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Idiot's Guide to the Axis of Evil

Mystery solved. On Sept. 6 of last year, Israeli warplanes struck a facility in the deserts of eastern Syria. The Israelis refused to explain what they had hit or why. The Syrians immediately bulldozed the site to block all further investigation. The U.S. government acknowledged the attack but declined otherwise to comment. And the world was left to speculate.

On Thursday, the Bush administration at last confirmed what had long been rumored: The Syrian facility was indeed a nuclear plant. The plant followed the same design as the Yongbyon plant in North Korea, and North Korean engineers and workers had helped to build it. North Korea and Syria had initiated discussions on the plant in 1997. Construction had commenced in 2005. When the Israelis struck, the plant was only weeks from completion.

All that would have been needed then would have been enough plutonium to start a weapons production cycle. Had the Syrians been allowed to proceed, they might well have been a nuclear weapons state by now.

This terrible story carries some significant lessons.

1) For years we have heard that it was impossible, inconceivable, that states such as Syria, North Korea, Iran or Saddam Hussein's Iraq could ever co-operate with each other. We were told that Shiite Iran could never possibly ally with Sunni terrorist groups such as Hamas or al-Qaeda. Yet again and again, over the past half dozen years, we have witnessed just that. North Korea did help Syria. Iran and North Korea did exchange technology. Iran did subsidize Hamas. Al-Qaeda leaders did find refuge in Iran.

You know, it's almost like they form an axis or something.

2) Many have urged the Bush administration to "reach out" to Syria. The Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by Lee Hamilton and James Baker, suggested that Syria could help broker a solution inside Iraq. Before that, Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher elaborately courted Syria, visiting Damascus more often than any other government on Earth. Yet the bad faith, aggression and recklessness of the Syrian regime continue unabated.

Happily, this latest deadly threat was intercepted in time. But can we at last recognize that Syria's Assad regime is part of the problem in the Middle East--not part of the solution?

3) Democrats and liberals have fiercely criticized the Bush administration for focusing on state sponsors of terrorism such as Syria and Iran, instead of focusing exclusively on non-state terror groups such as al-Qaeda. We've even heard it said that focusing on state sponsors of terror is a "distraction." But terrorists with nuclear weapons are a lot more dangerous than terrorists who lack them. Al-Qaeda's attempts to acquire nuclear weaponry have fizzled. It is from states such as Syria and Iran and North Korea that the threat of nuclear terrorism chiefly comes.

4) Military action against nuclear facilities can be effective--especially if those facilities are located far from population centres, as Syria's was. And despite Syria's command of terrorist organizations, there has been no Syrian terrorist retaliation. Something to think about in connection with the much more ominous Iranian nuclear program.

5) The revelations underscore the lethal naivete of the advisers around Barack Obama. As Gabriel Schoenfeld has pointed out on the Commentary magazine blog, Joseph Cirincione, the man most widely identified as Obama's top nuclear-affairs adviser, last September pooh-poohed as "far-right" "nonsense" the early rumors that the Syrian nuclear facility was indeed a nuclear facility.

Cirincione wrote on the Foreign Policy blog: "This [early news of the Syrian facility] appears to be the work of a small group of officials leaking cherry-picked, unvetted 'intelligence' to key reporters in order to promote a pre-existing political agenda. If this sounds like the run-up to the war in Iraq, it should. This time it appears aimed at derailing the U.S.-North Korean agreement that administration hardliners think is appeasement. Some Israelis want to thwart any dialogue between the U.S. and Syria."

Cirincione seems to have been so determined to avert what he regarded as the threat of U.S. over-reaction--so eager to promote dialogue with Syria--that he blinded himself to the reality of a nuclear threat.

And this way of thinking is not, unfortunately, unique to him. It pervades the Democratic foreign policy establishment--and especially that portion of the establishment that has gravitated to Obama.

So here's the final lesson from this week's: For the safety of the world, these people have to be kept far, far away from political power.

