Mark Steyn on Europication of USA via "Stimulus" Programs

Mark Left Out an interesting suggestion to move the Gitmo inmates to a re-opened Alcatraz, right there in Nancy P.'s district.

The only fallback is that many of Nancy's male constituents resemble the Boys from Gitmo in their complete rejection of Western values and morality, so an escapee could just melt into the surrounding crowd of fanatical nutjobs and escape detection for long enough to engineer an eventual escape....!

Benicio DT Pouts, Sulks, then the Mamma's Boy Walks Out of Newspaper Interview

Benicio del Toro is a friend of dictator Chavez and walked out of a Washington Times interview because the fraud felt "uncomfortable."

Probably because this clown is as stupid and mendacious as Sean Penn and when asked some fact-checking questions about the veracity of events in the Soderberg flick, didn't know or want to address the fact that the movie is factitious bullshit, more or less, and presents Commie Propaganda as dreamy romantic revolutionary twaddle.

Che in real life was so obnoxious that Fidel exiled him to Latin America---after Che defeated him in a golf match, thus closing down all golf courses in the prison-island south of Florida, as the megalomaniac running the prison doesn't like to lose.

When high school dropouts like Del Toro [& flunk outs like Penn] make movies, you can bet they'll win awards from the collection of entitled cretins in "The Academy" and at Cannes and other film festivals.

And when idiots like Matt Damon and B Del T make movies as revolutionaries, the results are revolting!

Rove Explains While Obamaniac Complains....

My daughter is a Poli Sci major at U of Miami and couldn't get a ticket for this event. Rove may have come to Miami because Donna Shalala is Prez of "The U" and teaches a senior Poli Sci course that is legendary for its popularity and excellence. Her former Cabinet Secretary experiences under Clinton and reputation for integrity set her apart from her other ex=colleagues such as Robert Reich, the pocket rocket rejected by Obama for a cabinet slot because, as Obama reportedly said "I want someone fighting for me!"

As always, Rove was insightful and may well serve as a one-man brain trust for the Republicans-in-exile.

Obama Uses Rush Limbaugh as Distraction

Limbaugh's thoughtful response to the new POTUS's remarks about partisanship and the trillion dollar "stimulus package" should be read by all opponents to the "voter grab" the Dems are attempting to make by buying the loyalty of millions of down-and-outers.
It's no secret that the Dem's pitch to minorities in the FDR years was a shameless buy-out of ethnic voters [and later black voters] after the Dems had been the party of racism and discrimination for over a century [Jackson and Native-Americans sent on a "Trail of Tears," for example]. Here's Rush on Obama's attempt to marginalize him and steal a march on sleeping solons of the GOP:

There are two things going on here. One prong of the Great Unifier's plan is to isolate elected Republicans from their voters and supporters by making the argument about me and not about his plan. He is hoping that these Republicans will also publicly denounce me and thus marginalize me. And who knows? Are ideological and philosophical ties enough to keep the GOP loyal to their voters? Meanwhile, the effort to foist all blame for this mess on the private sector continues unabated when most of the blame for this current debacle can be laid at the feet of the Congress and a couple of former presidents. And there is a strategic reason for this.

And that strategic reason Rush explains in clear and lucid terms:

To make the argument about me instead of his plan makes sense from his perspective. Obama's plan would buy votes for the Democrat Party, in the same way FDR's New Deal established majority power for 50 years of Democrat rule, and it would also simultaneously seriously damage any hope of future tax cuts. It would allow a majority of American voters to guarantee no taxes for themselves going forward. It would burden the private sector and put the public sector in permanent and firm control of the economy. Put simply, I believe his stimulus is aimed at re-establishing "eternal" power for the Democrat Party rather than stimulating the economy because anyone with a brain knows this is NOT how you stimulate the economy. If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of this TRILLION dollar debacle.

Obama was angry that Merrill Lynch used $1.2 million of TARP money to remodel an executive suite. Excuse me, but didn't Merrill have to hire a decorator and contractor? Didn't they have to buy the new furnishings? What's the difference in that and Merrill loaning that money to a decorator, contractor and goods supplier to remodel Warren Buffet's office? Either way, stimulus in the private sector occurs. Are we really at the point where the bad PR of Merrill getting a redecorated office in the process is reason to smear them? How much money will the Obamas spend redecorating the White House residence? Whose money will be spent? I have no problem with the Obamas redoing the place. It is tradition. 600 private jets flown by rich Democrats flew into the Inauguration. That's fine but the auto execs using theirs is a crime? In both instances, the people on those jets arrived in Washington wanting something from Washington, not just good will.

If I can be made to serve as a distraction, then there is that much less time debating the merits of the trillion dollar debacle.

One more thing, Byron. Your publication and website have documented Obama's ties to the teachings of Saul Alinksy while he was community organizing in Chicago. Here is Rule 13 of Alinksy's Rules for Radicals:

"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Rush is the "red herring" and Obama's sneak attack on the private sector, aided and abetted by the witless nitwits in the electronic and press media, continues apace.

As usual, Rush is the prophet in the wilderness, speaking wisdom and decrying the Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds whipped up by the Mainstream Media concerning the present "crisis," which may be simply another low in the peaks and valleys of economic corrections.

