Undereducated Opinion

2008-08-26T23:12:00.000-04:00

To sum up Hillary's speech:

1) My history-making campaign was awesome. Everyone who voted for me should be proud.
2) Your lives suck.
3) Obama: at least he's not Republican.

Her complements of him sounded half-hearted at best. She mostly pointed out that she agrees with him on some issues and that he's a Democrat. She certainly did not retract from her criticisms of him: inexperience, etc.

The Asterisk Next to China's Golds

2008-08-24T14:51:00.000-04:00

Sure, China beat us in the gold medal count. That means about as much to me as Bonds' baseball records. If you cheat to get there, who really cares?

First, communism. When neither your athletes nor their parents have freedom to choose whether the kid begins training 8-16 hours per day at age 7 (instead of going to school and learning how to read), China gains an unfair advantage over countries with freedom (not to mention the inherent problems of slavery).

Second, crappy sports. Between ping pong, trampoline jumping, and badminton, China has 9 gold medals (19 total). If we loaded up the Olympics with sports like putt-putt, bowling, and fishing, the US would get some freebies too, but those sports are a joke.

Third, gymnastics. The girls are clearly underage. Now, despite documentation pointing out that the girls are younger, I have little doubt that Chinese government officials printed plenty of fresh birth certificates, drivers licenses, and CDL's for the girls on Friday morning that say the kids are 16 or older.

This is about as believable as a kid with cookie crumbs on his face, after being caught, washing his face off and then returning to deny that he ate any cookies. "See, you have no evidence now," China proclaims. But we really do, just look at the girls! How many 35 year old men have molested 12 year old girls and then sworn that "She said she was 18"? Maybe she did, and maybe she even wrote it down in crayon and signed it, but take one look at her for crying out loud!

Doubt God's Existence? Be a Seeker, Not a Skeptic

2008-06-22T18:06:00.001-04:00

FYI- This is my first religiously themed note (that I can recall), but it may not be the last (who knows?).

I have had a variety of discussions with agnostics about religion over the years. Out of my admittedly small and less-than-random sample, most have been skeptics. Ultimately, I find this unfortunate. Here's why.

A Websters Online definition appropriately describes a skeptic: "an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity." Incredulous means "unwilling to admit or accept what is offered as true." A skeptic is critical of any evidence put forth in favor of God's existence as a matter of policy.

If one thinks God may exist, but is unsure (aka, is agnostic), this is the wrong response. In religion, the consequences of error could mean eternity. Thus, instead of mere skepticism towards any evidence that is presented, agnostics should be seekers. To seek is "to go in search of, to look for, to try to discover."

When it comes to God's existence, a skeptic doubts anything that they have not seen with their own eyes. Yet, in every other aspect of life, we observe evidence of events that we have not personally seen. In a jury box, we listen to witnesses account their experiences. That is because in a trial, we are seekers of the truth. We even desire to hear the less credible witnesses because we want to make a decision based on all of the facts. Why? Because of the consequences of making the wrong decision.

It would be unreasonable for a juror, before a single witness has taken the stand in a multi-million dollar trial, to say, "Well, I didn't see what happened, so I'll never know for sure," and refuse to vote. True, the juror may never know with 100% accuracy whether the Defendant harmed the Plaintiff, but the only reasonable option is to look at all of the facts and make a judgment based on probability.

Similarly, an agnostic should be eager to hear people describe their experiences with God. An agnostic, by definition, admits that God might exist. If God does exist, it seems likely that He would display Himself in some fashion. It would certainly affect an agnostic's view if God spoke directly to him or her. Why then is it irrelevant that millions of people claim that God has spoken to them?

To be sure, some of these people must be wrong because many of the testimonies conflict. Yet, this dilemma of conflicting testimony is not unique to religion. If we return to the trial example, the Plaintiff will argue that the Defendant harmed him or her, and the Defendant will deny it. Does this mean that you must reject the testimony of both? Of course not. You simply judge the credibility of each witness based on the evidence.

Finally, the seeker reads major religious texts; the skeptic simply assumes they are wrong. Again, the consequences of error are too great to make the wrong decision. To ignore potential evidence of God's existence is to effectively decide that he doesn't exist. It would be the same as a juror sleeping through a trial and voting Defendant, except the consequences are greater.

[Hat tip my father for teaching me the difference between seeking the truth and mere skepticism.]

Don't Expand SCHIP

2007-09-28T09:22:00.000-04:00

From Investor's Business Daily:

As passed by the House, the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP, will create a major new middle-class entitlement even as we face looming national bankruptcy from our $50.5 trillion (yes, you read that number right) in planned spending under Social Security and Medicare.

Today, some 6.6 million kids are covered under SCHIP, at a cost of about $25 billion over five years. The new bill raises that to 9 million kids covered, at a cost of $60 billion. It pays for it with a 61-cent hike in the tobacco tax.

Sounds good, except that tax will hit the poor hardest. And those it helps are not poor. Under the new bill, families earning $83,000 a year could be eligible. If this bill were targeted at the poor, President Bush and the Republicans wouldn't oppose it. But it isn't. It's a new, radically expanded middle-class entitlement.

That, by the way, includes families like the Siravos of New Jersey, profiled recently by Bloomberg News. The Siravos earn $56,000 a year, own their own home and drive two used cars. They also pay $9,000 a year to send their only child to a private school.

Yes, things are a bit tight for the Siravos, as with many American families. But should the working poor subsidize health care for the Siravos and other middle-class families?

And should those who, unlike the Siravos, send their kids to public schools but buy health insurance, now do the opposite?

That's the problem — SCHIP's expansion sets up perverse incentives, such as encouraging those with private insurance to dump it in favor of subsidized care. This isn't just talk. According to health care economists David Cutler and Jonathan Gruber, for every 10 children enrolled in SCHIP, six drop their private insurance.

There are other problems. For instance, far from being "about the children," SCHIP already covers 670,000 adults. The new law will increase that. Thanks to loopholes, illegal aliens are eligible too.

Add it all up, and SCHIP's costs will be much, much higher than the $60 billion forecast — just as happened with Medicare.

Ironically, a Republican-controlled Congress created SCHIP in 1997 to help the poor — those up to 200% of the poverty level.

But Democrats, along with many state governors, now want to expand that to up to 400% of the poverty rate — or $83,000 for a family of four. That's upper-middle-class, not poor.

This is a very bad, very cynical bill, disguised as an effort to help children. If it becomes law, spending will soar and we will have taken another foolish step down the road to a poorly run, expensive and inefficient nationalized health care system.

President Bush would be right to veto it.

Corporations Are Evil

2007-09-27T09:18:00.000-04:00

Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, explains the modern problem of anti-market bias:

People tend, for example, to see profits as a gift to the rich. So unless you perversely pity the rich more than the poor, limiting profits seems like common sense. Yet profits are not a handout but a quid pro quo: If you want to get rich, you have to do something people will pay for. Profits give incentives to reduce production costs, move resources from less-valued to more-valued industries, and dream up new products. This is the central lesson of The Wealth of Nations: The “invisible hand” quietly persuades selfish businessmen to serve the public good...
Collusion aside, the public’s implicit model of price determination is that businesses are monopolists of variable altruism. If a CEO feels greedy when he wakes up, he raises his price—or puts low-quality merchandise on the shelves. Nice guys charge fair prices for good products; greedy scoundrels gouge with impunity for junk. It is only a short step for market skeptics to add “…and nice guys finish last.”
Where does the public go wrong? For one thing, asking for more can get you less. Giving your boss the ultimatum “Double my pay or I quit” usually ends badly. The same holds in business: Raising prices and cutting quality often lead to lower profits, not higher. Many strategies that work as a one-shot scam backfire as routine policies. It is hard to make a profit if no one sets foot in your store twice. Intelligent greed militates against dishonesty and discourtesy because they damage the seller’s reputation....

From DailyKos: "I Don't Support the Troops"

2007-09-20T10:21:00.000-04:00

From DailyKos:

Supporting the troops essentially means supporting the illegal war. It seems that us anti-war types have been doing all sorts of mental and philisophical gymnastics to try and work around this...

Until we have another draft, this is a volunteer armed services... You signed up, you get to go to the desert and risk being shot at by brown skinned people who don't believe the lies you've been told. A war of aggression is immoral, period. If you believe in God, you can damned well be sure you are going to hell for your participation in it. The only troop I support is the man or woman who refuses to be deployed so that they can make the middle east accessible to profiteers who don't give a flying F about morality or democracy. Or a soldier's life...

I am sorry but supporting the troops means supporting this illegal war.

Fred on Hillarycare

2007-09-19T19:00:00.000-04:00

Healthcare Utopia?

2007-09-19T12:50:00.000-04:00

John Stossel on universal healthcare:

One basic problem with nationalized health care is that it makes medical services seem free. That pushes demand beyond supply. Governments deal with that by limiting what's available.

That's why the British National Health Service recently made the pathetic promise to reduce wait times for hospital care to four months.

The wait to see dentists is so long that some Brits pull their own teeth. Dental tools: pliers and vodka.

One hospital tried to save money by not changing bed sheets every day. British papers report that instead of washing them, nurses were encouraged to just turn them over.

Government rationing of health care in Canada is why when Karen Jepp was about to give birth to quadruplets last month, she was told that all the neonatal units she could go to in Canada were too crowded. She flew to Montana to have the babies.

"People line up for care; some of them die. That's what happens," Canadian doctor David Gratzer, author of The Cure, told "20/20". Gratzer thought the Canadian system was great until he started treating patients. "The more time I spent in the Canadian system, the more I came across people waiting. ... You want to see your neurologist because of your stress headache? No problem! You just have to wait six months. You want an MRI? No problem! Free as the air! You just gotta wait six months."

Michael Moore retorts that Canadians live longer than Americans.

But Canadians' longer lives are unrelated to heath care. Canadians are less likely to get into accidents or be murdered. Take those factors into account, not to mention obesity, and Americans live longer.

Most Canadians like their free health care, but Canadian doctors tell us the system is cracking. More than a million Canadians cannot find a regular family doctor. One town holds a lottery. Once a week the town clerk gets a box out of the closet. Everyone who wants to have a family doctor puts his or her name in it. The clerk pulls out one slip to determine the winner. Others in town have to wait.

It's driven some Canadians to private for-profit clinics. A new one opens somewhere in Canada almost every week. Although it's not clear that such private clinics are legal, one is run by the president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Brian Day, because under government care, he says, "We found ourselves in a situation where we were seeing sick patients and weren't being allowed to treat them. That was something that we couldn't tolerate."

Canadians stuck on waiting lists often pay "medical travel agents" to get to America for treatment. Shirley Healey had a blocked artery that kept her from digesting food. So she hired a middleman to help her get to a hospital in Washington state.

"The doctor said that I would have only had a very few weeks to live," Healey said.

Yet the Canadian government calls her surgery "elective."

"The only thing elective about this surgery was I elected to live," she said.

Not all Canadian health care is long lines and lack of innovation. We found one place where providers offer easy access to cutting-edge life-saving technology, such as CT scans. And patients rarely wait.

But they have to bark or meow to get access to this technology. Vet clinics say they can get a dog or a cat in the next day. People have to wait a month.

Rove on Healthcare

2007-09-18T10:28:00.000-04:00

Karl Rove outlines several private market solutions to health care.

Second-Tier Candidates Make Conservative Promises At "Values Voter" Debate

2007-09-18T09:51:00.000-04:00

From Townhall:

All seven participants [Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Chicago businessman John Cox, Maryland conservative Alan Keyes and Reps. Ron Paul of Texas, Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Duncan Hunter of California] said they would work to keep federal funding away from organizations that perform or promote abortions; to revive an attempt to reform Social Security by offering personal retirement accounts; and to oppose a government-run universal health insurance system. They all vowed to increase funding for abstinence education, to veto hate crimes legislation and to oppose embryonic stem cell research.

Fred Endorses FairTax

2007-09-17T13:29:00.001-04:00

Hillary Effectively Vows to NOT Fix Social Security

2007-09-17T11:15:00.000-04:00

Hillary has promised not to consider raising taxes, cutting benefits, or privatization in order to solve Social Security. By taking everything off the table, she's excluded all solutions.

Obama, making a compelling case that he is less evil, has not taken privatization off the table.

Rasmussen: Fred Leads by 8%

2007-09-14T12:13:00.000-04:00

Fred has expanded his lead in Rasmussen's poll to 8% (27% over Rudy's 19%).

Why Rudy's Doomed

2007-09-13T16:40:00.000-04:00

As I recently explained here, Rudy's lead over Fred has been cut by over 50% in ABC/Washington Post's Poll, 75% in CBS/NY Times' poll, and down to a statistical tie in CNN's poll. In addition, Fred's taken a small lead in Rasmussen. The only poll untouched by Fred's announcement has been USA/Today Gallup, where Rudy still enjoys a 12% lead.

3 more polls have came out to show that Fred recently got a large boost by his announcement. In NBC/Wall Street Journal, Rudy's lead shrunk 50% from 13% (33% over 20%) to 6% (32% over 26%). In Fox, Rudy's lead suffered a small loss from 15% (30% over 15%) to 12% (34% over 22%). Finally, in American Research Group, Rudy's lead fell from 11% (27% over 16%) to 1% (24% over 23%), which is a statistical tie.

In a related subject, Douglas Schoen, former consultant to Bill Clinton, explains why Rudy's doomed:

National numbers mean very little in a nominating contest that is going to be decided state by state. And when we look at the poll data that have been collected for the first four contests, the results are decidedly bleak for Giuliani.

Beginning with the Iowa caucuses, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney holds a decisive 16-point lead in the Real Clear Politics averages. Giuliani is running a poor second, with no signs of movement or growth over the last month. As we know from the case of John Kerry in 2004, Iowa's winner brings big momentum into future primaries.

Moving to New Hampshire, the first primary, the Giuliani candidacy has stalled. You would expect the famously independent state to be a Giuliani stronghold, but his numbers there are flat. Romney, the former governor of a neighboring state, now leads by an average of nine points.

So Hizzoner faces the very real prospect of losing both Iowa and New Hampshire before heading to what could be a decisive set of primaries and caucuses in Nevada and South Carolina. Here again, Giuliani is in trouble. In Nevada, Romney registered a 10-point lead over Giuliani in the last statewide poll. This is likely the result of Giuliani's relatively soft stances on immigration and guns. Nevada caucus-goers care deeply about both.

For a while, South Carolina looked more encouraging, with Giuliani getting surprising support from the state's heavy contingent of military veterans. But he's now in a statistical tie with Thompson. I'd put my money on the former southern senator.

No biggie, Giuliani's people argue - they are sitting in the catbird's seat when Feb. 5 rolls around. That's the day a half dozen big states go to the polls. But while Giuliani holds leads now in major, moderate states such as New York, Florida, California, New Jersey, Connecticut and Illinois, politics is like pool: The first shot changes the next one. If Giuliani loses to Romney in the first three states and to Thompson in South Carolina, a strong Super Tuesday showing is a fantasy.

Giuliani faces even bigger woes than the primary calendar. He has recently gotten into a debate with Romney over immigration and is on record saying ILLEGAL immigration is "NOT a crime." (emphasis mine). Being the real law-and-order candidate only goes so far if you seem to excuse a whole swath of criminality.

Notice I haven't yet touched on Giuliani's most-often-cited vulnerabilities: His support for a woman's right to choose and gay rights still makes him a very heavy lift in the family-values party.

Mark my words: Giuliani will not be the GOP's nominee. Instead, he will join a long list including Howard Dean, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and others who owned national polls early - only to fizzle once the real votes were counted.

What Do We Mean by "Poor"?

2007-09-13T12:40:00.000-04:00

The Heritage Foundation's Robert Redford on poverty in America:

[W]hen John Edwards says that one in eight Americans do not have enough money for food, shelter or clothing, that’s generally what the average citizen is thinking about when they hear the word “poverty.” But if that’s what we mean by poverty, then virtually none of these 37 million people that are ostensibly poor are actually poor. In reality, the government runs multiple surveys that allow us to examine the physical living conditions of these individuals in great detail.

When you look at the people who John Edwards insists are poor, what you find is that the overwhelming majority of them have cable television, have air conditioning, have microwaves, have two color TVs; 45 percent of them own their own homes, which are typically three-bedroom homes with 1 1/2 baths in very good recondition. On average, poor people who live in either apartments or in houses are not crowded and actually have more living space than the average person living in European countries, such as France, Italy or England.

Also, a lot of people believe that poor people are malnourished. But in fact when you look at the average nutriment intake of poor children, it is virtually indistinguishable from upper-middle-class children. In fact, poor kids by the time they reach age 18 or 19 are taller and heavier than the average middle-class teenagers in the 1950s at the time of Elvis. And the boys, when they reach 18, are a full one inch taller and 10 pounds heavier than the GIs storming the beaches of Normandy. It’s pretty hard to accomplish that if you are facing chronic food shortages throughout your life...

If you are looking at people who do not have adequate warm, dry apartments that are in good repair, and don’t have enough food to feed their kids, you’re probably looking at one family in 100, not one family in eight...

Generally, they will be families that have a whole lot of behavioral issues in addition to mere economic issues -- possibly drug problems, mental problems, certainly very low work effort, probably unmarried mothers and so forth. They would be spread around the country. Very few of them are elderly. Even though the elderly appear to have low incomes, they are not likely to lack food or to have a hole in their roof or things like that...

If you look at the official poor, particularly at children who are officially in poverty, there are two main reasons for that. One is that their parents don’t work much. Typically in a year, poor families with children will have about 16 hours of adult work per week in the household. If you raised that so that you had just one adult working full time, 75 percent of those kids would immediately be raised out of poverty.

The second major reason that children are poor is a single parenthood in the absence of marriage. Close to two-thirds of all poor children live in single-parent families. What we find is that if a never-married mother married the father of her children, again, about 70 percent of them would immediately be raised out of poverty. Most of these men who are fathers without being married in fact have jobs and have a fairly good capacity to support a family...

[Children] are counted as part of the household -- what they judge is the whole household’s income. Part of the reason the Census Bureau is telling us that we have 37 million poor people is that it judges families to be poor if they have incomes roughly less than $20,000 a year. But it doesn’t count virtually any welfare income as income. So food stamps, public housing, Medicaid -- all of the $600 billion that we spend assisting poor people (per year) is not counted as income when they go to determine whether a family is poor...

Some of [the poor] are just [in poverty] temporarily. Others tend to be in poor or near-poor status for a long time. That would tend to be true of single mothers, for example... But vis-a-vis the single mothers, it’s important to understand that 38 percent of all children are born to a mother who is not married and in half of the cases she is actually living with the father and the couple will express an interest in marriage but it never actually happens. One of the simplest and most important things we could do to reduce child poverty would be to go and communicate to those couples -- all of whom are low-income -- the importance of marriage for their own well-being and for the child’s well-being...

All of the data I provide come directly from government surveys. Those government surveys are not heavily publicized by the media, because since the beginning of the War on Poverty the politically correct thing to do is to just exaggerate the amount of poverty that exists in the United States as a way of encouraging more welfare spending...

That’s what we are spending on cash, food, housing and medical care. The biggest program in there is Medicaid, followed by something called the “earned income tax credit.” The federal government, with state governments, runs 70 different means-tested welfare programs. These are programs that provide assistance exclusively to poor and low-income Americans...

The problem with these programs is that they reward individuals for not working and not being married. Essentially, they set up a very negative set of incentives that tends to push people deeper into poverty rather than helping them climb out of it.The problem is that aid is given in such a way that it encourages dependence rather than helping people to become self-sufficient...

Poverty was declining rapidly before the War on Poverty was created in the mid-1960s, and since that time the poverty rate has basically stagnated (about 13%).

There are two reasons for that. One is that none of the poverty spending is counted as income, so that it can’t have an anti-poverty effect. But the second, more important reason is that all of these programs discourage work and marriage, so that they in fact are pushing people deeper into poverty at the same time that they are giving them aid...

Since the beginning of the War on Poverty we have now spent over 11 trillion dollars... Basically, we have spent a lot of money but we spent money in such a way that we displaced the work effort of the poor, so that we did not get very much net increase in income. Rather than bringing people’s incomes up, what we’ve done is supplanted work with welfare. What you need to do in order to truly get improvements is to create a welfare system that requires work and encourages marriage so that the recipient is moving toward self-sufficiency while receiving aid, rather than receiving aid in lieu of his own work efforts...

In 1996, we reformed one small welfare program -- Aid to Families with Dependent Children -- by requiring the recipients or part of the recipients to perform work in exchange for the benefits.

As a result of that, we got a huge decline in welfare rolls, a huge surge in employment and record drops in black child poverty. Unfortunately, the rest of the welfare system -- the remaining 69 programs -- remained unreformed. Until we reform those programs in a similar way, we will make no further progress against poverty.

Claiming "Consenus" By Ignoring Dissent: 500+ Scientists Published Refuting Evidence of Warming Theory in Peer-Reviewed Literature

2007-09-13T12:32:00.000-04:00

From PRNewswire:

A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance.
"This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.

Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.

Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."

The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.

"We've had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."

"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.

The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.

Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.

Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.

Media Hypocrisy on Clinton

2007-09-13T12:29:00.000-04:00

From Accuracy in Media:

Hillary and her cronies have expressed shock at this behavior. After all, why should they be expected to know what Hsu was like? Did anyone in the media blame the Republicans who took money from Jack Abramoff? Or just Abramoff himself? Of course they also blamed the recipients. Clearly the Republicans have had their own corruption problems, with Abramoff, Representatives Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney, and other embarrassments such as Sen. Larry Craig. But the difference is in the media coverage, both in degree and intensity, and how directly the media hold each side responsible. Republicans get much tougher scrutiny and coverage.

Bill Clinton has been on TV everywhere since this Hsu scandal erupted, selling his latest book called Giving. He does not get grilled. To the contrary, the media treat him and Hillary with total deference, as if they are victims in the scandal.

So How Goes Bin Laden's War on the U.S. Economy?

2007-09-13T12:26:00.000-04:00

From U.S. News & World Report:

Six years ago, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda weren't just attempting to bring down the twin towers of the World Trade Center. They were trying to smash the American economy as well. Here is what bin Laden himself said about his goals and motivations back in December 2001: "If their economy is destroyed, they will be busy with their own affairs rather than enslaving the weak peoples. It is very important to concentrate on hitting the U.S. economy through all possible means." And here is what al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said in September 2002: "We will also aim to continue, by the permission of Allah, the destruction of the American economy."

No luck so far, despite bin Laden's recent videotape ravings about our taxes and mortgage debt. Although the towers came down, the resilient American economy didn't. Since September 11, the economy hasn't suffered a single down quarter. In fact, it has notched 23 straight quarters of economic growth. (And despite the subprime mortgage crisis, this is likely to be the 24th straight quarter of growth.) Those numbers are especially amazing when you consider that when the terrorist attacks happened, the Internet stock bubble was in full implosion mode. The economy dipped in the third quarter of 2001 and was slightly negative in two of the previous four quarters. But it's been nothing but growth since then. Overall, the American economy is, adjusting for inflation, $1.65 trillion bigger than it was six years ago. To put that gigantic number in some perspective, the U.S. economy has added the equivalent of five Saudi Arabias, eight Irans, 13 Pakistans, or 15 Egypts, depending on your preference. And while 9/11 did cause the stock market to plunge, the Dow is 37 percent higher than it was on Sept. 10, 2001, creating trillions of dollars of new wealth for Americans. What's more, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent today vs. 5.7 percent back then. Not bad at all.

Iraq Improves, Democrats Reframe Opposition

2007-09-13T12:15:00.000-04:00

John McCain on progress in Iraq:

Just one year ago, al-Qaida controlled major portions of the Iraqi countryside and used its position of strength to incite sectarian violence. But now, U.S. forces are pushing al-Qaida out of former strongholds such as Anbar and Diyala.

As stability comes to the region, its impact is clear. The homicide rate in Baghdad has decreased by more than 50 percent. Running water has been restored. Schools, markets and hospitals have all reopened. The signs of progress are on the rise, and al-Qaida’s influence is declining.

