Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

I can't believe they actually polled this:

It appears a majority of New Jersey residents agree with Gov. Chris Christie: The hit MTV reality show "Jersey Shore" is doing more harm than good to the Garden State.

According to the new poll from Quinnipiac University, 54 percent of New Jersey voters say the show is bad for the state's image. It's a sentiment that reaches across party lines (Republicans agree 57 – 18 percent while Democrats agree 52 – 22 percent) and gender division (men say the show is bad for the state 51 – 25 percent and women agree 57 – 15 percent).

I am most interested in the 46 percent who do not agree or are unsure that the show is bad for the image of New Jersey.  Does that say more about the 46 percent, or more about the image of New Jersey?

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From the Lebanese website Naharnet:

"Israel once again penetrated Lebanon's mobile phone networks on Tuesday, sending text messages to citizens announcing a tangible reward for information about the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad, NBN television reported."

It is hard to believe that the Israelis actually think the messages will result in information about Ron Arad.

Rather, this seems like a bit of psychological warfare as tensions heat up in the prelude to the possible indictments of various Hezbollah figures in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, as well as reported war preparations related to the Iranian nuclear dispute.

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TBogg to Tucker Carlson:

"Go get a real job."

You mean, like yours?

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On Friday, Barack Obama dropped a political bombshell with wide ranging implications for the U.S. war on terror and relations with the Muslim world.  Obama then disappeared from the domestic political scene, as a fury of recriminations reverberated throughout the political sphere and blogosphere.  Obama left others to deal with the political convulsion he had created.

That Friday was Friday, November 13, 2009.  The announcement was that the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks -- would take place in New York City, at the federal courthouse not far from where the World Trade Center had stood.  At the time of the announcement, Obama already was on Air Force One heading for a week-long trip through Asia.  Obama watched the domestic political explosion from the other side of the world.

That Friday also was Friday, August 13, 2010, when Obama announced his support for the Corboda mosque and Islamic Center being built at or near (depending on your perspective) where the World Trade Center had stood.  Obama then left for vacation the next day, first to the Gulf coast and then to Martha's Vineyard.  Other than a quick comment on Saturday, August 14, Obama mostly has maintained radio silence as the politics has reached the boiling point. 

Friday document dumps are a routine political tactic, but Obama's tactic of dropping political bombshells just as he is leaving town is a bit much.

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Strike 1 was the now infamous "when I served in Vietnam" (but I actually didn't) statement by Richard Blumenthal.

Strike 2 (via HotAir) is Blumenthal's "I don't take PAC money" (but I actually do) statement by Blumenthal:

Richard Blumenthal's words are haunting him again. Already forced to apologize for saying he had served "in" Vietnam in the Marine Reserve rather than stateside, the state attorney general's campaign for U.S. Senate is now being challenged to explain his assertion that he had "never taken PAC money" and has "rejected all special interest money."

Federal records show that he has accepted $480,000 in political action committee money since he made that claim in January.

The Connecticut Post has a blistering analysis of the Blumenthal campaign:

Blumenthal is, so far, running the worst political campaign in Connecticut history.

The man is so afraid of losing that he is headed for a self-fulfilling prophecy par excellence -- the political equivalent of diving into the East River with Jimmy Hoffa's cement shoes on.

Democrats in Washington and Chicago, calculating ways to hold the Senate should send their money to Delaware or Pennsylvania or Colorado.

Unless Blumenthal gets a guts transplant, this race is gone; this candidate is hopeless, doomed, toast.

Blumenthal is not yet toast, by far.  But Blumenthal's integrity as a candidate is on the precipice, and once that is lost, he is a goner.

We're all waiting for Strike 3, and there is no Strike 4.

Wait, maybe I'm using the wrong terminology.  How about, Blumenthal is down for the eight-count, and we're at 5?

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Ethan Bronner of The New York Times has a classic piece on the opening of a luxury mall in Gaza.

How does one balance the endless propaganda that Gaza is a concentration camp and that Israelis are committing genocide, with the reality that Gaza exceeds most of its Arab neighbors (and even Turkey) in key health measurements?

How does one balance the endless propaganda of mass starvation in Gaza with the reality that there is plenty of food available, and there was plenty of food available long before Israel eased the restriction on civilian imports?

Most of all, how does The New York Times show balance on a subject which almost never is treated with balance by the mainstream media, much less the Islamist-Leftist Anti-Israel Coalition and its blogospheric sympathizers?

