BAY AREA HATEWATCH UPDATE: Tensions Heightened as Blacks Move In. “As more and more black renters began moving into this mostly white San Francisco Bay Area suburb a few years ago, neighbors started complaining about loud parties, mean pit bulls, blaring car radios, prostitution, drug dealing and muggings of schoolchildren. In 2006, as the influx reached its peak, the police department formed a special crime-fighting unit to deal with the complaints, and authorities began cracking down on tenants in federally subsidized housing.”

UPDATE: “Black Flight” from San Francisco.

ANOTHER UPDATE: For some less snarky background on what’s going on, see this article from The Atlantic that I linked a while back.

CONN CARROLL: Did Harold Meyerson Really Just Compare Toyota to a Slave Owner?

EVAN COYNE MALONEY: Pepsi, Hope, and Obama.

BECAUSE THEIR APPROVAL RATINGS AREN’T LOW ENOUGH YET: One Group That Is Still Getting a Raise: Congress. “The general public can’t help but think that lawmakers are patting themselves on the back, and padding their wallets, for presiding over the worst fiscal-policy blunders in recent history.” Plus this: “Finding anyone brave enough to defend the pay hike in Washington these days is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. When they’re asked to comment, usually accessible members quickly go missing, are on vacation, are extremely busy with family members or can’t be reached on their cell phones because they’re in remote locations. Some congressional aides, however, speaking privately, said they wouldn’t be surprised if public pressure forced Congress to revisit the issue when members returned to work next week.”

UPDATE: Reader Barry Dauphin writes: “Weren’t these the same guys complaining about the Big Three CEOs coming to DC on corporate jets? The pay raise in the middle of a financial downturn ought to be a much bigger story.”

IN THE MAIL: From Doug Schoen and Michael Rowan, The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America.

POWER LINE SUFFERS A denial-of-service attack but is undeterred.

MICHAEL TOTTEN: What would a “proportionate” response look like? “The Israel Defense Forces might have launched thousands of air strikes against targets in Gaza to match the thousands of Qassam rockets fired at the cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. It’s unlikely, however, that this is what Israel’s critics have in mind.”

UPDATE: Alan Dershowitz on “moral idiocy” that encourages terrorists.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Fred Lapides writes: “It is WWII. The Americans are about to launch an atom bomb to try to end the war that is killing so many. The voices of compassion say: no atom bomb because it is not proportionate. You must wait till they get their own super weapon.”

No, thank you.

KASS ON BLAGOJEVICH: For sheer brazenness, nobody surpasses Rod.

INSTA-POLL:

THE “BUMBLER OF THE YEAR” Award is announced. “In this period of ‘Obamamania,’ it is easy to forget that a year ago, the president-elect was a long shot for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Clinton was a huge favorite to win both the nomination and the November election. . . . How she lost the nomination and her shot at becoming the nation’s first female president will go down in political history as one of the great campaign screw-ups of all time.”

YOU THINK IT’S BAD HERE: A real-estate crash in Spain.

THE HILL: “Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointment to President-elect Obama’s Senate seat has prompted a flurry of legal questions about the Senate’s ability to block it.”

Brian Kalt writes: “Under Powell v. McCormack, the ability of the Senate to exclude someone would seem to be limited to judging that he hadn’t won the election (not applicable here) or that he is not qualified (30 years old, a resident of Illinois, and a U.S. citizen for nine years). Their discomfort with Burris’s appointer doesn’t enter into it.” Eugene Volokh agrees.

WESTHAWK: Will Obama’s team find any answers to America’s IO problems?

CHRIS DODD UPDATE: The Hartford Advocate writes:

Sen. Chris Dodd never stood a chance at the Democratic nomination, much less the presidency. But that didn’t stop the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from fleeing Washington during the prelude to the biggest banking collapse of our lifetime and moving his family to Iowa for the caucuses. Once Dodd did finally come to earth (and back to D.C.), we learned he’d received special low-interest mortgage deals from Countrywide Financial, a company that made huge profits off predatory subprime loans and which his committee was supposed to regulate. Dodd first said he’d make public the details of the loan, then backpedaled and stonewalled reporters seeking answers. Dodd’s up for re-election in 2010 and his approval rating’s sunk below 50 percent. After a year like this, he might find winning another term a rocky ride.

He still won’t release those documents.

THE CBS FOLKS SEND THIS TRANSCRIPT of Bobby Rush on The Early Show, discussing Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama’s seat.

MAGGIE RODRIGUEZ, co-host: We’re joined now also from Chicago by Congressman Bobby Rush, whom you just heard from in the piece. Good morning, Congressman.

Representative BOBBY RUSH (Democrat, Illinois): Good morning, Maggie. How are you?

RODRIGUEZ: I’m fine, thank you. Yesterday we heard you say that they shouldn’t hang and lynch the appointee to punish the appointer. But do you believe that this is the way the only African-American Senator should be seated? Tainted, rightly or not, by a scandal and against the objections of most of his own party?

Rep. RUSH: Well, let me just say this, you know, the recent history of our nation has shown us that sometimes there could be individuals and there could be situations where school children–where you have officials standing in the doorway of school children. You know, I’m talking about all of us back in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m talking about George Wallace, Bull Connors and I’m sure that the US Senate don’t want to see themselves placed in the same position. I know my friend Harry Reid…

RODRIGUEZ: But it’s not just the Senate, Congressman. It’s Barack Obama who is African-American also who disagrees with this.