Although I'm not her biggest fan, Ann Coulter has some excellent points on the lack of liberal logic concerning Iraq:

Democrats claim Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress on the surge was a put-up job with a pre-ordained conclusion. As if their response wasn't...

It's been the same naysaying from these people since before we even invaded Iraq -- despite the fact that their representatives in Congress voted in favor of that war.

Mark Bowden, author of "Black Hawk Down," warned Americans in the Aug. 30, 2002, Los Angeles Times of 60,000 to 100,000 dead American troops if we invaded Iraq -- comparing an Iraq war to Vietnam and a Russian battle in Chechnya. He said Iraqis would fight the Americans "tenaciously" and raised the prospect of Saddam using weapons of mass destruction against our troops, an attack on Israel "and possibly in the United States."

On Sept. 14, 2002, The New York Times' Frank Rich warned of another al-Qaida attack in the U.S. if we invaded Iraq, noting that since "major al-Qaida attacks are planned well in advance and have historically been separated by intervals of 12 to 24 months, we will find out how much we've been distracted soon enough."

This week makes it six years since a major al-Qaida attack. I guess we weren't distracted. But it looks like al-Qaida has been.

Weeks before the invasion, in March 2003, the Times' Nicholas Kristof warned in a couple of columns that if we invaded Iraq, "the Turks, Kurds, Iraqis and Americans will all end up fighting over the oil fields of Kirkuk or Mosul." He said: "The world has turned its back on the Kurds more times than I can count, and there are signs that we're planning to betray them again." He announced that "the United States is perceived as the world's newest Libya."

The day after we invaded, Kristof cited a Muslim scholar for the proposition that if Iraqis felt defeated, they would embrace Islamic fundamentalism.

We took Baghdad in about 17 days flat with amazingly few casualties. There were no al-Qaida attacks in America, no attacks on Israel, no invasion by Turkey, no attacks on our troops with chemical weapons, no ayatollahs running Iraq. We didn't turn our back on the Kurds. There were certainly not 100,000 dead American troops.

But liberals soon began raising yet more pointless quibbles. For most of 2003, they said the war was a failure because we hadn't captured Saddam Hussein. Then we captured Saddam, and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean complained that "the capture of Saddam has not made America safer." (On the other hand, Howard Dean's failure to be elected president definitely made America safer.)

Next, liberals said the war was a failure because we hadn't captured Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Then we killed al-Zarqawi and a half-dozen of his aides in an air raid. Then they said the war was a failure because ... you get the picture.

The Democrats' current talking point is that "there can be no military solution in Iraq without a political solution." But back when we were imposing a political solution, Democrats' talking point was that there could be no political solution without a military solution.

They said the first Iraqi election, scheduled for January 2005, wouldn't happen because there was no "security."

Noted Middle East peace and security expert Jimmy Carter told NBC's "Today" show in September 2004 that he was confident the elections would not take place. "I personally do not believe they're going to be ready for the election in January ... because there's no security there," he said.

At the first presidential debate in September 2004, Sen. John Kerry used his closing statement to criticize the scheduled Iraqi elections saying: "They can't have an election right now. The president's not getting the job done."

About the same time, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he doubted there would be elections in January, saying, "You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now" -- although he may have been referring here to a possible vote of the U.N. Security Council.

In October 2004, Nicholas Lemann wrote in The New Yorker that "it may not be safe enough there for the scheduled elections to be held in January."

Days before the first election in Iraq in January 2005, The New York Times began an article on the election this way:

"Hejaz Hazim, a computer engineer who could not find a job in computers and now cleans clothes, slammed his iron into a dress shirt the other day and let off a burst of steam about the coming election.

"'This election is bogus,' Mr. Hazim said. 'There is no drinking water in this city. There is no security. Why should I vote?'"

If there's a more artful articulation of the time-honored linkage between drinking water and voting, I have yet to hear it.

And then, as scheduled, in January 2005, millions of citizens in a country that has never had a free election risked their lives to cast ballots in a free democratic election. They've voted twice more since then.

Now our forces are killing lots of al-Qaida jihadists, preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and giving democracy in Iraq a chance -- and Democrats say we are "losing" this war. I think that's a direct quote from their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, but it may have been the Osama bin Laden tape released this week. I always get those two confused.

OK, they knew what Petraeus was going to say. But we knew what the Democrats were going to say.

Stossel Challenges Moore on Cuban Healthcare

2007-09-12T12:34:00.000-04:00

From John Stossel:

[michael] Moore claims Cubans live longer than Americans. It's true that a U.N. report claims that. But the United Nations didn't gather any data. "The United Nations simply reports whatever the government in Cuba reports, so we have no objective way to know what the real statistics are," Carro says.

Exactly. Communist countries are famous for hiding the truth. Twenty years ago, when I reported from the Soviet Union, officials insisted there were no poor people in Russia, but they refused to let me look for myself.

Why would we believe the Cuban government's health statistics?

Cuba claims it has low infant mortality, but doctors tell us that Cuban obstetricians abort a fetus when they think there might be a problem. Dr. Julio Alfonso told us he used to do 70-80 abortions a day. And here's an even more devious way of distorting infant-mortality data: Some doctors tell us that if a baby dies within a few hours of birth, Cuban doctors don't count him or her as ever having lived.

Moore told me: "All the independent health organizations in the world, and even our own CIA, believe that the Cubans have a pretty good health system. And they do, in fact, live longer than we do."

But the CIA does not claim that Cubans live longer than Americans. In fact, the CIA says Americans live longer.

When I pressed Moore, he backed away from the claims his movie makes about Cuba. "Let's stick to Canada and Britain," he said, "because I think these are legitimate arguments that are made against the film and against the so-called idea of socialized medicine. And I think you should challenge me on these things, and I'll give you my answer."

Next week in this column, and this Friday on "20/20," I'll take him up on that challenge.

Fred Gains, Rudy Slips, Mike Appears, John Returns

2007-09-12T10:34:00.000-04:00

In a national poll since Fred's announcement, Rudy's lead in CNN dropped from 8% (27% over Fred's 19%) to just 1% (28% over Fred's 27%, which is well within the 5% margin of error). In ABC/Washington Post's poll, Rudy's lead has shrunk from 21% (37% over John's 16%) to 9% (28% over Fred's 18%). As I explained here, Fred has taken the lead in Rasmussen, and Rudy's lead has been cut by 75% in CBS/NY Times' poll (from 38% over Fred's 18% last month to 27% over Fred's 22% this month). Only one poll appears untouched by Fred's announcement, and that is USA Today/Gallup, where Rudy still enjoys a 12% lead.

In my home state of Georgia, Fred has skyrocketed to the lead, pulling 32% support over Rudy's 17. This is just one of many signs that he will sweep the southern primaries.

It is also interesting to note that Mike has started to show up in the national polls with 5-6% in CNN, USA/Gallup, Rasmussen, & ABC/WP (he does not appear to have been included in CBS/NYT). John has also enjoyed a boost as he just had a very good debate, the war's improving, and immigration has seen less press time. He's now at 15-18% in CNN, NYT/CBS, USA/Gallup, & ABC/WP (he's still stuck at 12% in Rasmussen. Mitt has remained around 10-14% since early August.

Mitt Leads in Iowa/New Hampshire, Fred Leads in South Carolina

2007-09-11T21:02:00.000-04:00

In the only poll of any early primary states since Fred announced, LA Times/Bloomberg found that Mitt leads in Iowa (28% over Fred & Rudy, tied at 16%) and in New Hampshire (28% over Rudy's 23%). Fred leads in South Carolina (26% over Rudy's 23%). Rudy needs to win at least one state before Florida to have a chance there. If he doesn't win Florida, then he will have NO momentum before Super Tuesday, resulting in his demise (YAY!).

Fred & Rudy in Statitstical Tie in California

2007-09-11T15:27:00.000-04:00

Rudy's support in California dropped from 39% last month to 28% this month. His lead over Fred shrunk from 20% to only 2% (within the 4.4% margin of error). Rudy leads among moderates with 40% over Fred's 22%, but Fred leads among conservatives with 31% over Rudy's 22%.

Rudy's falling and fast! If Rudy's to have any chance, he needs the large states like California to be a sure thing.

Senate Votes to Fund Oversees Abortions, Bush Vows Veto

2007-09-11T13:21:00.000-04:00

45 Senators, including 3 Republicans (Collins, Snowe, & Specter), voted against a bill that would ban funding of foreign organizations that support COERCIVE abortion. Luckily, 48 Senators supported the measure, including 4 Democrats (Casey, Conrad, Landrieu, & Nelson), allowing it to pass.

Unfortunately, the Senate on Thursday also passed a bill 53-41 that reinstates funding of foreign organizations that promote or perform abortions. 7 Republicans (Collins, Murkowski, Smith, Snowe, Specter, Stevens, & Warner) joined the pro-choice Democrats while only one Democrat (Nelson) joined the pro-life Republicans. A few minutes later, Brownback offered an amendment to revoke federal funding of foreign organizations that promote or perform abortions. This time an eighth Republican defected (Lugar), causing the amendment to fail 54-40.

On the bright side, Bush has vowed to veto funding of foreign agencies that promote or perform abortions. This should be a reminder to pro-lifers who support Rudy. The president does matter.

OSU Bans Chris Rock's Entire Routine

2007-09-11T11:39:00.000-04:00

Ohio State University's non-discrimination policy:

Do not joke about differences related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, ability, socioeconomic background, etc...
If a person indicates that a behavior or action is offensive, you should stop the behavior immediately...
Words, actions, and behaviors that inflict or threaten infliction of bodily or emotional harm, whether done intentionally or with reckless disregard, are not permitted.

The first prong bans any controversial humor. Chris Rock be warned. The last two prongs basically amount to a prohibition of mean things. Sounds like pre-school: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." If only the hippies knew about the First Amendment...

Hat tip: Cassy Fiano

Abramoff v. Hsu, Part II

2007-09-11T11:32:00.000-04:00

From Suitably Flip:

Why New York hasn't been attacked again

2007-09-11T10:32:00.000-04:00

Judith Miller writes:

Why has al-Qa'eda not repeated the attacks it staged in New York and Washington six years ago to the day? Because it can't.

That is the only partly reassuring consensus of some of the experts who tried hardest to warn Washington about the danger posed by al-Qa'eda and militant Islam prior to its devastating strikes on September 11. Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism adviser to two American presidents, Michael Sheehan, New York's former deputy police commissioner who headed the State Department's anti-terrorism effort, and others who sensed the danger long before it became obvious, assert that offensive and defensive measures taken since that terrible day have not only severely degraded al-Qa'eda's ability to stage another terrorism "spectacular", but have made American cities and targets less vulnerable.

Thanks to such steps, "we are safer than we were on September 11, 2001," John Scott Redd, a retired vice-admiral who now leads the intelligence community's National Counter-terrorism Centre, told anxious legislators on Capitol Hill yesterday. "But we are not safe," he added. "Nor are we likely to be for a generation or more."

Complacency would indeed be dangerous. There will be no "mission accomplished" banners in this war - a campaign unlikely to end in my lifetime. American intelligence and counter-terrorism officials can only do their jobs, buy time, and hope that the wave of militancy that has engulfed so many Islamic communities ebbs.

Osama bin Laden marked the September 11 anniversary not by conducting another devastating strike but by releasing a videotape, his first in three years. His continued freedom is a triumph of sorts. It also shows how challenging a task defeating such an enemy has become.

A recent National Intelligence Estimate warned Americans that al-Qa'eda remains the single greatest terrorist threat to the US. Other assessments share its gloomy findings that the number of jihadis is increasing.

Yet America and its Western allies can also claim impressive successes - notable exceptions being the train attacks in Madrid in 2004 and London's Tube and bus attacks in 2005. Several plots have been disrupted here in America and in Europe. In New York, the police department deserves credit for aggressive policing that has thwarted at least seven attacks.

New York has assigned nearly 1,000 officers to counter-terrorism, 205 of whom analyse worldwide threats, provide training for all members of the force and police officers in neighbouring cities who request it, and develop plans for protecting key sites in and near the city. New York is in the process of erecting a "ring of steel" - cameras, random screenings, and sensors to help protect the 1.5-square mile financial district and its $1 trillion daily financial transactions. The city is also installing cameras in its subway and transit system. But at the heart of its policing is its surveillance effort.

The most recent plots here in New York and in Europe - among them the arrest of six men in May for plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and the failed effort to blow up jet-fuel supply tanks at John F Kennedy Airport in New York - show that the threat is morphing.

Whereas police in New York once worried mainly about militants sent to America from the training camps of Bosnia and Afghanistan, they are now focused more on indigenous, radicalised Muslims, living and working in America, many of whom show few signs of their violent intent.

The increased surveillance adopted by the NYPD also raises civil liberties concerns that Americans are only now beginning to debate. Resistance to it is likely to grow stronger as the memory of September 11 recedes and the commemorations grow smaller.

Patience may yet work to al-Qa'eda's advantage.

Fred Rises, But Rudy Continues to Enjoy Ignorance Boost

2007-09-11T00:41:00.000-04:00

Fred regained his lead in Rasmussen since his announcement. Fred now leads with 26% over Rudy's 22. Fred's lead expands to 12% among conservative voters.

In the CBS/NY Times poll, although Rudy still leads, his support dropped from 38% last month to 27%. His lead sunk from 20% to only 5%, over Fred's 22%. Fred could even be higher. Two of the six days polled were before Fred's announcement.

Also, one-third of Rudy's supporters still think, incorrectly, that he opposes legal abortions. Talk about heads in the sand!

EcoHypocrisy

2007-09-10T22:37:00.000-04:00

Doug Powers writes:

Over the weekend, I saw a photo of Al Gore de-boarding a private jet. Gore was no doubt on his way to an emergency meeting on what can be done about the carbon emissions of everybody except Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio, Bette "Chainsaw" Midler and all others who have earned the right to be environmentally hypocritical.

Leading the pack in ecopocrisy are some of Gore's biggest supporters, the television and film industry. Hollywood is the second largest polluter in the state of California. This industry is, oddly enough, from where the most environmental finger-pointing originates, and they are being pressured to either reduce their emissions and/or buy carbon offsets...

Being "carbon neutral" is now the designer jeans of wealthy, liberal self-proclaimed environmentalists who don't want to stop their energy gluttony but also don't want to appear to be harmful to the environment. This is where "carbon credits" come into play.

The notion of carbon credits is an offshoot of the "zero sum game" theory that is quite popular among certain economists and chess players. It's quite often a theory used to cast guilt and shame upon somebody who makes money – allegedly at the expense of others. Zero-sum game theory implies that, for every dollar you make, somebody had to lose a dollar. There hasn't been a more bogus economic theory since Bill Clinton's answer to a businessman's concerns over high taxes was to "just raise your price."

Imagine you're playing a zero-sum baseball game and the score is 4-4. Your team scores a run, so the other team loses a run, making the score 5-3. If you score another run, the score would be 6-2. The good news for the team with two is that by applying "zero-sum game," even though they're down by four, they'll only have to score two runs to tie the game. Make sense? We find as we go through life that those who embrace the zero-sum game theory are usually the ones who are behind, in this case, trailing big time in the game of environmental friendliness.

But there's something wrong, and also telling, about the above example. In a zero-sum game, the score could never be tied at four. True equality can only be attained if everybody (except the game's "managers" such as Al Gore) has zero. Anything more or less for any party involved means the other sinks into negative-number oblivion.

Why do energy gluttons enjoy zero-sum games? If we apply the above baseball metaphor to carbon credits, the person who burns more energy in his or her life than the average person can tie, or "neutralize" the game, in this case via carbon credits, for far less than it took them to get down that much in the first place.

The unspeakable fact of the matter is that if Al Gore didn't have a heated pool, there would be that much less energy burned. Period. Al Gore produces nothing – the sum of zero, if you will. If all his famous energy consumption went toward producing, say, wheat, his offset would be fed human beings. When his energy consumption goes toward ensuring his pool guests don't get shrinkage when they dive in, the only way to offset this would be to turn off the heater and sentence swimmers to cringing in the cool water. Anything else is kidding himself and everybody else, which is what much of the "global warming" theory is based upon.

How come it seems that carbon credits never work the other way around? Can you write to Al Gore and tell him to turn off his air conditioning so you can mow your lawn today? Of course not. Offsetting Al Gore's carbon emissions is your responsibility as a global citizen. Asking Al Gore to offset yours is… proof-positive you need to cut back on energy consumption.

The global warming movement as built by Al Gore believes that every gainer must have a loser, and what are the odds that Al Gore or Leo DiCaprio have any intention of being the latter?

Hopefully one day somebody will calculate how much carbon per year is spewed into the atmosphere by the smoke that accompanies the mirrors.

PETA Attacks Gore for Meat Consumption

2007-09-10T22:16:00.000-04:00

From Telegraph.co.uk:

He may be the hero of the environmental movement for his crusade against global warming but Al Gore is about to be targeted by animal rights activists over his carnivorous contribution to greenhouse gases.

Al Gore has come under fire for failing to highlight the impact of animal agriculture

Citing United Nations research that the meat industry is worse for the environment than driving and flying, animal rights groups are directing a campaign at the former American vice-president's diet.

When he delivers a lecture on global warming in Denver next month, protesters will display billboards bearing a cartoon image of Mr Gore eating a drumstick and the message: "Too chicken to go vegetarian? Meat is the No 1 cause of global warming".

The campaign is being organised by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) and is backed by other animal rights groups.

"For Al Gore, the fact that his diet is a leading contributor to global warming is a highly inconvenient truth - pun intended," said Matt Prescott, a spokesman for Peta.

Mr Gore won an Oscar this year for An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary based on his lecture-circuit presentation detailing how man is allegedly destroying the environment.

But he is now under fire for failing to highlight the impact of meat-eating.

According to recent UN Food and Agriculture Organisation research, animal agriculture generates 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions - more than the 13.5 per cent produced by all forms of transport combined.

Mr Gore's eating habits have previously drawn attention only because of his dramatic weight fluctuations.

He cut a far slimmer figure in the run-up to the 2000 election than since - and observers would regard a reduction in his waistline as a likely sign that he intends join the Democrats' race for the White House next year.

Even the Rolling Stone Blasts Move-on.org

2007-09-10T21:51:00.000-04:00

Move-on.org published an ad that stated, "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" The Rolling Stone's response is below:

[I]t’s not even clever. A bad pun driving a despicable message.

Listen: General Petraeus may well be carrying water for the Bush administration — I’ll reserve judgment until his microphone starts working. And let me be clear: He is every bit a target of legitimate criticism.

But to impugn the patriotism of a man who is doing what the commander in chief has asked him to do — try to win the war in Iraq — is as despicable as Dick Cheney questioning the patriotism of those Americans who want us to redeploy from Iraq.

Second Quiet US Hurricane Season Causes Premiums to Drop

2007-09-10T21:36:00.000-04:00

From Telegraph.co.uk:

Two years of unexpectedly quiet hurricane activity in the US have caused a dramatic drop in insurance premiums that, experts say, could spark consolidation amongst brokers and underwriters.

Hurricane Dean: the US has been spared from any major tropical storms this season
Brokers are predicting cover for hurricanes in the will tumble by at least 10% in 2008

The chief executives of the world's largest insurers and brokers are predicting cover for hurricanes in the US will tumble by at least 10% in 2008 - on top of a 20% slump in premiums this year...

Grahame Chilton, chief executive of the world's third largest reinsurance broker Benfield, said despite some major hurricanes such as Felix, this has been a benign storm season.

Petraeus Reports on Progress in Iraq

2007-09-10T16:56:00.000-04:00

General David H. Petraeus, Commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, reports to Congress:

As a bottom line up front, the military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met. In recent months, in the face of tough enemies and the brutal summer heat of Iraq, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces have achieved progress in the security arena. Though the improvements have been uneven across Iraq, the overall number of security incidents in Iraq has declined in 8 of the past 12 weeks, with the numbers of incidents in the last two weeks at the lowest levels seen since June 2006.

One reason for the decline in incidents is that Coalition and Iraqi forces have dealt significant blows to Al Qaeda-Iraq. Though Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq remain dangerous, we have taken away a number of their sanctuaries and gained the initiative in many areas.

We have also disrupted Shia militia extremists, capturing the head and numerous other leaders of the Iranian-supported Special Groups, along with a senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative supporting Iran's activities in Iraq.

Coalition and Iraqi operations have helped reduce ethno-sectarian violence, as well, bringing down the number of ethno-sectarian deaths substantially in Baghdad and across Iraq since the height of the sectarian violence last December. The number of overall civilian deaths has also declined during this period, although the numbers in each area are still at troubling levels.

Iraqi Security Forces have also continued to grow and to shoulder more of the load, albeit slowly and amid continuing concerns about the sectarian tendencies of some elements in their ranks. In general, however, Iraqi elements have been standing and fighting and sustaining tough losses, and they have taken the lead in operations in many areas.

Additionally, in what may be the most significant development of the past 8 months, the tribal rejection of Al Qaeda that started in Anbar Province and helped produce such significant change there has now spread to a number of other locations as well.

Based on all this and on the further progress we believe we can achieve over the next few months, I believe that we will be able to reduce our forces to the pre-surge level of brigade combat teams by next summer without jeopardizing the security gains that we have fought so hard to achieve.

Beyond that, while noting that the situation in Iraq remains complex, difficult, and sometimes downright frustrating, I also believe that it is possible to achieve our objectives in Iraq over time, though doing so will be neither quick nor easy...

The Nature of the Conflict

The fundamental source of the conflict in Iraq is competition among ethnic and sectarian communities for power and resources. This competition will take place, and its resolution is key to producing long-term stability in the new Iraq. The question is whether the competition takes place more - or less - violently... Foreign and home-grown terrorists, insurgents, militia extremists, and criminals all push the ethno-sectarian competition toward violence. Malign actions by Syria and, especially, by Iran fuel that violence. Lack of adequate governmental capacity, lingering sectarian mistrust, and various forms of corruption add to Iraq's challenges...

Current Situation and Trends

The progress our forces have achieved with our Iraqi counterparts has, as I noted at the outset, been substantial. While there have been setbacks as well as successes and tough losses along the way, overall, our tactical commanders and I see improvements in the security environment. We do not, however, just rely on gut feel or personal observations; we also conduct considerable data collection and analysis to gauge progress and determine trends. We do this by gathering and refining data from coalition and Iraqi operations centers, using a methodology that has been in place for well over a year and that has benefited over the past seven months from the increased presence of our forces living among the Iraqi people. We endeavor to ensure our analysis of that data is conducted with rigor and consistency, as our ability to achieve a nuanced understanding of the security environment is dependent on collecting and analyzing data in a consistent way over time. Two US intelligence agencies recently reviewed our methodology, and they concluded that the data we produce is the most accurate and authoritative in Iraq...

[T]he level of security incidents has decreased significantly since the start of the surge of offensive operations in mid-June, declining in 8 of the past 12 weeks, with the level of incidents in the past two weeks, the lowest since June 2006, and with the number of attacks this past week, the lowest since April 2006.

Civilian deaths of all categories, less natural causes, have also declined considerably, by over 45% Iraq-wide since the height of the sectarian violence in December. .. [Civilian deaths] decline[d] by some 70% in Baghdad... Periodic mass casualty attacks by Al Qaeda have tragically added to the numbers outside Baghdad, in particular. Even without the sensational attacks, however, the level of civilian deaths is clearly still too high and continues to be of serious concern...

[T]he number of ethno-sectarian deaths, an important subset of the overall civilian casualty figures, has also declined significantly since the height of the sectarian violence in December. Iraq-wide..., the number of ethno-sectarian deaths has come down by over 55%, and it would have come down much further were it not for the casualties inflicted by barbaric Al Qaeda bombings attempting to reignite sectarian violence. In Baghdad..., the number of ethno-sectarian deaths has come down by some 80% since December...

As we have gone on the offensive in former Al Qaeda and insurgent sanctuaries, and as locals have increasingly supported our efforts, we have found a substantially increased number of arms, ammunition, and explosives caches... [W]e have, so far this year, already found and cleared over 4,400 caches, nearly 1,700 more than we discovered in all of last year. This may be a factor in the reduction in the number of overall improvised explosive device attacks in recent months, which .... has declined sharply, by about one-third, since June.

