Look, if you are going to have Olympics in a dictatorship, you have to expect stuff to happen, and it's happening. The curtailment of the internet, the putdown and protests.

And what we saw, the protesters in the street today are women, mostly older people who are -- a million driven out of their homes-- to make room for the plush hotels that westerners will be staying in, and athletes will be staying in.

That's what happens in a command economy, in a command society that's run by Leninists. So you have got to expect that.

But look, this is a political event. When the Olympics were given to countries like Italy, Japan, and Germany in the 60's and 70's, it was a way to welcome them back into the international community after the second World War.

It's also a way of anointing a country as a great power--Nazi Germany in '36, the Soviet Union in '80, although it went awry because of Afghanistan, Seoul in '88, and now China. This is a coming out. It is an announcement of her status as a great power. That's what all of this is about.

Estimates of the number of people employed to monitor the Internet run into the tens of thousands. According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 50 Internet dissidents are in jail. Of course, none of this will be visible to a foreign visitor.

Pollution, skyscrapers and development reflect China's rapid economic growth, not political change. There have been no significant political reforms in China since the 1980s. Meanwhile, economic growth has enabled more intense but sophisticated approach to political repression.

The stage for his disappointing performance was set several weeks ago, when the Illinois senator rejected John McCain's proposal to eject Russia and exclude China from the Group of Eight (G-8). Mr. Obama's response during a July 13 interview on CNN -- "We have to engage and get them involved" -- suggests that it is impossible to work with Russia and China on economic and nuclear nonproliferation issues while also standing up for democracy and human rights.

It has repeatedly been shown that the exact opposite is true.

The U.S. does not cede leverage with authoritarian governments when it confronts them about their crimes. Instead, the U.S. increases its credibility and influence with foes and friends alike. Placating regimes like those in Russia and China today only entrenches hostile, antidemocratic forces.
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In short, the candidate of change sounds like he would perpetuate the destructive double standards of the current administration. Meanwhile, the supposedly hidebound Mr. McCain is imaginative enough to suggest that if something is broken you should try to fix it. Giving Russia and China a free pass on human rights to keep them "at the table" has helped lead to more arms and nuclear aid to Iran, a nuclear North Korea, and interference from both nations in solving the tragedies in Darfur and Zimbabwe.

The top 35% marginal income tax rate rises to 39.6%; adding the state income tax, the Medicare tax, the effect of the deduction phase-out and Mr. Obama's new Social Security tax (of up to 12.4%) increases the total combined marginal tax rate on additional labor earnings (or small business income) from 44.6% to a whopping 62.8%. People respond to what they get to keep after tax, which the Obama plan reduces from 55.4 cents on the dollar to 37.2 cents -- a reduction of one-third in the after-tax wage!

Darfur gets plenty of news coverage from sympathetic reporters sickened by the carnage and devastation they have seen. What the people of Darfur do not get is an armed force capable of taking on the Janjaweed -- a horse-mounted militia. The Janjaweed has murdered men, gang-raped women, beaten children to death, and left poisoned wells and burnt-down villages in its wake.
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Mr. Prince has a remedy. He believes that with 250 or so professionals, Blackwater can transform about a thousand of the African Union soldiers into an elite and highly mobile force. This force would also be equipped with helicopters and the kind of small planes that missionaries use in this part of the world. It would be cheaper than the hundreds of millions we are spending to set up a larger AU/U.N. force. And he says he'd do it at cost.
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Strongly worded resolutions, sanctions and boycotts are generally what you do in place of decisive action. I understand that the whole idea of Blackwater helicopters flying over Darfur probably horrifies many of the same people frustrated by Mr. Bashir's ability to game the system. But it's at least worth wondering what that same Blackwater helo might look like to a defenseless Darfur mother and her daughters lying in fear of a Janjaweed attack.

Mr. Obama's problem is he opposed the policy that created the progress that makes victory in Iraq possible. Mr. Obama's unbending opposition to the surge undermines his fundamental argument that he has better judgment on national security. Mr. McCain needs to use Mr. Obama's retrospective mistake to shape voters' prospective conclusion, convincing them that Mr. Obama's badly flawed judgment on the surge shows he cannot be trusted with major foreign-policy decisions.

Mr. Obama also created a problem by canceling a visit to U.S. soldiers who were wounded in Iraq and are now recuperating at Landstuhl hospital in Germany. His campaign has offered a welter of explanations. What's the real one? My rule is that when in doubt, see what a candidate said at the time and judge his candor. In a July 26 London news conference, Mr. Obama explained: "I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisers, a former military officer. And we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy, but he wasn't on the Senate staff."

The solution was obvious. Leave the campaign adviser behind and visit the wounded troops. Mr. Obama's decision to work out in the hotel gym instead adds to his growing reputation for arrogance.

More than in most countries, Israeli politicians are preoccupied with political machinations designed to buy support from powerful interest groups by distributing government largesse. This causes not only the factionalization of politics and growing corruption, but consumes time and energy that leadership should use to address life and death issues.
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Israeli governments have done little to stop the massive rearmament of Hamas in Gaza with Iranian weapons, bought with Saudi money and transported into Gaza with the connivance of Egypt.
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But the worst failures stem from adoption of a no-win strategy. Many in Israel's top political and military echelons have convinced themselves that terrorism cannot be defeated by force, that to stop it one must compromise and accept some of its demands.
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Amazingly, Israel keeps supplying Hamas, for "humanitarian reasons," with subsidized electricity and materiel including the steel and chemicals needed to produce the rockets that attack it. It keeps providing money and weapons to prop up the hopelessly corrupt Palestinian Authority.

