Update on Tottenham Riots

At Telegraph UK, "Tottenham riot: a community blighted by drugs and gun crime." And, "How technology fuelled Britain's first 21st century riot." There's a live blog as well, "Second night of rioting as violence and looting spread across London."

BONUS: A phenomenal report at London's Daily Mail, "Police and the riot blunders: Top officer flew off on holiday hours before mayhem and doubts emerge over shooting that sparked carnage."

Ross Douthat, Political Scientist

Douthat draws on political science research at New York Times, "Waiting For a Landslide." And for a second I thought he'd blow it, because "realignment theory," which he discusses, hasn't accurately explained, much less predicted, partisan trends for decades. But Douthat adds this, which is just right:

In reality, the next election may be no more transformative than 2008 turned out to be. The next Republican president may find himself as hemmed in and frustrated as President Obama has become. Meanwhile, America will still have a credit rating to fix, and a deficit to close.

More at that link at top, and Douthat had a great piece a few days ago on the debt deal, "The Liberals’ Dilemma." Note especially:

... American liberalism risks becoming a victim of its own longstanding strategy’s success. Because yesterday’s liberals insisted on making universal programs the costly core of the modern welfare state, on the famous theory that “programs for the poor become poor programs,” today’s liberals find themselves defending those universal (and therefore universally-popular) programs at the expense of every other kind of government spending — including, yes, programs for the poor. It’s a classic example of putting liberal political interests ahead of liberal policy priorities. In the short term, the insistence on ring-fencing Medicare and Social Security has left Democrats defending a system that often just ends up redistributing money from the younger middle class to the older middle class while accepting caps on programs that might do more (both directly and indirectly) to help downscale Americans get ahead. In the long term, by postponing any reckoning with the cost of entitlements, it’s making it more likely that the inevitable crunch will hit the poorest recipients of Medicare and Social Security harder than it should.

Read that whole thing. Basically, progressives will never cut entitlements because gargantuan socialist welfare states form the core of socialist existentialism.

Douthat's coming of his own as a New York Times columnist, by the way. He had cold feet or something after leaving The Atlantic, but he's been more consistent in posting some excellent commentary of late.

Killed U.S. Navy SEAL Team Was on Rescue Mission to Help Army Rangers Pinned Down by Insurgents

At ABC News, "SEALs on Rescue Mission Killed in Afghan Crash."

RELATED: At Los Angeles Times, "Afghanistan Chopper Downing Raises Concerns Over U.S.":

The downing of an American helicopter full of elite troops deepened concerns among some Afghans that it might symbolize an erosion of U.S. power at an uncertain crossroads in the nearly 10-year-old war.

In the rugged district of Wardak province where the U.S. Chinook helicopter crashed early Saturday, apparently after being struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, NATO and Afghan forces engaged in daylong skirmishes with suspected Taliban fighters, according to Afghan officials.

Wardak Police Chief Abdul Qayuum Baqizoi said there had been Taliban casualties in Sunday's fighting, but he did not know how many. Western military officials said only that the area was being secured.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for downing the helicopter within hours of the crash. Following confirmation from U.S. officials that the 30 American troops killed had included 22 members of the Navy SEALs, the Islamic movement reacted with jubilation.

"We killed America's most elite forces; we achieved one of our biggest goals," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said Sunday in a telephone interview. "This shows that our efforts are unstoppable."

'New Age'

D.O.A., "New Age." The studio version's at the second clip, and dwell on that lead guitar solo for a minute or two. The rockin' guitar sounds set DOA apart back in the day:

And don't just take it from me. Keith Morris says DOA blew his mind at the Starwood on Santa Monica Boulevard in 1980. I was there as well. DOA opened for X, who were huge at that time. But Keith makes me laugh when he says, at 2:25 minutes, "I was thinking, how the f*ck was X going to follow these guys?"

See what I mean?

Secrets to Longevity

Hoping for a long life?