When such esteemed incorruptible thinkers as Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank [whose "husband" was runniing Fannie Mae for a while during the nineties] and Pelosi/Reid [Oh yes, let's not forget Chris Dodd of "VIP customer" fame with Countrywide Mortgage!], are in the vanguard of "economic reform," anyone with a job and some assets should watch their wallets.

Rush is the strawman scarecrow keeping the scavengers from pillaging the harvest, such as it is, of our faltering economy.

Juan Williams an Antidote to Fawning Obsequious MSM Obama-Worship

CNN is a channel on one of the several I can see from my exercise bike in the fitness center I am currently spending a lot of time in---the crawler captions denote the utterly clueless and seemingly unending flood of Obama worship this mediocre network has been peddling for the last fortnight.

In particular, the airhead ditzes named Costello and Frederika LNU have exceeded all boundaries in their silly spew of compliments, interrupting their hagiography only occasionally to chastise "Obama Nay-Sayers," those unenlightened enough to display skepticism about the coming Apocryphal Age of Obama. For a few minutes, I noted the same on "The View" as Crone-in-Chief Walters rapped the wrist of Elisabeth Hasselbeck for daring not to employ the standard encomiums with reference to "The One."

Juan brings a little sane perspective to this downpour of banality and third-rate silliness on air at the moment. The MSM is obviously under the impression, partly true, that it was their complete devotion to Obama which got him the prize.

Evidently, Global Warming, despite the coldest winter in decades, is the next item on the agenda of mindless hype, as a piece by a formerly respectable PBS science program named NOVA failed to mention the fact that a majority of the scientific community is unconvinced about man-made Global Warming.

Al Gore is the pied-piper leading the low-IQ lemmings over the cliff on this one. Someone in the media should remember his utter lack of qualifications, including a bogus Nobel, to even write about a subject which is far beyond his limited intellectual capacities.

Pilgrim over at Redstate sums up the coming debacles through a close examination of the Inaugurate Conception Speech weaving dreams that are cloud-cuckoo bizarre. His readers' following comments are also worth a look...

Guantanamo Prisoners 333 & 372 Return to Terrorism & Make their TV debut.

Two reasons why Barry Hussein Obama should take his time releasing the remaining 240-odd prisoners at Gitmo popped up on an Al-Qaeda video today. Sixty-one released prisoners have recidivized [!?] to terrorism so far.

This won't bother terrorist-enablers on the left wing of the Dem Party, but Americans worried about national security should be careful before letting the rats run loose back into the sewers.

Another question: why did the Saudis release 372 after his return from Gitmo in 2007? Are the Royal Family truly the allies of the US in the fight against terrorism?

Is David Paterson Even Dumber than SNL Portrayed Him?

The clumsy maneouverings of visually-disabled and mentally-challenged Gov. Paterson may exceed the bumbling, attention-grabbing rendition of the accidental guv portrayed by the SNL regular who had him wandering around the set bumping into cameras and generally acting like a total moron. Here is the bumbling "newspaper of record" displaying the normal state of NY Democrats--- corrupt confusion:

According to a person who spoke with her, Ms. Kennedy called the governor, who will choose a successor to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, to tell him that she was no longer interested in the post. Two other Democrats said they were also told Wednesday that Ms. Kennedy’s candidacy was in doubt. The news appeared to catch the governor off guard, throwing the Paterson administration into confusion and setting off conflicting news media reports. [my emph.]

Anyone who has worked in NY state for the Democratic Party, as I did in two campaigns during the last century, understands that chaos, cross purposes, and corruption are an endemic chronic state of affairs in the clowns [led in the House by corrupt incompetent Rangel] and in the Senate by braying ass Shumer. Paterson combines both the corruption of Charlie and the attention-whore Chuck's relentless search for the nearest mike, but as an additional schlag of whipped cream on the caffeinated brew, adds his own inimitable stupidity.

SNL had this feckless blind black version of Jimmy Carter down perfectly in its skit last month.

Norwegian "Diplomat" E-Mails Comparisons of Israel & Nazi Germany

Norwegians supported Adolf's Master Plan for the Master Race, and Herr Quisling famously was Hitler's Prime Minister buddy in Oslo during the war.

In the upper Middle West, Norwegians are deemed dumber even than "dumb Swedes," and this female envoy to Riyadh [where I'm certain she feels right at home in that hive of anti-Semitic Jew hatred] demonstrates the continuing hypocrisy of the Scandanavian countries that supported Hitler's Germany during the Second World War, yet now posture and point fingers at country's that don't coddle and abet terrorists as they do.

I wonder if Olaf Palme's murderer was ever really caught? The Swedes are too stupid to really be sure. Ditto the lutefisk-eating clowns that allowed Al Franken to steal a Senate seat in MN, where these double-digit IQ types infest the northern plains.

Signs of Decline: The Passing of Time & Newsweek

Once Upon a Time there was a saying: "Life Magazine is for people who can't read and Time is for people who can't think." Now that almost everyone can't think, Time & Newsweek are planning to become a sort of Pravda and Isvestia for the "elite" reader, and Jon Meacham is honest enough to admit that the rags are both pitched to "liberals."

Time, of course, is regarding itself as centrist, a hilarious solecism revealing just what they think of their average reader.

Chief Global Warming Hoaxer Warns that Sky is Falling

A so-called "scientist" is repeating the 19th c. Millerite end-of-days hysteria, only this religious fraud calls himself a scientist and punches a timecard at NASA.

