BUT IF YOU DEPICTED ARAFAT THIS WAY, THEY’D CALL YOU A RACIST:

A cartoon of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon eating the head of a Palestinian baby against the backdrop of a burning Palestinian city has won first prize in the British Political Cartoon Society’s annual competition.

And yet, who has killed more actual babies? (Or, for that matter, Palestinians?) It’s not even close.

UPDATE: Stephen Green has thoughts on what it would take to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. “The only process towards peace is the kind of war one side can’t commit, and the other side won’t.”

FRITZ SCHRANCK is giving the AARP its due.

ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT, China wants to give Bush the “Thatcher treatment” over Taiwan.

They’d better watch out. Bush might give Taiwan the Bomb. Er, if Taiwan doesn’t already have it. . . .

Either this report is just plain wrong, or the Chinese haven’t been paying attention.

UPDATE: Jim Bennett emails:

What the ChiComs don’t get is that the military situation with Taiwan is quite different from that of Hong Kong. HK coulnd’t have lasted a week without water from the mainland. When i was talking with Lady T. she got on to the subject of HK — I got the impression that she had had the military possibilities of defending HK studied very closely, and had very reluctantly come to the conclusion that there was no way it could have been defended short of a nuclear strike on Beijing. If it had been as defensible as Taiwan, there’s no doubt in my mind she would have fought.

Yes. Also: Who’s in a worse political position if goods from China can’t get to WalMart because Chinese harbors have been mined? Bush? Or the Chinese leadership?

THE FOLKS AT BUREAUCRASH are mocking the Miami protesters. They’re very clever, but they may have met their match: these guys are pretty much beyond mockery.

GREGG EASTERBROOK’S TUESDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK has found a new home, over at NFL.Com.

EUGENE VOLOKH is, in my opinion, appropriately harsh.

HALLEY SUITT IS IN PENTHOUSE. Meryl Yourish is in Victoria’s Secret.

TIM BLAIR offers a before and after comparison on Iraq.

DAVID BROOKS:

Working off U.N. and U.S. census data, Bill Frey, the indispensable University of Michigan demographer, projects that in the year 2050 the median age in the United States will be 35. The median age in Europe will be 52. The implications of that are enormous.

As we settle down to the Thanksgiving table in a few days, we might remind ourselves that whatever other problems grip our country, lack of vitality is not one of them. In fact, we may look back on the period beginning in the middle of the 1980’s as the Great Rejuvenation. American life has improved in almost every measurable way, and far from regressing toward the mean, the U.S. has become a more exceptional nation.

And for that, let us give thanks.

JEFF JARVIS says that the BBC’s Greg Dyke isn’t just a dinosaur, but a dishonest one.

MICHAEL TOTTEN, supposedly on vacation, is blogging from Guatemala.

IS ANDREW SULLIVAN the most influential intellectual in the public arena today? Could be.

FROM OUTSOURCING TO INSOURCING: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

N.Z. BEAR: “I was a lousy pilot; I’m a much better blogger.”

IRANIANS: Angry at the E.U.? Here’s at least one who is:

The EU has openly established trade relations with the Islamic regime in order to assert its presence in the Middle East as well as with the newly established energy-producing Central Asian countries. The winners, at least up until now have been the European countries and the ayatollahs. The losers in this strife are the Iranian nation and the United States — who are paying the highest price in this battle against an international terrorism skilfully supported by the EU.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis says that the next Beatles won’t come from Europe, but from Iran.

CAR BOMBS COMING TO AMERICA? Here’s a troubling post. Of course, we’ve had them before, but I hope that people are still paying attention to the possibility that we might have them again.

UPDATE: Here is a website, about which I don’t know a lot, suggesting that some attack along these lines is imminent: “Information and intelligence found by analysts strongly suggests an increased risk of an attack or series of simultaneous or consecutive attacks occurring through the end of this week, designed to strike at the busiest time of our shopping and travel season.”

Is it true? Beats me. But if the terrorists don’t pull of a major strike in the U.S. pretty soon, they’re going to be rather obviously a spent force, which I think means that if they can do something, they’ll do it soon.

IRAQ NOW is another military blog from Iraq that’s worth reading. (Via Scott Wickstein, who asks: “But with every soldier a journalist, what is the role of the media?”)

UPDATE: Scroll down (or click here) for some interesting thoughts on military procurement, and this post from Kim du Toit. (Also read this followup by du Toit, which expressly responds to some stuff from Iraq Now.)

A READER SENDS THIS INTERESTING SUMMARY of Gallup’s latest poll on Baghdadis’ attitudes, this time involving the economy:

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being very bad and 5 being very good, most respondents characterized economic conditions in the city as “bad.” Nearly half of Baghdad’s citizens rated economic conditions as a 1 (22%) or a 2 (25%). Although a third (34%) gave a middle rating of 3, few Baghdadis rated economic conditions toward the positive end of the scale — with 16% rating it a 4 and only 1% giving a 5.

When Baghdadis were probed about whether the economic picture in Baghdad as getting brighter or darker, opinions were more positive. A clear plurality (48%) said that conditions were getting better, 29% said they were getting worse, and another 20% volunteered that things were staying about the same. Citizens’ views about Baghdad’s economic direction were affected by their own personal economic vantage: Baghdadis who said their family income has increased from what it was before the war were more likely to say conditions are getting better than were those who said their family income had decreased since the war (58% and 38%, respectively).

