Links and Minifeatures 2008 12 29 Monday

Carnival of Personal Finance

via Michael Barone, an historian compares today not to 1929, but to 1873. I think the data is a much better fit.

Reconsidering Watergate and Deep Throat

A bureaucrat, disgruntled for being passed over for a promotion, using the FBI to make political war upon the President of the United States. Somebody paid to carry out the policies of his superiors sabotaging those policies for revenge. If he'd have been a whistleblower, he would have come forward publicly at the time to make his accusations - and they would have brought down Nixon much more quickly. Instead, he played the game to his personal advantage and continued his career for another decade, keeping his involvement secret, while dragging the pain out for the entire country for more than two years.

Across Mideast, thousands protest Israeli assault

From Lebanon to Iran, Israel's adversaries used the weekend assault to marshal crowds into the streets for noisy demonstrations. And among regional allies there was also discontent: The prime minister of Turkey, one of the few Muslim countries to have relations with Israel, called the air assault a "crime against humanity."

Where were all of these outraged demonstrators when Hamas was using civilian cover to attack Israeli citizens by raining down rockets on their head - sixty per week on average for the past year, during a period of so-called "truce"?

Furthermore, Hamas called off that "truce" and with an open declaration of hostile violance towards Israel and tripled their level of rocket assaults. Where were these people when Hamas was raining death and destruction upon Israel, and Israel was forbearing retaliation?

One demonstrator carried a banner reading, "The aggression against Gaza is an aggression against the whole Arab nation."

"Down with America, the mother of terrorism," read another.

In Amman, Jordan, about 5,000 lawyers marched toward parliament to demand the Israeli ambassador's expulsion and the closure of the embassy. "No for peace, yes to the rifle," they chanted.

How did that work out for you last time? The time before that? The time before that? Has it ever worked? The Palestinian people exist at all because of Israeli restraint. Were the situations reversed, does anyone have any doubt as to what the Palestinians (or Arabs) would do to the Israelis?

Israel is in a situation where they cannot afford to lose once. Given that fact, I do not understand why they have not driven the Palestinians completely out, dispersed them to the four winds, and put an end to the issue, but they haven't. They're more compassionate than I am, and far more compassionate than their opposition - which translates into Palestinian as "enemy"

In Jordan's squalid Baqaa camp for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, protester Yassin Abu Taha, 32, blamed America and Israel for the Middle East's problems.

"The Israelis kill our people in Gaza and the West Bank. The Americans kill our people in Iraq. We're refugees, kicked out of our home in Tulkarem in 1967 and we're still displaced," he said, bemoaning his family's flight in the 1967 Mideast war.

If they're such poor pitiful victims, why don't their fellow Arabs allow the Palestinians to assimilate into their society? Why don't they improve the lot of the Palestinians? The other Arab countries or the UN could permanently solve this issue with the expenditure of about two years budget for the ongoing problem created by continuing to deny the Palestinians the ability to assimilate into the rest of Arab society - but then they wouldn't have a ready made grievance against Israel, would they?

In Iraq, where the government has also condemned the Gaza airstrikes, a suicide bomber on a bicycle blew himself up amid a crowd of about 1,300 demonstrators in Mosul who were protesting against Israel, killing one demonstrator and wounding 16, Iraqi police said.

We're definitely into Life of Brian territory here...

Private Papers: More California Dreaming

California is a governmental train wreck in progress. Unfortunately, it being a state rather than a country, revolution is impossible.