Thomas Friedman: Free Al Q'aeda Terrorists; Empower Castro

Some days you just can't make this stuff up. Here's Tom Friedman waving his magic wand like Glinda the Good Witch of the North in the Sunday NYTimes, declaring with a dazed, hallucinogenic grin that "9-11 is Over". (That's the actual title of the editorial, reminding me, thematically at least, of this). You stupid little munchkins hiding in fear from the Wicked George Bush can all come out now:

You may think Guantánamo Bay is a prison camp in Cuba for Al Qaeda terrorists.

Last I checked, yes, it still is. And the reason it's a bad thing to keep them there is?...

A lot of the world thinks it’s a place we send visitors who don’t give the right answers at immigration.

Who would that be, exactly? Besides not being true (not that that ever stopped a New York Times columnist with a good head of steam), why do we care what lies the rest of the world chooses to believe after reading editorials like this one and listening to Al Jazeera and the BBC do Al Q'aeda's propaganda work for it? But Tom, we're dyin' here... tell us what you really think:

I will not vote for any candidate who is not committed to dismantling Guantánamo Bay and replacing it with a free field hospital for poor Cubans.

Hmm... interesting idea. I have a better one. How 'bout we free Cuba from the cult-of-personality Communist dictatorship that's created the poverty in the first place--aided and abetted by the leftist Western media?

Remedial Economics For Reactionaries and Radicals

As noted before, I've been increasingly impressed with U.S. News and World Report economics writer James Pethokoukis. In this post/column, he completely fisks the Democratic debate that took place in Hanover, NH earlier this week. If this were all he had to do, I would nominate his as the easiest job in America.

If you've a hankering for higher government spending and higher taxes—and I know plenty of people who do—you most likely got a bellyful at last night's Democratic debate... Democrats do realize that America exists in a hypercompetitive global economy, right? Mentions of "compete" or "competitiveness," [in the debates] zero; "China," one; "India," zero; "Asia," zero; "innovation," zero; "productivity," zero; "technology," two...

Thank goodness for global warming. Without it, Dems would seem to be hard pressed to come up with a strategy to grow the economy faster. This from Dennis Kucinich: "I'm talking about a new WPA*..." ...global warming provides a handy excuse for more government spending. As far as dealing with Social Security goes, raising taxes—-by lifting the cap on taxable wages-—seems a popular way of returning solvency to the system. (Such a move, by the way, would be the largest tax increase in American history.) [emphasis and link added]

*(The WPA, or Works Projects Administration was set up by the direct presidential order of FDR in 1935--entirely bypassing Congress. Here's what the uncontested Wikipedia entry about it has to say: "...the program wasted federal dollars on projects that were not always needed or wanted... White-collar WPA projects in particular were often singled out for their sometimes overtly left-wing social and political themes. One criticism of the allocation of WPA projects and funding was that they were often made for political considerations... The most serious criticism was that Roosevelt was building a nationwide political machine with millions of workers. The Hatch Act of 1939 was designed to forbid political activities on government time but the WPA remained politically manipulated by left-wing interests...")

Back then, despite the depression, we stood astride the world. Now, as Pethokoukis notes, we exist in a hyper-competitive global economy. Even if such a thing were marginally acceptable then, it would without question represent economic suicide today.

It has been fashionable for a long time for Democrats to accuse Republicans of wanting to "roll back the clock" on various issues. Not that that's always such a terrible thing on some issues. Yet what we have here is the entire cadre of Democratic candidates failing to address uniquely 21st century issues while simultaneously proposing a list of policies with vintages ranging from the 1930s to the 1970s that have all been tried and found wanting.

That reactionary impulse has only increased on the left as Democrats have begun to realize that history is against them--in the form of baby-boom demographics and fertility rates. The current Congress (and particularly its committee chairs) is a case study in boomer throwbacks running the asylum based on Carter-era assumptions.

Speaking of asymmetrical fertility, here's the other piece of Democratic economic fantasy I've been trying to figure out (this one in the 'radical' category): the she-devil's proposal yesterday that every baby born in America receive (from your tax dollars) a $5,000 bond.

(There are about four million babies born in the U.S. each year. Little wonder she put the proposal in per-capita terms rather than calling for twenty billion dollars in extra federal spending.) Here she is in her own words:

"I like the idea of giving every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow over time..."

Let me first dispense with the aesthetics of her statement before dealing with its substance (such as that is). She begins with "I like the idea", as if, in narcissistic fashion, anything she comes up with is a gift to the American people and yet (paradoxically) also as if this were just a casual mention, not a carefully calculated ploy, as I believe it is. She tosses it off as if, with false modesty, it were really someone else's idea (she doesn't say whose).

If you don't like it, well, she was just floating a trial balloon, you know, so pay it no mind. But if you do, then we all know (wink-wink) it was really her idea all along (aw shucks) and isn't she brilliant (falsely humble smile) and besides (adoringly earnest, glassy-eyed acolyte look) she's a woman you know, so of course we must vote for her in order to rid the world of its patriarchal oppression. (Whatever that is, and never mind Maggie Thatcher or Condi Rice, much less the Islamofascists we're trying to stop whose sharia law enshrines precisely that value).

Then there is the rootlessness of the verb she uses ("to give", in its gerund form here). She carefully avoids attaching that verb to anything in particular because, if she did, it would be obvious that what she is proposing is both a vast new government bureaucracy and the taking of more of your hard-earned money.

The word "giving" exists on its own--floating in space--as if Santa Claus were about to come down the chimney and everybody likes Christmas, right? (We'll forget the Islamofascists for a moment. They surely do not and would thus spoil the fantasy.) But while we're on that thematic track, she thinks, why don't you poor stupid people (does she really think we need to be told, like little children, that invested money grows over time?) think about a Salvation Army Santa ringing the bell in front of the department store at Christmas.

In that context, we can all agree, giving is a good thing, right? We can, however her proposal is emphatically not that--not even in one molecule of its mechanism or intention. Which brings us to substance--all of which is political.

There are several obvious and several not-so-obvious angles to this. (Sorting out which is which is left as an exercise for the reader):

First, it harbors the potential to extend her reach beyond a liberal, affluent, bi-coastal base that has tended to be less-re-productive (in some cases militantly or physically un-reproductive) compared with more traditional families (particularly religious ones) in 'red' states.

Second, combined with a soft policy on illegal immigration, it virtually ensures the long-term expansion of the Democratic base, especially where they have been weak among Hispanics. (Buying votes is a traditional Democratic 'machine' tactic. Nothing new here.)

This is also an end-run on the traditional welfare state, with something thrown in (quite ironically for the income-redistributing Dems) for semi-affluent suburban stay-at-home moms who may have subliminally resented the idea of single mothers in the ghetto getting a hand-out while they have been punished for keeping their family together. At the very least, it takes a stab at the core of Republican support in that demographic and may peel off a few marginal votes among the more secular parts of it.

Finally and most cleverly on her part is what took me 24 hours to realize: this is her defense against the charge of being anti-life/pro-abortion. With the 'gift' of your money, she can say that she supports growing (selected) children into productive, college educated (read: liberally indoctrinated) adults and distract attention from the ones who (ahem, lets be delicate here) never had the chance to make it that far. My goodness, she is clever...

Climate Mania: A World Gone Truly Mad?

Not to be hyperbolic about it, but two articles this morning, on first reading, left me semi-despondent over the nature of truth, factual dialogue and the world's sense of priorities. (I'm a little more sanguine after analyzing them in more detail, as you'll see by the end.)

The first is featured by Drudge, linking to the FT. The piece includes this quote from Condi Rice, and appears to mark a sea-change in Bush administration policy.

“It is our responsibility as global leaders to forge a new international consensus on how to solve climate change . . . If we stay on our present path, we face an unacceptable choice: either we sacrifice global economic growth to secure the health of our planet or we sacrifice the health of our planet to continue with fossil-fueled growth.”

This is deeply worrying in two regards, but tentatively encouraging in several others. First the bad stuff:

1) It represents an apparent capitulation to the forces of hysteria over reason and of politics over truth. I was impressed to learn last year that the president had read Michael Crichton's awful-as-fiction, but sociologically prescient novel "State of Fear". Now he seems to be forgetting its main axiom: people will work themselves up into fearing things that aren't rational. Special interests groups have strong financial and existential interests in fanning those flames.

2) If the phrase "solve climate change" is not the ultimate in hubris, I can't imagine what is. (Those railing against Bush administration notions of grandiosity, take note: this is a better place to look for it than in Iraq). The planet's climate has been changing constantly since its very beginnings. Man can no more stop that change than he can stop, well... the weather. The word 'solve' begs a million other questions also. E.g., What exactly is the problem? Who gets to define it (and its scope)? Who gets to say when we're "done"? How would we know that we had "solved climate change"? When all change stopped?

And how would you even agree on how to measure such a thing? Would century-to-century stasis be sufficient (in which case nobody has to prove in the present that anything is efficacious). Or would we seek some petty tyranny of year-to-year stasis? (A kind of Stepford Wives notion of conformity, this time for weather and climate instead of suburban housewives.)

I'm reminded of Virginia Postrel's ground-breaking work "The Future and Its Enemies" in which she defines two political interests that cut across traditional right-left lines: Stasisists and Dynamists (the latter are the good guys). Stasisists want everything to remain the same no matter what, sucking in both reactionary conservatives and folks like Ralph Nader, Al Gore and others. The ultimate expression of this impulse is to freeze (if I can use that term) the state of very planet on which we live. The Dynamists recognize that all life (economic, social, physical, etc.) is in a state of flux, co-evolution and adaptation that the best solution to any problem (say, pollution) is to bet on new technologies and social mechanisms (not to mention increasing prosperity) to solve it in a far more organic, innovative and bottoms-up fashion.

Here's what I find encouraging about Ms. Rice's statement:

1) It leaves this and any future administration a massive amount of wiggle room. (And they will need it. Remember, under Clinton, the Senate voted unanimously to not ratify Kyoto. And they were right to do so. Don't hold your breath for the "thank you" from Hillary though. She will find a way to make herself the victim in this.)

The phrase "responsibility to... forge a new international consensus" could mean anything, or nothing. The word 'new' could also create an opening to finally spread the word about the consensus this administration already created for action on climate change with several East Asian nations several years ago (can't find the reference at the moment). That barely got mentioned by the MSM. The Bush administration got no credit for it because well, everyone knows that Bush is worse than Adolf Hitler, right?

2) It removes an issue from the 2008 presidential race that--even if we 'skeptics' are right--would have lost us some votes due to the aforementioned irrational and misplaced fears.

3) It stands firm on the key issue in this whole thing: robust, global economic growth (i.e., wealth creation), noting that we can't 'sacrifice' the global economy (and with it human living standards) on some altar of global world government allocating trillions of dollars on useless remediation and wealth re-allocation schemes to shave a tenth of a degree (maybe) off some postulated rise in global temperature over a century. Economic growth--and only that--is the best solution to virtually any environmental issue you want to name. Don't believe it? Pick ten major cities around the globe, distributed according to wealth (e..g, from say, San Francisco or London or New York all the way down to some third-world hell-hole). You get to live in any one of them you want, but only at, say, the 20th percentile of wealth (i.e, in terms of being downwind from factories, drinking water) and you must stay there for 30 years. Remember, your kids' health is at stake. Guess which places pop to the top of the list?

4) Capitulation on global warming (despite the truth) may be a pragmatic way to do what we ought to be doing anyway, namely cutting our dependence on Saudi Arabia as fast as possible (without setting up a socialist economy, that is). I different from Thomas PM Barnett on this point. Short take: he says economic connection prevents conflict. I say it does... if there are shared values underpinning it. Which we don't have with Saudi. Not by a long shot.

In the short term, it's impossible and economically unwise to cut fossil fuel consumption drastically, and I'm not suggesting that conservation could succeed without also (say) drilling in ANWR, nor that it should succeed with a top-down (SUVs are banned!) kind of approach. But it's a way to start harnessing a movement that is otherwise heading in loony-tunes directions and instead tack in a direction that reduces our need to kow-tow to the Wahhabists who looked the other way and allowed 9-11 to happen... and that's unarguably a good thing.

OK, on balance and reflection, maybe George and Condi aren't so far off the reservation after all.

