No Oil for Pacifists

For the life of me, I just don't get why the White House continues to try to pick a fight with the Supreme Court. . . But after Chief Justice John Roberts made some entirely reasonable remarks yesterday -- and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs just had to respond -- it's now getting ridiculous.

Whether the White House has a short-term or long-term strategy or no strategy at all, it's flat-out absurd and ill-advised for the administration to think it should always have the last word. It's like my 6-year-old: "I don't LIKE your idea. I like MY idea."

It wasn't enough that Mr. Obama, for the first time in modern history, took a direct shot at the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address, when he slammed the justices for their recent campaign finance reform decision. Six of them looked on -- including the author of the opinion, key swing vote Anthony Kennedy -- while Democrats jumped up to whoop and holler.

All that, of course, was too much for Justice Samuel Alito, who shook his head and silently mouthed, "not true."

The next day, the White House just couldn't let it rest. It again had to have the last word. It put out a "fact sheet," trying to prove it was Mr. Obama -- not Justice Alito -- who was right.

Now the Chief Justice, speaking yesterday at the University of Alabama Law School, has weighed in. Responding to a question from a clearly insightful Alabama law student, Roberts said he thought the whole scene was "very troubling." . . .

Gibbs should have let this go.

This administration is going to have to be dealing with this Supreme Court for at least three more years, if not more. Its lawyers are going to have to appear before these justices to defend presidential initiatives or federal laws in case after case, big and small.

I'm not suggesting they won't get a fair shake simply because the White House is trying to stick it to the conservative justices. George Bush repeatedly got slapped down by this Court, even though he never lashed out at the justices.

But at some point -- and I'd say that point is now -- the Obama Administration is working against its interests.

They'd do well to remember that on a lot of the issues they care about, the Supreme Court gets to decide. No matter how much they stomp their feet and shout, "I don't LIKE your idea; I like MY idea," the Supreme Court is going to get the last word.

Swiss prostitutes trained to use defibrillators in brothels to prevent clients dying

[C]redit derivatives are merely a financial tool that can be used by those exposed to credit risk, say a default by the Greek government or General Electric, to share that risk with others. This lowers the costs of borrowing and helps spread risk. In addition, third parties with no exposure to the particular credit risk can bet on whether the Greeks will default. These secondary-market transactions are the same as an individual buying stock in General Electric betting it will rise. Importantly, these bets provide a liquid market for credit risk, which lowers the cost of hedging for those with primary exposure, and provides the market with better information about whether Greece or General Electric is a good credit risk. Those who might lend to the country or company, those conducting other business with it, and those who might face the risk of default in other ways, can use this information to better plan their activities.

I would have loved nothing better than to simply come up with some very elegant you know, academically approved approach to health care. And didn't have any kinds of legislative fingerprints on it. And just go ahead and have that passed. But that's not how it works in our democracy. Unfortunately what we end up having to do is to do a lot of negotiations with a lot of different people. Many of whom have their constituents best interests at heart.

Unfortunately???? Damn Democracy! Obama sees it as "unfortunate" that in a Democracy we have to do "a lot of negotiation with a lot of different people", ie: Congress.

"I have hundreds" of threatening emails, Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University in California, told Tierramérica.

He believes scientists will be killed over this. "I'm not going to let it worry me... but you know it's going to happen," said Schneider, one of the most respected climate scientists in the world. "They shoot abortion doctors here."

Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use.

4. The Commission also finds that in Venezuela, not all persons are ensured full enjoyment of their rights irrespective of the positions they hold vis‐à‐vis the government’s policies. The Commission also finds that the State’s punitive power is being used to intimidate or punish people on account of their political opinions. The Commission’s reportestablishes that Venezuela lacks the conditions necessary for human rights defenders and journalists to carry out their work freely. The IACHR also detects the existence of a pattern of impunity in cases of violence, which particularly affects media workers, human rights defenders, trade unionists, participants in public demonstrations, people held in custody, campesinos (small‐scale and subsistence farmers), indigenous peoples, and women.

5. The Commission begins by analyzing how the effective enjoyment of political rights in Venezuela -- rights that by their very nature promote strengthened democracy and political pluralism -- has been hampered. The IACHR’s report indicates that mechanisms have been created in Venezuela that restrict the possibilities of candidates opposed to the government for securing access to power. That has taken place through administrative resolutions of the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic, whereby 260 individuals, mostly opposed to the government, were disqualified from standing for election. The Commission notes that these disqualifications from holding public office were not the result of criminal convictions and were ordered in the absence of prior proceedings, in contravention of the American Convention’s standards.

6. In its report, the Commission also notes how the State has taken action to limit some powers of popularly‐elected authorities in order to reduce the scope of public functions in the hands of members of the opposition. In its observations to the present report, the State indicated that the modifications made to the instruments governing the powers and scope of authority of governors and mayors would have been made regardless of who was elected in 2008 and that they also apply to authorities of the government’s party. Nevertheless, the IACHR has noticed that a series of legal reforms have left opposition authorities with limited powers, preventing them from legitimately exercising the mandates for which they were elected.

7. In this report, the IACHR also notes a troubling trend of punishments, intimidation, and attacks on individuals in reprisal for expressing their dissent with official policy. This trend affects both opposition authorities and citizens exercising their right to express their disagreement with the policies pursued by the government. These reprisals are carried out through both state actions, including harassment, and acts of violence perpetrated by civilians acting outside the law as violent groups. The Commission notes with concern that, in some extreme cases, criminal proceedings have been brought against dissidents, accusing them of common crimes in order to deny them their freedom on account of their political positions.

8. Similarly, the Commission notes a trend toward the use of criminal charges to punish people exercising their right to demonstrate or protest against government policies. Information received by the Commission indicates that over the past five years, criminal charges have been brought against more than 2,200 people in connection with their involvement in public demonstrations. Thus, the IACHR considers that the right to demonstrate in Venezuela is being restricted through the imposition of sanctions contained in provisions enacted by President Chávez’s government, whereby demonstrators are accused of crimes such as blocking public highways, resisting the authorities, damage to public property, active obstruction of legally‐established institutions, offenses to public officials, criminal instigation and criminal association, public incitement to lawbreaking, conspiracy, restricting freedom of employment, and breaches of the special secure zones regime, among others. In its report, the Commission describes cases of people facing criminal charges for which they could be sentenced to prison terms of over twenty years in connection with their participation in antigovernment demonstrations. . .

9. At the same time, the IACHR notes that exercising the right of peaceful demonstration in Venezuela frequently leads to violations of the rights to life and humane treatment, which in many cases are the consequence of excessive use of state force or the actions of violent groups. According to information received by the Commission, between January and August 2009 alone, six people were killed during public demonstrations, four of them through the actions of the State’s security forces. This situation is of particular concern to the IACHR in that repression and the excessive use of criminal sanctions to criminalize protest has the effect of dissuading those wishing to use that form of participation in public life to assert their rights.

Particularly shocking is the commission's account of the role that violence and murder have played in Mr. Chávez's concentration of power. The report documents killings of journalists, opposition protesters and farmers; it says that 173 trade union leaders and members were slain between 1997 and 2009 "in the context of trade union violence, with contract killings being the most common method for attacking union leaders." The report says that in 2008 Venezuela's human rights ombudsman recorded 134 complaints of arbitrary killings by security forces, 87 allegations of torture and 33 cases of forced disappearance. It also asserts that radical groups allied with Mr. Chávez "are perpetrating acts of violence with the involvement or acquiescence of state agents."

There has been no accountability for these acts. "Impunity," says the report, "is a common characteristic that equally affects cases of reprisal against dissent, attacks on human rights defenders and on journalists, excessive use of force in response to peaceful protests, abuses of state force, common and organized crime, violence in prisons, violence against women, and other serious human rights violations."

To read the report is to be dismayed anew by the silence of Venezuela's neighbors and of the principal OAS organs.

The populist demagogue President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela obviously believes the Internet has got it in for him. He's accusing the web of "spreading false information" about him and his grandiose plans and so has decided that he wants it regulated -- on his terms, naturally. . .

