Dean Barnett died today, at the too-young age of 41. He died of complications from cystic fibrosis, a disease he’d been fighting his entire life. The world is a poorer place without him.

But the thing about CF is that they’re getting closer and closer to a cure, and that’s important to me. Because there’s a young man in my life that will benefit from that cure. If you’ve been reading this blog for any of the last six years, you’ve met that young man. His name is Max.

So reading about Dean’s death saddens me greatly—but it makes me that much more hopeful that by the time Max is 41, we will have found a cure for CF.

I’m asking my readers to donate, not just for Dean, but for Max, and for the 30,000 Americans who have it. And that’s one of the problems: Because CF is so uncommon, it’s not heavily funded, and it’s not heavily publicized. There’s no Jerry Lewis telethon raising millions of dollars every year for CF.

We can’t raise millions. But we can raise thousands. Please give a little bit today. I’m a very selfish person. I want keep Max around for a long, long time.

Looks like the falling price of oil is getting better and better results.

The same tumbling oil prices that led OPEC to slash output last week threaten to send Venezuela’s economy into a tailspin, and put an end to President Hugo Chavez’s ambitions to expand his socialist revolution at home and abroad.

To cope with plummeting oil revenue, the source of half the government’s spending, Chavez may have to cut domestic handouts and foreign aid. The first items likely to go will be arms purchases from Russia, oil subsidies for Cuba, and job-creating local projects such as bridges and subways, economists say.

“You have a country with an oil boom, that doesn’t know how to save, doesn’t know how to set up productive industries that generate jobs, and goes into debt,” said Elsa Cardozo, a professor of political science and international relations at the Universidad Central de Venezuela. “Then oil prices fall and the party ends.”

Venezuela may be poised to repeat the economic collapse it suffered in the 1980s at the end of its last oil boom. Former President Carlos Andres Perez, employing policies similar to Chavez’s, lavished petrodollars on public works projects, foreign aid and nationalizations in the late 1970s, setting the stage for a 1983 currency devaluation and spending cuts that sent millions of Venezuelans into poverty.

Not the poverty of Venezuelans part. I feel bad for the ordinary schlub who bought into Hugo’s twaddle. But I won’t be sorry to see the bastard go. Him, and his newfound Iranian and Hezbollah buddies. Buh-bye, billions in anti-Israel aid! Buh-bye, state-sanctioned raids on Jewish centers!

Update: Ended the day below $62 a barrel. Good times!

Israel will be weaning the Palestinians off the Israeli power grid.

A Jordanian official said Monday that the Palestinian Authority will join a regional power grid that so far links Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya and Turkey.

Israel is not hooked up to this grid.

Jordanian Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Khaldoun Qteishat said during a meeting Monday of electricity and energy ministers in the network members that the Palestinian accession will help the territories face challenges of providing safety and security to its power supply.

What will the UN protest about when the Palestinians have all the tools of self-sufficiency, yet still wallow in the mire of despotism and poverty?

Who are you going to trust? The AP bias or your lying eyes?

Get a load of this jaw-dropping bias in the lead:

Families in this village near the Iraqi border buried loved ones Monday who they said were killed when the U.S. military launched a rare attack in Syrian territory. During the funerals, angry residents shouted anti-American slogans and carried banners reading: “Down with Bush and the American enemy.”

The Syrian government said four U.S. military helicopters attacked a civilian building under construction shortly before sundown Sunday in Sukkariyeh about five miles inside the Syrian border.

The government statement said eight people were killed, including a man and his four children and a woman. However, local officials said seven men were killed and two other people were wounded, including a woman among the injured.

An Associated Press journalist at the funerals in the village’s cemetery saw the bodies of seven men - none of them minors. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained.

They receive a report on the scene that utterly contradicts the lies of the Syrian government, and yet, they still publish those lies in the lead—before pointing out the “discrepancy” of the fact that only adult males were being buried. You know, the kind of people that generally go to Iraq to perform terrorist acts.

And once again, let me point out that most local newspapers publish only the first three to five paragraphs of AP world news articles. The truth is in the fourth paragraph.

The Associated Press: All the lies they see fit to print.

The New York Times reports on yesterday’s raid into Syria and concludes:

The United States is trying to negotiate a strategic agreement with Iraq that would allow American troops to remain in the country and carry out military operations. The pact faces strenuous opposition from neighboring countries, especially Syria and Iran, because of fears that the United States might use Iraqi territory to carry out attacks on them.

The United States has no diplomatic relations with Iran and has withdrawn its ambassador to Syria.

It is kind of odd to make the focus of the article the fears of Syria and Iran. Part of the problem is that the Times’s report seems to have been early and they haven’t updated it.

The Washington Post provides more information and context:

U.S. attacks inside Syria are extremely rare, though the U.S. military has stepped up security along Iraq’s border with Syria in recent months to stem the traffic of fighters and weapons into Iraq. U.S. officials say many insurgents, particularly suicide bombers, arrive in Iraq via the Syrian border.

The two most obvious questions are what was U.S. military doing and why now?

(more via memeorandum)
Bill Roggio gives some background and speculates what the United States may have been after.

If the raid occurred, the US military must have detected a senior member of al Qaeda in Iraq in the region. Abu Ayyub al Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is reported to have left the country earlier this year after the terror group lost its sanctuaries in Diyala province.

The US military may be closing in on al Qaeda’s senior leadership. US forces killed Abu Qaswarah, al Qaeda in Iraq’s second in command, during a raid in Mosul in northern Iraq on Oct. 15. The military has also killed and captured numerous al Qaeda leader and couriers over the past several weeks. The information obtained during these raids help to paint a picture of al Qaeda’s command structure inside of of Iraq as well as in neighboring countries.

Amos Harel of Ha’aretz makes an interesting observation:

The common denominator to all these operations is that nobody takes the Syrians seriously anymore, given the repeated violations of their sovereignty. It is doubtful the domestic security situation there has ever been this unstable.

Then he adds:

The lack of stability in Syria adds to the already-tense situation between Israel and Lebanon. Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said Sunday that weapons-smuggling from Syria to Hezbollah is continuing across the country.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel is prepared to attack weapons convoys, on a background of Hezbollah efforts to equip itself with anti-aircraft missiles.

Is it possible that the American raid is a signal to Israel then?

After observing that the raid took place 5 years too late, Noah Pollak frames it in the context of the Presidential election:

What’s important right now is that both candidates go on record about the raid. Should there be repeat performances — as many as needed to impress Bashar that his days of meddling with impunity are over? Should Iran be targeted for similar strikes? Do you, Mr. Obama, view this news as an unacceptable expansion of the war that will never be countenanced in your administration, or do you believe it a vital component of a winning strategy in Iraq?

Joshua Landis writes:

The Bush administration seems to be ratcheting up action against Syria during its last days in power. The cross border raid undertaken on Sunday, which killed eight people, seems to fit into a broader pattern of the Bush administration initiating cross boarder attacks into countries that it is not officially at war with. The recent attacks in Northwest Pakistan are a case in point.

The Bush warmonger meme, which we will now doubt see quite a bit in the MSM in the coming days. The idea, as Bill Roggio wrote that there was likely as specific target, will get little attention.

Mere Rhetoric, Meryl and LGF have previously blogged this.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad