HOT5 Daily 1/11/2009

1. "Borrow and Spend — Isn’t That How We Got Here?" A look at Obama's economic plan and suggestions for what we should do instead.

Representative Sample: The federal government must tighten its belt like everyone else and stop soaking up an increasing share of the economy.

2. "Rum is the Latest Weapon Against Wal-Mart" Supposedly Wal-mart will blacklist products from countries hostile to the U.S.  That's supposed to be a bad thing?

Representative Sample: managers have already been told products from Iran, North Korea and Sudan will no longer be sold at the store

3. "Reactions to racism not as strong as we think" Interesting results of a recent study on racism.

Representative Sample: many people imagine they would respond strongly to a racist act but actually respond with indifference

4. "Zeppelins: A Noble History, A Respectable Russian Comeback"  Russia to build zeppelins? An informative look at the history and current prospects of zeppelins.

Representative Sample:  The new zeppelin will offer much to the world of space travel and aircraft. It can be used in a myriad of ways 

5. "Interesting Facts About Turkey" A list of interesting facts about Turkey.

Representative Sample: Istanbul is the only city in the world built on two continents.


To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

The latest on Iran

The New York Times dropped a bombshell yesterday.  The gist is in the first paragraph

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

A few things immediately leaped to mind as I read this article.  First, this is one occasion where I approve of the U.S. restraining Israel.  Unlike Gaza, where I believe the U.S. should encourage Israel in its efforts to destroy Hamas -- since that is almost as much in the U.S. interest as in Israel's -- Iran is a different matter. As I have written here before, the overall strategic & military consensus is that it is highly unlikely that Iran's nuclear program can be destroyed by a surgical airstrike. It is too far along, too dispersed, too redundant, and too well-protected. A massive sustained air campaign would be necessary to have any reasonable chance of actually destroying Iran's nuclear program. At best, a surgical strike will be able to only temporarily delay and disrupt it. The risks and possible consequences to U.S. interests of an Israeli attack on Iran are simply not worth it for a mere delay in Iran's progress.  The U.S. was right to block the proposed Israeli strike.

Then there is the matter of the Times revealing an ongoing U.S. covert operation. I have long given up on expecting U.S. newspapers, particularly the NYT, to restrain themselves in their reporting for reasons of national security. But the Times cites unnamed senior officials, some of them American, as its sources. These leakers have endangered anyone involved in this operation, as well as the operation itself.  And for what?  Is there any reason the public needs to know about a current covert operation? These officials should be identified if at all possible and charged with treason. There is no excuse for a deliberate attempt to undermine a U.S. operation against a hostile country by revealing it to the press.

And that brings me to my final thought.  Back during the Valerie Plame affair, there was much outrage on the left at the supposed leakers. Some even accused people of treason for revealing her name, despite the fact that she wasn't really a covert operative, and was actually an analyst working at Langley. Here we have a real case of treason. Senior U.S. officials talked to the press and revealed an ongoing covert operation aimed at Iran. What are the chances that the left will show the same level of outrage at these leakers that was directed toward those who revealed Plame's identity? I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that most of the anger, if any, will be directed instead at Israel and the Bush administration.

Another Irrational Attack on Israel

Anti-Israel articles are a dime-a-dozen lately, although usually they don't appear in the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal.  But today George Bisharat, a law professor in San Francisco -- big surprise there -- has an amazingly intellectually dishonest column entitled "Israel Is Committing War Crimes." Bisharat begins by making an obviously false assertion, writing

Israel's current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense.

What about the Hamas rocket attacks on Israel? They don't count as attacks. No, really.  According to Bisharat, firing rockets at Israel aren't "serious violations of the peace." It's just a "border skirmish," and therefore no big deal.  Since being attacked by rockets is nothing serious, Israel's response is totally unjustified. That's actually the entire basis of his argument. 

He extends this line of "thinking" to the truce between Hamas and Israel.  Although he admits to violations on both sides, he writes that

Israel then broke the truce on Nov. 4, raiding the Gaza Strip and killing a Palestinian.

But why did Israel do that?  Well, Bisharat notes that prior to that action "Hamas permitted sporadic rocket fire."

Now to normal rational people who don't hate Israel, the Israeli action on November 4 might have had just a tiny bit to do with that rocket fire, and one might think that the truce had already been broken.  But no, remember that Bisharat doesn't think rocket fire into Israel qualifies as anything significant. The Israelis should have just accepted it and done nothing. Therefore Israel broke the truce by responding to attacks that aren't really attacks, according to this lawyer. Since they had no justification for their actions, everything they've done since qualifies as a war crime in an illegal war. See how neat it is? 

Bisharat goes on to make more ridiculous arguments about Israel targeting civilians in Gaza, conveniently ignoring everything about the way Hamas operates, the fact that civilian buildings often contain military targets, the fact that if Israel wanted to target civilians, there'd already be tens of thousands dead, and military reality in general. He concludes with a one-sided picture with poor oppressed Palestinians on one side, and the evil war criminals of Israel on the other.

The entire article is based on the completely irrational premise that rocket attacks on a country don't justify a military response. I'm not sure why the Wall Street Journal decided to give this clueless anti-Israel propagandist a forum. Maybe they just wanted to illustrate the intellectual dishonesty and inability to reason that characterize many who hate Israel. 

HOT5 Daily 1/10/2009

1. "The New Army Air Corps" The rise of UAVs and their implications for the Army vis a vis the Air Force.

Representative Sample: A recent development has profound implications for the balance of power between America's armed services

2. "When Flu Beasties Mutate" Evolution in action.