The enraged Chavez said, "This is a crime. The Internet can't be something free where anything can be done and said. No, every country has to impose its rules and regulations It can't be that they transmit whatever they want poisoning the minds of many people -- regulation, regulation, the laws!"

If the goal is job growth, we need to admit one fact: Political entrepreneurs create fewer jobs than do market entrepreneurs. We need new mass markets, really big markets of the sort Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie created. Great employment markets are discoverable only by people who create opportunities or see them in the cracks of what already exists--a Federal Express or Wal-Mart. Either you believe that the philosopher kings of the Obama administration can figure out this sort of thing, or you don't. I don't.

FDIC chief Sheila Bair whacked bank bonuses Tuesday. People on the East Coast spend too much time around the finance and insurance industries. If the price of rediscovering the American job machine is some people across the land getting really rich, it's a small price.

Half the solar power installed globally in 2008 was installed in Spain. . . [A]s low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely, and that the industry they had created might never produce efficient green energy on its own.

In September the government abruptly changed course, cutting payments and capping solar construction. [The] brief boom turned bust. Factories and stores shut, thousands of workers lost jobs, foreign companies and banks abandoned contracts that had already been negotiated.

[The] wrenching fall points to the delicate policy calculations needed to stimulate nascent solar industries and create green jobs, and might serve as a cautionary tale for the United States, where a similar exercise is now under way. . .

In 2008 the nation connected 2.5 gigawatts of solar power into its grid, more than quintupling its previous capacity and making it second to Germany, the world leader. But many of the hastily opened plants offered no hope of being cost-competitive with conventional power, being poorly designed or located where sunshine was inadequate, for example. . .

In its haste to create a solar industry, Spain made some miscalculations: solar plants can be set up so quickly and easily that the rush into the industry was much faster than anticipated. And the lavish subsidies inflated Spanish solar installation costs at a time when they were rapidly decreasing elsewhere -- in part because of increasing competition from panel makers in China, but also because higher volumes produced economies of scale.

[G]reen jobs have become the ginseng of progressive politics: a sort of broad-spectrum snake oil that cures whatever happens to ail you. They are the antidote to economic malaise, an underskilled labor force, the inherent unwillingness of the public to suffer any significant economic and personal dislocation in order to save the environment. They enhance nationalistic vigor. (If we don't act now, the Chinese will steal all of our green jobs!) They stave off aging of stale political platforms. And I'm pretty sure they're good for bunions, too.

Obviously it is true that if we subsidize various environmental activities, this will create jobs for some people. Unfortunately, it will also destroy jobs for other people--people who make the things that would otherwise have been purchased with tax dollars. They may partially offset the economic losses of switching off a very efficient, cheap, high density energy source. They will also, hopefully, give us cleaner, cooler air to breathe. But they do not represent a net improvement in either GDP or the unemployment rate. They represent a loss.

But they're green! And green is such a pretty color. Also, everyone loves frogs. So who could possibly be against my green jobs except some cranky libertarian?

He admitted withholding data about global temperatures but said the information was publicly available from American websites.

And he claimed it was not 'standard practice' to release data and computer models so other scientists could check and challenge research.

The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital. The lack of compliance has been confirmed by the findings of the Information Commissioner. This extends well beyond the CRU itself - most of the e-mails were exchanged with researchers in a number of other international institutions who are also involved in the formulation of the IPCC's conclusions on climate change. . .

The e-mails reveal doubts as to the reliability of some of the reconstructions and raise questions as to the way in which they have been represented; for example, the apparent suppression, in graphics widely used by the IPCC, of proxy results for recent decades that do not agree with contemporary instrumental temperature measurements.

There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific 'self correction', which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.

Bluntly put, this is the political reality:

First, the battle for public opinion has been lost. Comprehensive health care has been lost. If it fails, as appears possible, Democrats will face the brunt of the electorate's reaction. If it passes, however, Democrats will face a far greater calamitous reaction at the polls. Wishing, praying or pretending will not change these outcomes.