Oh yeah, the second article is in this morning's WSJ. Since it's in the news section (page one) and not on the editorial page, it leans further left than the New York Times (if such a thing is possible), though it does so more subtly (framing and character selection). The title: "Split Over Global Warming Widens Among Evangelicals". Here are the first few paragraphs:

WACO, Texas -- Suzii Paynter, director of the public policy arm of Texas's biggest group of Baptist churches, traveled to central Texas early this year to talk to a local preacher about a pressing "moral, biblical and theological" issue. She wanted to discuss coal.

Christians have a biblical mandate to be "good stewards of God's creation," Ms. Paynter says she told the Rev. Frank Brown, pastor of the Bellmead First Baptist Church here in the county where President Bush has his ranch. So, Texas Baptists should demand that controversial plans to build a slew of coal-fired power plants be put on hold.

Mr. Brown was not impressed. God, the pastor said, is "sovereign over his creation" and no amount of coal-burning will alter by a "millisecond" his divine plan for the world. Fighting environmental damage is "like chasing rabbits," he recalls telling her. It just distracts from core Christian duties to spread the faith and protect the unborn.

Starting with the dateline, it's not hard to see where the piece is going and its bias makes it less than earth-shaking in its likely impact.

I strongly suspect (since, ahem, the lede is written entirely from Ms. Paynter's point of view) that a distinction may have been (or at least should have been) made in the reported conversation between "environmental damage" (which anyone including me can and does rightly oppose) and global warming, which actually benefits mankind in myriad ways.

The difference is boxing at shadows vs. boxing a real opponent. If anyone call tell me how CO2 causes damage in the sense that say mercury does, I'm still waiting to hear it. The article is also just a tad too gleeful (again, in subtle ways) about a split among religious folk. I can't remember any MSM articles recently talking about how atheists are tearing one another apart and screwing up their fragile coalition with Democrats (though they have been known to do just that).

For the record, I don't object to people holding different points of view (and arguing for them forcefully) with regards to--in this case--a particular coal-fired power plant or other environmental issue. What I and many other conservatives object to is misusing, hijacking and/or cherry-picking religion to make a case for a pet political cause one holds dear outside of the spiritual arena, or a view which one held long before ever considering what God has to say.

There is a great difference between using scripture to inform one's world view and using one's world view to re-form scripture to one's liking. Yeah, I know that's a deep one and it's an easy retort to say that it cuts both ways. Just try to keep it civil and interesting in comments. Recycling is fine for plastic and metal. I prefer to avoid it in argument.

Heh... Chasing rabbits... I'll have to remember that one... maybe substitute cockroaches. :)

UPDATE: A loyal reader and friend writes far more succinctly in response to the WSJ article: "I think global warming represents a misplaced faith in the power of man..." Nicely put.

1984, 23 Years Late

Boston Globe sub-headline last Sunday: "The advantages of amnesia... What society needs now are new ways to forget."

Tremendously 'deep' and filled with quotes from prominent academics and thinkers (e.g., Borges) tilting Luddite-like at new technologies like Google, iPod and the Internet in general.

Only one problem: the left has already done a bang-up job, starting in the 1960s of forgetting and deriding the importance of history and accumulated societal wisdom in general. As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, forgetting (or rather continuously 're-inventing') is pretty much their self-appointed job description.

What's disturbing is that the writer shows no sign whatsoever of recognizing how close the philosophy she espouses comes to (take your pick): Pol Pot and his chillingly evil 'Year Zero' campaign, Mao and his grandly murderous schemes of Cultural Revolution, or George Orwell's fictional but frighteningly prescient treatment of Stalinism in '1984'. The final paragraph of that classic reads: "the longhoped-for bullet was entering his brain... He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother" In other words, he had, under pressure, forgotten what he'd once held to be critically important.

Willfull amnesia: we should be repulsed by the very idea. Don't buy it? Try this only slightly ironic little exercise: try 'Googling' the phrase "never forget" and see what comes up. Despite the above references, I had not really spent much time thinking--until I wrote this post--about how something as simple and obviously virtuous as remembering (especially history) could be a partisan issue. Apparently, it is. Amazing.

This Just In: Al Q'aeda is Motivated by Islamic Fanatacism

I don't know whether to laugh with derision that it took them so long to figure out what has been patently obvious to some of us for six years, or to cry with relief that they finally did so, but some in the academy are finally beginning to discover that (swallow your coffee and hold onto your seat, folks 'cause this is big--really big--news): Islamic terrorists such as Al Q'aeda want to kill, convert and/or subjugate all non-Muslims because of who we are, not what we have done. Yes, the most purified of ivory minarets looming over the Western academy, The Chronicle of Higher Education has finally gotten the news:

It soon became clear why these particular documents had not been directed to the West. They were theological treatises, revolving around what Islam commands Muslims to do vis-à-vis non-Muslims. The documents rarely made mention of all those things — Zionism, Bush's "Crusade," malnourished Iraqi children — that formed the core of Al Qaeda's messages to the West. Instead, they were filled with countless Koranic verses, hadiths (traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), and the consensus and verdicts of Islam's most authoritative voices. The temporal and emotive language directed at the West was exchanged for the eternal language of Islam when directed at Muslims. Or, put another way, the language of "reciprocity" was exchanged for that of intolerant religious fanaticism. There was, in fact, scant mention of the words "West," "U.S.," or "Israel." All of those were encompassed by that one Arabic-Islamic word, "kufr" — "infidelity" — the regrettable state of being non-Muslim that must always be fought through "tongue and teeth."

Consider the following excerpt — one of many — which renders Al Qaeda's reciprocal-treatment argument moot. Soon after 9/11, an influential group of Saudis wrote an open letter to the United States saying, "The heart of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is justice, kindness, and charity." Bin Laden wrote in response:

As to the relationship between Muslims and infidels, this is summarized by the Most High's Word: "We renounce you. Enmity and hate shall forever reign between us — till you believe in Allah alone." So there is an enmity, evidenced by fierce hostility from the heart. And this fierce hostility — that is, battle — ceases only if the infidel submits to the authority of Islam, or if his blood is forbidden from being shed, or if Muslims are at that point in time weak and incapable. But if the hate at any time extinguishes from the heart, this is great apostasy! Allah Almighty's Word to his Prophet recounts in summation the true relationship: "O Prophet! Wage war against the infidels and hypocrites and be ruthless. Their abode is hell — an evil fate!" Such, then, is the basis and foundation of the relationship between the infidel and the Muslim. Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.

