Two years ago, in Afghan Poppies: What The Bush White House Should Really Be Afraid Of, I told you about CIA collusion and incompetence regarding opium production in Afghanistan.

That was in 2003. Since then, Afghanistan’s poppy crop has exploded. According to Robert Charles, in his capacity as chief counternarcotics official at the State Department, the poppy crop went from 152,000 acres in 2003 to 515,000 acres in 2004 - producing $7 billion in opium and heroin money.

This money is financing Al Qaeda, Abu Musab al Zarqawi in Iraq, and international Moslem terrorism - yet the CIA is too impossibly incompetent to stop it, and the Pentagon simply refuses to.

Many in the American Jewish community are aghast to discover that President Obama is planning to appoint former Senator Chuck Hagel to serve as Defense Secretary. If you want the skinny on how Hagel has come to be known as one of the few ferociously anti-Israel senators in the past generation, Carl from Jerusalem at Israel Matzav provides it.

Meantime, all I can say is I don't understand how anyone can possibly be surprised. Shortly after word came out that Hagel is the frontrunner for the nomination, I read a quaint little blog post written by a conservative leaning commentator voicing her belief that Obama wouldn't want to risk his relations with Israel's supporters by appointing Hagel.

But as Powerline pointed out yesterday (12/17), this is the entire point of the nomination.

Obama wants to hurt Israel. He does not like Israel. He is appointing anti-Israel advisors and cabinet members not despite their anti-Israel positions, but because of them.

Imagine what life would be like if you did not have a bank account and a credit or debit card. It would be much harder to pay your bills, take trips on airlines (which normally require a credit or debit card), and receive payments, just to start.

The shocking thing is that more than one-quarter of all American households are unbanked or underbanked and that this number is rising, not falling, largely because of ill-thought-out financial regulation and policies.

The term "unbanked" refers to people who have neither checking nor savings accounts. "Underbanked" refers to people who have either a checking or savings account but rely on alternative services such as non-bank money orders and check cashing, payday loans, pawn shops, refund anticipation loans, etc., at least once a year. These alternative sources usually are much more costly than banking services.

Banking services to lower-income people have become increasingly expensive directly because of unthinking government regulators.

OK, now that I’ve gotten the outrageousness of the Miers nomination off my chest, let me tell you a story about a wonderful guy named Howard Papush. In 1980, Howard had one of the all-time coolest jobs in Hollywood. As the “talent coordinator” for the Tonight Show, Howard was a primary gatekeeper deciding who got to be a guest and sit in that chair talking to Johnny Carson on national television.

Let me tell you how Howard reminds me of Harriet Miers.

Watching the nightmare in Syria unfold, you have to ask yourself: Could the Obama administration have made a worse hash out of the situation if it had tried?

Short of an outright Iranian victory that saw the Assad regime's power fully restored, it's hard to imagine a more dire set of circumstances for U.S. interests. The Syrian state is well on its way to imploding. A multiplicity of increasingly well-armed militias are rushing to fill the vacuum. At the forefront of the fight are a growing number of radical Islamist groups, including some affiliated with al Qaeda.

The prospect that Assad' s demise will be accompanied by the use (and/or proliferation) of chemical weapons and massive communal bloodletting gets higher by the day. Libya on steroids is what we're looking at, only this time not on the distant periphery of the Middle East but in its heartland, a gaping strategic wound that is likely to threaten the stability and wellbeing of Syria's five neighbors -- critical American partners all -- for years to come.

Does it require saying that it need not have been this way? Evidently yes.

Istanbul, Turkey. How free is Turkey? Turkey is almost entirely Muslim but lacks most of the repressive characteristics of many of the Arab Muslim countries.

It has a largely free market with a high rate of economic growth. But it ranks in the middle among other countries in terms of economic freedom and per capita income. It also has less religious freedom and freedom of speech than is common in most of Europe and the United States and, thus, less liberty.

The Mont Pelerin Society, most of whose members are economists and other scholars who were inspired by the great economist and philosopher F.A. Hayek, is holding a meeting here in Istanbul to discuss the nation, the state and liberty. The discussants are drawn from many countries and cultures, resulting in a very stimulating debate, some of which is summarized here, along with my own observations and thoughts.

It was certainly no coincidence that on the 4th anniversary of 9/11 last Sunday, front page headlines appeared in the nation’s newspapers entitled Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan .

It was a public shot across the Jihadi Terrorists’ bow, meant to make them and folks in Mecca nervous. You know why, since you read Mad in Mecca in To The Point back in October, 2004, and George Bush and the Sword of Damocles: Why There Hasn’t Been Another 9/11 last January.

It’s the clearest sign yet that Mecca is being held as a nuclear hostage.

The collapse has begun. Nihilism thrives in Europe.

A new book written by Alejandro Macarrón Larumbe, El Suicidio Demográfico de España" (The Demographic Suicide of Spain - although in Spanish, here is a Power Point summary in English) delivers a death sentence for Europe.

The German giant is also ditching.  The weekly Der Spiegel has a long article titled "A Land without Children."  The European Union, which offers its citizens every comfort, with first-rate health care, long holidays and sit-down lunches, protected jobs and generous welfare, has the world's lowest fertility rate (1.47 children per woman) and the highest percentage of a population that is over 65 years old (16.4 per cent of the population in the EU).

Meanwhile, nearly one in three pregnancies in Europe is terminated by abortion, according to the Gutmacher Institute in the US, and all over Europe gay marriage is advancing (France and UK will soon approve it). The model is Spain, where you have no more "father" and "mother", but Parent (progenitor) A, and Parent (progenitor) B.

In the Netherlands, you can order a mobile euthanasia van to your house. It's the first experiment in the world of door-to-door euthanasia and the insurance covers the cost of the operation.

The two most intriguing words of the week:  "I'm game."  It's was Sarah Palin's answer to Eric Bolling on Fox's Follow The Money show on Wednesday (2/15). 

She agreed with Bolling that we could end up with a brokered GOP convention, and that while she respected "all four" remaining candidates in the race (Romney, Santorum, Gingrich & Paul), "all bets are off" if it comes to that.  "If it does," asked Bolling, "then, Governor, would you be interested?"

Sarah's answer:  "I would be willing to help any way that I can."  And: "If that means running for office at some point in the future, I'm game."

No wonder everyone wants a brokered convention.  As Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, founders of Tea Party Patriots, told Neil Cavuto on Fox News on Wednesday (2/15), "Nobody is satisfied with the (four) candidates out there. They're all losers."

Jenny and Mark could have done a mea culpa at this point, for after going ga-ga over Herman Cain, they pouted in a corner when he cratered.  If Tea Party Patriots had gone all-up/all-in for Rick Perry, we wouldn't be in this loser-mess now.

But we are.  So, what would it take for an "all bets are off" convention?  The short answer is...

Many on the political left are quick to recognize that tax rates affect behavior when applied to behaviors they do not like, such as smoking. They want to have high taxes on certain foods, such as candy, drinks containing sugar, and transfats, to discourage their use.

But when it comes to labor and capital, those on the left often argue that those taxes have little effect on the willingness of people to work or invest in productive enterprises, despite both the empirical evidence and good economic theory.

President Obama, you assert that it is fair for the rich to pay more, but you never define ‘fairness' or how you derived this undefined concept. Why?

I have asked the White House to provide the answer but have received no response. We know from previous experience and from good dynamic economic studies that higher capital gains taxes will result in fewer new jobs and even less tax revenue. How is that fair, Mr. President?