Some questions.
Extradite The War Criminals
“I think we should at least try to prove that what happened in Mexico must be sanctioned by Mexican laws and under our sovereignty,” Creel told us. “What can’t happen is that this now ends on an administrative sanction, or a resignation. No, no, no. Human lives were lost here. A decision was made to carry out an operation that brought very high risk to human lives.”
Mexico doesn’t completely understand Operation Fast and Furious, the American plan to help send assault rifles and revolvers to Mexico as a means of exposing the gun trafficking rings that operate along the border. The project lasted 18 months and allowed some 2,500 guns to be illegally sold to suspects the U.S. government knew to be front men for the cartels.
Let me explain it to them. The administration wanted to impose new gun controls, but needed an excuse to do so, so they perpetuated a lie that most of the guns entering the Mexican drug wars came from US gun shops, and then implemented a murderous policy to attempt to make it true.
I hope that Eric Holder is one of the people extradicted.
Not Wall Street
The housing crisis was made in Washington:
Not surprisingly, politicians have not addressed the problem, even with the benefit of hindsight. The Dodd-Frank bailout bill, which was supposed to address the problems of the housing crisis/financial crisis, left Fannie and Freddie untouched. The two government-created entities are on life support after their bailouts (speaking of which, here’s a funny cartoon), so this would have been the right moment to drive a stake through their hearts. One can only wonder what damage they will do in the future.
The biggest lie that continues to be told about the 2008 financial crisis was that it was caused by “deregulation.”
The More You Understand It
…the more you disagree:
On the whole, the most scientifically literate and numerate subjects were slightly less likely, not more, to see climate change as a serious threat than the least scientifically literate and numerate ones.
Obviously, this doesn’t surprise me at all.
Lyndon Johnson’s Greatest Quaqmire
After the Medicare/Medicaid catastrophe the single greatest policy failure of modern America is urban policy. Since the Great Society era of Lyndon Johnson, the country has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into poor urban neighborhoods. The violence and crime generated in these neighborhoods costs hundreds of billions more. And after all this time, all this money and all this energy, the inner city populations are worse off than before. There is more drug addiction and more social and family breakdown among this population than when the Great Society was launched. Incarceration rates have risen to levels that shock the world (though they make for safer streets); the inner city abortion rate has reached levels that must surely appall even the most resolute pro-choicers not on the Planned Parenthood payroll. Forty percent of all pregnancies in New York end in abortion, with higher rates among Blacks; nationally, the rate among Blacks is three times the rate among white women. Put it all together and you have a holocaust of youth and hope on a scale hard to match.
This is not a lot to show for almost fifty years of fighting poverty — not a lot of bang for the buck.
It’s worse than that. It’s a lot of destruction of lives, at a cost to the productive of trillions over the past four decades.
“Our Live, Our Fortunes, And Our Sacred Honor”
A perennial classic from Rush Limbaugh’s late father. The people currently running the country certainly have lives and fortunes, but they seem to be a little short of the “honor” stuff, sacred or otherwise.
And celebrate, amidst the hot dogs, barbecue, ice cream and fireworks, and commemorate this anniversary appropriately, with an oral reading of the document that was signed two hundred and thirty five years ago today.
[Update early afternoon (PDT)]
More thoughts from Jeff Jacoby:
If Nature and Nature’s God intended human beings to be free and equal, then the only legitimate government must be self-government. For if none of us is naturally subordinate or superior to anyone else, no one has the right to rule us without first obtaining our approval. Political power, Locke had written, stems “only from compact and agreement, and the mutual consent of those who make up the community.’’
The Declaration of Independence emphasized the point. Not only are all persons endowed by nature with the unalienable rights of equality and freedom, it avowed, but “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’’
No lawful government without consent and self-rule: It was an extraordinary doctrine for its time. . . . July 4 marks more than American independence. It commemorates the great political ideals, rooted in faith and philosophy, that vindicated that independence – and that thereby transformed the world.
But some wish to transform it back.
The Demand For Concealed Weapons In Michigan
…is being driven by women:
Most women would not have thought to carry a gun even five years ago, said Andrea Durhal. When she became a National Rifle Association certified instructor eight years ago, her classes were mostly men. Recently, women have started to fill her classes.
It took a few years for women to get over a fear of guns and take responsibility for their protection, she said.
“We’re being victimized; we’re being raped. The crimes are getting higher and the police departments are less and less,” she said. “People are realizing now that they need to be their own security.”
There’s a very interesting graphic there. The highest percentages of women getting permits is Wayne County (Detroit) and Barry County (Grand Rapids). I would have thought that Genessee (Flint) and Oakland (Pontiac) Counties would be equally high, but they’re slightly less. I wonder why?
The Last Shuttle Flight
…and the state of the space agency. A pretty good story by Joel Achenbach. I wish that he hadn’t let this stand unchallenged, though:
“It’s sad. There’s a lot more left in them. The airframes are certified for 100 flights. This one had 39 flights,” said senior mechanical technician Bill Powers, 58, who works for United Space Alliance, the primary contractor for the shuttle. USA already has laid off thousands of shuttle workers across the country. On July 22, the contractor will lay off about 1,900 more people here in Florida.
“It’s not wore-out. It’s just broke-in,” said Tim Keyser, lead mechanic for the orbiters. “It could fly another 20 years. We get into the guts of this thing, it’s pristine.”
That’s not what the CAIB said. The notion that the orbiters were “certified” for a hundred flights is one of the canards of the program. That was a design specification, but it’s a matter of the highest conceit to think that NASA could really know how many flights they were good for. If it were really true, they wouldn’t have needed so much inspection and TLC every flight, which was a dominating factor in the operating costs.
Vanity, and Arrogance
So, the socialist scumbag spent time in jail because he thought he was too high and mighty to have to pay a hooker.
While I think the perp walk should be abolished, going as it does against the notion of the presumption of innocence, it’s hard for me to feel sorry for him. I just hope he doesn’t yet become president of France. I fear, though, that this incident may make it more likely, appealing as it does to some aspects of the aristocratic French culture.
[Update a while later]
The almost overnight transformation of D.S.K. — as Dominique Strauss-Kahn is widely known in France — from alleged sexual predator to seeming victim of an unscrupulous accuser has riveted and divided the country. The news that the Sofitel maid who had accused D.S.K. of rape had repeatedly lied to prosecutors has also spurred talk of a political comeback for the one-time French presidential contender that only weeks ago was deemed impossible.
Goody.
A Solution To Global Warming
Why didn’t I think of this?
[Via Paul Hsieh, on Facebook]