Bin Laden goes so far as to say that the West's purported hostility toward Islam is wholly predicated on Islam's innate hostility toward the rest of the world, contradicting his own propaganda: "The West is hostile to us on account of ... offensive jihad."

None of this should be new, in even the remotest sense, to readers of this blog. What's remarkable and possibly encouraging here is that new constituencies are beginning to accept this persistent reality. The attacks of September 11th, and the global shifting-of-gears in jihad that it kicked off were never about oppression of Palestinians, or anything even remotely close to that secular complaint. They were and continue to be about our being non-Muslim.

Jonah's Dilemma

Michael B. Oren and Mark Gerson wrote an op-ed in last Friday's WSJ that I missed at the time but am glad to have found in 're-runs'.

Jonah's quandary is routinely encountered by national leaders, especially during crises. Winston Churchill, for example, prophetically warned of the Nazi threat in the 1930s, but if he had convinced his countrymen to strike Germany pre-emptively, would he have been hailed for preventing World War II or condemned for initiating an unnecessary conflict?
...
Recent presidents, in particular, have struggled with such dilemmas while wrestling with the question of terror... had [they] gone to war, would Americans today credit them with averting a 9/11-type attack or would they have been denounced for overreacting? If American leaders had stood firmly earlier in Iran, Lebanon or Afghanistan, would U.S. troops today be battling in Iraq?

President Bush presents a striking example here... This is the tragedy of leadership. Policy makers must decide between costly actions and inaction, the price of which, though potentially higher, will ultimately remain unknown -- a truly Jonah-like dilemma.

Unlike presidents, of course, Jonah knew the outcome of his decision: A penitent Nineveh would not be destroyed by God. And yet he so feared the paradox of prophecy that he risked his life to escape it. [emphasis and link added]

The paradox of prophecy, a.k.a. "d*mned if you do and d*mned if you don't". It part of a gap (a yawning chasm, really) that separates buck-stops-here decision-makers (i.e., executives) from commentators, critics and kibbitzers. As such, I suspect it partly explains what's motivating President Bush to reach out and advise those who by all rights ought to be his partisan enemies.

Yes Virginia, There is an Axis of Evil, Part II

Must read op ed by John Bolton in today's WSJ.

A dramatic and apparently successful night-time Israeli air attack on Syria, whose details remain extraordinarily closely held, has increased the stakes. North Korea immediately condemned the raid, an action that raises this question: What is it about a raid in Syria that got Kim Jong Il's attention?

Israel's specific target is less important than the fact that with its objection to the raid, North Korea may have tipped its hand. Pyongyang's interest in the raid may be evidence of secret nuclear cooperation between the regime and Syria...

Iran's increasing hegemony over Syria makes Syrian-North Korean cooperation in nuclear matters unlikely without its consent. Although Iran's involvement here is murky, its incentive to conceal its own nuclear program raises the possibility of a three-way deal. Most chillingly, the United States and Israel must now ask whether the Iranian and North Korean nuclear challenges can be resolved in isolation from one another...

Even if we "only" have evidence of continued North Korean ballistic missile cooperation with Syria, that alone should keep the North on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Syria -- and its senior partner, Iran -- are both long-time denizens of that same list of state sponsors of terrorism. Can we really delist North Korea when it partners with other terrorist states in the most destructive technologies?

Moreover, where are Syria's ballistic missiles -- and its weapons of mass destruction -- aimed? With American forces at risk in Iraq, no increase in the threats they face is acceptable, especially given Syria's record on Iraq to date. Syria remains at war with Israel and with Lebanon's Cedar Revolution. No one concerned about Israel's security or Lebanon's democracy should countenance giving North Korea a pass on the terrorism issue...

Developments in Syria should have brought the administration up short. Instead, the State Department has accelerated its efforts to declare "success," [in NoKo negotiations] a deeply troubling and dangerous sign. This reflects a cultural problem at State, where "zeal for the deal" too often trumps the substance of the deal itself.

It's all connected. It has been for quite some time. Those who scoff at the Axis of Evil as a paranoid delusion of George Bush, or the byproduct of our action in Iraq are simply deluded. Sorry. Facts are hard things.

One other thing: in Ahmadinejad's remarks at Columbia yesterday, he is widely purported to have said that "Iran is not going to attack any country". [emphasis added]

Thing is, Iran does not need to attack in the traditional, uniform-wearing state-on-state sense. It has Syria as a proxy if not virtual puppet and in much closer proximity to its primary target (Israel) as well as its secondary target (U.S. interests, i.e., in Iraq).

It also has Hezbollah. Same advantages. Even murkier and harder to retaliate against.

Furthermore, since Iran--and the rest of radical Islam--do not regard Israel as a legitimate country, and never have, Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement is technically true in his world--and therefore fiendishly clever. It's the equivalent of crossing your fingers behind your back while telling a 'white' lie... as if that somehow absolves one of the responsibility for telling it.

I use the word 'fiendish' advisedly. It's very much how Satan (the father of lies) talks in the Bible (not to mention unscrupulous attorneys, used car salesmen and politicians--with apologies to the honest ones out there who prove the rule): a narrowly technical truth, carefully engineered to make ambiguous a massive deception. It allows him not only 'wiggle' room but bragging rights with his home constituency. (Hey Achmed, they actually bought that "won't attack" line! Hah!)

The home audience was the intended one for the whole New York visit from the beginning: edited and spun by the tightly controlled Iranian state media as David standing up to Goliath and getting a standing ovation.

That's one part the mandarins that invited him just don't get: no matter what got said, the output of the encounter, and the very fact of his visit must have been deeply discouraging to those in Iran hoping for, or maybe plotting regime change. For those who believe that a non-military solutions is possible (and I still hold out slim hope), I have a question: why was it right to give a golden propaganda opportunity to this man when its effect as regards internal, peaceful struggle against the regime is utterly antithetical to peaceful solutions?

One more question bugging me: I still don't see how "Bush lied" (another story altogether); but, for those worked up about him having done so, I'm curious: where is the left's outrage about nefarious statements such as this one from the man who has actually sworn to kill us?

The Fine Art of Surfing Popular Sentiment and Calling it Science

On July 9, 1971, the [Washington] Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.

The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" [i.e., by 2021] fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.

Sustained emissions over five to 10 years [i.e., by 1976-1981], Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."

Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.

If NASA scientist, Dr. James Hansen, "the global warming alarmist in chief" has the right to form his own conclusions to the point of radically changing his mind, why does he deny that right and ascribe sinister motivations to those who disagree with him?

What Good Covert Ops Look Like

Israeli intelligence finds NoKo nuke material in Syria*, quietly solicits and obtains the support of its primary ally for removing it (without a media leak), and launches a daring and successful raid to do so. The best part: we find out about it only two weeks after the fact. If there were casualties, they were minimal. This is how things are supposed to work.

*If the NoKo/Syria/Iran nuke axis of evil is news, you might want to watch your head so you don't bang it on that stalactite--or trip over that stalagmite--as you wake up from your five-year nap.

A Watershed Moment in the 2008 Campaign

I don't usually opine on arcane details of bills in Congress. Others do it much better. One of those is Hugh Hewitt. In this post, he lays out the details of Section 1070 of the Senate Defense Appropriations bill, a bit that got its own vote late Wednesday night. Here's the meat of it:

It is the sense of the Senate–

(1) to reaffirm its support for all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, including General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq;

(2) to strongly condemn any effort to attack the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces; and

(3) to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org.

The Moveon.org ad in question ran prior to and during General Petraeus' testimony (the timing is important) pre-emptively calling him an unrepentant and across-the-board liar, without using the actual word.

It is one thing for an activist group to say what it wants--as reprehensible as that position may be. It's quite another for Senators to endorse such a position while saying the exact opposite (i.e., "we support the troops") and while pretending to listen to and take seriously the man to whom they unanimously gave the authority to bring back frank analysis from the front.

How did the vote go down?

72 yea, 25 nay.

One quarter of the U.S. Senate does not support the man they unanimously approved only a few months ago. Why? Pure politics. One quarter of the U.S. Senate does not support the U.S. Armed Forces--anywhere, anytime, anybody, doing anything. Note carefully that the bill does not say anything at all about supporting or opposing the war in Iraq. That's key. Do you support the U.S. military? No. Well, at least that's as plain as it gets. As Dennis Prager likes to say: clarity is better than agreement.

But still... unbelievable. One wonders whether these Senators still go to parades back in their districts. One wonders whether they still visit military bases. One wonders whether they take seriously letters and e-mails from military personnel in their districts. One wonders... well... one wonders many things that this vote makes nearly unfathomable.

Bottom line: Hillary voted against it. That's absolutely huge. In Hewitt's words:

"If she ever wanted her public image to be that of a moderate, it's gone now with this vote... she just tipped her hand that she shows more respect to the radical fringe of her base than she does to the country's top general prosecuting a war that she originally supported."

Obama showed up on the Senate floor, heard what the vote was about, and promptly left without casting one. Courageous. Not.

Teach Your Children Well

This allegory has a somewhat apocryphal ring to... and it's a little harsh to imagine even as fiction... but then the larger reality it describes isn't a whole lot more pleasant. H/T: Foxfier

"OK, now I want you to pretend that our house and our yard is the United States of America, and you are President Bush."

Our son giggled and said, "OK."
...
"[The bad man] walks across the street to the old lady’s house, breaks down her door and drags her out. He steals all her stuff and sets her house on fire, and then...he kills her. He turns around and sees you standing in the window and laughs at you. WHAT DO YOU DO?"

"Daddy..."

"WHAT. DO. YOU. DO?"

Our son is crying and he looks down and he whispers, "I close the blinds, Daddy... so I can't see what he's doing........and I'm going to pretend that it is not happening."

What. Do. You. Do? Nicely put. Most on the left simply don't get that last part ('you' and 'do'). We are on the spot. Someone has to make a decision. Inaction is a really bad option. There is plenty of moral clarity--if we're willing to face it. (Does anyone remember September 12th?)

They think we can just watch the movie or ride the amusement park ride and close our eyes for the scary parts. It's an understandable impulse, denial. Unfortunately some don't have that luxury. There's much more. Read it.

Get a Life, Dan

Definition of Chutzpah: Dan Rather sues CBS for $70M for making him a 'scapegoat' while still maintaining that the story CBS ran prior to the 2004 election about President Bush's National Guard service is true. Mountains and mountains of concrete evidence showed that it was not.

U.S. vs. Iranian Unilateralism

What those advocating half-measures, pass-the-buckism, vague notions of 'containment' or 'deterrence', outright appeasement, and/or spinelessly indefinite patience on Iran miss is... what our enemies actually say... and do. (Other than that, they're as tame as Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers--riight). Here's Iranian government spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Elham at a rally today in Iran:

"The U.S. loses all opportunities to cooperate with regional and other world states by trying to support a regime (the Zionist regime [i.e., Israel]) which is now at its weakest political and social position... Supporters of the Zionist regime will definitely receive the final response for their support on [Qods*] day."

*Qods Day occurs on October 12th this year (annually, on the last Friday of Ramadan).

Aside from the increasing specificity of such threats, the statement is remarkable for its stark unilateralism. When the U.S. says: "We will not deal with Country X if they deal with Country Y", the administration gets lambasted for 'unilateralism'. When Iran does it, well... they're just being Iran. Unfortunately, a frighteningly large number in the West secretly empathize with their position out of a misplaced sense of "justice" for the Palestinians and a nebulously soft-core anti-Semitism they'd never ever admit to. Elham is only mimicking what some in the West are already saying (without having the guts to come right out and say it). As I wrote yesterday:

[Retired General Abizaid is] vague in talking about how we could "live with" a nuclear Iran because, if he were clear about it, he would be shot down immediately. The way to "live with" a nuclear Iran is to cede Israel... Sacrificing a peace-seeking, stable, prosperous, long-time, democratic ally that shares our Judeo-Christian world view and values is not only morally sickening but ultimately short-sighted in the sense that Dietrich Bonhoffer meant it in his famous treatise on the Nazis coming first for one group, then the next and the next and the next.

When I say we ought to listen to our enemies, I don't mean just some random, wacko-fringe quote from some super-hard-line radical mullah taken out of context, but a relentlessly clear and consistent message from the Iranian regime, of which the Elham bit is merely the latest example: they plan to destroy the state of Israel; they plan to do it as soon as they can; they are sparing no expense in gearing up for said adventure; and they want to get full credit for it.

