It’s been too long since my last bit of dour linkage.
- The Obama administration is giving the UN Human Rights Council (an oxymoron if there ever were one) legitimacy. Jonah Goldberg has a great article in critique of this.
- Robert Gates is trying to move the US military to focus on irregular forces. The Heritage Foundation blog has more on this, and they criticize the move, arguing that the US must be able to face both regular and irregular opponents. Such a move makes sense, however, if Gates is under the constraint that his budget is going to shrink. The killer quotation: “conventional modernization goals should be tied to the actual and prospective capabilities of known future adversaries, not by what might be technological feasible for a potential adversary given unlimited time and resources.” Instead of anticipating where our enemies and potential foes could be, we’ll set baselines that will necessarily underestimate the growth of opponents’ weapons systems, training, and strategies (because otherwise, it wouldn’t be “realistic”). In other words, this is codifying the adage that we should fight the last war.
- Heritage also points out that Ford is doing significantly better than GM or Chrysler in terms of managing their problems. By not taking government money, they were able to re-negotiate credibly with debt-holders. They will also have more leverage when dealing with the UAW. Why this is such a bad idea that taxpayers need to funnel tens of billions of dollars into dinosaur operations, I don’t know…
- More proof that we really need a mechanism forcing legislators to read what they’re voting on.
- Andrew Stuttaford sounds like he’s expecting the Russians to make a move in eastern Ukraine and Moldova. Given the likely Obama response, it makes sense for Putin (err, I mean Medvedev…yeah, that’s right, Medvedev’s the guy in charge…) to strike now.
- Pennsylvania’s governor sounds like he could be tied up in some nasty business.
- It took us thousands of years, but we finally ended the direct trade-off between food and fuel. Before the gasoline-powered automobile, people had to feed horses from ground that they could have used to grow more food for people. Since the 1930s and the wide-spread adoption of the automobile (and later, the airplane) for travel, farmers did not need to dedicate nearly as much farmland to load-bearing animals. Now, hurray for Congress! We have gone back to those halycon days.
- The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a great answer for the pirate problem: letters of marque. Not that this president cares.
- Finally, up in Soviet Canuckistan, judges are determining what kind of a grounding is too harsh. I’m beginning to think that this civilization is so screwed up that there’s no way it can last too much longer. Where’s my Albert Jay Nock again? [Note to readers: the Columbus Metropolitan Library system apparently does not have any of Nock's works.]