The change in the security situation in Anbar Province has, of course, been particularly dramatic... [M]onthly attack levels in Anbar have declined from some 1,350 in October 2006 to a bit over 200 in August of this year. This dramatic decrease reflects the significance of the local rejection of Al Qaeda and the newfound willingness of local Anbaris to volunteer to serve in the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police Service. As I noted earlier, we are seeing similar actions in other locations, as well.

To be sure, trends have not been uniformly positive across Iraq, as is shown by this chart depicting violence levels in several key Iraqi provinces. The trend in Ninevah Province, for example, has been much more up and down, until a recent decline, and the same is true in Sala ad Din Province, though recent trends there and in Baghdad have been in the right direction. In any event, the overall trajectory in Iraq - a steady decline of incidents in the past three months - is still quite significant.

The number of car bombings and suicide attacks has also declined in each of the past 5 months, from a high of some 175 in March, as this chart shows, to about 90 this past month. While this trend in recent months has been heartening, the number of high profile attacks is still too high, and we continue to work hard to destroy the networks that carry out these barbaric attacks.

Our operations have, in fact, produced substantial progress against Al Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq... [I]n the past 8 months, we have considerably reduced the areas in which Al Qaeda enjoyed sanctuary. We have also neutralized 5 media cells, detained the senior Iraqi leader of Al Qaeda-Iraq, and killed or captured nearly 100 other key leaders and some 2,500 rank-and-file fighters. Al Qaeda is certainly not defeated; however, it is off balance and we are pursuing its leaders and operators aggressively. Of note, as the recent National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq explained, these gains against Al Qaeda are a result of the synergy of actions by: conventional forces to deny the terrorists sanctuary; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets to find the enemy; and special operations elements to conduct targeted raids. A combination of these assets is necessary to prevent the creation of a terrorist safe haven in Iraq.

In the past six months we have also targeted Shia militia extremists, capturing a number of senior leaders and fighters, as well as the deputy commander of Lebanese Hezbollah Department 2800, the organization created to support the training, arming, funding, and, in some cases, direction of the militia extremists by the Iranian Republican Guard Corps' Qods Force. These elements have assassinated and kidnapped Iraqi governmental leaders, killed and wounded our soldiers with advanced explosive devices provided by Iran, and indiscriminately rocketed civilians in the International Zone and elsewhere. It is increasingly apparent to both Coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran, through the use of the Qods Force, seeks to turn the Iraqi Special Groups into a Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.

The most significant development in the past six months likely has been the increasing emergence of tribes and local citizens rejecting Al Qaeda and other extremists. This has, of course, been most visible in Anbar Province. A year ago the province was assessed as "lost" politically. Today, it is a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose Al Qaeda and reject its Taliban-like ideology. While Anbar is unique and the model it provides cannot be replicated everywhere in Iraq, it does demonstrate the dramatic change in security that is possible with the support and participation of local citizens. As this chart shows, other tribes have been inspired by the actions of those in Anbar and have volunteered to fight extremists as well. We have, in coordination with the Iraqi government's National Reconciliation Committee, been engaging these tribes and groups of local citizens who want to oppose extremists and to contribute to local security. Some 20,000 such individuals are already being hired for the Iraqi Police, thousands of others are being assimilated into the Iraqi Army, and thousands more are vying for a spot in Iraq's Security Forces.

Iraqi Security Forces

As I noted earlier, Iraqi Security Forces have continued to grow, to develop their capabilities, and to shoulder more of the burden of providing security for their country. Despite concerns about sectarian influence, inadequate logistics and supporting institutions, and an insufficient number of qualified commissioned and non-commissioned officers, Iraqi units are engaged around the country...

[T]here are now nearly 140 Iraqi Army, National Police, and Special Operations Forces Battalions in the fight, with about 95 of those capable of taking the lead in operations, albeit with some coalition support. Beyond that, all of Iraq's battalions have been heavily involved in combat operations that often result in the loss of leaders, soldiers, and equipment. These losses are among the shortcomings identified by operational readiness assessments, but we should not take from these assessments the impression that Iraqi forces are not in the fight and contributing. Indeed, despite their shortages, many Iraqi units across Iraq now operate with minimal coalition assistance.

As counterinsurgency operations require substantial numbers of boots on the ground, we are helping the Iraqis expand the size of their security forces. Currently, there are some 445,000 individuals on the payrolls of Iraq's Interior and Defense Ministries. Based on recent decisions by Prime Minister Maliki, the number of Iraq's security forces will grow further by the end of this year, possibly by as much as 40,000. Given the security challenges Iraq faces, we support this decision, and we will work with the two security ministries as they continue their efforts to expand their basic training capacity, leader development programs, logistical structures and elements, and various other institutional capabilities to support the substantial growth in Iraqi forces...

To summarize, the security situation in Iraq is improving, and Iraqis elements are slowly taking on more of the responsibility for protecting their citizens. Innumerable challenges lie ahead; however, Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces have made progress toward achieving sustainable security. As a result, the United States will be in a position to reduce its forces in Iraq in the months ahead...

Recommendations

[The recommended] approach seeks to build on the security improvements our troopers and our Iraqi counterparts have fought so hard to achieve in recent months. It reflects recognition of the importance of securing the population and the imperative of transitioning responsibilities to Iraqi institutions and Iraqi forces as quickly as possible, but without rushing to failure. It includes substantial support for the continuing development of Iraqi Security Forces. It also stresses the need to continue the counterinsurgency strategy that we have been employing, but with Iraqis gradually shouldering more of the load. And it highlights the importance of regional and global diplomatic approaches. Finally, in recognition of the fact that this war is not only being fought on the ground in Iraq but also in cyberspace, it also notes the need to contest the enemy's growing use of that important medium to spread extremism...

Based on these considerations, and having worked the battlefield geometry with Lieutenant General Ray Odierno to ensure that we retain and build on the gains for which our troopers have fought, I have recommended a drawdown of the surge forces from Iraq. In fact, later this month, the Marine Expeditionary Unit deployed as part of the surge will depart Iraq. Beyond that, if my recommendations are approved, that unit's departure will be followed by the withdrawal of a brigade combat team without replacement in mid-December and the further redeployment without replacement of four other brigade combat teams and the two surge Marine battalions in the first 7 months of 2008, until we reach the pre-surge level of 15 brigade combat teams by mid-July 2008.

I would also like to discuss the period beyond next summer. Force reductions will continue beyond the pre-surge levels of brigade combat teams that we will reach by mid-July 2008; however, in my professional judgment, it would be premature to make recommendations on the pace of such reductions at this time. In fact, our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is not just difficult, it can be misleading and even hazardous. The events of the past six months underscore that point. When I testified in January, for example, no one would have dared to forecast that Anbar Province would have been transformed the way it has in the past 6 months. Nor would anyone have predicted that volunteers in one-time Al Qaeda strongholds like Ghazaliyah in western Baghdad or in Adamiya in eastern Baghdad would seek to join the fight against Al Qaeda. Nor would we have anticipated that a Shia-led government would accept significant numbers of Sunni volunteers into the ranks of the local police force in Abu Ghraib. Beyond that, on a less encouraging note, none of us earlier this year appreciated the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq, something about which we and Iraq's leaders all now have greater concern.

In view of this, I do not believe it is reasonable to have an adequate appreciation for the pace of further reductions and mission adjustments beyond the summer of 2008 until about mid-March of next year. We will, no later than that time, consider factors similar to those on which I based the current recommendations, having by then, of course, a better feel for the security situation, the improvements in the capabilities of our Iraqi counterparts, and the enemy situation. I will then, as I did in developing the recommendations I have explained here today, also take into consideration the demands on our Nation's ground forces, although I believe that that consideration should once again inform, not drive, the recommendations I make...

One may argue that the best way to speed the process in Iraq is to change the MNF-I mission from one that emphasizes population security, counter-terrorism, and transition, to one that is strictly focused on transition and counter-terrorism. Making that change now would, in our view, be premature. We have learned before that there is a real danger in handing over tasks to the Iraqi Security Forces before their capacity and local conditions warrant. In fact, the drafters of the recently released National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq recognized this danger when they wrote, and I quote, "We assess that changing the mission of Coalition forces from a primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role to a primary combat support role for Iraqi forces and counterterrorist operations to prevent AQI from establishing a safe haven would erode security gains achieved thus far."

In describing the recommendations I have made, I should note again that, like Ambassador Crocker, I believe Iraq's problems will require a long-term effort. There are no easy answers or quick solutions. And though we both believe this effort can succeed, it will take time. Our assessments underscore, in fact, the importance of recognizing that a premature drawdown of our forces would likely have devastating consequences.

That assessment is supported by the findings of a 16 August Defense Intelligence Agency report on the implications of a rapid withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Summarizing it in an unclassified fashion, it concludes that a rapid withdrawal would result in the further release of the strong centrifugal forces in Iraq and produce a number of dangerous results, including a high risk of disintegration of the Iraqi Security Forces; rapid deterioration of local security initiatives; Al Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground and freedom of maneuver; a marked increase in violence and further ethno-sectarian displacement and refugee flows; alliances of convenience by Iraqi groups with internal and external forces to gain advantages over their rivals; and exacerbation of already challenging regional dynamics, especially with respect to Iran.

Lieutenant General Odierno and I share this assessment and believe that the best way to secure our national interests and avoid an unfavorable outcome in Iraq is to continue to focus our operations on securing the Iraqi people while targeting terrorist groups and militia extremists and, as quickly as conditions are met, transitioning security tasks to Iraqi elements...

Closing Comments

The Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen with whom I'm honored to serve are the best equipped and, very likely, the most professional force in our nation's history. Impressively, despite all that has been asked of them in recent years, they continue to raise their right hands and volunteer to stay in uniform. With three weeks to go in this fiscal year, in fact, the Army elements in Iraq, for example, have achieved well over 130% of the reenlistment goals in the initial term and careerist categories and nearly 115% in the mid-career category...

Our country's men and women in uniform have done a magnificent job in the most complex and challenging environment imaginable. All Americans should be very proud of their sons and daughters serving in Iraq today.

US Commission on Civil Rights: Affirmative Action Does More Harm Than Good

2007-09-08T19:54:00.000-04:00

From the NY Post:

THE U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which turns 50 this week, remains an important vehicle for public debate on civil-rights issues - as evidenced by its controversial new report questioning whether affirmative action may actually do more harm than good to its intended beneficiaries.

The report, "Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," found that admitting minority students "into law schools for which they might not academically be prepared could harm their academic performance and hinder their ability to obtain secure and gainful employment."

The arguments about the unintended consequences of affirmative action aren't new. What is new is a growing body of empirical evidence to back up the claim that affirmative action in higher education harms not only whites and Asians but also blacks and Hispanics.

But this body of evidence may never see light - which is why the report is so important. The commission has no civil-rights-enforcement authority, but it has always served as the nation's conscience on civil rights, making findings and recommendations to the president and Congress. Its recommendation is to end the conspiracy of secrecy surrounding the effects of affirmative action on the performance of black students in law schools.

The first solid evidence that affirmative action was harming black law-school students came in 2004, when UCLA law prof Richard Sander published a study that showed that more than half of black students at elite law schools had first-year grades that put them in the bottom 10 percent of their classes. This led to a far greater chance that the students wouldn't finish law school and made them six times more likely never to pass the bar exam.

But Sander also found that black students did far better if they attended law schools with students whose undergraduate grades and law-school-admission-test scores were similar to theirs. Black students who didn't rely on affirmative action to get into law school had similar first-year grades with their white counterparts and passed the bar at similar rates as all students from the same tier law school.

The affirmative-action establishment denounced Sander's study. More perniciously, it conspired to deny access to a body of evidence, a 25-year archive of California state-bar results, that could definitively prove Sander's thesis that mismatching black students with law schools where they were less likely to succeed resulted in fewer black lawyers than there would be without affirmative action.

Hospital Chaplain Fired for Praying to Jesus

2007-09-08T18:44:00.000-04:00

From CitizenLink.com:

A Florida chaplain claims he was fired from the hospital where he worked because he prayed in Jesus' name. The Rev. Danny Harvey was chaplain at Leesburg Regional Medical Center for more than seven years, but was forced to resign for what the hospital said were “concerns” raised by patients.

Harvey does not take God lightly.

“He’s done everything for me," he told a Fox affiliate in Orlando, Fla. "He is my Savior; He is my Redeemer; He is the Restorer of who I am.”

But those beliefs appear to have cost him his job. In a statement, hospital officials said Harvey’s pastoral care was “not consistent with and respectful of various faith beliefs.”

Harvey said he never pushed his faith on anyone.

“If you were Jewish, I would get somebody from the Jewish synagogue; if you’re Muslim, I’d do my very, very best to get someone there to meet your need," he said. "But if you ask me to pray, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to my God that I know through Christ.”

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said Harvey may have a case under the Civil Rights Act.

“If he’s been there for years … I would consider a few complaints as amounting to nothing," he told Family News in Focus. “Theoretically, he could bring a federal lawsuit alleging religious discrimination.”

Hausknecht said asking a Christian chaplain not to pray in Jesus' name is like asking a carpenter to work without a hammer.

Conspiracy Theorists

2007-09-08T00:15:00.000-04:00

In response to this question:

There are three main schools of thought regarding the 9/11 attacks. The first theory is the official story, and maintains that 19 Arab fundamentalists executed a surprise attack which caught US intelligence and military forces off guard. The second theory known as Let It Happen argues that certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military and economic motives; and the third theory Made It Happen contends that certain US government elements actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks. Based upon your knowledge of 9/11 events and their aftermath, which theory are you more likely to agree with?

barely even half of Democrats belief the Official Story!

Hsu v. Abramoff

2007-09-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

From Suitably Flip:

How to Be a Good Liberal

2007-09-06T09:16:00.000-04:00

Taken from longer list here:

1. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
2. You have to believe that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are more of a threat than nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Iran or Chinese and North Korean communists.
3. You have to believe that there was no art before federal funding.
4. You have to believe that global temperatures are less affected by cyclical changes in the earth's climate and more affected by soccer moms driving SUV'S.
5. You have to believe that the same teacher who can't teach 4th-graders how to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.
6. You have to believe that standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas are not.
7. You have to believe that the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.
8. You have to believe that homosexual parades displaying drag queens and transvestites should be constitutionally protected, and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.
9. You have to believe that this message is a part of a vast, right-wing conspiracy.

Assaulted by Cheetos?

2007-09-06T09:07:00.000-04:00

From the Des Moines Register:

The assault weapons listed on the Des Moines police report was a bag of Cheetos.

Patrick Hamman, 22, of 4904 S.W. 13th St., was arrested Sunday on a charge of domestic assault... Patrick Hammon picked up a bag of Cheetos and threw it at his father, hitting him in the face, police said. It hit him in the glasses, causing a cut to the bridge of Michael Hamman's nose.

The police report said: "Michael's T-shirt was also covered in Cheeto dust."

Hat Tip: Cassy Fiano

Ohio Statehouse Bans the Name of Jesus

2007-09-05T21:44:00.000-04:00

"The Majority Speaker warned of the 'increasing tendency of guest invocators to use language referring to a particular deity.' Citing the authority of the Supreme Court, he said that if a prayer is not approved beforehand, he will forbid it."

Science Confirms: "All Women Want Is Your Wallet"

2007-09-05T09:38:00.000-04:00

The science is in:

New scientific research has reached the conclusion which many of us have long suspected - that men are attracted by beauty while women focus on a partner's wealth

Money grabbing Jezebels.... Did we really need a study for this?

Thomas Sowell on Health Care

2007-09-04T10:45:00.000-04:00

From Thomas Sowell:

During the first 30 years of my life, I had no health insurance. Neither did a lot of other people, back in those days.

During those 30 years, I had a broken arm, a broken jaw, a badly injured shoulder, and miscellaneous other medical problems. To say that my income was below average during those years would be a euphemism.

How did I manage? The same way everybody else managed: I went to doctors and I paid them directly, instead of paying indirectly through taxes.

This was all before politicians gave us the idea that the things we could not afford individually we could somehow afford collectively through the magic of government.

When my jaw was broken, I was treated in an emergency room and was given a bill for $50 -- which was like a king's ransom to me at the time, 1949. But I paid it off in installments over a period of months.

Like most young people, I was lucky enough not to have any heavy-duty medical expenses that would have required major operations or a long hospital stay.

That is still true for most young people today, which is why many people in their twenties do not choose to pay for medical insurance, even when they can afford it.

They know that, in an emergency, they can always go to an emergency room. And today the idea that you ought to pay for that out of your own pocket is considered almost quaint in some quarters.

It is not uncommon -- especially in California, with its large illegal immigrant population -- for hospitals to have to shut down because so few people pay for the emergency room care they receive.

There are, of course, people with huge medical bills that they cannot possibly pay. Believe it or not, that also happened back before the modern welfare state.

Some hospitals -- whether public or private -- could absorb such costs, with the help of donors. There were people with polio living in iron lungs, which is why rich and poor alike gave money to the March of Dimes.

But that is very different from hospitals being stiffed every day by emergency room users whose only emergency is that they want to keep their money to spend on fun, instead of on doctors.

The biggest of the big lies in the "health care" hype is that a lack of insurance means a lack of medical care. The second biggest lie is that health care and medical care are the same thing.

Doctors cannot stop you from ruining your health in a hundred different ways, so statistics on everything from infant mortality to AIDS are not proof of a need for government to take over medical treatment.

Few people show the slightest interest in what has actually happened in countries with government-controlled medical care.

We are apparently supposed to follow those countries' example without asking about the months that people in those countries spend on waiting lists for medical treatments that Americans get just by picking up a phone and making an appointment.

It is amazing how many people seem uninterested in such things as why so many doctors in Britain are from Third World countries with lower medical standards -- or why people from Canada come to the United States for medical treatment that they could get cheaper at home.

Government price controls on pharmaceutical drugs are more of the same illusion of something for nothing.

People who are urging us to follow other countries that control the prices of medications seem uninterested in the fact that those countries depend on the United States to create new drugs, after they destroyed incentives to do so in their own countries.

Since it takes more than a decade to create a new drug, a politician can be elected president by hyping price controls on drugs, spend eight years in the White House, and be living in retirement before people start to notice that we no longer get the kinds of new medications that successively conquered deadly diseases in the past.

U.S. Workers Work Longer and Are More Productive Per Hour than European Workers

2007-09-04T10:40:00.000-04:00

From the AP:

American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.

They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States "leads the world in labor productivity."

The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609.

The productivity figure is found by dividing the country's gross domestic product by the number of people employed. The U.N. report is based on 2006 figures for many countries, or the most recent available.

Only part of the U.S. productivity growth, which has outpaced that of many other developed economies, can be explained by the longer hours Americans are putting in, the ILO said.

The U.S., according to the report, also beats all 27 nations in the European Union, Japan and Switzerland in the amount of wealth created per hour of work a second key measure of productivity.

Norway, which is not an EU member, generates the most output per working hour, $37.99, a figure inflated by the country's billions of dollars in oil exports and high prices for goods at home. The U.S. is second at $35.63, about a half dollar ahead of third-place France.

Seven years ago, French workers produced over a dollar more on average than their American counterparts. The country led the U.S. in hourly productivity from 1994 to 2003.

The U.S. employee put in an average 1,804 hours of work in 2006, the report said. That compared with 1,407.1 hours for the Norwegian worker and 1,564.4 for the French.

It pales, however, in comparison with the annual hours worked per person in Asia, where seven economies South Korea, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and Thailand surpassed 2,200 average hours per worker. But those countries had lower productivity rates.

America's increased productivity "has to do with the ICT (information and communication technologies) revolution, with the way the U.S. organizes companies, with the high level of competition in the country, with the extension of trade and investment abroad," said Jose Manuel Salazar, the ILO's head of employment.

Edwards Will MAKE You Go to the Dentist

2007-09-03T17:29:00.000-04:00

From the AP:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care...

"It requires that everybody get preventive care... If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem..."

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

Trouble Ahead for Rudy

2007-09-02T21:15:00.000-04:00

From the Weekly Standard:

So Giuliani is the Republican frontrunner--but he's also a highly vulnerable frontrunner. Polls show only a plurality of Republican voters understands that Giuliani is pro-choice in a pro-life party. As that number rises, there's a chance his support will decline...

The more serious vulnerability comes from the primary calendar. Giuliani's focus is on winning at least one contest prior to Florida's primary on January 29. Right now the target is South Carolina, whose primary currently is scheduled for January 19. If Giuliani pulls off wins in South Carolina and Florida, he'll be in a good position to take February 5 states like New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, and Delaware. And if that happens, he'll be in a commanding position to win Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and D.C., on February 12, and--well, by then, he'll have the nomination.

Here's the problem. As things stand, there will be two, perhaps three contests prior to South Carolina: Iowa, New Hampshire, and perhaps Michigan. At the moment Romney has double-digit leads in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to the average of polls available at RealClearPolitics. And Michigan--where polling indicates the race is wide open--is the state where Romney grew up and his father was a popular governor. A Romney trifecta, or even wins in two out of the three states, would bring huge amounts of free publicity and would greatly complicate Giuliani's South Carolina strategy, to say the least.

There's also the Thompson factor. Republican voters may respond positively to Thompson's laid-back charm, which contrasts sharply with Giuliani's politics of confrontation. Just ask the antiwar voter in Merrimack. The Giuliani campaign, looking to win pluralities if not majorities, predicts Thompson's entry will lower the number of votes necessary to win in any given state, thus boosting the mayor's chances by dividing social conservatives among many candidates. Thompson won't gain much more traction nationally, the Giuliani campaign predicts, but could emerge as a regional candidate who wins several southern states. But this would hurt Giuliani the most, as the opera-loving Yankee-fan's support in the South--bizarre as it may seem to some New Yorkers--is real. If Iowa goes to Huckabee, New Hampshire and Michigan go to Romney, and South Carolina goes to Thompson, what then?

The scenarios pile up. But one thing seems clear. Rudy Giuliani probably has to pull out a win in one of the pre-South Carolina states if he is to have a good shot at the nomination.

Jonathan Falwell on Religious Discrimination

2007-09-01T14:41:00.000-04:00

Jonathan Falwell, pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church, has this to say about a school's recent choice to discipline a girl for mentioning Jesus in her Valedictorian address (see other posts here and here:

At Liberty University, a sophomore student named Megan Chapman was told two years ago by Russell County (Ky.) High School officials that she could not mention God during her valedictorian speech. But 3,000 people, including all 191 graduates, joined her in repeating the Lord's Prayer before erupting in applause and sending a chilling message to the ACLU. Today, Megan plans to earn her law degree so that she can help students who face similar dilemmas because expressed their faith.

Across our nation, students face persecution because they wish to start a Bible club, utilize an image of Jesus in an art project, sing Christmas carols or offer personal expressions of faith.

The "wall of separation" metaphor has been used to silence people of faith, as was never intended.

I would like to note that President Thomas Jefferson, author of the "wall of separation" extract, was not a passionate advocate of silencing expressions of faith. In fact – and this is rarely mentioned – Jefferson, during his terms as vice president and president, attended church services that were held in the U.S. Capitol!

Newt Gingrich, in "Rediscovering God in America," wrote, "President Jefferson clearly understood that his 'wall of separation' would allow his attending church services in the U.S. Capitol without even the appearance of the state either establishing a national church or imposing a religious belief system on the people..."

Canadian Wait Times

2007-09-01T14:33:00.000-04:00

Bill Steigerwald on Canadian health care:

Average wait from time of referral to treatment by a specialist -- 17.8 weeks. Shortest waiting time -- oncology, 4.9 weeks. Longest waiting times -- orthopedic surgery, 40.3 weeks. Average wait to get an MRI -- 10.3 weeks nationally but 28 weeks in Newfoundland. Average wait time for a surgery considered "elective," like a hip replacement -- four or more months.

No wonder 40,000 Canadians come to the U.S. each year for medical care.

Evangelicals Fear Rudy

2007-09-01T14:15:00.000-04:00

From ABC:

Most evangelical leaders expressed alarm about Rudy Giuliani, an abortion-rights advocate and a moderate on social issues. They predicted that if he won the nomination, many evangelicals would sit out the election.

