MMM, SPICY BURGERS. They’re better for you, as well as tastier.

IS CHICAGO CHINA? Roger L. Simon writes:

Now Chicago is not as brutal as China, obviously, but in some ways it’s worse. Someone named Daley has been the city’s mayor since somewhere in the Early Paleolithic Age. Chairman Mao didn’t last as long. Being a Daley in Chicago is equivalent to being a Medici in Florence – with less danger of a violent death. The patronage system seems to extend from somewhere a few miles south of Canada to the northern reaches of Kentucky. Everyone here appears to accept this as part of the game.

Last weekend the Wall Street Journal had an interesting article about the three hundred people who rule China and are connected by their own special super private line of “red phones.” That could be Chicago. In fact, they should adopt it here. Obama and Rahm Emanuel could be linked in with David Axelrod and Bill Ayers. Maybe it should be red Blackberrys.

Now I’m being sarcastic here, but I think this is indicative of the serious problem we’re facing now. Crony capitalism can work to a point. Chicago still looks better than LA at the moment. But the strains are starting to show. Crony capitalism is a dependency system. It has obvious economic weaknesses that stem from its obsessive need for control. And now it’s all about to crack with unions, pensions, too many people working for the city and state, etc., etc.

Sounds like Thomas Friedman’s kind of place.

MARKDOWNS ON kitchen knives and cutlery.

IF NIXON COULD GO TO CHINA, what’s stopping Obama from visiting Israel?

Yes, let’s see Obama interact with the Israeli people and go to the Knesset. Let him give interviews to Israeli media. Let him conduct a press conference in Jerusalem.

What could go wrong?

“WE ARE IRON MEN:” At PJTV, Bill Whittle’s latest episode of Afterburner:

IN THE MAIL: Short: Walking Tall When You’re Not Tall At All by John Schwartz.  Speaking as a borderline short person (I’ve been called dapper, which is code for short-and-wears-a-suit), I thought this book was charming, but what’s best is how it subtly undercuts the entire grievance industry.  If even the height-and-income studies have been hyped, imagine the data distortion underway in more politicized fields.  Says Schwartz in an interview:

I didn’t find any studies that really supported the idea that being short was a disadvantage—even those much-publicized studies that seem to say small people earn less than taller folks. Beyond that, I knew that science can be manipulated and misused, but even I was surprised to see how far people stretched it. I spoke with David Sandberg, a researcher whose groundbreaking work showed that the overwhelming majority of short kids actually cope pretty well with being small. His studies showed that their height doesn’t cause them deep psychological stress, and in fact he found that other kids did not see them in a demeaning way. … Sandberg was startled to find that his work was being cited to the FDA to support the notion that small kids do have big problems!

THE REAL BLUMENTHAL SCANDAL IS THE MEDIA: “In the wake of revelations by the New York Times that Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal lied about serving in Vietnam, the Beltway media has already gone into its protective crouch,” Michael Walsh writes at Big Journalism.

HERE ARE THE NEW, HORRIBLE OLYMPIC MASCOTS. They’ve always got to be horrible for some reason. They’re named Wenlock and Mandeville, and Mandeville looks like he just wet his pants.

ROUGH RIDE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Michael Young at Reason reviews Lee Smith’s book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. If you want to know what ails the Arab world, Smith is your man and this is your book.

EVEN CRIPPLING OR BITING sanctions would most likely fail to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, but Marty Peretz says what’s on offer right now is feeble and flaccid. “This will only encourage Tehran to be more and more truculent in its nuclear pursuits. This faces the United States and the West with the option of force. Or Israel with the imperative of force.”

MMM, GINGER. And it’s good for you:  “Researchers at the University of Georgia have found that daily ginger consumption reduces muscle pain caused by exercise”  by 25%.

CONGRESS ABOUT TO LIMIT POLITICAL SPEECH OF BLOGGERS? At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey writes:

This isn’t about “good government” or clean elections.  It’s an attempt by Congress to step around the First Amendment and regulate political speech that threatens incumbents, just as McCain-Feingold attempted.

Maybe Apple — having ditched their “Think Different” motto long ago — will be happy to aid Congress’s efforts.

TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS? Sen. Arlen Specter wasn’t the only election-day loser yesterday. President Obama’s  “I love you, Arlen” TV spot failed to turn out Philly voters where Specter really needed a boost. Gov. Ed Rendell’s appeals fell on deaf ears. And Pennsylvania’s AFL and SEIU unions went all out for Specter but lost big-time. The Washington Examiner editorial page says Tuesday’s balloting marked the “twilight of the Establishment.”

THE OTHER IRAQ: It has been a while since I’ve been to Iraqi Kurdistan, but Abe Greenwald is there now and wrote a strong piece for Commentary.

Kitchenware on sale at Amazon.

MORE TERROR ATTACKS SOON?  Stratfor Global Intelligence expects the Taliban to launch “additional attacks … in primarily New York City and Washington, D.C., in the next five- to six-month timeframe.”

NO CABS TO BE HAD OUT THERE:  Males (of another species) deceive females about danger in order to keep them near: 

“Researchers report that when ovulating female antelopes appear ready to leave, male antelopes make alarm cries identical to ones they make when lions are near. The males look in the direction the females appear headed as they make the cries, triggering them to falter and step back.”

ELIE WIESEL DOES NOT WANT TO BE A CHARACTER IN YOUR PLAY, even if you meant to use him as the embodiment of “decency, morality, the struggle for human dignity and kindness.” Now, if you want to use him as the embodiment of not wanting to be turned into an abstraction and fictionalized….

KAGAN FILLS OUT THE QUESTIONNAIRE.

NAVY SEALS FIGHTING TERRORISM isn’t really news. Navy sea lions, though, that’s another story.

IN THE MAIL: Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy is Failing and How to Fix It.

“THE WORD ‘VOLUNTARY’ IS A LITTLE COMPLICATED…” Yeah, maybe it is, but I think it’s complicated on the side of favoring the individual who is resisting government compulsion. Not on the side of the government imposing on an individual who is clearly saying no.

Here’s today’s photo of the day. I snapped it in 2006 at the HR-57 jazz club in Washington, D.C. The band pictured is the Donvonte McCoy Quartet.

Or, I guess, half of them.

BARACK OBAMA ON CHATROULETTE. (Via Metafilter.)