Or else, we'll write you a letter telling you how angry we are!

US Promises 'Measured, Unified' Response to North Korean Attack:

Obama administration intends to move carefully and deliberately in the face of what the White House calls "belligerent action."

… "North Korea's behavior has been very, very bad; provocative and belligerent. And, again, we're not going to buy into that cycle of rewarding that kind of behavior. We're in a spot now where we just feel that by working through the six-party process, by working with our partners, we're going to take a deliberate, slow approach to responding to this latest provocation," said Toner.

As usual, Team America continues to offer foreign policy insights to Mr. President and his crew (NSFW).

In fact, I can think of a highly effective way to deliver a letter to Kim.

How about removing the warhead from a cruise missile, and replacing it with the letter and a video of Saddam being pulled out of the hole in the ground and his subsequent execution (do they have DVD players in North Korea?), along with some chocolate bars and pantyhose, and programming it to land right smack in the middle of his people's palace or whereever he lives.

Mr. President and his crew have to come to terms with the fact that chickens invite confrontation. The final speech from Team America should be mandatory viewing to everyone in the cabinet (extra NSFW):

We can only hope that Carville was right and there is someone in the cabinet with the requisite endowment to stop Kim.

Does the TSA have a policy of giving special exemptions to Muslim women wearing the hijab?

In my blog post For most, first nude photo shoot will be at the airport on October 29, 2010, I pondered:

… the current administration and their supporters seem to have an unhealthy aversion to possibly offending Muslims (see, for example, the culling of Juan Williams). I can imagine a devout, covered Muslim woman (and her husband) having serious issues with a nudie scanner as well as the rub-down procedures authorities are talking about.

Now, there is an editorial in the Washington Times speculating that covered Muslim women might be subject to a different standard:

Last week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a "travel advisory" noting that women who are patted down "should remind the TSA officer that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They SHOULD NOT subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down." It's unclear why CAIR believes TSA frisking must be Shariah-compliant. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano refused to deny that such exemptions existed when CNS News asked her about them on Monday, saying instead that "adjustments will be made where they need to be made" and that "there will be more to come" on this issue.

Update: In fact, CAIR also issued a press release today (November 24), that states:

If you wear the Islamic head scarf and you are selected for secondary screening, ask the TSA officer if the reason you are being selected for secondary is because of your head scarf. If the officer confirms you were referred to secondary because of your head scarf, before you are patted down, you should remind the TSA officer, who should be of the same gender, that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They should not subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down. You can always request to pat down your own scarf, including head and neck area, and have the officer perform a residue swab of your hands.

emphasis mine

Here is the thing: Covered women have perpetrated attacks on innocents by using their garments to hide explosives.

A policy of not examining what is underneath a full body cover tells the terrorists here is your opening, come on in.

Interestingly, such a policy would be discriminating against Muslim women who do not wear such clothes in favor of Muslim women dressed in a burka.

Certain Muslims will claim not being hijab-compliant means the woman is not a Muslim. Too bad they have no authority deciding who can be a Muslim. They, and their typical liberals, have conveniently forgotten that there is one and only one condition to being a Muslim and that is not a license from CAIR.

Is there a legitimate privacy vs security trade-off involved in TSA's nudie scans and crotch grabbing procedures?

I am a little bewildered when the same people who claimed the NSA had no legitimate business tracking phone calls from numbers associated with terrorists into the U.S. claim that we must all submit to either nudie scans or invasive searches at the airport.

We are told we must accept them in return for the assurance that a terrorist with a bomb will not be on our flights.

First, the terror threat is real, regardless of the extent to which liberals downplayed it during the Bush years. We have seen time and again that Muslim terrorists are willing to use children and women as bomb carriers. Therefore, civilized societies cannot easily start from the assumption that a given airline passenger is not a terrorist. We must assume, at all times, that there is someone planning mass murder and be vigilant. We must be able to report suspicious behavior without fearing that we will be the target of a lawsuit.

However, TSA's current procedures do not promote increased vigilance and are self-defeating. In fact, they appear to be CYA policies for bureaucrats to be able to claim that they did everything they could in the event that a terrorist does succeed.

There is a legitimate health & safety concern in subjecting millions of people to radiation exposure. Yes, theoretically, with perfect calibration, the machines might subject passengers to very low doses of radiation. But these machines are calibrated and operated by humans. And, humans are known to make mistakes from time to time.

Therefore, I would not have a problem with someone who does not want to go through the machine. After all, I doubt that the TSA officers will be handing out specific information on the exact amount and duration of radiation each passenger is subjected to. Do they even measure it? How often are these machines tested and recalibrated? Are they maintained by the same people who build software for voting machines?

That leaves us with the option of an intimate encounter with a TSA officer.

I doubt most people will be perfectly calm as their crotch areas are touched by a perfect stranger. So, there goes your most valuable aid in spotting suspicious characters out the window. Most people in the security line will be apprehensive because of either how they feel about the machines (am I going to be subjected to excess radiation? or will the person looking at my body laugh at me) or about the impending intimate moment with a stranger.

There is a practical solution to this that would actually enhance security.

Airlines must share responsibility in passenger screening because they have a profit maximizing incentive in not allowing terrorists on their flights.

Similarly, airports must also share responsibility. For they do not want to be known as the terrorists' go-to airport.

However, for such a scheme to work, airports and airport personnel and airlines and airline personnel must have immunity from civil rights lawsuits based from people who are offended by receiving special attention.

I do not know what the optimal security screening procedures are, but it is intuitive that they do not involve treating everyone the same way. They must incorporate sufficient randomness so as to prevent terrorists from knowing what kind of attackers they must recruit. They must give the people responsible for security sufficient leeway in determining who will be subject to extra scrutiny and the extent of such extra scrutiny within broad parameters. They must not put screeners in a position where they are just longing for their shifts to end while offloading all responsibility to a machine. That is a recipe for disaster.

After all, according to published reports, TSA's nudie scanners cannot see what is under the skin. As grotesque and disgusting as it sounds, it does not take much imagination to think of ways terrorists can exploit that. Overwhelming the security screeners with uncomfortable tasks does detract from being able to spot suspicious behavior.

Palin Derangement Syndrome: Man Shoots TV Over Palin Dance

From The Hollywood Reporter:

A Dane County Sheriff's detective said Steven Cowan felt Palin was not a good dancer and was only on the show because of her famous mother.

Then Cowan shot his TV before turning the gun on his wife, who ran out and escaped.

I don't know if my life would be enhanced if I could understand how a man can take a dance contest so seriously as to shoot his own TV set.

Does China own the United States?

These days, it is a way too often repeated complaint that China owns the U.S. This is presumably because the Chinese hold a lot of treasuries.

If you want detailed numbers, you can take a look at China’s Holdings of U.S. Securities: Implications for the U.S. Economy by the Congressional Research Service.

Looking at the numbers, in June 2009, China held about $2 trillion in reserves (so, the Chinese would be hurt by a depreciation of U.S. currency). In 2008, they held about $1.2 trillion in U.S. securities. About 67% of that amount was in long term U.S. government debt.

To me, it looks more like the interests of the two countries are aligned. The Chinese need a strong U.S. economy to avoid losing a boat load of money on their investments.

Think of it this way: If you lend your pall half your retirement savings, would you do anything to hurt his ability to pay you back?

Now, the Chinese (just like everyone else in the world) are trying to hedge against the U.S. government continuing the current idiotic tendency toward transforming most of the U.S. economy in to a command & control style economy (an inevitable outcome of government agencies' meddling in health care pricing and energy pricing — two huge sectors of the economy).

And, yes, I do believe even the Chinese Communist Party understand that trying to foreclose on the U.S. government would be extremely costly.

So, the only option they have is pray that Mr. President Carter the Second will be forced to come to his senses.

The mandate for Republicans

The only reason for the GOP's historic victory in yesterday's elections is the strong reaction to the Democrats' plans.

Even the GOP candidates that failed to get elected in states like California, Delaware, and Nevada helped to emphasize the difference in philosophy.

These fresh voices helped differentiate all GOP candidates in 2010 not only from the Democrat candidates in 2010 but the GOP dominated congress of 2006.

Clearly, the electorate do not want the new GOP to behave like the GOP of 2006–2008. They also do not want them to try to smooth the edges around Democrat initiatives.

To use Mr. President's analogy, the voters believe that the car is headed toward a cliff.

The car needs to shift into reverse. It does not need a new coat of wax and and tire-shine to be provided by the Republicans.

The only mandate the Republicans have is to stop or slow down the car as much as possible until the next election.

In that process, they should not expect Mr. President to "moderate" or "move to the center" or "triangulate" like President Clinton did.

These are different men.

Mr. President and his crew are likely to double down on everything they have been pushing and then blame the "obstructionist" Republicans for everything that does not improve between now and the next election.

I am hoping (foolishly, perhaps) that the Republicans will do a good job of explaining over and over again why it is necessary to reverse course while stopping as much of the Democrat agenda as possible.

Governments, federal, state, and local, have become too big and too intrusive.

They must go on a diet.

What next? A reality show featuring witness protection program participants?

Christian Science Monitor has a story titled Who saved the day in Yemen bomb plot? Once again, a Muslim.

Faifi returned home to Saudi Arabia a few weeks ago and turned himself in, soon telling Saudi interrogators that AQAP was planning to use international air freight to ship bombs to the US.

This is a weird article.

On the surface, its purpose seems to be to point out the obvious fact that good human intelligence in the fight against Muslim terrorists will come from Muslims who do not support terrorists.

Apparently, the tip leading to the detection of UPS packages loaded with bombs came from a former Guantanamo detainee who had gone to Yemen to join al'Qaida and then defected to inform Saudi authorities of the plan.

So far, so good.

The incongruity arises from the fact that the CSM publishes both the name and a photo of the informant.

This is where the whole thing breaks down.

Publishing the identity of this man surely would lead his former comrades to want to harm him and his family to make an example.

Unless, he did not really defect. The only way he would not be a target is if the plot was meant to be uncovered so as to provide the planners with information regarding the capabilities of the anti-terror agencies of all countries involved or to distract said agencies from other avenues of attack that might be in the pipeline. Or, if he had been directed by leadership to provide this information to the authorities, was the purpose to see if, when, and how the anti-terror appartus would react?

Publicizing this man's actions and providing his identity alongside is the same as publishing the names and photos of all mob informants.

What kind of effect would this have on possible future informants?

Inform on the al-Qaida and prevent an attack, and your identity will be made public. Your photo will be plastered all over the web.

Is that any way to encourage Muslims who might be within arm's length of al-Qaida's tentacles to inform on the activities of vicious, blood-thirsty terrorists?

The only thing that makes sense to me is the possibility that Mr. Faifi is not the source of the information and he is being offered as a scapegoat to protect the real source.