that anyone who refuses to accept Israel’s rule in the region is a “terrorist” to be eliminated. No other country, not even the US, has such a comprehensive security concept, which means that Israel is permanently at war. Who will the Israeli army attack next?….

(click on the link to find out)

Then only this morning, Israel’s Deputy PM Moshe Yaalon, a former armed forces chief, uttered a sort of ominous ultimatum:

‘Iranian regime … must choose between continuing to seek nuclear capability and surviving’

`West has 3 years to rein in Iran’

The West?

Will Israel then strike Iran? Yaalon didn’t say, but when you combine militarism and arrogance, it can be a lethal combination. Obama’s failure in the Middle East peace effort thus has the wider implication of potentially dragging the US into another Middle East war.

The Neocons are quietly finding ways to continue their project of using American military power to make the Middle East subordinate to Israel.

.

Wave of Jewish racism worries Netanyahu, activists

Jerusalem police said they had arrested a gang of young Jews accused of multiple hate-crime attacks against Arabs, shortly after the publication of a letter signed by dozens of Israeli rabbis, many of them state employees, calling on Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the unusual step of addressing the incidents in a video message posted on his YouTube and Facebook pages.

“We are a country run by the rule of law, we respect all peoples, whoever they are,” he said. “I insist that citizens of Israel do not take the law into their own hands, not through violence nor through incitement.”

Earlier this month, Israel’s attorney general began investigating whether the rabbis’ letter broke the law against incitement to racism. But despite the investigation and an outpouring of criticism over the letter, right-wing activists planned a rally in support of the rabbis in central Jerusalem Thursday.

Ronit Sela of the Association of Civil Rights in Israel said there was a growing climate sanctioning discrimination, nurtured by the formation almost two years ago of a coalition government embracing the Jewish nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party and the ultra-Orthodox Shas. “We definitely see a connection between these different instances, most of them targeting either Arab citizens or non-Jewish people living in Israel,” she told AFP.

Sela said muted condemnation by those in power, coupled with “racist and xenophobic” declarations by Israeli lawmakers and their promotion of discriminatory legislation, encouraged hatred.

In October, ACRI wrote to Netanyahu and Parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin warning that legislation including a bill compelling non-Jewish citizens to swear an oath of allegiance to [a Jewish state of] Israel could damage Israeli democracy.

And Israeli-Arab lawmaker Ahmad Tibi said the current Parliament was “the most racist ever,” claiming its house committee had for months blocked an equal opportunities bill, Israeli news site Ynet said.

In the blue-collar Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, demonstrators at a “keeping Bat Yam Jewish” protest reportedly called for Jewish women who consort with Arab men to be put to death.  

  All Hail! Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman!

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

I’m not sure who is writing the New York Times’ unsigned editorials these days, but they are demonstrating once more a lazy support for thoughtless imperialism. We are all happy that the Iraqis have cobbled together a government nine short months after their elections, but that’s not the real point of this column.

The administration deserves credit for goading Iraqis into a political deal. But the long delay and Iraq’s daunting list of problems is a reminder that, even after the troops come home, Iraq will continue to need American attention, support and pressure.

Why will Iraq “need” American attention, support, and pressure after all our troops come home?

At this point, Iraq’s most dangerous fault line may be the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, which is claimed by Arabs and Kurds. Washington must press Iraqis to find a solution, making clear that a Kurdish secession or a grab for Kirkuk would mean the end of American support.

President Obama has rightly promised to withdraw all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal that was published on Tuesday, Mr. Maliki insisted that that deadline is firm. Still, the two leaders need to consider whether some number of forces — American or from the United Nations — should remain temporarily as a buffer in Kirkuk.

The whole point of having a government is so you can peaceably resolve internal disputes like “who owns all this damn oil anyway?” If you can’t resolve them peaceably then you resolve them with force. But you don’t “need” attention, pressure, or support from outside powers to do these things.

One of the more disturbing pathologies of the American mind is our ability to go blow the crap out of a country, ruin all its institutions, cause irresolvable internal conflicts, and then argue that we’re absolutely essential to fixing everything we’ve screwed up. No, we’re not. We’re really not. We’re responsible. We’re liable. We’re not essential.

Gary Bauer is cute, like a hobbit. But he’s not very bright. He’s trying to convince us that Christians are treated worse than Muslims in America, and here is part of his proof.