Perhaps Hansen will be given historical credit for the biggest hoax ever perpetrated, though most discerning observers realize that the GW Hoax gives cover to a world government which will end up taxing the very air we breathe.

If the high priesthood of political hacks and "climatologists" can last out the winter, that is....

Vapid Female Columnist for WSJ Asks Readers to "Suspend Disbelief" About Obama

After Ms. Noonan spent a considerable amount of time during the recent campaign trashing Sarah Palin for being pro-life and having a child to term with Down Syndrome [what I posit are her real reasons for hating Palin], this specimen of Upper East Side hauteur gushes over Obama after supping with the PeOTUS at George Will's home in Chevy Chase.

This leads me to ask myself, what is the difference between the Republican elites and the Democratic elites besides the size of pie slices they divvy up every two years? I agree with Ms. Rodriguez that Ms. Noonan has a way with prose, but sorely lacks substance or even gravitas in her fawning over this candidate largely elected by the "drive-by media." Perhaps the most telling statistic of the '08 election was the fact that Obama garnered 40K fewer votes in Ohio than John Kerry did in '04 against GWB! [McCain simply was a RINO and most Ohio Repubs wanted a real one.]

Noonan's columns about Palin showed Peggy's nasty shallow side. Her pre-emptive sycophancy with Obama demonstrates Peggy's opportunistic shallow side!

Rush Limbaugh has a much different POV on the incoming POTUS.

George W. Bush a Better Than Average President

Andrew Roberts of the Daily Telegraph commences his sum-up of the GWB presidency with a request by the usual airhead ditz American motherhood-hating "feminist." Then he puts a cap in the ample butt of the European and American corrupt and self-absorbed "elites," aided and abetted by a servile leftist media more corrupt than its entitlement-crazed masters.

The funhouse mirror-view of the print and electronic 24-7-365 news cycle has brought superficial celebrity hysterics to a new level, the level of political analysis, and Roberts approaches Christopher Hitchens Olympian perspective on what fools these media-crazed intelligentsia-enamored progressives be. Then he rationally recites a list of accomplishments:

The decisions taken by Mr Bush in the immediate aftermath of that ghastly moment will be pored over by historians for the rest of our lifetimes. One thing they will doubtless conclude is that the measures he took to lock down America's borders, scrutinise travellers to and from the United States, eavesdrop upon terrorist suspects, work closely with international intelligence agencies and take the war to the enemy has foiled dozens, perhaps scores of would-be murderous attacks on America. There are Americans alive today who would not be if it had not been for the passing of the Patriot Act. There are 3,000 people who would have died in the August 2005 airline conspiracy if it had not been for the superb inter-agency co-operation demanded by Bush
after 9/11.
The next factor that will be seen in its proper historical context in years to come will be the true reasons for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in April 2003. The conspiracy theories believed by many (generally, but not always) stupid people – that it was "all about oil", or the securing of contracts for the US-based Halliburton corporation, etc – will slip into the obscurity from which they should never have emerged had it not been for comedian-filmmakers such as Michael Moore.
Instead, the obvious fact that there was a good case for invading Iraq based on 14 spurned UN resolutions, massive human rights abuses and unfinished business following the interrupted invasion of 1991 will be recalled.
Similarly, the cold light of history will absolve Bush of the worst conspiracy-theory accusation: that he knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. History will show that, in common with the rest of his administration, the British Government, Saddam's own generals, the French, Chinese, Israeli and Russian intelligence agencies, and of course SIS and the CIA, everyone assumed that a murderous dictator does not voluntarily destroy the WMD arsenal he has used against his own people. And if he does, he does not then expel the UN weapons inspectorate looking for proof of it, as he did in 1998 and again in 2001.
Mr Bush assumed that the Coalition forces would find mass graves, torture chambers, evidence for the gross abuse of the UN's food-for-oil programme, but also WMDs. He was right about each but the last, and history will place him in the mainstream of Western, Eastern and Arab thinking on the matter.
History will probably, assuming it is researched and written objectively, congratulate Mr Bush on the fact that whereas in 2000 Libya was an active and vicious member of what he was accurately to describe as an "axis of evil" of rogue states willing to employ terrorism to gain its ends, four years later Colonel Gaddafi's WMD programme was sitting behind glass in a museum in Oakridge, Tennessee.

The hyperventilating exhalations of the delusional left [and a lot of spineless center-left fellow-travelers] spew endless quantities of calumny and obloquy on George W. Bush, projecting their cartoonish exaggerations unabated by any respect for reason or actual research---only polemics are allowed in the salons of the delusional truffle snuffers in the left-wing media. Actually, George W. Bush, despite jokes by clowns such as Leno and Letterman about his supposed illiteracy and ignorance, is a vastly read consumer of biographies and historical memoirs. Very unfashionable nowadays in this age of solecisms and ignorance of even elemental history on the part of the cable-news mafia on the Left. But GWB was also betrayed by former "allies," including the perfidious and corrupt president of France, who was a long-time friend of Saddam H. and who was almost certainly taking large payments [in gold specie as preferred by French politicians] from Saddam's half-brother, the Iraqi Ambassador to the UN complex in Geneva. Jacques Shh-iraq had already betrayed Valery Giscard D'Estaing and his own party by helping Mitterand defeat VGD'E in 1981, a fact Mitterand fessed up to on his deathbed. All so that Chirac himself would be POTRoF after Mitterand's socialism had worked its mischief for a dozen years---and Chirac himself was saddled with a socialist Prime Minister after botching up the Gaullist Party in the mid-'90s. But Chirac reserved his greatest incompetent treason for the Iraq situation, while the bullion arrived from Geneva to keep him on the side of tyranny and genocide [Kurdish, that is]. As his countryman Bernard-Henri Levy frequently shouts from the rooftops, Chirac was on the side of the demons by protecting Saddam and his Operation Anfal from eventual retribution. More from Roberts:

With his characteristic openness and at times almost self-defeating honesty, Mr Bush has been the first to acknowledge his mistakes – for example, tardiness over Hurricane Katrina – but there are some he made not because he was a ranting Right-winger, but because he was too keen to win bipartisan support. The invasion of Iraq should probably have taken place months earlier, but was held up by the attempt to find support from UN security council members, such as Jacques Chirac's France, that had ties to Iraq and hostility towards the Anglo-Americans.
History will also take Mr Bush's verbal fumbling into account, reminding us that Ronald Reagan also mis-spoke regularly, but was still a fine president. The first
MBA president, who had a higher grade-point average at Yale than John Kerry, Mr Bush's supposed lack of intellect will be seen to be a myth once the papers in his Presidential Library in the Southern Methodist University in Dallas are available.
Films such as Oliver Stone's W, which portray him as a spitting, oafish frat boy who eats with his mouth open and is rude to servants, will be revealed by the diaries and correspondence of those around him to be absurd travesties, of this charming, interesting, beautifully mannered history buff who, were he not the most powerful man in the world, would be a fine person to have as a pal.
Instead of Al Franken, history will listen to Bob Geldof praising Mr Bush's efforts over Aids and malaria in Africa; or to Manmohan Singh, the prime minister of India, who told him last week: "The people of India deeply love you." And certainly to the women of Afghanistan thanking him for saving them from Taliban abuse, degradation and tyranny.
When Abu Ghraib is mentioned, history will remind us that it was the Bush Administration that imprisoned those responsible for the horrors. When water-boarding is brought up, we will see that it was only used on three suspects, one of whom was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda's chief of operational planning, who divulged vast amounts of information that saved hundreds of innocent lives. When extraordinary renditions are queried, historians will ask how else the world's most dangerous terrorists should have been transported. On scheduled flights?
The credit crunch, brought on by the Democrats in Congress insisting upon home ownership for credit-unworthy people, will initially be blamed on Bush, but the perspective of time will show that the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started with the deregulation of the Clinton era. Instead Bush's very
un-ideological but vast rescue package of $700 billion (£480 billion) might well be seen as lessening the impact of the squeeze, and putting America in position to be the first country out of recession, helped along by his huge tax-cut packages since 2000.

More importantly, GWB showed exceptional moral courage when he backed Gen. Petraeus's daring plan to increase US troops in Iraq, the so-called Surge. Despite grandstanding by the likes of the cowardly Hillary Clinton and thedespicable NYT which allowed a cabal of treasonous whack-jobs [MoveOn.org] a discount in printing a manifesto the day the esteemed General testified in front of Congress, the Surge worked and girly-men like Harry Reid have had to eat their treasonous words about the war being "lost." If they had any sense of honor, they would feel shame, but they are shameless and without conscience.

Sneered at for being "simplistic" in his reaction to 9/11, Bush's visceral responses to the attacks of a fascistic, totalitarian death cult will be seen as having been substantially the right ones.
Mistakes are made in every war, but when virtually the entire military, diplomatic and political establishment in the West opposed it, Bush insisted on the surge in Iraq that has been seen to have brought the war around, and set Iraq on the right path. Today its GDP is 30 per cent higher than under Saddam, and it is free of a brutal dictator and his rapist sons.
The number of American troops killed during the eight years of the War against Terror has been fewer than those slain capturing two islands in the Second World War, and in Britain we have lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front. As for civilians, there have been fewer Iraqis killed since the invasion than in 20 conflicts since the Second World War.
Iraq has been a victory for the US-led coalition, a fact that the Bush-haters will have to deal with when perspective finally – perhaps years from now – lends objectivity to this fine man's record.

Roberts and The Telegraph demonstrate, as does Bernard-Henry Levi, that not all Europeans have succumbed to the collective hysteria engendered by the continent's loss of real power on the geopolitical stage.

Russia Blames US for Gas Pipeline Eff-Ups

Gerhard Schroeder must be getting extra kneepad time in front of his Empoisoner Master Vlad Putin, as the Kremlin laughingly blames US skullduggery for the Ukraine inability to wheel its gas to needy Balkan countries [Bulgaria & Romania]. In the meantime, Belarus, which has been on kneepads in front of dwarf Putin for over a decade, pays a price roughly one-third the exorbitant fees the Dwarf is trying to impose on the Ukraine. The Dwarf wishes to bitch-slap Ukrainian nationalists into submission with gas overcharges.

