A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day...so check back often.
In the News: (Registration may be required to read some stories)
U.S. Finds It's Getting Crowded Out There - China plans to conduct its first spacewalk in October. The European Space Agency is building a roving robot to land on Mars. India recently launched a record 10 satellites into space on a single rocket. (READ MORE)
Housing Secretary Expresses Concerns With Mortgage Bill - The nation's top housing official yesterday criticized elements of a legislative package that aims to dramatically expand the Federal Housing Administration's role in responding to the mortgage crisis. (READ MORE)
Iraq Wants Withdrawal Timetable In U.S. Pact - BAGHDAD, July 8 -- Iraq's national security adviser said Tuesday that his government would not sign an agreement governing the future role of U.S. troops in Iraq unless it includes a timetable for their withdrawal. (READ MORE)
In Colombia Jungle Ruse, U.S. Played A Quiet Role - BOGOTA, Colombia, July 8 -- For months before a group of disguised Colombian soldiers carried out a daring rescue of three American citizens and a prominent Colombian politician from a guerrilla camp.. (READ MORE)
Foreign Agents Blamed In Deadly Kabul Attack - KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, July 8 -- Investigators have found evidence that a deadly suicide bombing attack against the Indian Embassy in Kabul this week was planned with the help of a foreign intelligence agency, a spokesman for Afghanistan's president said Tuesday. (READ MORE)
Maliki's Withdrawal Card - A year ago, the conventional Beltway wisdom had it that Iraq was a failed state. Today, the same wisdom holds that it is less chaotic but still fragile, dependent entirely on a U.S. presence to survive. But judging by recent comments from Nouri al-Maliki, even this view may be out of date. (READ MORE)
Maximum Optimist - On the eve of World War II, John Templeton bought stock in 104 companies selling at $1 a share or less. Only a few turned out to be worthless, while in time the rest turned large profits. Templeton went on to become one of the world's great fund managers by investing at what he called "points of maximum pessimism." (READ MORE)
Mr. Frank's Wild River - Behold the Taunton River in Fall River, Massachusetts, pictured nearby. Congressman Barney Frank thinks your family would love to visit this scenic wilderness. Among its attractions are the fuel-storage tanks along the eastern shore. The container ships and piers are always a hit with the children looking for a place to romp. (READ MORE)
On the Web:
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.: More Bailouts, Please! - Ben Bernanke once might have been tempted to duck into the Fed chairman's private bathroom to high-five himself over his heroics to save the financial system. Not anymore, and we're not talking about Bear Stearns, which some worrywarts see as a disastrous precedent. Let us review the relevant history: Inaugurating the modern era of bailouts was Continental Illinois in 1984, following which a top regulator declared 11 national banks were "too big to fail." (Joked a Swiss banker in the next day's Journal: Which bank is number 12?) Since then, the circle has been expanded willy-nilly to include more banks, one hedge fund (in 1998) and one investment bank (2008). (READ MORE)
Thomas Frank: The GOP's Lame-Duck Push - In his landmark 1938 study of political corruption, "The Politicos," Matthew Josephson recalled for his readers the final moments of the Republican 43rd Congress, meeting in a lame-duck session in early 1875. Although the party had just been defeated at the polls in what Josephson called "a great popular mandate for currency expansion," its leaders proceeded to pass a measure designed to contract the money supply. It is in moments of defeat rather than those of triumph that politicians "show their real hand," Josephson observed. Masks are dropped in the stampede; brutal essence shoves aside compassionate appearance. (READ MORE)
T. Boone Pickens: My Plan to Escape the Grip of Foreign Oil - One of the benefits of being around a long time is that you get to know a lot about certain things. I'm 80 years old and I've been an oilman for almost 60 years. I've drilled more dry holes and also found more oil than just about anyone in the industry. With all my experience, I've never been as worried about our energy security as I am now. Like many of us, I ignored what was happening. Now our country faces what I believe is the most serious situation since World War II. The problem, of course, is our growing dependence on foreign oil – it's extreme, it's dangerous, and it threatens the future of our nation. (READ MORE)