If Christianity were treated like Islam, Christmas and Easter would be publicly celebrated for what they are — the signature events of Christianity, marking the birth and the death and Resurrection of Christ — not stripped of all their theological meaning and transformed into secular holidays devoted to crass consumerism.

Now, I know that Gary Bauer isn’t trying to blame Muslims for turning Christmas into a celebration of Santa Claus and Easter into a celebration of egg-laying rabbits. I think even Gary knows that Christians screwed this up themselves. So, what could he possibly mean? Perhaps he means that the government is to blame for not insisting that all Easter-related activities be focused on dying Jesus and for failing to ban Santa from the mall.

Maybe this next bit will help us learn what Gary means.

If Christians were treated like Muslims, the Catholic Church’s stances on sex, contraception and human life would be revered as welcome departures from our over-sexed, self-obsessed culture, not condemned as a cause of disease and death in the less-developed world. And if Muslims were treated like Christians, the application of Sharia law around the world would be met not with stony silence but with the outrage it deserves.

Now, I’m sitting here trying to think of who in our society is celebrating Islam’s stances on sex, contraception, and human life (aside from Muslims, of course), and the people that I’m thinking of are conspicuously like Gary Bauer. I don’t know any liberals who think Islam is a progressive voice for women’s rights. It was a progressive voice for women’s rights when it began in Arabia, just as Christianity was originally quite enlightened on women’s issues during its nascent period. But those days are long past.

It’s not really clear to me why Gary Bauer opposes Sharia law since it basically agrees with his worldview in most respects. Just change the prophet and you’ve got it right where Gary wants it.

It is year end, and The Economist Intelligence Unit has just released its bi-annual report on the state of democracy around the world. The results, unfortunately, are not uplifting.
According to the study, a full third of the world population lives in totalitarian states – and only 12% live in what is defined as “full democracies”. The trend has been negative since the last report issued in 2008.
The study measures five criteria to arrive at a compound index:

• Electoral process and pluralism
• The functioning of government
• Political participation
• Political culture
• Civil liberties

The methodology of the study is explained in the end section of the report (from page 34).

Link to full study.

Not surprisingly, the 5 Nordic countries + Australia and New Zealand form the top seven in the ranking. At the bottom of the list are: Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, Chad and North Korea.

The United States is ranked 17.

The index score determines whether a country will be characterized as:

• Full democracy
• Flawed democracy
• Hybrid regime
• Authoritarian regime

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Only 26 nations qualify as full democracies. A disappointing finding is that several European states have fallen from the full to the flawed democracy category – this applies to France, Italy, Slovenia and Greece.

I believe most users of this blog will find it useful to have a quick look at the full report. Here’s a choice quote:

Problems in the functioning of democracy in leading Western states diminish the scope for credible external democracy promotion. The US and UK are near the bottom of the “full democracy” category in our index. In the US, there has been an erosion of civil liberties related to the fight against terrorism. Problems in the functioning of government have also become more prominent. In the UK, there has also been some erosion of civil liberties, but the main feature is an exceptionally low level of political participation across all dimensions–voting turnout, membership of political parties and willingness to engage in and attitudes to political activity.

Although almost one-half of the world’s countries can be considered to be democracies, in our index the number of “full democracies” is low, at only 26 countries; 53 countries are rated as “flawed democracies”. Of the remaining 88 countries in our index, 55 are authoritarian and 33 are considered to be “hybrid regimes”. As could be expected, the developed OECD countries dominate among full democracies, although there are two Latin American countries, one east European country and one African country, which suggests that the level of development is not a binding constraint. Only two Asian countries are represented: Japan and South Korea.

Have a look at the full report!

I am trying to take a little mental holiday in preparation for a season of nuttiness that will probably require me to brush up on more arcane rules of procedure. I went and saw Tron tonight with CG. It’s in 3-D which is pretty cool. The story is okay (picture The Dude as the Creator of the Universe who fucked everything up) but the graphics totally kick-ass. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now I have to see True Grit to fully satisfy my Jeff Bridges jones.

There seems to be some decent movies out for a change. I usually see no more than one movie in a theater a year unless I see a bunch at the Philly Film Festival. I just don’t think Hollywood makes good movies anymore. They should go back to the 1970’s and let the lunatics run the movie studios again.