Thank goodness for global warming

If it was not for global warming, humankind might still be huddled in caves around roaring fires, just trying to stay warm.



Hat tip: Red Planet cartoons

Some previous posts:

What if global warming is a good thing?

Global warming myths

Why Greenland welcomes warming

Advocacy science: Climate science has no "product"

And everything here.

Upping the Ante

The Obama administration is playing a dangerous game in the Middle East and the only beneficiary will be Iran regardless of the outcome. Debka explains that the current strong arm tactics with Israel started before Tuesday's announcement of the 1600 housing units.

The peremptory note was first noted when Biden called on president Shimon Peres, his first meeting with an Israel leader. He then explicitly warned Israel against venturing to attack Iran without prior American permission.

Even the oft-repeated American commitment to Israel's security was delivered with a notable reservation: I can promise the people of Israel that we will confront every security challenge that we will face, said Biden. This statement ruled out unilateral Israel operations in its defense. Forget unilateral, he was saying: From now "we" make the decisions about the levels of "security challenge" facing Israel and how to "confront it." And there was no false modestly about who the senior decision-maker was to be in this "alliance."

Jerusalem was also taken aback by the US vice president's assertion that Iran was isolated as never before. A distorting prism appeared to be held up by the Obama administration to justify its backtracking on painful sanctions for Iran. These sanctions were explicitly promised by the White House to Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak in return for Israel's consent to hold back from striking Iran's nuclear facilities.

The Biden visit to Israel, therefore, far from meeting its avowed goal of smoothing over the differences between the Obama administration and Israel, has left Jerusalem more distrustful than ever.

This growing lack of trust with the administration's Iran repproachment is not limited, moreover, to the Israelis. The Saudis are very concerned with the alarming way chess pieces are behaving. Debka explains.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived in Riyadh Wednesday, March 10, flying in unexpectedly from Kabul in Afghanistan, after the Saudis demanded urgent clarifications of the Obama administration's Iran policy. DEBKAfile's military sources report that the demand followed the failure of US Vice President Joe Biden's talks with Israeli leaders to resolve their differences on Iran.

As a result, two senior US officials are visiting to Middle East capitals at the same [time] under pressure to deal with the Iranian nuclear question.

Gates was closeted with Saudi rulers although it was as recently as Feb. 15 that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Riyadh and explained Washington's strategy on Iran to King Abdullah and several senior Saudi princes. But she failed to allay her hosts' intense concerns that the US was doing enough to abort Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Then on Sunday, March 7, US Centcom Commander Gen. David Petraeus, asked by a CNN interviewer, whether countries in the Persian Gulf wish to see a US military attack on Iran, said: “…there are countries that would like to see a strike, us or perhaps Israel, even...”

In Israel, where the media are obsessed with the slightest Arab or Palestinian utterance, none cited the US general's comments.

DEBKAfile's military sources report that Petraeus' comments referred mainly to the two main Persian Gulf state, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In fact, the UAE foreign minister, referring to the assassination of Hamas member al-Mabhouh, noted this week that his country and Israel see eye to eye on the Iranian issue.
Reports of the Biden conversations in Jerusalem Tuesday have reached Riyadh. They reveal that not only is the Obama administration leaning hard on Israel to abstain from attacking Iran, but is even retreating from harsh sanctions. Such penalties have no been put on hold for five months.

The Saudis are as deeply alarmed by the latest American stance on Iran is as the Israelis.

US sources reported that no sooner did the US defense secretary land in Riyadh from Kabul when he was summoned to dinner with King Abdullah and the Saudi defense minister, Crown Prince Sultan. They admitted that he would be required "to present an update to Saudi officials who are intensely concerned about Iran's nuclear program and the fate of the American-led effort to impose new sanctions on Tehran."

This morning, reports are that the Obama adminnistration is considering holding up agreed arms shipments to Israel to further rachet the pressure on Jerusalem. This was hinted at by Clinton during a dressing down phone call to Netanyahu last night.