Representative Sample: life on earth rudely refuses to be bound by the imagination of creationist hacks

3. "In defense of security contractors" How they are used and why we should keep using them.

Representative Sample: We won't be getting rid of private security contractors anytime soon -- and for good reason.

4. "Stimulus to fund Real ID?"  Yet another example of how the "stimulus" will actually be a giant pork project.

Representative Sample:  Lobbyists for the homeland security industry and the legislators who love them are agitating for up to $2 billion of the proposed economic stimulus package

5. "Where Were The Protesters When Missiles Were Hitting Israel?" Some of them were no doubt cheering, yet disappointed at the lack of major Israeli casualties.

Representative Sample: Why did the world keep silent for so many years? Could anyone really expect Israel to do nothing for evermore?


To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.

Christian Stupidity in South Carolina

I've commented on the recent stupid behavior of a couple of atheist groups, so it's nice to be able to focus on some Christians.  There was a rally Wednesday night in South Carolina protesting a federal judge's ruling that blocked production of Christian-themed license plates. The ruling was based on grounds that the plates would violate the establishment clause.  A picture of the license plate can be seen here, along with a report on the court case.

The plate has a stained-glass window, a cross, and the words "I believe." Now to many people, those symbols on a government-issued license plate might indicate government support for the Christian religion. But not to the South Carolina state legislature, which authorized the plates with an overwhelming majority. There's plenty of stupidity right there.  And then there are the comments made at the protest rally, as recounted by Greenvilleonline.com.

The pastor of the church holding the rally said that he was "fed up that Christians cannot display anything that symbolizes Jesus Christ or Christianity."  Really?  Since when? He then went on to say

"We've lost so many rights as a Christian over the last few years, the right to prayer in public and call the name of Jesus, the prayer in schools, and this, that and the other. ... The people of South Carolina are really stirred up about this"

Last I checked anyone could pray in public, and I seem to hear Jesus' name all the time. And you can pray in school too, as long as you do it silently.  Somehow I don't think his supposedly ominipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God needs to hear people make a public display of their prayers. Another person complained that the plate should be allowed because sports-themed plates are ok. Apparently she doesn't see any distinction between religion and sports. 

Lest anyone think I'm just picking on some clueless locals, the state attorney general and lieutenant governor were also present at the rally and "echoed the crowd's sentiments." Here's the lt. governor

"Total freedom of speech doesn't mean everybody but Christians. When a secular group can get a license plate and nobody challenges it, but Christians can't, there's a problem in the system," Bauer said. "Quite frankly, we're under attack."

You'd think someone who managed to reach the rank of number two executive in one of our states would be able to figure out why secular messages on government license plates don't involve the same issues as religious ones.  But no, to him any objections mean that Christians are "under attack." 

Anyone with an ounce of basic common sense would have understood that passing this measure was a bad idea from the start.  It clearly raises a church-state issue for no good reason.  It's totally unnecessary and pointless to put religious messages on a type of media that is a government requirement for operating a vehicle.  The judge's injunction against the plate wasn't an attack on Christianity; it was an attack on stupidity.

John Brennan named Top Advisor on Counterterror

Back in November of 2008 John Brennan withdrew his name for consideration as CIA director after Obama received heated criticism from the left, particularly in the blogosphere.  Glenn Greenwald called his withdrawal "exceptional news," and gloated about the left's ability to block the nomination.  He wrote

Brennan was the only prospective appointment that, speaking only for myself, was completely unacceptable. Advocacy of Bush's interrogation and rendition programs should exclude anyone from consideration for any important position, let alone CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence.

Well guess what?  Obama named John Brennan to the National Security Council as his top advisor on counterterrorism. As the Washington Post reports, the appointment will give Brennan a "powerful voice" on all sorts of national security issues.  So much for the big left-wing victory in blocking him for CIA.  

By his appointments, Obama seems to indicate that he is going to do basically whatever he thinks is best.  If left-wing bloggers with delusions of grandeur think they are going to be able to block him from choosing his key advisors, they might want to think again. If he can't get them in through the front door, they can always be brought in the back -- in the form of appointments that don't require Senate confirmation.  It appears that Obama really does want a range of views among his foreign policy advisors, and isn't subjecting them to any leftist litmus test.  If only the same thing were true of his economic team.   

HOT5 Daily 1/9/2009

1. "Painless Economic & Bailout Thinking: It's Going to Hurt Worse Later" A good analysis of the bailout mentality.

Representative Sample: Bailouts are bandages with a temporary dose of topical anesthesia to numb the pain for a short period of time.

2. "Get to know "Artificial and Natural Flavors "" Do you really know the difference?

Representative Sample: Natural flavors, you might think, are derived from the pure essence of a food's flavor, and as such are more authentic.

3. "Gazans unionize" Pretty amusing.

Representative Sample:By creating the union, to be called United Fodder, Gazans will finally gain basic protections, said ILO spokesman Juan Ponce Trabajador.

4. "Obama's Super-Cabinet"  An interesting analysis of Obama's "czar" creation policy.

Representative Sample:  This will either be a masterstroke of bureaucratic management or will simply add an additional level of bureaucracy 

5. "Smart Grids: The Future of Power Distribution" Sounds promising, on paper at least.

Representative Sample: A smart power grid refers to a "vision" of a power distribution network that will see upgrades made on long distance power transmission lines and grids


To submit a blog post for HOT5 Daily, please e-mail me at unrright@NOSPAMgmail.com. Put HOT5 in the subject.