Nothing has been more disconcerting than to watch Democratic politicians and their media supporters deceive themselves into believing that the public favors the Democrats' current health-care plan. Yes, most Americans believe, as we do, that real health-care reform is needed. And yes, certain proposals in the plan are supported by the public.

However, a solid majority of Americans opposes the massive health-reform plan. Four-fifths of those who oppose the plan strongly oppose it, according to Rasmussen polling this week, while only half of those who support the plan do so strongly. Many more Americans believe the legislation will worsen their health care, cost them more personally and add significantly to the national deficit. Never in our experience as pollsters can we recall such self-deluding misconstruction of survey data.

The White House document released Thursday arguing that reform is becoming more popular is in large part fighting the last war. This isn't 1994; it's 2010. And the bottom line is that the American public is overwhelmingly against this bill in its totality even if they like some of its parts.

The notion that once enactment is forced, the public will suddenly embrace health-care reform could not be further from the truth -- and is likely to become a rallying cry for disaffected Republicans, independents and, yes, Democrats.

Second, the country is moving away from big government, with distrust growing more generally toward the role of government in our lives. Scott Rasmussen asked last month whose decisions people feared more in health care: that of the federal government or of insurance companies. By 51 percent to 39 percent, respondents feared the decisions of federal government more. This is astounding given the generally negative perception of insurance companies.

CNN found last month that 56 percent of Americans believe that the government has become so powerful it constitutes an immediate threat to the freedom and rights of citizens. When only 21 percent of Americans say that Washington operates with the consent of the governed, as was also reported last month, we face an alarming crisis.

Health care is no longer a debate about the merits of specific initiatives. Since the spectacle of Christmas dealmaking to ensure passage of the Senate bill, the issue, in voters' minds, has become less about health care than about the government and a political majority that will neither hear nor heed the will of the people.

Voters are hardly enthralled with the GOP, but the Democrats are pursuing policies that are out of step with the way ordinary Americans think and feel about politics and government. Barring some change of approach, they will be punished severely at the polls.

Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks -- and the Acropolis too! (Verkauft doch eure Inseln, ihr Pleite-Griechen . . . und die Akropolis gleich mit!)

A bankrupt must use everything he has to raise money -- to satisfy creditors. Greece owns buildings, companies and several uninhabited islands, which can now be used to repay debt.

The Germans are fed up with paying the bills of everybody in Europe, they don't want to bail out the feckless Greeks with their flagrantly inaccurate official statistics, they resent being Europe's banker of last resort, they object to the universal demand that they plug the vast holes in the Greek deficit in the name of "European unity" -- and for the first time in a long time they are saying this out loud. . .

The euro -- the continental currency that has been rendered wobbly by Greece's national debt -- was created to help the single European market compete with the United States. But political feelings run deeper than economic needs, and without that fundamental German urge to sacrifice national sovereignty, the whole thing will fall apart.

According to [the Inner Mongolia Electric Power Industry Association] EPIA, Inner Mongolia's installed wind power capacity approaches 3.5 gigawatts, and currently nearly one-third of that is sitting idle. The remaining two-thirds capacity is supplied by turbines that run erratically, shutting off and on according to demand.

"Wind power is too concentrated" in certain regions of China including Inner Mongolia, Ma said. "When there is wind, wind power plants need to generate electricity. But power grids get overwhelmed."

And that wastes money. Nationwide, some 5 million gigawatts of wind power generating capacity never made it to the grid during the first half of 2009. Since wind farm construction costs some 10,000 yuan per kilowatt, the total idle investment is worth about 50 billion yuan [=$7.3 billion].

"The winter wind blows hard, but things aren't easy for wind power," Ma told Caijing.

Outside Inner Mongolia, wind power capacity is unevenly spread across sections of Gansu Province in the northwest, Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces in the northeast, and coastal areas such as Jiangsu Province.

With the exception of Jiangsu wind farms, most of the nation's wind energy operators concentrate power generation at a grid terminus or in areas with high concentrations of thermal plant capacity. And factors such as local market demand, power grid links, wind farm expansions and capacity peaks contribute to the fact that equivalent full load hours (EFLH) are relatively rare for wind farms.

