Though George W. Bush often defined terrorism incorrectly as taking up arms against the United States or its interests, a more accurate definition would be the actual or threatened  destruction of people or property as a means of political intimidation.  States can commit terrorism against opposition parties just as stateless Islamists can bomb hotels.  Either way, the use of violence for political intimidation is terrorism.

The definition came to mind to today when reading about fifteen people who smashed and vandalized two banks in Logan Circle early Saturday morning.  They weren’t there to steal money, but, as the anti-IMF and anti-World Bank graffiti they left in their wake suggests, they had a beef against the capitalist system.  It’s no coincidence that these acts of violence coincided with the annual meeting of the World Bank and IMF, a perennial target of anarchist and anti-capitalist theatrics.

Since this violent destruction of property was motivated by a hatred of the relationship between capitalism and the world’s political systems, this violence, which the Post reported as mere “vandalism” qualifies as terrorism.  The Post won’t classify this violence as terrorism and the city’s police aren’t likely to either.  But had a similar crime been committed not by young, white Marxists, but by middle-aged Muslim extremists, the media and police would have likely classified this violence as terrorism.

This is a shameful double standard we ought to eliminate.  Radical Muslims aren’t the only people who can commit terrorism.

Candidate Obama rightly criticized President Bush for hiding the costs of the Iraq War through supplemental appropriations bills, rather than including the costs in the normal budget.  Alas, Mr. Obama is pulling yet another page from Bush book: though Mr. Obama recently included Iraq spending costs in his latest $410 billion budget, he has quickly come back for more, proposing his own $83.4 billion supplemental to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a few international aid programs.

Though there’s nothing necessarily wrong with requesting supplemental funding, the president’s request raises two concerns.  For one, requesting this money a mere month after Congress passed his buget makes one wonder why his budget analysts didn’t foresee these new costs and just include them in the original budget.  What’s more likely is that the president just wanted to send to Congress a bill with a lower bottom line so as to appeal to moderate Democrats and GOP deficit hawks (who only now have found fiscal religion).

Secondly, it’s hypocritical for the president to critcize his predecessor for a practice that he, himself, readily adopts once in office.

Remember Sen. Obama’s campaign promise to examine the Federal buget “line-by-line” to eliminate wasteful spending and earmarks?  Shamefully, the president has gone back on his promise and instead signed the mammoth $410-billion omnibus spending bill.  An amazing 8,500 earmarks sit like barnacles on $7.7 billion of the bill.  One must suppose Senator Obama didn’t think it fair to impose burdensome campaign promises on President Obama.

While a presidential veto would have embodied the spirit of this new “era of responsibility“, the President has decided to play along to get along rather than ruffle the blue feathers at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Wait, haven’t we seen this movie before?

Ah, yes!  President George W. Bush waited five years to issue his first veto, preferring to work with Congressional Republicans quid pro quo.  The result was runaway spending and unexamined executive power.

Sadly, Pres. Obama had a chance to give us some change we could believe in.  The only change he gave us was his promise.

Many small businesses such as shops and doctors’ offices are sole-proprietorships, meaning the income of the store is counted on the owner’s tax return as his own personal income. As a result, many small business owners are grossing more than $250,000 annually in income, even though they must pay rent, insurance, and employees’ salaries from this income, leaving only a modest sum to remain for the owner.

These business owners, because their personal income is combined with their business income, may face higher taxes under Pres. Obama’s tax proposals. What makes this coming tax debate interesting is that tax increases will heavily fall on people who voted for the President in the first place. Is this an instance of betrayal or an instance of you get what you vote for?

Victor Davis Hanson at RealClearPolitics, addressing the new President, discusses the implications of classifying small-business owners as “the rich”. He very smartly identifies the Democratic constituencies that will face higher tax bills under the President:

In fact, for your [spending programs] to succeed, you must go after the upper, upper middle-class, those making between $250,000 and $600,000 who are restaurant owners, home builders, labor contactors, architects, surgeons, engineers, hospital executives, college administrators, Ivy-League law professors, and many dentists.

These households are wealthy, yes; but they don’t own or even fly on $50 million private jets or host private Super Bowl parties. Their income is all reported, and with such good salaries come high insurance and, in the case of business, constant reinvestment and expensive inventories. They are not greedy, but the bulwark of the United States’ productive classes who in aggregate pay over 40% of the collective income taxes, and provide most of the jobs in the country. Under your plan many in these high-tax states will pay nearly 70% of their incomes in FICA, Medicare, federal income, and state income taxes. Why gratuitously mislead the American people that those for whom you will lift FICA ceilings or up their IRS bites to 40% are in any way synonymous with the super-rich? Remember the very, very wealthy voted overwhelmingly in your favor precisely because their riches gave them immunity from high taxes, and in many cases they were far removed from the everyday risk and worry of owning a hardware store or trying to keep together a family-owned construction firm. George Clooney is a world away from a paving contractor, just as making $400,000 a year on call 24/7 is not quite making $40 million investing or $2 million for a cameo.

So please no more intellectual dishonesty, Mr. President. Those in great numbers who will pay your higher taxes are not really the rarer Warren Buffets, Bill Gateses, Diane Feinsteins, Teresa Heinz Kerrys, Sean Penns, George Soroses, Oprah Winfreys, or Tiger Woodses, whose mega-wealth really does result in private jet rides, and yet exempts them from worries that increased taxes might wreck their small businesses. (my emphasis)

Some business owners facing higher taxes may find it more economical to incorporate their businesses and file taxes separately for their respective businesses. If this is the case, the President’s plan to boost revenue to pay for all his programs may not collect as much as he anticipates.

(No worries, though, since we can always foist these financial burdens on the unborn. Since when do they vote?)

The President’s opponents highlight that his aim is to redistribute wealth downward à la Robin Hood, but the President himself prefers to highlight his aim to provide such necessities as universal health insurance coverage. However, if the President’s aim were merely to provide necessities, it’s only fair that he come clean with the true costs of these programs.

The Bush Administration, wanting to hide its deepening budget deficits, cynically and dishonestly refused to count Iraq spending as part of the normal budget, instead requesting the money as “emergency” appropriations. Though Pres. Obama is rightly including Iraq spending as part of the normal budget, he is underestimating the costs of his forthcoming health care plans, somehow imagining that taxing “the rich” (celebrities, hedgefund managers, as well as roofing company owners) can somehow finance the all-ages version of the most out-of-control government medical insurance program in the nation.

There is no such thing as free healthcare and the bill must be paid somehow, be it through escalating private premiums or through escalating tax rates.  The President is wisely persuing cost reductions through large-group bargaining of drug prices, digitization of medical records, and research into best practices to reduce mistakes.  These are worthy goals, no doubt, but like earmark reform, they will merely dent expenditures slightly, leaving hefty bills to be paid through the public treasury.

The super-rich can afford marginal increases in their tax bills, but sole-proprietors grossing more than $250,000 may find this President rather taxing.

It’s official.  The White House now picks winners.

After the Senate failed to agree to auto bailout legislation, President Bush today announced that the Treasury will lend $17.4 billion to GM and Chrysler (two will likely merge) to prevent their imminent collapse.  Though their collapse would have disastrous economic consequences in certain rustbelt states, the action marks yet another step in the unwitting construction of a national industrial policy.

Though the loans’ terms require the companies to restructure their operations drastically, the public should remain skeptical.  If politicians employ the specter of increased joblessness to justify such an unprecedented level of Federal intervention, these same reasons can be used to modify these loan terms to preclude substantive restructuring.  Any decent analysis of the auto industry will conclude that GM and Chrysler, in order to survive, must make several politically unpopular steps: they must lay-off employees right away to reduce production to meet lowered demand, they must produce cars people actually want to buy, and they must cut the wages and benefits of their new-hires and those of their  long-time employees and those of their retirees.

Now that public money is put at risk to assist two poorly run companies restructure, many will view this public investment as an excuse to demand the automakers not make the necessary job, pay and benefit cuts.  After all, why should laid-off employees pay taxes to fund their own layoffs?

What a shame that the Administration in its decision to pick winners has picked two losers.

Thomas Friedman in the NYT is back to his usual environomics finger wagging:

It baffles me that President Bush would rather go to Saudi Arabia twice in four months and beg the Saudi king for an oil price break than ask the American people to drive 55 miles an hour, buy more fuel-efficient cars or accept a carbon tax or gasoline tax that might actually help free us from what he called our “addiction to oil.”

Friedman forgets is that our democratically elected president is simply representing the wishes of the American people, who steadfastly demand cheap oil.  No candidate has offered to raise the gas tax because they know that to do so would be touching a third rail of politics, “elite opinion” be damned.

Friedman further laments the Bush administration:

The failure of Mr. Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world — the U.S. economy — to produce a scalable alternative to oil has helped to fuel the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states — from Russia to Venezuela to Iran — that are reshaping global politics in their own image.

Though I don’t doubt the wisdom of developing such industries, it will only be possible with higher gas prices, as the demand for alternative fuels will necessarily increase.    Unfortunately, high gas prices are politically unpopular.

Friedman may be right about what energy policy shifts are needed, but his opinions are not going to go over well at the polls.  Not everyone can afford a Prius, Tom.

There are typically two reactions to anti-Americanism: one reaction seeks to understand the antipathy and the other dismisses it as the inevitable result of being a superpower.  It is truly hard to understand the feelings, usually diverse and contradictory that drive contempt for America.  Much has been said of an Obama presidency redeeming America in the oft-veiled eyes of the Muslim world.  After all, if America is willing to elect a black man whose father was a Muslim, perhaps America isn’t the Great Satan after all.

Not so fast, says Edward Luttwak in an op-ed in the New York Times.  This audacity of hope of a messianic foreign policy transformation of an Obama White House ignores the fact that through a strict Koranic reading, Sen. Obama is shameless apostate who must (I kid you not!) be assassinated.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Sen. Obama has spoken of his sincere devotion to Christianity and to his church in Chicago.  However, this devotion is what condemns him:

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

Thus in the Muslim world, Sen. Obama may be more considered more heinous than Sen. McCain or—dare I say it—George W. Bush, himself!

In America, this should make no difference, but a President Obama would not automatically help America’s image as some of his supporters have claimed.  For some, it would be an offensive move by our democracy to an elect a man who has supposedly known their religion and freely rejected it.  The vast majority of Muslims will care little about Sen. Obama’s religious views one way or the other.  Vocal clerics, however, have never been known for their laissez-faire attitudes on faith.  For them, an Obama presidency would be a slap in the face.

One can never be a Senator, a millionaire and a “regular guy”.  Senator, you’re no Joe Six-pack.  But where did these pitiful scenes of Sen. Obama bowling, Sen. Clinton downing shots, and Pres. Bush crashing his bike originate?  The Post clues us in:

Presidential candidates have strived relentlessly downward in social class ever since the 1840s, when William Henry Harrison created what historians now call the “common-man myth.” While most of his peers campaigned from their estates, Harrison traveled the country and spoke under a banner depicting a log cabin and a bottle of hard cider. He won the presidency by a landslide, and his campaign model became the new standard.

There’s the old polling questions of which candidate would you prefer to have a beer with.  Who cares?  Being a good drinking buddy and running the Executive Branch require completely different qualities.

Robert Mugabe’s government has refused to admit defeat in the election three weeks ago and his government has not even bothered to release the total vote counts. While parking in front of the Zimbabwe Embassy in Washington today, I noticed one of the usual signs restricting a short strip of parking to embassy cars on weekdays. This sign restricted parking to the ‘Republic of Zimbabwe’, which I no long believe to be a true democratic republic. It is now dictator Robert Mugabe’s personal fiefdom, featuring a wrecked economy, 165,000% inflation (I kid you not), a refugee crisis, and one of Africa’s wealthiest populations reduced to penury. Equipped with some paper, a pen and some tape, I put together a revision to the sign so that it now reads

NO PARKING
7AM-6:30PM
DIPLOMATIC CARS
DICTATOR
ROBERT MUGABE’S
THUGS, GOONS
& APOLOGISTS
ONLY

Despite having robbed his people of both their livelihoods and the right to vote, Mr. Mugabe can still count on his defenders in the region. Shortly after it appeared that Mr. Mugabe stole the election, South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki, infamous for denying that HIV causes AIDS, met with Mr. Mugabe and, much to the world’s surprise, assured that Zimbabwe was not facing a crisis.

Fortunately, many South Africans, unlike Mr. Mbeki, do have a conscience.

The New York Times reports today that on Friday a ship carrying weapons and ammunition from a Chinese state-owned weapons foundry made a call into the port of Durban with goods destined for Zimbabwe’s military. News of the arrival quickly broke and the longshoremen’s union threatened to strike if forced to unload the ship.

The South African government, though, citing the absence of an official weapons ban on Zimbabwe, ruled that the shipment should be allowed to pass through South Africa. Not so fast, ruled South Africa’s High Court, after a South African activist and the Anglican archbishop petitioned for an embargo:

[Archbishop] Phillip, [human rights activist] Mr. Kearney and the lawyers argued that South Africa’s 2002 law on conventional arms included guidelines that directed the government to consider, in deciding whether to give permits for the transport of weapons, whether the government receiving the arms was committing human rights violations.

Late Friday afternoon, a judge in Durban granted their request. But on Friday evening, when the authorities drove out to the Chinese ship, An Yeu Jiang, to serve the court order, it pulled up anchor and moved off, according to a South African government official and Ms. Fritz.

What’s impressive is the reaction of South Africa’s civil society to represent the interests of human rights when its president fails to.

Even still, Mr. Mugabe is still holding onto his seat and the outcome of the election is still unknown. Will the State Department eventually eject Mr. Mugabe’s representatives in Washington? If he ends up stealing this election for sure, the State Department should consider it.