Gary Wilson: How to Rein in the Imperial CEO - America's most serious corporate governance problem is the Imperial CEO – a leader who is both chairman of the company's board of directors as well as its chief executive officer. Such a CEO can dominate his board and is accountable to no one. This arrangement creates a conflict of interest, because the chairman is responsible for leading an independent board of directors. The board's primary responsibility, on behalf of the owners, is to hire, oversee and, if necessary, fire the CEO. If the CEO is also the chairman, then he leads a board that is responsible for evaluating, compensating and potentially firing himself. (READ MORE)
Michael O. Leavitt: Will Congress Continue a Medicare Scam? - This week Congress will demonstrate if it is serious or not about reining in entitlement spending. Right now the government is paying insane rental prices for medical equipment – prices far higher than it would cost to purchase the equipment outright. For years, the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Health and Human Services's inspector general have been saying Medicare is paying too much for Durable Medical Equipment (DME). Just compare what Medicare pays to the prices of equipment for sale on the Internet. DME prices are based on a fee-schedule established by law in the 1980s and subsequently updated for inflation. But the fee-schedules weren't based on competitively determined market prices. (READ MORE)
Thomas Sowell: An Internet Fraud - Over the years, many statements have been falsely attributed to me, but this is the first year in which a whole column has been made up and circulated in a chain letter on the Internet, claiming that I wrote it. Letters, phone calls and e-mails from readers around the country have asked me if I wrote a column saying that Barack Obama is not an American citizen. The answer is "No." Many of my readers have been savvy enough to tell that the style of the phony column is not mine, but checked with me just to be sure. What is puzzling about all this is that some people would take seriously a chain letter on the Internet saying what some columnist-- any columnist-- is supposed to have said, and would pass that on without knowing whether it was true or false. (READ MORE)
Michelle Malkin: 15 Things You Should Know About "The Race" - Only in America could critics of a group called "The Race" be labeled racists. Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, whose aggressive activists and supine abettors have succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate." Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino organization whose name is Spanish for, yes, "The Race." Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that? No matter. The presidential candidates and the media have legitimized "The Race" as a mainstream ethnic lobbying group and marginalized its critics as intolerant bigots. The unvarnished truth is that the group is a radical ethnic nationalist outfit that abuses your tax dollars and milks PC politics to undermine our sovereignty. Here are 15 things you should know about "The Race": (READ MORE)
Walter E. Williams: Scapegoating Speculators - Despite Congress' periodic hauling of weak-kneed oil executives before their committees to charge them with collusion and price-gouging, subsequent federal investigations turn up no evidence to support the charges. Right now oil company executives are getting a bit of a respite as Congress has turned its attention to crude oil speculators, blaming them for high oil prices and calling for tighter control over commodity futures trading. Let's look at the futures market and for simplicity use corn futures discussed in my May 28th column titled "Futures Market." While corn is different from oil, both obey the laws of supply and demand, just as humans are very different from bricks but both obey the laws of gravity. Say that today's price of corn is $7 a bushel. I have a hunch that because of Midwest flooding, higher demand due to droughts and war in other parts of the world, that in May 2009, corn will sell for $12 a bushel. (READ MORE)
Michael Medved: "Not a Dime's Worth of Difference?" - Despite all the logical and historical arguments against third party campaigns, insurgent candidates say they’re compelled to run to give the people a "real choice" when major parties become indistinguishable. Ignoring the increasingly profound ideological gulf between Republicans and Democrats on foreign policy, economics and social issues, minor party activists dismiss these old political organizations as "Tweedledum and Tweedle-dumber," or "Republicrats and Demicans" – power hungry hacks who serve the same corporate masters and only pretend to disagree. Former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace ran his entire 1968 campaign (as standard-bearer for the hastily assembled "American Independent Party") based on the slogan that "there’s not a dime’s worth of difference" between his two opponents, Nixon and Humphrey, claiming they both kowtowed to the same "pointy-headed intellectuals." (READ MORE)
Tony Blankley: The Obama Glissade - Way back in June, Sen. Barack "middle name not permitted to be mentioned" Obama campaigned on the theme of "Change We Can Believe In." Now, several days later, his theme should be "Change We Can't Keep Up With." Apparently, the change he was calling for was not for Washington politics, but for his primary campaign positions. Abortion, gun control, capital punishment, FISA laws, the status of Jerusalem, faith-based federal programs, public financing of his campaign, welfare, NAFTA and free trade, and his commitment to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his Trinity Church all have fallen to reconsideration, rephrasing, changed rhetorical modulation, and other semantic miracles. His Iraq position is currently in the process of glissading from anti to pro, so we will have to wait for a while before saying he actually has changed it. To be precise, to stay in my dance metaphor, Obama's move may not be a glissade so much as a fouétte. (READ MORE)
Mona Charen: Quit Whining and Study - Everyone in our region and many beyond has heard of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ). A public magnet school in Fairfax County, Va., it is always rated among the top 10 or 20 high schools in the nation -- and it packs off scads of students to the most selective colleges every year. Admission is highly competitive. Last year, more than 2,500 eighth-graders applied for 485 seats in the freshman class. It was considered front-page news in this week's Washington Post that for the first time, TJ's incoming class will have a plurality of Asian-Americans at 45 percent. White students will comprise 42 percent, while African-American and Hispanic students will make up two percent each (the rest are called "other"). All students in Fairfax County (and some in surrounding regions) are eligible to apply, and the corresponding ethnic percentages in the county are white (67.9 percent), black (9.9 percent), Asian (15.9 percent), and Hispanic (12.9 percent). (READ MORE)
John Andrews: Another Dem Strikes Out on Energy - Where is “Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson when we need him? Two prehistoric inventors stand before the tribal elders, beaming proudly. Og has discovered fire, and Zor has invented the wheel. But the ruling Democrats turn thumbs down. “Begone,” they order. “No good will come of those things.” I exaggerate, of course. The elders would decree taxes and regulation, not a ban. Dems aren’t cavemen, after all. Yet if you follow the logic of liberals like Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, we’re headed for a future with less fire and fewer wheels. Their distaste for the obvious energy sources that keep America rolling and the lights on is that intense. Following a sweaty commute on Gov. Ritter’s bike-to-work plan, you can spend the day in one of Denver Mayor Hickenlooper’s minimally air-conditioned office buildings. After dining at ethanol-inflated food prices that evening, you can join our green leaders in one of their voluntary switchoffs, a darken-the-city display of pity for the planet. (READ MORE)
Austin Bay: Obama's War Change: Hope for Iraq? - We've now seen enough of Barack Obama's campaign to get an idea of his remarkably agile strategic plan. Obama bills himself as the candidate of "change and hope" -- and change is a key component in his plan, if by change we mean radical political flexibility characterized by dramatic shifts in fundamental policy, or quickly substituting today's iron-clad principles for last week's rusting certainties, or adroitly morphing his eternal verity of Old Testament May into a revised piety befitting New Age July. Obama's change isn't simply the expedient replacement of once-upon-a-time principle, exemplified by his rejection of public election financing. When the winds shift, Obama's strategic plan changes people. Since the end of March, Obama's "campaign of change" has used his grandmother and booted the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Convicted Chicago grifter and Obama buddy Tony Rezko? He's so changed he's vanished. (READ MORE)
Paul Weyrich: A Time to Drill - In a remarkably short time the public has changed from supporters of environmentalism to advocates of drilling for oil and natural gas in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and/or in the ocean. For the first time since the 1970s liberals in both parties have found themselves responding to significant demands for drilling. Their responses are meant to confuse the electorate in order to turn public opinion back to their position on the environment. Toward that end liberals have come up with two mantras which we hear on every talk show, in every press conference and in every speech addressing the high cost of gasoline. The first mantra is that it will take at least 10, maybe 30 years before we see a drop of oil coming from the ground at the aforementioned sites. The second mantra is that greedy oil companies already have 86 million acres of leases provided by the Federal Government. They only want more leases to satisfy their greed. (READ MORE)
