Losing The Peace

The turnover of Iraq to Iran continues apace;

A wave of bombings ripped across Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 63 people and injuring almost 200 in the worst violence Iraq has seen for months. The bloodbath comes just days after American forces left the country.
The blasts also came on the heels of a political crisis between Iraq’s Sunni and Shiite factions that erupted this weekend.
The political spat has raised fears that Iraq’s sectarian wounds will be reopened during a fragile time when Iraq is finally navigating its own political future without U.S. military support.

Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?

Featured Comment

Dick Slater;

The EU never ceases to amaze. The government of Hungary, led by the Fidesz party of Victor Orban, is one of the few in Europe to actually rule in the interests of the people and not bother pandering to traitors, unrepentant communists and foreign bankers currently sucking the place dry. (I’ve mentioned and praised their constitutional reforms. Canada’s Conservatives have much to learn from Fidesz.)
Now the EU and the IMF are trying to bully Hungary into reconsidering a law that would see the Hungarian National Bank’s policy more closely overseen by the Hungarian people, with members of the governing council appointed by the prime minister and not the central bank’s governor.
Now HNB governor Andras Simor is a lifelong bureaucrat who began his career at the HNB during the communist period, and was appointed to the governorship by the former communist government Fidesz replaced. Simor is determined to nip any hope of Hungary’s economic recovery in the bud by raising interest rates with Europe on the brink of financial catastrophe, hoping Hungarians will blame Fidesz and re-elect a communist government. (Who needs the euro?)
The ratings agencies who needed to have downgraded the whole euro zone to junk long ago downgraded Hungarian debt to junk status the moment they learned that Fidesz were trying to rein in Simor. Now you know whose side they’re on. Nicolae Ceausescu saw to it Romania’s creditors were paid in full and on time. If you’re an Austrian bank, you’ll much sooner want an unrepentant communist running Budapest than anything resembling a Socred who’ll tell the banks where to go.
Keep your eyes on Hungary.

Update: An alternative viewpoint.

Ethical Oil Vs Blood Banana

We have seen the enemy and she is Alison Redford.

Why is Alberta’s premier doing public relations work for Chiquita? Why isn’t she sticking up for our oilsands, which offers far superior oil in terms of ethics and transparency compared with the conflict oil that Chiquita so clearly prefers and that obviously better reflects that company’s historical lack of ethics.

Let this serve as a warning to conservative parties everywhere: that which the left cannot defeat, they will infiltrate.

Job Ads: “Must Be Employed” is Verboten?

I’m currently in Portland, Oregon and saw a news report on TV about this story. It concerns the growing practice of employers insisting that applicants must be currently employed. A California lawmaker, Democrat Mike Allen, wants to forbid this practice.
I understand why some unemployed workers might feel discriminated against when they see such ads. However, I also fully understand the position of the employers placing the “must be currently employed” tag in their ads. Fact is, with a large supply of available workers and a small demand for work, it’s most certainly an employers’ market right now. When advertising for lower-skilled jobs right now, an employer may very well be getting hundreds, if not thousands, of applications. All things being equal, if you have two applicants with equal skills and experience but one is employed and the other is not, most employers would logically feel it less risky to hire the employed person. That might not be “fair” but it is reality.
Congressman Allen can enact this law if he wants but it won’t make any difference. The employers insistent on the “currently employed” requirement will just be forced to accept all resumes but will then most likely discard those who are unemployed. All Allen’s bill will do is cost the companies more money, lowering their profits, and thus reduce the number of people they can hire. Another feel good law that accomplishes nothing of value. And further evidence why more government in our lives is a bad thing.

It’s Probably Nothing

At our request, William Bernstein, an investment manager at Efficient Portfolio Advisors in Eastford, Conn., reviewed Rep. Paul’s portfolio as set out in the annual disclosure statement. Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe. ”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he says.

More Pavilions At Folkfest

An Islamic Sharia law court has been established in Antwerp, the second-largest city in Belgium.
The Sharia court is the initiative of a radical Muslim group called Sharia4Belgium. Leaders of the group say the purpose of the court is to create a parallel Islamic legal system in Belgium in order to challenge the state’s authority as enforcer of the civil law protections guaranteed by the Belgian constitution.
The Sharia court, which is located in Antwerp’s Borgerhout district, is “mediating” family law disputes for Muslim immigrants in Belgium.
[…]
Sharia4Belgium says the court in Antwerp will eventually expand its remit and handle criminal cases as well.

Related: “Bosnia moving toward Sharia law”
Plus – “Muslims are said to be no more than 10% of the French population, though no one knows for sure, because French law prohibits population counts by religion.

Climategate 2.0: The Green Police

Donna Laframboise;

In recent days I’ve been receiving calls and emails asking what the U.S. Justice Department wants with me. In fact, there has been a misunderstanding. I write a blog about climate-change dogma that has a similar Web address to a blogger in the United States. It is that person — who publishes under the pen name Jeff Id at NOconsensus.wordpress.com — who is being targeted.
Earlier this month, a trial attorney employed by the Justice Department’s criminal division sent a formal request to WordPress (the blogging software company) to freeze for 90 days “all stored communications, records, and other evidence in your possession” regarding three climate-skeptic blogs. ClimateAudit.org — written by Canadian Steve McIntyre and hosted on WordPress’ U.S.-based servers — was one of that trio. So was Tallbloke’s Talkshop, written by a U.K. resident and published at tallbloke.wordpress.com.
The Justice Department is interested in WordPress records spanning three days — Nov. 21 to 23 inclusive. At 4:09 a.m. on Nov. 22, someone calling themselves FOIA made a comment on McIntyre’s blog. It consisted solely of a link to a zip file posted online at a Russian Web address. The zip file contained 5,000 emails written by some of the most prominent names in climate science.
Dubbed Climategate 2, these documents are still being examined and sifted. But emails have already come to light in which scientists employed by publicly funded universities in the U.K. and elsewhere discuss the deliberate deletion and removal of records from university computers. (In the U.K., altering or deleting documents in an attempt to circumvent freedom of information legislation is a criminal offense.)

Normally, an international investigation into information breaches that seek to undermine multi-trillion dollar planet-saving wealth transfer schemes would be “news”. But reporting on the crackdown might result in public attention, which might necessitate reporting on the contents of the emails, which might lead to revealing the corruption within – and that’s a problem for a consensus media deeply invested in denying any exists.
But it must make their audiences wonder when the editorial/opinion people report on international scandals that the “hard news” department apparently know nothing about.

Michael O’Leary at the Innovation Convention 2011 – Brussels

So I urge you as quickly as you possibly can: Get the hell out of Brussels.
Go back to your countries, and stay away from here as much as is humanly possible. Because Brussels, those of you who know the Star Wars Trilogy, this is the evil empire. The Berlaymont is the Death Star, where any hint of innovation is left at the door as you walk in to meet with bureaucrats and politicians, who you can always tell when they’re telling lies because their lips are moving.


h/t LC Bennett

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