"If they take the abortion issue off the table [by nominating Giuliani], then other issues get oxygen like economic justice and the environment," said [Richard Land, a prominent leader in the Southern Baptist Convention]. "They will have given the Democratic candidate a license to go after evangelicals on those issues."

"If Giuliani wins the nomination, we're moving away," said [Tony Beam, the director of the Christian World View Center], who supports former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. "It's a sign that the party is no longer lining itself up in any way for the evangelical community."

Though Giuliani is the only declared candidate who seems to beats Clinton in the early polls, many evangelicals say they are waiting for a better choice and some are eagerly anticipating Fred Thompson's run.

"Once a social conservative is competitive against Hillary, the voters will drop off Giuliani like fleas off a dead dog," said Land. "At this moment, it's Fred Thompson's race to lose."

Unanimous Texas Supreme Court Affirms Seminaries' Religious Freedom

2007-09-01T14:08:00.000-04:00

Multiple Texas seminaries successfully challenged a state requirement that subjected each seminary's curriculum to government approval. A unanimous Texas Supreme Court (8-0) found that such restrictions "impermissibly intrudes upon religious freedom protected by the United States and Texas Constitutions."

The "47 Million Uninsured" Myth

2007-08-31T16:01:00.000-04:00

From Investor's Business Daily:

One of the shocking things in the Census Bureau's report this week on poverty and health care in America is that so many well-to-do people can easily afford health care, but choose to go without it.

The median household income, according to the data released this week, is $48,200. You might be surprised to discover that 38% of all the uninsured — that's almost 18 million people — have incomes higher than $50,000 a year. An astounding 20% of all uninsured have incomes over $75,000. These are people who can afford coverage.

Is it really a good idea to tax working people to subsidize those who refuse to pay for a necessity they could easily buy? The answer, of course, is no.

One other breakdown of the data is instructive... Drilling even deeper, one finds that fully 27% of all the uninsured in the U.S. — that's 12.6 million people — aren't even citizens...

By some estimates, another 20% or so is uninsured only for a couple of months a year. As TV journalist John Stossel recently noted, as many as a third of all those eligible for public health programs don't even bother to apply.

Once you whittle it down, you start to realize that the number of hard-core uninsured who are citizens is in fact fairly small — perhaps half the reported 47 million or less.

Yet it's not clear that shrinking the 47 million to zero would help all that much. Because the uninsured still get health care. They get it through Medicaid, the state-run, federally funded program for the indigent. They get care, by law, in any emergency room in the country.

No, that's not the best way to care for someone. But to say that people have "no access to health care," as we often hear, simply is a lie.

Moreover, it's not clear that those who go the emergency care route are worse off. A study by health economists Helen Levy of the University of Michigan and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago found "no evidence" that boosting coverage for all would be a cost-effective solution to improve overall health.

If there is a real problem here it is a tax code that encourages third-party payment of our health care bills, thus driving up costs. An estimated 86% of all health care purchases go through third parties. As anyone with a credit card understands, letting someone else buy something for you without any controls is an invitation to financial disaster.

Making consumers responsible for spending their own health care dollars — and letting them benefit when they control costs — is the real answer to our "uninsured problem."

It would lead to lower costs, and wider coverage — something universal care advocates promise, but can't deliver.

Ninth Circuit Upholds Schools Decision to Ban Christian Group

2007-08-31T15:54:00.000-04:00

From CitizenLink:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against a Christian club that is seeking to start up at a Seattle high school.

Truth Bible Club has been trying to gain recognition since 2001, but has been blocked because of its Christian code of conduct.

Officials at Kentridge High School have called the club discriminatory because its name excludes other religions, and its bylaws require voting members to sign a statement espousing the Bible...

Nate Kellum, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), pointed out the school's double standard: other clubs are granted the freedom to associate with whomever they please — including the school's Gay Straight Alliance.

“It’s really incredible that these groups are allowed to identify themselves according to membership," he said, "but Truth is forced to compromise who they are — they are forced to compromise their message.”

Kellum added that ADF is prepared to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if that’s what it takes for Truth Bible Club to gain recognition.

School Bans Tag

2007-08-31T15:48:00.000-04:00

An elementary school banned tag because some students didn't like being chased. According to the assistant principal, "Running games are still allowed as long as students don't chase each other." I hate hippies.

Fortune 100 Insurance Company Will Cover Abortion at any Time for any Reason

2007-08-31T15:37:00.000-04:00

AETNA, one of the countries largest insurance providers, "will pay for a woman to receive an abortion for any reason at any time during her pregnancy." Most of their policy-holders, are not given the option to exclude abortion coverage (only the largest policy-holders can), meaning that most people insured by AETNA are paying for abortion through their premiums.

Scientists Ask for Library of Human Achievements on Moon

2007-08-31T15:30:00.000-04:00

If we all die, at least the transformers will know about the iPhone.

Top Taliban Leader Killed

2007-08-31T15:28:00.000-04:00

"Mullah Berader, a top Taliban commander, was killed early this morning in a U.S. air strike in volatile Helmand province, a senior Afghan general tells ABC News."

Carrying Your Freedom of Religion Outside of Your Church

2007-08-31T15:12:00.000-04:00

Jon Sanders from the John Locke Foundation addresses a school's recent choice to discipline a girl for mentioning Jesus in her Valedictorian address (see my other post here):

The First Amendment protects individuals' rights of religion, speech, assembly, and petition. Religious freedom is the very first freedom it secures against government interference. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" (sealing citizens against the fear of a State Church), "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

It should not escape anyone's notice that the Free Exercise clause is immediately followed by the prohibition against Congress (and by application, all government) "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." These all proceed in logical order. A free individual is free to believe, follow, and express his faith, and it follows that he is free to speak and publish as he pleases, meet with whom he pleases, and not be hindered even from airing grievances with the government.

No "Separation Clause" there; that phrase hails from Pres. Thomas Jefferson's January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. Jefferson used the phrase "a wall of separation between Church & State" to describe what the First Amendment had accomplished, so that the Baptists need not fear state governments' declarations of days of prayer and fasting as abridging their religious rights. The First Amendment protects religious expression even by individuals in government, and even in public halls and government buildings – an idea Pres. Jefferson solidified by concluding his letter with a reference to "the common father and creator of man."

And this is true liberty – allowing all manner of religious expression. It is the cardinal opposite of the current teaching on the First Amendment as it pertains to schools and government; i.e., forbidding all manner of religious expression. That, of course, is tyranny.

Follow the coercion. If a teacher or administrator forces students, regardless of creed, to hew to his religious beliefs, then that would be an unconstitutional abridgment of their religious rights. If a teacher or administrator cited a personal belief in God -- or a personal disbelief in God -- without any response forced upon the students, then no First Amendment rights would have been violated. The former involves coercion, the latter doesn't.

Where was the coercion in Monument? Was it used against the audience hearing a student's declaration of belief in Jesus Christ and encouraging her listeners to join her? Were they prevented from leaving or forced to agree or pledge fealty? Or was it used against the student? Does the First Amendment protect government officials forcing a specific kind of speech – a specifically worded apology – from someone under their power?

Follow the coercion. That's where you can see the tyranny that our Founders sought to protect us against.

Extend the Tax Cuts

2007-08-31T14:55:00.000-04:00

From David Limbaugh:

Not only are federal revenues increasing; the deficits are decreasing...

The Heritage Foundation reports that the Office of Management and Budget's Mid-Session Review -- an update of its budget projections from February -- shows the 2003 tax cuts have boosted economic activity by increasing incentives to work, save and invest. The deficit will decrease from $248 billion last year to $205 billion this year. "One hundred percent of the budget deficit's decline is caused by revenue increases, and none by spending cuts. Lawmakers have not cut one dollar from the budget."

And get this: "At 1.5 percent of GDP, the budget deficit is now lower than it was in 24 of the past 30 years." President Bush will have fulfilled his promise to cut the budget in half despite spending on the war, Katrina and even entitlements...

Mounting evidence contradicts the Democrats' shameless efforts to downplay the Bush economy by claiming the gap between the "haves" and "have nots" is growing.

Heritage's Rea. S. Hederman Jr. notes that the U.S. Census Bureau's annual report shows that in 2006, the growing economy increased the median family income and lowered the poverty rate, and income inequality did not statistically increase. This is without even factoring in tax transfer payments from upper to lower income groups.

Hederman concludes, "The Census report refutes the notion that 'the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.' Instead, all quintiles are growing wealthier with more money income."

Democrats will not be deterred by these reports and, like their colleague John Edwards, will cite Census data that there are 36.5 million poor Americans who "do not have enough money for the food, shelter and clothing they need." But here again, closer inspection paints a different picture.

Heritage's Robert Rector documents that "if poverty means (as Edwards claims) a lack of nutritious food, adequate warm housing and clothing, then very few of the 36.5 million people identified as 'poor' by Census are, in fact, poor."

Bad Technology, Bad

2007-08-30T12:11:00.000-04:00

Cell phones will KILL US ALL!!!!!

Don't Raise Gas Taxes

2007-08-30T11:53:00.000-04:00

David Strom at Townhall:

For most of us, life is pretty simple. If there isn't enough of something and prices skyrocket, the last thing we would think of is limiting the supplies even more and raising prices by slapping even higher taxes on it.

Obviously, if you think this way, you aren't a politician.

Politicians look at the current oil price crunch as an opportunity—but not to increase Domestic exploration, promote free-market investment in alternative fuels and research, or let the market work as it should.

No, this is of course an opportunity to raise taxes on oil companies and oil refiners-who will have to pass these costs on to you in higher prices. Not only will this raise prices even higher, but it will ensure our dependence upon foreign oil by limiting domestic oil exploration in the United States.

Price too high already? Congress and many State Legislators want to increases prices even more.

Most people don't know this, but the United States has huge oil reserves that are off-limits to oil exploration and production. Politicians may blather all they want about energy independence, but no amount of Ethanol or "biofuels" will come close to meeting Americans' energy needs in the foreseeable future. Even if we required all fuel in the United States to be 10% Ethanol- an almost impossible goal to meet while keeping our food supply (and the world's) cheap and abundant,--90% of the fuel we would consume would still be fossil fuels. And that is just for cars!

America has become and is dependent so heavily on foreign sources of energy because politicians and radical environmentalists have stopped every serious attempt to produce more energy in America. As supplies get tighter and out of our control, prices skyrocket. And no wind farm alone will reverse this trend anytime soon.

We can't build nuclear power plants to supply electricity, so natural gas prices go through the roof as more of it gets used to produce electricity. We can't drill for oil in Alaska, or off the coasts, or just about anywhere these days (unless we started decades ago), so we increasingly turn to foreign sources to supply our needs.

And who are these "trading partners" we depend upon? All those fine friends we have in the Middle East such as Iran, our good partner Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and of course the Saudi's who are straddling the fence in the war on terror to keep their creaky regime alive.

So what are liberals proposing? Limiting oil exploration here in the United States, and slapping huge tax increases on oil companies. Honestly, that is the energy policy they propose.

Oh, don't worry. Those new taxes will go to subsidize new and exciting fuels like Ethanol (Europe studies the possibility of requiring more Ethanol in their gas, and discovered there isn't enough cropland to supply even their energy needs, no less minor matters such as feeding people). And don't forget pie-in-the-sky unproven technologies and "renewables" that may someday be part of the energy mix, but will do next to nothing to power the economy of today.

The facts are simple: the American economy will take decades to switch from fossil fuels to other sources of energy. We have an economy and a power grid that keeps us warm, fed, our houses lit, and allows us to get back and forth to work, school, day care, and all our destinations. We aren’t about to all stop using cars next year.

Americans deserve better than this from their leaders. For the next decade or three, oil will power our economy. The resources are there to be used, and the only barrier to more energy independence for Americans is American politicians.

Does anybody really still believe that government can successfully tax, regulate, subsidize, and mandate our way to continued prosperity? That's what Congress and many State Legislatures and Governors are promising, and it is a fool who believes them.

Government has a proven track record of backing the wrong technologies (solar was supposed to be supplying our homes with electricity by now if you believed Jimmy Carter, and fusion is forever 20 years from being the source of energy of the future). Government is just not the best innovator. Name the Government equivalent of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates. It is innovators like these guys who will bring the next big thing to market, not Congress.

Get government out of the way. Use American oil reserves that are just waiting to be drilled, and free the market to work as it should. Modern drilling technology is environmentally friendly, safe, and a heck of a lot more reliable than promises from politicians, whether they be the Presidents of Iran and Venezuela, the King of Saudi Arabia, or your local Congressman.

At Least They're Consistent

2007-08-29T12:42:00.000-04:00

Giving up No Matter What

Valedictorian Forced to Apologize for Mentioning Jesus in Address

2007-08-29T12:30:00.000-04:00

Liberty Counsel press release:

Today, Liberty Counsel filed suit against Lewis Palmer School District on behalf of Erica Corder, a high school valedictorian who was forced to publicly apologize for sharing her Christian faith at graduation... During her 30-second message Erica spoke about her faith in Jesus Christ. Afterwards, she was escorted to see the assistant principal, who said she would not receive her diploma because of the speech she had given...

He said that she could only receive her diploma if she apologized to the school community. Erica prepared a statement saying the message was her own and was not endorsed by the principal. Brewer insisted that she include the words: "I realize that, had I asked ahead of time, I would not have been allowed to say what I did." Erica complied because she feared the school would withhold her diploma. She was also afraid that the school would put disciplinary notes in her file and would generate negative publicity, which could prevent her from becoming a school teacher. Principal Brewer sent out Erica's message in an e-mail to the entire high school community. Soon after, Erica received her diploma...

Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: "Valedictorians have the right to express their religious viewpoints while at the graduation podium. School officials have no right to threaten young graduates that their diplomas will be withheld. The school district's action in forcing Erica Corder to write an e-mail apologizing to the community for exercising her right to free speech is shocking."

Hat Tip: Cassy Fiano
Hat Tip 2: Stop the ACLU

Stossel Takes on Studies that Grade US Poorly on Health Care

2007-08-29T12:13:00.000-04:00

From Stossel:

Insured Americans have almost immediate access to cutting-edge procedures performed by some of the best-trained doctors. It's why our outcomes for such diseases as prostate and breast cancer are markedly better than in Canada's and Britain's socialized systems...

As I've noted previously, the problem of the 45 million uninsured is exaggerated. The statistics represent a snapshot, and many uninsured people are reinsured in less than a year. The same people are not uninsured year in and year out.

The Commonwealth Fund study divides "quality" into right (effective) care, safe care, coordinated care and patient-centered care. The U.S. placed fifth or sixth in the last three.

But where did the U.S. place in "right care"? First.

"Right care" is the most important criterion because it includes things like how often women have mammograms and whether diabetics get proper treatment.

...The study's authors also consider having high administrative costs and spending the largest share of GDP on health care worse than having the highest share of patients who wait four months or more for surgery. This seems designed to make the U.S. look bad.

Stossel on the same topic last week:

[I]t strains credulity to hear that the U.S. ranks far from the top. Sick people come to the United States for treatment. When was the last time you heard of someone leaving this country to get medical care? The last famous case I can remember is Rock Hudson, who went to France in the 1980s to seek treatment for AIDS.
So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.

The WHO judged a country's quality of health on life expectancy. But that's a lousy measure of a health-care system. Many things that cause premature death have nothing do with medical care. We have far more fatal transportation accidents than other countries. That's not a health-care problem.

Similarly, our homicide rate is 10 times higher than in the U.K., eight times higher than in France, and five times greater than in Canada.

When you adjust for these "fatal injury" rates, U.S. life expectancy is actually higher than in nearly every other industrialized nation.

Diet and lack of exercise also bring down average life expectancy.

Another reason the U.S. didn't score high in the WHO rankings is that we are less socialistic than other nations. What has that got to do with the quality of health care? For the authors of the study, it's crucial. The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how "fairly" health care of any quality is "distributed." The problem here is obvious. By that criterion, a country with high-quality care overall but "unequal distribution" would rank below a country with lower quality care but equal distribution.

It's when this so-called "fairness," a highly subjective standard, is factored in that the U.S. scores go south.

The U.S. ranking is influenced heavily by the number of people -- 45 million -- without medical insurance. As I reported in previous columns, our government aggravates that problem by making insurance artificially expensive with, for example, mandates for coverage that many people would not choose and forbidding us to buy policies from companies in another state.

Even with these interventions, the 45 million figure is misleading. Thirty-seven percent of that group live in households making more than $50,000 a year, says the U.S. Census Bureau. Nineteen percent are in households making more than $75,000 a year; 20 percent are not citizens, and 33 percent are eligible for existing government programs but are not enrolled.

Only 18% Approval Rating for Congress

2007-08-27T11:27:00.000-04:00

Congress' approval rating has dropped to 18%, tying the historic low-point of the 1992 check-bouncing scandal.

Driving Blind

2007-08-26T22:49:00.000-04:00

Did you know even BLIND people drink & drive? Well, as long you have your friends in the car directing you, what can go wrong?

Success at the Border

2007-08-12T09:02:00.000-04:00

I hope it continues to get better:

U.S. border agents detained 55,545 illegal migrants jumping over border walls, walking through the desert and swimming across the Rio Grande River between October and June. That's down 38 percent for the entire border compared to the same period a year before.

U.S. and Mexican officials say increased border security, including 6,000 National Guard troops, remote surveillance technology and drone planes, have thwarted smugglers who had succeeded for years at beating the system...

Deportations also are up for illegal immigrants who have lived in the States for years. Some are caught for minor infractions like a burned-out headlight. Others are rounded up in workplace raids that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush has vowed to intensify.

The new measures announced Friday will force employers to fire anyone who can't prove their Social Security numbers are legitimate. U.S. employers are already complaining, especially those in agriculture, where most workers are believed to be working with false documents...

What Does the Recent Market Shake-up mean?

2007-08-12T08:43:00.000-04:00

Adam Lashinsky, senior writer at Fortune, has this:

And it's not as though the U.S. economic engine is sputtering. Job creation is good, corporate profits are solid, and, at least in Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke's opinion, inflation remains a concern -- a sign that the economy is growing, not contracting. This is why, despite the daily drumbeat of worrisome news such as the travails of the brokerage house Bear Stearns, which has been burned by bad investments in ultra-complex mortgage products, the U.S. stock markets have been relatively resilient. Yes, they have been volatile, signaling uncertainty (see below), but most remain up for the year....

But Greenspan also created the permissive climate that led to no-documentation, no-money-down, no-common-sense home mortgages. He failed to slam on the brakes when giddy lenders and home builders were catering to house-flipping speculators and aspiring homeowners borrowing beyond their means. In fact, in 2004, he suggested that people would be better off with adjustable-rate mortgages -- just as interest rates were poised to rise.

Greenspan needed to send a signal of moderation. That's why Bernanke is reluctant to lower rates. Tougher credit is a good thing now. It's helping the housing market get back into equilibrium...

Be wary of attempts to anthropomorphize the capital markets. Talking heads often blather on about what "Mr. Market" likes or dislikes, especially uncertainty. In fact, the market is a heartless collection of the best-guess expectations of investors. Certainty and risk are opposites. Good investors, in fact, love uncertainty. The whole notion of buying an undervalued stock stems from an investor's presumption of value that others are missing. If something is certain -- say, the rate on a six-month certificate of deposit -- there's no disagreement over its value and no upside on its price. I'm completely certain of this.

Democrats Love Their Pork

2007-08-10T12:18:00.000-04:00

Club For Growth exposes Congress For Pork:

Even though the Democratic majority vowed to return Congress to a path of fiscal responsibility, the 2008 appropriations bills were stuffed with wasteful pork projects. While Representatives John Campbell, Jeff Flake, Jeb Hensarling, Scott Garrett, and David Obey (1 amendment) offered 50 amendments to strip outrageous pork projects from the appropriations bills, only one amendment, offered by Rep. Jeff Flake, passed.

The Club for Growth has compiled a RePORK Card of all members' votes on all 50 anti-pork amendments. "Taxpayers have a right to know which congressmen stand up for them and which stand up for the special interests," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. "Unfortunately, the Club for Growth RePORK Card shows that most congressmen care more about lining their buddies' pockets than they care about protecting American taxpayers."

Some interesting numbers to consider:

* Sixteen congressmen scored a perfect 100%, voting for all 50 anti-pork amendments. They are all Republicans.
* The average Republican score was 43%. The average Democratic score was 2%...
* Kudos to Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) who scored an admirable 98%-the only Democrat to score above 20%...
* 105 congressmen scored an embarrassing 0%, voting against every single amendment. The Pork Hall of Shame includes 81 Democrats and 24 Republicans...

Some of the targeted pork projects this year include:

* $2 million for a "Paint Shield for Protecting People from Microbial Threats," requested by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH-11). Rep. John Campbell challenged Murtha to demonstrate that the $2 million earmark would be effective and that it had been put up for a competitive bid. Murtha could not. Amendment failed, 91-317.
* $1 million to the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, requested by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). No congressional member could confirm the existence of the alleged Center. Amendment failed, 98-326.
* $2 million to establish the "Rangel Center for Public Service" at City College of New York, requested by none other then Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY). Amendment failed, 108-316.
* $34 million for the Alaska Native Education Equity program, requested by Rep. Don Young (R-AK). When Scott Garrett challenged Young's earmark, Rep. Young declared, "You want my money, my money!" Amendment failed, 74-352.
* $50,000 for the National Mule and Packers Museum in California, requested by Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA). Amendment failed, 69-352.
* $100,000 for renovation of the Fire Fighters Hall in Columbus, Ohio, requested by Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH). Amendment failed, 66-364.
* $100,000 for the renovation of St. Joseph College's theatre in Indiana, requested by Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-IN). Amendment failed, 97-328.

Iran Arms Our Enemies & Democrats See the Light

2007-08-09T20:36:00.000-04:00

Democrats praise military progress in Iraq, but express caution about political failures:

One senator said U.S. troops are routing out al-Qaida in parts of Iraq. Another insisted President Bush's plan to increase troops has caused tactical momentum.

One even went so far on Wednesday as to say the argument could be made that U.S. troops are winning.

These are not Bush-backing GOP die-hards, but Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Bob Casey and Jack Reed. Even Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee, said progress was being made by soldiers.

The suggestions by them and other Democrats in recent days that at least a portion of Bush's strategy in Iraq is working is somewhat surprising, considering the bitter exchanges on Capitol Hill between the Democratic majority and Republicans and Bush. Democrats have long said Bush's policies have been nothing more than a complete failure...

Reed, a Rhode Island senator who visited Iraq last month, said there's been tactical momentum, but it "has yet to translate itself into real political momentum, which is the key, I think, to progress."

Durbin, an Illinois senator who is traveling this week with Pennsylvania Sen. Casey, told CNN on Wednesday that "naturally" troops are routing out al-Qaida in parts of Iraq, but then explained there's no evidence of the government in the areas.

In a conference call with reporters, Casey said one could make a good argument that U.S. troops have won the war, then accused Iraqi politicians and the Bush administration of not matching the intensity of the troops.

"The troops have met every assignment, they've beaten the odds time and again, they've done everything we've asked them to," Casey said.

California Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney had a different take. After visiting Iraq last month and visiting with Petraeus, McNerney said signs of progress led him to decide he'll be a little more flexible about when troops should be brought home.

"I'm more willing to work with finding a way forward to accommodate what the generals are saying," McNerney said.

Iran-supplied bombs are killing our troops (from the NY Times) (Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt):

Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

The devices, known as explosively formed penetrators, were used to carry out 99 attacks last month and accounted for a third of the combat deaths suffered by the American-led forces, according to American military officials...

Such bombs, which fire a semi-molten copper slug that can penetrate the armor on a Humvee and are among the deadliest weapons used against American forces, are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants. American intelligence officials have presented evidence that the weapons come from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, although Tehran has repeatedly denied providing lethal assistance to Iraqi groups...

In focusing on Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the American goal is to reduce the number of car bombings and spectacular suicide attacks that have aggravated sectarian tensions, encouraged Shiite retaliation and undermined efforts at political reconciliation...

Though explosively formed penetrators account for a small fraction of roadside bomb attacks in Iraq, they cause a disproportionately large number of casualties.

Of the 69 members of the American-led forces killed in action in July, the lowest toll in months, 23 died as a result of attacks with the devices, according to data supplied by General Odierno's [the No. 2 commander in Iraq] command. Of the 614 allied troops who were wounded that month, 89 were hit in penetrator attacks...

American intelligence says that its report of Iranian involvement is based on a technical analysis of exploded and captured devices, interrogations of Shiite militants, the interdiction of trucks near Iran's border with Iraq and parallels between the use of the weapons in Iran and in southern Lebanon by Hezbollah...

According to American military data, penetrator attacks accounted for 18 percent of combat deaths of Americans and allied troops in Iraq in the last quarter of 2006. The number of such attacks declined in January, and some American officials thought at that time that this might be a response to their efforts to publicly highlight the allegations of an Iranian role.

But in recent months such attacks have risen steadily.

The July figure is roughly double the number for January. The total for July is also 50 percent higher than in April, when there were 65 penetrator attacks, according to American military officials.

Many of the penetrators faced by American forces are difficult to counter. Because they fire from the side of the road, the militants do not need to dig a hole to plant them, making them well suited for urban use. Because they are set off by a passive infrared sensor, they cannot be thwarted by electronic jamming.

General Odierno said Iran was increasing its support to Shiite militants in Iraq to step up the military pressure on the United States at a time when the Congress is debating whether to withdraw American troops.

''I think it is because the Iranians are surging support to the special groups,'' he said, referring to the American name for Iranian-backed cells here. ''Over the last three to four months, it has picked up in terms of equipment, training and dollars.''

''I think they want to influence the decision potentially coming up in September,'' he added.

General Odierno said Iranians had also provided Shiite groups with 107-millimeter rockets and the launchers for firing them, as well as 122-millimeter mortars.

American forces, he said, recently thwarted an attack at a military base used by forces from the Third Infantry Division. Fifty launchers equipped with rockets were discovered within range of the facility and struck by allied aircraft. Serial numbers taken from the rocket launchers, he said, indicated that they were made in Iran.

Iranian and American diplomats held talks in Baghdad on Monday on security in Iraq. Ryan C. Crocker, the American envoy in Iraq who led the discussions for the United States, said there had been ''an escalation, not a de-escalation'' of Iran's support for militias in Iraq since an earlier May meeting...

Oil Roundup: CO2 Hypocrisy, Domestic Drilling, Ethanol

2007-08-07T23:06:00.000-04:00

The Rolling Stone (apparently also part of the vast right wing conspiracy) on ethanol:

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn...

This is not just hype -- it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.

So why bother? Because the whole point of corn ethanol is not to solve America's energy crisis, but to generate one of the great political boondoggles of our time...

With the first vote to be held in Iowa, the largest corn-producing state in the nation, former skeptics like Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain now pay tribute to the wonders of ethanol...

But as a gasoline substitute, ethanol has big problems: Its energy density is one-third less than gasoline, which means you have to burn more of it to get the same amount of power. It also has a nasty tendency to absorb water, so it can't be transported in existing pipelines and must be distributed by truck or rail, which is tremendously inefficient.

Nor is all ethanol created equal. In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 -- that is, when you add up the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That's a better deal than gasoline, which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 - making it practically worthless as an energy source...

The most seductive myth about ethanol is that it will free us from our dependence on foreign oil. But even if ethanol producers manage to hit the mandate of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, that will replace a paltry 1.5 million barrels of oil per day -- only seven percent of current oil needs. Even if the entire U.S. corn crop were used to make ethanol, the fuel would replace only twelve percent of current gasoline use.

Another misconception is that ethanol is green. In fact, corn production depends on huge amounts of fossil fuel -- not just the diesel needed to plow fields and transport crops, but also the vast quantities of natural gas used to produce fertilizers. What's more, when corn ethanol is burned in vehicles, it is as dirty as conventional gasoline and does little to solve global warming: E85 reduces carbon dioxide emissions by a modest fifteen percent at best, while fueling the destruction of tropical forests.

But the biggest problem with ethanol is that it steals vast swaths of land that might be better used for growing food... University of Minnesota economists C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer point out that filling the gas tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires more than 450 pounds of corn -- roughly enough calories to feed one person for a year.

Thanks in large part to the ethanol craze, the price of beef, poultry and pork in the United States rose more than three percent during the first five months of this year. .. And since America provides two-thirds of all global corn exports, the impact is being felt around the world. In Mexico, tortilla prices have jumped sixty percent, leading to food riots. In Europe, butter prices have spiked forty percent, and pork prices in China are up twenty percent. By 2025, according to Runge and Senauer, rising food prices caused by the demand for ethanol and other biofuels could cause as many as 600 million more people to go hungry worldwide.

Despite the serious drawbacks of ethanol, some technological visionaries believe that the fuel can be done right... Like other high-tech ethanol evangelists, [Vinod] Khosla[, a pioneering venture capitalist in Silicon Valley,] imagines a future in which such so-called "energy crops" are fed into giant refineries that use genetically engineered enzymes to break down the cellulose in plants and create fuel for a fraction of the cost of today's gasoline.

Unfortunately, no commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants exist today... And even if the engineering hurdles can be overcome, there's still the problem of land use: According to oil-industry engineer [Robert] Rapier, [who has spent years studying cellulosic ethanol,] replacing fifty percent of our current gasoline consumption with cellulosic ethanol would consume thirteen percent of the land in the United States - about seven times the land currently utilized for corn production.

Increasing the production of cellulosic ethanol will also require solving huge logistical problems, including delivering vast quantities of feedstock to production plants. According to one plant manager in the Midwest, fueling an ethanol plant with switchgrass would require delivering a semi-truckload of the grass every six minutes, twenty-four hours a day...

[B]iofuels are, at best, a huge gamble. They may help cushion the fall when cheap oil vanishes, but if we rely on ethanol to save the day, we could soon find ourselves forced to make a choice between feeding our SUVs and feeding children in the Third World. And we all know how that decision will go.

On CO2 hypocrisy:

Barbra Streisand... [i]s a big backer of environmental causes, and even offers tips for low-carbon living on her personal website, she was busted by the British press for touring in a private jet with a massive entourage that required 13 trucks and vast amounts of laundry—in other words, for sponsoring a traveling CO2 extravaganza...

Take Laurie David, soon-to-be-ex-wife of Seinfeld co-creator Larry, and producer of An Inconvenient Truth and other save-the-earth extravaganzas. Though she boasts about using recycled toilet paper and compact fluorescent lightbulbs, David has been pilloried for, among other excesses, flying on private jets... Apparently, when you're worth a few hundred million dollars, being asked to refrain from the most carbon-intensive indulgence known to man qualifies as "holding people to a standard they cannot meet..."

Even Leonardo DiCaprio, generally regarded as a serious sort not given to excessive grandstanding, came up short in May when quizzed about his travel habits: "I try as often as possible to fly commercially," he offered. "As often as possible"—as though there are times it's simply impossible to avoid flying private. As though forces beyond his control occasionally abduct Leo, drug him, and drag his limp body onto an executive jet.

It's always galling to be exhorted to curb your consumption by people who are living the poshest lifestyle imaginable. But the problem here goes beyond aesthetics. Eco-hypocrites undercut the very message they're trying to peddle. How desperate could the planet's plight be if the people who present themselves as most concerned about it consider flying first-class commercial an unacceptable sacrifice? Why should anyone bother to carpool when Streisand requires her own convoy? Or forgo A/C for a fan when Edwards is chilling in the largest house in his county?

...Celebrities who say they have the power to change people's minds are right... But without real, visible commitment to back up all the talk, it's just a fashionable pose—and we all know what happens with those... [T]hey also need to be reminded—by their allies as well as their adversaries—that actions still speak louder than words.

Pete du Pont, former Delaware governor, on domestic drilling:

America's domestic oil production is declining, importation of oil is rising, and gasoline is more expensive. The government's Energy Information Administration reports that U.S. crude oil field production declined to 1.9 billion barrels in 2005 from 3.5 billion in 1970, and the share of our oil that is imported has increased to 60% from 27% in 1985. The price of gasoline has risen to $3.02 this month from $2 in today's dollars in 1985.

The U.S. has substantial supplies of oil and gas that could be accessed if lawmakers would allow it, but they frequently don't. A National Petroleum Council study released last week reports that 40 billion barrels of America's "recoverable oil reserves are off limits or are subject to significant lease restrictions"--half inshore and half offshore--and similar restrictions apply to more than 250 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. (We consume about 22 trillion cubic feet a year.)

Access to the 10 billion barrels of oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve has been prohibited for decades. Some 85 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas exist on the Outer Continental Shelf, but a month ago the House again, as it did last year, voted down an amendment that would have allowed the expansion of coastal drilling for oil and natural gas. All of which leaves the U.S. as the only nation in the world that has forbidden access to significant sources of domestic energy supplies...

On the other side of the coin is the need for more refineries to produce the oil products we need: gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and plastics. Twenty-five years ago we had 254 oil refineries; today there are just 145 (although they are a bit more productive) since we haven't built a new refinery in America for 30 years.

Then there is nuclear power, America's largest pollution-free source of energy... As President Bush pointed out two weeks ago, "Our country has not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s..." But new nuclear plants have been continually opposed by the liberal establishment that now controls Congress...

[E]thanol is not a good gasoline substitute. It takes some seven gallons of oil to produce eight gallons of corn-based ethanol--diesel fuel for the tractors to plant and harvest the corn, pesticides to protect it, and fuel for trucks to transport the ethanol around the country. So there is not much energy gain, nor with all the gasoline involved does it help with global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. And ethanol yields one-third less energy per gallon than gasoline, so that mileage per gallon of ethanol-blended auto fuel is less than gasoline mileage...

Then there are all the other energy ideas Congress wishes to adopt--better energy efficiency for washers, driers, boilers, motors and refrigerators; greater fuel efficiency for cars; and more use of wind, solar and geothermal power generation. Good ideas all--especially more fuel-efficient automobiles--but not substantively or immediately very helpful in meeting the challenge of increasing America's energy supplies to keep our economy, jobs and prosperity increasing.

To do that we must build many more nuclear power plants and increase our drilling for oil and gas... That is just the opposite of the current congressional policy of reducing oil use, blocking access to existing domestic oil reserves, not increasing nuclear power generation, and touting ethanol as another subsidy for farmers.

Economy Ain't Too Shabby

2007-08-07T22:43:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE: Brian S. Wesbury, chief economist for First Trust Portfolios, points out, "The economy moderated last year, but the unemployment rate is still just 4.6%, almost a full percentage point below its 20-year average of 5.5%. Since the jobless rate first fell below 5% in December 2005, average hourly earnings have expanded at a 4.1% annualized rate--as good as any year during the late 1990s. And recent research shows that incomes for the bottom fifth of wage earners have risen faster in the past few decades than incomes at the top, hard work is being rewarded more by performance pay, and income volatility is no worse today than it was in the 1980s and 1990s."]

Lest you forget, the economy ain't too shabby.

Some economic news came out of Washington this week which should give every Democratic candidate for President reason to pause. What this news bulletin shows is that Dems can no longer repeat the tired Clinton Era mantra, "It's the economy, stupid."

The Commerce Department is reporting that the gross domestic product—the gold standard of economic barometers—grew at a respectable rate of 3.4 percent in the 2nd quarter of the year. Even the mainstream news media admit that this is a figure that President Bush can be proud of.

The Associated Press reported that the GDP was helped in part by the fact that businesses—the real engine that drives our economy—were able to sell a greater number of goods overseas. And, even though we've been hearing constant news flashes about the housing slump, housing troubles did not have the adverse effect on the economy that they have had in previous quarters. On the heels of this economic breakthrough, President Bush stated, "I want the American people to take a good look at this economy of ours. It's an economy that is large, flexible and resilient."

Of course, the naysayers still aren't satisfied. Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, was quoted as saying that the economic rebound was "a temporary oasis." I suppose one can consider life itself a temporary oasis from death, but, really, would it kill the Democrats to admit that the President might have done something right, as far as the economy is concerned? Meanwhile, while noting that Wall Street investors need to exercise caution, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson insisted the economy's fundamentals are solid... Analysts are reporting that businesses appear to be regaining their confidence, boosting inventories, and expanding exports...

Adult Stem Cells Treat Heart Disease

2007-08-07T22:28:00.000-04:00

Adult stems cells offers successful treatments for patients suffering with heart disease.

Heart disease, according to the figures from The National Center for Health Statistics 2005 data, affects some 25.6 million Americans. It was then, and remains, the biggest killer of U.S. citizens, with over 650,000 dying every year. Until now as patients deteriorated and medication or surgery on their heart failed to help they were faced with only two options, a heart transplant or death.

Theravitae, an international biotechnology company based in Thailand, has shown the world that it can provide a realistic third option that offers new hope to heart failure patients - treatment with their own adult stem cells. Their patented therapy, VesCell, uses a mere half pint of the patient's own blood from which millions of adult stem cells are grown then implanted into the damaged heart muscle or occluded heart blood vessels. Most of their 250 treated patients---70%+--- have attested to the fact that their lives have been improved and lengthened by this technique which is performed by cardiac specialists in world-class hospitals in Thailand...

The body has natural ways of healing itself and the cardiovascular system is no exception. Angiogenic Cell Precursors (ACPs) originate in bone marrow and then circulate in the blood vessels. To manufacture VesCell, TheraVitae expands a small number of ACPs harvested from about 250cc of blood into a therapeutic quantity. VesCell is injected either through a coronary artery via catheter, or during surgery, directly into the heart muscle.

A key aspect of VesCell therapy is the advanced cell isolation and expansion technique that allows for the ACPs to be harvested from blood collected in a procedure similar to a common blood donation. VesCell uses a patient's own adult stem cells to treat Heart Disease and PAD and is a viable therapeutic possibility for heart or PAD patients without any other treatment option.

Rudy Can't Win

2007-08-07T21:24:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE: Rasmussen finds that Democratic Presidential Candidates have no advantage over the GOP hopefuls on Iraq or restoring the nation's optimism. Although Democrats have an edge on the environment, the GOP is preferred when it comes to immigration or the economy.]

[Sidenote: JivinJehoshaphat explains why defending partial-birth abortion ain't easy.]

David Limbaugh explains why Rudy can't win the primary or the general election:

For the longest time I have believed -- and continue to believe -- Republicans will not nominate a social liberal as their presidential candidate, but even more so that if they do, they will severely handicap themselves in the general election...

Moderate and liberal Republicans have long argued that the key to GOP success is to "moderate" its positions, which means adopting social liberalism to appeal to the so-called broad center.

But the most successful Republican coalition in ages was that built by Ronald Reagan, a pro-active, unapologetic economic, social and foreign policy conservative. He did not build his coalition by diluting his principles, but by articulating them without compromise or filter.

For those who might have forgotten, the mainstream media, which was immeasurably more powerful at the time of Reagan's rise, tagged Reagan as a dangerous extremist. They said his tax-cutting policies would bankrupt America, his social policies would send women to the back allies for abortions, and he would ignite World War III with the Soviet Union.

The GOP social liberal who urges the party leftward in the name of sound strategic analysis is allowing his own policy preferences to skew his thinking. For if he truly understood history or the pulse of the conservative movement that still drives the GOP, he would see the folly of his prescriptions for the party.

Those GOP "moderates" can't seem to get past their own belief that pro-life conservatives are indeed extreme and so assume it will be easy for Democrats to paint them as such in the election. But most Americans are less likely to view those defending innocent life as extreme than those defending its extermination in the name of women's rights. They are less apt to consider the championship of traditional marriage as extreme than forcing society to sanction, even celebrate homosexual unions.

Interestingly, Democrats instinctively understand the awesome power of social conservatives -- they call them values voters. That's why for the last three or four years we've seen stories every other month or so about the Democrats' "new" efforts to woo values voters. That's also among the reasons those same Democrats have made such a concerted effort to shut out Christian conservatives from the public square under the cover of a church-state separation crusade.

No matter what the polls now show, I believe social liberals like Rudy Giuliani are long shots for the GOP nomination. Even promises to appoint originalist judges won't likely mollify the conservative base, because if you are pro-choice, it's doubtful you strongly believe Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided or that you'll be passionate about overturning it. You'll also be less inclined to disagree with the left's expansive view of the Establishment Clause that effectively suppresses religious liberty in the name of protecting it...

To argue it's more important to have a strong leader in the war on terror than one who will stand up for traditional values is to present a false choice. There are a number of capable, credible and electable candidates out there who are "right" across the spectrum.

Rudy & Adoptions

2007-08-07T18:45:00.000-04:00

FactCheck.org investigated Rudy's boasted adoption record. He claims that he dramatically increased adoptions (65-70%) as NYC's mayor. As it turns out, this statement is about as honest as Bush claiming to have been an extremely popular president. Just as Bush's job approval had some high years, the adoption rate had some good years under Rudy. But if Rudy were honest he'd admit the adoption rate had been increasing for seven years prior to his taking office. Indeed, the adoption rate peaked in his third year, then declined in five out of his last six years in office. When he left, the adoption rate was slightly above what it was when he arived.

There is no dispute about the figures — only about how Giuliani portrays them. We work from the same official figures on adoption he does, which are shown in this graph. We also agree that the proper figures to use are those covering fiscal years, as shown here, rather than calendar years. And we agree that for purposes of this discussion the "Giuliani years" (shown in red) started with fiscal 1995, which began six months after the mayor took office but coincided with the first city budget for which he was responsible. By the same token we agree the Giuliani years ended with fiscal 2002, which began six months before he left office.

Based on these figures, Giuliani at the Republican debate of May 3 made the statement that adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent "when I was mayor." (Giuliani: "When I was mayor of New York City, I encouraged adoptions. Adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent; abortions went down 16 percent.")

This raises the question, "Up, compared with what?" It's true that yearly figures for adoptions peaked at 73 percent over his predecessor's best year, but he's not resting his claim on that. His campaign insists the 65 to 70 percent figure is a valid reflection of the record of his entire tenure — if the figures are viewed in the proper way. But viewed just about any other way, Giuliani's overall record on adoption numbers isn't as good.

A campaign official notes, quite correctly, that the total number of adoptions was 66.5 percent higher when comparing Giuliani's last six fiscal years (1996 - 2002) with the six fiscal years preceding. Why those years? The reason given to us is that the former mayor was referring to his creation of the Administration for Children's Services, an agency to protect children and encourage adoption, in 1996. The official said it is "a much more responsible statistical measurement" to compare the six years following creation of ACS with the six years that went before.

Other True Statements

That, however, doesn't give an accurate impression of what happened. It is true that there were 66.5 percent more adoptions in his last six years than there were in the preceding six, but consider this: The following statements also are true, based on the official figures that both we and the Giuliani camp accept:

* Adoptions more than doubled in the five years prior to Giuliani.
* Adoptions had already increased by 257 percent in the seven years
prior to creation of ACS, the agency Giuliani credits with increasing adoptions.
* Adoptions initially peaked, then declined by 26 percent between
the time ACS was created and the end of Giuliani's tenure.
* Adoptions declined in five of the mayor's last six years.
* Adoptions have continued to decline thereafter, and in the most recent fiscal year were half what they were when ACS was created.

We take no position on whether Giuliani or ACS had one iota of influence on adoptions, for good or bad. All sorts of influences come into play that have nothing to do with government. However, the very figures Giuliani is using show that adoptions were increasing long before ACS was created, and they also show adoptions started going downhill soon after. Giuliani's cherry-picked time periods turn that fact on its head.

Official Puffery

He could have been even more misleading. We give the mayor credit for not repeating the official puffery that the ACS itself had peddled.

The agency once claimed that adoptions had "almost doubled" in the same period to which Giuliani refers. Even if the choice of time spans wasn't itself misleading, claiming that a 66.5 percent increase is "almost" 100 percent is the sort of careless exaggeration that would get a reporter reprimanded, or worse, from any responsible news organization.

We don't mean to pick exclusively on Giuliani. It's a common fault of candidates and elected officials to make grand statistical pronouncements based on figures that, when more closely examined, reveal a different picture. We dissect this bit of spin to present a case study in how this is done. Our intent is to arm our readers against what is to come.

We also want to make clear that for all we know the ACS is doing an exemplary job aiding the children of New York. We made no judgment about that. All we're saying is that in this case it exaggerated and tried to create the impression that adoptions were going up when in fact they had been going down for years.

Can Fred's Past Haunt Him?

2007-08-05T19:11:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine sent me this via e-mail:

So not only did Thompson lobby for a prochoice group in 1991, he also lied about it until the LATimes uncovered documents proving he was hired by this prohoice group. Not too gutsy for Mr. Red October.

I later found out it was a joke, prodding me into making a long response. Since I fell for it and wasted half an hour, I might as well post what I came up with here. So here we go.

I generally distrust politicians. That said, politicians too are capable of changing their views and religion. Certainly, I can't allege that Zell Miller's, Bush Jr.'s, or Reagan's conversion on the abortion issue is [are] fabricated, but I'm less convinced by Bush Sr.'s flip at the moment Reagan asked him to be VP. Mitt's flip seems politically motivated, but he also didn't have to condemn embryonic stem cell research in order to get the right's nod.

Who cares if Fred was pro-choice 15 years ago? Hopefully, every pro-choice person will convert. Reagan liberalized California's abortion laws as Governor, but was the most pro-life president in our history (not to mention that both Bush I & II used to be pro-life).

Moreover, so pro-life Republicans will leave Fred and go to whom? We know for a fact that Mitt was pro-choice previously, and more recently so. John has previously endorsed Roe, but no longer does. Not only is Rudy pro-choice NOW, but he believes that federal funding of abortion is a right guaranteed by the Constitution (did this guy really go to law school?). See Constitution; common sense; 84% of Republicans are against state funding of abortion. Rudy gave $500 in donations to Planned Parenthood, which tax returns show is probably more than he's ever even given to his church. Compare this with this. NARAL gave Fred a 0% rating, but gave Rudy a 100%. Rudy hosted three Roe v. Wade celebrations in City Hall and declared a "Planned Parenthood Day" in NYC while praising Mrs. Eugenics herself, Margaret Sanger. Since Fred's current competition is an abortion extremist, I don't think this story will hurt him.

Fred has a 100% pro-life voting record from the senate (unless you count McCain-Feingold as a pro-choice vote. Even if you do, he's already said he regrets that vote, and the Supreme Court just made that a moot issue.)

I also think it's interesting that the only people who care about this weren't going to vote Republican anyway. The alleging firm makes large donations to Hillary. It's more like a "See, gotcha!" from the left. This story also breaks while Hillary is trying to be "moderate" on abortion by saying she dislikes it, even though she thinks there's a consitutional right to kill a fetus three quarters out of the womb.

If this "scandal" is the best thing Hillary's camp can dig up, then the Democrats are in trouble. See generally skeletons in Hillary's closet. It's also not as if Democrats were pro-choice before the mid-1980s. See Carter (maybe the only thing I agree with him on); op-ed by the late-Rev. Jerry Falwell (Gore, Bill, Ted Kennedy, & Jesse Jackson - all flipped on abortion).

Also, the story has isn't that solid. See 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Healthy System

2007-08-05T16:51:00.000-04:00

David Gratzer, a Canadian physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explains how American health care is better than socialized systems:

One often-heard argument, voiced by the New York Times' Paul Krugman and others, is that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health.

Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall or a car accident. Such factors aren't academic — homicide rates in the U.S. are much higher than in other countries.

In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don't die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country.

And if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50%; the European rate is just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma: 12% in the U.S., 6% in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation...

[Socialized healthcare] would push the U.S. further down the path to a government-run system and make things much, much worse. True, government bureaucrats would be able to cut costs — but only by shrinking access to health care, as in Canada, and engendering a Canadian-style nightmare of overflowing emergency rooms and yearlong waits for treatment.

America is right to seek a model for delivering good health care at good prices, but we should be looking not to Canada, but close to home — in the other four-fifths or so of our economy. From telecommunications to retail, deregulation and market competition have driven prices down and quality and productivity up. Health care is long overdue for the same prescription.