Check with Neo-Neocon for an informative essay on the topic, "Want to reach 100? Just do whatever you want…":

…and hope for the best.

HAT TIP: Instapundit.

The Alinksy-Obama Minions

I love this title, from Pat Austin, "The Alinksy-Obama Minions Would Have You Believe In the 'Tea Party Downgrade'.

EXTRA: At The Other McCain, "Liberals Spinning S&P Credit Downgrade: BLAME IT ON THE REPUBLICANS!"

Hamas-Linked CAIR Freaks Over Pamela Geller's New Book: Stop Islamization of America

And Pamela laughs, "The review is a badge of honor. My favorite one yet!"

See, "PRESS TV: LEADING SPOKESMAN FOR ISLAMIZATION HAMAS-LINKED CAIR RIPS GELLER'S NEW BOOK: STOP THE ISLAMIZATION OF AMERICA: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE RESISTANCE."

'Nothing From Nothing'

Perfect Democrat theme song. You don't gets to be hangin' with those mofos unless you be chippin' in some snaps (cash). And Billy Preston's 'fro is da kine!

I'm not tryin' to be your hero
'Cause that zero is too cold for me, Brrr
I'm not tryin' to be your highness
'Cause that minus is too low to see, yeah

Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'
And I'm not stuffin'
Believe you me
Don't you remember I told ya
I'm a soldier in the war on poverty, yeah
Yes, I am

Asian Markets Fall in Monday Trading After U.S. Downgrade

At New York Times, "Asian Markets Fall Despite Efforts by Policy Makers."

But see Los Angeles Times, "No rush from U.S. Treasuries, as yields fall while Asian stocks slump":

U.S. Treasury bonds' status as a haven seemed intact in Asia on Monday, as yields fell despite Standard & Poor's downgrading of Uncle Sam's credit rating on Friday.

It may have helped Treasuries that Asian stocks were broadly lower, as some investors bailed out ahead of European and U.S. equity trading.

The 10-year Treasury note yield slid to 2.50% in late Asian trading, down from 2.56% on Friday.

Shorter-term yields also fell. The two-year T-note dropped to a record low 0.26% from 0.29%.

More at that link above, and see, "What the U.S. debt-rating cut may mean for markets":

If investors dump Treasuries, where would the money go?

They don’t have a lot of options if they want to keep their money in something relatively safe.

The bond markets of other countries still rated AAA -- including Germany, Canada, France, Finland and Australia -- are far smaller than the U.S. debt market. The appeal of Treasuries in part is their great liquidity, meaning it's easy for investors to instantly buy or sell bonds.

What’s more, Europe has its own worries: The continent’s government-debt crisis has worsened in recent weeks, with investors now fearing that Spain and Italy could be forced to seek European Union bailouts, following the paths of Greece, Ireland and Portugal over the last 15 months.

Some investors are likely to run to gold, another classic haven. Gold has been streaking this year, rising 16% year-to-date through Friday, to $1,648.80 an ounce.

Haven’t Treasury interest rates been falling lately, anyway?

Yes. Investors have been pouring cash into Treasury securities since mid-April, driving interest rates down, as global economic growth has faded. The rate on the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for mortgage rates and other long-term interest rates, fell as low as 2.40% last week from 3.59% in mid-April.

Because worries about the economy have only worsened in recent weeks, many analysts believe that any jump in Treasury rates related to S&P’s downgrade could quickly bring a torrent of buyers into the market, happy to snag higher yields.

“The fundamentals of U.S. and global growth are weakening, and that’s a fertile time to be in Treasuries” as a haven, said William O’Donnell, head of Treasury-bond strategy at RBS Securities.

RELATED: At CNBC, "No Chance of Default, US Can Print Money: Greenspan" (via Memeorandum).

Back From Etnies

This photo's not so focused, and I didn't take any others, since I couldn't get a good vantage point. I'm standing up on the planter as it is.

I'm going to look into getting my own skateboard this week. I need to see how the summer funds are holding out. I'm not paid until September 1st, a couple of weeks after the semester begins (and we're taking the boys to Las Vegas for LOVE next weekend). So it's either a new board this week or hold off a bit, although I'm getting the bug to go skating again. Being with my young son all the time is getting me fired up. I've been enjoying seeing the thrills of skateboarding through the experience of my boy. It's an old saying but it occurred to me today it's true, when my son came up to where I was sitting, after a couple hours of skating, and said, "I want to come back tomorrow!" I told him sure, and I thought what am I waiting for on my own skating? You're only young once!

RELATED: Check the Etnies Skatepark homepage. There's going to be a grand opening for the expansion on August 20th.

America Gets Downgraded

At Wall Street Journal, "A spend and tax policy mix always leads to economic decline":

... is there anything that S&P said on Friday that everyone else doesn't already know? S&P essentially declared that on present trend the U.S. debt burden is unsustainable, and that the American political system seems unable to reverse that trend.

This is not news.

In that context, the Obama Administration's attempt to discredit S&P only makes the U.S. look worse—like the Europeans who also want to blame the raters for noticing the obvious. Treasury officials and chief White House economic adviser Gene Sperling denounced S&P for relying on a Congressional Budget Office scenario that overestimated the U.S. discretionary spending baseline by $300 billion through 2015 and $2 trillion through 2021.

But even adjusting for that $2 trillion would only reduce U.S. publicly held debt to 85% or so of GDP—still dangerously high. And that assumes that recently agreed upon spending caps are sustained over a decade, something which rarely happens.

We think the larger problem with S&P, Moody's and Fitch is that they make no distinction over how a nation balances its books—whether through tax increases or spending reductions. Like the International Monetary Fund, the raters care only about balance.

This takes too little account of the need for faster economic growth, which is the only real path out of a debt crisis. Britain's government has earned rater approval for its fiscal consolidation, but its increases in VAT and income tax rates are hurting its tepid recovery. Letting the credit raters dictate tax increases is the road to an austerity trap.

The real reason for White House fury at S&P is that it realizes how symbolically damaging this downgrade is to President Obama's economic record. Democrats can rail all they want about the tea party, but Republicans have controlled the House for a mere seven months. The entire GOP emphasis in those seven months—backed by the tea party—has been on reversing the historic spending damage of Mr. Obama's first two years.

Continue reading.

IMAGE CREDIT: The Astute Bloggers.

Etnies Skatepark Expansion

Etnies Skatepark in Lake Forest has opened a huge new skatepark addition. See O.C. Register, "Expansion done, skaters enjoy 'perfect' Etnies Skatepark." And at TransWorld Skateboarding, "Final Expansion Will Make It the Largest Free Public Skatepark in the U.S."

I'm taking my kid over there right now. I'll post some pics later.

The Progressive-Left's Communist Holocaust Denial

Judson Phillips, leader of Tea Party Nation, is trending at Memeorandum for his statement that...

I detest and despise everything the left stands for. How anybody can endorse and embrace an ideology that has killed a billion people in the last century is beyond me...

Actually, the numbers of those killed under communist totalitarianism probably don't reach one billion for the 20th century, but certainly hundreds of millions were killed during the rule of the Soviets to Communist China, with a turn at genocide in the "paradise" of Cambodia. One commenter at Alan Colmes' "Liberaland" compares the history of left-wing genocide to U.S. support for "death squads in El Salvador." That's the kind of moral equivalence that allows the left's search for ideological utopia to continue and thrive. Jamie Glazov wrote on this specifically, "Cold War Revelations and 'Progressive' Holocaust Denial":

The Western "progressive" milieu's refusal to acknowledge Communist crimes is, of course, rooted in that disease with which we have become all too familiar in the second half of the twentieth century: anti-Americanism. It explains well why not one Revisionist historian, including Gabriel Kolko, has come forward to apologize for his errors. However, the refusal to acknowledge grievous faults on the Cold War, and to seek refuge in other politically correct orthodoxies, is all part of a larger phenomenon: Holocaust denial. A clear analogy can be made between the neo-Nazi Holocaust denial and the Left's refusal to acknowledge Communist Holocaust. In denying that the genocide of Jews occurred, Holocaust denial perpetuates anti-Semitism and keeps it alive. By erasing historical memory, Holocaust denial gives birth to moral relativism, which, in turn, instills a mindset that facilitates the possibility of yet another Holocaust. Holocaust denial, in other words, is the craving for another Holocaust.

This is precisely the case in the Western Left's refusal to acknowledge the genocidal consequences of the socialist idea in the twentieth century. The causes of this Holocaust denial are directly rooted in the Holocaust itself. The Nazi Holocaust, for instance, was the logical outcome of anti-Semitism, but anti-Semites need to keep anti-Semitism alive. Thus, anti-Semitism's existence is kept alive easier if its darkest consequences are supported but simultaneously denied. So too, if Stalinism was the inevitable result of the pursuit of equality, then the belief in the possibility of equality must be kept alive by the socialist milieu. The historical memory and significance of the Gulag, however, must be wiped out.

It's the progressive-left's Communist Holocaust denial. It's alive. And it's deadly.

PHOTO CREDITS: Wikipedia Commons.

The Debt Downgrade Blame Game

I was up in time for the Sunday news shows. I flipped back and forth for a minute between ABC and NBC and finally settled on "Meet the Press." John Kerry and John McCain were interviewed, forgettably, with the exception of McCain's comments on Afghanistan. But the roundtable discussion was a keeper. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Allan Greenspan stole the show (a bit of which can be seen here). But frankly the reason I didn't channel surf further was Rachel Maddow. Maddow is maddening. The S&P downgrade dominated the discussion, and Maddow's entire shtick was political. David Gregory asked her about economic implications and she segued into an attack on "Republican intransigence." Check it out:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maddow was sticking like glue to S&P's press release, which claimed that the downgrade was a comment on political gridlock in Washington. But Maddow's fascinating because she perfectly encapsulates all that's wrong with the Beltway media mindset: She blames Bush for the crisis, citing the revised GDP numbers to argue that "the hole we've been getting out of is even deeper than we thought." Well, I guess if you're in a hole you stop digging, but the Obama-Dems 2012 budget was pegged to add $7.2 trillion in new debt over the next decade, and that's after racking up $1.7 trillion after the administration's first year in office. Congressional Republicans stood up to this, and that fortitude so enraged the progressive political class that "tea party terrorists" were claimed to be the greatest threat to national security since Nazi Germany. But Maddow goes on. And bless his heart, but Alex Castellanos fails to get a smackdown rebuttal until much later in the broadcast. I reported on Janet Daley's essential piece earlier, "A Capitalist Economy Can't Support a Socialist Welfare State." The GOP talking point has to focus on the unsustainability of big-government entitlements. Republicans won the day by standing firm, and the S&P downgrade ultimately will damage Democrat reelection prospects next fall, hence Maddow's desperate efforts to spin this as not an economic issue at all, but one of tea party "intransigence."

In any case, see Karl at Patterico's Pontifications, "For Whom the Downgrade Tolls":

In sum, the S&P downgrade marks a post on the road where progressive demagogy loses its power. The downgrade marks a post on the road to extinction for 19th-20th century progressivism. That’s why the Obama administration — and true progressive ideologues — made S&P their first target, however futile the gesture.

RTWT.

I wouldn't separate the partisan left from the ideological left so much (Maddow is both, for example), but it's a really perceptive essay otherwise.

UPDATE: Linked at Atlas Shrugs and Yid With Lid. Thanks! Also linked at Blazing Cat Fur!

A Capitalist Economy Can't Support a Socialist Welfare State

The obvious realities are the ones people most desperately resist, especially progressives, who live in a utopian world where higher taxes and endless spending are held to promise a classless, want-free society, which is impossible.

See Janet Daley, "If we are to survive the looming catastrophe, we need to face the truth" (via Memeorandum):

Contrary to what the Obama Democrats claimed, the face-off in Congress did not mean that the nation’s politics were “dysfunctional”. The politics of the US were functioning precisely as the Founding Fathers intended: the legislature was acting as a check on the power of the executive.

The Tea Party faction within the Republican party was demanding that, before any further steps were taken, there must be a debate about where all this was going. They had seen the future toward which they were being pushed, and it didn’t work. They were convinced that the entitlement culture and benefits programmes which the Democrats were determined to preserve and extend with tax rises could only lead to the diminution of that robust economic freedom that had created the American historical miracle.

And, again contrary to prevailing wisdom, their view is not naive and parochial: it is corroborated by the European experience. By rights, it should be Europe that is immersed in this debate, but its leaders are so steeped in the sacred texts of social democracy that they cannot admit the force of the contradictions which they are now hopelessly trying to evade.

I discussed the political angle previously, "Time for Institutional Reform? Well, Only When Democrats Are Losing." But read Daley all the way through. Progressives argue that "politics is broken" when the people revolt against the socialist political class. If folks want to fix what's broken they need to look at what we're spending. Are we going to cut spending and reduce the size of government? It'll take a helluva lot more than downsizing defense. But America's Obama-Democrat-Socialists are impervious to reality. The reckoning is coming in 2012. Folks always say this election is "the most important election in my lifetime." I usually don't, but with the credit downgrade and America's military abusively stretched thin around the globe, my normal optimism is found wanting.

More on this in upcoming posts.

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube.

That's Creepy? ABC's Lara Spencer Runs Her Hand Through Jon Bon Jovi's Hair During On-Air Interview

It's not that creepy, but check NYDN, "Lara Spencer and other reporters getting too close for comfortm creepy in on-air segments." Looks like Bon Jovi doesn't mind either. See, "The Hair Is Shorter, but the Career Goes On and On: Jon Bon Jovi on Longevity, Jersey and Outselling Justin Bieber."

North London Riots After Police Killing

At Chicago Tribune, "Riot hits north London following police shooting, double decker bus and patrol cars set ablaze."

And from Nile Gardiner, at Telegraph UK, "Tottenham riots: how long before the shameless Left starts blaming the Conservatives for the criminal actions of mindless thugs?":

Red Hot Chili Peppers Are Back

At Los Angeles Times, "A new beginning for the Chili Peppers: After a rough patch, the veteran L.A. band is back with a new guitarist and a new album due out this month."

What Do We Say When Johnny Comes Home?

One of my favorite anti-war songs, from T.S.O.L., mainly because it's so haunting on the apathy. Joe Wood sings on "American Zone," during a period when Jack Grisham had left the band. I really enjoyed the studio recording, but I don't see it online, so just turn this up on your tablet:

There's blood on the streets again today
All the people dying what a price we have to pay
Around the world they're fightin'
It's not that far away
feel the darkness
Can we change our ways?

[Chorus:]
We live in the American zone
Free of fear in our American home
Swimmin pool and digital phone
What do we say when Johnny comes home

Johnny just got back from war today
Beruit weekend, the powder keg
He was 20 years old and he lost both of his legs
We're all really sorry today

[Chorus]

What do we say
What do we say
What do we say
When Johnny comes home
and he lost his legs.

RELATED: "Washington Mourns U.S. Troops Killed in Afghan Helicopter Crash."

Fresno State Sweet Corn Is Best-Kept Secret No More

I got a kick out of this story, which ran on the front-page of the Los Angeles Times, "Customers stalk Fresno State's sweet corn."

Reminds me of my dad a little too. We used to go to some local produce stands to buy fruits and vegetables. You're surrounded by agriculture up there, so it brings back fond memories. And Fresno State is world-renowned for its ag programs anyway. If we don't move out of state, we'll probably retire up that way, although that's still a long time from now.