Michele Bachmann: Democrats Chose to Ignore Rising Gas Costs - Instead of returning to DC willing and ready to create a commonsense solution to our nation’s rising gas costs, House Democrats have chosen to ignore the issue all together. According to a story by the Hill Newspaper, “leadership has scrubbed the floor schedule of the energy legislation that it vowed to tackle after the Fourth of July recess.” Forgetting their promises to the American people before taking the Majority, Democrats would rather slap hard-working American motorists in the face instead of addressing the single-most important issue at hand – off-the-chart gas prices. People are hurting and need relief now. This is all people – Republicans and Democrats, in the Midwest, the Northeast, and the Deep South. With food costs also rising, many just can’t stretch their bottom dollar much further while paying such high gas prices. (READ MORE)
John McCaslin: Previous Leaker - That's former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who recently blasted one-time boss George W. Bush by saying the president relied on "propaganda" to sell the Iraq war, still leading a video tour of the West Wing posted on the official White House Web site. "I'm pleased to be your tour guide," begins the once-loyal aide to the president, his presentation titled "Life in the White House." In the video tour, Mr. McClellan describes his morning "gaggles" with the White House press, an off-camera session where he provided those "messages we want to get across that day." Hmmm. "Then later in the afternoon … is the daily White House press briefing … about [items] of news interest the White House wants to get out to the public," he continues. Gotcha. (READ MORE)
Right Wing Nut House: THE IRAQIS ARE GROWING UP - Finally, Nouri al-Maliki – a guy I’ve been calling an empty suit for years – seems to have grown a pair and is standing up for the Iraqi people against the Americans. The Iraqis want our combat forces to leave in an orderly fashion by withdrawing troops using a timetable that will be mutually agreed upon. What’s not to like in this? Well, if you’re President Bush or John McCain, you have a political problem in that you have opposed a timetable being attached to our withdrawal for years. But that was Democrats setting arbitrary timetables not the sovereign nation of Iraq giving their problematic allies a graceful way to exit with honor and a true “Mission Accomplished.” (READ MORE)
Neptunus Lex: But… but, I thought we had something - NYT columnist Bob Herbert manages the not inconsequential task of sighing like a weary Washington insider who’s seen everything while simultaneously weeping like a middle schooler jilted at the eighth grade dance over the realization that Barack Obama - the Man Who Came to Change Everything - might just be another politician: “(So) many of Senator Obama’s strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer… Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.” (READ MORE)
Ed Morrissey: Did Obama walk into a trap on Iraq? - Roger Simon at Politico believes Barack Obama allowed himself to walk into a big trap on Iraq by agreeing to tour the country and talk to the commanders on the ground. Why go at all if Obama planned to stick to his policy of withdrawal? Making the trip concedes that he didn’t know what he talking about in the primaries, and it sets up a conundrum for Obama’s future policy: “Today many Americans are asking themselves if their summer driving vacations are really necessary because of the high cost of fuel. But I am wondering about a trip that has nothing to do with the cost of fuel. I am wondering about Barack Obama’s planned trip to Iraq. Is it necessary? Why? What is he going to learn from it?” (READ MORE)
Don Surber: Obama needs a nap - At 46, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama cannot keep up with Republican Sen. John McCain, 71. The LA Times has sympathy for Obama, writing: “He hasn’t had a vacation for months. He sees his family little more than once a week. And now as the presumed Democratic nominee for president, he can’t go anywhere without being trailed by a full crew of journalists.” Yes, like being president will be so restful. Without reporters. Or pressure. It is summer. How about a rerun of a post from April 26: “Maureen Dowd picks up on his lack of vigor. Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama appear to be headed in different directions. She looks like the frontrunner and he looks like, well, tired.” McCain has released a thousand pages of medical records. Obama one. A simple statement from a doctor that Obama is healthy. (READ MORE)
Dafydd: Cheney vs. the EPA: the Sound of One Wing Flapping - Here's the scaremongering lede from the Associated Press -- funneled into hometown newspapers and dutifully recited on local news stations across the country: “Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.” AP and other elite media imply that the wicked George W. Bush and the administration try to censor inconvenient scientific truth that undercuts the interests of their masters at Big Oil. But what's really going on here is a desperate struggle by the Left to enshrine the conventional wisdom of anthropogenic global climate change into federal law quickly, before the public can catch up to the current science -- which has thrown a rising ride of cold water on global warming hysteria. (READ MORE)
