David Duke associate and son of a KKK grand wizard wants in on the Palm Beach County Republican Executive Committee. One hopes he'll be show the door when the voting comes. I really don't think the secret ballot he's requesting is going to help him much.

More interesting Palm Beach news: classy (supposedly) Italian made designer crap is being made in China and the well heeled aren't too happy about it.

..."One brand, the COO of the company, chief operating officer, told me, 'We do not manufacture handbags in China.' Twenty-four hours later, I was watching them make their handbags - in China. And not just a couple, thousands and thousands with their name big across the side."

Once the supposedly Italian-made handbags arrive in Europe, the "Made in China" tags are removed. Some, however, are overlooked, because the Chinese tailors hide them in the lining of the purse near the inside pocket, Thomas said...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:56 PM | Comments (27)
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Well. It looks like someone in the new administration has balls after all.

TOKYO -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first trip abroad as President Barack Obama's chief diplomat, arrived in Tokyo with a warning to North Korea that it needs to live up to its commitments to dismantle its nuclear programs. If they don't, Secretary Clinton vowed to meet with Kim Jong Il and do a slow motion strip tease pole dance in front of him.

Okay, that part in bold I made up. But isn't it ironic that Cankles is warning the Norks not to do something that her husband pretty much enabled them to do during his reign of error?

How serious is this "warning" anyway?

Hey, I'm just asking questions here, people.

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:25 PM | Comments (89)
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Texas lawmaker Lon Burnam filed the resolution to impeach Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller today. In 2007 she refused to keep the courthouse open late to give defense attorneys extra time to file an appeal in a capital case.

[Michael] Richard was executed that night by lethal injection for the 1986 rape and murder of a Houston-area woman -- Marguerite Lucille Dixon.

Burnam is a Fort Worth Democrat. Keller is a Republican

He's calling it "neglect of duty." She has been under fire by Democrats and Republicans alike since then.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:08 PM | Comments (68)
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A lament in the L.A. Times:

Advocates for stem cell research thought Obama would quickly sign an order to reverse former President Bush's restrictions on the science. Now they are fretting over Obama's statement that he wants to act in tandem with Congress, possibly causing a delay.

Critics of Bush's faith-based initiative thought Obama had promised to end religious discrimination among social service groups taking federal money.

But Obama, in announcing his own faith-based program this month, said only that the discrimination issue might be reviewed.

And Obama's recent moves regarding a lawsuit by detainees have left some liberal groups and Bush critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, feeling betrayed, given that Obama was a harsh critic of Bush's detainee policies when running for office last year.

Y'know, if I have to be miserable about this guy, I can at least enjoy the sour looks coming from the ACLU. more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:01 PM | Comments (118)
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Interviewed by NPR:

We're going to do a few things. First of all, the rule of law applies on the border, and we want to make sure that that happens, No. 1. That means manpower. That means technology — things like ground sensors. It means interior enforcement against those who intentionally are going into the illegal labor market and creating a demand for illegal laborers, so that's all going to continue. How we do that may change with me as a new secretary, but we want to make sure the rule of law is applied, and it's applied fairly and forcefully across the border.

[...]

The section of the fence for which Congress actually appropriated the funds has been complete, but I've been one of the people out there saying, "Look, you cannot build a fence from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, and call that an immigration policy." You've got to have boots on the ground. You've got to have technology. You've got to have interior enforcement of our workplace laws. Some fencing in some places may make sense, but only if it's part of an overall system.

Unlike pro-amnesty former Secretary Chertoff, who couldn't help but insert himself into immigration policy debates, Napolitano sounds like she intends to steer clear of that sort of thing:

[NPR Interviewer:] I'm hearing a lot of enforcement from you right now. What about the other side of it? What about the immigration part of it, and changing immigration policy to allow more or fewer immigrants in?

[Napolitano:] Again, that's for the Congress to decide.

Three times the interviewer tries to coax the Secretary into talking about policy. She did a good job explaining what U.S. policy is, rather than what she thinks it ought to be.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 12:51 PM | Comments (72)
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In a continuing series of indecisions, the President is putting off making a decision about sending troops to Afghanistan. After he spent the campaign screaming his head off about the need for a surge in Afghanstan, Obama wants more time to study the issue.

Here he is at the first presidential debate, September 28, 2008:

We need more troops. The situation is getting worse. We had the highest fatalities among US troops this past year than at any time since 2002. I would send 2 to 3 additional brigades to Afghanistan. Keep in mind that we have 4 times the number of troops in Iraq, where nobody had anything to do with 9/11 before we went in, where, in fact, there was no al Qaeda before we went in. That is a strategic mistake, because every intelligence agency will acknowledge that al Qaeda is the greatest threat against the US, and that the place where we have to deal with these folks is in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ItÂ’s not just more troops. We have to #1, press the Afghan government to make certain that they are actually working for their people; #2, weÂ’ve got to deal with a poppy trade that has exploded; #3, weÂ’ve got to deal with Pakistan, because al Qaeda and the Taliban have safe havens in Pakistan. Until we do, Americans at home are not safe.

Here he is on Meet the Press, May 4, 2008, answering "Would you, as president, be willing to have a military surge in Afghanistan in order to, once and for all, eliminate the Taliban?":

Yes. I think thatÂ’s what we need. I think we need more troops there, I think we need to do a better job of reconstruction there.

And here he is today:

The latest sign of crossed signals occurred Friday, when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Obama "hasn't made a decision on augmenting our force structure in Afghanistan," three days after Pentagon officials said he would likely do so that week.

As I said, this is a continuing series where the President tells people he intends to do one thing and then goes off in a different direction.