Bronner achieves balance through an ingenious slight of argument:  The luxury Gaza mall is mostly an act of defiance!

As reported by Bronner (emphasis mine):

Gaza, famous for its misery, has a shopping mall. It opened a month ago to considerable fanfare, with Palestinian television cameras trailing Hamas government officials meandering proudly around the bright new stores filled with imported goods.

For Hamas, and for the Hamas-linked group of local investors behind the enterprise, the two-story mall, with its central air-conditioning and underground parking, has deep symbolic value. It is proof, they say, that despite the Israeli and Egyptian effort to isolate this Palestinian coastal strip, it can develop and thrive. Let the message go out: We will not be defeated....

But the broader point many of these advocates are making — that the poverty of Gaza is often misconstrued, willfully or inadvertently — is correct. The despair here is not that of Haiti or Somalia. It is a misery of dependence, immobility and hopelessness, not of grinding want. The flotilla movement is not about material aid; it is about Palestinian freedom and defiance of Israeli power.

Why not just admit that for years the media has painted a false picture of Gaza? 

Compared to Europe, the United States, and Israel, the living standards in Gaza are not high.  Gaza suffers for many of the same reasons that neighboring Arab countries suffer:  Political corruption, tyranny, Islamist rule, and a host of other factors which have nothing to do with Israel.

The Gaza mall does proves a point, but it is not that Israel is to blame for whatever misery exists outside the walls of the mall.

Rather, the Gaza mall proves what would be possible if the Palestinian political leadership, be it Hamas or Fatah, focused more on improving the living standards of its people rather than the endless war against the Jews.

There is a profound cognitive dissonance in the media when it comes to Gaza.  Reality does not jive with the narrative, but the narrative lives on anyway.

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I haven't posted about Count Frankula in a while.  Frank Rich's latest column, How Fox Betrayed Petraeus, is stuffed full of Rich's usual "people who don't agree with me are crazy and dangerous" filling.

Frank's point apparently is that opposition to the Cordoba mosque and Islamic center being built in the planned location has undercut General David Petraeus's surge strategy in Afghanistan, and doomed the war to failure (emphasis mine):

Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

It is, of course, interesting that Rich now claims that opposition to the Cordoba mosque is what will cause the surge to fail and the war to be lost. 

Because in October 2009, Rich predicted that an Iraq-style surge (which Rich also opposed) would not work in Afghanistan and the war would be lost:

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention. Even if the countries were interchangeable, the wars are not. No one-size surge fits all. President Bush sent the additional troops to Iraq only after Sunni leaders in Anbar Province soured on Al Qaeda and reached out for American support. There is no equivalent “Anbar Awakening” in Afghanistan.

And again in December 2009, Rich declared the nascent surge a failure and the war already lost after Obama announced his new Afghanistan policy (emphasis mine):

AFTER the dramatic three-month buildup, you’d think that Barack Obama’s speech announcing his policy for Afghanistan would be the most significant news story of the moment. History may take a different view. When we look back at this turning point in America’s longest war, we may discover that a relatively trivial White House incident, the gate-crashing by a couple of fame-seeking bozos, was the more telling omen of what was to come.

Obama’s speech, for all its thoughtfulness and sporadic eloquence, was a failure at its central mission. On its own terms, as both policy and rhetoric, it didn’t make the case for escalating our involvement in Afghanistan. It’s doubtful that the president’s words moved the needle of public opinion wildly in any direction for a country that has tuned out Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq alike while panicking about where the next job is coming from...

What he’s ended up with is a too-clever-by-half pushmi-pullyu holding action that lacks both a credible exit strategy and the commitment of its two most essential partners, a legitimate Afghan government and the American people. Obama’s failure illuminated the limits of even his great powers of reason.

On July 31, just three weeks ago, Rich even wrote a column titled Kiss This War Goodbye, arguing that the leak of tens of thousands of classified files by WikiLeak's was a Pentagon Papers-like turning point in Afghanistan, sigaling that the war was lost.

So if I understand Rich's current column correctly, the surge which Rich declared in October 2009 could not work in Afghanistan, which Rich declared had failed by December 2009, and the war that Rich kissed-off just three weeks ago, really would have worked out for us if not for the wingnuts who object to the location of the Cordoba mosque and Islamic Center.

Am I crazy and dangerous for pointing out Rich's intellectual laziness and predictability?

