How do you create a $2 million internet media company? You start with $25 million, and give it to Arianna Huffington…

Max Boot on Israel’s tragic dilemma:

It can’t ignore Hamas’s attacks, not only because of the damage they inflict, but also because of the terrible precedent they set. Israel has always been a state that is one battle away from destruction, and it cannot allow its enemies to think that it can be attacked with impunity. But at the same time Israel cannot do what it takes to wipe out the enemy, because of the constraints imposed by its own public, which is far less willing than in the past to suffer or inflict bloodletting.

So the Jewish state is forced to fight an unsatisfying war of attrition with Hamas, Hezbollah and other entities bent on its destruction. The current incursions are only one stage of this lengthy struggle. The odds are that once Israeli troops leave, Hamas will rebuild its infrastructure, forcing the Israelis to go back in the future.

Of course, I covered all this years ago and concluded, “The only process towards peace is the kind of war one side can’t commit, and the other side won’t.”

Global warming makes ice!

Now that’s brazen:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to re-write House rules today to ensure that the Republican minority is unable to have any influence on legislation. Pelosi’s proposals are so draconian, and will so polarize the Capitol, that any thought President-elect Obama has of bipartisan cooperation will be rendered impossible before he even takes office.

Pelosi’s rule changes — which may be voted on today — will reverse the fairness rules that were written around Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — when it comes to exercising real power, conservatives and libertarians are pikers.

Rather, war comes to Twitter.

The cause of the Steve Jobs weight-loss mystery has been revealed, sort of:

Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause - a hormone imbalance that has been “robbing” me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.

The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment. But, just like I didn’t lose this much weight and body mass in a week or a month, my doctors expect it will take me until late this Spring to regain it. I will continue as Apple’s CEO during my recovery.

Seeing pictures of Jobs last year reminded me of my hyperthyroid problems from a couple years ago. Except that my condition is an easy one to treat, and the weight came back on immediately — 2.5 pounds a week, on average, for a dozen weeks or more. Also, Jobs seemed sane, which doesn’t mesh with a hyperthyroid, either.

So what’s this “imbalance?” Not a clue.

600,000 new government jobs? And that’s just the Chicago Post Office.

Conservative bloggers vote on the 20 most annoying liberals of 2008.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, and a thousand times… NO!

Can we really get two armies for the price of one? It’s being tried:

What the army is seeking to confirm is the usefulness of combat experience, which so many troops now have, to enabling them to quickly relearn the skills needed for conventional war. In practice, much of what a soldier does in conventional, or irregular, warfare, is the same. Shooting accurately, carefully planning raids or patrols, attention to detail and discipline are all used in both forms of combat. There are different tactics, but these are learned more quickly by troops who have been in combat. Being a combat veteran makes a big difference, and the coming series of conventional war exercises at the training centers will measure how much.

The army also wants to measure how quickly the commanders can switch from conventional, or irregular warfare, and back again.

If this works, instead of the “hollowed-out” Army so many (uninformed) people are screaming about, we’ll have the most lethal, experienced, and adaptable force in history.

TTAC presents the Automotive Darwin Awards.

The recounts is over, Al Franken is up by 225 — but Minnesota still doesn’t have a Senator-elect:

At least two things, however, still stand in the way of Franken becoming Minnesota’s newest U.S. senator: the possibility of a ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court that more wrongly rejected absentee ballots should be counted, and a legal contest that Coleman attorneys all but promised should Franken prevail.

Can’t they just agree to flip a coin and get it over with?

Three new Prince albums this year? So long as they aren’t all as lame as Planet Earth (best described as “Prince descends into Adult Contemporary”), then I’m as excited as Darling Nikki.

Well, maybe not that excited.

Did you know Michele was taking requests? Anyway, guess what album I asked for: This is the album Frankie and Annette would play, if their beach was on Planet Claire.

(Via Insty) Two trillion in new debt. Trillion with a T and that rhymes with P and that stands for piss-poor planning.

Yes, there’s a question of who is going to soak up that much new debt — “money” created by Congress out of thin air. Assuming that other people with actual already-created money want to exchange it for our new stuff with the ink still wet.

There’s another question, however. Folks somewhere will buy up our debt, if we price it right. And that will drive up interest rates during a credit crunch. Worse yet, it will crowd investment dollars out of the private economy, reducing our future productivity, current employment, and prolong the recession. So the other question is: What the hell are we thinking?

Mark Steyn:

When President Ahmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map, we deplore him as a genocidal fantasist. But maybe he’s a genocidal realist, and we’re the fantasists.

The civilizational clashes of professor Huntington’s book are not inevitable. Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something the West no longer has the stomach for. Unfortunately, the Saudis do, and so do the Iranians. And not just in Gaza but elsewhere the trend is away from “moderation” and toward something fiercer and ever more implacable.

Read the rest here.

A washing machine hacked to send you a Tweet when your load is done.

When I was a kid and tried to imagine the future, I never once came up with the phrase “washing machine hacked.” Still, nifty little hack there.

Israeli troops, tanks, and helicopters move into Gaza.

Some good seems to have come out of the credit collapse:

The crisis revealed the clay feet of the Putin/Medvedev regime, not only showing the extent to which its relative prosperity was tied to high oil prices but also exposing the fakery of its feel-good propaganda machine. While state-controlled television news avoided the word “crisis” - except with regard to the West - Russian citizens rushed to convert rubles to dollars.

Polls by the Public Opinion Fund found a sharp drop in confidence in the mainstream media. By late December, close to half of Russians said that media reports on the economy were biased and minimized economic problems; 30 percent (up from 23 percent in November) said that “journalists know the real state of the economy but are not allowed to tell the truth.”

Trust in Putin and Medvedev may suffer as well. Bizarrely, over 80 percent of those polled recently still approved of Putin’s performance as prime minister - though only 43 percent thought Russia was headed in the right direction.

I’d trust modern Russian polls about as much as I used to trust polls out of the old Soviet Union. Does anyone believe that Putin really enjoys 80% support?

Wow, the new Senate is a mess:

In Colorado, Gov. Bill Ritter (D) is expected to announce today that Michael F. Bennet, the superintendent of Denver’s public schools, will succeed Sen. Ken Salazar (D) once Salazar is confirmed as interior secretary this month. In New York, Gov. David A. Paterson attempted to knock down reports that he has decided on Caroline Kennedy as his appointee to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) after she is confirmed as secretary of state, even as key state party officials continued to push for Kennedy’s appointment.

In Illinois, Roland W. Burris, the selection of embattled Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) to succeed President-elect Barack Obama in the Senate, filed another legal motion yesterday to try to force state officials to recognize his appointment, which would allow him to take his fight to the Capitol in time for Tuesday’s start of the 111th Congress.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, declared that under no circumstances would they agree to seat Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota, who is clinging to a 49-vote lead in the recount of his race against Sen. Norm Coleman, if Coleman files a legal challenge.

Please take note that only Colorado is enjoying an orderly succession. The other three states get a heartfelt “neener.”