Store Wars

The Meatrix

Demography Is King

By DAVID BROOKS

Fifty-five years ago, 80 percent of American television viewers, young and old, tuned in to see Milton Berle on Tuesday nights. Tens of millions, rich and poor, worked together at Elks Lodges and Rotary Clubs. Millions more, rural and urban, read general-interest magazines like Look and Life. In those days, the owner of the local bank lived in the same town as the grocery clerk, and their boys might play on the same basketball team. Only 7 percent of adult Americans had a college degree.

But that’s all changed. In the decades since, some social divides, mostly involving ethnicity, have narrowed. But others, mostly involving education, have widened. Today there is a mass educated class. The college educated and non-college educated are likely to live in different towns. They have radically different divorce rates and starkly different ways of raising their children. The non-college educated not only earn less, they smoke more, grow more obese and die sooner.

Retailers, home builders and TV executives identify and reinforce these lifestyle clusters. There are more niche offerings and fewer common experiences.

The ensuing segmentation has reshaped politics. We’re used to the ideological divide between Red and Blue America. This year’s election has revealed a deep cultural gap within the Democratic Party, separating what Stuart Rothenberg calls the two Democratic parties.

In state after state (Wisconsin being the outlier), Barack Obama has won densely populated, well-educated areas. Hillary Clinton has won less-populated, less-educated areas. For example, Obama has won roughly 70 percent of the most-educated counties in the primary states. Clinton has won 90 percent of the least-educated counties. In state after state, Obama has won a few urban and inner-ring suburban counties. Clinton has won nearly everywhere else.

This social divide has overshadowed regional differences. Sixty-year-old, working-class Catholics vote the same, whether they live in Fresno, Scranton, Nashua or Orlando.

The divide has even overshadowed campaigning. Surely the most interesting feature of the Democratic race is how unimportant political events are. The candidates can spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising, but they are not able to sway their opponent’s voters to their side. They can win a stunning victory, but the momentum doesn’t carry over from state to state. They can make horrific gaffes, deliver brilliant speeches, turn in good or bad debate performances, but these things do not alter the race.

In Pennsylvania, Obama did everything conceivable to win over Clinton’s working-class voters. The effort was a failure. The great uniter failed to unite. In this election, persuasion isn’t important. Social identity is everything. Demography is king.

Over the years, different theories have emerged to describe the educated/less-educated divide. Conservatives have gravitated toward the culture war narrative, dividing the country between the wholesome masses and the decadent cultural elites. Some liberals believe income inequality drives everything. They wait for an uprising of economic populism. Other liberals divide the country morally, between the enlightened urbanites and the racist rednecks who will never vote for a black man.

None of these theories really fit the facts. It’s more accurate to say that the country has simply drifted apart into different subcultures. There’s no great hostility between the cultures. Americans have a fuzzy sense of where the boundaries lie. But people in different niches have developed different unconscious maps of reality. They have developed different communal understandings of what constitutes a good leader, of what sort of world they live in. They have developed different communal definitions, which they can’t even articulate, of what they mean by liberty, security and virtue. Demographic groups have begun to function like tribes or cultures.

We can all play the parlor game of trying to figure out why Obama, a Harvard Law grad, resonates with the more educated while Clinton, a Yale Law grad, resonates with the less educated. I’d throw in that Obama’s offer of a secular crusade hits a nerve among his fellow bobos, while Clinton’s talk of fighting and resilience plays well down market.

But these theories only scratch the surface. The mental maps people in different cultures form are infinitely complex and poorly understood even by those who hold them. People pick up millions of subtle signals from body language, word choice, facial expressions, policy positions and biographical details. Efforts to rebrand a candidate to appeal to down-market voters are inevitably crude and counterproductive.

The core message is that even if you take away the ideological differences between the parties, you are still left with profound social gulfs within the parties. There’s poignancy to that. The upscale liberals who revere Obama have spent their lives championing equality and opposing privilege. But they’ve smashed the old WASP social hierarchy only to create a new educational one.

Elitist

Why Pennsylvania Matters

By John McIntyre

Barack Obama has had three previous opportunities to knock Hillary Clinton out of the race. First, in New Hampshire in early January where all the polls pointed to an Obama win; second, on Super Tuesday in early February where a win in California (where the polls were tied) would have been enough to cripple the Clinton campaign; and then most recently in Ohio and Texas in early March, where a popular vote win in either state would have been enough to effectively knock Clinton out of the race.