Meanwhile, back in the land of democracy, Netanyahu's own Likud party is asking the question that Israelis (and perhaps the Saudis) are asking--what's to apologize for?

"How can it be that we need permission from the Americans every time we want to build a neighborhood or a house in Jerusalem?” [MK Yariv] Levin said. The American condemnation of Israeli plans to build in Jerusalem exposed the real problem, the problem of Israel's willingness to accept foreign meddling in domestic affairs, he stated.

"The time has come for us to stand up for ourselves. I have no doubt that if we do so, the world will see us differently,” he said.

America's attempt to interfere in Jewish housing projects in Jerusalem is the result of the building freeze in Judea and Samaria, said Levin. “We warned [Netanyahu] that it was a slippery slope, and that the building freeze would lead to interference in construction in Jerusalem, and that's what happened,” he said.

What is not being discussed is the growing violence in the West Bank. Undoubtedly, the Palestinian tough guys will use this an excuse to scuttle the "next round of talks". Stay tuned.

Pining for the Fjords

Nicole Brackman and Asaf Romirowsky over at Pyjamas Media have a great article on Palestinian education reform. Actually, it's really more about the lack thereof.

Now their discussion got me thinking about the same topic but in a slightly different angle. Actually, Palestinian education, reform or otherwise, is essentially virtual. Like all forms of virtual realities, believing determines what is seen.

A case in point is the Frush Beit Dajan school project somewhere out in the Jordan Valley. I say "somewhere" because my son showed me the sign announcing the USAID grant to expand the school, but no where to be found is the school.

According to the UNISPAL website, the school's expansion was inaugurated in 2005 to expand the current school.

FRUSH BEIT DAJAN, West Bank – American and Palestinian officials inaugurated a new wing to the local primary school Thursday, expanding the facility's capacity by three grades and allowing older students to study in their own neighborhood.

The new wing of the Frush Beit Dajan Co-Ed School includes four classrooms and a teachers' room. The school used to accommodate students only up to the sixth grade – forcing older children to travel 17 kilometers to schools in Jiftlek or Nassarieh.
The new classrooms will enable the students to continue their education close to home until the ninth grade.
Teachers say they also expect the new classrooms to sharply reduce the drop-out rate among the school's 200 students.
The American people contributed $88,000 to the project through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Frush Beit Dajan Village Council chipped in another $7,000 in the form of designs and site supervision.

My son told me it is something of a joke out in the area around Ma'ale Ephraim where his pre-military training program is. Like the child's game of peek-a-boo, here's the sign, where's the school?

Now maybe the sign migrated from its original site. Maybe it is a model modern school that utilizes virtual technology, just like all those virtual educational reforms Brackman and Romirowsky are writing about. Maybe the school never was built and this is just the local version of Chicago style political construction projects.

It could even be that the school, like the students and the staff, goes home for the night.

Or, maybe it goes off to some remote hilltop to pine for the fjords.

Hot Air and Sandstorms From the West

The weather this week in Israel has been frightful. Incredibly hot air and fine sand blown in from the west, accompanied by very high barometric pressure made it just plain yucky to walk about let alone have a civil conversation.


Perfect timing for Joe Biden's visit to Israel to scold the Israelis. The latest in a recent gaggle of tongue waggers and nay sayers, Biden was here to get things going, otherwise known as lean on Bibi. Acting very Bill Clinton, the Vice President probably was using the former president's play book when Netanyahu folded and, if it were not for Arafat, would have given away the farm.

It was a good idea. But the mood in Israel is just not the same as it was back in those days. In fact, Biden was "brought up short with a round turn", as maritime folk like to say.

There are two significant differences between now and then, and these two things will influence how Israel will deal with neighbors, friends, and foes.

