Pushing Green Could Drive Taxpayers Into Red

Once again, Mayor Mike Bloomberg's nanny state tendencies are taking hold. The Taxi and Limousine Commission is requiring that the ubiquitous black Town Cars will become a thing of the past as the city demands higher mileage requirements on those vehicles.

The City is forcing the owners of these vehicles to switch to hybrids and other vehicles claiming that they're going to reduce emissions. This is an unfunded mandate on those businesses, which is to be carried by those businesses. So, he's also pushing for tax breaks:

Mayor Bloomberg said he expected drivers to support the proposal because it would bring them more business and save them thousands of dollars in fuel costs each year. Increasingly, he said, the companies that use the cars, which are summoned to specific locations rather than being hailed in the street, are demanding the greener vehicles.

The mayor’s plan would also include incentives like tax breaks and low-cost-financing options to make it easier for the drivers, many of whom must buy their cars, to afford the higher down payments needed for hybrid vehicles.

Deutsche Bank and Lehman Brothers are working with a black-car company, Executive Transportation Group, to help provide low-interest loans for hybrid-vehicle purchases. Best Ford Taxi and Hudson Toyota/Penske Automotive Group have said they would offer favorable financing packages to the drivers. And the city is asking the state to approve the waiver of sales taxes on purchases.

How much is this going to cost the state? No one is saying.

You might think that this doesn't amount to much or that you don't use the town cars, but he's done the same thing to the yellow cabs. How much longer before he does the same to other vehicles?

Now, ask yourself why he's not demanding the same changes of the City owned fleet of vehicles? Instead, he's putting the onus on private entities and having taxpayers pick up the tab because the owners are balking at the higher initial costs.

The Gaza War Continues

While the New York Times and other outlets lead with the fact that Israel continues to pound Hamas positions with airstrikes, it curiously omits the reason that Israel is firing at Gaza in the first place.

Israel kept up its airstrikes Thursday against militants in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas continued to fire heavy barrages of rockets at Israel, one day after an Israeli civilian was killed in a rocket attack. That death was the first such fatality in nine months.

The Israeli Army said it had carried out five airstrikes since the early hours of Thursday morning against armed men and rocket launching squads in Gaza. Five militants were killed in those strikes, according to Hamas and Palestinian medical officials, bringing the total of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Wednesday to 17.

Two more militants were killed in two later attacks, according to local reports, and an airstrike in northern Gaza killed four young boys, aged 8, 9, 11 and 12, Palestinian medical officials said.

Eight Grad-type missiles fired from Gaza landed on Thursday afternoon in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon, to the north of the strip, Israel Radio said.

The Grad missiles have a longer range than the homemade, relatively crude Qassam rockets that are usually fired at the Israeli town of Sderot and farming communities bordering the Gaza Strip.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from Ashkelon, but the targeting of the center of that city of 120,000 people, a rare occurrence until now, will likely be seen in Israel as an escalation of the conflict.

Among the dead in Gaza were 11 militants and six civilians, including three young boys and a 5-month-old boy killed in airstrikes on Wednesday night, the medical officials said.

Most of the dead militants belonged to the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades. One of them was Hamza al-Hayya, the son of Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader and legislator. Hamza was killed on Thursday morning in what the Israeli army said was a strike against a squad about to launch rockets.

Hamas has been unleashing barrages of rockets, killing and maiming Israelis all within range of Gaza. That is a not insignificant fact that should be conveyed in the lede.

The terrorists refuse to accept Gaza; they want to destroy Israel and will fight by all available means to do so. That means firing off barrages of rockets and mortars at Israel from within confined places where civilians live and work. It means knowing that Hamas leaders move within civilian areas on purpose so as to maximize casualties should Israel's airstrikes hit them.

The fact that Hamas managed to kill an Israeli yesterday is not for lack of trying; they've fired hundreds of rockets and mortars at Israelis with the express purpose of killing and maiming them. Note that 17 more Israelis were injured when one of those Grad rockets slammed into Ashkelon.

To ignore this, or to deemphasize this in the leading paragraph shows just how far the media will go to portray the Palestinians in a positive light.

Further, relying on Palestinian media sources for casualty information among Palestinians is also problematic given how they've routinely exaggerated or lied about the injuries sustained or those who died.

This should also give pause to anyone who thinks that Fatah is dedicated to anything but Israel's destruction - that Fatah provided Hizbullah with training and that they're not willing to cede armed resistance. Earth to Abbas; your terrorist minions have never stopped their war against Israel. Your terrorist group has been eclipsed by an even more violent terrorist group; Hamas.

UPDATE:
It's good to see that some Israelis are waking up to the realization that the terrorists have been at war with Israel and are now calling for Israel to return the favor. It also appears that Israeli airstrikes were launched against the home of the Hamas prime minister (via MSNBC).

The New Jersey Reckoning

New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has unveiled a budget that would actually reduce state expenditures by a modest amount over the prior year budget (something accomplished only 3 times in the past 40+ years).

Among the proposals is the elimination of three state departments/agencies, and other workforce cuts.

That, of course, has got the state unions in a tizzy. That also has Carla Katz on the warpath (and she happens to be Corzine's former girlfriend).

Accepting the Oscar for his leading role in the budget adaptation of "There Will Be Blood" is Governor Jon Corzine. This was a budget speech that reached out and stabbed nearly every constituency and hacked at countless services that the public holds dear. As intended, the Governor's speech was grim, sobering and gory. It was also dead wrong.

Slashing thousands of jobs of middle class workers, who had nothing to do with getting the state in this fiscal fix, is grossly unfair. More to the point, it doesn't save money, it doesn't attack patronage and it ultimately hurts all families in New Jersey. My local union, representing thousands of public workers, vehemently opposes these cuts and we intend to vigorously fight against them.

We've seen this movie before starring Governors past. As horror films go, each sequel gets bloodier. This year's version, seemingly written with a chainsaw, proposes to eliminate between 4,000 and 5,000 hard-working middle class workers while failing to present any real solution to state's ongoing fiscal problems. These cuts will be devastating to the critical services that our members provide to the public and which the public values.

To make matters worse, the proposed job cuts follow on the heels of a severe two-year hiring freeze which has left many essential programs at bare bones levels already. The Governor's proposal, which eliminates thousands of important jobs without realistic backfilling, will dramatically cut services across all departments and will degrade the ability of the workers who remain to perform their jobs well.

The unions have done quite well for themselves, but have screwed taxpayers for years. The state workforce grew exponentially even as the state population decreased. We're still not going to see workforce levels below those in 2000, and the state can ill afford even that level.

It's Katz's job to bitch, moan, whine and complain about budget cuts since her union is among the biggest in the state and she's doing what she has to protect her members. However, her interests are not the same as the state taxpayers.

If anything, Corzine needs a bigger axe, or else the legislature will undermine his modest expenditure reductions. The Legislature will be sure to restore many of the jobs because they see the expediency of listening to the unions and their lobbyists. Also, watch for more taxes and fees to pay for existing programs at a time when the state and its citizens can ill afford them.

The state is also pushing small municipalities to merge services, and will use the carrot and stick approach to make it happen.

The Palestinian Rocket War Inflicts More Israeli Casualties

Palestinian terrorists continue their rocket war, this time firing rockets that slammed into a college campus in Sderot and murdered an Israeli student. 22 rockets were fired in all today. Hamas claimed responsibility.

Residents of Sderot have no more than seconds from the time the rockets are fired by the terrorists until they slam into buildings, homes, schools, day care centers, factories, and parks. The Israeli government knows that, and while it claims that its defense systems can engage rockets within 15 seconds of launch, the sad fact is that most rockets take far less time than that from the moment they're fired until they hit Israel.

Thus, the only way to stop the rocket war is to take out the terrorists before they fire the rockets. And so far Prime Minister Olmert is reluctant to take the steps necessary to safeguard Israeli lives in Sderot and beyond.

The IDF is largely reduced to policing rather than taking aggressive and necessary actions to stop the violence against Israel. I say largely, because the IDF and IAF still manage to take out terror cells using airstrikes.

Fatah is busy claiming that Hamas and al Qaeda are linking up in Gaza, which shouldn't be all that surprising. It's in Abbas' interest to get everyone to go after Hamas, because it extends Abbas' shelf life despite the fact that Abbas is no more interested in peace with Israel than Hamas is.

The IDF broke up a terror cell operating in the West Bank city of Nablus, which is supposed to be Fatah's responsibility, but we've repeatedly seen how Fatah looks the other way as terrorists operate from territory supposedly under its civil administrative control. Still others were arrested for carrying pipe bombs.

UPDATE:
Palestinian terrorists have now fired rockets at Ashkelon (just north of Gaza), and one ripped into a hospital. Carl in Jerusalem has the latest details.

UPDATE:
Israel raises Palestinian standard of living by lowering Palestinian infant mortality standards; Palestinians fire rockets at schools, universities, hospitals, etc., all with the hope of increasing Israeli mortality figures. This is the Palestinian-Israel conflict in a nutshell.

UPDATE:
MSNBC is focusing on the Israeli airstrikes and not on the precipitating events - the ongoing rocket fire by the terrorists at Israel. Figures.

Eskimos Sue Over Global Warming

Wonders will never cease. An Eskimo village in Alaska is suing a whole bunch of oil companies and other major corporations claiming that their emissions are causing weather changes that have meant that the village is affected by severe storms eroding its shoreline.

Good luck with that suit, because the science isn't exactly in their favor.

This past year has seen near record snowfall across North America, snow in places that rarely see snow like Baghdad and Jerusalem, and major snows across China.

The solar portion of the global climate equation may be playing a far greater factor than any of the global warming hype-meisters wish were the case and global temperatures have actually fallen by the largest amounts ever recorded.

That last part is anecdotal to be sure (one year a case does not make), but the fact is that the temperature drop from the past year practically cancels out a century of increases.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

So, while the Eskimos look to Al Gore and the global warming junk science, real science is providing evidence that we're about to enter a period of cooling.