Senator Obama has another opportunity tomorrow in Pennsylvania - and this time he doesn't even have to win. If he simply outperforms the latest RealClearPolitics Average which has him trailing by 5.9%, that will be enough to calm nervous superdelegates while all but eliminating any hope Senator Clinton has of claiming a popular vote victory.

Senator Clinton has a much higher hurdle. With time running out and Democrats increasingly anxious to turn their fire on John McCain, a win by 2-4 points along the lines of New Hampshire and Texas will simply not get the job done. Hillary Clinton needs a double-digit win.

Clinton will undoubtedly stay in the race with a 6-9 point victory, but at that point her chances for the nomination will be reduced to hoping for an Obama scandal or major gaffe that causes Obama's campaign to implode. Not totally impossible. But, then again, not very likely either.

Where the race could get very interesting is if Clinton is able to beat Obama by double-digits. Something to keep in mind is Pennsylvania will be the first time Democratic voters, as opposed to pollsters, have had a chance to factor in some of the recent controversies surrounding Obama the last six weeks, in particular Reverend Wright and his "bitter" comments in San Francisco. A big win by Clinton may cause a reassessment of how damaging these issues might be to Obama. On the back of Senator Obama's dismal showing in the Ohio River Valley among working class whites, his performance in Pennsylvania among downscale white voters will take on heightened importance.

A Clinton victory over 10 points will allow two critical things for the Clinton campaign.

1) Given the likelihood that Obama will overwhelmingly carry black voters and young voters, a 10+ point Clinton win, will mean Obama performed terribly among blue-collar whites. This will exacerbate angst among undecided superdelegates, fully aware that the most reasonable Democratic pathways to 270 electoral votes include wins in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey.

2) A double-digit win keeps Clinton in position to be able to ultimately claim a victory in the popular vote. And a win in the popular vote is critical to the Clinton campaign's ultimate strategy for the nomination, as it gives superdelegates the rationale (and more importantly the cover) to buck all the emotional investment in Obama as the nominee.

Here is a quick guide to sort through the inevitable post-PA spin.

--Obama wins: Race is totally over.

--Clinton wins by 5 or less: Race is effectively over.

--Clinton wins by 6-9: Status quo, which favors the front runner Obama, particularly as the clock winds down.

--Clinton wins by 10-13: Clinton remains the underdog, but her odds of being the nominee will be considerably higher than the conventional wisdom in the media.

--Clinton wins by 14+: Totally different race, as Clinton will be on a path to claim a popular vote win that will give her every bit as much of an argument as the legitimate "winner". In this scenario anything could ultimately happen, including neither Clinton nor Obama becoming the eventual nominee.

Oooops

If you have posted this week....i accidently just erased your comments.

PLEASE REPOST!!!!!

Sorry

Mr. P

Protracted

Is Obama Ready for Prime Time?

By JOHN FUND

April 15, 2008
Barack Obama's San Francisco-Democrat comment last week – about how alienated working-class voters "cling to guns or religion" – is already famous. But the fact that his aides tell reporters he is privately bewildered that anybody took offense is even more remarkable.

Democrats have been worrying about defending Mr. Obama's highly liberal voting record in a general election. Now they need to fret that he makes too many mistakes, from ignoring the Rev. Wright time bomb until the videotapes blew up in front of him, to his careless condescension towards salt-of-the-earth Democrats. Mr. Obama has a tendency to make such cultural miscues. Speaking to small-town voters in Iowa last year, he asked, "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?"

Mr. Obama is the closest thing to a rookie candidate on the national stage since Dwight Eisenhower, who was a beloved war leader. Candidates as green as Mr. Obama make first-timer mistakes under the searing scrutiny of a national campaign. Even seasoned pols don't understand how unforgiving that scrutiny can be. Ask John Kerry, who had won five statewide elections before running for president.

For all his winning ways and natural appeal to the camera, Mr. Obama hasn't really been tested in a major campaign. In 2000, then-state Sen. Obama challenged Congressman Bobby Rush, who was vulnerable after having been crushed in a bid to become mayor of Chicago. Mr. Rush, a former Black Panther, painted Mr. Obama as "inauthentic" and beat him 2-1.