I really hope I don't have to say "I told you so".

UPDATE: If Hitler had visited New York in 1939, would we have given him the red carpet?

Leftist Contradictions: Forced Energy Use to Avoid "Urban Blight"

Check out this inadvertently hilarious piece on page one of yesterday's WSJ illustrating how an absolutist (as opposed to a trade-off-acknowledging) world view on the left end of the political spectrum leads to infighting and hypocritical contradictions galore.

Susan Taylor... strung a clothesline to a tree in her backyard, pinned up some freshly washed flannel sheets -- and, with that, became a renegade. The regulations of the subdivision in which Ms. Taylor lives effectively prohibit outdoor clotheslines... the development's managers have threatened legal action. To the developer and many residents, clotheslines evoke the urban blight they sought to avoid by settling in the Oregon mountains...

Ms. Taylor and her supporters argue that clotheslines are one way to fight climate change, using the sun and wind instead of electricity. "Days like this, I can do multiple loads, and within two hours, it's done," said Ms. Taylor. "It smells good, and it feels different than when it comes out of the dryer." ...

Clothes dryers account for 6% of total electricity consumed by U.S. households, third behind refrigerators and lighting... [emphasis added]

For the uninitiated, "urban blight" is an elitist code word for "poor people". If you're on the left however, you don't want to come right out and say that because, well... that would seem terribly intolerant and snobbish--which of course, it is. This vignette is just another skirmish in a long war between contradictory impulses within modern leftist thought as I wrote about last fall. A 'green' developer friend had written me an e-mail about her disdain for an affordable housing developer friend of mine just down the street. She opined:

"The intersection between green and affordable housing is rather tenuous, as these guys never really have enough money to do anything... I've learned I need to stay away from the AH [affordable housing] guys, since their mission appears the same, but really isn't. AH is generally pretty cheap construction - the opposite of the high quality stuff I'm doing."

Without realizing it though, she got one thing right: increasing wealth is one of the best antidotes to environmental degradation... provided, that is, that condo associations don't put in fascist-style regulations about what one can and cannot do with one's laundry on one's own property. Spend trillions on global warming prevention however, and that wealth is never created. (It is a gross fallacy, btw--and one that the she-devil supports--that regulatory compliance and/or anticipatory spending of this kind creates wealth. It does not. It merely moves it around.)

I'm not even going to touch the motivation for WSJ woman's laundry-hanging: a megalomaniacal and unassailable faith that humans are causing global warming and therefore have the power to stop it. There are plenty of other excellent reasons to save energy (e.g., as I did yesterday, walking nearly ten miles to three different meetings around town). One of the best ones is this.

UPDATE: Yet more environmental hypocrisy: save water!... unless it means having to look at your brown lawn...

Nothing to Fear From Iran...

Naaahhh, nothing at all...

Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in a Jane's Magazine report that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria... the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas and VX gas. The factory was created specifically for the purposes of altering ballistic missiles to carry chemical payloads... Syria began developing chemical weapons in 1973, just before the Yom Kippur War.

Nothing to fear that is, if we pull all our troops back 5,000 miles, stop caring about a staunch ally and stick our collective head in the sand about what comes next after Holocaust, Act II is a fait accompli. You get one guess as to where some of those WMD came from.

Side note: Yom Kippur starts in just over 48 hours in Israel...

Retired Generals Opining (Irresponsibly) on Politics and Grand Strategy

The phenomenon is as old as war and politics. The American Civil War was famous for it; Lincoln (rightly) sacked generals over it. Once they're retired and have the mike however, there's not much that can be done in a free society except to fisk their arguments.

Thus it's merely disappointing, not surprising, that General John Abizaid, "recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East" made public statements Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (a generally conservative think tank) that were filled with naive analogies, false assumptions and principles so vague that even a career State Department bureaucrat would likely be confused.

Abizaid said:

"Iran is not a suicide nation... I mean, they may have some people in charge that don't appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon... I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear... There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran... Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well... War, in the state-to-state sense, in that part of the region would be devastating for everybody, and we should avoid it - in my mind - to every extent that we can... On the other hand, we can't allow the Iranians to continue to push in ways that are injurious to our vital interests... I believe the United States, with our great military power, can contain Iran - that the United States can deliver clear messages to the Iranians that makes it clear to them that while they may develop one or two nuclear weapons they'll never be able to compete with us in our true military might and power... We need to press the international community as hard as we possibly can, and the Iranians, to cease and desist on the development of a nuclear weapon and we should not preclude any option that we may have to deal with it."

There's more in the AP article that fills in the gaps, but this is enough and I'd rather critique Abizaid himself than the AP which we already know to be biased.

What are Abizaid's errors?

1) He assumes that Iran is not a "suicide nation". It may not be (but would we want to risk going against what seems plain from its statements?). Its people certainly aren't. (I spent the weekend running all over the state of New Hampshire with a wonderful Iranian ex-pat friend; my college roommate was Iranian). Yet it's leaders have given every indication that they are--and that they will happily take millions down with them on the theory of the return of the 12th Imam and the fulfillment of Islamic jihad, they actually have a duty to do so.

2) He makes a specious comparison to Cold War politics. The motivations of the Russians and Chinese were not religiously prophetic in anywhere near the same sense (or intensity) that Iran sees the divine necessity of the destruction of Israel and the West.

3) He is vague in talking about how we could "live with" a nuclear Iran because, if he were clear about it, he would be shot down immediately. The way to "live with" a nuclear Iran is to cede Israel--to effectively cut off our alliance with them. This is one place where 'paleo' and 'neo' conservatives disagree. Sacrificing a peace-seeking, stable, prosperous, long-time, democratic ally that shares our Judeo-Christian world view and values is not only morally sickening but ultimately short-sighted in the sense that Dietrich Bonhoffer meant it in his famous treatise on the Nazis coming first for one group, then the next and the next and the next.

4) He falsely assumes that it is Iran's desire to "compete" with us and that we should feel secure because we're much bigger and stronger. They don't want to compete with us. They want to erode our influence in their region, increase their influence in Europe, and pursue jihad. Theirs is a millennial (and frankly brilliant) ultra-long-term, darkly messianic strategy. Abizaid assumes, in the a Roman sense, that what is strong now must always be that way because it is. That's bad history.