Also, this article shows how Sicko completely misrepresented Cuba's health care:

Ninety-nine percent of Cubans have no more experience with a hospital like the one featured in Sicko than Michael Moore has with a Soloflex. Most Cubans view a hospital like the one featured in Sicko the way teen-age boys used to view Playboy magazine: "If only!" ...

In Sicko, Moore parrots the Castroite claim that Cubans live longer than Americans. In fact, the figures are practically identical, which actually casts Cuba's vaunted health care in a negative light. In all nations with high emigration rates longevity rates skew high. This occurs because the birth is recorded but the death gets recorded in the nation migrated to. So it seems like fewer people die. Naturally, the opposite effect appears in nations with a large influx of immigrants. The death is recorded but the birth was recorded in the nation immigrated from. So, generally speaking, a nation with high longevity but known to hemorrhage its people has little to boast about with regards to longevity figures. All they're proving is that theirs is a miserable place to live from which massive numbers of people flee.

And few nations hemorrhage people like Cuba. Almost 20 percent of its population since the glorious revolution. This 20 percent of Cuba's population, let's not forget, represents those who got out with the clothes on their back and against enormous odds. Had Cuba followed the norms of all civilized nations in allowing free emigration with family, property, etc. (as in pre-Castro Cuba, when almost nobody left), Cuba today (statistically speaking) would boast the highest longevity rates in the annals of man's history.

As eagerly expected by Michael Moore's Cuban case officers, Sicko's screening was the signal for their other propaganda assets to chime in. "Cuba has developed the world's first Meningitis B vaccine which is available in Third World countries but not in Europe or in the United States due to U.S. sanctions," reported Anthony Boadle from Reuters' Havana bureau last week. Of this 27 word sentence, by a news agency considered authoritative worldwide, exactly 14 words are true. This vaccine is not available in the U.S. and Europe -- but hardly because of "sanctions.” In fact, in 1999, Bill Clinton's Treasury Department granted the pharmaceutical giant SmithKline Beecham a license to market the Cuban vaccine in a joint venture with Castro’s medical ministry -- pending FDA approval....

The reason the vaccine is not available today in the U.S. and Europe is simply that, like so many other Castroite concoctions and proclamations dutifully trumpeted by news agencies who earn Havana bureaus, the vaccine is a farce and its sale a swindle... Some Third World countries discovered the swindle the hard way... A study by Brazil’s Centro de Vigilancia Epidemiológica (Center for Epidemiological Research) from 1999 seconded Dr Raw: "The studies conducted on the use of the Cuban vaccine in children under 4 years old—the major risk group for hepatitis B—showed no evidence that the vaccine protected them against the disease. This vaccine should not be recommended.” All current medical literature flatly asserts that despite countless attempts, "no effective vaccine against the Meningitis B has yet been developed..."

According to a report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, over 75% per cent of "doctors" with Cuban "medical degrees" flunk the exam given by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates for licensing in the U.S. This exam is considered a cakewalk even by the graduates of Mexico’s Tec de Monterrey School of Medicine. Most Cuba-certified doctors even flunk the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates' exam for certification as "Physician Assistants," making them unfit in the U.S. even as nurses...

According to the same report by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the mortality rate of Cuban children aged 1 to 4 is 34 percent higher than the U.S. (11.8 versus 8.8 per 1000). But these don't figure into U.N. and World Health Organization spotlighted "infant-mortality rates." So apparently the pressure (so far) is not on Cuban doctors to fudge these figures.

In April 2001, Dr. Juan Felipe García MD of Jacksonville, Florida, interviewed several recent doctor defectors from Cuba. Based on what he heard, he reported the following: "The official Cuban infant-mortality figure is a farce. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during its first year the doctors often reports he was older. Otherwise such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job."

Cuba's infant mortality rate, though it plunged from 13th lowest in the world pre-Castro to 40th today -- is also kept artificially low by an abortion rate of 0 .71 per live birth, the Hemisphere's highest by far which "terminates" any pregnancy that even hints at trouble.

More tragic still, the maternal mortality rate in Cuba is almost four times that of the U.S. rate (33 versus 8.4 per 1000). Peculiar how so many mothers die during childbirth in Cuba. And how many 1-4 year olds perish, while from birth to one years old (the period during which they qualify in U.N. statistics as infants) they're perfectly healthy.

At the very least, such statistics should lead people to question Cuba's official infant-mortality figures. They may not make for a flattering portrait of Cuba, but unlike Michael Moore’s documentary, they have the virtue of being true.

Abortion, Fred, & Rudy

2007-08-05T11:22:00.001-04:00

[Update:Not only will a Democrat keep Roe on the books (Stevens, Ginsberg, & Souter are all set to retire in the next 4-8 years), but all 3 frontrunners will socialize abortion funding through socializing health insurance. This will certainly have a dramatic increase in abortions.]

1) Fred has edged out Hillary in Rasmussen (46-45).]

2) Malkin exposes Planned Parenthood coverups of statutory rape:

3) I find this shocking: 59% of Republicans still don't know that Rudy's prochoice, including 53% of conservative Republicans. When Republicans discover how liberal he actually is, Fred will continue to pass him.

[Update: Multiple polls show Rudy with about a 10% lead, but virtually all of those polls make no attempt to weight based on likely primary voters. Instead, these polls (ABC/Post, Fox, USAT/Gallup, CNN, Cook, Newsweek, Quinnipiac, & McLaughlin) include any Independent who leans Republican, whether they have any intention of voting in the Republican primary or not. On the other hand, Rassmussen, Hotline, and NBC/WSJ actually weight for likelihood that a particular "Republican leaner" will also be a likely primary voter (CBS/NYT, ARG, & LAT/Bloomberg do as well, but they have not released polls within the last 3 weeks). Out of these, two (Rasmussen & Hotline) show Rudy barely leading Fred by 1 or 2% (a statistical tie), and the other (NBC/WSJ) shows Rudy leading by 13%.]

4) Rudy has stated his opposition to abortion flows from his hesitance to put the women in jail. Pia de Solenni, head of Diotima Consulting, points out that such an allegation is a red herring, intended to distract the debate from whether or not an unborn child deserves value and protection as a human being created in God's image. Dorinda C. Bordlee, executive director of the Bioethics Defense Fund, has explained the lack of logic in such a rationale:

“How much jail time?” is a contrived question that is both deceptive and desperate. It is deceptive because it ignores the fact that the American pro-life movement has consistently considered the woman as the second victim of abortion. The abortion ban enacted in South Dakota, as well as the abortion bans with post-Roe activation clauses enacted in recently in Louisiana and several other states, explicitly state: “Nothing in this section may be construed to subject the pregnant mother upon whom any abortion is performed or attempted to any criminal conviction and penalty.”

The question “How much jail time?” is also a desperate attempt to distract the public from what they have learned about the crime against humanity known as partial-birth abortion, in which a child’s brain are suctioned out while only inches from complete birth, and about the most common methods of abortion, which involve ripping the unborn child from the womb piece by piece.

A more appropriate question is: How much jail time we should impose on abortion providers who financially benefit from the plight of women who are abandoned by those who should be caring for them and their unborn children? How much jail time is appropriate for abortionists who expose women to startling increased risks of breast cancer, problems with future pregnancies, and a three to six times increased risk of suicide? How much jail time for the destroying the lives of countless women and children?

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, agrees:

The fact of the matter is that compassion for women before abortion was legal and compassion for them after unborn protections are enforced will drive the law. The focus of such laws is on protection, not punishment. Women were not punished by the legal system before 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision and there is absolutely no drive to punish her now. While the position may be counterintuitive to some, it is clearly a uniquely American case of handling a delicate and tragic situation with sensitivity.

As Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor of National Review Online, puts it:

History suggests that when tough anti-abortion laws exist, desperate women aren't rushed to the slammer... Abortion was illegal in the United States prior to the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling, and women weren't being rushed to jail in droves for seeking abortions. Women weren't prosecuted because the law generally wasn't after them to begin with.

Clarke D. Forsythe, president of Americans United for Life, adds:

Contrary to the pervasive myth that women were prosecuted for abortion before Roe, consistent state abortion policy for a century before Roe was not to prosecute women. Abortionists were the exclusive target of the law. That was based on three policy judgments: the point of abortion law is effective enforcement against abortionists, the woman is the second victim of abortion, and prosecuting women is counterproductive to the goal of effective enforcement of the law against abortionists.

In fact, the irony is that in nearly all of the reported court cases explicitly addressing the issue of whether a woman was an accomplice to her abortion, it was the abortionist (not the prosecutor) who pushed the courts to treat the woman as an accomplice, for the obvious purpose of undermining the state’s criminal case against the abortionist...

Joseph Dellapenna, professor at Villanova University School of Law, explains pre-Roe abortion law:

Moreover, if the woman were a criminal co-conspirator with the abortionist, in the common law tradition the abortionist could not be convicted on the basis of the woman’s uncorroborated testimony — and all too often there were no other witnesses and no other evidence. This problem was also solved by treating the woman as a victim rather than as a co-criminal. Thus none of the laws overturned by Roe v. Wade (that is, the abortion laws of every state) treated the woman as a criminal...

It is no more inconsistent to criminalize the abortionist and not the woman having the abortion than it would be to decriminalize the use of certain recreational drugs (say, marijuana) while vigorously pursuing the drug dealers — even though most drug users exercise a significant element of choice in using the drug.

Walter M. Weber, senior litigation counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, explains how Rudy's argument ignores history, law enforcement priorities, and human reality:

History- Roe v. Wade was not decided until 1973, yet I’ve never heard of any women being locked up for abortions before then. If there were, you can bet groups like Planned Parenthood would trumpet the evidence.

Law-enforcement priorities- It makes far more sense, for example, to pursue the drug pushers, who do widespread harm, than drug users, who inflict harm mainly on themselves. Does this mean drug abuse is not illegal? No, it just means that striking higher up the food chain makes eminent sense. The same common sense points to targeting abortionists, not women.

Human reality- Yes, I suppose there are women who have abortions for truly despicable reasons, like spite or sex-selection. But many women (I’ve read affidavits and testimonies from plenty) have abortions because they are coerced by boyfriends, bosses, parents, etc. They are the second victims of abortion. To treat them as equally culpable with the professional abortionist is ludicrous and heartless.

Matthew J. Franck, professor and chairman of political science at Radford University, sheds light on how principles of limited government affect the debate:

If the law is to recover its sanity, it will have to proceed by degrees, forbidding what it can and enforcing its prohibitions by the mildest punishments sufficient to achieve the desired results... It is plausible that we could begin by reducing the number of abortions in America by 90 percent with zero jail time for any woman who obtains one.

Wendy Long, legal counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, elaborates on how the concept of culpability affects the debate:

Society’s judgment about the relative lack of culpability of the mother of an aborted child in no way undermines the humanity of that child. The law assigns differing degrees of culpability in various situations — including killing other people — all the time. If you kill someone in self-defense, you get zero punishment. It does not mean that the guy lying on your kitchen floor with a knife sticking out of his chest is not dead — or not human.

Most women who get abortions are under tremendous stress and pressure, and few of them recognize the full humanity of the child in utero. This goes to the woman’s mens rea and, accordingly, to the reasonable legislative judgment about the non-punishment of the mother. Our society instead has decided to punish the abortionist who profits from her, and her child’s, misfortune.

Frederica Mathewes-Green explains:

The goal of abortion laws is to stop abortion. And the person to stop is not the woman, who may have only one abortion in her life, but the doctor who thinks it a good idea to sit on a stool all day aborting babies. End the abortion business and you end abortion.

Arguments like Rudy's reminds Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for the Family Research Council, of the befuddled New York socialite who, after Ronald Reagan’s win in 1980 said, “But I don’t know anyone who voted for him!” Maybe Rudy just doesn't know any pro-life people. McClusky elaborates:

I count many pro-lifers as friends (as well as some pro-abortionists whom I politely describe as “confused”), and the only ones that seem to be talking about jailing women are pro-abortionists... In fact, the Family Research Council has consistently supported legislation that protects the expectant mother and her child; we have also called for case studies of postpartum depression in women who have had abortions (a measure introduced by the great Rep. Joe Pitts (R., Penn). Our main opposition in getting these pro-women initiatives into law tends to be pro-abortionist groups like Planned Parenthood. In the U.S., laws against abortion have always targeted the abortionist, never the woman. To suggest that women be criminalized for having an abortion is rather ludicrous. U.S. law gives the abortionist the final say about whether the abortion will happen or not and additionally gives him the right to profit from it.

Ramesh Ponnuru alos agrees:

The crucial legal goal of the pro-life movement is not any particular set of punishments. It is that unborn children be protected in law. We could, for example, eventually secure laws that prohibited most abortions, that removed the medical licenses of doctors who committed illegal abortions, and that imposed fines on people who committed them without medical licenses. If that legal regime sufficed to protect unborn children, there would be no need to go further.

Finally, O. Carter Snead, professor of law at Notre Dame, says about such arguments:

One can imagine several perfectly defensible reasons for pro-life legislators to target abortionists rather than women. For one thing, abortionists are arguably more culpable in principle: they directly perform the lethal action; they are more fully aware that they are snuffing out a human life in process; they are not laboring under any duress; and they perform abortions for profit. As a prudential matter, prosecuting abortionists seems a sufficient means to ending the practice of abortion. Also, abortion is like a vice crime in that there is not likely to be a complaining witness. Immunizing one of the parties removes a powerful disincentive for confessions. Finally, it does seem that the public is more willing to accept a law that punishes doctors rather than mothers. Pro-lifers can thus achieve their goal of ending abortion without provoking a political backlash. That is neither unprincipled nor unwise. Frankly, it seems like good politics for a pluralistic society.

Could the Tide Turn in Iraq?

2007-08-01T20:13:00.000-04:00

[Sidenote: Some anti-war hippies are out of control.]

Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack, both from the left-leaning Brookings Institution, wrote a piece in the NEW YORK TIMES about how recent improvements demonstrate that stability is a real possibility in Iraq, stating in particular:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

They go on to note, among other things, 1) troop morale has risen, 2) the death toll of Iraqi civilians has dropped 1/3, and 3) the Iraqi forces are finally stepping up to the plate.

As George Packer for the New Yorker explains:

O’Hanlon and Pollack have long been critics of the war. They are serious analysts and have nothing to gain by supporting the strategy of an Administration that they say has “lost essentially all credibility.” I don’t doubt that they believe what they saw and heard and wrote, and I’m certain that some of the gains they describe are real.

Michael Barone from the US News & World Report concurs:

O'Hanlon specializes in military affairs; Pollack is an expert on Iraq and Iran. Both are Democrats; Pollack served on the national security adviser's staff in the Clinton administration. Both are first-class scholars whom I have long respected, though they differ from me in significant respects on foreign policy.

Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security policy notes the articles' significance:

It is also noteworthy for being the latest and, arguably, most objective indicator that the situation on the ground in Iraq is, indeed, changing for the better.

Indeed, the article has certainly shed significant light on the potential of US success in Iraq. In the article's aftermath, House Majority Whip James Clyburt (D) said such evidence of improvements in Iraq would be a "real big problem" for Democrats (basically admitting what everyone else knew: Democrats have put stock in US failure).

On that note, the New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning John Burns explained recently that although requiring incremental benchmarks would encourage political accomplishments in Iraq, Democrats in Congress have moved beyond that and declared the war lost. This actually has discouraged political concessions in Iraq. The Sunnis & Shiites just assume the US is about to leave, making a complete civil war inevitable. Thus, they see concessions as pointless in the short term.

Also, for all this talk of "we only need a political solution, not a military one," an Iraq & Afghanistan veteran has said:

“For better or for worse, Iraq is NOW a part of the war on terror. We need to try things until they work. Part of achieving the political solution is getting the military situation right.”

On a related matter, the public opinion tide could even be turning. The ratio of people who think invading Iraq was a bad decision to those who still approve has narrowed from a whopping 61-35 ratio in May to a bare majority of 51-42 in July. [UPDATE: most Americans now think that either the surge is working (25%) or that it is too early to tell (26%).]

[An interesting aside: Even though a majority of Americans (57%) support bringing troops home, a majority of Americans also believes that withdrawal increases the chances of a civil war (58%) and that al Qaeda will establish terror bases (55%). In fact, a plurality of Americans who support withdrawal believe that such action would increase the likelihood of a civil war (41%-38%).]

Fred on Eminent Domain

2007-07-31T12:27:00.000-04:00

[Sidenote: Why does ABC's poll show Rudy ahead, but Rasmussen show Fred leading? Because Rasmussen polls "likely primary voters", but ABC polls all Republican leaners, no matter their interest in the primary.]

Hat Tip to Fred:

Last week, California officials in National City voted unanimously to use eminent domain to take over more than 600 properties—including a nonprofit youth center dedicated to keeping local kids out of gangs and off the street. They plan to give this land to local private developers for a group of condominiums.

It’s said that a man’s home is his castle, but across America some property owners are being rooked by local bureaucrats and politicians and having their private property confiscated by local governments for the supposed public good.

Most people probably think that if they buy a home or a small business that they will get to keep what they purchased. After all, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

But in 2005, the Supreme Court, in Kelo v. New London, held that the government could take private property – even a person’s home – and give that property to a large private corporation for that business’s private use. As Justice O’Connor wrote in her scathing dissent, “Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded – i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public – in the process.”

Not surprisingly, the public responded to Kelo with outrage. Since then, numerous states passed legislation aimed at curbing an abuse of eminent domain powers. In the 2006 election cycle, 12 states held referendums proposing to limit state governments’ abilities to confiscate property a la Kelo. Ten states approved the proposals, each with strong majorities.

Now, nearly two weeks ago, members of both parties in Congress introduced legislation in the House that would deny federal economic funding to state and local governments upon a finding that those governments had abused their power of eminent domain by seizing private property that would be used for private economic development. This is an important issue, and Members of Congress need to act to make sure that federal funds are not used to enable these sorts of takings of private property. Another option would be the reissuance of President Ronald Reagan’s Executive Order 12630, which directs federal agencies to “first do no harm” to property rights when issuing new regulations.

Our Founders placed respect for private property as a key principle when writing our nation’s Constitution, and the protection of private property resulted in the United States becoming the greatest economic power in the world and a beacon of freedom to all. This principle is even more important today, as homeownership has become an increasingly integral part of our citizens’ aspirations for a better future for themselves and their loved ones. If the Supreme Court will not protect our right to ownership, then political leaders must step up to the challenge.

IMAO Recaps Debate

2007-07-26T22:47:00.000-04:00

IMAO recaps the Democratic debate:

"I'm Anderson Cooper..." he pirouetted. "...360, and this is the Democratic presidential debate on CNN! Let's start with opening statements. First up, Hillary Clinton."

"I will be president! It is inevitable!" she pounded her podium, cracking it. "Your only choice is whether you stand behind me or whether you get in my way and feel my horrible wrath!"
"We agreed in the ground rules that there would be no time outs to touch Edwards's hair!"
"Barack Obama, your turn."

"I'm Barack Obama."

Cooper was quiet a moment waiting for Obama to continue. "Is that your entire opening statement?"

"That's all I got... well, that and my winning smile." Obama smiled and the audience erupted in applause.

"John Edwards, your statement."

"I want to unite the two Americas and end poverty and..." He started giggling. "I just can't stand how fabulous my hair is today. I hope their broadcasting this in HD, because you really just need to admire my hair." He ran his hand through it. "I could just feel it all day; I really could."

"Now on to the second and third tier candidates," Cooper said. "Since no one really cares what you all have to say, please be quick. Bill Richardson."

"I'm a governor, and you should all know that governor's are who usually become president, not Senators."

"Dennis Kucinich."

"We have to stop the mind controlling space lasers... with peace!"

"Mike Gravel."

"Rocks go in the river! Throw the rocks in the river!"

"Chris Dodd."

"I don't even know anything about me."

"And I should note that Joe Biden has decided not to give an opening statement to reduce the chance of him using a racial slur or some similar gaffe. Very wise of him." Cooper turned towards a large TV screen. "We in the media have been criticized for asking stupid, insipid questions, so to prove that things can be worse we asked the public to submit questions on YouTube. As expected, intelligent, thoughtful people didn't seem especially motivated to videotape themselves asking a question, but we went through what we had and found the most coherent and those least likely to make you give up hope in all humanity. Here's the first one."

On screen was a man staring into the camera with great confusion. "Is this recording? How do I know if this is recording? Maybe I need to hit this button again..." He reached forward and the screen went black.

"That actually was one of the best one's submitted," Cooper said. "Since it wasn't addressed to anyone in particular, who wants it?"

"I'll take it," Richardson says. "I believe the camera was recording."

Everyone else nodded in agreement.

"Good," Cooper said. "This next question is for Hillary."

On screen was some goth chick. "My question is for Hillary Clinton. As the the first openly evil presidential candidate, what are your plans for America?"

"If you knew the full extent of my plans, you would die from fear. Sill, I will say I plan to spread misery and pain to all Americans, but less misery and pain to those who do my bidding."

"Any rebuttals?" Cooper asked.

"NONE SHALL DARE REBUT ME!" Hillary screeched.

"Okay. Next question."

On screen was a woman. "This question is for Barack Obama. With Iraq possibly in a civil war and turmoil throughout the Middle East, how do you plan to stabilize that region and end America's presence in Iraq without genocide erupting afterwards?"

Obama thought for a few moments, and finally replied, "I'm Barack Obama!" He smiled, and the audience erupted in applause. "I think I'm winning the debate!"

"Probably, next question is for Edwards."

On screen was a man who looked like a hobo. "This is for John Edwards. What made you so interested in the cause of poverty?"

"One day I saw some people outside the front gate of my mansion. They looked like ants from so far away, but I used some binoculars and saw they were poor people. Then the most horrible thing happened: My security came out and started beating them. The government has to stop that!"

"Um... just to clarify," Cooper said, "you're asking for the government to stop your security guards from beating poor people?"

"Well, I can't stop them myself; those people are large and scary. What if they got angry and damaged my fabulous hair?!" Edwards ran his hand through. "Isn't it just luscious? Don't you want to touch it?"

Cooper was quiet for a moment, but then he reached out his hand. "Yes... I do want to touch it..."

"Hey!" Hillary yelled. "We agreed in the ground rules that there would be no time outs to touch Edwards's hair!"

"Fine, here's the next question."

On screen appeared a young woman. "This question is for Dennis Kucinich. I saw you standing in front of my neighbor's house all week wearing a blue coat and a pointy red hat. Why was that?"

"Thanks, I get that question a lot. That's actually a lawn gnome. A lawn gnome makes a house seem whimsical and welcoming and thus it actually accomplishes more than I do in Congress. Still, when I'm president, I want people to say, 'Though Dennis Kucinich looks like a lawn gnome, he has actually accomplished much more than said lawn ornament."

Hillary laughed. "Not likely. Why do I have to share the stage with this freak? When the power of America is mine, I vow never have to be as near someone as freakish as Dennis Kucinich again... except maybe for foreign diplomacy."

Dodd raised his hand. "Do I get a question?"

"No," Cooper replied. "I'm afraid there isn't anyone with enough spare times on his hands -- even on the internet -- to videotape a question for you."

Dodd hung his head. "Aww. Dodd sad."

"We now -- surprisingly -- have a question for Joe Biden."

A man holding a rifle appeared on screen. "I was wondering what Joe Biden thinks of gun rights and whether he'll try and take my firearms."

"Of course I'll take your gun!" Biden screamed. "You're a crazy sick man to have one! I will take your gun, lock you up, and then beat your children! Anyone who owns a gun is insane!" Biden turned towards a man off stage. "You, with the gun! You're sick!"

The man looked confused. "I'm part of security here."

Biden started walking towards him. "You're insane! I'm going to take your gun! And then I'm going to stangle you! And then I'll strangle your wife! And then I'll--"

Biden was cut off by a gun shot.

"Well, Biden just got himself shot because of his frank language we all know and love," Cooper said, "but since he's only a second tier candidate, I think we can go on without him."

"Can someone get him off stage and throw him in a dumpster?" Hillary demanded.

"He's still alive," Cooper answered.

"Do I look like I care? Get it done!"

Some people dragged away Biden. "This next question is for John Edwards."

