Working its way through the Israeli Knesset is a bill declaring Jordan as the Palestinian nation. It has nearly half of the parliament’s support. If passed, the bill would have West Bank Palestinians choose between Israeli or Jordanian citizenship. What’s unclear to me is the status of West Bank land under this plan. That’s irrelevant though, if you follow the Christian Science Monitor’s opinion that the idea is crazy. Now the CSM doesn’t say that directly, but read this article and try not to notice how they paint the proposal as madness.

Is it madness? Geert Wilders doesn’t think so. Although I can see how he can be dismissed. He’s not the right sort, so there’s no need to pay attention to his opinion. Don’t remember who he is? I’ll help. Geert Wilders is the head of the Freedom Party, the third largest political party in the Netherlands, and just came off a strong electoral showing. That’s a little hard to translate into American terms, since we don’t have a parliamentary system. I guess Wilders would be similar in stature to a powerful senator. Yet despite being chosen by a significant portion of the Dutch electorate, Wilders should just be ignored because he doesn’t have the right kind of opinions. He’s a right-winger. Oh he’s a neo-fascist. Nevermind that a large chunk of the Dutch electorate voted for him. He’s clearly a crazy person on the fringe.

We can ignore Wilders, but Camie Davis has dug up some choice quotes on the topic.

• “We are the government of Palestine, the army of Palestine and the refugees of Palestine.”
  - Prime Minister of Jordan, Hazza’ al-Majali, 23 August 1959
• “Palestine and Transjordan are one.”
  - King Abdullah, Arab League meeting in Cairo, 12 April 1948
• “Palestine is Jordan and Jordan is Palestine; there is one people and one land, with one history and one and the same fate.”
  - Prince Hassan, brother of King Hussein, addressing the Jordanian National Assembly, 2 February 1970
• “Jordan is not just another Arab state with regard to Palestine, but rather, Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan in terms of territory, national identity, sufferings, hopes and aspirations.”
  - Jordanian Minister of Agriculture, 24 September 1980
• “The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.”
  - King Hussein 1981

Should King Hussein and King Abdullah be ignored? Who wants to dismiss them as people who know nothing about Middle Eastern history and politics?

This is why history is important. Israel should be throwing these quotes in the face of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Arab League and the EU. Force all of them to publicly abrogate these ideas and explain why, before any movement on negotiations happen.

America has four car companies again! GM has sold the Saturn franchise to Roger Penske. I never believed it would happen. I’m glad to have the choice in the marketplace.

Technically though this is probably a temporary situation. Once Fiat buys Chrysler, will Chrysler still count as an American car company anymore? The business will take its orders from Turin even if Fiat doesn’t own a controlling percentage of Chrysler shares. Well, maybe it will still be American. Mazda is still Japanese right, even though Ford tells it what to do.

Even though Penske won’t be building cars it does leave some exciting possibilities for the future. GM will provide Saturn vehicles for the first few years, but eventually Penske will contract with other automakers and rebadge their vehicles. What could we have in store? From what I read online, most people expect rebadged Renaults. That idea surprises me because Renault and Nissan are allied, so why would Nissan allow itself to compete against its ally’s cars in the US? I expect Nissan would veto any move by Renault to sell cars to Penske. I hope so anyway. I don’t care for Renault’s lineup (based on UK models). The Laguna coupe is the only exception and I’m still not that excited about it.

I sure as hell don’t want Penske to import the New Kangoo.

I would think Citroen or Peugeot might be a possibility. They’re a large company without any ties to the US. Neither of their lineups interest me either though. Here you can see Citroen and Peugeot in the UK. My heart still skips a beat for the Citroen C5 however. If the C5 Airscape is ever made and sold as a Saturn I’ll sell my ass on the street to get one.

Certainly Fiat is out of the running since they’re taking on Chrysler. That also rules out Alfa Romeo since it’s a part of the Fiat Group. I can’t really think of any other European manufacturers that could possibly supply a US car company. No American is going to buy an AvtoVAZ.

Representing Asia… I think Proton is a strong possibility. They sell in the UK and Australia so they’re familiar with first world safety standards, and they’re a bargain leader. I could see them supplying Penske with one or two compact, fuel-efficient cars; perhaps a small SUV as well. Nothing they make excites me though.

Other than Proton, Asia doesn’t have much to offer Penske. South Korea’s two biggest native manufacturers, Hyundai and Kia, already sell in the US. That leaves SsangYong which is in bankruptcy. I doubt Penske wants to rescue a second failed automaker. Even if he did I don’t recommend he save SsangYong. They manufacture some awkward looking vehicles. Japan doesn’t have any companies that aren’t involved in the US so no sense looking there. That leaves China.