And now, as some people wake up from their pet rock purchase, they are seeing they've de facto nominated someone rated about the Senate's most liberal senator based on three years of experience there. The Democrats have boxed them into a situation of running a candidate that has out-sourced all negative attacks to the New York Times, political junkies and columnists, in order to remain above the fray and loyal to the "new" politics of change and hope.

In a report released earlier this month, the Pentagon said that the Chinese People's Liberation Army was expanding its military power from "the land, air and sea dimensions of the traditional battlefield into the space and cyber-space domains."

"The PLA has established information-warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, and tactics and measures to protect friendly computer systems and network," the report noted.

China reacted angrily to the Pentagon report, with a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry labeling it a "serious distortion of facts." Speaking to reporters last week, the spokesman, Qin Gang, also urged the U.S. "to drop its Cold War mentality."

U.S. officials have specifically linked China to several successful cyber attacks against military networks.

The short-term political impact of Heller might turn the 2008 presidential election. Either Senators Clinton or Obama would the most anti-gun Democrat nominee in American history. The Second Amendment is a pivotal issue in a half-dozen swing states, and other swing states have smaller gun votes, but gun owners could easily tip those states in a close election.

Heller will heat up twice during the presidential campaign, first when the case is argued in March and second when the Court hands down its decision, most likely in June. Gun owners will either be emboldened, pressing forward for policies recognizing their rights, or outraged that an activist Court has denied them their cherished right, holding rallies, and taking to the streets. Either way, gun rights could dominate the news.

Hate speech is verbal communication that induces anger due to the listener’s inability to offer an intelligent response.
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Islamic advocacy of violence is not classified as “hate speech” because it induces fear, not anger.

This, of course, explains the failure of speech codes (and probably multi-culturalism in general). Since the enforcement of the codes relies largely on the emotional reaction of the listener rather than the content of the speech, the codes create insurmountable problems within both the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

Mainstream media types tend to think that, while rising casualties from Iraq are legitimate news, falling casualties are not. But even so the word got out: The surge strategy was producing results. Anbar province, given up for lost in 2006, turned peaceful and cooperative in 2007. U.S. casualties and Iraqi civilian casualties were down. Brookings scholars Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, no fans of the administration's conduct of the war, announced on July 30 (in the pages of The New York Times, no less) that this was "a war we might just win."
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Democrats are coming face to face with the fact that there's a war on -- and that Americans prefer success to failure. If the choice is between stalemate and withdrawal, as it seemed to be in November 2006, they may favor withdrawal; but if the choice is between victory and withdrawal, they don't want to quit -- or to undermine the effort.

Last week, Democrat Niki Tsongas won a special election with only 51 percent of the vote, in a Massachusetts district where John Kerry won 57 percent in 2004 and would have run much better in 2006. History doesn't stand still -- we're not in 2006 anymore.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy is nursed on grievances about a lost empire, America as the sole superpower and the independence of cocky former Soviet republics. In the thinking of oil-exporting Russia, anything that causes America to squirm and world oil prices to soar is a win/win situation. That’s why Russia supplies Iran with its reactor technology and stirs the nuclear pot.

China, like Russia, is a large nuclear power and doesn’t fear all that much Iranian missiles that it thinks are more likely to be pointed westward anyway. True, it would like calm in the Gulf to ensure safe oil supplies, but thinks it still could do business with a nuclear Iran.

And, as in the case of Russia, anything that bothers the United States can’t be all that bad for Beijing. While Ahmadinejad ties the U.S. down in the Middle East, China thinks it will have more of a free hand to expand its influence in the Pacific.

Since President Bush took office, real after-tax per capita personal income has increased more than 12.5 percent -- an average of $3,750 per person. More than 30 percent of the country's net worth has been added since the president's 2003 tax cuts.
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What, then, accounts for the pessimism? Well, take a look at the mainstream media.
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Here's a typical example of how the media shapes moods. Support for the Iraq war increased from 22 to 30 percent -- a 36 percent increase -- right before Iraq operations commander Gen. Petraeus testified before Congress. MSNBC described this as an "uptick." Meanwhile, a major paper described a 36 percent increase in home foreclosures as a "surge."

Quick: Name a movie star, a noted celebrity, a great athlete and a radio or TV personality. When I posed these queries to some nice Americans this week, I got answers such as: "Russell Crowe," "Paris Hilton," "Britney Spears," "quarterback Tom Brady," "Curt Schilling of the Red Sox," "Tiger Woods" and "Rush Limbaugh."

Now: Can you name a contemporary American hero? Only two of the dozen or so people I challenged came up with, "Navy SEAL Michael Murphy." That says a lot about what our mainstream media thinks is important.

Under Putin, civil liberties have been restricted, independent newspapers and TV stations have been shut down, outspoken businessmen have been arrested or exiled, and others -- including journalists and political troublemakers -- have been killed, as was Alexander Litvenenko, a former KGB agent who became a critic of Putin. He was assassinated in London with radioactive poison, KGB-style.

Even heads of state are not exempt.

When Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president, ran an anti-Moscow campaign, he was poisoned, KGB-style, with dioxin that turned that man's once-handsome face into a pock-marked scar, and almost killed him.

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Life expectancy for Russian men is an appalling 59 years; there are now more abortions than live births in Russia.

And why is it "homophobic" for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital.

Liberals have no idea what they think about homosexuality, which is why their arguments are completely contradictory. They gay-bait Republicans with abandon -- and then turn around and complain about homophobia.

They call Larry Craig a "deviant" based on accusations that he attempted to solicit sex in a public bathroom -- and then ferociously attack efforts to prevent people from having sex in public bathrooms.

The Russian political system has come to resemble the political system of Mexico from 1929 to 2000, which was something of an absolute monarchy, with term limits. The candidate of the ruling PRI was always elected president, the legislature was a rubber stamp, and the incumbent president chose his successor.