Depends on whose ox is being gored, etc.

So, consumers are now gouging the oil companies, do I have that right?

And speculators are artificially driving prices down, correct?

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Random factoid: Last month was the 70th warmest October in the 114 years for which we have records.

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Of the 425 Guantanamo prisoners released, 50 have been re-captured trying to kill Americans again. And I have to doubt that we’ve captured 100% of the repeat war criminals.

Yeah, closing Guantanamo sounds like a terrific idea…

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Signs of sanity across the pond:

“Italy and Germany agree that measures to cut greenhouse gases shouldn’t weigh on the economy, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a press conference Tuesday, indicating government support for tough new measures in Europe is waning.”

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Unfortunately, signs of insanity at home:

“The Governor of California has just said that the US is the greatest polluter in the world, which is manifestly untrue on any level.”

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NR offers a counter cliché on bailing out the UAW:

"We’ve heard of too big to fail. Isn’t there such a thing as too failed to bail?"

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From a must-read account of a conversation between Jay Nordlinger and the heroic Chinese dissident Jian-li Yang:

We turn back to China and the Olympics: “A park was set aside for protest,” says Jian-li — was set aside at least in theory. “But not a single application for a protest or demonstration was approved.” In addition to which, there were not as many potential protesters around as there might have been: because “everyone had been arrested before the Olympics.”

The world’s journalists letting the Olympics pass by without shining a bright light on the human rights hell that is China – shameful.

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Our conflict with Iran is becoming more intense, and looks like it will be the biggest challenge facing the Obama administration. By that I mean real, existential challenge, not a transient issue like a slowing economy.

Which is what makes French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s take so unsettling. Sarkozy calls Obama’s stance on Iran “utterly immature” and characterizes it as “formulations empty of all content.”

Sarkozy also fears that Obama will undermine the united European resistance by “arrogantly” ignoring the UN Security Council and opening direct talks with Iran with no preconditions.

Let us hope that Sarkozy underestimates the president-elect, our future depends on it.

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Did Al Qaeda number two Ayman Zawahiri really call Obama a "house Negro" in an audio tape released Tuesday? I though that was a slur used exclusively by American racists to refer to blacks who did not think the way they are damned well told to think, who choose to stray away from the ideological plantation.

How odd to hear it coming from an Arab.