FT. HOOD SHOOTING

Viktor David Hanson's view.

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

Bruce Bawer's take.


Most of the people in the mainstream media, I suspect, could also see early on exactly what was going on — but to an outrageous degree, they, too, spent Thursday evening doing their best to turn away from the obvious truth. Throughout the evening military and other authorities kept saying, and the talking heads on CNN kept repeating, that there was no sign that this was “a terrorist act” — as if Nidal Malik Hasan had to be officially connected to al-Qaeda to be a jihadist, a pious Muslim who saw the infidel as his enemy.

REPUBLICAN HEALTH CARE BILL

The Republicans certainly have a much lower price tag on their bill. I will be watching to see how the critics deal with it.

The Congressional Budget Office Wednesday night released its cost analysis of the Republican health care plan and found that it would reduce health care premiums and cut the deficit by $68 billion over ten years.



The Republican plan does not call for a government insurance plan but rather attempts to reform the system by creating high-risk insurance pools, allowing people to purchase health insurance policies across state lines and instituting medical malpractice reforms.



"Not only does the GOP plan lower health care costs, but it also increases access to quality care, including for those with pre-existing conditions, at a price our country can afford," House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

GOLD & US ECONOMY

This report in the Financial Times that India is buying a massive amount of gold indicates a lack of faith in the dollar.

GLOBAL WARMING QUESTIONED

I am seeing more "academic" articles questioning global warming as just a current phenomena. When I saw this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education questioning it, I began thinking that the questions have moved far beyond those so-called "right-wing," anti-intellectuals. I like the historical perspective of this scientist.

People have changed the planet's climate, warming the atmosphere by churning out greenhouse gases.

But that process didn't start during the Industrial Revolution. It began thousands of years ago, according to a controversial hypothesis, before anyone uttered the phrase "global warming."

The warming, triggered by a relative handful of farmers, some cutting and burning forests and others planting rice paddies, could be the best way to explain one of the strangest oddities in earth's climate record. The notion has admirers but also adamant detractors, who say it has major holes and—just as seriously—provides an excuse for skeptics of current global warming to say that climate change is a long-term trend that has little to do with car tailpipes and modern industry.

PROBLEMS WITH STIMULUS SPENDING

Reason.com has an interesting graph showing that the stimulus money is being spent disproportionately. The states with the highest unemployment are receiving fewer funds per person than states with lower employment. If one accepts the premise of the stimulus it should be spent in places where you need to jump-start the economy. And it looks like Congress and the administration are most focused on Washington D.C. where unemployment is less of an issue because of all the government jobs available. Poor Michigan and California.

And once again Business Week had an interesting article about the lack of investment in research and development. Both business and the federal government are very short-sighted, because it is r & d that creates future jobs. Stimulus money spent to keep some people hired in a day-care center has much less impact than money spent to develop innovations that lead to the jobs of the future. Washington and businesses are just focused on the present and not the future. But the future will come at some point.

CYNICISM

OBAMA'S FOREIGN POLICY

A discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of Obama's foreign policy. Is he just engaged in community organizing at the international level?

CONGRESS vs. UFOS

. . .more Americans believe in UFOs than approve of the job done by Congress. Wow!

HOLLYWOOD'S PORTRAYAL OF SOVIET COMMUNISM

Tim Cavanaugh wrote an interesting analysis of how Hollywood presented the Soviet system and values (as well as America's). He summarizes a number of films produced since WWII and tries to assess a variety of reasons Hollywood did this, including that Soviet society was "boring" or "dull" to the ideological left bias of Hollywood. However one views Cavanaugh's assessments, I find Hollywood's shortcomings to be quite significant when you contrast this with the richness of both Soviet and East European filmmakers as they dealt with life in the Soviet system.

An aside: I think Ninotchka and The Russians Are Coming are must sees when you want to raise your spirits.

MURDER BUSH

Gore Vidal wishes he had murdered Bush. (video)

DEATH OF THE DOLLAR

Another, what some call a pessimistic perspective, but he seems to conclude on a positive note. I haven't seen many positive comments about the future of the dollar. Most people seem to feel the dollar is in decline, but there is debate on what will follow.

Whichever path we take, like it or not, we will be moving away from current arrangements, the dollar-reserve system. There are only two questions: will the movement away be orderly or disorderly, and will America play a part in shaping the new system that will emerge? I believe that the transition to the new system will be smoother and that both the United States and the world will benefit if we stop putting our heads in the sand and help create the worldwide reserve system that the globalization of financial markets requires. Keynes recognized the need for such a global reserve currency seventy-five years ago. At the Bretton Woods meeting of 1944, in a costly act of self-interest, the United States blocked the full implementation of Keynes’s scheme. This is an old idea whose time has finally come.

STIMULUS MONEY

CBS is beginning to sound like Foxnews! Misspent stimulus money--who would have dreamed this would happen? It's just Chicago politics.

HONDURAS

I find it interesting that Senator Kerry (D, Massachusetts) is trying to "withdraw" a Library of Congress study that he and the Obama administration do not agree with regarding the recent Honduran revolution.