WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE SCIENCE FICTION BOOKS?

DEBACLE: US pledge to rebuild Haiti not being met.

The deadly earthquake that leveled Haiti’s capital more than two years ago brought a thread of hope: a promise of renewal. With the United States taking the lead, international donors pledged billions of dollars to help the country “build back better,” breaking its cycle of dependency.

But after the rubble was cleared and the dead buried, what the quake laid bare was the depth of Haiti’s dysfunction. Today, the fruits of an ambitious, $1.8 billion U.S. reconstruction promise are hard to find. Immediate, basic needs for bottled water, temporary shelter and medicine were the obvious priorities. But projects fundamental to Haiti’s transformation out of poverty, such as permanent housing and electric plants in the heavily hit capital of Port-au-Prince have not taken off.

Critics say the U.S. effort to reconstruct Haiti was flawed from the start.

You’d think that in Haiti, at least, we’d have been able to find some shovel-ready projects. The reader who forwarded this, who has experience in the area, says that it’s a mistake just to write Haiti off as a basket-case because it has a lot of problems. Rather, the problems we’re having in Haiti represent systemic problems with how we do business.

SHRUNKEN VISTAS: Thrifty bride KNITS her own dress and hunts out crockery from charity shops for £5,000 recession wedding. She sounds like a keeper to me. Though I think the Insta-Wife and I actually spent less than that on our wedding, with no knitting.

AN EXPLANATION OF WHY being grateful to the government is not the same as being grateful to God. “I find the hypothetical fascinating not so much on the substance, but for what it says about the world view that would see an equivalence between the two scenarios.”

God created man. But man created government. And government is supposed to serve its creator, though . . . .

THIN AND CURVY is a fashion blog for women who are, well, thin and curvy.

LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Court Dismisses Fraud Lawsuit Against Second Law School: ABA Placement Data Are ‘So Vague and Incomplete as to be Meaningless and Could Not Reasonably be Relied Upon.’ Well, it’s a win — but not much of an endorsement.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: How To Find That Perfect Husband In College.

AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in Kitchen & Dining.

Also, today only: Save up to 44% on Select Energizer Headlamps. If you’ve never used one, a head-mounted light can be surprisingly useful since it leaves your hands free.

IOWAHAWK: You Didn’t Build That: Readings From The Book Of Barack.

HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? US Poverty on Track to Rise to Highest Since 1960s.

That’s not a bug, it’s a feature: They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please. . . .

LAWRENCE SOLOMON: Losing the Anti-Semite Card.

The anti-Semite card that Democrats have played so deftly over the years — the single-biggest reason Jews provide Democrats with more than 50% of their campaign funding — looks phony to many Jews. When Schultz got up to speak in praise of Obama, the normally sedate Jewish audience heckled her, leaving her visibly rattled.

The upset many Jews feel today is mostly directed toward Obama, whom they see as tolerant of anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan, tolerant of anti-Semitic organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and intolerant, even hostile, to Israel. But Democrats on the whole need beware — more than a presidential election is at stake.

When Jews began to perceive Canada’s Liberal Party as being tolerant of anti-Semitism and unfair to Israel — such as through Liberal participation in the UN Durban conference and the accusation that Israel had committed a war crime — the rock-solid support that the Liberals had long enjoyed from Jews evaporated. . . .

Anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli venom is on the rise, and it is coming mostly from the left. Anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses is a “serious problem,” concluded the 2006 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “There is more sympathy for Hamas [on U.S. campuses] than there is in Ramallah,” wrote award-winning Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who found during a 2009 speaking tour of the U.S. that it “is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state.”

Surveys by Jewish organizations confirm that anti-Semitism is on the rise, as does a 2009 survey by researchers at Stanford and Columbia University, designed to find explicit prejudice toward Jews as a result of the financial meltdown. To the researchers’ surprise, they found that “Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32% of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4% of Republicans did so,” a difference that jars “given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition.” Warning that “we must take heed of prejudice and bigotry that have already started to sink roots in the United States,” the authors noted that “Crises often have the potential to stoke fears and resentment, and the current economic collapse is likely no exception.”

Almost as if on cue, the Occupy Wall Street movement arose, with Jews often crudely singled out for blame, and with prominent Democrats, Obama and Pelosi among them, stoking the anti-1% sentiment.

Read the whole thing.

MICHAEL WALSH: A History Of Violence.

NEW YORK POST: The Fort Hood Whitewash.

After a more-than-two-year review, a report released last week accuses the FBI of having dropped the ball when it investigated the Fort Hood jihadist before the 2009 massacre.

So — how many people will be fired?

Exactly . . . none.

That’s right: The agency might have been able to prevent the killing of 13 people by a home-grown Islamic fundamentalist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan — but failed to do so.

And yet, not a single FBI official will lose his or her job.

Responsibility for failure is for the little people.

LONGEVITY UPDATE: A man depicts the often grim atmosphere in assisted living facilities. “What I hadn’t calculated was what it’s like to watch a friend — someone you’ve eaten breakfast with every morning for several years — waste away and die. And just as you’re recovering from that friend’s death, another friend begins to waste away. I can say with certainty that the prospect of watching dozens (at my young age, perhaps hundreds) of my friends and neighbors in assisted living die is a sadness beyond words.”

My photo on the subject:

#NARRATIVEFAIL: Generation X Is Surprisingly Unconcerned About Climate Change.

IT’S NICE TO SEE THE INTERNET taking such interest in a good, wholesome sport.

BUMMER: Stories of an Elvis-Mouse Hybrid turn out to be untrue.

A RICK PERRY ITEM I SOMEHOW MISSED THIS WEEK: Governor Welcomes President Obama to Texas By Demanding An Apology.

NO. BUT IT MIGHT HELP. Can Vitamin D Solve All Your Problems?

REMEMBERING the Aurora shooting victims.

ALEC BALDWIN’S fracking hypocrisy.

AT LEAST THERE WERE NO STYROFOAM COLUMNS. Obama Paid $93k for Half-Empty Stadium Kick-Off Event. “The event was widely considered a dud, and perhaps best remembered for images of the numerous empty seats.”

Oh, well, it could have been worse: Tony Robbins event ends in disaster as 21 people are treated for burns after walking on 2,000-degree hot coals. At the Obama event, there were just snores, instead of “wails of pain and screams of agony.” Yet somehow there seems to be a parallel.

HMM: Report: Police seek second person of interest in Aurora theater shooting; fellow PhD student. If it’s true — and that remains a big “if” — that’s a real break with past mass shootings.

UPDATE: Some paranoid types are questioning the timing. Though post Fast-and-Furious I guess it’s not quite as crazy as it might have been. Which is a hell of a thing.

HAD A LOVELY EVENING IN CHATTANOOGA: LibertyCon is there this weekend, and while I didn’t make the Con, we drove down for the Baen Books party (it’s only about 90 minutes from Knoxville). Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle were there, as were Mike Williamson, Tim Zahn, Sarah Hoyt, John Ringo (pictured below with Helen), Les Johnson, and a host of others.

Plus, I was presented with a lovely certificate in recognition of my support for the Baen’s Bar crowd’s work to support the troops. But, really, it was the InstaPundit readers who chipped in who provided the real support. A good time was had by all. Now we’re home again. Maybe next year I’ll actually attend the Con!