JunkYardBlog

ISRAEL'S STRATEGY

of collapsing the homes of vaporized homicide bombers appears to be working, to the point that even Hamas is feeling the pinch of a populace that's sick of war.

So here's an interesting question, to me at least: If the Palestinians finally quit blowing themselves up to kill Israelis, will the Arab states then green light our war with Iraq? Of course not--they'll find some other excuse. But it would be interesting to see what that excuse turns out to be.

WHAT'S TO BE DONE

with the remains of the 9-11 hijackers? I say scatter 'em and bury 'em in pigskin. Or ship most of 'em back to Riyadh with a "Return to Sender" notice attached.

WAR-FOR-OIL

is Phil Donahue's latest sad attempt to gin up ratings. Well, though it's utterly baseless it is more interesting than his town hall meeting with Ralph Nader.

BLOGGER

has been fighting me for the past two days. AARRGGHH...and to think I upgraded to Blogger Pro. Why? The idea was to make posting easier...

THE CASE AGAINST CLONING

doesn't depend on one's theological perspective, according to Ramesh Ponnuru, writing for Tech Central Station. According to Mr. Ponnuru,

To oppose research cloning, it is necessary to believe 1) that the early embryo is a living member of the human species and 2) that all entities that meet this description have intrinsic worth such that it is wrong intentionally to destroy them. To support research cloning, it is necessary to deny one or both of these premises.

He's dead right. I've made the case before that a pro-life stance on abortion isn't inherently religious (if you press me, I might be able to find the link), and similar logic applies to cloning. But I'll do something I rarely do here--make a prediction. Pro-cloners will assiduously avoid taking this column on. It contains no straw men, and no religious arguments that can be swatted away with "Well, I'm not religious, so this doesn't apply to me" rhetoric. It's just a good, straightforward, logical take on cloning--and therefore something pro-cloners will ignore.

AL QEADA MAY BE OUR WELCOMING PARTY IN IRAQ

, and the Saudis may be helping them set the table. If this story turns out to be true, the Saudi entity's days are numbered.

IF ISRAEL IS THE CAUSE

of all the problems and violence in the Middle East, then how might this story be explained. It seems the Palestinians aren't good neighbors whether they live in the "Occupied Territories" or an Arab country like Lebanon.

(thanks to Chris)

FLIGHT 93 CRASHED INTACT

, which means no missile or bomb brought it down. Which means the people over at Democrats.com are, as usual, chasing shadows, and in this case trying to chip away at the doomed flight's heroes. This very interesting bit comes from Listen Missy, who seems to have run across it in Discover magazine. Since the magazine hasn't put the story online yet, I'll quote Missy herself:

Putting conspiracy theorists to rest, for now: in my new issue of Discover magazine, there's a blurb about a University of Arizona seismologist who analyzed records from September 11 of ground vibrations triggered by the Flight 93 crash. Based on seismic energy, the plane crashed intact (or nearly so), disputing rumors that a fighter plane shot it down, which would have caused Flight 93 to hit in pieces, which in turn would have triggered far less seismic energy (as was the case with the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie).

She posted that on August 4, so I suppose the story must be in the September issue.

(Link to Missy via Croooow Blog, who, by the way, has been added to the permalinks. Thought I'd done that a long time ago.)

THOUGH HE PUT THEM IN THE "AXIS OF EVIL,"

Iran's mullahs are nicer to President Bush than his Democrat opposition. The Dems routinely call him "dumb," but an Iranian official says he's "too intelligent" to attack them.

Funny thing is, he's right. We're not interested in attacking Iran, figuring the Iranian street may soon do what we'd like. Now Iran's neighbors, on the other hand....

UPDATE: Speaking of Iran's neighbors, if you happen to be scheduled for a meeting with Saddam's son Uday, make sure you're on time.

WASHINGTON ISN'T READY FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT

according to InstaPundit (who needs a link from me like a hole in the head). Let me tell ya a little story. Not long after moving to Maryland, my job took me to the nation's capital. I didn't know my way around the city, so I asked a co-worker, who gave me very good directions that I failed to follow. Instead of ending up where I was supposed to be, I ended up on a little side street not at all far from the Mall. It was a sunny morning so I wasn't worried about safety or anything, just worried that I'd make my appointment with the very powerful people I was to meet. So, thinking I'd passed my destination, I turned left on another little side street to attempt to make the block and come back. When I turned, I was shocked to see before me an abandoned police car, covered in dust like it had been there since the Grant Administration, the windows broken out and the tires flat. An abandoned police car--any city that has one of those on any street isn't ready for self-governing.

And don't get me started on what the canyon-sized potholes can do to your car in that town.

A TIME OF MEASURELESS PERIL

: That's how Winston Churchill described the world before September 1939, and Tony Blankley has resurrected the quote to describe the times in which we now live. The article he has penned today is a fascinating read for several reasons, not least of which is the way he juxtaposes Henry Kissinger's support for the coming war with Iraq with StratFor's recent analysis of the war as a means to break the will of the Islamists and the terror they use as a weapon.

Psychology is so much a part of war and conflict that it can scarcely be measured. Our troops lost many battles in World War II, and were humiliated in places like Bataan, yet the homefront never wavered in its support. The nation knew it had a job to do and did it without reservation. The purpose was clear, the enemy obvious, and the cause just, and America and her allies prevailed.

A generation later, in Vietnam the nation was much less sure of the necessity of war. The conflict had largely started from an attack in the Gulf of Tonkin that later turned out to have been rather less significant than most believed. The nation divided over the war, as its purpose became murky and the enemy seemed relentless. It didn't matter at all that US troops never lost a single battle in Vietnam, or that the infamous Tet Offensive nearly broke the enemy's back--America wasn't sure that the fight was worth it, and lost.

Now America is for the most part united that war against Islamism is just, but the Islamists are even more united in the idea that they can win. The psychology of the struggle has reached a loggerhead as it often does early in a war--both sides are convinced that they are right and will ultimately win. One side is wrong, but we don't know which side yet. All we do know is that losing is unacceptable, possibly lethal, to the idea of liberty and the continuance of democracy in the world, so win we must.

But winning is more than pushing an ustable regime out of power in a tenth-rate country. Winning is breaking the enemy's will to continue fighting, wherever the enemy lives. In this way, the current war is similar to World War II. In Germany, a hideous ideology predicting the rise and victory of a Germanic reich drove it to fight, while in Japan a cultic worship of the divine emperor and the perceived struggle against lesser beings drove it to fight. In the Islamists, we have both--religious fanaticism unparalled elsewhere in the world, combined with a Nazi mindset preaching death to the Jews and other infidels. Like World War II, our civilization can't co-exist with the enemy's, so one must fall.

So the war isn't about establishing some American dominion or securing oil patches in unpronouncable countries. It's about survival, and the key to survival is having the will to survive coupled with the might to break the enemy's will to fight. Destroying Saddam's sadistic regime in Iraq is key--he survived our mightiest onslaught a decade ago, has thumbed his nose at us ever since, and we have become bogged down trying to contain him. Destroying him will destabilize the entire Middle East and lead to violent conflict, but it is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace for the future.

BIG FISH OR TINY MINNOW?

If you read the headline to this story, you come away thinking that alleged dirty bomber Jose Abduyah Padilla was a bit player in al Qaeda's attempt to detonate a dirty bomb in the US. In fact, you could get much the same impression from the way the Bush Administration, apart from Attorney General John Ashcroft, handled it at the time. After Ashcroft's splashy announcement from Moscow that Padilla had been arrested and the plot thwarted, the administration started muttering that the arrest was overpublicized, that Padilla wasn't a big deal and so forth. And it's probably true that Padilla isn't a high roller in the terrorist world.

But the truly weird thing is that either federal officials can't even decide that he was connected in some way to al Qaeda, or there's a debate about that going on inside law enforcement that's now bubbling up in the press. Here's the skeptical side:

The FBI's investigation has produced no evidence that Jose Padilla had begun preparations for an attack and little reason to believe he had any support from al-Qaida to direct such a plot, said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But....the same article stresses once again why Padilla was caught in the first place:

Most of the information that led to Padilla's arrest came from captured al-Qaida operational chief Abu Zubaydah, officials said. Zubaydah, the highest-ranking terrorist leader taken into U.S. custody since Sept. 11, was captured and wounded in a raid in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in late March.

One U.S. law enforcement official said the information Zubaydah is supplying during interrogations is not always accurate and investigators are treating his comments with increasing skepticism.

It's very likely that Zubaydah is doling out partial and even false information, both in an effort to establish his credibility with our guys while also keeping them far from real terrorist plots. For our guys, the trick is obviously to try and figure out which information is based in fact and which is not. So while Zubaydah did give up the information that led to Padilla's capture, it suggests seemingly contradictory conclusions--that Padilla was in fact working for al Qaeda at some level (meaning that to some extent his capture was important), but that he wasn't important enough to hide from US authorities. Which should lead to another conclusion--there are more al Qaeda ops, who are better trained than Padilla, and they're currently planning more terrorist attacks inside the US. If Padilla were the sole al Qaeda op scouting around for targets or trying to obtain the radioactive goop necessary to make a dirty bomb, Abu Zubaydah wouldn't have given him up.

HEADLINES FROM TODAY'S DEMOCRATS.COM NEWSLETTER

:

Bush Has No Compassion for the Disabled

Bush Rolls Back Rules on Privacy of Medical Data

Bush's Disgraceful Failure: How Bin Laden and Al Qaeda Got Away

Hey Sicky Dick - It's Time for You to Go!

Bush's Economic Summit Ignores the Growing Divisions between Rich CEO's and
Unemployed Americans

It's the Economy, Stupid - Yes George, We Mean YOU

This would be bad enough if it were just coming from a splinter group of the DNC, but it isn't--DNC Chair Terry MacAuliffe has been out saying similar stuff lately. As for the Bushies, they can't even stomach legitimately criticizing the Dems for refusing to require Robert Rubin to testify about his possible role in Enron.

To the Bush Administration: I know you guys want to change the tone of Washington and all, but the Dems aren't interested in changing the tone. They just want to hang whatever they can around your neck. You folks had better learn how to respond and fight back, or you risk a repeat of 1992 in a couple years.

HOMESCHOOLING DUSTUP

: Some corners of the blogosphere seem to be embroiled in a discussion on the merits of homeschooling (Stuart Buck has a good rundown of the links pro and con). Not to blogpile on Dawn Olsen, but she's wrong. As she admits, she's done no research and her take is a gut reaction, to which we're all entitled. But to condemn all homeschooling based on her neighbors (whom I assume she won't be inviting over for tea parties after calling them a nasty name) and on the opinions of a couple of others is to use a pretty narrow "core sample" of data. I think it's profoundly interesting, though, that her sister (a professional educator) is even considering homeschooling her children. Why? I don't know the answer, but I'd like to know as I think it would shed much light on the discussion. Dawn presumably doesn't know or doesn't want to get into it, but of all the points she hits, that one is to me the most interesting.

As for using anecdotal evidence, we all can play that game. Many of the brightest, most attentive parents I know are homeschooling their kids, and for a wide variety of reasons. For many it comes down to faith--they want to give their children an education that better reflects their own values, and they're simply sick of the references to Heather and her two mommies that keep sneaking into kindergarten reading lessons. For others, it's the violence that's rampant in today's schools, while for others it's cultural--they want to give their child a more rounded and grounded education than public schools provide. I know one family whose reasoning touches all of those I've cited, and their neighborhood is full of homeschooled kids. At a couple of points during the school day, the parents have agreed to let their kids out for a sort of block-wide recess time, taking care of the socialization angles that Dawn worries about. Having spent time around these kids, I have to say that for their age they are some of the smartest, best-behaved children I've ever been around.

Instead of homeschooling, some say the answer is to send your kids to private schools, but for most parents that's too expensive an option unless they either mortage their future or have both parents work outside the home. That also runs contrary to the way most of these parents think--it may be a radical notion nowadays, but these parents believe in raising their own children, not depending on day care or the state to do it for them. If these parents could somehow get their hands on their tax dollars presently being misspent in the public schools, then private schools might become a viable choice, but as things stand now that isn't going to happen.

So the fact remains, whether homeschooling is the answer or not, that public schools are simply failing to truly educate, which doesn't mean getting kids ready for some standardized test at the end of the year. To be educated means to be able to think for oneself, to be able to reason and to be able to solve problems. From what I've seen, homeschooling does educate young minds much better (on average) than public schooling--and for a tiny fraction of the cost.

INTELLIGENCE SOURCES

have recently spotted an uptick in activity around one of Iraq's biochem weapons labs. It seems a large convoys of trucks has been seen going in and out of the compound in Taji, which is just a few miles from Baghdad and is a known weapons lab. Speculation as to what the trucks are doing can run a couple of ways--that they're bringing new stuff in to renovate the plant, or that they're hauling stuff out to move it to a new location. Either way, it's something to keep track of.

And for the Josh Marshalls and Chris Matthews of the world, it's stories like this one that keep the hawks on guard. It's not a neocon cabal or American bloodlust--it's the simple fact that Saddam has used WMDs in the past, and if he gets his hands on them is likely to use them in the future, and that his likely method is to hand them off to terrorists for use against us, Israel or our other allies.

What I can't figure out is why some people have such a hard time seeing this.

A RIGHT-WING TEXAN

visits Saudi Arabia. During my time in the Air Force, 1993-97, I heard many tales from Gulf War vets about the medieval kingdom. But I haven't been there myself, both because I haven't had a reason to go and because to me Saudi Arabia is the very definition of "flyover country."

If you want a good writer's take on what it's like to work and try to live in the Saudi entity, check out RWT's three-parter.

THE SECRET IS OUT

: Long-time JYB readers may remember that I speculated a few weeks back about the timing of all the Bush scandal-mongering coming from the Democrats and the NY Times. I wondered aloud whether they'd been collectively sitting on the Harken stock story, a story that's been kicked around for about a decade now in Texas politics, waiting to use it to their advantage in this fall's mid-term elections. According to this story in The American Prospect, that's exactly what was going on. The Dems played wallflower early after 9-11, so that they could come out swinging as the election neared:

This wallflower pose has not been an accident, but a conscious strategy. For months now, Democratic operatives have debated whether to go after Bush personally and drive his poll numbers down to obtain an advantage in the midterm elections. Until recently, Bush stood at 75 percent, 80 percent, even higher. What on earth could Democrats do about numbers like that? They did some polling and found out -- phew! -- that they didn't need to go after Bush's numbers, that the president lacked coattails, that voters in discrete congressional districts and states were unlikely to cast their votes for Congress based on how they felt about Bush. There were internal arguments over this question -- some very much wanted to go after Bush more aggressively and personally -- but the numbers said what they said, and Democratic operatives concluded that they could succeed this fall without the risk of going after the president.

That was until Paul Krugman sharpened up his hatchet and began penning anti-Bush stories on July 2.

But now the sword has been unsheathed, and the vital question is whether the Democrats know how to wield it. Certainly, there are risks in going after Bush. He remains personally popular, for now. The White House can still use the war on terrorism to its political advantage, and it may turn out that nothing hard can be pinned on the president with respect to Harken. The media could tire of the story when no smoking gun turns up -- or when our divisions hit the soil of Iraq -- and revert to the reflexive flattery that characterized coverage of this administration before July 2. Even so, the latest polls suggest the emergence of a new political reality in which public trust in Bush and his fellow multimillionaires is fading. The Democrats may not have done much to create this opening, but it's there. And if the Democrats fumble this one, their patient, long-suffering loyalists may not be able to stand it any longer.

First, it's a joke to assume that the Dems "may not have done much" to create the ethics openings--they've been grousing over these allegations for years. All it took was a phone call from a disgruntled Dem in Texas to Krugman to get the ball rolling, and that may be what happened. And before I get too far into this line, let me say that it's always legitimate to question what our leaders are up to, what motivates them, and what they bring to the table in terms of skills and baggage from their pre-political lives. In that vein, I'm not saying that it's unpatriotic for the Dems to want to go after the president politically, but the personal side that they seem interested in is the very same personal side that they always say is off limits when it's their guy under fire.

And there is the larger issue, the war, that serves as a backdrop to all this. Nowhere in this article, or indeed any of the pro-Dem writings I've come across recently, is the simple question asked: Do we somehow hurt the war effort by going after the wartime president? There seems to be no concern for that at all, as the focus is entirely on the party and its never-ending quest to acquire and expand its power base. In fact, they only mention the war as either a political weapon for Bush (which it isn't, much) and as something that can get in the way of Democratic scandal plans. That is, at best, a naive posture for one of our two leading parties to strike. Presidential power is as much about the president as it is about law, and intentionally weakening a wartime president for purely partisan gain will likely fracture support for the war as a whole.

Contrast this with the Republican stance during the Clinton days. Most Republicans, from the party leadership down, were hesitant to say too much about Clinton's peccadilloes while he was ordering the air campaign in Bosnia--though that very same air campaign turned out to coincide with at least one of Clinton's trysts with Monica. The Republicans as a party never went into wag the dog mode (though most of the public did to one degree or another) during Clinton's feeble Tomahawk raids on al Qaeda "bases" in Sudan and Afghanistan. Republicans understood that getting too partisan during crises presents a fractured front to our enemies and emboldens them. It's an obvious truth that, thus far, hasn't occurred to the Democrats.

If you have the time and the stomach for lots of whining, check out the rest of the story. It's laughable and full of grousing about how the Democrats don't have a Richard Mellon Scaife to bankroll its politics (no mention of Ted Turner, or the Ford Foundation, or the scads of other foundations and corporations that regularly give to left-wing causes, which ultimately help the Democrats) and how the Democrats don't have their own cable network (um, unless you count CNN) and how they've generally been out-thought on policy in recent decades (a rare point with which I agree). It's sad, and further proof that the Dems resort to demagoguery so often because they have to--reality is no longer a friend of the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: Upon a little closer reading, this section jumped out at me:

It's not for nothing that Grover Norquist, the conservative caudillo whose weekly meetings are the nerve center of the American right, frequently quotes Lenin, according to David Brock's Blinded by the Right: "Probe with bayonets, looking for weaknesses." Movement conservatives, as The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg maintained in his review of Brock's book, think very much like communists: They take the long view of history. With iron certitude they are convinced that their interpretation of the world is the only legitimate one; as such, achieving it through virtually any means is justified. They have a movement's way of seeing themselves: embattled, outnumbered, humanity's last hope for slaying the decadent liberal Democratic dragon.

Yes, it's sad and ironic that some of the former defenders of Communism now liken conservatives to Lenin, but that isn't what really got my attention. It's Herzberg's treatment of Brock's book and the editorializing within that review. With liberal reviewers like Hertzberg at the Times to give the kid glove treatment to books that support Democrat paranoia, they still have the nerve to complain that life's been unfair to them. They sound like spoiled children.

UPDATE AGAIN: The word "swining" in the first paragraph should've read "swinging," as it now does. But if I had to commit a typo, I probably couldn't have picked a more appropriate one.

I'M SO GLAD I SUBSCRIBE TO DEMOCRATS.COM'S NEWSLETTER

: It's a window into the intellectual vacuum that dominates the left these days, and offers the added benefit of unwittingly exposing sneaky Democrat racial smears. Here's the story, linked in today's Democrats.com e-newsletter: A new video that was to be used to train poll workers in Broward County, Florida contained an outrageous racial smear, depicting a white, male voter who identified himself as a Republican verbally abusing a black poll worker. After local Republican officials justifiably raised a fuss about it, it's being re-edited. So who's behind the offensive sections? A "diversity trainer" with a tin ear for true diversity:

Janice Boursiquot of Fort Lauderdale, a diversity training consultant to the supervisor’s office, got less than $2,000 for developing the concept behind the tape. She was stunned by the complaints.

“I thought we were being progressive, including party affiliation as something our poll workers should be sensitive to,” Boursiquot said. “The intent was to sensitize people that there were more than just Democrats here and that we have to be tolerant of all political beliefs. It was an issue of diversity.

“There was no intent to be insensitive to Republicans,” she said. “Some of my best friends are Republicans.”

Probably not anymore, but I digress. So there should end the story, but not for Democrats.com. They apparently think training videos should slur one party. Here's what they had to say about the issue in today's newsletter:

In Broward County FL, "Election officials have re-edited a video used to train
poll workers and have apologized to Republicans after complaints the tape
portrays a GOP voter as intolerant and abusive. The tape, which is designed to
instruct how to handle potential conflict during elections, shows a white voter
who identifies himself as voting Republican verbally abusing a black poll
worker. 'This is just outrageous. It is incomprehensible that our highest
election official would take a partisan shot at a member of the Republican
Party,' said George LeMieux, the Broward Republican chairman. LeMieux had
demanded the offending portion of the tape be erased and that Supervisor of
Elections Miriam Oliphant apologize to the county's Republicans." Hey LeMieux -
are you afraid of the "conservatively incorrect" TRUTH about GOP racism? And
when will Katherine Harris - and George Bush - apologize to America for stealing
the White House?

That's it. Democrats.com approves of the gratiutous racial slur, but not of the GOP official who put a stop to it.

GOING FOR THE BANK SHOT

: Saddam says he's willing to fight us "to the last Palestinian." In trying to get the Palestinians to perpetrate mega-attacks against Israel, he's finally made plain what I've suspected, and blogged about, for months--that the recent uprisings in Palestinian areas are directly tied to our threats against Saddam, and the point of which have been to provoke Israel into such massive retaliation that it upsets the whole region. But Israel is currently playing it smart, destroying the homes of suicide bombers' families. It may seem cruel, but it is already having the desired effect--while the bomber is all fine to evaporate himself in a "martyrdom operation" against the "Zionist entity," he tends to dislike the idea that his own family may become homeless as a result. The families don't like it much either.

The big question, now that Israel has a decent deterrent in place and now that Saddam is so openly using the Palestinians as bomb-fodder for his own selfish ends, is how long Hamas et al can keep the game going? Not long, I think. Arafat is a fool twice over now, for siding with Saddam against us in the last major regional conflict and in the one to come. You've been used, Yassir.

TOWNSEND'S TROUBLES

: I just caught this WaPo piece about the Maryland Governor's Office of Crime Control and Prevention, which is currently inder investigation by the FBI. Now, before you Ehrlich fans get too excited, this is the same FBI that accused Richard Jewell, and now possibly Steve Hatfill, of committing crimes they didn't do. And it's the same FBI that flubbed Joe Messner's brilliant destruction of alneda.com. So just because the FBI is investigating doesn't mean anyone's guilty, or that the guilty will actually get caught.

Nonetheless, it's not good form to have the Feds snooping around one of your pet projects in the middle of a tight race, but such is the current fix for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. The gist of the story is that the crime control office was set up to dole out state money (gleaned from your taxes and mine, if you live here) to groups that in one way or another claimed to have a hand in fighting crime (personally I'd like to see it go to the cops for raises, bigger guns and faster cars, and to hiring another prosecutor or two to help put criminals away, but what do I know? I'm just a taxpayer...). But in Prince Georges County, about a half million dollars of the grant money may have given out for purely political purposes to groups that like Democrats. Now that the FBI and the grand jury investigating have subpoenaed the University of Maryland for data regarding the $13.5 million it received from the same kitty, there's a real possibility that the entire effort could soon come under scrutiny.

Slicing through all this, the crime control office may have been a political slush fund used to grant largesse on groups aligned to the state's Democrats. That's what the prosecutors, the grand jury and the FBI are trying to find out. As the group is under the authority of one Lt Gov Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and since it administered several projects that have become her signature accomplishments, it's beginning to pose a real problem for her.

"OUR EFFORT 2001"

is another nasty little terrorist website. Anyone out there got Joe Messner's number? I would call the FBI, but I think Messner would be more efficient.

(thanks to Dave)

IRAQ HAS JUST NIXED WEAPONS INSPECTIONS

unilaterally, presumably forever. This is the direct result of nations unwilling to stand with the US and demand that the inspections resume. It is the direct result of Europe's cowardice and relativistic view of the world, and flows from the Arab states' carping that there should be no pursuit of Saddam until Palestine is taken care of. Had Europe stood with us, had the Arab states stood with us, we could perhaps have kept Saddam bottled up. But they haven't--they have acted to lift, or at least undercut, the weapons inspection regime at every turning point. This has made Saddam bolder, and has led him to believe that if he waited long enough, he could simply outlast the world's will to contain him. He seems to have been proven right.

Should war begin, those who refused to stand up and demand that Iraq live up to its 1991 cease-fire responsibilities are to blame. We live in a world full of Neville Chamberlains today, and Iraq's latest move is the proof.

IS ISRAEL ROPE-A-DOPING

the Palestinians? Daniel Pipes thinks so. And there's some evidence that it's succeeding:

Misery leads some Palestinians to even contemplate the unmentionable: "I don't say (Israeli) occupation would be better," said a farmer in Jericho who let his peppers wilt on the bush. "But if they were occupying us, at least the city might be open," permitting his produce to get to market.

More broadly, 55 Palestinian intellectuals and public figures signed a petition in June condemning suicide bombings in Israel. Ehud Ya'ari of the Jerusalem Report notes that "instead of automatic applause for the attacks, there is now a readiness to allow expressions of doubtfulness and dissent".

WHEN REPTILES ATTACK

: This KXAS-TV anchor is having a bad day.

DEFUSING THE CHENEY "SCANDAL:"

Why isn't Paul Krugman reporting on Halliburton's recent accounting conference call, a call that helped soothe investor worries and bolstered the company's stock price?

I think you already know the answer.