A woman with heavy makeup appeared on screen. "Senator Edwards, how do you get your hair so bouncy?"

Edwards smiled. "I'm glad you asked that question. First you need to--"

"ARE YOU TRYING TO TAKE A PICTURE OF MY PENIS?!!" Anderson screamed at Edwards.

Edwards looked completely dumbfounded. "No, I'm just--"

"You're watching me, hoping my pants fall so you can take my picture of my penis!"

Edwards was stunned silent, but eventually he hung his head shamefully. "Yes, I was trying to take a picture of your penis. I'm sorry." He put away his camera phone.

Anderson kept glaring at Edwards suspiciously. "The next question is for Hillary."

A man came on screen. "Hillary Clinton, will you keep nuclear weapons on the table in your dealings with Iran?"

"I hope we can create a dialog with them and such threats won't be necessary, but if they ever get in the way of my political ambitions, I will nuke them and any country next to them! And I will eat their children's bones!"

"Any responses to that?" Cooper asked.

"I'm Barack Obama!" Obama smiled, and the audience erupted in applause. "I think I won the debate!"

"I wouldn't be surprised," Cooper said. "Since that's all the Democrat idiocy FCC regulations allows for one day, that concludes our debate. Thank you for watching CNN. CNN: Even more scared of FOX News than the Democrats."

OTHER RELEVANT POSTS:

In Iraq, Liberals Flip on Genocide

2007-07-25T22:16:00.000-04:00

Jonah Goldberg does it again:

Barack Obama says preventing genocide isn't a good enough reason to stay in Iraq...

It's worth pointing out a key difference between the potential genocide in Iraq and the heart-wrenching slaughters in Congo and Sudan: The latter aren't our fault. But if genocide unfolds in Iraq after American troops depart, it would be hard to argue that we weren't at least partly to blame. Yes, the mass murder would have more immediate authors than the United States of America, but we would undeniably be responsible, at least in part, for giving a green light to genocide. Obama offers precisely that green light in his proposed Iraq War De-escalation Act.

Some advocates of withdrawal try to maintain the moral high ground by arguing that there won't be genocidal slaughter - though that sounds like self-delusion to me. Most close observers of the situation believe that if the U.S. were to sail out of Iraq, it would be on a river of Iraqi blood.

"The only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into a Lebanon- or Bosnia-like maelstrom," a new report from the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution concludes, "is 135,000 American troops." Rapid withdrawal, the report says, could bring "a humanitarian nightmare" in which "we should expect hundreds of thousands (conceivably even millions) of people to die."

New York Times reporter John Burns, who has won plaudits across the ideological spectrum for the clarity of his reporting, recently told Charlie Rose of PBS, "It seems to me incontrovertible that the most likely outcome of an American withdrawal any time soon would be cataclysmic violence, and I find that to be widely agreed among Iraqis, including Iraqis who widely opposed the invasion."

Ultimately, it's unknowable what would - or will - happen if the U.S. "redeploys" until it happens. But what I find fascinating is the growing consensus around the Obama withdrawal-is-justifiable position. (If you think this unfair to Obama, feel free to call it the Hillary Doctrine or the Edwards Corollary or the Richardson Rule.)

Liberals used to be the ones who argued that sending U.S. troops abroad was a small price to pay to stop genocide; now they argue that genocide is a small price to pay to bring U.S. troops home.

President Clinton lied in his 1998 apology to survivors of the Rwandan massacre when he suggested that he and his staff hadn't known genocide was taking place. Documents obtained subsequently under the Freedom of Information Act in 2004 by activist groups showed that the Clinton administration referred to the slaughter as "genocide" in its internal discussions but refused to say so publicly because Clinton had decided against intervention.

"Genocide can occur anywhere. It is not an African phenomenon," he said in 1998 as part of his apology. "We must have global vigilance. And never again must we be shy in the face of the evidence." Thus, Clinton nicely articulated a moral principle whose moral authority he excluded himself from.

Nonetheless, this principle has saturated much of the recent discussion about Darfur. Indeed, as historian and columnist Niall Ferguson noted, Obama called for an increased military commitment in Sudan, including possibly sending NATO, in order to prevent genocide just two years ago.

There's been so much talk about how conservative foreign policy's moral credibility has been demolished under President Bush. Maybe. But what of liberal credibility? In the 1990s, amid the debates about Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the broad outline of the debate had conservatives advocating a narrower definition of the national interest while liberals argued - and I often agreed with them - for a more expansive one that included a heavy dose of moralism. Finally, liberals seemed to have shaken off the Vietnam syndrome and embraced an overly optimistic but benign foreign policy of nation-building and do-goodery.

Conservatives are at least still arguing about the national interest - but they're also the ones touting the moral imperative of preventing genocide and even the need for nation-building. Where is the principle in the hash of liberal foreign policy today? How does liberalism recover? If you can justify causing genocide in order to end a nation-building exercise that - unlike similar efforts elsewhere - is fundamentally linked to our national interest, then how can you ever return to arguing that we should get into the nation-building and genocide-stopping business when it's explicitly not in our interest?

OTHER RELEVANT POSTS:

Obama and Postpartum Abortion

2007-07-25T22:08:00.000-04:00

[Update: After a quick search, the quote is clearly fictitious, but the article interests me nonetheless. I'll try not to gloss over articles again in the future, but will certainly make errors.]

I found this shocking:

Just when I think the man has run out of ways to alienate even swing voters, he comes up with something even more potentially damaging to his campaign.

As many an astute media watcher already knows, on July 17, 2007 Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) – who wants to be The First Black President of The United States – told Planned Parenthood that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”

Yes, I know…Your reaction was similar to mine: “Good Lord! What’s next: Endorsing postpartum abortion?”

“When you get right down to it,” the Illinois Senator said before an audience at the recent Stem Cells R Us Annual Convention, “What difference does two or three minutes inside or outside the womb really make? One’s ‘late-term’ and the other’s ‘postpartum’. Who’s to say if the postpartum fetus is truly viable? Postpartum fetuses die all the time for all manner of reasons…”

If a full-term unborn baby can be called a “fetus” and aborted, then why not, right? There’s no significant theoretical or intellectual leap involved…

I’m not going to belabor the point that there’s no more an “age-appropriate” sex education curriculum for kindergarteners than there is an “acceptable level” of Ebola virus in one’s blood or rat testicles in supermarket salami.

The questions raised in my mind of late (Other than Obama possibly shooting for the Secretary of Early Indoctrination post if he doesn’t get the nomination and another Democrat wins the White House) were as follows:

1) Why Obama insists upon addressing not only some of the most dangerously contentious issues presently available, but does so from a place of glaring vulnerability.

2) Why he does not appear to comprehend that his positions on these issues put him squarely in the in the Leninist wing of the Democratic Party, which represents a scant minority of voting Americans.

3) Why his handlers, who appeared to be among the best a junior senator running for President (to some, an oddity in itself) could hope for, are allowing him to do it.

Which gives rise to the more poignant questions – and where we must lay aside the fact that Obama is black. Is he actually in heart and mind squarely in the in the Leninist wing of the Democratic Party? Is that what he’s sincerely about, handlers and naysayers alike be damned? Or is it simply about ambition: Do he and his handlers believe that his course, though marked by clusters of timber-splitting sharp pointy rocks, is still the best to his becoming The First Black President of The United States?

A person with a history of Islamism and militancy in his family who was running for his party’s nomination for President might think that being closely allied with a militant pastor (Trinity United Church of Christ’s Reverend Jeremiah Wright) was a tad risky. The fallout from that blowing up in his face had barely cleared when on June 23, 2007, he decided to attack the “Religious Right” for “hijacking faith.”

Now, he’s promoting even earlier sexualization of our children – one of the foulest scourges his party and ideological ilk has foisted upon our society – than has already become the status quo.

- From “Who Is Ellen Sauerbrey?”, by Betsy Illingworth, project manager for Planned Parenthood Global Partners, Published: 10/04/05, updated: 01/02/06:

“There is mounting opposition in the Senate to the president's nomination of Ellen Sauerbrey to the post of assistant secretary of state, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Barack Obama (D-IL), and Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) have questioned her qualifications, with Boxer comparing her fitness for the post to that of Michael Brown for his former FEMA post.

“Sauerbrey, the current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, is not well prepared to take the job, having little experience working with refugees and a long record of opposing reproductive rights…

“However, Sauerbrey's record on reproductive health and family planning raises more than a few red flags:

- She has not only repeatedly stated her opposition to the right to choose abortion but has also declared that abortion is not a legitimate element of reproductive health assistance.

- She approves of President Bush's withholding of funding to UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, charging that the money is "being used for coercive abortions in China," despite numerous findings to the contrary.

- Sauerbrey has also denied that adolescents have any right to exercise autonomous control over their reproductive health and has called abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education the healthiest and most responsible method of HIV prevention suitable for adolescents.”

So we have Barack Obama and some of the most far-Left leadership in the Democrat Party on the side of Planned Parenthood (originally created as a eugenics program to breed blacks out of existence) clearly and vocally in support of some of the most damaging policies with regard to our youth’s “reproductive health” (and what a piece of propagandistic work that catch-phrase is!), essentially advising us that thrashing madly in quicksand is indeed a viable means of escape.

“No condoms and bananas left behind!” – Michelle Malkin, July 19, 2007

And so it would seem. But from whence does this shameless promotion of hideously irresponsible policies come? Earlier, I deliberately evaded delving into the theory involving Hillary Clinton having well-placed moles in the Obama organization – but given his audacity, who knows?

The larger story in the press was Republican Candidate Mitt Romney’s criticism of Obama’s statements, rather than the appalling outlandishness of the statements themselves. This appeared to be a feeble attempt to place the onus on Romney to defend his perfectly reasonable outrage and criticism than on Obama to defend his sociopathic logic.

“There was something of a backlash the other day from comments made by Senator Barack Obama at a Planned Parenthood rally. Senator Obama is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination and the backlash came over some words he said about sex education… his essential message was that education trumps idiocy. Mitt Romney, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, fell all over that one and thus the warring began.

“One of the things that's pretty cavalier for a gentleman like a Romney to declare is that everyone is like he is. That is all children, like his children, will grow up in a home with two parents.” – “Associated Content, ‘The People’s Media’”, “Romney Attacks Obama over Sex Education Comments”, by Jesse Schmitt, July 19, 2007

“The People’s Media”, eh...? That raises a red flag (pun most definitely intended) if I ever saw one. Rings a bright red bell, even. Marxists have always maintained that parents were expendable.

So the message from the Democrat leadership – although there are those (such as Hillary Clinton) smart enough to refrain from admitting it publicly – is “to hell with those who observe moral values, even if they happen to be the majority of Americans”. They’re going to play to the gallery of freaks to whom they are politically beholden. Thus, we will become a nation of bohemian, sensualized, slaves to self-indulgence. Why? Other than the power it will bring them: Because we’re wrong; we’re arcane, retrograde, intolerant throwbacks.

And they’re right. Just because. Maybe just because it feels good.

OTHER RELEVANT POSTS:

Youtube Debates

2007-07-25T19:11:00.000-04:00

I found this humorous:

Well, it’s 9:14 pm on Monday, July 23rd -just minutes after the unbelievably important and innovative Democrat candidate debate put on by CNN and You Tube. The debate was hyped for about 64 days in advance because, not only would it be on CNN (distantly the second biggest name in cable news!), but the questions were submitted via the video site You Tube -- and You Tube is on the internet, which for the young bucks running CNN is a new idea.

Through this alliance, average citizens with digital video cameras and web access (suddenly no Democrat talk of a digital divide) could record a question and, in just picoseconds, have it zoomed to CNN via You Tube -- where it would sit for days to weeks until a couple of dozen videos asking the same questions that CNN staff would have asked directly could be cherry picked and played on a small screen with poor sound quality. Now that’s revolutionary!

Submitting prewritten questions to CNN days ahead of time is clearly a miracle of technology. This is not the sort of thing that could have been accomplished by the United States Postal Service in previous times. But You Tube videos are hip, baby, so don't question the premise of the high-tech suggestion box. And saying that the process means that now “anyone” can question the candidates is a little like saying anyone can date Gisele Bündchen. We can all apply, but ultimately somebody else makes the decision for us and most of us ain’t making the cut. (Gisele, call me!)

The actual debate began with some self-important autovideographer berating the candidates while using repeated “air quotes” (picture me using “air quotes” while saying “air quotes”). Man, that “video” could be just what TV needs to reinvigorate itself. The debate then went downhill from there. I know because my editor made me watch it. There is no way I am being paid enough to watch moonbats on You Tube on CNN -let alone take notes.

All the big issues about which the candidates wanted their supporters to plant questions were covered: Iraq, Katrina, race, health care, Katrina and race, race and health care, war for oil, Lorenzo’s oil, the danger of religion (Christianity), gay marriage, gay marriage and the danger of religion (Christianity). Technology made the field wide open for novel inquiries.

According to my notes, the debate made several things clear. One is that Mike Gravel is quite insane. In case you don’t know who he is, he’s one of the two old fart characters from “The Muppet Show” who used to sit up in the balcony and tell Kermit the whole place was going to Hell in a hand basket. He’s now running for President and is angry about some things -- –mostly anything real, but a good deal of his anger was also aimed at the imaginary. He’s still so mad about Vietnam that he wants us to withdraw from Iraq via Saigon.

Iraq was a major topic of debate, as the candidates argued with one another at several points over how quickly surrender should take place. Joe Biden, being the “Hawk” of the Democrat field, was very adamant that it would take at least a year to surrender fully, pointing out that, logistically, it just takes time to tuck 160,000 tails. Bill Richardson thought the surrender could be done in six months, while Dennis Kucinich gloated that he wanted to surrender before the war began and that we could teleport our troops home by “texting” P-E-A-C-E on our cell phones. Chris Dodd wants to leave in April –either this past April or maybe next April, or perhaps April of the year he becomes President (in his mind). But April is the only good option (June is full up with weddings, February is Black History month… April is open).

The candidates then argued over whether, in some future war, it would be good to draft teenage girls to participate in some future surrender. While against war and against the draft, all want to draft little girls in the name of sexual equality. In truth, though, I think they all just drool at the possibility of having young dead girls to use as a political tool in a future war.

Still on Iraq, the candidates debated over how comprehensive our surrender should be. Biden, still the hawk, demanded our total surrender. Others wanted a token apology team left behind.

In between videos from average MoveOn.org members (or the occasional non-liberal picked mostly for his ability to sound really stupid), the candidates’ production teams were given their own shot at producing a You Tube video (so many new voices on the internet!). These made the amateur videos shine, since it took the candidates hundreds of thousands of dollars to make annoying rambling videos, while the amateurs did it for pennies on the dollar.

Clinton’s video ended by endorsing Ann Coulter for President (what else could she mean by “Sometimes the best man for the job is a woman”?) Kucinich’s video asked us again to text P-E-A-C-E (perhaps to his mother ship?). Dodd talked about his hair. Edwards talked about his hair. Biden, anxious to not talk about his occasional hair, claimed to have a secret plan for surrender in Iraq, which will take at least a year. Obama pointed out that he’s for hope and good things and opposed to many unnamed bad things and the despair they might bring. Gravel played an old segment from the “$10,000 Pyramid” game show. Richardson… Oh, why can’t a few of these people drop out early?

In other highlights: Big Oil/Insurance/Drug companies are bad and we should use solar-powered compact fluorescent bulbs so as to save the snowmen who will die in Iraq if we don’t withdraw in 6 months to a year this next April. Also, public schools are good, but just not right for each candidate’s own special family situation.

Finally, one You Tube guy asked the field what “In God We Trust” means. All candidates got the answer absolutely wrong. The correct answer is that the motto is our public acknowledgement that, given the inherent and inexhaustible stupidity of man, this nation’s ultimate salvation must rest with the benevolence of a divine protector. After watching the You Boobs debate, I think trust in God is our only hope for 2008.

OTHER RELEVANT POSTS:

Could the surge be working?

2007-07-25T18:58:00.000-04:00

Could the surge be making a difference?

The surge has basically been chasing the terrorist and criminal gangs around the suburbs of Baghdad, or even into northern or western Iraq. This has taken its toll. Time spent in flight cannot be spent planting IEDs or killing people. Putting all these guys on the road, also makes them more susceptible to capture. A lot of important terrorists have been captured this way. The chief liaison between al Qaeda headquarters and al Qaeda in Iraq was nabbed, as well as many mid-level terrorist cell leaders.

What most of the troops, and Iraqi civilians, notice is the lower level of violence. Since the surge offensive began four months ago, Iraqi (military and civilian) deaths have declined by more than 50 percent, and American casualties are down by over a third. U.S. troops are still taking the lead in moving into hostile areas, and being exposed to ambush and IEDs. But U.S. tactics and training have made enemy efforts much less lethal. This has helped demoralize an increasing number of terrorists. Many are tired of killing Iraqi civilians, and the increasing difficulty at getting at American troops. Look at this from the Iraqi perspective. In a very good month, Iraqis make a hundred or more attacks a day on American troops, and kill, on average, about four of them. While the terrorists make a big deal out of every American killed, they know that most of their attacks were not only failures, but got a lot of their buddies killed. On average, 10-20 terrorists die for every American killed. This has been going on for years, and an increasing number of Iraqi fighters are demoralized and quitting. Many either become informers, or surrender and speak freely. This is resulting in fresher intelligence, and raids that are catching terrorist cells preparing for operations, and in possession of weapons, bombs and incriminating documents.

There are several wars going on in Iraq. Up north, Turkish and Iranian troops are fighting with PKK (Kurdish secular separatist terrorists). The PKK takes refuge in northern Iraq, where the local Kurds tolerate, or support, the PKK. Turkey has put pressure on the U.S. to either get the Kurdish government in the north to round up or expel the PKK, or tolerate a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq to do that. The U.S. has told the Iraqi Kurds that they have to deal with the PKK, or something very bad (for the Kurds) will happen. And soon.

With the Sunni Arab threat diminishing, pro-Iranian Shia Arab groups are more often becoming the target of American military action. The Iraqi government is reluctant to go after these groups because the government is run by a coalition of Shia Arab parties. That said, the government has been less and less willing to protest attacks on Shia Arab militias. This is linked to more American evidence that Iran is supporting and supplying these groups. The Iraqi government knows that Iran wants a religious dictatorship running Iraq. Self interest does have its good side.

As could be expected, there's still no love lost between the Shia and Sunni Arab communities. The attitude in the Sunni Arab community alternates between despair and desperation. The despairing have been leaving, the desperate either fighting or trying to make a deal. Nearly half the 2003 Iraqi Sunni Arab population has left the country. That makes Sunni Arabs only about ten percent of the population. Many Kurds and Shia want them all gone, but as long as the Americans are there, such a mass expulsion won't happen. This gives the Sunni Arabs a chance to cut a political deal with the majority Kurds and Shia Arabs. There's not much love in that department. Amnesties and oil revenue are not being offered in large quantities. The Sunni Arabs are being less demanding. The Sunni Arab "resistance" is crumbling, worn down by casualties and hatred directed at them for all the murders they commit. Not a good time to be Sunni and Arab in Iraq.

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Can I Follow Mitt?

2007-07-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

My major concern: Mitt appears inauthentic, especially on the life issues.

That glass is half empty: I have a general distrust of politicians. That is especially true when any "conversion" appears politically motivated. I was very critical of Kerry in 2004 and am still of Hillary for pandering. I don't want a politician to follow the public opinion polls, but to lead us.

That glass is half full:

1) Road to Damascus: I feel inconsistent encouraging conversion so much while at the same time bashing any convert. In addition, maybe history teaches against distrusting converts on the life issue. Other converts on the life issue: Reagan (the most pro-life president in our history), Bush I & II, among others.

2) The Real Deal? He didn't have to condemn embryonic stem cell research in order to get the GOP nod. He also took a lot of flack for that veto and risked his career. The stem cell issue has never sold well to voters for conservatives, and his controversial veto was a bold move.

3) "No new taxes!" Even if he's pandering, doesn't he want to be reelected? Campaigning as the "Life Candidate" then appointing a moderate to the Court would be political suicide, especially when we're one vote away on Roe.

Conclusion: I'm hearing him out. I won't categorically say yay or nay. It's still early, and my ears are open.

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Moore's "Sicko" Is Sickening

2007-07-12T12:17:00.000-04:00

Larry Elder explains why "Moore's 'Sicko' Is Sickening":

Nearly 50 million Americans without health-care insurance? For what it's worth, the Centers for Disease Control puts the number of uninsured at 43.6 million, and the Census Bureau at 44.8 million.

First, understand that lack of health-care "insurance" does not mean a lack of health care. Many emergency rooms, by law, provide medical care to anyone who walks in, whether an illegal or legal resident of this country.

Second, when Moore asserts that 50 million Americans lack health care insurance, he most assuredly includes some of the estimated 11 million to 20 million illegal aliens living here. Of people born in America, 86 percent have health-care coverage. For non-citizens, only 57 percent have health-care insurance.

Now examine those who lack health-care insurance.

Nearly half go without health insurance only for four months or less, usually while between jobs. Others with employment could easily add health-care insurance through their work for a very small premium. Many without health-care insurance consist of young people (18 million uninsured are between the ages of 18 and 34) who consider themselves -- given their youth and good health -- unlikely to face large health-care costs.

Over 14 million of the uninsured, according to the Census Bureau, live in households earning $50,000 or more annually. Over 7 million are in households earning more than $75,000 a year. These people could afford health-care insurance, either out-of-pocket or by making minor adjustments to their lifestyles. A small number of the uninsured include criminals. Should taxpayers provide health care for them, as well?

"Sicko" followed the travails of Americans with health-care insurance -- their squabbles with their providers, denials of treatment by insurance companies, their dissatisfaction with the unwillingness of insurance companies to cover certain procedures. But according to an ABC News-Kaiser Family Foundation-USA Today survey, 89 percent of Americans with health-care insurance say they are, in fact, satisfied with the quality of care they receive.

To "solve" health care, Moore wants America to adopt a European or Canadian style of universal health-care, or single-payer system. Does Moore really expect Americans to tolerate long lines for services, months-long delays for important, critically necessary operations and procedures, and the rationing that inevitably occurs with a government-takeover of health care?

Canada? A recent government study said that only half of ER patients received health care in a timely fashion. Lindsay McCreith of Ontario was supposed to wait four months for an MRI, and then wait several months more to see a neurologist for his malignant brain tumor. But instead, McCreith -- like many other ill Canadians -- came to the United States for life-saving surgery.

England? The country's socialist Labor Party now favors privatization and expects, within two years, to triple the number of private-sector surgical procedures.

France? Nearly 13,000 people died in the summer of 2003. Why? The number suffering from the heat so overwhelmed the French health-care system that hospitals simply stopped answering their phones and ambulance attendants told people to take care of themselves. The majority of the 13,000 died from simple dehydration.

To address the "crisis" of the medically uninsured, Moore follows down the same dreary path of those who wish to improve America's education -- ignoring the benefits of competition. Why, for example, do elective medical procedures -- those not covered by health-care insurance -- become increasingly affordable? Cosmetic surgery procedures, nose jobs, breast implants, hair grafts, facelifts and vision-corrective eye surgery steadily decline in price.

Stifling regulations, price controls and outright attacks on free market medicine make things worse. A decade ago, an entrepreneur who operates a for-profit medical school in the Caribbean island of Dominica attempted to build one in America. He scouted the country and figured that Wyoming's doctor shortage created ideal conditions for a for-profit medical school. Compared to the national average of one doctor for every 441 people, Wyoming had only one doctor for every 642 people.

But local doctors pounded the table, warning that the medical school would produce unqualified doctors. Never mind that 92 percent of students graduating from his off-shore medical school passed their U.S. basic level tests on their first try, a slightly higher rate than the U.S. and Canadian average. Wyoming doctors and the national accrediting agency for medical schools successfully fought the proposed school.

If you consider our current health-care system "Sicko," just wait until Dr. Moore takes charge.

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ADULT Stem Cells Treat Leukemia

2007-07-11T23:37:00.000-04:00

Umbilical cord stem cells successfully treat leukemia:

When Tyler Colosimo learned last winter that doctors could find no suitable bone-marrow donor worldwide to help save him from leukemia, he thought his days might be numbered...