[Note to readers:  With this post I commence a Frank Rich tag, an honor previously bestowed upon Rich's colleague, Paul Krugman)(still no MoDo tag, but give me time)]

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Mission accomplished.  We're just like Europe, at least in terms of Gross Domestic Product per person (emphasis mine):

For quite some time, the US and the leading EU countries have been fairly comparable in terms of output per hour worked. The US has had higher output per person for two reasons: a relatively high employment/population ratio and very high average hours worked per person. The first of these is important because it raises the possibility that EU countries performing well on productivity measures are benefiting from the “Thatcher effect” . If low-skilled workers are excluded from employment, for example by restrictive macro policy, as in Thatcher’s case, or by labor market sclerosis, as claimed by critics of European institutions, then productivity measures are artificially boosted.

This issue is now moot. As a result of the crisis, the US employment/population ratio has dropped sharply, to the point where the US is now little different from the EU. The difference in GDP per person between the US and leading European countries is driven primarily by differences in average hours worked by employed people.

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Soon after the Nevada Republican Senate primary, in which Sharron Angle was a surprise winner, Harry Reid announced that he would not be available to debate Angle for several months because he was too busy. 

Here is a report from a local news station from July 2:

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., tells News 4 he's willing to debate his Republican opponent Sharron Angle.

Angle challenged Reid to debate during her interview on Face to Face with Jon Ralston Tuesday.

Today-Thursday- in a phone interview News 4 asked the Senator if he was willing to debate Angle, and when.

Reid said he wants to debate, but does not think his schedule will allow one to take place for a few months.

But the Reid campaign wanted you to forget about that.  Instead, it launched a media blitz claiming that Angle refused to debate Reid because Angle would not agree to debates after early voting had started.  Angle wanted to debate sooner.

When Nevada reporter and television host John Ralston offered Reid a debate forum on Ralston's show back in July, Reid's response was "Can't Hear Ya."

Now, Reid has relented, agreeing to a debate on October 14, just two days before early voting starts.  Yet the Reid campaign is spinning it as Angle caving in to Reid's demands for a debate:

“Sen. Reid is very much looking forward to this debate, and is pleased that Angle's new DC handlers have finally been forced to abandon their phony excuses and, despite their obviously severe reservations, allowed her to participate."

Just another of Harry Reid's games. Stall debating for several months because he was "too busy," then blaming Angle.

This brings back memories of how what you see is not what you are going to get with Reid:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, seeking to console liberal activists who were disappointed by the final version of the national health care law, assured them that there would eventually be a public option.

"We're going to have a public option," Reid said. "It's just a question of when."

I can't wait to see what Reid pulls two days before early voting starts.

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This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain:

I will not use that word even to talk about the word.  I will not say the word even in condemning people who call other people the word.  I also will hesitate to say words that sound like the word even if they mean something completely different, because the word is that bad. 

If it were up to some people, the word would be removed from the dictionary, as if the word, and not the thought behind the word, were the problem.

I hope we all can agree that no one ever should be called the word, even by comedians or people who are not comedians but are trying to be funny.  There is nothing funny about the word.

Anyone who uses the word should not be on television or radio.  Because those airwaves belong to all of us.

The fact that some people who are called the word have used the word themselves, in a different context, makes no difference.

Do not use the word.  Period.

You know what I'm talking about, don't you?

I'd tell you myself, but then I'd have to use the word.

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In a story today at Politico, Harry Reid's strategy: Winning ugly, Reid makes one of his favorite points in responding to Sharron Angle's assertions that Reid bears at least some responsibility for the economic decline in Nevada:

Reid contends that if Angle attacks him on the problems now with the economy, she must also give him his due for the times when the economy was booming in Nevada.

“She’s been in the state a long time — does she give me any credit for the 20 good years we just had?” Reid said in an interview. “If she’s blaming me for what’s wrong now, shouldn’t I get credit for the 20 years I was back there and we did so well?”

There is one major problem with Reid's line of defense.  Reid did not become Majority Leader until the Democrats took over control of the Senate in January 2007.  Until then, for most of the time Nevada was experiencing its boom, Reid was not in a position to control the nation's economic agenda the way he has been since January 2007.

It may be unfair to credit or blame any single Majority Leader for the overall economy, but there is no doubt that Reid's brand of big government is written all over the current economic problems and economic stagnation. 