5) He references "pressing" the international community as if we had not already done so--hard--over many many years. And gotten... squat. Diplomacy is essential. Diplomacy with nothing credible to back it up is worse than useless. It is enabling.

6) He draws lines in the sand that blow away in the wind. "We can't allow the Iranians to continue to push... [against] our vital interests", means absolutely nothing. Vague boundaries are the font of half the wars in history (including, arguably, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War I, if not II, not to mention many in which the U.S. was not involved). The Iranians have demonstrated that they will push and push and push and break every rule in the book and every talky-talk 'agreement' with the spineless likes of UN lackeys until they are stopped by force. They started this kind of behavior in 1979; nothing gives credence to the thought that they are likely to change.

7) He speaks, as many liberals do, about war with Iran as a future possibility rather than a current reality. When one is already at war and the other guy started it, the conversation is entirely different than when one is safely at peace and considering pre-emption.

Abizaid is right on one thing however: war is hell. Taking the initiative, for once, in the continuing war with Iran will be messy. Lots of people will die. It will be bad for the economy. The long-term repercussions cannot be accurately predicted. I occasionally have apocalyptic thoughts about it, as do others. Yet it will do at least one thing: stop Iran from making the nuclear strike on Israel it has sought for decades. Preventing that inevitability is worth much.

Yawn - U.S. Preps for War With Iran

Telegraph headline: "Bush setting America up for war with Iran"

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran... Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran...

The headline reads like a bad editorial. ("Set up" may mean something different in Britain. Here it means a unilateral, unfair trick, leading to disaster.) The copy reads like an announcement that when it rains things tend to get wet. The existence of highly specific target lists for U.S. bombing of Iran was common, public knowledge 18 months ago (and easily surmised well before that). Preparations are prudent when one is already being attacked both verbally and physically. In the current climate, a lack of them would be much more shocking headline fodder.

The Sky is Falling... No Wait, That's My Daughter!

Suddenly vying for top three on my lifetime list of least expected phone calls is the one my wife and I received yesterday from our daughter off at college (her freshman year):

"Mom, Dad, I went skydiving this afternoon."

I suppose there are many less positive ways of ramming home the point that she's an adult now and will make her own decisions... but this one is right up there.

It was a strange brew of emotions for a few hours there: shock, pride, fear, delight, curiosity, relief, envy, disorientation, joy and the finally, the empathetic realization that all she really did was to take some cues from us. (My wife used to show-jump horses; she broke her arm. I used to climb big, gnarly, crevasse-ridden mountains and ride my bike fast in heavy traffic; I've stared down several icy abysses... and homicidal drivers).

Mostly I'm just happy... that she is. Isn't that all any parent ever wants?

Remind Me Again Why Global Warming is Bad?

Longtime readers already know that warmer temperatures lower morbidity and mortality far more than higher temperatures raise them, inverting any moral case that might be made against anthropogenic global warming... if it existed to any significant degree, which it doesn't. John Tierney notes the same thing in his NYT column last week, which I cited here.

About seven times more deaths in Europe are attributed annually to cold weather (which aggravates circulatory and respiratory illness) than to hot weather, Dr. Lomborg notes, pointing to studies showing that a warmer planet would mean fewer temperature-related deaths in Europe and worldwide.

The second factor is that the weather matters a lot less than how people respond to it. Just because there are hotter summers in New York doesn’t mean that more people die — in fact, just the reverse has occurred. Researchers led by Robert Davis, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, concluded that the number of heat-related deaths in New York in the 1990s was only a third as high as in the 1960s. The main reason is simple, and evident as you as walk into the Bridge Cafe on a warm afternoon: air-conditioning.

Now this today, via the AP:

Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record [since 1978], new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage... will become an open shipping lane... The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal [emphasis added].

And the reason that would be a bad thing is what, exactly?

Manhattan Under Water

One of three things is going to eventually happen to John Tierney--the lone conservative(ish) columnist at the New York Times: 1) He will save the paper from the left-wing echo-chamber into which it has consigned itself, 2) They will find a way to fire him, or 3) (and most likely in my view), they will keep him around like a pet just to be able to say they are balanced--as if a see-saw with twenty kids on one end and one on the other is balanced by virtue of having someone on each side.

Tierney's Tuesday column is a must-read on global warming:

Since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the sea level in New York has been rising about a foot per century, which happens to be about the same increase estimated to occur over the next century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The temperature has also risen as New York has been covered with asphalt and concrete, creating an “urban heat island” that’s estimated to have raised nighttime temperatures by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming that has already occurred locally is on the same scale as what’s expected globally in the next century.

The impact of these changes on Lower Manhattan isn’t quite as striking as the computer graphics. We couldn’t see any evidence of the higher sea level near the Bridge Cafe, mainly because Water Street isn’t next to the water anymore. Dr. Lomborg and I had to walk over two-and-a-half blocks of landfill to reach the current shoreline.

The picture at the top of the article is not to be missed: polar bears in a desert. (For some on the left, this will not seem ironic or funny at all; they should get a grip.) Also check out Kimberly Stassel's piece in today's Opinion Journal--also talking about Bjorn Lomborg.

Cuban Missile Crisis, Take Two

It would be nice to think that this could be resolved with a virtual staring contest the way JFK did it in October, 1962.

Israeli surveillance shows possible Syrian nuclear installation stocked by North Korea... target of alleged raid last week was Syrian missile base financed by Iran

Unfortunately, one key element is missing: rational or even life-seeking thinking on the part of our opponent (in this case, Iran, or if you like, the three remaining members of the Axis of Evil).

They want this to boil over and have said so repeatedly. As bad as our options are, if we don't handle this situation, they--unlike Kruschev--will make full use of their nuclear capabilities to destroy Israel and set off a massive world war. The Democrats have one thing right, albeit for the wrong reasons: Iraq may soon seem like a sideshow distraction.

I've said since the inception of this blog: Syria is Iran's "aircraft carrier" for taking out Israel.

Any Suggestions, Admiral? "Prayer..."

"...the Klingons don't take prisoners... a no-win situation is a possibility every commander may face... How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn't you say?"

This and other items eerily applicable to today's struggle with the jihadists on this Star Trek clip over at YouTube: the Kobayashi Maru training scenario.

Why Not Send a Memo?

Interesting headline: "Surge a failure, Democrats tell general"... during his testimony to them.