[W]e have to pass the [healthcare reform] bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

Storyteller: "Once upon a time, when the bullets were flying all over the village, and the Zionist gangs were destroying everything, invading cities and villages, killing the young and the elderly, Muhammad and the guys were hiding. There was a heavy exchange of fire. Between whom? Between people wearing masks – nobody knew who they were - and the accursed Zionists. One side was shooting at the other, and the whole village was ablaze.

"Everybody was afraid, and people were yelling: 'Stop! The house of the mukhtar [NOfP note: village elder in Arabic] is on fire!' Everybody started screaming and crying, and the men didn't know what to do.

"After a few moments, a group of masked men came down from the roof of the house of the mukhtar. Two of them opened the back door, which led to the garden, and they took the women, the children, and the elderly out. Two other masked men continued shooting at the Jews through the window.

"Everyone started running under the cover of those masked men, until they reached Sheik Nuh in the mosque. What did they see there? They saw Sheik Nuh giving guns to the masked men, saying to them: 'Allah be with you, men! Defend your country and your honor! Don't let any Jew be happy! Attack them, men!'

"Muhammad saw his friend Isma'il among the men. Isma'il was as happy as if it was his wedding night. He held the gun firmly -- a beautiful new gun. Muhammad approached him and said: 'I see that you are happy, Isma'il.' 'Of course I am. Let's show those lowlifes what heroes we are. Let's go, Muhammad!'"

Child: "Did Muhammad know how to use a gun?"

Storyteller: "My dear children, there is not a single Palestinian village or city whose people do not know how to use a gun. Why? Because they have suckled this with their mother's milk.

If the Republicans pushing against the filibuster love majority rule so much, they should propose getting rid of the Senate altogether. But doing so would mean acknowledging what's really going on here: regime change disguised as a narrow rules fight. We could choose to institute a British-style parliamentary system in which majorities get almost everything they want. But advocates of such a radical departure should be honest enough to propose amending the Constitution first.

[T]he Founders said nothing in the Constitution about the filibuster, let alone "reconciliation." Judging from what they put in the actual document, the Founders would be appalled at the idea that every major bill should need the votes of three-fifths of the Senate to pass.

The battle is asymmetric, in the sense that scientists feel compelled to support their findings with careful observation and replicable analysis, while their critics are free to make sweeping statements condemning their work as fraudulent.

For months, climate scientists have taken a vicious beating in the media and on the Internet, accused of hiding data, covering up errors and suppressing alternate views. Their response until now has been largely to assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science and to mock their critics as cranks and know-nothings.

The fundamental problem here is that, in the decade since it joined the euro area, Athens has consistently run massive budget deficits, in violation of European Union rules, and then disguised them with less-than-honest bookkeeping. The responsible E.U. and member state officials essentially did nothing about it. . .

No doubt politicians from Berlin to Athens would have preferred to keep pretending that 16 countries could employ a single currency without an enforceable common fiscal policy. But the hedge funds called this massive bluff. Before retaliating, government authorities should factor in the possibility that the hedgies merely precipitated a crisis that Europe was going to have to face sooner or later.

Germany has the most fiscal flexibility among European Union members to help Greece, but public opposition to any assistance has been vehement. The debate has crystallized broader German misgivings about the European project into a public outcry. "It’s like a mosaic and the Greece crisis is the last stone," said Wolfgang Nowak, a former senior adviser to Mrs. Merkel’s predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, and head of Deutsche Bank’s International Forum. "More and more there is the feeling that French farmers, Polish farmers, Spanish infrastructure, that Europe is not a community but something held together by a German paycheck."

The first phase of financial crisis gave capitalism a bad name. This phase may give European social democracy a bad name.

President Obama, who pledged to establish the most open and transparent administration in history, on Monday surpasses his predecessor's record for avoiding a full-fledged question-and-answer session with White House reporters in a formal press conference.

President George W. Bush's longest stretch between prime-time, nationally televised press conferences was 214 days, from April 4 to Nov. 4, 2004. Mr. Obama tops that record on Monday, going 215 days - stretching back to July 22, according to records kept by CBS Radio's veteran reporter Mark Knoller.