The FT headline has the EU "baffled" by the natural gas contretemps. Why don't we just say "muzzled" to make the situation clear. The clown named Medvedev in charge of Gazprom notes:

Gazprom had declared “force majeure” on its gas exports to Europe and warned it would unleash its “entire legal arsenal” against Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Stern, who used to hum during long IAEE conferences we both attended during the late eighties [he explained to me that he is an amateur musician] and now head of Oxford Energy's gas research, summed it up with the observation that Russian & Ukrainian statements were

“all smoke and mirrors”

Perhaps a musical metaphor like "andante" would better fit this deathmarch toward a frozen destiny befitting the Dwarf Second Napoleon now guiding Moscow's policies.
.

Hamas Leaders Hide in Hospitals, UN Schools, Mosques

The Rabid Rabbits who comprise Hamas leadership are displaying their underworld nature by using human shields of various sorts.

Ten years ago, I was short-listed for the UN job of UNRWWA chief in Gaza, which would pay handsomely but require me to live in the arms-infested hellhole Hamas has made Gaza into. I thank God every day that this cup passed from my lips, and I did not drink the "cup of poison" Ayatollah Khomeini spoke about. Subsequently, on one of my trips to Israel while working for Amoco, I met and befriended one of the former heads of Shin Beth. Here is what another ex-Shin Beth chief said:

Hamas is using Gaza's Shifa Hospital as a meeting place and even distributed salaries to its operatives there over the weekend, Public Security Minister and former Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) head Avi Dichter said Monday morning.


SLIDESHOW: Gaza op, Day 17
Speaking on Army Radio, Dichter noted that "on Saturday, January 10, which is the day salaries are distributed in Gaza, several Hamas commanders who cannot come out of hiding were given their salaries at their hiding places. But those commanders who can move around Gaza made their way to Shifa Hospital to receive their wages."

Regarding Israeli intelligence reports that the Hamas leadership had taken refuge in Gaza's Shifa Hospital, Dichter said that the "Shifa Hospital has long ago ceased to be just a hospital, just as the UNRWA humanitarian and health services in Gaza long ago ceased to be just humanitarian services providing food and medical services."

"UN schools in Gaza long ago stopped being just schools," the minister said. "All these services and places are refuge for Hamas terrorists and commanders."

Daniel Pipes [whom I hired to come to Amoco to explain the FIS phenomenon in Algeria in the mid-nineties] is very pessimistic that Israel is bloody-minded enough to do the necessary in Gaza.

Polls: Minnesota Style

Really Cold Winters freeze more than the brain, but a "poll" which comes to the conclusion that "Coleman should concede" also comes to the following conclusion:

Only 38 percent of Minnesotans surveyed said they view Coleman favorably. 44 percent have an unfavorable view.
Franken scored similarly with 37 percent favorable and 45 percent unfavorable.

Don't check your eyeglasses. If the morons at the site actually could write, they might have noted that "Franken scored even lower, rather than use the word "similarly." But being Vikings fans, their thinking processes are probably a bit out of kilter!

Once again, it's just those zany folks in Minnesota, the dumbest collection of loo-zers in the USA [except maybe for the state of Washington, whose current governor stole her seat just like Franken did in the Land of 10,000 toxic waste dumps.]

US Tops World in Innovation Rankings

Despite economic convulsions, the US "remains the world's most most innovative economy, with unrivalled business sophistication and competitiveness, according to a new study by INSEAD, the Paris-based business school," according to the Financial Times.

The United Kingdom – also mired in recession – is the world’s fourth most innovative economy, ranking behind Germany and Sweden, the study found.

The Global Innovation Index – released in New Delhi on Tuesday – looks far beyond traditional indicators of innovation such as the percentage of gross domestic product spent on research and development, numbers of engineering graduates, and numbers of patents obtained and scientific papers published each year.

Instead, the index seeks to measure an economy’s potential for a broad range of innovation – including social, marketing, and business innovations – by assessing its institutions and policies, infrastructure, and business and market sophistication as well as people’s skills.

The study also assessed wealth, competitiveness and knowledge in the overall rankings of 130 nations.

The link above has many details, including a comparison between China and India:

China ranks higher for innovation and 37th globally, compared to India, ranked 41st. However, the rankings also show striking differences in the strengths and weaknesses of the two Asian giants.

China ranks 48th globally in terms of its infrastructure – including telecommunications infrastructure – far exceeding India, which is ranked 76th. China is ranked the 5th most competitive economy in the world.

However, India’s human skills, ranked 28th globally, outperform China’s which are 38th.

“China has a tremendous ability to delivery on infrastructure fast,” said Prof Dutta. “But India is leveraging its human capacity into competitiveness.”

Some more interesting details emerged from the massive study:

Within Asia, the Global Innovation Index judged Singapore the region’s most innovative economy, ranking it fifth globally, followed by South Korea, which ranked sixth in the world. Singapore was judged second in the world – behind Finland – in its institutional and policy environment, while South Korea topped the global list for knowledge production.

Japan, the world’s second largest economy, lagged behind, ranked third in Asia and ninth globally, faring poorly on measures of its institutions and market and business sophistication. Hong Kong ranked 12th globally overall, with its markets judged the most sophisticated in the world, but its human skills ranked only 26th globally.

How long the US can maintain its premier position, of course, is unknowable, but as the entire world economy stumbles, it appears that the US will be hit less hard than a lot of more vulnerable economies, the FT opines.