Among the most remarkable findings were Baghdadis’ hopeful views about their own financial situations one year in the future. About 6 in 10 Baghdad citizens (61%) said they expected that they would be better off financially in a year, and only 1 in 10 (11%) anticipated being worse off. Even among low-income Baghdadis, a majority held an optimistic view of their economic futures (53% expecting that they would be better off next year).

That’s good news, I think. Meanwhile, economic news in the United States looks good, though I don’t understand this technical economist-talk:

“Growth is now super-super strong compared to super strong,” said Joseph LaVorgna, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities, whose forecast of 8.3 percent was the highest in a Bloomberg News survey.

Help me out here: I think that “super-super strong” is better than “really boss” but not as good as “bitchin’.” This, however, strikes me as very good news: “The GDP price deflator, a measure of prices tied to the report, was unchanged from the previous estimate at a 1.7 percent pace.”

My worry at the moment is Nixonian inflation. So far, no sign.

SARDONIC VIEWS notes this shocking admission from the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s editorial board: “More legal gun owners does not automatically lead to more crime.”

Indeed.

“ECONO-EQUIVALENCE” is sort of like “moral equivalence,” except you get cool graphics. Well, not exactly. But go read this post from Steven Antler on why Bush’s economic policy isn’t the same as the Democrats’ in spite of anguished wailing by fiscal hawks that there’s no difference anymore. Steve Verdon, on the other hand, takes a less positive view.

IS IT WRONG TO ROOT FOR THE PEOPLE KILLING OUR TROOPS IN IRAQ? Some San Francisco Chronicle readers are wondering:

I’m definitely torn, because I obviously don’t want any more of our soldiers getting killed, but I also wouldn’t mind the quagmire going on just long enough to ruin Bush’s re-election chances.

Blackfive has observations. So do I: The answer to the question is “yes, it’s wrong.”

THE RISE AND RISE OF THE ASIAN WEBLOG: Interesting article.

HOWARD KURTZ WONDERS why journalists have suddenly gotten so fussy about leaked stories. It’s basically a roundup of commentary on why the Stephen Hayes story on Saddam / Al Qaeda connections has been ignored.

UPDATE: Reader James V. Somers emails:

Seems to me that Shafer’s observation, quoted in Kurtz’ column this morning, is dead on as to why the link has not been reported:

“One possible explanation is that the mainstream press is too invested in its consensus finding that Saddam and Osama never teamed up and its almost theological view that Saddam and Osama couldn’t possibly have ever hooked up because of secular/sacred differences.”

Saying that Saddam and Osama would never team up because of secular/sacred differences is an oh-so-smart thing to say. It’s the sort of thing you say as you sip your expensive latte and nibble at a raisin scone over a carefully-folded copy of the New York Times. Saying such things reveals nuanced understanding, an appreciation of the political, religious and cultural subtleties in the Islamic world – things that could never be understood by knuckle-dragging conservatives who don’t see shades of grey, and who don’t understand other cultures.

Yeah, too bad it’s, you know, wrong.

FRANCE AND GERMANY GET AWAY WITH DEFYING INTERNATIONAL LAW:

BRUSSELS, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Confusion and recrimination erupted on Tuesday after euro zone finance ministers effectively froze budget rules underpinning the euro by suspending disciplinary action against Germany and France in defiance of the European Commission.

Berlin and Paris will be asked for a political commitment to cut deficits that are set to break EU limits for the third year in a row in 2004, rather than being pushed along a disciplinary process whose ultimate sanction is a fine. . . .

Small states complained that the rules were being bent by the big countries to protect Germany and France, which have long been the EU’s central leadership axis.

Such shameless unilateralism and contempt for international organizations.

“WE HAD THAT IN COMMUNIST TIMES” — some interesting observations on the European Union from Czech President Vaclav Klaus:

Last week, the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg released a 400-page report that found “systematic problems, over-estimations, faulty transactions, significant errors and other shortcomings” in the EU’s budget. EU’s auditors could only vouch for 10 percent of the $120 billion the EU spent in 2002. It was also the ninth successive year the auditors were unable to certify the budget as a whole.

Europeans are yet to face such “serious underlying issues,” Klaus said, because “they are still in the dream world of welfare, long vacations, guaranteed high pensions, and cradle-to-grave social security, and which obviates the imperative need to face” reality.

The biggest challenge for the Czech republic, Klaus said, is how to avoid falling into the trap of “a new form of collectivism.” Asked whether he meant a new form of neo-Marxism, he said, “absolutely not, but I see other sectors endangering free societies.”

“The enemies of free societies today are those who want to burden us down again with layer upon layer of regulations,” president Klaus explained. “We had that in Communist times. But now if you look at all the new rules and regulations of EU membership, layered bureaucracy is staging a comeback.” The EU’s 30,000 bureaucrats have produced some 80,000 pages of regulations that the Czech republic and the other European applicants for EU membership would have to adopt.

He has some interesting thoughts on Iraqi reconstruction, too.