A Chinese manufacturer presents political problems in the US. Penske will have a lot of baggage to deal with in terms of quality questions, safety concerns and a freakout over the loss of US manufacturing to China. The benefit is that Penske has plenty of choice in China – Geely, Great Wall, BYD, Brilliance, Chery, and probably others I can’t think of. I’m sure they would all bend over backwards to crack into the US market. Penske would also provide them with a lot of manufacturing know-how to bring their cars up to US standards. That’s a lot of work for Penske.

Don’t think Penske is going to import cars from several different sources. That would be a collosal headache for maintainance. Dealerships would have to stock parts from so many different companies and train their mechanics on completely different systems. I actually expect Proton to win out. They’re third world cheap but already know how to operate in the first world.

Now we have unemployment the likes of which my generation has never seen. Well we could have seen it but I doubt anyone in my age group was paying attention to unemployment statistics in 1983. Unemployment hit 9.4% today; the worst it has been since August 1983. Most of the media seems to be taking the ‘What, me worry?‘ approach to reporting this fact. Just about every article starts off mentioning the unemployment rate, but then soothes your nerves by talking up the better than expected decline in job losses.

• Job losses slow dramatically says CNN
• US loses just 345,000 jobs in May, raising hopes proclaims Yahoo!
• Jobs Report Is an Upside Surprise declares BusinessWeek

Actually those headlines are pretty damn cheerful, but reality may not turn out to be so. A Barron’s columnist has taken note of some rumors surrounding these unemployment figures. The reduced job loss figure of 345,000 may be an error at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. C’est la vie! We can’t be sure of this trend until we see data for this month, which of course won’t happen until next month.

By the way, with the way a lot of news outlets are discussing that 345,000 drop in jobs you would think they’re discussing a long term, established trend. Remember though, this is actually a one data point trend, and a single data point is pretty meaningless. Repeat that to yourself the next time you see or hear a report about this fantastic new employment trend we’re in.

Aside from this irrational exuberance, I’ve noticed one question not asked; one key statistic not given today. What’s the funemployment number? I’m positive we can’t have 9.4% sad sacks moping through their days looking for work. The LA Times found some people living it up without a pesky job. Ex-Yahoo Michael Van Gorkom is hanging out at the beach with his new best friend, the margarita. Aubrey Howell’s busiest task has been visiting family since she’s joined the ranks of the funemployed.

I was (f)unemployed once. I graduated college into the Internet recession in 2001, and then moved to Silicon Valley. For seven months I puttered around the apartment I couldn’t afford to live in. In that summer I watched every single episode of the original Battlestar Galactica, and learned Galactica 1980 is unwatchable. I’d spend afternoons driving aimlessly trying to learn the roads of my new home. I look back on that with misery. I ran through my savings and ran up credit card debt trying to feed myself, pay my car loan and pay my rent. How any of these people can feel relaxed and happy when they don’t have an income is beyond my understanding.

So what’s the point of my rambling? The media is carrying water for the White House. We have a job market that is only getting worse, but who in the fourth estate is actually calling out our esteemed leader over it? These mainstream news outlets are sugarcoating today’s bad news with soft headlines. The LA Times is inventing a new term – funemployment – to persuade the millions of newly unemployed people that it’s not so bad. So what if you don’t have penny left to your name. Go hit those batting cages!

The media is a disgrace and the country is going to hell in a handbasket. Same old, same old.

UPDATE: Wow, I thought I was pushing it by saying the news media were protecting Obama from criticism by shielding negative news about unemployment. Then Newsweek’s editor, Evan Thomas, one ups everyone by going on MSNBC to say Obama is “sort of God.” It’s unbelieveable how nakedly pro-Obama these guys are.

A man placed an ad on Craigslist looking for another man to rape his wife while he watched. To be clear, his wife was not into this. This wasn’t a couple trying to spice up their relationship. Now I don’t know if he first tried to get her excited about it and she rejected this idea, or if he hatched this completely in his head.

We’re not that far off from eating babies. Seriously now, does human behavior get any more depraved than this? People have always done horrible things to each other, but what appalls me about this is this guy’s betrayal of his wife. I think it goes without saying that you don’t offer up your friends or family to be raped. I suppose you’re also not supposed to do that to complete strangers too, but if you’re sick enough to do it, you would think you would start with a stranger. Instead this guy offers up his wife, the person he is supposed to be closest to, so he could get a sexual thrill.

Really now, does it get worse than this? I could imagine someone answering back that maybe if the guy offered up his children instead of his wife, but I don’t see that as a great deal different. He would still be torturing his close family to get a cheap thrill.

I’d like someone to ask him what he thought would be the end of result of his action. Did he expect his wife to turn to him at the end and say, “Wow hun! That rape was hot! I’m going to cook you your favorite dinner,” and everything would work out for him? Did he actually think this was totally worth going to jail for?