In 2004, when Mr. Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, he had the good luck of watching both Blair Hull, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and Jack Ryan, the GOP nominee, self-destruct in sex scandals. Mr. Obama's eventual Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, was an unserious candidate who won the votes of only 56% of Republican voters.

Mr. Obama has prospered in Democratic primaries. But as John Harris and Jim VandeHei note in Politico.com, that's in part because these primaries have "been an exercise in self-censorship" about Mr. Obama's weaknesses. It is "indisputably true," they write, that "Obama is on the brink of the Democratic nomination without having had to confront head-on the evidence about his general election challenges."

There are many. His statements that he wants to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, combined with his lack of foreign policy experience, could hurt him. And his aides are hard pressed to come up with any deviations in a voting record the nonpartisan National Journal calls the most liberal of any U.S. Senator.

As a state legislator he was even more off-center. In 1996, he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Senate approved 85-14 and President Clinton signed into law. He twice voted "present" on a bill to ban partial-birth abortions. In 1999, he was the only state senator to oppose a law that prohibited early prison release for sex offenders.

Mr. Obama also backed a total ban on handguns, a move his campaign now says was the result of a rogue aide filling out a questionnaire. But Mr. Obama's own handwritten notes were found on the questionnaire, calling into question the campaign's version of what happened.

Everyone knows Mrs. Clinton's electoral vulnerabilities – GOP consultant Mike Murphy jokes that "half of the country thinks she rides a broom." But Mr. Obama has shown weakness with key Democratic constituencies. He's had to fend off concerns about his Middle East policies with Jewish voters; he's also won only a third of Hispanic primary voters.

Then there is trade, where his insincerity is at least as clumsy as Mrs. Clinton's. During the San Francisco episode, Mr. Obama had a throwaway line about how working-class voters fixate on "anti-trade sentiment" in order to vent their frustrations. But isn't it Barack Obama who has been spending months stirring up "anti-trade sentiment?" He has threatened to yank the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement unless Canada and Mexico renegotiate it. Last week, he denounced the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

According to Canadian diplomats, top Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee admitted to them that they could dismiss his man's anti-Nafta rhetoric. All of this makes Democrats wonder if Mr. Obama is ready for prime time.

But they have themselves to blame for letting him get this far largely unexamined. While Republicans tend to nominate their best-known candidate from previous nomination battles (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and now John McCain), Democrats often fall in love during a first date. They are then surprised when all the relatives don't think he's splendid.

Michael Dukakis had a healthy lead in 1988 against the elder Bush at this time and right through the political conventions. Then came the GOP's dissection of his Massachusetts record and his tank ride. Bill Clinton was able to win with only 43% of the vote in 1992, thanks in part to Ross Perot's presence as a spoiler. John Kerry had a six-point lead in the May 2004 Gallup poll over President Bush, then the wind-surfer crashed. All of those candidates had never run for national office before. Democrats paid a price for running a rookie.

Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 campaign manager and an undeclared super delegate, is worried. "With the Wright controversy still lingering and now Obama's unartful comments," she told CNN, "it will paint the picture of Obama as being 'out of sync.'"

With 81% of voters telling pollsters the country is on the "wrong track," no one disputes Democrats can win in November. Still, it should be a matter of concern to them that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama currently trail John McCain in general-election matchups. Democrats would be wise to have more debates and sharper exchanges in the remaining primaries. It may help minimize the surprises they are likely to encounter this fall.
Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.

Things That Really Matter

Now that we are over 2 weeks into the Major League season, it's time to reveal my predicitions for the season.

Since my first prediction, one I make every season has already missed the mark, it appears that the Texas Rangers will not be the first team to go undefeated for the season. In fact, sorry to say, the Rangers will come in last place in the American League West. If there are any Ranger fans reading this, I feel ya. There is nothing that builds character more than being a dedicated, lifelong Ranger fan.