Here is a chart of Nevada's unemployment rate history:


This much is beyond dispute:  When Harry Reid was not in power Nevada did quite well; since Reid has been in power, Nevada has suffered.

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I was on record, before the Cordoba mosque and Islamic Center became a national story after Obama weighed in, that the organizers should have picked a different location, because the location was bound to result in the center being a target of radical Islamists for propaganda and agitation purposes.

But I do not agree with the tenor and scope of the "Stop the Islamization" movement and protest.  Muslims, as any other religious group, should be held to abide by our civil laws.  Period.  To insist on such compliance is not anti-Muslim or Islamophobic, which is how some people want to play the issue.

An insistence on the supremacy of our civil laws does not require or justify a broad swipe at any religious group.

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The Democratic National Committee released an advertisement, posted on the DNC's "Rapid Response" YouTube Channel, mocking George W. Bush.  The ad was laughable, and much derided.

Here is how it appeared in my post earlier today, Extremely Effective DNC Ad:


Now the DNC has pulled the video from its YouTube Channel.  Here is what readers get when they click on the video:


Here is what the link turns up at YouTube:


Great job, DNC.  Did you forget that the internet has memory?  The video still is available from Mediaite and my YouTube Channel.



Update 8-21-2010:  The DNC apparently has edited the first video, removing scenes from the City Center Las Vegas project trumpeted by Harry Reid, and then posted a new version.  So the DNC is standing by its claims that the Democrats have done wonders for us and that everything is Bush's fault. (Note to readers:  At the time I prepared this post, the new video had not been re-posted yet; it appears that the DNC uploaded its edited version within an hour or so thereafter.)

And

The whole sequence is beyond strange.  The original DNC ad was widely linked and embedded across the blogosphere, including at high volume and high profile sites such as Sam Stein's column at HuffPo.  In fact, when I noticed that my embed went dead I checked Stein's post, and noticed the same problem and that commenters were complaining.  It was at that point that I began to prepare my post.

It is hard to believe that a relatively sophisticated media operation like the DNC RapidResponse group would pull a video which it knew was widely circulated in order to do minor edits.  If I had to guess, I think they decided to pull the video, and then when people started complaining and it started getting attention, they reposted with a truly meaningless edit.  Why not just restore the original by turning off the private setting?

Either that, or they are completely incompetent, because all the links and embeds to the video they wanted publicized are now dead..

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The latest release by the Rapid Response team at the Democratic National Committee will persuade everyone who, since January 2009, has been living on Mars, in a diving bell at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, on a respirator while in a deep coma, or in the headquarters of the DNC*:



* I mean no offense of omission towards those who have been in Meth induced stupors, strapped down in padded cells, or who only read Media Matters and Think Progress blog posts.

Update:  DNC has pulled the ad, but you can see it at my new post.

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In mid-June, when Obama went on television to announce that he would "inform" BP how much it had to contribute to a compensation fund for the Gulf oil spill, I predicted that the fund -- despite the grandstanding -- would not put much money in anyone's pocket anytime soon:

If the Constitution means nothing to you, and all you want is retribution, you will be left very unsatisfied.

The claims procedures apparently have not yet been worked out in detail. But if the 9/11 claims process is any indication, the process will not be fast. And claimants will be limited to compensation for economic losses, which will require that individuals give up whatever other claims they may have.

End result is that I would be surprised to see much money put in anyone's hands this calendar year.

I also predicted that the price of participating in the settlement fund would require giving up claims which otherwise might have entitled the participant to compensation:

No appeals, no second chances, not only for BP, but for individuals. The price of submitting to an arbitrary claims process is the loss of access to the judiciary and the legal process. That may be fine for many people, but it is a high price to pay as a nation supposedly of laws.

And so it is coming to pass, as The New York Times details in an article, BP Oil Spill Settlements Likely to Shield Top Defendants:

People and businesses seeking a lump-sum settlement from BP’s $20 billion oil spill compensation fund will most likely have to waive their right to sue not only BP, but also all the other major defendants involved with the spill, according to internal documents from the lawyers handling the fund....

Legal experts said that the eligibility criteria in the protocol, including the emphasis on proximity, make intuitive sense, but they will cut out large sectors of businesses and people that were indirectly but nonetheless deeply affected by the spill.

Read the whole thing, as it lays out the onerous claims forms, tight filing deadlines, and the near complete power rested in the hands of one man.

Is the claims fund better than the alternative?  Claimants have precious little time to figure that out.

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