Stick a fork in the human race. We’re done.

And another special election graces California. I really wish that “divide the state” proposal was on this month’s ballot. It would be perfect placement too because this election is the one where the state legislature gets cowardly and tries to get the public to cosign their budget compromise. I’ve never heard of a special election being needed to pass an annual budget, but hey, California is a trend setter. You other 49 states pay attention.

To my surprise it looks like there is some real anger brewing among the populace. The five ballot measures needed to pass the compromise budget are polling poorly. I actually had the impression people would blindly accept any budget after the long budget showdown we had a few months ago. Perhaps it has been the events at the federal level that have stirred up some anger, but it looks like Californians want to reject these measures altogether to send a message they’re tired of a state government that never stops growing. Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about California’s epic budget expansion? I guess I’m not the only one to notice an unending trend of higher government spending. Over the last ten years spending has risen 60%, but what has that gotten us? Did it really improve our lives, or didn’t you notice it? Why do you have to pay higher taxes and fees for that?

The prevailing sentiment among us angry taxpayers is that we should reject all five budget measures to send a strong message to the legislature. I agreed with that until I sat down to read the measures in my voter guide. Let’s look at these one-by-one.

Prop 1A: Changes to State Budget Process.

Remember how the legislature assured us all those tax hikes were ONLY for two years? This makes them last four years. It also performs a bunch of complicated adjustments to the rainy day fund, but the short version is that it expands it. Those complicated adjustments are probably just a ploy to give this ballot initiative a meaningless name like “changes to state budget process” instead of “raising your taxes even more”.

Prop 1B: Education Funding. Payment Plan.

This authorizes payments to schools from the rainy day fund starting in 2011. These payments are essentially repayments of budget cuts schools are getting now.

Prop 1C: Lottery Modernization Act.

This proposition would “modernize” the state lottery with higher jackpots and more advertising. Oh and it would also allow the state to issue bonds against future, expected lottery revenues, but pay no attention to that. That’s just a piddling little nothing provision that doesn’t matter at all.

Prop 1D: Protects Children’s Services Funding.

This protects funding for certain children’s services programs by cutting funding to other children’s services programs. Prop 98 established required spending rules for a program called First 5. This prop would permit the legislature to transfer money away from that to fund other social programs.

Prop 1E: Mental Health Services Funding.

This is similar to 1D except this involves mental health programs instead of children’s social services.

Prop 1F: Elected Officials’ Salaries.

This denies any pay raises to the legislature and any constitutional officers in deficit years.

As you can guess 1F is the outlier here. It’s not part of the legislature’s budget plan. Conservative rage is pounding the table over 1A through 1E and as I mentioned there is a ‘vote it all down’ movement brewing. I planned to take part in that as soon as I heard we would have a special election over the budget. Screw the legislature! I wasn’t going to let them pass the buck to me. Once I actually read these propositions I took a more nuanced view. Here’s what I voted on my mail-in ballot and why.

1A: No! I’m not going to vote to allow these idiot politicians to raise my taxes. The cycle of ever higher taxes needs to break somewhere.

1B: No! No! The school system should learn to tighten their belts just like everyone else. Repaying a budget cut is asinine.

1C: No! No! No! A thousand times NO! Borrowing against future lottery receipts is not reform. It’s just more of the borrow and spend policies that have ruined this state’s finances.

1D: Uhmmm, well, yea. I have always hated the many propositions that tie up California’s spending. We elect a legislature but can’t trust them to plan a budget? If you don’t think your representative is able, capable or trustworthy enough to make decisions on spending, stop voting for them. It’s an idiotic situation. I decided to vote yes because I’m happy to undermine this type of spending. Besides, it’s not a new tax. The legislature wants to shift spending from one program to another. I don’t object to that. It’s the sort of decision that legislators exist to make.

1E: Yes here too; Same logic as with 1D.

1F: Hell yes! I can understand the argument that this is pointless populism, but it won’t cause any harm and yet it will send a resounding ‘screw you’ to our elected officials.

I guess I’ve failed the purity test so there will be no GOP nominations for me. I’ll be happy to see props 1A through 1C fail, and I wouldn’t mind if 1D and 1E fail too. Right now the polls are in my favor but the ‘yes’ ads are starting on TV. I hope their repetition doesn’t hypnotize the population, but I fear it will. Something needs to be done to stop our tax and spend irresponsibility. The failure of these propositions will force the legislature to go back to work on the state budget. Either they will have to accept the blame for raising taxes again, or actually make serious budget cuts.

