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Google Monopoly
I have come to the conclusion that Google has evolved into what economists call a “natural monopoly”. When this situation occurs it is always cheaper for one large firm to supply the market than multiple smaller firms, In fact, absent…


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Right Wing Renews Calls For Profiling: ?There Should Be A Separate Line To Scrutinize Anybody With The Name Abdul?
The right wing’s predictable policy prescription in the aftermath of any terror incident is to impose greater ethnic profiling of Muslims. For instance, following the Ft. Hood shooting, Sarah Palin said, “profile away.” After six imams were removed from a plane in Minnesota in 2006, Ann Coulter justified profiling Muslims by arguing that it’s just […]

The right wing’s predictable policy prescription in the aftermath of any terror incident is to impose greater ethnic profiling of Muslims. For instance, following the Ft. Hood shooting, Sarah Palin said, “profile away.” After six imams were removed from a plane in Minnesota in 2006, Ann Coulter justified profiling Muslims by arguing that it’s just like “profiling the Klan.” That same year, after British authorities revealed a terrorist plot to blow up planes headed to the U.S., right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher said, “It’s time to have a Muslims check-point line” at airports.

They’re at it again. In the wake of the failed terrorist attempt aboard a Northwest airlines flight on Christmas Day, the right wing is renewing its pleas for more profiling of Muslims:

Radio host Mike Gallagher: “There should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed.” (Note: Those are some of the most common names in the world.)

Rep. Peter King (R-NY): “100 percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim, and that is our main enemy today. So why we should not be profiling people because of their religion?”

Terrorism pundit Steven Emerson: “Remember, there have been so many complaints about quote, profiling, by the quote, Islamic civil rights groups, that they stopped basically profiling. And that basically led to not putting this guy onto the terrorist watch list.“

Unsurprisingly, Fox News has served as the platform for right-wing voices calling for more profiling. Watch a compilation:

Broad-based ethnic profiling is counterproductive for a host of reasons. It creates a false sense of security and causes law enforcement resources to be wasted in chasing the wrong targets. Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. John Walker Lindh was white, while Richard Reid was Jamaican and British. As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has reported:

Terrorism profiling is a crude substitute for behavior-based enforcement. It violates core American values, including the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. It also hinders anti-terrorism efforts because it alienates people and communities that are critical to the success of the anti-terrorism effort.

Non-specific profiling of certain religions or races amounts to a witch-hunt against a class of people, creating the perception among the larger society that those individuals containing certain suspect features (skin color, foreign-sounding names, foreign-language skills, etc) are to be feared.

Yesterday, two Middle Eastern men were pulled off a flight heading to Phoenix because passengers reported they were engaging in suspicious behavior. The men were speaking in a Middle Eastern language. And on a Detroit-bound flight yesterday, a Nigerian businessman was taken off an airplane because passengers became suspicious that he was lingering in the bathroom for too long. The FBI confirmed that the individual’s behavior was due to a legitimate illness.

Explosive in Detroit terror case could have blown hole in airplane, sources say
A dangerous explosive allegedly concealed by Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his underwear could have blown a hole in the side of his Detroit-bound aircraft if it had been detonated, according to two federal sources briefed on the investigation.

Crush of earmarks in defense bill gives yet another lesson in horse-trading
Journalists talk about congressional earmarks in terms of lobbyists’ shenanigans, or legislators helping themselves and their pals.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s legacy as Chicago schools chief questioned
CHICAGO — Soon after Arne Duncan left his job as schools chief here to become one of the most powerful U.S. education secretaries ever, his former students sat for federal achievement tests. This month, the mathematics report card was delivered: Chicago trailed several cities in performance and…

Republican senator DeMint holds up nomination for TSA chief
An alleged attempt to blow up a transatlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.

Settlement reached in Nevada governor’s divorce
RENO, NEV. — Gov. Jim Gibbons and first lady Dawn Gibbons reached a settlement in their divorce Monday as they were preparing to begin a four-day public trial.

Dems Don’t Need to Be More ‘Moderate’
Robert Creamer, Huffington Post
There is little doubt that over the last several months President Obama's poll numbers — and those of Democrats generally — have taken a swing for the worse. The president's job approval numbers have drifted below 50 percent. The popularity of some of his signature initiatives has dropped. Last week, Democratic Congressman Parker Griffith of Alabama announced he was switching parties — presumably in order to enhance his odds of political survival next fall. These events have given rise to calls that the Democratic agenda needs to become more “moderate” or…

Grayson Gaffe

Foreign-Policy Team Bests Economy Stars
Albert Hunt, Bloomberg
(ii) If you submit material to this site or to BLP or its representative, unless BLP indicates otherwise, you grant Bloomberg a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, copy, and display such content throughout the world in any form, media, or technology now known or hereafter developed. You also permit any other user to access, store, or reproduce such material for that user's personal use. You grant Bloomberg the right to use the name that you submit…

U.S. Troop Fatalities Double in Afghanistan
A U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan on Sunday raised the American death toll in 2009 to exactly twice the number of those soldiers killed there in that country in 2008. After eight years in Afghanistan, 940 U.S.—and 613 coalition—soldiers have died.  Casualty statistics are available at iCasualties.  —JCL Agence France-Presse via Google News: A US solder was killed in Afghanistan, NATO said on Sunday, raising the American death toll to twice the number of those killed there in 2008, according to an AFP tally. The NATO-run International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the soldier died from an improvised explosive device (IED), the biggest killer of foreign troops in the eight-year battle to contain a Taliban insurgency. “An ISAF service member from the United States died following an IED strike in southern Afghanistan Saturday,” the force said in a statement. The death takes this year’s international military casualties in Afghanistan to 506, according to an AFP tally based on independent website icasualties.org which tracks military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq. Read more

A U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan on Sunday raised the American death toll in 2009 to exactly twice the number of those soldiers killed there in that country in 2008. After eight years in Afghanistan, 940 U.S.—and 613 coalition—soldiers have died.?

Casualty statistics are available at iCasualties.? —JCL

Agence France-Presse via Google News:

A US solder was killed in Afghanistan, NATO said on Sunday, raising the American death toll to twice the number of those killed there in 2008, according to an AFP tally.

The NATO-run International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the soldier died from an improvised explosive device (IED), the biggest killer of foreign troops in the eight-year battle to contain a Taliban insurgency.

“An ISAF service member from the United States died following an IED strike in southern Afghanistan Saturday,” the force said in a statement.

The death takes this year’s international military casualties in Afghanistan to 506, according to an AFP tally based on independent website icasualties.org which tracks military deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Read more

Related Entries

• December 28, 2009 One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists
• December 24, 2009 Larry’s List: Christmas Eve Edition

Jacob M. Appel: Revenge of the Sperm Donors
A misguided offshoot of the men’s rights movement has recently started to assert paternal rights for sperm donors. Now the Irish Supreme Court has granted parental rights to one such donor.

Al Hunt: Obama Economic Team Needs To Get Its Act Together
A year ago, the expectation was that President-elect Barack Obama’s economic team would be a smooth- functioning machine, and the outlook was for turbulence in…

Chez Pazienza: The Unfriendly Skies
The only way to truly keep us truly safe while flying a commercial airliner would be to put us all through body scanners, then have us fly in our underwear.

Quick Fact: On CNN, Matalin falsely claims “Bush inherited” 9-11 attacks and recession

On the December 27 edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Mary Matalin falsely claimed that President George W. Bush “inherited a recession from President Clinton, and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history.” In fact the 9-11 attacks occurred eight months into Bush’s presidency and more than a month after he had received a Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and the recession began in March 2001.

From the December 27 edition of CNN’s State of the Union:

MATALIN: I was there, we inherited a recession from President Clinton, and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history.

Matalin’s comments were September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York City; Arlington, Virginia; and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The 9-11 Commission stated that on August 6, 2001, Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” and that Bush “did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether [then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice had done so.” The Commission also “found no indication” that Bush’s aides further discussed with him “the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States” prior to 9-11 — this despite the fact that “[m]ost of the intelligence community recognized in the summer of 2001 that the number and severity of threat reports were unprecedented.”

Perino previously stated that “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.” Matalin’s claim about the 9-11 attacks follows former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino’s false assertion on the November 24 edition of Fox News’ Hannity that “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.”

Fact: According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, recession began in March 2001 during Bush presidency

NBER determined that recession started exactly 10 years after expansion that began in March 1991, “the longest in the NBER’s chronology.” In March 2001, the U.S. economy went into recession for the first time in 10 years, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). NBER — the private, nonpartisan organization whose business cycle announcements have long been considered the definitive word on the topic — announced its determination on November 26, 2001:

The NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee has determined that a peak in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in March 2001. A peak marks the end of an expansion and the beginning of a recession. The determination of a peak date in March is thus a determination that the expansion that began in March 1991 ended in March 2001 and a recession began. The expansion lasted exactly 10 years, the longest in the NBER’s chronology.

Conservative Attorney: Secret Service ‘Violated My Civil Rights’ Outside White House
Attorney Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch who first attained gadfly status during the Clinton years, is alleging that the Secret Service mistreated him when he went to the White House last week as part of an effort to force President Obama to reveal details of closed-door meetings with health care lobbyists.

Alaska Journo: Palin’s Banned Media List Written By Todd Palin
Further details have emerged about the banning of undesirable reporters from the Sarah Palin book tour event in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, after Alaska-based photojournalist and blogger Dennis Zaki found himself on the list.

Blackwater, Already On The Ground In Afghanistan, Now Gunning For More Contracts
It looks like the Obama Administration just can’t quit the company formerly known as Blackwater.