Seattle P-I and Red Star Tribune Approach Termination

Two States which have recently committed massive fraud overlooked by local press, Washington in getting a bi-yotch guv in 2004 after a half-dozen vote frauds to deprive the Repub candidate, allowing the RICO scheme/scam to continue in Seattle, and of course Minnesota, which followed a pro wrestler for guv with a cheating porn comedian for Senator, the latter after recounts until he overcame a lead by Repub Coleman.

The Red Star Trib will only be missed by commissars awaiting the next party line, but they can get that from the NYT after the RST ceases publication. The NYT continues to gush red ink and if the hemorrhaging continues, in a few years will be reduced to an on-line presence. The Silent Majority doesn't want or need birdcage bottom material delivered to the door any more.

Happily, the WSJ is gaining circulation.

Why Waziristan and its Neighbors Should Keep Us Awake at Night

CSIS has issued a shortish study [pdf] on Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas where a host of baddies dwell, at least from time to time, and Osama's presumed place of residence, if a cave can be deemed a dwelling.

I did a year-long stint at CSIS in the early eighties, at a time when both Kissinger and Brzezinski had office space in the think tank. Here's the opaque prose that serves as the Executive Summary:

Increased militancy and violence in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan known
as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan has brought FATA into sharper focus, as
U.S., Afghan, and Pakistani leaders attempt to find solutions to the problems underlying the situa-
tion there. This most dangerous spot on the map may well be the source of another 9/11 type of at-
tack on the Western world or its surrogates in the region. Should such an attack occur, it likely will
be spawned in the militancy that grips FATA and contiguous areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan
today. The principal actors are the Taliban, in both countries; their allies—former Soviet-era mu-
jahideen commanders including Gulbadin Hekmatyar of the Hezbe Islami and the Haqqani group
(headed by Jalaluddin and his son Siraj); Sunni militants from Central and Southern Punjab; and
al Qaeda, which benefits from links to most of these insurgents. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar
is suspected to be hiding in southwestern Afghanistan and Pakistani Balochistan. The Taliban
are engaged in a struggle against foreign forces inside Afghanistan and now against the military
in Pakistan. Hekmatyar has spoken against the Pakistani government but has not yet taken up
arms against it. The Haqqanis have also not provoked a battle with the Pakistani forces as yet. The
Punjabi militants, however, have become franchisees of al Qaeda and have been linked to attacks
on the Pakistani state and its army.
While many ideas have been put forward for tackling the issues facing FATA, too often they
rely on longer-term plans and solutions. This report attempts to define the conditions that spawn
militancy and violence among the Pakhtun tribesmen that inhabit FATA and suggest practicable
ways of approaching them in the short and medium term. Concrete actions by the principal
actors—the U.S., Afghan and Pakistan governments and the U.S. and Pakistan militaries—are sug-
gested. These will need to be underpinned by a national debate in Pakistan, in particular, on the
nature of the country’s polity and the need to tackle terrorism and militancy as domestic issues.
But the debate will need to be rooted in a clear consensus among the civil and military leadership
on the nature of the Pakistani state and society and how to tackle the growing militancy inside
the country and in broad-based support from major political parties and the general public. The
United States needs to forge a longer-term relationship with Pakistan and its people, shifting from
a transactional relationship to one built on strategic considerations and respect for Pakistan’s political
and development needs. Failure to bring peace and to restore a modicum of stability to
FATA will have widespread repercussions for the region and perhaps the world.

Arnaud de Borchgrave has a nice intro with one immortal sentence:

How does one deal with members of Pakistan’s parliament who asked Gen. David M. McKier-
nan, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, “Why did you Americans come to Afghanistan
when it was so peaceful before you got there?”

For a quick visual glimpse on why Pakistan is a powder keg which will explode or implode, depending on the scenario, unless of course, it becomes involved in a [nuclear?] war with India beforehand, check out pages 3-5. Bear in mind that the tribes and colored areas on the map are the loci of immemorial feuds and death squads from times out of mind, both internal and external. Alexander the Great encountered these folks and grudgingly admitted their fighting capacity, as did the British colonials 2200 years later. Even today, the government of Pakistan has less than complete control of many of the areas in FATA, the NWFP and Baluchistan. Also, adjacent regions in Afghanistan are out of Kabul's control as well, giving the entire mini-region an aspect of barely-contained anarchy. My one visit to Peshawar during one of my many sojourns in Pakistan back in the '80s was an instructive lesson [narrated by local experts with the sharp humor that Pakistanis maintain toward their own foibles] in the intractable resilience of long-held disputes. I was even dined at the Officer's Mess where young Winston Churchill drank between expeditions into the countryside potting away at hostile tribesmen.

In case anyone is inclined to become complacent, pp. 9-10 discuss events under the heading "The Rising Militancy" thusly:

he balance has been swinging in favor of the militants and terrorists inside both Afghanistan
and Pakistan. Afghanistan is now facing a dramatic change from insurgency to civil war, with the
NATO- and U.S.-supported government losing control of larger swathes of territory.8 Pakistan too
has lost its ability to manage FATA to its ends as it did in the past and is fighting desperately to
regain control even over parts of the NWFP where home-grown militancy has created a parallel
government of terror.

All this in a region where backyard smelters turn molten automobiles and scrap iron into AK-47s and larger armaments with their munitions with perfect simulacra of the Soviet era. Read the entire 44 pages to depress your mood, or just dwell on a Chapter called Basic Perceptions and Realities in FATA—a most dangerous place:

Certain basic perceptions and realities emerge from the experience of the United States in Afghan-
istan after 2001 and Pakistan’s foray into FATA:
■ The United States went into Afghanistan without a comprehensive plan for winning the war
beyond the military ouster of the Taliban (evidenced by its shift of focus to Iraq), or for the
socioeconomic rehabilitation of the country after decades of war.