Rep. RUSH: Well, I think what needs–what needs to happen now is that all these folks who are opposed to Governor Blagojevich, they need to take a chill pill. We’re still a nation of laws and I believe that Roland Burris and Governor Blagojevich, they’re on solid constitutional grounds in terms of them being–of him being selected. I think that the US Senate will have to accept him. Let me just say this, you know, the real political tragedy, the real political issue, the moral issue that we face is why in the US Senate there are no African-Americans? There are two Asians, three Latinos, 11 women, but no African-Americans. And I just must applaud the people of the state of Illinois because in the last 150 years, we have sent two of the three African-Americans to the Senate over a period of 150 years. Now something is really, really wrong with that. So are you saying is this–is this…

RODRIGUEZ: But shouldn’t Governor–let me interrupt you for a minute and ask you this.

Rep. RUSH: Yes.

RODRIGUEZ: Shouldn’t Governor Blagojevich maybe have given Roland Burris the chance to go in as the only African-American senator in a legitimate way that everyone would approve of?

Rep. RUSH: Well…

RODRIGUEZ: Is he being selfish here by appointing him this way? By remaining so defiant?

Rep. RUSH: Well, you know, he has the constitutional responsibility as governor of the state of Illinois to appoint. The General Assembly met a week or so ago, they passed the buck, they shifted, they punted, they did not declare a special election. Let me just say this. On January the 20th, President-elect Obama wants on his desk the Congress to deliver to him a stimulus package, hundreds of millions of dollars, and the people of the state of Illinois should not be deprived of a representative in the US Senate to be at the table to help decide where that money should go.

RODRIGUEZ: All right.

Rep. RUSH: We have many other issues and I just think that it is incumbent upon the US Senate and President Reid and others to make sure that Illinois is not short-changed as it relates to representation.

RODRIGUEZ: OK, Congressman Rush.

Looks like we’ll have fun in the new year. Plus, “President Reid?” I know it’s just a verbal stumble, but don’t scare me like that.

MORE ON THAT Houston eminent-domain scandal. “If the Chronicle’s description is accurate, this is a typical case of the use of eminent domain for the benefit of private interest groups under a thin veneer of advancing the public interest.”

THIS IS INTERESTING: Consumers Union to Buy Gawker Blog Consumerist.

MEAT PLUS BEER EQUALS BETTER HEALTH: “Marinating a steak in red wine or beer can cut down the number of cancer-causing agents produced when it is fried or grilled, research suggests.” Plus, this no-brainer: “The researchers also found that tasters preferred the smell, taste and appearance of beer-marinated steak.” Post-consumption marination was not researched. . . .

YOUR QUESTIONS, ANSWERED: “Have you noticed that Instapundit always has a post that goes up in the middle of the night? Think he’s really up and writing then?” Those are scheduled posts, for the benefit of people in the other hemisphere, or people who are up late and bored.

UPDATE: Yes, I am a great humanitarian. But you knew that.

FROM ISRAEL: The Stories You Won’t See on CNN.

UPDATE: Golfing while Gaza Burns.

GAZA UPDATES: PJTV direct from Israel.

SHANNON LOVE on diplomacy and terrorism.

Plus, “The vile Cynthia McKinney.”

TOBY HARNDEN: The race card is played: Don’t “hang or lynch” the black man chosen by Rod Blagojevich.

MORAL AGENCY:

Those quick to point out how Olmert’s miscalculations have hurt the people he governs will typically suggest that military incursions “radicalize” Arab sentiment, leading to more suicide bombers and more dead Israelis.

Assuming this is true, why is it that the corollary is never asked: namely, how does Hamas radicalize Israeli sentiment? A much remarked-upon fact of the last 72 hours is that Israel’s ultra-left-wing party Meretz has endorsed Operation Cast Lead, a development that should concern partisans of both sides. If there is merit to the “root causes” argument, then surely it applies to the decisions undertaken by a Jewish polity as much as it does to those undertaken by a Muslim one. Or does a belligerent Israeli consensus form in a vacuum? Honest sympathizers of the Palestinian cause should inquire as to what culpability Ismail Haniyeh and Khalid Mashaal bear for the all-but-certain election of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is sure to continue – to coin another witless cliché of this ageless debate – the “cycle of violence.” If, as Hannah Arendt once phrased it, Theodore Herzl and Bernard Lazare were “turned into Jews by anti-Semitism,” why would their empowered disciples be any less susceptible to external threats?

From India to Northern Ireland, no colonized population has ever been deemed immune from having the pursuit of its own political interests held up to scrutiny. Indeed, complaints in the Western media about the staggering corruption and incompetence of Fatah have given way to an almost total absence of any serious evaluation of Hamas’s many blunders and failures of foreign policy. Either this indicates an unpardonable bias, which many supporters of Israel allege, or the implicit acceptance of a disturbing reality — that Hamas is still too recalcitrant a political entity to effectively barter with.

Read the whole thing. “Cycles of violence” continue until one side wins decisively. Personally, I’d rather that were the Israelis, since they’re civilized people and not barbarians.

UPDATE: Greenwald vs. Goldfarb. Hilarious that Greenwald is offended by calling Hamas “barbarians.” If only I could be as temperate in my approach as he is!

PALESTINIAN PROPAGANDA 101.