First, Israel is faced with an existential threat in the form of Iran. This is not the sort of thing even Big Bill can minimize with that old arm-about-the-shoulder-come-let's-walk-in-the-garden ploy he uses so well. Iran is a real threat and everyone in this part of the woods, especially the Saudis, believe that Iran will get its bomb and use it.

Second, the democratic will of the Israeli electorate put together a ruling coalition made up with different politcal interests that guarantees that Bibi will NOT do what he did when last given keys to the family car. While Israelis may not have the savvy of a Chicago style politician, they do understand Byzantine plots and chess strategy. Many of Bibi's most loyal followers voted for Lieberman JUST to keep their favorite son in line.

Over the last several months, Bibi has tried different tactics to get out of this or that coalition partner in a vain attempt to return to the slightly left side of center. Nothing has worked. In fact, the new political style has far more of a Russian flavor that American or European. Lieberman's tough talk has earned Israel third and fourth looks from Moscow as seen by Russia's hesitation to ship Iran missiles promised BEFORE Lieberman was foreign minister. Lieberman's number two, Danny Ayalon, followed suit with tough talk and aggressive action dressing down Turkey's envoy for the outrageous blood libel program on state run Turkish television.

While this may be very politically uncorrect for US State Department standards, it is both regionally understood (and respected) and unavoidable for Bibi's tenure as Prime Minister. Netanyahu's coalition is propped up by Lieberman's party and the Russian immigrant Israelis he represents.

Now, when Admiral Moon Mullins was here a few weeks ago, he made it very clear that his boss was prepared to let Iran have the bomb and would be very unhappy if Israel should do something rash like get a 1967 jump start on the up coming war. Israelis were both understanding and disappointed. They understand, however, that everything has a price. Just exactly what is this administration willing to pay to purchase Israel's taking another round for the Obamasama?

It is not surprising, therefore, take the events of this week as the opening round of bargaining with the US and holding Netanyahu's feet to the fire. Just as Bibi and Joe were having their tete-a-tete, the Minister of Housing, Reb Yishai, announced construction permits for 1600 units in Jerusalem, Israel's capital city. Yishai is the top MK for the SHAS party, Israelis ultra right religious party--the other volatile arm of Netanyahu's ruling party.

It should be borne in mind that SHAS is the king-maker party in recent Israeli political history. While Lieberman presents the strong Russian flavor, brusk and straight to the point, Yishai presents the refined logic of the Babylonian Talmud and Yeshiva culture, no small part of Israel's melting pot culture. When questioned about the timing of the announcement, Yishai responded in a powerful but non-Lieberman style.

Yishai stressed that during "sensitive" visits, he would like to be informed of the deliberations taking place in the committee.

No official is to blame," Yishai said, referring to Interior Ministry staff. "It was technical authorization only. The committee session was scheduled two weeks in advance, and no one in the committee knew that the vice president of the U.S. was coming."

From which quarter would Yishai, the King Maker, like the information of deliberations to come do you suppose? Underlings and functionaries? In the Byzantine labyrinths is Israeli government offices--I don't think so! Like Lieberman, Yishai is shaking Bibi's cage. Like Ayalon, Yishai is setting Biden straight about how Israel, a democratic country, feels about Jerusalem--it is not for sale. Period.

"Those who may have known know that in Jerusalem there is no freeze on construction, so there was nothing unusual," Yishai added. "There was a mishap and no special importance should be attributed to it."

While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked hard to publicly explain what was seen as an effort to spoil Biden's visit, Yishai was quick to stress that "In Jerusalem there is no construction freeze and therefore building will continue. Jerusalem, according to a cabinet decision, is not part of the freeze."

The Shas leader also expressed confidence that the matter will not have a detrimental effect on his relations with the prime minister or on coalition stability. "The integrity of the coalition is important to Shas, and I certainly have no intention of making the prime minister's life difficult or undermine the diplomatic process [with the Palestinians]. The prime minister has a genuine desire to push the process forward, and he is capable of bringing peace. I believe him and I suggest that instead of attacking him, help him. The demand should be made to the other side. It is up to the Palestinians, and I do not know whether they are capable of making decisions."

Now, isn't Israeli politics so much more interesting since Lieberman entered politics?

The fact is that if the US wants to give Iran the Bomb, it will cost them plenty and 1600 housing units is simply part of the overall package. Also, as everyone in Israel knows, and American should know, that the money to build these units will go into the pockets of the Palestinian and Arab Israeli contractors who in turn will pay their Palestinian and Arab Israeli construction workers to do the job. That means plenty of work, take home pay, and shopping in Malls for consumer goods. And THAT is part of Bibi's plan.

Government's new motto: It's good to be king!

As every king knows!



And how are the monarchs doing today? Well, pretty well: "Gov't workers feel no economic pain."

The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.

Meanwhile, the compensation for state and local government employees continued to easily outdistance the wages and benefits for workers in private business, a separate Labor Department report showed.

Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.

The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses.

USA Today reports,

Federal employees earn higher average salaries than private-sector workers in more than eight out of 10 occupations, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds.
Accountants, nurses, chemists, surveyors, cooks, clerks and janitors are among the wide range of jobs that get paid more on average in the federal government than in the private sector.

Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.

A chart of comparative pay rates between the federal and private sectors is here. Some of the differences are very large, for example, a federal public relations manager makes $132,410 working for the feds, but only $88,241 in the private sector, a difference of $44,169.

Why is this important? Two reasons.

First, government at almost all levels is growing like unchecked cancer, and spending along with it. Last month's deficit of $221 billion was 37 percent larger than the entire year's deficit of 2007 of $161 billion. But government does not produce wealth. Government is funded only by reducing the wealth of the country. Government must be funded, of course, but every dollar exacted from the people is a dollar lost to economic activity. Government does buy things, of course, but except for the military there is no economic activity the government does that is not or could not be done in the private sector. Quite simply, the government has no money of its own.


Already, there are far more people employed by government in America than are working in manufacturing. And from December 2007 until near the end of last year, private-sector employment dropped dramatically (as we all know) while government employment, excluding education, rose sharply, outpaced by several multiples by employment in education and health services taken together - and governments at all level are major employers of those disciplines (see here, chart next below).

The growth of government has been impelled by two main factors. One is the now-entrenched political philosophy of both parties that America is a problem to be fixed, and Americans are a people to be managed, which I identified as George W. Bush's principal shortcoming back in 2003. Since the instrumentalities of government management (well, control) are the bureaucratic structures of government, it's no wonder that government's size has exploded in both the number of employees and the appetite for money. The only way this growth can be sustained is first to milk and then to control the economic activity of the country. Increasing mandates, regulations and taxes are how that is done.

The other factor is the rise of the entitlement mentality of American to match the growth of entitlement-disbursing governments. Quite simply, Americans have allowed welfare payments of various kinds, both individual and corporate welfare, to control a far greater share of the total economic activity of the country than is healthy for growth or freedom. I belabored this point many times before, and this post is long enough, so I'll provide a few links:

"The end of entitlements"

"American reliance on government at all-time high."

"California is a greater risk than Greece, warns JP Morgan chief"

"The entitlement mentality knows no boundaries"

"How democracies perish"

The second reason the growth of government employees should cause alarm is that increasingly, government employees are unionized, therefore politicized. In fact, the Service Employees International Union, SEIU, is is heavily political. With 2.2 million members it is about 50 percent larger than the Teamsters and more than five times the size of the UAW. The consequence?

At the apex of union density in the 1940s, only about 9.8% of public employees were represented by unions, while 33.9% of private, non-agricultural workers had such representation. In this decade, those proportions have essentially reversed, with 36% of public workers being represented by unions while private sector union density had plummeted to around 7%.

The result is that government employees are setting government policy in a virtual mode: they do what unions do, collective bargaining, to force job security and benefits. I have not been able to find the proportion of federal expenditures that are personnel costs of all kinds, but they are huge as a share of the budget. Does anyone have a link?

To preserve the sovereignty of the people, government must shrink, especially the federal government. But the relative security, higher incomes and political power of government workers and their unions almost guarantees this cannot be done easily, if it can be done at all.

The senseless Census?

An email from a longtime friend and reader:

Can anyone tell me why on earth the US Dept of Commerce sent out a letter to every residence in the United States this week to tell me, that in a week I will be getting the 2010 census form?

I would imagine you also have received your letter too.

Is this not a complete waste of tax payer dollars? Or is this Obonomics at it finest, creating jobs for who know how many people to put out this piece of paper. Plus the special letter head and special envelopes to put out a letter telling me I am getting a Census Form in a WEEK! Plus there are 5 other languages at the bottom of the page, of which I can identify one as Spanish, maybe one a Chinese and or Japanese.

Maybe this is an attempt to help out the Postal Service. Since they can’t bail them out, why not just create a useless mailing of say 75 million households times a bulk mail rate of $.28 so $21 million dollars, give or take a few million.

I guess the government thinks I have been living in a cave these last few months with all the television ads telling me to fill out the census form and how important it is to make sure to include MY PHONE NUMBER! How does that help count how many people there are living in my state, county, etc.? Plus fill out my address completely. Isn’t that already on the form? How did the form get to me? Did they have people just throwing envelopes at houses as they drove by?

Am I missing the mark on this? Any thoughts are always appreciated.

Listen, I can explain to you how women think, how high is the sky and most other mysteries of the universe. But I cannot explain the inexplicable ways of government.

But boy, is this one easy to understand the reason---->

Every decade the census form gets more and more intrusive. Any guesses as to why the gummint wants to know these details about our health insurance? Oh, really, just guess.

But's that's not all. Mark Krikorian at NRO observes:

Fully one-quarter of the space on this year's form is taken up with questions of race and ethnicity, which are clearly illegitimate and none of the government's business (despite the New York Times' assurances to the contrary on today's editorial page). So until we succeed in building the needed wall of separation between race and state, I have a proposal. Question 9 on the census form asks "What is Person 1's race?" (and so on, for other members of the household). My initial impulse was simply to misidentify my race so as to throw a monkey wrench into the statistics; I had fun doing this on the personal-information form my college required every semester, where I was a Puerto Rican Muslim one semester, and a Samoan Buddhist the next. But lying in this constitutionally mandated process is wrong. Really — don't do it.

No, do not lie to the government. I have not yet received my census form. But I guarantee, based on the form of 10 years ago, that I am not going to answer a lot of the questions. Didn't a decade ago, either, and never even got a phone call from the bureau. We'll see this year, won't we?

Update: Michael Silence at Knoxnews.com says he got three postcards. Does that mean he'll be triple counted?

On A Wing and A Prayer

While the USAF is struggling to find a proper place for UAV pilots as reported in the WAPO, this is not the case with the IDF, which groups all forces under one heading. Perhaps part of the reason is what it really takes to pilot one of these suckers as seen in this IDF video.



The young woman at the helm makes the entire process look like a piece of cake. Where's the macho challenge in that? Fascinating to speculate that the UAVs in the next war will be "manned" by Women in Green.

Interesting to note that in several frames, the picture of Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the IDF appears to the upper right of the composition. Known simply as Gabi, under his direction, IDF morale is strong and his status throughout Israel borders on charismatic. The standard "command portrait" appears many places, especially in Mizrachi mini-markets and grocery stores. His face even is the subject of graffiti found even in the leftie end of Tel Aviv.

"Ain O'ad Milvado" [There is None Else but Him] is a strong mystical statement on the Unity of God. Applied to Gabi, it expresses the solidarity Israelis have to the IDF. The government began to distribute gas masks last week, so Israelis are not blind to the what's ahead.