■ The United States failed to see the proactive need to help Pakistan transform its own army and Frontier Corps into a counterinsurgency force or help equip and train them for that purpose; It
has been in reactive mode ever since 2001.

■ Afghanistan has shown no willingness to address the grievances of the Taliban against the
excesses of the Northern Alliance forces in the wake of the U.S. invasion. This keeps the anger
of the Taliban and their Pashtun supporters alive.


■ The United States cannot win the war in Afghanistan without the full and willing participation
and support of Pakistan, its army, and the general population, especially with a new civilian
administration in place. It certainly cannot win by aligning itself to any one Pakistani leader,
political or military, as evident in the past reliance on President and General Pervez Musharraf.

■ The United States depends for more than 80 percent of cargo and 40 percent of its fuel in
Afghanistan on transit shipments via Pakistan; Uzbekistan has expelled the United States; and
Russia has the ability to block overflights to reach Turkmenistan or Tajikistan and then into
Afghanistan. The only other relatively shorter land route is via Iran from Chahbahar on the
Arabian Sea. But U.S. hostility toward Iran makes that an impossible alternative. This severely
limits the United States’ options in taking military action inside Pakistan that could provoke a
backlash, including the closure of this supply route into Afghanistan.

■ Pakistan, its army, and the ISI have maintained an ambivalent position regarding the Afghan
Taliban, based on the twin supposition that the United States would exit the region yet again,
perhaps after capturing or killing some key al Qaeda leaders, and that the Pashtun Taliban
would return to power in Kabul. They would rather have a neutral or friendly Pashtun govern-
ment in power, even if it is the Taliban.


■ On its part, Afghanistan fears a Pakistani desire to maintain control over Afghanistan because
of its land-locked status and as a “client” state.

■ Another powerful and persistent perception inside Pakistan is that rival India has chosen to
develop civil and military ties with Afghanistan and even to fuel militancy inside Pakistan in
retaliation for past (and perhaps current) Pakistani support for militants in Indian-held Kash-
mir. Many Pakistanis see a conspiracy to encircle and weaken Pakistan in the region.

■ Yet neither confrontation nor capitulation by Pakistan to U.S. interests in Afghanistan and
FATA is the right approach. Rather, engagement and a joint effort to eliminate the militancies
inside Afghanistan and Pakistan is the best approach.

■ The Pakistan Army is seen as an alien force inside FATA. The Frontier Corps has lost its effi-
cacy over the years. Both the army and the FC are ill-equipped and ill-trained for counterinsur-
gency (COIN) warfare. Compounding their difficulty is the fact that they are operating inside
their own borders against their own people.

■ The traditional system of governance inside FATA involving the government’s political agents
interacting with largely compliant tribal maliks, who are on the official payroll, has been sup-
planted by a freer system under which renegade leaders have emerged and the religious leaders
have taken on greater import. The old system cannot be restored in its entirety nor for the long
run.

■ No plan for FATA will work unless it involves the local people and they are given a responsible
role in its implementation. However, all efforts will need to be made to ensure that the tradi-
tional “leakage” of funds or resources to the privileged few is prevented or reduced and that
there is equitable sharing of opportunities and finances.

I once spent half-a-night discussing with the Agriculture Minister of NWFP his complete and total conviction that Pakistan would eventually split into two parts, the Pushtun and Baluchi parts devolving into Iran while to the East, the Punjab and Sindh would revert back to India. This was a minister in the NWFP government, mind you.

I can see why this gentleman would have many reasons to believe that things would get worse [this was around 1985] in the surrounding areas, and so far his pessimism seems amply justified by ensuing events.

Harry Reid Spirals Downward in the Porcelain Exit Tunnel

This link sums up the epic and serial incompetence of a compleat dodo, who makes a gaffer like Joe Biden look like a genius. [Good thing those pesky Hezbollah have been chased out of Lebanon!]

If the people of Nevada don't realize that Harry Reid makes Jimmy Carter look relatively [!] sane and competent [see my previous post], then they should re-elect this girlie man with a squeaky voice in 2010. He makes Pelosi look relatively [!] good.

Jimmy the Cuckoo Clock on His Monthly Quacking Rant---Hamas' Best US Buddy

Some Questions assert themselves on reading this WaPo exhalation from this specimen of halitosis birdclock crying cuckoo...

"defensive tunnel..." and Jimmy the Gasbag knows it was defensive...how? Most arms and missiles reaching HAMAS arrive underground, doesn't the quarterwit anti-semitic failed peanut farmer [also failed in another job, this a DC stint] know that? But if Israel bombed the tunnel, it must be defensive, because a terrorist told him so.

And those 17 mosques? The AIS? Why doesn't James Earl Flatulent not cite the Israeli allegation that the HAMAS terrorists employ mosques, schools and private residences as launching pads for missiles and arms caches for terrorist cadres? Isn't that an acceptable alternative explanation, since it occurs so often in S. Lebanon, Iraq, and other countries where this aggressive hostile-to-the-west religion has its fanatical suicidal maniacs at large?