UPDATE:
Welcome Hot Air readers! Please also note some more background about living in the Arctic from Thanos at Noblesse Oblige.

Flopping Aces Hacked By Palestinian Hackers

Flopping Aces was hacked by Palestinian hackers earlier today. Nice. Guess they don't like folks shedding light on the vermin known as Palestinian terrorists.

I somehow think that those Palestinian hackers will get their comeuppance. Sooner rather than later.

Mugh the Thug's Role in Lebanon War

I'm torn between calling this breaking news and stating the obvious, but AP says that Hizbullah sources have revealed that Imad Mughniyeh, far from being on the sidelines for the past decade, was right in the thick of the terrorist group's planning and operational efforts during the Hizbullah war with Israel in 2006.

Now Hezbollah officials and associates are describing a previously unknown role for Mughniyeh: Far from being too busy fleeing enemies, he was a key commander for Hezbollah in its 2006 war with Israel.

He was among the leading military and security strategists — if not the very top himself — of the group and a member of its decision-making committee, according to those who had knowledge of Mughniyeh before he was killed Feb. 12 in Damascus.

"Hezbollah's top architect of that war was Imad Mughniyeh," Anis Naccache, a 57-year-old longtime associate, told The Associated Press. "You can say he was like a staff general (chief of staff)."

In a speech Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah credited Mughniyeh with leading the group to two victories — the 2006 war and a Hezbollah guerrilla war in 2000 that led to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from its last positions in southern Lebanon.

In the 1980s, Mughniyeh was notorious in the West. He was accused of plotting suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy and bases of U.S. and French troops that killed hundreds, as well as the kidnappings of dozens of Westerners in Beirut.

The last attacks he is believed to have directed were suicide bombings in the 1990s against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish center in Argentina that killed more than 100 people and a bombing in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 Americans.

For years, Hezbollah said almost nothing about him. But after his death, the group has embraced him as a hero — to a degree that surprised some Lebanese who believed Hezbollah would not want to revive memories of its past association with terrorism.

AP can't call the thug, or the group, terrorists, even after the incontrovertible proof.

And his replacement in Hizbullah will try to do the same. Hizbullah's intentions haven't changed, and the UN continues to fail to carry out its obligations under UN SCR 1701. Lebanon continues to be torn apart by Hizbullah's presence, which is another avenue by which Syria profits.

Missed Correction of the Day

The New York Times has offered up the following correction:

A front-page article on Feb. 21 about Senator John McCain’s record on lobbying and ethics, including his role in the Keating Five case, described incorrectly the reprimand delivered to three other members of the Senate in 1991 for intervening with government regulators on behalf of Charles H. Keating Jr. The Senate Ethics Committee rebuked the three senators for improper behavior, but under a parliamentary agreement the full Senate did not censure them or take any other vote on the matter. (Go to Article)

That February 21 article is the one that caused a firestorm of anger and scorn of the paper by the insinuation that Sen. John McCain engaged in an extramarital affair with a lobbyist, Vicki Iseman.

Yet, this is all that the Times offers up as a correction? There was no factual evidence to support their lede:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

Even their public editor, Clark Hoyt, chastised the paper for running the story without corroboration even as editor Bill Keller doubled down and called his readers idiots for thinking the report was all about a possible sexual liason between McCain and Iseman.

Breaking: Blackout in South Florida

Power outages are cascading through many parts of South Florida, with Florida Power & Light and others reporting blackouts in portions of Miami, Doral, Westchester, Pembroke Pines, Miramar and Boca Raton.

Many traffic lights are not working and nine accidents were reported in Miami-Dade County between 1:04 p.m. and 1:26 p.m. Police agencies were dispatching officers to as many intersections as possible.

The lights flickered off at several South Florida hospitals, which had to switch to generator power.

"We had a blip here and the generators kicked in immediately," Jackson Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Lorraine Nelson said.

Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach and Baptist Hospital in Southwest Miami-Dade reported similar situations.

A spokeswoman for FPL said the company was investigating the extent and cause of the problem.

In one part of western Pembroke Pines, the outage began about 1:15 p.m., but service was restored within about 10 minutes.

Reuters is reporting that several power plants went offline.

I'd be curious to hear why this happened. With tonight's debate just hours away, expect someone to raise this as a question on energy policy, even though Congress has not allowed utilities to build new nuclear power plants by loosening restrictions, and the energy infrastructure in the country remains creaky at best despite a massive blackout in the Northeast several years ago and ongoing problems with energy distribution.

UPDATE:
One of the power plants that went offline includes a nuclear reactor, which apparently went offline when it lost power from an outside source.

A spokeswoman for FPL Group Inc said the company's Turkey Point nuclear reactor in Florida shut down due to the loss of off-site power but would not elaborate on the cause of the outage.

Mike Stone, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said the blackout affected two to three million people in south Florida and as far north as the Tampa area of the state.

Local media said the number of those affected was higher.

"I don't know the cause of the outage," Stone told Reuters, saying authorities were awaiting an update from FPL.

"There was a failure within the FPL system," Stone said.

They're quick to mention that terrorism isn't suspected as a source, even as no one quite knows how or why it happened.

UPDATE:
The blackout could continue into the night, and they're not sure if the instability in the grid is due to the shutdown of the Turkey Point nuclear power plant or whether it is a symptom of the problem. However, one has to wonder why the utility isn't responding to some media queries - that's just bad public relations on their part.

Florida's largest electric company shut down a nuclear reactor south of Miami for safety reasons Tuesday, causing sporadic power outages covering large portions of the state that could last well into the night. More than 3 million people are affected, the state says.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the two Florida Power & Light nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point power point 30 miles south of Miami automatically shut down. Two other power plants farther north, the Crystal River reactor and St. Lucie twin reactors, in the state continued to operate, although officials at those two facilities noticed the grid disturbance.

"We don't know whether the grid disturbance caused the units to shut down or that their shut down caused the grid disturbance," said Kenneth Clark, a spokesman at the NRC regional office in Atlanta. He said the two reactors were automatically shut down and in safe standby.

"There are no safety concerns. The reactors shut down as designed," said Clark in a telephone interview. He said both reactor continued to have offsite electric power. He said two coal-burning power plants at Turkey Point also shut down.

FPL in several media interviews estimated that power should be up statewide within 10 hours. The company did not return repeated calls from The Associated Press or speak to a reporter in the lobby of its Juno Beach headquarters.

UPDATE:
Well, it appears that a problem at a nearby power substation caused Turkey Point to shut down, and the problem spread to seven other power plants, causing a widespread blackout across Florida.

Fifteen Years Later

Today marks the 15th anniversary of the 1993 WTC Bombing, which killed six and wounded over 1,000 people. I continue to refer back to this posting in reference to the attacks, which occurred at 12:18 PM on a snowy overcast day:

The bomb went off at 12:18PM.

It took some people more than 2 hours to evacuate the towers. The emergency stairwells were pitch black, and the air was thick with smoke.

The six people who were murdered in the first major Islamic terrorist attack on US soil were:
John DiGiovanni, Valley Stream, New York
Robert Kirkpatrick, Suffern, New York
Steve Knapp, Manhattan, New York City
Monica Smith, Seaford, New York
William Macko, Bayonne, New Jersey
Wilfredo Mercado, Brooklyn, New York City

The terrorists had sought to do more than just damage the towers. They wanted to make an emphatic and deadly statement:

Yousef was assisted by Iraqi bomb maker Abdul Rahman Yasin. Yasin's complex 1300 lb (600 kg) bomb was made of urea pellets, nitroglycerin, sulfuric acid, aluminum azide, magnesium azide, and bottled hydrogen. He added sodium cyanide to the mix as the vapors could go through the ventilation shafts and elevators of the towers. The van that Yousef used had four 20 ft (6 m) long fuses, all covered in surgical tubing. Yasin calculated that the fuse would trigger the bomb in twelve minutes after he would use a cheap cigarette lighter to light the fuse.

Yousef wanted to prevent smoke from escaping the towers, therefore catching the public eye by smothering people inside. He foresaw Tower One collapsing onto Tower Two after the blast would occur. The materials to build the bomb cost some US$300.

Andrew McCarthy has a good roundup of his thoughts on the war launched by the Islamists on US soil on that day.

UPDATE:
Others remembering this day of infamy: Michelle Malkin (thanks for the link!), and Debbie Schlussel.

Jammie reports that one of the convicted terrorists rotting in Supermax for his participation in the attack is trying his best to conduct lawfare on the US courts system. The US Supreme Court isn't giving him the satisfaction.

The Kitchen Sink and Hope Wont Be Enough

Senator Hillary Clinton is going to need more than throwing the kitchen sink of criticism about her opponent and front runner Senator Barack Obama if she's to win the nomination for the Democrats. Hope wont be enough either.

After denouncing Mr. Obama over the weekend for an anti-Clinton flier about the Nafta trade treaty, and then sarcastically portraying his message of hope Sunday as naïve, Mrs. Clinton delivered a blistering speech on Monday that compared Mr. Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience to that of the candidate George W. Bush.

“We’ve seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor the wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security,” Mrs. Clinton said in a speech on foreign policy at George Washington University. “We can’t let that happen again.”

With a crucial debate on Tuesday night in Ohio, both Mrs. Clinton’s advisers and independent political analysts said that, by going negative against Mr. Obama at a time when polls in Texas and Ohio show a tightening race, Mrs. Clinton risked alienating voters. Mrs. Clinton has always been more popular with voters when she appeared sympathetic and a fighter; her hard-edged instinct for negative politics has usually turned off the public.

“There’s a general rule in politics: A legitimate distinction which could be effective when drawn early in the campaign often backfires and could seem desperate when it happens in the final hours of a campaign,” said Steve McMahon, a Democratic strategist working for neither candidate.

In Mrs. Clinton’s speech Monday, she also portrayed herself as “tested and ready” to be commander in chief, while accusing Mr. Obama of believing “that mediation and meetings without preconditions will solve some of the world’s most intractable problems.” Mr. Obama has said he would go further than Mrs. Clinton to meet with leaders of hostile nations, but he has also said he would prepare for those meetings carefully and would not be blind to the leaders’ motives.

On another matter, Mrs. Clinton’s aides criticized Mr. Obama on Monday for not distancing himself from outside groups running advertisements that promote his candidacy, a practice that Mr. Obama has sometimes criticized. An Obama spokesman said in response that Mrs. Clinton had tacitly permitted similar spending without comment.

Voters have decided over the past 10 primaries that Hillary simply isn't their choice. The man from Hope hasn't helped either. President Bill Clinton has been seen as much as a hindrance to Hillary's efforts as a help.

Obama's on a serious roll. If Hillary is to overtake Obama in the total number of delegates, she's going to need to do more than just okay in the debate tonight. She needs a knockout blow.

Supporting publication of photos of Obama in African garb isn't going to cut it. His inexperience and failures of achievement of note are serious drawbacks to Obama's message of hope and change, but coming from someone who has similar drawbacks isn't going to help Hillary.

So, unless Hillary has something more, the debates tonight aren't going to sway voters all that much.

UPDATE:
And another photo of Obama in tribal garb has surfaced. Sweetness and Light has the photo and details (but it may be swamped by everyone rushing to see what the fuss is about). This photo shows him wearing different African tribal garb, and I have the same thoughts about this as I did the first photo. Big deal.

Name one of Obama's achievements.

The AP apparently had this photo, based on the watermark associated with it. The photographer of the man holding a photo of Obama in tribal garb is Karel Prinsloo, and you can view some photos attributed to Prinsloo here.

UPDATE:
Rob Port at Say Anything doesn't really think much of the photo and whether Obama is or was Muslim. That he's a self-professed member of the Trinity United Church of Christ is enough to give him the creeps. I'm surprised more media outlets aren't willing to take on that task, or is it too sensitive to raise questions over a church that uses the language of race to describe everything and there are disturbing links between this church and Louis Farrakhan and Libya, among others.

UPDATE:
Jammie writes that the IRS is now taking a closer look at Obama's church after a speech he gave there. Nice.

A spokesman for the denomination says it received notice of the inquiry on Monday.

The IRS says there is reason to believe the speech violated restrictions on political activity for nonprofit groups. The denomination denies any wrongdoing.

Did you expect the church to come out and say yes, we broke the law? Seriously? I don't know how much weight to put behind the IRS efforts, but politicians routinely go to churches all the time to burnish credentials and gain support from congregations. If you dig enough, you'll probably find Hillary and McCain likely stepped over this line as well at some point.

Serbs Attack Another US Diplomatic Facility Over Kosovo

The Serbs are once again showing themselves unworthy of support. Even if you agree that the US gave them a bum rap in supporting independence for Kosovo, rioting and torching US diplomatic facilities isn't the way to make friends and influence people, unless you want to influence them and make them enemies.

That's precisely what the Serbs are doing right now. They've attemped to attack the US consulate in Banja Luka:

Hundreds of protesters tried to attack the United States consulate in Bosnia’s Serb Republic on Tuesday, smashing shops in the city centre after they were pushed away by riot police.

About 10,000 people protested in the region’s capital Banja Luka in a largely peaceful march against the secession of Kosovo from Serbia. The Albanian-majority breakaway province declared independence on February 17 with Western backing.

But despite a heavy police presence, the protest turned violent when several hundred set off towards the U.S. consulate, throwing stones and firecrackers at the building.

They also smashed the windows of Croat-owned shops in the centre of town. Three people were injured, including two police officers, the emergency services said.

The photo was taken by Milan Radulovic of AFP and carried on Getty Images.

Photo of the Day

 

The photo is taken in Radburn, New Jersey after Friday's snow of an overpass that enables pedestrians to travel between parks without having to cross streets. For a history of Radburn, check out this.

This post will also serve as my call for the best and brightest from around the web.

That Obama Picture

Memo to all politicians. If you put on a costume, uniform, or otherwise get photographed wearing something that might be fodder for the late night talk shows and blogosphere, it will be fodder.

See the frenzied reaction tracked by memeorandum here.

Obama was spotted in 2006 wearing an African tribal outfit. Great.

I'm supposed to get outraged or surprised by this?

Can someone please provide me with a single accomplishment that Obama has to his name? I'm still waiting for his supporters to provide one.

I'm surprised that people are still taking this guy seriously when he hasn't done anything besides claim to be for hope and change.

Also, I'm not surprised that the Clinton campaign may be behind pushing these photos in the media. It's a sad testament to the Clinton machine that this is the best that they have to offer. You'd think that they'd try to hammer Obama on his lack of qualifications as President, but that too gets undercut by the fact that Hillary is similarly lacking in achievements and accomplishments.

UPDATE:
Malkin has a bunch of photos of other major politicians wearing the local color/garb or photographed with those who are wearing it. To me, the most disturbing are those of Laura Bush smiling for the camera with women who are covered head to toe in a burkha.

Photos that make politicians look foolish comes with the territory. Some hurt hard - like Kerry wearing a cleansuit and looking like he was a cast member of Bananas or Mike Dukakis wearing military headgear while riding around in a tank.

How you react as the politician in the photograph is telling. Do you, or your staff, have a thick skin, or do you need to issue caveats to everything?

Don Surber counseled to not overreact and let things peter out. Obama's folks couldn't help themselves had responded.

The garb itself is indicative of nothing. Doug at Below the Beltway notes that some try to make more of it than others, claiming that Obama is a secret Muslim. Rick Moran offers the definitive smackdown on that front.

Jammie notes the stink of desperation coming over the Clinton campaign that they're trying to make this an issue.

The North Korean Nuclear Program Through the Eyes of CNN

CNN was one of only two American news organizations ever allowed to visit the main nuclear facility at Yongbyon.

For a nation President Bush labeled as part of the "axis of evil," it was not an impressive sight: a dilapidated concrete hulk, built with few resources back in the early '80s.

But it did produce plutonium, enough to make a few bombs and to test-fire a nuclear weapon 18 months ago.

Today is a very different story though. North Korea shut down Yongbyon last summer under an agreement with the United States and four other nations in the nuclear disarmament negotiations.

We were shown the extraordinary sight of heavy metal pipes, chopped down and laid on the ground: They had been part of a coolant loop that sent steam to the turbine generators to produce electricity.

For starters, appearances can and are deceiving. North Korea was intent upon enriching uranium and producing plutonium, and appearances were a distant concern. The dilapidated conditions belie the fact that they worked extremely well and secured North Korea sufficient weapons grade material to put together several nuclear weapons including test shots in violation of international law.

Amanpour makes light of the real security concerns posed by this dilapidated facility and is essentially opining that the threat was overstated, even as she admits that the facility produced the very materials needed and used in making nuclear weapons.

That the North Koreans have taken those facilities and chopped up their guts to show that they are now in compliance with IAEA and the UN shows that the US backed talks worked.

And there are American technicians from the Department of Energy on-site helping with all of this. It seems a far cry from the hostility conjured by the axis of evil.

For all of this, North Korea expected a million tons of heavy fuel oil, a lifting of sanctions and removal from the U.S. list of terrorist sponsors. This has not happened yet, so North Korea has slowed down the disabling process at Yongbyon.

The United States says Pyongyang hasn't yet fully accounted for its past nuclear activities. However, both sides seem determined to overcome this stumbling block and reach out in other ways, too.

It's a far cry because North Korea couldn't manage to do this alone. China wasn't backing their efforts, and North Korea couldn't afford to bankroll its nuclear efforts. It had no choice but to fold - in return for significant economic aid.

The threat has been partially neutralized, though the technologies developed by the North Koreans are sure to be put to use by the Iranians, Pakistanis, Syrians, and whoever else had the money to buy them.

Trust but verify. The US is there to verify that the North Koreans are doing what they're saying they are doing.

Life Imitates Fiction?

These are tough times for Sen. Hillary Clinton, and this mashup is spot on:



HT: Anonymous emailer.

Mystery Explosion Heard In Tabriz, Iran

Was it explosives used in a road construction project? Was it old munitions destroyed by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps unit in the area? Or, was there another reason?

No one really knows for sure and reports are all conflicting over the source, but Tabriz is known to be home to one of Iran's nuclear research facilities.

The explosion was loud enough to cause concern - at least according to some reports.

Carl in Jerusalem is also monitoring events, and wonders at all the conflicting reports.

UPDATE:
More recent reports are still unclear as to the cause, but are pegging the location as southwest of the city. That also puts it close to the suspected location of one of Iran's missile development sites and location of Iran's first missile silos, which are extremely hardened, and are meant to house long range missiles.

A wider satellite overhead view is here:


View Larger Map

UPDATE:
Now, here's supposition on my part - for those that remember the Israeli September 6 airstrike in Syria against this facility, does anyone notice any similarities to the Iranian facility at the quoted link above? To my eye, some of the similarities suggest that the Syrian facility was actually a missile development site where weapons were mated with warheads, as opposed to a nuclear weapons facility (though it doesn't mean that the warheads couldn't carry nukes).

Here's a photo of the Syrian site for comparison purposes:

View Larger Map

UPDATE:
Gateway Pundit also is covering the curious circumstances in Tabriz.

Hamas Demonstration Dud; Kassam Rockets Aren't

While the Hamas-inspired demonstration that would send tens of thousands of women and children towards the Gaza-Israel border was a dud as only 5,000 bothered to show up, the Palestinian terrorists continued their wicked ways, firing off kassam rockets at Israel, severely injuring another Israeli boy.

Apparently, even the Hamas thugs knew that attempting to breach Israel's border would be a completely different story than when they invaded Egypt.

The PRC claimed responsibility for the kassam attack in Sderot that left a 10-year old seriously injured.

Paramedics dispatched to the scene managed to stop the bleeding and evacuate the boy to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon. A number of other residents were treated for shock.

A total of three rockets were fired toward Israel since noon. One landed in the southern town's industrial zone, another landed in a grove near a school while the third hit a residential neighborhood.

One of the kassams struck propane tanks, setting off a series of explosions.

UPDATE:
Jammie and Charles both note that the demonstrations are being touted as mass protests, despite the paucity of actual demonstrators.

Chumley's Update

Chumley's, one of the oldest bars in New York City and a famous landmark as a speakeasy, may finally reopen in May after requiring serious renovations due to a collapse of interior walls and the chimney and that work on the building may have been done illegally.

Work is supposed to start on Monday. We'll see. There have been intermittent reports of renovations and reopening since the collapse. (HT: Curbed)

The Rebuilding of Ground Zero, Part 20

The Daily News reports that law enforcement officials are concerned about the construction of Towers 2, 3, and 4 along Greenwich Street at Ground Zero. They're worried that they are covered with too much glass, or are located too close to the street.

Law enforcement counterterrorism specialists have pinpointed serious flaws in key components of the Trade Center site, including three of the signature office towers projected to open by 2012.

Towers 2, 3 and 4 - which will rise between Greenwich and Church Sts. to 79, 71 and 64 stories, respectively - contain too much glass, sources familiar with the issues said.

They also are not set back far enough from the two streets - where uninspected trucks will whiz by - to meet the most rigorous security standards, the sources said.

"The reimposition of the street grid is an integral part of the plan to bring vibrancy to lower Manhattan," said Avi Schick, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

"The administration understands the need to balance that goal with legitimate security concerns."

Another concern: The buildings do not meet Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security blast standards. That means they can withstand certain types of explosions - but not more powerful blasts.

For starters, these are concerns that have been present since the day the Master Plan was orchestrated to include running the street grid back through the site along Greenwich Street. The WTC complex prior to 9/11 had created a 16 acre superblock with no streets running through the site. Greenwich Street stopped at the border.

The planners thought that relinking Greenwich street through the site was a good idea, although it was something I had repeatedly pointed out was a bad idea from a security perspective, not to mention that it took away vital space that could be devoted to memorial and/or office space instead (see this from 2005 for example).

Meanwhile, the steel that will form the skeleton of the Freedom Tower continues to be fitted out in Virginia after coming from Luxembourg where it was formed and is making its way to New York City for erection at Ground Zero. A photo montage of the castings and finishing along with erection at the site can be found here. Already, the Freedom Tower steel is starting to peek out from the site at ground level.

Free Speech Under Assault at YouTube

Pakistan's government has banned access to the video-sharing Web site YouTube because of anti-Islamic movies that users have posted on the site, an official said Sunday.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told the country's 70 Internet service providers Friday that the popular Web site would be blocked until further notice.

The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a movie trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release an anti-Koran movie portraying the religion as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

The PTA official, who asked not to be identified because he was not an official spokesman, said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority also blocks Web sites that show controversial drawings of the Prophet Muhammad. The drawings were originally printed in European newspapers in 2006 and were reprinted by some papers last week.

The PTA urged Web users to write to YouTube and request the removal of the objectionable movies, saying authorities would stop blocking the site once that happened.

Pakistan finds the videos and images of Mohammad to be objectionable and wants to see YouTube ban them. No word on whether Pakistan would ban the jihadi propaganda videos showing the butchers slaughtering innocents - beheadings and terrorist attacks and martyrdom videos.

Free speech is more objectionable than suicide bombings, terrorism, and beheadings.

Journalistic Malpractice at the Times (Again)

The New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt found that the paper screwed up (again) in running a front page story about GOP Presidential candidate John McCain and implied that he had an extra-marital relationship with a lobbyist - trading favors for influence.

Hoyt found that there was no substance to the charges. Most readers were similarly inclined. The Times, responding to an outpouring of anger to the story from all quarters essentially called its readers idiots because they focused on that and not the larger story of influence by and on McCain.

“I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot,” Keller added.

The problem, Keller went on, is that readers didn’t get it.

“Frankly, I was a little surprised by how few readers saw what was, to us, the larger point of the story.”

The problem for the Times, of course, is that they made the alleged sexual liaison part of the lede:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

No evidence was actually proffered, and not only have all the principles denied that there was any improper conduct on the part of McCain, but many Democrats have come out against the paper's reporting, including Lanny Davis, who knows a thing or two about sex scandals - he worked for the Clintons.

Other media outlets have also jumped on the Times for this "story", which clearly falls into something that even the National Enquirer might not publish for lack of facts and evidence.

Cubans To Rubber Stamp New Leader

The Cuban legislature, for the past 49 years, has been there to rubber stamp every decision made by Fidel Castro. That was its sole purpose.

Yet, the media treats the latest gathering to determine a successor to Fidel Castro as though they're given the opportunity to actually choose who will take over for Fidel.

Like they have a choice?

His 76-year-old younger brother Raul Castro, as first vice president and constitutionally designated successor, is widely expected to be picked as president of the ruling Council of State.

The younger Castro, also Cuba's defense minister, has headed a caretaker government for 19 months since Fidel announced he had undergone emergency intestinal surgery and was provisionally ceding his powers.

The 614-member National Assembly, whose members were elected Jan. 20, is selecting a 31-member Council of State led by a president, who is the nation's head of state and government.

Fidel Castro has held the position since the current government structure was created in 1976. For 18 years before that, he was prime minister — a post that no longer exists.

He evidently retains his position as a member of the National Assembly, to which he was re-elected to last month, and he remains the head of the Communist Party as first secretary.

In an article published Saturday, Castro scoffed at suggestions in news reports that his retirement would lead to political changes on the island aided by Cuban exiles in the U.S.

"The reality is otherwise," Castro wrote in the front page of the Communist Party newspaper Granma — his final published comments as the nation's leader. He quoted approvingly from other articles that said his retirement showed the failure of U.S. officials to affect Cuba's political transition.

Raul Castro will be the next leader. As it is, he's been the leader since 2006.

The joke really is on the media that reports Cuban press releases as news (and the readers who believe this tripe), and treats totalitarian dictatorships as something else because there is a group of people who rubber stamp the decisions of the dictator.

UPDATE:
Well, knock me off my chair. The next leader of Cuba is *drum roll* Raul Castro. What a surprise. You could have fooled me given that Raul has been in charge since 2006 and this was never an issue in doubt. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

Yet, the media treats this as though it is a new day for Cuba and that the Cubans actually had a choice in the matter. Figures.

UPDATE:
The AP runs with this as though it is real news and proclaims that Raul Castro Becomes Cuba's Leader

Hey AP. Raul has been in charge since 2006 when big brother couldn't afford Cuba's vaunted health care system and had to go to outside sources for help. This was a rubber stamping of what everyone knew - that Raul was running the show. Don't try passing this off for anything more than that. Yet, that's precisely what AP and other media outlets are doing.

A Budget That New Jersey Actually Needs?

Has Gov. Jon Corzine actually seen the light and realized that the state can't afford the state workforce it has and will instead begin the process of trimming it?

Is this a budget I could actually approve of? Perhaps.

Jon Corzine on Tuesday will become the first New Jersey governor in a decade to propose a state budget that cuts total spending, when he presents a plan that has no new taxes or fees, shrinks the state payroll by as many as 5,000 jobs and eliminates three departments, according to three individuals familiar with the budget.

Having pledged to keep total state expenses below the current $33.5 billion, the governor also will propose slashing state aid to towns and cities by about $100 million, and "charity care" funding for hospitals by as much as $200 million, according to the individuals, who requested anonymity because Corzine's plan had not been made public yet.

And while administration officials have said aid to school districts defined by New Jersey's school funding formula will increase by $530 million, overall school funding will be about the same as last year because of other reductions, not yet disclosed.

In addition, the spending plan will eliminate rebates to about 152,000 homeowners. Administration and legislative officials said last week homestead rebates would be limited to families making no more than $150,000 instead of the current $250,000 limit. The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services estimates that move will save more than $100 million.

Rebate amounts are expected to remain about the same. They averaged $1,051 for homeowners and $303 for renters last year.

This pretty much guarantees that the unions will oppose it. Municipalities are going to complain heavily since local aid will also get cut.

It also leaves open the question of how exactly the school funding can increase even if the budget remains flat. What else is getting cut?

Cutting the state workforce is an important step since each job cut actually has a compounded effect because of benefits paid to those workers years after they are no longer working for the state.

While the article says no tax hikes, look for proposals to be floated to increase the gas tax and a whole assortment of minor taxes and fees, including perhaps the real estate transfer taxes, and maybe the various sin taxes. Those will likely be floated by the Legislature in response to Corzine's plan in order to raise revenues to cover the funding lost for pet projects.

States love to increase sin taxes because they can raise revenue while not affecting the overwhelming majority of residents. Without significant opposition to raising those taxes, states can raise them without too much trouble.

Crazy Uncle Declares He's Running For President

Ralph Nader, the perennial candidate for President, has decided to run again. It makes me wonder what Ron Paul will think since the crazy uncle routine was Nader's gig before Ron Paul stepped on the national stage.

He won 2.74% of the vote in 2000, and Democrats often blame him for costing Al Gore the election (that is when they're not blaming the US Supreme Court, that is). In 2004, he got less than 1% of the vote.

Exit question: Who does the Nader candidacy benefit: McCain or Obama? Or neither.

UPDATE:
Patterico thinks that Nader's run can't be good news for Obama, especially with such rich quotes like this floating around:

“His record in the Senate is pretty mediocre,” Nader said. “His most distinctive characteristic is the extent to which he censors himself. He hasn’t performed as a really progressive first-term senator would.”

Pandagon's crew thinks that this is bad jobu and that someone ought to stage an intervention (just follow the comments).

Others blogging: Sister Toldjah, Macranger, Blue Crab Boulevard, Wake Up America, and Secular Blasphemy.

UPDATE:
Corrected attribution for Hot Air comment to Patterico, who's guest blogging over at Hot Air.