Now for the goods. The 2008 Major League post season will be the following:

American League

Boston Red Sox

Cleveland Indians

Seattle Mariners

Wild Card Chicago White Sox

Boston wins the AL

National League

Atlanta Braves

St. Louis Cardinals

Arizona Diamondbacks

Wild Card Chicago Cubs

Arizona wins the NL

Boston over Arizona 4-2

The Reason Why I Don't Drink Coffee!

It might not be to everyone's taste - and that's not just because at £50 a cup it's the most expensive coffee in the world.

The secret behind the special blend about to go on sale at an upmarket department store is that it is made from cats' droppings.

While such an ingredient might leave many spluttering into their cups, Peter Jones thinks it is on to a winner.

For the rest of April, it is serving espressos, Americanos and lattes made from the droppings in its in-store coffee shop in Sloane Square, central London.

And for those who want the ultimate talking point over the after-dinner mints, the coffee beans are also on sale at £50 for 100 grams.

The store, part of the John Lewis partnership, has bought 60 packets of the exclusive blend of Jamaican Blue Mountain and the Kupi Luwak bean.

The bean is rare, with less than 450lb harvested each year.

The beans are extracted from the droppings of the palm civet, a cross between a cat and a monkey which lives in Indonesia.

The civets eat the soft coffee cherries, digest the fruit pulp and excrete the beans on the forest floor, because they cannot digest the beans.

Plantation workers then collect the beans, which are sold as Luwak coffee.
The civets are said to pick the best and ripest coffee berries.
It is also thought that their gastric juices may add to the flavour.

Now Peter Jones customers can taste flavour for themselves, with all proceeds from sales going to a cancer charity.

One, 23-year-old Hannah Silver, said: "I was a little apprehensive before I tried it but I actually really liked it. It was very earthy and it tastes very smooth.
"It wasn't too bitter and the earthiness really came through - probably because of where the beans have come from.
"It is a delicacy so I can definitely see someone wanting to pay £50 for this, perhaps for a present."
A Peter Jones spokesman said: "We wanted to give our customers a really special experience."

Tibetian Monks and the $$$$

These days, nobody seems to doubt that the U.S. dollar will lose its status as the world's reserve currency. To watch the financial news channels you would think that the dollar-yuan relationship is so unstable that the only question is whether it will be Ben Bernanke or Chinese monetary authorities who will determine the details of the breakdown.

Perhaps the dollar won't surrender its anchor role so soon. And perhaps that loss, if it comes, will happen because of events that take place nowhere near men in suits at a central bank. Maybe the answer to the dollar's riddle can be found in the cellphone photo image of a Tibetan monk in crimson and orange squaring off with a Chinese soldier.

Two economists at Deutsche Bank AG, David Folkerts-Landau and Peter Garber, and a colleague, Michael Dooley of the University of California at Santa Cruz, are making the case that the dollar will remain an anchor. Their research concedes that the old dollar order, that of Bretton Woods, may be past. But it suggests we are in a second order, a Bretton Woods II, one that can be surprisingly stable.

The Deutsche Bank argument starts with facts on which we all agree. The Chinese regime made a deal with its people: It would give them jobs and cars. The people would allow the regime to stand.

The Chinese leaders used exports to drive the growth that created those jobs. Their success put upward pressure on their own currency. To keep its own workers' exports cheap, the Chinese government resisted that pressure and intervened heavily in exchange markets, snapping up U.S. Treasuries.

Wile E. Coyote

Years ago, commentators began saying that Chinese monetary authorities would soon abandon the dollar for other currencies -- the euro, say. Such statements are based on the belief that the most important number in the world was the U.S. current account, which was in deficit, i.e., unbalanced.

Shortly, the rest of the world would realize that the U.S. bought more than it sold and withdraw its cash from the debtor. Paul Krugman of the New York Times calls this the Wile E. Coyote moment -- when you fall because you suddenly realize that you are past the cliff's edge and are standing on thin air.

Somehow, that realization hasn't come. The reason, the Deutsche Bank scholars say, is that other numbers are more important than the current-account deficit. Indeed, that deficit may be a good thing.

``Contrary to almost universal opinion, successful economic development is powered by net savings flow from poor to rich countries,'' they wrote.