And last week, over 100 Iraqis, including tribal sheikhs in a conference in Kirkuk trying to iron out differences between Sunnis and Shi'ites, and mostly women & children in an open marketplace, were killed by Islamic terrorists. But not a peep or a scowl from those high-minded UN observers who scold Israel every time it kills a "defenseless" civilian in Hamas while a terrorist often uses said civilian as a human shield.

Why no cry of outrage from this terrorist-loving, anti-semitic, over-the-hill drooler?

Because this gullible geezer believes anything Hamas tells him and hates Israel, that's why...

He really believes he's still a player, when he's always being played...

Brave Hamas Fighters Use Human Shields in Gaza

The inbred race of cowards running Gaza are employing schools and mosques, often filled with civilians fleeing the fighting, to launch mortars and rockets.
And of course, when the Israeli military retaliates and the civilian human shields are killed, Reuters and AP note the civilian deaths, but only mention the circumstances far into the story....

Sound familiar? Hezbollah played the gullible quarter-wits in the press two years ago in Lebanon, staging photo-ops that the ignoramuses in Reuters and AP lapped up like the puppy dogs they are.

And the inflammatory press reports fuel anti-Semitic outbreaks in Denmark and France, among other neo-Nazi and Islamic terrorist havens....
UPDATE Q.E.D. France's Channel 2 Public TV [which is run by the government and reflects Elysee sentiments] has footage from a 2005 militant munitions truck explosion with dozens of dead bodies scattered which France2 claimed were from this week until FOUND OUT or expose!!!

This at the very time that crazy Muslim terrorists are attacking synagogues and French Jews in the streets. The French have a term for such behavior, and France2 is obviously acting as an agent provocateur.

Coulter "Banned for Life" at NBC nutwork in cunning marketing ploy

Wizbang notes how the nutroots are echoing NBC's clever promotion campaign for Coulter's book! NBC brilliantly canceled a long-scheduled Coulter appearance on the Today Show to show ideological solidarity with the young woman who will certainly benefit from the free publicity.

But from another perspective, it’s wonderful to see the NBC nutwork continuing its elaborate seppuku rituals as a buffoon named Zucker tries to dumb down the moronic collection of clowns on Today even further. Ann Curry will hopefully pluck at Perez Hilton's garments while he is doing Deep Thoughts to replace Coulter, demonstrating NBC's new policy of getting leftist intellectuals on the early morning gabfest, and Perez certainly fits their idea of intelligentsia heft!

Going back, this is reminiscent of NBC's cunning market move to see how hockey makes it instead of the NFL on weekend sports in the Fall/Winter slot,, though that brilliant idea was hatched back in the ’90s. Now they’ve got Leno in prime time 10PM and when that doesn’t work, Conan will destroy their Tonight Show just like the Today Show is swirling round & round in the porcelain exit chute….

Commissar Zucker is demonstrating the failure of capitalism, one corporate unit at a time!

20 Most Annoying Liberals

Although Bernard Goldberg has a more exhaustive survey [100] of the corrupt gaffe-prone morons who comprise the ultra-left human sewer in U.S. politics, I can't argue with Right Wing News in its top twenty. Although Hillary shouldn't really be on the list and Obama isn't THAT annoying [give him time, he'll get there], the rest richly deserve all the contempt and contumely they receive on Right Wing News' annual sum-up.

And Mrs. Andrew Sullivan makes Markos the Guinea Greek look like a sane person!

Dingy Girlie Man Harry Reid Should Put a Sock in it.

The Senate Majority Leader continues his high-pitched whining about President Bush, whom the historians will rate far higher than the querulous loo-zer who proclaimed in early '07 that "the war is lost" just before Bush and Petraeus won the war with the surge.

Occasionally, Pelosi acts like a human being, but the odds are that Dingy Harry will lose the next Nevada senate election in '10.

Especially if he keeps on making a fool of himself, like the link above demonstrates, in a non-stop fashion....! Does this fool really think that most Americans are even dumber than he is?

Washington State Proves Democrats are Becoming a RICO Enterprise

Washington Huskie football isn't as bad as the state's rotten corrupt political system, which the WSJ writes at length about to demonstrate how Minnesota, another rotten sewer as politics goes, rapidly is devolving into a Washington-state wannabe.

Democrats have more lawyers by far than Republicans, and these lawyers are predisposed to win at any cost. Plus as Illinois demonstrates, the old machine politics of the early 20th century has now for all practical purposes evolved [or devolved] into a business/political criminal enterprise. Obama may be the lotus flower, but Blagojevitch and Emanuel are the mud and goo out of which Obama flourished.

The Democrats are still whining about how they were unable to cheat the buffoon Gore into the White House in Florida in 2000. Numerous recounts and Gore's own stupidity made it clear that the nation was better off with a three-digit IQ male in the Oval Office than the Gore-bot and his lockboxes.

But if there is one resolution that 2009 should engender, it is to turn around the disturbing tendency of ultra-left Democrats to abandon completely any ethical, moral, or even legal [as happened in Washington in 2004] boundaries to achieve what these unhappy people---who have no other codes in their lives---regard as victory.

Jake Tapper of ABC gets the Soros-Move-On-bot MN SecState's knickers all twisted up in the creepy functioonary's pathetic justification of stealing a senate seat for the stupidest state among the 50 allowed so far in the USA.