If only you'd stop telling us about your successes and run away with no strategy like you're supposed to, it would become what we say it is!

Did I miss something or aren't the Petraeus hearings (and all hearings for that matter) supposed to be about asking questions, learning and deliberating on new information brought back by the highly qualified and duly appointed firsthand source close to the action. Well, in an ideal world maybe. But Petraeus, having been the Dems' man from the beginning, has roused their righteous indignation and anger by sticking to the facts. They think he's evil and must be stopped. I think I've heard this tune before.

I'm just waiting for another headline: "Strategy of Running Away and Giving Islamofascists Free Rein to Pursue Genocide a Failure, Voters Tell Dems". Ah that it were so. Of course if I were this unpopular, I'd be on the attack as well... better to create a smokescreen for... $850,000.

'Peace' Activist

This one pretty much speaks for itself: the thin end of a wedge of ends justifying means. Not as far off from this as it might at first appear.

Facts Are Durable Things: George Bush and the Economic Legacy of 9-11

U.S. News and World Report economics writer James Pethokoukis, whose e-mail list I somehow managed to get signed-up for a few months ago, without having done anything in particular, has been on a roll lately--in a good way. His piece today is important to consider in light of the old and tired class-warfare and Bush-bashing rhetoric Democrats are already starting to trot out in preparation for 2008. Pethokoukis writes:

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... [Yet] 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...

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... 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.

Resilient. It's a unique feature of our economy, our nation and most importantly, our people and thus it's a blind spot not only for the Islamofascists and their rigid world views, but also for the gloom-and-doom, America-hating crowd that's unfortunately synonymous with much of the Euro-worshipping left these days. (Just for example, domestic poverty statistics seldom take into account how many people pass through poverty on the way to something more pleasant and sustainable. That's resilience. The left would like you to believe they are all perennial victims.)

In a completely different vein, the article made me think about a project I worked on in the months after 9-11, helping to clean up some of the IT and telecoms infrastructure that broke when the towers went down. I was privy to some "inside dope" on how that event affected the workings of a sensitive focal point of the American economy, namely Wall Street and it was enough to keep me up nights for months, knowing that that vulnerability still existed and that it would be unbelievably easy to exploit if our enemies knew of it and had a few more airplanes or well-placed trucks filled with explosives.

I know all too well how close Bin Laden came to accomplishing his objective--for reasons, and by means he never suspected. And the answer is: just a few hundred yards and a little more reconnaissance. Sometimes I like to imagine him finding this out after the fact and tearing his hair out at how close he came.

I'll leave that one deliberately vague except to note that blowing up Wall Street itself wouldn't have made that much difference. Two other very specific targets nearby that very few know about would have brought the overwhelming majority of securities trading, clearing and settlement to a complete halt until Christmas of that year. At least. It would not be giving Wall Street undue credit to observe that we would be living in a virtual stone age by now if that had happened. Fortunately, those vulnerabilities have since been fixed in some tremendously clever ways.

Fortunately, an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm. Fortunately, God has chosen to bless America. For now. That's not a reason to gloat with jingoistic glee (far from it), but neither is it a reason to let the Democrats send us cowering back to a state of fearful and selfish isolationism and short-sighted fiscal policies.

The Left/Right Asymmetry in Ascribing Motives

Dennis Prager--rapidly becoming my favorite radio host--frequently makes a generalization that's nonetheless illuminating.

Prager observes that while those on the right think leftists are naive and misguided in how they attempt to apply their convictions, most of their underlying motives and intentions are good. By contrast, the left tends to think that conservatives' convictions stem directly from malign motives. In other words: we think they're incorrect; they think we're evil.

They want clean air and water, peace, prosperity, tolerance and freedom (to name just a few core ideals). And I believe them. It's just that I think they're going about getting those things in the wrong ways, while overlooking some important applications of those principles. I want those things too. They don't believe me.

One can immediately come up with several exceptions but--being exceptions--they operate at the margins, tending to reinforce the truth of the more general rule. (Sure I occasionally joke about Hillary Clinton being the she-devil, but mostly she's just an ambitious opportunist filled with populist ideas that probably won't work very well and will likely cause harm on the way.)

Were this merely Dennis Prager's idea, I would not be writing about it. But having been far to the left until I was in my early 30's, I can attest to this phenomenon firsthand. Long, long ago (25 years to be precise), I sent rotting chicken parts to the Republican National Committee in a business reply envelope. I know I was not alone in the sentiment behind that utterly juvenile act (deep fear and hatred of a Republican president). I would be in the mainstream with it today.

It's hard to have a calm, rational debate when that is the implicit (sometimes explicit) starting point. How does one answer the underlying charge without going on the defensive and obliquely confirming the suspicion? It is much like the old trap question: "So... how long have you been beating your wife?"

Just to be fair here, it's worth noting that the left learned this technique from a man (a loose cannon, really) of the far far right: Joseph McCarthy. The comparison only illustrates how much notions of "liberal" and "conservative" have flipped in half a century. (The other classic example is the numerous parallels between JFK and George Bush. But that's a story for another day.)

Coming back to the present, most on the left and the right could agree for example, that the killing of a human being is generally to be avoided (i.e., "a bad thing"). Yet the asymmetry makes it difficult to build on that obvious common ground. Why? Because on a deeper level, most on the left simply do not credit those of us on the right with sincerity on the original plank.

This asymmetry prevents true left-right debates from ever getting traction on the tougher applications of any shared principle. E.g., in the previous example, when life begins, whether the state has a right to take life as punishment (or retribution), whether distinctions are to be made between innocents and those bent on violence, whether there is a distinction between killing and murder, under what circumstances it may be moral to kill some in order to save others, etc.

It becomes impossible to move further not primarily because of the issues themselves, but because the left's primary tactic of late is to demonize rather than discuss. George Bush is equivalent to Adolf Hitler. We're only at war because of greed for oil. No sane comparisons or alternative motives are allowed. We are evil. Thus we are not eligible to debate.

What kicked off this thread was a bumper sticker I saw the other day that (I later learned) has been around for awhile. It reads: "Republicans for Voldemort"--as if half the population were animated by pure evil and the 24/7 job of the other half (resounding good 100% of the time) is to completely eliminate that dark and nefarious force.

How do you even begin a debate when that is someone's starting position? