From Simon Tisdall:

Barack Obama’s chances of making a fresh start in US relations with the Muslim world, and the Middle East in particular, appear to diminish with each new wave of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Gaza. That seems hardly fair, given the president-elect does not take office until January 20. But foreign wars don’t wait for Washington inaugurations.

Obama has remained wholly silent during the Gaza crisis. His aides say he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time. Hillary Clinton, his designated secretary of state, and Joe Biden, the vice-president-elect and foreign policy expert, have also been uncharacteristically taciturn on the subject.

But evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama’s detachment – and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush’s strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush’s bias or simply does not care.

This might actually work to Obama’s long term favor – given the way Obama ran very strongly against President Bush and American policy over the past 8 years, the impression given in the Arab would was of a 180 degree shift in American policy…which would translate into abandoning our friends and currying favor with our enemies. By not speaking out on Gaza, Obama has cast doubt about this, and therein lies his great opportunity.

Now, I happen to think that Obama hasn’t made a statement on Gaza because he, Biden, Hillary and the whole gang simply don’t know what to say. They are entirely at sea here, lacking even cursory knowledge of how things work in foreign affairs and military policy. You’re supposed to call for a cease fire, get the President of France over there, cobble together a truce which will be violated on a daily basis and then have some grand conference somewhere (with preference given to places with swank hotels and nice beaches). Its not working out that way because Israel just might possibly be determined to fight this out to the finish (and I suspect with the tacit approval of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and perhaps with such approval from the Egyptian government, as well) – what might happen here is complete Israeli victory, abject Hamas defeat and thus an end to the Gaza issue…there is no one in Obama’s team who can grasp this set of circumstances. But, no matter – it can still work to our advantage.

The befuddled silence on the part of Team Obama might start to convince our friends that Obama won’t actually abandon them and also convince our enemies that Obama just might fight them – and this will greatly strengthen our friends and dismay our enemies, who have already been greatly weakened by 8 years of President Bush relentlessly hammering them. The sole remaining bastions of State-sponsored terrorism – Syria and Iran – are both politically and economically on the ropes – they breathed a sigh of relief on November 4th as they contemplated what would at least work out to a period of truce allowing them to rebuild their shattered terrorist organizations…but now they’ll doubt, and if Obama presses, he can cause them to collapse upon themselves.

We’ll see – unfortunately, that same ignorance which is the likely explanation for Obama’s current reticence is likely to prevent his seeing this massive chance to finish the War on Terrorism with victory within a year or two.

The argument on the left is, essentially, that its just not fair for some people to make as much as some corporate CEOs. Such arguments are never made against Hollywood producer or superstar pay, nor against the amount of money Bruce Springsteen makes when not making what amounts to massive, in-kind donations to Democrats, but no matter. Buttressing the argument for caps is the immoral and asinine manner in which some corporations have taken bailout money and paid bonuses to executives of de-facto bankrupt firms. The other side of the argument goes thusly:

To be sure, executive pay in the United States is vastly higher than necessary. Executives in other countries, whose pay is often less than one-fifth that of their American counterparts, seem to work just as hard and perform just as well. The same was true of American executives in the 1980s.

So why not limit executive pay? The problem is that although every company wants a talented chief executive, there are only so many to go around. Relative salaries guide job choices. If salaries were capped at, say, $2 million annually, the most talented candidates would have less reason to seek the positions that make best use of their talents.

More troubling, if C.E.O. pay were capped and pay for other jobs was not, the most talented potential managers would be more likely to become lawyers or hedge fund operators. Can anyone think that would be a good thing?

I work for one of the larger corporations in the world. Previously, I worked for a smaller – though still quite large – corporation which was sold to the vastly larger corporation I currently work for. When this deal was transacted, the CEO of the smaller corporation I worked for received tens of millions of dollars…as if he had actually done anything in his entire life worth tens of millions of dollars. This was, of course, entirely legal and approved by the Board who, presumably, also made out very well in the deal. But it was immoral and should not have been done – I’d like to ask the guy how he sleeps at night, but I’d probably get an “on a pile of money with beautiful women” sort of answer.

Now, we must fight tooth and nail against Democrat attempts to let Congress set executive pay. This is because all we’ll have then is corporate CEOs bribing Democrats in order to be permitted to have high salaries (and anyone who thinks Democrats won’t go along with such things just hasn’t been paying attention to William “Cold Cash” Jefferson, Rod Blagojevich and, indeed, the entire pay-for-play ethos of Democratic politics). But this doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do.

As to the argument that we must pay massive salaries in order to entice the best of the best into our corporate executive offices, I call bullsh**. The CEOs who are bankrupting our corporations today are the very sort of geniuses we were enticing with high salaries, and look where it got us. I have in mind, right now, three people I work with who I’d much prefer to be in charge of the corporation I work for (no, none of them are me) and I’ll bet they’d take the job for, oh, $250,000.00 per year and they certainly couldn’t make more stupid decisions than are currently being made and they might make much better ones (which I actually believe is true as they have a genuine appreciation of what is going on out there, while the CEO and senior executives are entirely too far removed from the day to day grind of the average folks).

My preferred route to bring corporate salaries – top to bottom – in line with reality and inject a bit of sobriety and solidarity in to our economy is to create tax advantages for companies where executive salaries are in line with average employee salaries. Certainly the big boss needs a high income – but if Joe Average is making $50,000.00 a year then Jane CEO shouldn’t need more than $500,000.00 to rest content. Companies can choose to pay massive amounts for the hot-prospect CEO who appears a genius because his last corporation had a great couple years (likely due to macro-economic factors rather than CEO smarts, but no matter), but they’ll get a tax advantage if they go with the really hard working mid-level manager who has genuinely innovative ideas and the guts to make decisions (one of the primary failures of our corporate executives is their fear of making decisions…make a decision and you’re responsible for failure, and that could jeopardize the golden parachute!).

There is nothing wrong with being successful. There is nothing wrong with being rich – even multi-billionaire rich…but there is something wrong with someone just walking in to a long established firm and making money off it as if he built it from the ground up over a lifetime’s work. We must be wary of attempts by liberals to take control, but we must also work out the ways and means of bringing reasonableness into corporate life.

Citing an ongoing federal probe into a pay-to-play scandal, NM Governor Bill Richardson has withdrawn his name for Comrade Obama’s Commerce Secretary.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Sorry, liberals – you thought that you had elected Selfless Liberals to save America from the effects of Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler…well, turns out you’ve placed in power a bunch of corrupt, partisan hacks and you’re now praying that Obama is actually clean, but there is that fact he arose out of the very sewer of Democrat corruption known as Chicago.

Have fun!

Deep within all of us is not just the ability to do the right thing, but the desire to do it – some people still rise to the challenge:

They are the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. They wear long white habits, carry rosaries, live in community, teach, and attract so many new recruits that they’re building a new motherhouse big enough to house 100 women religious.

The community, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is only 11 years old. It started as an offshoot of a large convent, with four nuns, but it has grown to 85 sisters. Their average age is only 28, more than 40 years younger than the average age of all women religious in the United States. They come from more than 30 states, plus Canada, Europe and the Caribbean. They have been featured on NBC, ABC, National Public Radio and Canadian TV.

Their lives, traditions and devotion are part of the 800-year-old Dominican charism. They form “a beautiful and alluring sign of contradiction,” says one of the foundresses, Sister Joseph Andrew, director of vocations. “You can get ‘the world’ wherever you go.”

Young women discerning religious life, she said, want authenticity, and with her community, “what they see is what they get,” that is, one with “a clear vision and identity.”…

…“I can’t imagine living religious life in an apartment,” said Sister Maria, a native of the Bronx, a first-year novitiate. “It’s not puppy dogs and rainbows every day; your sisters bring you up.”

She gave up a successful corporate career in the car business to enter the convent. She chose the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, she said, because of their devotion to Mary, traditional lifestyle and sense of humor.

“I knew that to go to heaven, I needed to be in a convent!” she said with a laugh. “I knew that I could slip into being greedy. I wanted more than a house on the lake and a closet full of shoes. Life is empty without Christ. It doesn’t make any sense without him.”

In the end, she said, she felt compelled to stand up for what she believed in, regardless of what other people thought she should do.

“Go big or go home,” she said. “No one will live my life but me.”

Sister Maria Jose, a second-year novice, grew up in a strong, Catholic, Mexican-American family and graduated from the University of Texas-El Paso. After working as a software engineer for six years, she entered the convent.

“I loved my career, but Jesus Christ is better,” she said. “I realized that there was more to life than going to a job. There was a lot of emptiness there. I could either do something to distract me, like going out to the bars, or I could pursue prayer, seek Jesus, and see what it was that Jesus was calling me to do.”

And the meek shall inherit the earth…or, at least in this case, the feminist movement. Wrap all the broads at NOW together and you won’t get something a tenth as worthy as these Sisters, and their like around the world. One of the wisest statements I’ve seen is that – “There was a lot of emptiness there.”. False feminism held that for women to be fulfilled they would have to follow men on the treadmill of corporate life…get a degree, slave away in a corporate behemoth, expend your sexual energy in pointless affairs, eschew children or – if you have them – consign them to the care of others…that terrible mistake men made was, for the feminists, precisely what women should do. Never in the course of human history was there ever a more stupid idea.

And here, now, is the signpost back – just as it was 2,000 years ago, it is the devoutly Christian women who will save our society (and, yes, devoutly Jewish and Moslem women will, too, but we’re a mostly Christian society and thus the lion’s share of it will be from Christians). In a large sense, the Greco-Roman world went insane and the only thing the women of Rome could think to do was to follow the men into their insanity. Along came the Christians – men, of course, but it was the sobriety and solidarity of the women, I think, who really made the running – to recall people back to sanity; and thus it will be again, in this time when our society has gone insane.

The most important thing for those who are not Catholic to understand here is that these women are not so much giving up everything, but mostly giving up nothing, and seeking for something…in fact, seeking for the only genuinely real thing there is. The biggest mistake anyone can make in contemplating this story is to think that these women are in retreat – they are in the vanguard, the sharp point of the revived world.

HAT TIP: The Anchoress

I’m betting that, in the end, Reid and the Democrat caucus will back down:

Arrangements are under way for a Wednesday meeting between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Roland Burris, the Democrat tapped by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to succeed President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate, ABC News has learned.

Burris confidant and business partner Fred Lebed of Chicago tells ABC News that, despite the opposition of Senate leaders, Burris is on track to arrive in Washington Monday, and on Capitol Hill, Tuesday.

“He intends to be sworn in and seated in the U.S. Senate,” said Lebed, who added that Burris and his “staff” are “looking forward to get sworn in, seated, and to roll up our sleeves.”

When Burris arrives at the doors of the U.S. Senate next week, says Lebed, “he will have a few close friends and supporters with him. he is very careful and has cautioned me to make sure this is not a spectacle.”

For the same reason that the Democrat powers-that-be could not refuse Obama the nomination, Burris cannot be denied his Senate seat: Obama won by 8.5 million votes. There were 125 million votes cast in 2008. 13% of the electorate was black, or 16.25 million voters, who gave 95% of their votes to the Democrats. Had the GOP scored half the black vote, Obama’s vote by blacks would have dropped from 14.4 million to 8.1…in other words, it would have put Obama’s victory in doubt as even though he’d still have come out with more votes, it is likely that places like NC, VA, FL and OH would have dropped into the McCain total, thus giving him the election. To put it bluntly – without a high black turnout giving most of its votes to the Democrats, winning national elections will become nearly impossible. And so Democrats will do whatever it takes to keep black voters on side – and “whatever it takes” will not and cannot include “deny a Senate seat to a black man”.

Reid will back down, I’m sure of it.

For us global warming deniers, that is:

The European Union’s new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.

The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.

The Czech president, who caused a diplomatic incident by dining with opponents of the EU’s Lisbon treaty on a recent visit to Ireland, has a largely ceremonial role.

But there are already fears that, after the dynamic EU presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy – including his hyper-active attempts at international diplomacy over the credit crisis and Georgia as well as an historic agreement to cut greenhouse gases – the Czech effort will be mired in infighting and overshadowed by the platform it will give to Mr Klaus and his controversial views.

Czech diplomats in Brussels insist that Mr Klaus is not a big part of their plans and are trying to limit him to one speech to the European Parliament in February and chairing one international summit, either the EU-Canada or EU-Russia meeting.

They are pinning their hopes on a lunch between Mr Klaus and Mr Topolanek on January 5, which they hope will see both parties agree a truce after the President’s unsuccessful attempt to unseat his rival as Prime Minister at a party conference last month.

“What is sure is that there will be at least a little choir of voices coming from Prague that will not be singing the same song,” said Piotr Kaczynski, of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.

And therein lies the entertainment value – the head guy will be out there speaking sense, while the rest of the EU apparatus is blindly going along with the anthropogenic global warming hoax. I love how the global warming kooks are determined to put Czech President on a leash…they know that having someone as respected as klaus making rational, incontrovertible statements on global warming (and a host of other issues the EU-topians have wrong) will just be the kid pointing out the naked Emperor.

Anyways, fun, fun, fun for us on the right side of the aisle!

But not the sort of fight against poverty, perhaps, that we think of here in America:

Presiding over the celebration of Mass for the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God, Pope Benedict XVI re-emphasized the need to fight poverty to build a society of peace. Violence, hatred and mistrust, which he called “forms of poverty,” must be brought to an end, especially in the Holy Land, he exhorted.

The Holy Father began his homily by commemorating the Incarnation, “a light which will not go out and which offers the faithful and men of good will the possibility to construct a civilization of love and of peace.”

“The Second Vatican Council said, in this regard, that ‘by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man,’” the Pope noted.

With his birth in Bethlehem, Benedict XVI said, Jesus reveals to humanity that God chose poverty for himself in his coming among them. “The scene that the shepherds saw first and that confirmed the announcement made to them by the angel is that of the stable where Mary and Jesus looked for refuge and of the manger in which the Virgin laid the Infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.”

Turning to today’s celebration of the 42nd World Day of Peace, the Pope explained that its theme– Combating poverty. Building peace– contains two elements: “the poverty chosen and proposed by Jesus and of combating poverty to make the world more just.”

The second consideration is that “there is poverty that God does not want: a poverty that impedes individuals and families from living according to their dignity; a poverty which offends justice and equality and which threatens peaceful coexistence,” the Pontiff said. In addition, he pointed to forms of spiritual poverty: “marginalization and moral and spiritual misery.”

“To combat unjust poverty it is necessary to rediscover sobriety and solidarity, those evangelical and at the same time, universal values,” Pope Benedict asserted.

We wrap ourselves up so much in income levels and judge peoples’ wealth or poverty by the amount of things they have. Now, to be sure, there is actual, physical poverty which we must, as far as possible, end. Those who lack their daily bread, and a roof over their heads, and clothes on their back – they must be succored by a world which does not pause to count the monetary cost of such aid. But while such physical aid has its vital place in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t attack the real poverty of our modern world, which is spiritual.

Most of the people in the world today are poor. Most of the people who have ever lived were born in to poverty and never rose out of it. And yet with poverty being the normal condition of Man, it has only been in the past century or so that we’ve gone down into the depth of human degradation.

In the last century, at least 100 million people were murdered for political reasons. We abort millions of our children every year. Pornography has become mainstream and the objectivication of our fellow human beings – mostly women, but a large number of men, as well – is considered a right so important that we daren’t place even mild restrictions on it. We think people have a right to lie on our streets in their own filth. We’re teaching our children to massacre their school mates. People set off bombs to kill the innocent. These are the actions of people who are spiritually impoverished – people who may, especially in America and the larger West, live in the greatest of ease and surrounded by wealth kings of the past couldn’t dream of, but who are so morally bankrupt that they can’t bestir themselves to even so much as see evil, let alone do anything about it.

We’re given the simple solutions – just give the Palestinians some land. Just provide sex education. Just withdraw from Iraq. Just ban racial profiling at airport security. Just control guns. Just increase foreign aid. Just go through the UN. Just to this. Just to that. Just do the other thing. But almost nowhere in this world is there the leader who doesn’t merely give lip service to the concept of hope, but who seeks to make it manifest. In other words, the leaders who understand that the problems of the day are fundamentally spiritual are few and far between. You could give the Palestinians all the land you want – give them Alaska and throw in half of Canada for good measure, and it won’t change the fact that the people who strap bombs on themselves don’t really need land, they need a moral revival. Provide all the birth control and sex education you want, and it won’t cure the person who has been degraded to the point where they say, “yeah, give me some money and I’ll allow a stranger to f**k me on camera”. Triple the budget for Head Start and develope the most comprehensive anti-violence education in school and it won’t do anything to sway a kid who is learning, step by step, that its cool to take guns to school and massacre the student body. We’re bleeding to death and we keep trying to put a band aid on the societal lacerations.

Sobriety and solidarity are, indeed, the keys to a revived human society and the restoration of an advanced civilization. Sobriety – not just not getting drunk and stoned, but a set of mental attitudes which refuses excess and which places self indulgence on a much lower plain than self sacrifice. Solidarity – an understanding that we really are our brother’s keeper and that even those who are doing the most wicked deeds must not be allowed to make hatred and despair grow in our hearts. Naturally, as a Christian, I believe I know where one can get this – tap in, that is, to the wellsprings of sobriety and solidarity. But not all my brothers and sisters are Christian. But, still, it remains something we must do – Christian or not – in order to survive as humans rather than die off as a failed experiment, or regress entirely into savagery.

Geesh:

Update: The French press reported that the Interior Ministry released a final “verified” count of 1,147 vehicles burned in France over New Year’s Eve. The number is up 30.64% from last year’s total, 878.

REUTERS – At least 445 cars were torched over the night of New Year’s Eve in France, a 20 percent rise on last year, but there were relatively few clashes with police, the Interior Ministry and police said on Thursday.

Car burnings are regular occurrences in France but the registering the New Year’s Eve total has become something of a tradition since they achieved symbolic status in the violent rioting that shook many of the country’s poor suburbs in 2005.

With riots in Athens heightening worries that the economic crisis might spark a resurgence of the violence seen in the run-down “banlieues” then, 35,000 police were mobilised on New Year’s Eve, some 7,000 more than last year.

Officials were also on guard against possible attacks after five sticks of dynamite were left in a Paris department store just before Christmas by a so-far unidentified group demanding a withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan.

A more than 30% increase – and please note in the news report that its “poor suburbs” and “unidentified group” which is demanding France get out of Afghanistan. That the poor suburbs in question are heavily Moslem and controlled by Islamists and that only Islamists would want France out of Afghanistan shows just how bad its got – Europe is dying by self inflicted wounds, and they won’t even tell the truth to themselves about what is going on.

We had a phrase in the Navy – “BOHICA”, Bend Over, Here It Comes Again. I just hope Obama and his Democrats are kind enough to kiss us after they’re done:

Sources said Obama and Pelosi will discuss the scope and timing of the economic recovery package, which Obama has said will be his first priority upon being sworn into office. Pelosi has said her goal is to have the legislation on the new president’s desk and ready to be signed on Jan. 20.

But that schedule appears increasingly likely to slip, as Republicans and conservative Democrats are raising concerns about the impact on the federal deficit of spending hundreds of billions on an array of projects with little vetting by Congress. Lawmakers now expect a spending package of between $675 billion and $775 billion.

And a top congressional aide said yesterday that Democratic leaders in the House are still waiting for a detailed proposal to be delivered by Obama’s economic advisers before lawmakers can begin the process of turning it into legislation.

Even so, congressional Democrats are anxious to get the process started so that a vote can take place in the House as early as the week of Jan. 12. Pelosi announced yesterday that the first hearing on the plan will take place Wednesday…

…Obama aides said the president-elect and his team will help make an all-out push to convince Americans that the government must spend almost $1 trillion to create jobs, provide cash for spending and shore up the finances of the state governments.

Yeeehaw!!!! Lets go spend some MONEY!!! We’ll pass the swag around to everyone who has their hand out! Mismanaged your corporation into bankruptcy? No problem, here’s some money! Spent your State into insolvency? Big deal, here’s some money! Need to reward corrupt union bosses who helped get out the vote? We’ve got you covered! Here at the Obamathon it doesn’t matter what the money is for, as long as it gets spent and helps Obama get re-elected in 2012!

Gonna be a long four years, boys and girls.

Thank goodness Obama doesn’t take office for another 19 days – had he his way on this, we would have left 9 months ago, in disgrace:

The U.S. formally transferred control of the Green Zone in Baghdad to Iraqi authorities Thursday in a pair of ceremonies that also handed back Saddam Hussein’s former palace.

Iraq’s prime minister said he will propose making Jan. 1 a holiday marking the restoration of sovereignty.

Under the security agreement between Washington and Baghdad to replace a U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, the Iraqi government also now has control of American troops’ actions and of the country’s airspace.

The moves came amid a dramatic fall in violence over the past year.

Think about that MSM bias – “a dramatic fall in violence”…how about, “due to the Iraqi-American victory”? Or is that just too hard to admit?