"I just hope Hizbullah and Syria can wait until the Semester is over," says my friend Arik, a second year student at the Technion in Haifa. "Last time, they at least waited until the summer break, man. War is such a drag."

Amen to that.

The Lunatic Speaks

That guy who fronts for Iran was speaking again.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a "big fabrication" that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West and Israel, made the comment in a meeting with Intelligence Ministry personnel.

It came amid escalating tension in the long-running dispute between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program, with the United States pushing for new UN sanctions against the major oil producer.

Ha'aretz explains that His Nibs says the whole thing was a means to go to war against terrorists.

Ahmadinejad described the destruction of the twin towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001 as a "complicated intelligence scenario and act," IRNA reported.

He added: "The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan." He did not elaborate.

Well, he's partially correct in a Baysian Logic sort of way.

Rental car horrors & media alarmism

Autoblog cites and rolls tape of a recent Today Show report on what unhealthy things rental cares are. Why, they are no cleaner than an average public restroom!

Blah, blah, blah. I'll bet the average home bathroom is a lot dirtier than the average public restroom - at least the public ones get cleaned every day and in many (maybe most) locations are subject to health inspections by the municipal government.

The comments are entertaining, though, especially those by former rental-car employees relating the things they have found in returned cars.

I was waiting to pick up my rental at the counter of an airport agency one day. The manager was on the phone with a customer who had recently turned a car in (the manager filled me in on the details after he hung up). That customer had taken his rental car dirt track racing. The manager said the car was absolutely covered with mud, inside and out. The customer had driven the car with all the windows opened (track rules, I think he said) and the entire inside of the car was smothered with mud, including the surface of the whole back window. Just before the manager hung up I heard him say, "Your name is now on our blacklist and you will never be permitted to rent a car from this company again anywhere."

But back to the explosive news that bacteria are found on steering wheels of rental cars! Media watchers have known for years (well, decades) that the three main morning news shows spend the first hour or so addressing hard news - that pertaining to national, international and business matters. That's the time that working adults are at home to view. Then they leave for work and the rest of the show is soft news, of which the rental-car health scandal is a prime example. These features are directed toward stay-at-home adults (I dare not say "housewives"), usually who are taking care of others in their families, either their children or aging parents.

For that reason, stories about risks to safety or health out in the big, bad world are favorite themes, both for national media and local stations, the latter broadcasting mainly in the evening. They are intended less to inform of actual risks (although some do) than to cement the perception that watching that show every day is necessary to navigate this hazardous world.

Local news is especially pernicious. The typical evening news show starts with the "bleeds" story ("if it bleeds, it leads"), stories about violence in the coverage area, whether intentional such as murder or accidental such as a wreck on the highway. Coverage of more innocuous issues follows, but rest assured that the main feature of the broadcast will, most of the time, be a health-and-safety alarmist story of some kind. Local news stations emphasize their commitment to you and your well being by using slogans such as, "On your side." My local NBC affiliate claims to have a whole division, he "I-Team," devoted to such stories.

I am not claiming that none of these kinds of stories have merit. But consider how often advocacy journalism uses health-and-safety alarmism to advance an activist agenda by calling for something to be done, and that almost always by government at some level. But the world is not as dangerous as we are led to believe and we don't live better lives by being told all the time that we are at risk from the routine occasions thereof.

But the MSM have editors!

I posted earlier about the AP's Olympic Confusion, an AP piece that pointed out in one paragraph that the US would play Canada for the gold medal in its last hockey game (meaning that the US would get silver if it lost, as happened), then a few paragraph's down said that the Canadians and the US teams were both "long shots to get medals" in the game.

I concluded, "But mainstream media are more reliable than bloggers because they have editors!"

Comes now Time magazine's piece on the sorry state of Europe these days, with the news that Hillary Clinton got fired while we weren't looking:

Once again: "But mainstream media are more reliable than bloggers because they have editors!"