Of course, this is spun by some Politico so-called reporter as a "methodical and independent decision-making style" which is a sharp break from the "usual style" of Bush 43. Despite his confident statements (lies?) on the campaign trail, Obama is now "questioning the timetable, the mission and even the composition of the new forces."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:31 AM | Comments (167)
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President Obama has been claiming that the spendulus is necessary to keep the United States from an economic funk like the so-called "lost decade" experienced by Japan in the 1990s:

I think that what IÂ’ve said is what other economists have said across the political spectrum, which is that if you delay acting on an economy of this severity, then you potentially create a negative spiral that becomes much more difficult for us to get out of.

We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they did not act boldly and swiftly enough, and as a consequence they suffered what was called the “lost decade,” where essentially for the entire ’90s, they did not see any significant economic growth.

Japan eventually spent $6.3 trillion building roads and bridges to nowhere on the exact same Keynesian theory that Obama says will save us. It is reasonable to ask then, how the Japanese are doing today:

That is log US real GDP (blue), log Japanese real GDP (red), and log Euro Area 15 real GDP (green), all rescaled to 0 in 2007Q4.

H/t Econbrowser for the graphic.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 10:45 AM | Comments (77)
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These numbers come out of the Pew Religious Landscape Survey via the Corner.

When it comes to questions of right and wrong, which of the following do you look to most for guidance?

How interesting. Jehovah's Witnesses (73%), Mormons (58%), and Evangelical Christians (52%) were most likely to look to religious teachings and beliefs for guidance. Among named groups, Jews (60%), "Mainline" Christians (59%), and Catholics (57%) most looked to practical experience and common sense. "Philosophy and reason" and "scientific information" didn't score well with anyone.

How would you have answered the question? Does that put you in line with the survey?

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:56 AM | Comments (176)
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Do I even have to say anything more?

LONDON (AFP) — British and French nuclear submarines collided in the
Atlantic Ocean earlier this month, officials admitted Monday,
confirming an embarrassing accident involving highly sensitive
technology.

Confirming media reports of the incident involving
Britain's HMS Vanguard and France's Le Triomphant, Britain's First Sea
Lord Admiral Sir Jonathon Band said the submarines "were conducting
routine ... patrols in the Atlantic Ocean.

"The submarines came into contact at very low speed... No injuries occurred," he said in a brief statement to reporters.

Actual serious commentary from our resident submariner at Blackfive.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 08:43 AM | Comments (51)
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Ignore the stuff about the war being an imperial adventure.* The rest is scorching good fun.

As a journalist, criticizing military policy without talking to the military is completely incompetent. But with you, it goes deeper. You hide behind political artifice to lob your mines of pre-conclusion, like a craven wretch. And really, I think that goes to the solid core of the dregs of the problem. You're not a coward merely because you're afraid to seek the truth when it might not conform to your views ... rather your chickenshit views are shaped by the fact you're a coward.

I bet you were one of those kids in high school who got the shit kicked out of him by bullies. You probably developed some deeply seated complex for power and aggression by the time you were a sophomore, and now you rail out blindly against all exhibitions of it. The irony here is that you and I probably agree on some overarching premises. This war has ultimately been waged for the same reasons all wars are waged--natural resources and geopolitical advantage; we probably see eye-to-eye there. But grow some balls, Dahr; be more honest--and brave--in the future.

Nearly every American soldier on the ground--no matter how misguided vis-à-vis the underlying motivations that brought the U.S. to Iraq--is here because of a sincere and genuine desire to help; none of them, I wager, have come to further an empire. Whether it be to fight against terrorism so people back home feel a little safer in skyscrapers, or to relieve a weary Iraqi population of a dictator, they're here for honorable reasons; just as is the case with the majority of those Iraqi soldiers (who still have targets on their foreheads). Which makes your fink agenda a slap in the face to about a million people who have fought and died and lost legs, brothers, and lots of blood in the hope of making something as simple as a secure place to live.

The military has been surprisingly forthcoming with me and all I had to do was ask. Marine Corps Colonel Patrick Malay sat with me on three different occasions, for long discussions about security in his area of operation in Anbar. One thing I learned quickly is that the military's officer corps is filled with the best of America's minds--kids that aced their college entrance exams, were the captains of their ball teams, and had to be nominated by senators to go to the schools they did. These are the guys (along with their much more experienced superiors) that are deciding strategy--and they're fucking smart. I was allowed to sit in on a couple of their high level briefings--again, all I had to do was show some kind of aptitude for objectivity--and I can tell you their comprehension of the situation on the ground is apt, their thinking clever, and their intentions centrally wrapped up with the Iraqi people.

At the heart of it all, they're smart enough to be pragmatic.....

The military's policy is designed from the bottom-up on security. The plan is simple--so simple (in theory), it can't fail. Security will bring outside investment, which will thereby enhance existing security, which will bring more investment, further enhancing security, and so on. It's uncomplicated and it's already working. The lynchpin is security....

I'm phobically allergic to the conservative Republican types the military is rife with, but I've only been in country four months and already I hate liberals. There's plenty of ugliness to report in Iraq (as there are thousands of stories of hope and headway)--and the U.S. military certainly isn't beyond reproach. Nobody's telling you to report on one side or the other. But manipulating the truth because of your own personal biases is wretched and works in the face of progress. The other end of the political spectrum disregards you, Dahr, and now I know why. I thought it was because you're a liar--but you aren't. You don't have enough backbone to be a liar. You're a craven obfuscationist, intent on promoting your agenda at the cost of a menagerie of much braver men and women.

* Actually, don't ignore it; it makes this attack all the more remarkable.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (75)
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