Race With Time

A number that does matter is the real interest rate in the U.S. and elsewhere, lower than it would otherwise have been because of Chinese growth and demand for dollars. Today, Americans can borrow more than they once expected thanks to China. Bernanke's predecessor as Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, wrote about this in the Financial Times this week.

Another key number in the Deutsche Bank story is the Chinese government's growth target. That's important because the authorities are in a breakneck race with time.

There are still more than 100 million unemployed or underemployed Chinese workers to whom the regime has yet to deliver the promised employment. The authors calculate that it will take the regime many years to create jobs for those people. In that period, the Chinese need dollar-denominated capital to fund such an expansion.

If that government ceases to generate stupendous growth each year, those underemployed people will start joining demonstrations in places like Tibet, they will begin to find Internet censorship intolerable, and will think more about challenging Beijing.

Olympic Lifesaver

American and European mayors see hosting the Olympic Games as a good way to get fame and some pricey infrastructure for their cities. Beijing sees the games as a lifesaver, the greatest advertisement ever made for a nondemocratic regime's commitment to its side of a jobs contract.

What could break Bretton Woods II? Politics. In the U.S., new protectionist laws passed by angry Republicans and narrow- minded Democrats could shut out imports from places like China, and the Chinese would no longer have any use for their dollar deal.

In China, the monetary authorities could lose their race against time. After all, in the past decade, instances of demonstrations or other forms of public unrest in China have risen tenfold.

A new regime in Beijing might pull the country left, and confiscate or redistribute all that new wealth. The old anti- capitalist laws are probably still on the books. Or new leaders -- the monks -- might make democracy, or even religious faith, a priority.

Ethnic Chaos

Or China might recede into years of ethnic chaos. In any of these cases, the new Chinese government won't be forced to deliver the same growth, and therefore won't spend commensurate energy tending the dollar.

This is just a sketch, but you get the point. Watch Bernanke, watch the European Central Bank, watch the Chinese authorities -- but also watch the rest of the country. The flash of orange in the robe of the monk is important enough to change the picture for the greenback.

Liability

Uncle Jay Explains

Helping Small Minds Understand Big News!
I want this job when I grow up!!!

Why People Can't Afford Food

What happened

Egyptian police foiled plans for a general strike after protesters angry about rising food prices set fire to buildings and looted shops in the industrial Nile Delta town of Mahalla el-Kobra over the weekend. (AP in the International Herald Tribune) At least four people were killed in similar clashes with police in Les Cayes, a city on Haiti’s Caribbean coast. (BBC News)

What the commentators said

When people all over the world start rioting because they can’t afford to put food on the table, said The Christian Science Monitor in an editorial, it’s time to “rethink global security.” The cost of food staples in Haiti have gone up 50 percent in the last year, and, “from Egypt to Vietnam, price rises of 40 percent or more for rice, wheat, and corn are stirring unrest and forcing governments to take drastic steps, such as blocking grain exports and arresting farmers who hoard surpluses.” With spreading deserts and rising demand for grain-fed meat driving the price hikes, this problem won’t go away on its own, so world leaders will have to actually do something about it.

But what? said Paul Krugman in The New York Times (free registration). The first thing is getting aid to “people in distress.” The second is halting the push for biofuels—the “subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming,” but this was clearly a big mistake. “You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.”

“Ethanol production has been linked to a rise in the price of everything from tortillas to gummy bears,” said Michigan State chemical engineering professor Bruce Dale in the Trenton (N.J.) Times, but “this argument is very nearly ridiculous.” The truth is that “rising wealth and grain demand in China and India, drought in Australia, increased ethanol demand, and especially rising energy prices all play a role” in driving up grain prices all over the world.

There will certainly be a “backlash” against using crop land for fuel production if “world food shortages worsen,” said the Singapore Straits Times in an editorial (subscription required). If Europe and the U.S. decide not to reverse converting cropland for biofuel production, perhaps the solution is figuring out ways to get more food per acre. Using genetic manipulation to produce “high-yield strains of rice and wheat” is “a scientific hot potato,” but if anybody has “a better idea to reverse recurrent trends of food scarcity” now might be a good time to share it with the rest of us.