ShrinkWrapped: The New Middle Ages: Part I - "The Future is hard to predict because it hasn't happened yet." In one of my first posts, on Homeostasis and Conservatism, I explained that biology and psychology are basically conservative. The body and the mind attempt to maintain homeostasis, essentially a dynamic equilibrium that ranges within certain relatively well defined limits. As a result of our conservative predisposition, we tend to have difficulty recognizing when our environment has shifted so dramatically as to require a paradigm shift in our thinking. We tend to expect current conditions to continue indefinitely and rarely see the "black swans" until their effects are unmistakable and painful. We did not pay attention to Islamic radicalism until 9/11. Worries about the sub-prime markets were in evidence months before the bubble began to burst yet even among our most sophisticated investors, few were prescient enough to protect themselves. (READ MORE)
Warner Todd Huston: Chgo Trib’s ‘Honor Killing’ Report Omits Islam Connection - OK, I am wondering here if the hanging of a black Southerner by the KKK in the American south would be reported by the Chicago Tribune in the same kind of vague language of “cultural” murder as a recent Muslim murder in Georgia was treated? More likely, of course, the story would be immediately pegged to the racist, white motives that actually led to the murder. In essence that is how the Chicago Tribune mishandled their reporting of another so-called Islamic “honor killing” that occurred in Georgia this week. They wrote about the “culturally rigid Pakistani” immigrants and said that “honor killings” occur with “other South Asians” without ever once mentioning that this is more often than not a Muslin practice. Instead of pegging this murder to Muslim “culture” the Tribune makes it a vague and nondescript “culture” so that the reader is unaware of the connection with Islam. (READ MORE)
Cassandra: Stephen King on "Ignorant Military Types" - DimWit of the Day: Stephen King, speaking to high school students at the Library of Congress: “I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that.” No, Mr. King, the fact is that military recruits as a group are more literate than their counterparts in the civilian population: “...in the most recent edition of Population Representation in the Military Services, the Department of Defense reported that the mean reading level of 2004 recruits is a full grade level higher than that of the comparable youth population.[8] Fewer than 2 percent of wartime recruits have no high school credentials. Table 2 shows the breakdown for the educational attainment of the wartime recruit cohorts. The national high school graduation rate taken from the Census 2004 ACS is 79.8 percent.” (READ MORE)
Jim Lindgren: A second look at the effect of the DC gun ban - When the Heller case came out, Carl Bogus pointed to a “careful study” by Colin Loftin, et al., (325 New Eng. J. Med. 1615 (Dec. 5, 1991)), showing a huge drop in homicide resulting from the DC gun ban. I cited criticisms of that study. Tim Lambert responded on his own blog, apparently thinking that I had been unfairly hard on the Loftin study. Now that I’ve had a chance to look at some of the DC data, I think that in my original post I was much too easy on the Loftin study. There are even more problems with the Loftin study than I originally thought. In response to Bogus’s endorsement of the Loftin study, I cited an analysis by Dean Payne: (READ MORE)
The Midnight Sun: BESIEGED IN BROOKLYN - The Islamization of the west: Think it’s only Britain? Look at what’s happening in New York. Further to my post below on nabbing small babies right out of the womb or toddlers for ‘racism’, the stage is set for all criticism of Islam to be silenced completely; to produce a great, all-consuming fear across the population of Britain that they might lose what they hold most dear, their children, if they will not be silent about the rising influence of Islam lest they be labeled ‘racist’. Melanie Phillips has written an excellent article on the Islamization of Britain. I quote: “The steady Islamisation of British public life is either being ignored or even tacitly encouraged by a political, security and judicial establishment that is failing to identify the stealthy and mind-bending game that is being played.” I would agree with ‘tacitly encouraged’ after reading about the draconian controls demanded from nursery staff. But it’s not only Britain. Here’s an excerpt from an eyewitness account on what’s going on in Brooklyn, New York: (READ MORE)
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