Then Colosimo learned that blood left over from the umbilical cords of two babies may have compatible stem cells that could help cure him.

The stem cells -- which are more commonly taken from bone marrow -- can produce healthy blood cells to replace the cancerous ones of leukemia...

Without the suitable cells, Colosimo would have had little hope of surviving the acute myelogenous leukemia that threatens him. Stem-cell transplants also can treat other types of leukemia, certain kinds of anemia and other potentially fatal diseases.

Transplants of stem cells from umbilical-cord blood have been around for nearly 20 years, and they work well in children who can't find an optimal match...

The cord-blood stem cells don't have to match the recipient's tissue as well as those from bone marrow. And the blood is readily available from 45 cord-blood banks around the world.

But adults are bigger, and they need far more stem cells than children to quickly replace those killed off by the procedure. That includes white cells to protect against infections and disease...

Now, Dr. Colleen Delaney, a Hutchinson Center oncologist and researcher, thinks she may have found a way around the problem. Before transplant, the cord-blood stem cells are placed in a special culture that stimulates them to reproduce quickly...

Delaney has expanded the number of blood stem cells 150-fold in just 17 days. That reduces to 15 days the amount of time a patient is most vulnerable to infection. Scientists at other institutions have tried similar technology but increased the cells only fourfold.

"This can open up a whole new donor pool for people who can't find donors," Delaney said.

Colosimo is only the third patient to have the experimental treatment. A 42-year-old San Francisco man has fared well since his transplant a year ago, though he now is battling a viral infection. And six months after treatment a 30-year-old woman is healthy.

The treatment is only in its first phase of research, to make sure it is safe...

After the transplant, Colosimo had more rough days. He developed mouth sores and terrible fevers. Diarrhea and headaches racked his body for two weeks.

But on June 14, he was able to leave the hospital to continue his three months of initial recovery in a South Lake Union apartment near the Hutchinson Center and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where he receives outpatient tests and treatment.

He's exhausted now, but if all goes well, he will recover fully in about a year. Then, he can resume his senior year at the University of Idaho in fall 2008.

He hopes to travel and perhaps work in Japan. He looks forward to building a career in filmmaking.

"So far, I'm happy with the treatment," he said. "It seems like it's working."

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Don't Give Up in Iraq

2007-07-11T22:58:00.000-04:00

Ralph Peters writes about the consequences that would accompany leaving Iraq too soon:

But if Republicans are rushing to desert our troops and spit on the graves of heroes, the Democratic Party at least has been consistent - they've supported our enemies from the start, undercutting our troops and refusing to explain in detail what happens if we flee Iraq.
So I'll tell you what happens: massacres. And while I have nothing against Shia militiamen and Sunni insurgents killing each other 24/7, the overwhelming number of victims will be innocent women, children and the elderly.
Bosnia? That was just rough-necking at recess compared to what Islamist fanatics and ethnic beasts will do. Given that Senate Majority Misleader Harry Reid and Commissar of the House Nancy Pelosi won't tell us what they foresee af- ter we quit, let me lay it out:
* After suffering a strategic defeat, al-Qaeda-in-Iraq comes back from the dead (those zombies again . . .) and gets to declare a strategic victory over the Great Satan.
* Iran establishes hegemony over Iraq's southern oil fields and menaces the other Persian Gulf producers. (Sorry, Comrade Gore, even that Toyota Prius needs some gasoline . . . )
* Our troops will have died in vain. Of course, that doesn't really matter to much of anyone in Washington, Democrat or Republican. So we'll just write off those young Americans stupid enough to join the military when they could've ducked out the way most members of Congress did.
* A slaughter of the innocents - so many dead, the bodies will never be counted.
But I hope somebody tries to count the dead after our Congress kills them. As for those on the left who sanctimoniously set out rows of shabby combat boots to "teach" the rest of us the cost of war, I fully expect them to put out displays of women's slippers and children's shoes to show the world how many innocents died when they "brought our troops home now." (Note to the demonstrators - better start bulk-ordering those slippers and booties now.)
I hate the long-mismanaged mess in Iraq. I wish there were a sensible, decent way to get out that wouldn't undercut our security and produce massive innocent casualties. But there isn't. Not now. And, like it or not, we have a moral responsibility as well as practical interests in refusing to surrender to the butchers in Iraq.
This has been the Bush-Cheney War. But it will only be fair to call the carnage after we run away the "Reid-Pelosi Massacres."

Tony Blankley echoes Peters' sentiment:

Even Bush's war critics who specialize in Middle East affairs (such as the Brookings Institute) believe that the immediate chaos in the Middle East that will follow our premature departure would likely involve not only regional war there, a new base for al Qaeda, but also a nuclear arms race that would quickly result in the world's most unstable region -- which possesses the world's oil supply -- armed with nuclear weapons on a hair trigger.

But the debate today in Washington is about none of these strategic concerns. It is exclusively about Washington's political timetable and when the president will bend to such political necessity. For self-admitted politics -- rather than national security -- to be driving decision making in wartime Washington is not only an unpatriotic disgrace -- it is a national menace.

Imagine the following fanciful discussion in April 1943:

FDR: "Ike, you're going to have to get the Normandy Invasion completed by June this year."

Ike: "But I need at least another year to assemble troops and materiel, establish logistics and strategy and train the men for the battle."

FDR: "Sorry. Several senators are feeling very uncomfortable with the war. Frankly, they have just had it. And several of them are worried about their re-election."

Ike: "My men are fighting and dying for yards in Italy right now -- and even so, they can't wait to take the war to Hitler next year in France. Tell those pantywaisted senators to unloosen their girdles, take an aspirin and go to bed -- and leave the fighting to my men."

FDR: "But we could lose the Senate."

Ike:" Better to lose the Senate than the war."

FDR: "I'm with you, Ike. You beat Hitler, and let me beat the Senate."

Ike:" My men thank you, Mr. President."

Of course, it is an absurdity to imagine such a conversation would have been possible during WWII. And it is a tragedy and disgrace that we are, in fact, having precisely such a conversation today.

But the worm will surely turn. And senators who today proudly call for retreat will then be hiding their faces in shame. And deservedly so. And the public will remember.

And finally, from Rich Lowry:

Advocates of various forms of withdrawal argue that we can fight al Qaeda from our large bases or from Kurdistan. This is a fantasy that ignores that we are waging a counterinsurgency war against al Qaeda that requires on-the-ground relationships with key players and knowledge of the terrain.
And the main "compromise" proposal - adopting the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group - would have all American combat troops out of Iraq by the end of March 2008. It is self-evidently impossible to fight al Qaeda in Iraq without any combat troops to do it.
What all those abandoning the surge essentially want is a return to the old failed Rumsfeld strategy of prematurely drawing down and handing over to unprepared Iraqi forces.
The surge has succeeded in reducing sectarian killings in Baghdad and civilian casualties overall, but at the cost of increased U.S. casualties and without the Iraqi legislative accomplishments that were established as "political benchmarks." Those benchmarks shouldn't be fetishized. The reason that they were considered so important is that they were thought necessary to entice Sunnis away from the insurgency. Instead, the Sunnis have swung our way anyway, in reaction to al Qaeda brutality and to our strength.
By any measure, this is significant political progress - so significant, in fact, that no one even considered making it a "benchmark" at the start of the year. The U.S. political argument over benchmarks is shot through with bad faith anyway. Would the advocates of retreat really have a different position if the Iraqi parliament had managed to pass an oil-revenue-sharing law already? Unlikely.

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Split the Ninth Circuit

2007-07-11T22:38:00.000-04:00

Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a professor at Vanderbilt Law and former clerk on the 9th Circuit and the Supreme Court, explains why we should split the 9th Circuit:

ANOTHER Supreme Court term has come to a close, and, while many things changed in the law, one thing stayed the same: The justices spent much of their time reversing the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The 9th Circuit, which hears appeals in federal cases in the Western United States, is the largest of the 13 such courts, with 28 active judges and more than 20 part-time senior judges. The 9th Circuit is almost three times the size of an average court of appeals, and its jurisdiction stretches from Alaska to Arizona, an area comprising nearly one-fifth of the American population.

The 9th Circuit also has a long-running streak as the most overturned, which went unbroken this year. The Supreme Court reviewed 22 cases from the 9th Circuit last term, and it reversed or vacated 19 times. By comparison, the Supreme Court reviewed only five cases, vacating or reversing four, from the next-busiest court of appeals, the 5th Circuit based in New Orleans.

In other words, although the 9th Circuit decided only one-third more appeals on the merits than the 5th Circuit, it was reversed nearly five times more often.

These numbers suggest that the 9th Circuit is not doing a very good job. I am not the first to point this out. For many years, lawyers, judges and legal scholars have argued that the 9th Circuit is so large and unwieldy that it should be split. Indeed, before the 2006 midterm elections, Congress came very close to doing just that. Legislation passed the House but was never acted on in the Senate.

Proponents of splitting the 9th Circuit largely have been unable, however, to connect the colossal court's size to its high rate of reversal. But there is a connection. Indeed, it can be shown mathematically that, as a court grows larger, it is increasingly likely to issue extreme decisions.

We know that all judges are not created equal. Some are more ideologically extreme, more willing to push the law in a liberal or conservative direction, to find ways around precedents they do not like. Such extreme jurists are a minority on any federal court of appeals, but these courts don't typically decide cases by a majority vote of their entire memberships. Rather, cases are heard by panels of three judges selected at random. So, despite their small overall numbers, extreme judges will occasionally make up a 2-1 majority.

So what are the chances that a circuit court will draw a panel with two judges who hold extreme views? It depends first on how many such judges you have, but also on how big the court is.

Consider a hypothetical court of 28 judges (the number of active judges currently on the 9th Circuit), in which six of the judges are extreme. The probability of such a court randomly selecting a panel with at least two extreme judges is almost 11%. But if it were divided into two courts — each with 14 judges, three of whom are extreme — that probability falls to 9%.

A difference of 1% or 2% may not seem like much, but the 9th Circuit decides more than 6,000 cases every year. This means that if the 9th Circuit is anything like my hypothetical court, splitting it in half would save 60 to 120 appeals a year from being decided by panels with a majority of extreme judges.

If a majority of the full court believes a panel's decision is too far out of step, the full membership can rehear a case. But that is such a cumbersome process that it's used very rarely. The 9th Circuit used it only 22 times last year. And even then, the court is so large that it uses a randomly selected panel of 15 judges instead of the full 28.

Of course, mathematics cannot prove that one of the reasons the 9th Circuit is so frequently reversed by the Supreme Court is because it renders more extreme decisions. But we have other evidence to go on. Of the 19 9th Circuit cases reversed by the Supreme Court last term, eight of them were unanimous — that is, the 9th Circuit's view in these cases did not win the support of a single justice, from the liberal John Paul Stevens to the conservative Clarence Thomas. All the other 12 circuit courts combined were unanimously reversed only nine times.

In other words, it is no coincidence that, when you hear about a bizarre ruling issued by a federal court of appeals, it very likely came from the 9th Circuit. That court was, after all, the one that held a few years ago that it was unconstitutional to voluntarily recite the Pledge of Allegiance in a public school. It also has ruled that tenants in public housing could not be evicted even though their apartments were being used as drug dens. Both of these decisions were, not surprisingly, unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court.

As long as the 9th Circuit stays as large as it is, it is likely to disproportionately continue to issue rulings like these, and it is likely to continue being disproportionately reversed by the Supreme Court.

Over the last six years, many members of the Senate have expressed their desire to reduce the number of "extreme" (as opposed to "mainstream") judicial decisions. If they mean what they say, they should also want to complete the work of the last Congress and split the 9th Circuit.

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Fred Thompson Facts

2007-07-11T22:10:00.000-04:00

At IMAO (In My Arrogant Opinion) and Fred Thompson Facts, you can find good stuff like this:

Fred Thompson doesn't take "No" for an answer... unless the question was "What don't I take for an answer?" Then you better correctly respond with "No" before Fred Thompson rips out your spine and beats you with it.

Fred Thompson disproves natural selection by allowing the rest of the mortal world to continue living.

Not only does Fred Thompson cut taxes, he cuts tax collectors.

[UPDATE: When Fred Thompson visits San Francisco, it's temporarily the straightest city in the country.]

When Fred Thompson is elected President, he'll be the tallest American President ever, beating Abraham Lincoln by an inch and Jimmy Carter with his fist.

Many say that Fred Thompson is just an urban legend made up to scare liberals, but Harry Reid claims to have seen him.

If you say the U.S. government is responsible for 9/11 and end up with your head ripped off and shoved up your ass, it will be no conspiracy who did it. It was Fred Thompson.

Fred Thompson doesn't believe in myths such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and extraterrestrials -- and he knows their existence is myths since he killed them all with his bare hands. Also, he knows for a fact that Elvis is dead since he strangled him in a shopping mall in 1987.

Fred Thompson honors the fallen on Memorial Day by setting fire to hippies. Burn long and hard in their remembrance, you filthy hippies.

Fred Thompson has enough strength to throw Rosie O'Donnell ten feet.

In a Fred Thompson administration, there will always be room to disagree with him. That room is called the morgue.

Usually for a bill to become a law, it has to be passed by the House and the Senate and signed by the President, but once Fred Thompson made a bill into law by saying, "This bill is now the law" and punching Bill Clinton in the nads.

When Fred Thompson throws a cat, it always lands on its head.

Fred Thompson not only doesn't add cream or sugar to his coffee, he doesn't add water.

Fred Thompson's favorite color is the blood of his enemies.

In an election, it costs ten dollars to vote for Fred Thompson since voting for him is a privilege, not a right.

Fred Thompson plans to make it an allowable interrogation technique to rip out a terrorists spine and beat him with it.

The original ending to In the Line of Fire had Fred Thompson stand between the assassin and the president and deflect the bullet off his chest. This was deemed to unrealistic, though, since no one would ever have the courage to pull the trigger on Fred Thompson.

Fred Thompson often fills in for Paul Harvey and Batman.

When Fred Thompson found out a Senator had added pork to a bill, Fred Thompson ripped off the man's leg and beat him with it. The leg was later returned to the Senator as part of a bi-partisan compromise.

While he is opposed to gay marriage, Fred Thompson is very compassionate towards gays since, in comparison to him, every man is a flaming homosexual.

Fred Thompson has on multiple occasions pronounced "nuclear" correctly.

Fred Thompson reconsidered running for reelection after 9/11 but later decided to handle things on his own. He was soon seen entering the Middle East with a bottle of tequila in one hand an a handgun in the other. They're still counting the dead.

Though Fred Thompson left the Senate in 2003, Harry Reid still hasn't stopped wetting his pants.

Fred Thompson once ended a filibuster by ripping out a Senator's heart and showing it to him before he died.

Fred Thompson vows not only to win in Iraq but also to forcefully free Vietnam from Communism, thus giving America a perfect win/loss record for wars again.

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Warming Roundup

2007-07-10T20:36:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE: Dr. D. Bruce Merrifield is a former Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs and Professor Emeritus of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds Masters and Doctoral degrees in physical organic chemistry and currently is a member of the Visiting Committee for Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He writes about the correlation between warming and solar radiation.]

Check out the Goracle.

Thomas Lifson writes, "Global Warming is So Yesterday":

My very favorite excuse for low attendance at the much-ballyhooed worldwide Live Earth global warming concerts yesterday came from Johannesburg, where concert organizer John Langford "believes extremely cold weather... kept people away from the concert." Well I suppose that if you are trying to whip up fears about global warming, cold weather does tend to dampen enthusiasm somewhat.

Of course, the global warming enthusiasts have already tried repackaging their rhetoric of doom, so Langford found himself musing, "...we've had a strange winter... is it climate change?" The brilliant stroke claiming that any weather at all is evidence that something is very wrong works on idiots, ideologues, and children too young to remember every year it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. But evidence is accumulating that most normal people are fed up with being lectured about the need to conserve energy by people who fly in private jets and own multiple mansions. Fifty-six percent of the British public, for instance, believes that global warming fears are "exaggerated."

David Freddoso talks about our options for reducing emissions:

In order to decrease carbon emissions by 33 percent, we would have to remove every existing car and truck from the road (yes, that includes your hybrid), ground every airplane, and shut down every gas station in the United States. In order to bump up from there to a 73-percent decrease in emissions, we would have to shut down most of our electrical grid, with the exception of areas supplied only by nuclear plants, windmills, and dams.

No computers, no lights, no cars, no air conditioning. We’ve entered the third world already, and we’re still not anywhere near the 90-percent reductions that some respected climate scientists say we need immediately in order to save the planet.

So why is it considered anything but a big joke when former Vice President Al Gore asks millions to pledge “to demand that my country join an international treaty within the next 2 years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy earth”?

Instead of the appropriate laughter, we hear ecstatic plaudits from news reporters, evidently too busy copying press releases about Gore’s Live Earth concerts to look anything up. Last week, Gore must have become the first man in history to receive the epithets “Eco-crusader” and “Environmental Guru” in a single mainstream-news article. These adjectives were applied uncritically by the Agence France-Presse, considered by some people to be a serious news source.

Green Hail Mary
Short of killing everyone, there is nothing the U.S. government can do to bring anything close to 90-percent carbon-emissions reductions within a generation. And as long as political opposition remains against nuclear- and hydroelectric-power generation, there is exactly one realistic way to reduce carbon emissions significantly: An inventor will find an economically viable way of producing and distributing all the electricity we need, carbon-free.

This is, to some degree, the Bush administration’s approach — to subsidize or at least wait for such a discovery. The New York Times derided this last August 5 as the “Hail Mary” solution, but it is also the only solution, short of economic collapse, that can achieve anything like 90-percent carbon reductions.

Historically, carbon emissions in the United States decline only in years of economic hardship, and even then only slightly. The last two such years were 2001, when the stock market underwent a major correction and New York City was paralyzed by a terrorist attack, and 1991, another recession year (see figure one). Even with the economic pain we suffered in those years, the nation reduced carbon emissions by just above or below one percent, and in both cases the tiny reductions were more than made up for by increases in the following year or two. As a rule, we emit less when have less, produce less, and employ fewer people. And as our population and economy grow, so does our demand for energy.

In the future, someone will make a lot of money by coming up with a practical and cheap alternative fuel. This will happen when a new source of energy becomes cheaper than what we have right now. In the meantime, incremental measures such as forced ethanol use, government-efficiency standards, and carbon caps have a completely negligible effect on carbon emissions. They do have the effect, however, of causing pain for consumers. The caps will drive up everyone’s electrical bill, as well as the cost of everything that it requires energy to produce or deliver. Meanwhile, new government standards are already making electrical appliances unaffordable and worse in quality, and they will only continue to do so.

Then again, perhaps the whole idea is to cause pain. That is the only way to interpret Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer’s statement to a conference call of reporters on Friday. Boxer has proposed a bill with goals not unlike Gore’s — to require an 80-percent carbon-emissions reduction by 2050.

“I’ve been in these conversations with this administration, and their claim is that technology can solve this problem (global warming) without controls on carbon emissions,” said Boxer. “But everyone has told us, including business leaders, that to drive the investment in these technologies that are going to solve our global-warming challenge, we need to have clear limits on carbon pollution.”

We normally think of higher prices as a byproduct of well-meaning-but-misguided environmental policy, but this is just the opposite. Boxer is arguing that we must make carbon-based energy artificially expensive now, in order to drive an artificial demand for competing environmentally friendly technologies.

The reasoning is that certain business leaders are unwilling to invest in discovering viable alternative technologies because they don’t want to shoulder the risk. Therefore, rather than be surpassed by speculators in a free market, they go to Boxer and others in government to drive up the price of carbon-based energy for all of us, in order to make it less competitive. Other winners include certain companies — such as DuPont — that are holding millions in carbon credits that will suddenly become very valuable if the U.S. government gets involved in a cap-and-trade scheme.

The only ones to lose out in this arrangement are people who use electricity or gasoline, or have to buy consumer products like cars and appliances. Keep that in mind the next time you hear a Democratic politician invoke the image of a single mother who can’t afford to pay her health-care bills.

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Unpardonable Hypocrisy

2007-07-10T19:58:00.000-04:00

[UPDATE: Dick Morris and Eileen McGann have more here]

Helvidius, a Pachyderm has this on the hypocrisy surrounding Bush's commutation of Libby's prison sentence. She points out that Libby supported Marc Rich, which Bill pardoned. Now Hillary is bashing Bush for relieving Libby of time in prison.

The New York Post has this:

Apparently, Bill Clinton's pardon of his own brother (a cocaine-trafficking conviction), as well as of folks who'd paid Hillary's brother tens of thousands of dollars for presidential clemency, had nothing to do with "cronyism."

Oh, but there's a difference, claims Hillary. "This was clearly an effort to protect the White House," she said. As opposed to, say, Clinton's pardon of Susan McDougal, his one-time Whitewater business partner, who sat in prison for 18 months rather than testify against the Clintons?

And finally, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has this:

Scooter" Libby will serve as much time in prison for lying under oath to a federal grand jury as Bill Clinton served for lying under oath to a federal grand jury.

Mr. Libby, who was chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted in March of lying about how he learned that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA. Last month Judge Reggie Walton sentenced him to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine.

On Monday, President Bush commuted the prison sentence. His conviction still stands, and Mr. Libby has paid the fine.

Democrats were outraged. "As Independence Day nears, we are reminded that one of the principles our forefathers fought for was equal justice under law," said Sen. Charles Schumer of New York. "This commutation completely tramples on that principle."

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. said President Bush should be impeached for "crimes against the Constitution of the United States."

So were liberal newspapers. "President Bush's commutation of a pal's prison sentence counts as a most shocking act of disrespect for the U.S. justice system," said the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in an editorial.

"In this case, Mr. Bush didn't sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice," said The New York Times. "He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell."

These worthies were outraged in the fall of 1998, too. But then they were outraged because President Clinton had been impeached for committing perjury.
With so many others piling on, Hillary Clinton should have had the good sense to hold her tongue. But she said, "This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice."

That's rich, as in Marc Rich, the financier who fled the country to avoid prosecution for tax evasion, fraud and "trading with the enemy." On his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned Mr. Rich after his ex-wife, Denise, donated $1 million to the Democratic Party and $10,000 to the Clinton legal defense fund.

That day Mr. Clinton also pardoned four men who had bilked the government out of some $40 million. They were leaders of the Orthodox Jewish Skver sect in New Square, N.Y. Members of the sect usually vote Republican, but broke heavily for Hillary Clinton in her Senate campaign after she invited the group's spiritual leader to the White House.

Others among the 140 Mr. Clinton pardoned on his last day in office were Henry Cisneros, his former housing secretary who was convicted of lying to federal officials; Susan McDougal, his former partner in the Whitewater land deal; and his former CIA director, John Deutch, convicted of mishandling national secrets.
Few Democrats said those pardons sent "the clear signal" that in the Clinton administration "cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice." Hillary Clinton could get away with her blatant hypocrisy because she knew her fellow hypocrites wouldn't call her on it.

And few complaints were heard from these worthies when Sandy Berger, who had been President Clinton's national security adviser, received no jail time -- and only a $50,000 fine -- for stealing classified documents from the National Archives.

We still don't know why Mr. Berger stole those documents, or why he destroyed some. The news media don't seem to be pursuing the story. For most journalists, a scandal isn't a scandal unless a Republican is involved.

Mr. Bush also took flak from the right for commuting Mr. Libby's prison sentence. The editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post blasted him for not pardoning Mr. Libby outright.

It wasn't a crime to disclose Ms. Plame's identity (she hadn't been covert for more than five years), and it was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who outed her, not Mr. Libby. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald demanded he be sentenced as if he had violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

I'm suspicious of verdicts handed down by D.C. juries, and I think Mr. Fitzgerald is the federal equivalent of disgraced Duke rape prosecutor Michael Nifong.

The president got it right. There was no underlying crime, but Mr. Libby was convicted of lying to the grand jury. So, he should pay. But the loss of his job, his reputation and the $250,000 fine are greater punishment than similarly situated Democratic offenders usually receive

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