Our president is “to challenge government agencies to cut costs,” in the words of Reuters. That makes a fantastic headline. Instead of being the profilgate spender, Obama is casting himself as a budget watchdog. If you take a moment to read the article you’ll see he’s calling on his cabinet to find $100 million in cuts. That’s $100 million out of $3.5 trillion. Put another way that’s $100 million out of $3,500,000 million.

Economics professor Greg Mankiw puts the proposed cut in even clearer terms.

[I]magine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had be cut? By $3 over the course of the year–approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.

Such bold action. Obama’s really going to tame that budget. In all seriousness, that’s not the point of this exercise. What will happen is that each cabinet department will cut tiny amounts from hundreds of programs. It will all be inconsequential sums but it will give Democrat pundits an important talking point. When they go on cable news or the Sunday morning public affairs shows, they can then say, “President Obama has cut thousands of government programs. He’s a fiscal hawk.”

My only guess on the timing is that the Tea Parties must have spooked the White House. Why else bother with creating the illusion of caring about the budget?

Ron Paul finally has one good idea. We have a piracy problem in the world, but combating it with a professional navy is expensive work. So we can turn to an old, forgotten power as a solution: the Letter of Marque. It’s right in Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

The basic idea is that Congress will empower privateers to capture pirates and destroy their vessels. It gets more complicated when you have to work out the bounty payouts and deposits. Generally speaking though Paul’s plan is to leave pirate hunting to private citizens. I frickin’ love the idea, but then again I think all pirates should be executed. There’s bound to be a fair number of people who disagree with me. It’s a Ron Paul idea so it will go nowhere, but damn, I just have to give credit where it’s due.

I saw this video this morning and man did I have to cringe while watching it. It’s South Carolina Congressman Gresham Barrett being lambasted by the crowd at the Tax Day Tea Party in Greenville, South Carolina. It’s merciless. People turned their backs to him. There was one guy who shouted “Go Home” during Barrett’s whole speech. Everyone in that crowded booed for 5 minutes straight.

What did Barrett do to desire this ire? He voted in favor of funding the $700 billion TARP program. Supposedly he’s going to run for South Carolina governor. I can’t see that contest ending well for him.

Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, threw his support behind a resolution that reasserts the legitimacy of the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution. In doing so Perry has clearly branded himself a rightwing extremist, at least according to the Department of Homeland Security. Check out this quote from a DHS report on “Rightwing Extremism“.

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

The emphasis is mine. The DHS has declared anyone who supports federalism a rightwing extremist. The Bill of Rights is a rightwing extremist document thanks to the 10th Amendment Rick Perry made such a fuss over.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

If that’s not clear enough for you, it means the federal government gets the powers named in the Constitution. All the other powers not mentioned are left to the States or citizenry. And now if you agree with that you’re on the road to becoming a terrorist. Amazing how one of the principles this nation was founded on becomes a warning that brands people as radicals. I guess I’m one of them. Reading this news today makes me wonder if our federal government is becoming the oppressive behemoth the founders warned about. What if that’s the direction we’re heading in?

This news does give me a positive view of Rick Perry, and I suspect he’s trying to raise his profile for a presidential run. Like a few other Republicans out there he’s someone trying to showcase himself as a classic conservative. It would be refreshing to have a politician who seriously wants to remove government from our daily lives. Is Rick Perry the real deal? I have no idea. I haven’t paid any attention to Texas politics. I’m sure we’ll hear more from him though. He recognizes there’s a power vacuum in the Republican Party and he’ll try to become the standard bearer. I can’t wait to hear more from him.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

¹⁴And the State of Hawaii went forth, and saw a great disaster in Polihale State Park, and was moved with compassion, and proposed funding $4 million to repair.

¹⁵And when the State of Hawaii examined its budget, his accountants came to him, saying, This budget is a desert place, and the funding is not allocated; send the multitude of merchants of Polihale State Park, that they may go into the villages, and find themselves other jobs.

¹⁶But the State of Hawaii said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them a date two years hence when the repairs shall be.

¹⁷And they say unto him, We have here but a simple bridge repair.

¹⁸He said, Bring the plans hither to me.

¹⁹And he took the bridge repair job, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and wasted time, and overspent on labor and supplies.

²⁰And they did all plan $4 million to build a short bridge two years hence.

– The Book of the Bureaucrats: Chapter 14: Verses 14-20.

Yes the State of Hawaii worked a miracle. A bridge was destroyed in Polihale State Park thanks to bad flooding. Hawaii figured replacing that bridge would cost $4 million and couldn’t be done for two years. The merchants whose livelihoods depend on tourists visiting the park found that intolerable and actually did something about it. They replaced the bridge in eight days for a cost far less than $4 million. Hawaii took a simple construction project, and using the power of bureaucracy, turned it into an expensive and time-consuming one. Government be praised!

Gee, I can’t wait until the government is in charge of my healthcare.