If you’re like The Stiletto, you’ve read more than a few articles bemoaning the fact that Americans save too little – unlike the thrifty Japanese, for instance - imperiling prosperity, not just on personal scale, but globally as well. It turns out that saving money – at least, not spending it as fast as it’s coming in – might actually be bad for our economy. The New York Times reports:

[T]he Commerce Department reported that the economy continued to stagnate during the first three months of the year, with a sharp pullback in consumer spending the primary factor at play. …

With the overall economy growing at a mere 0.6 percent annual rate for the second quarter in a row, consumer spending advanced by only 1 percent, the government estimated. That was down sharply from the 2.9 percent gain for all of 2007 and the 3.1 percent gain for 2006. …

Even more ominously, Americans cut back on a wide variety of discretionary purchases, conserving their cash for necessary spending. …

As real estate prices plunge, so does the ability of homeowners to borrow against the value of their homes, crimping a major artery of spending. As banks grow tighter with their dollars in a period of uncertainty, families are running up against credit limits, forcing many to live within their incomes. …

Consumer spending fell for a broad range of goods and services, including cars, auto parts, furniture, food and recreation, reflecting a growing inclination toward thrift. Areas in which spending rose were predominantly those not considered optional purchases, including health care, housing and utilities.

But that’s where that tax rebate from the federal government comes in, right? The Boston Globe’s Scot Lehigh writes:

Tax rebates from Uncle Sam started arriving this week, and I say it's about damn time.

Now it's everyone's patriotic duty to go buy some new stuff to get our economy going again.

But for my money, this shouldn't happen just when the economy gets soft. It's the kind of thing we should expect every year. Who couldn't use an extra $600, particularly if it comes at no cost?

Not to us, anyway. As I understand it, we're borrowing the billions for the rebates from the Chinese, and we'll use a lot of it to buy their goods. So this is really a win for both sides. …

Yes, China and our other creditors may want to be paid back someday, but that's a burden the next generation is going to shoulder for us.

In an op-ed published by The Washington Post, Andrew Carroll, founder of the Legacy Project, which preserves wartime letters of America’s veterans and active duty personnel, notes that “[s]avvy retailers have been promoting special ‘tax rebate’ sales, car discounts, summer trips … hoping to capitalize on the billions the U.S. Treasury is sending out” to more than 100 million of your fellow citizens. Instead of spending it – and getting in hock even deeper with the Chinese – he suggests that we “[d]onate it to charitable organizations supporting our troops and their families.” His pitch:

Let's remind our troops and their families, through a surge in giving, that we have not forgotten their sacrifice. If even a tiny percentage of Americans make donations, millions of dollars could be raised. Bumper stickers and lapel pins are not enough. We cannot merely tell these extraordinary men and women how much we owe them for their service. It is time to show them.

Here’s another worthy cause to which you might consider donating part or all of your rebate check – and one that The Stiletto personally finds appealing: Naturalizer is partnering with Dress for Success on a campaign to provide dress shoes to low-income women who are going on job interviews. If you visit a Naturalizer store from May 3^rd to May 11^th and drop off a “gently worn” pair of career shoes, the company will also donate a new pair on your behalf. Plus, you get a coupon that knocks 20 percent off new shoes or a handbag for yourself. So you can spend your rebate check on new shoes and help another woman get a leg up in the working world. Sounds like a win-win to The Stiletto.  

Why We Need Gitmo

The Washington Post reports that eight years after the attack on the USS Cole, which killed 17 sailors, not only Yemen has failed to bring the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible to justice, they’ve actually been secretly freeing them from imprisonment:

Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he's still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections. …

Since then, Yemen has refused to extradite Badawi and an accomplice to the United States, where they have been indicted on murder charges. Other Cole conspirators have been freed after short prison terms. At least two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq. …

U.S. officials withheld $20 million in aid to Yemen and canceled a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yemeni officials said they quickly put Badawi back behind bars. But reports persist that his incarceration remains a day-to-day affair. …

Diplomatic relations soured further in February, when the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa learned that Fahd al-Quso, another Cole conspirator, had been secretly freed nine months before. Like Badawi, Quso faces U.S. charges in the Cole case and has a $5 million bounty on his head.

al-Qaeda continues to hype the Cole attack “as one of its greatest military victories.”

Meanwhile, Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan, formerly Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver and currently a detainee at Guantánamo Bay awaiting trial on terrorism charges, “has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day,” reports the International Herald Tribune.

Hamdan’s military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer, has asked a military judge to suspend his case – now scheduled to begin May 28^th - until he is transferred to less isolating confinement, as he is unable to focus on his defense:

[T]three-quarters of the detainees have been held recently in two "camps" that look much like American prisons. Camp5 and Camp6, heavily guarded concrete buildings, hold men who have yet to face trial. Behind a heavy door, each cell has a handful of sanctioned items including a cup and a Koran. …

Mizer said Hamdan talked unendingly about his desire to be moved to Camp4, the only place at Guantánamo where detainees are permitted to live communally. Camp4 is believed to house 50 or fewer detainees whom officials classify as highly compliant.

Hamdan blames his lawyers for failing to get him out of Camp5, Mizer said, and will talk only about that. "He refuses to talk about his case," he said.

For their part, prosecutors dispute that Hamdan’s confinement is all that solitary - “detainees can communicate through the walls” – and add that Hamdan isn’t a model detainee, having spit at guards and thrown his urine at them.

Hamdan – who not only helped his boss bin Laden evade  capture after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, but also transported weapons for Al Qaeda  - and his fellow Gitmo detainees are not exactly Harold and Kumar.

So This Is What Passes For “Art” Nowadays

Kenyon Wilson, music professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, composed an antiphonal fanfare for the tuba and euphonium, titled "Kerfuffle," a word to which he was introduced by OpinionJournal’s James Taranto, who uses it somewhat frequently in his columns. Taranto explains how the piece was composed:

In developing the tune for “Kerfuffle,” Mr. Wilson derived a pair of musical motifs from my name, in the manner of BACH and DSCH (Dmitri Shostakovich). Rendering a name in musical notes is “far from an exact science,” Mr. Wilson explains. Some letters translate directly: A and C through G to the corresponding notes, and - in accord with German notation - B to B-flat, H to B-natural and S (Es) to E-flat.

But Mr. Wilson employed some creativity in putting JAMES to music. M usually translates as E (do-re-mi, C-D-E), but Mr. Wilson thought D - mi in the key of B-flat - sounded better. And there is no standard translation for J. Mr. Wilson used C, which is pronounced like our J in Azerbaijan, where he spent a semester as a Fulbright Scholar.

“Kerfuffle” also includes a TARANTO motif, though it recurs less frequently. “JAMES is quite melodious,” Mr. Wilson says. “TARANTO is not as much.”

To The Stiletto’s ear, the thing sounds like an extended bout of flatulence (mp3 file). A very fitting tribute, indeed.

Perhaps The Stiletto is being a tad harsh, but then again, she takes a dim view of what some consider “art”: a dog dying of starvation while the crowd looks on (video link); a dead baby hanging on a wall; and seven lice-infested German artists living free of charge in an Israeli museum for three weeks.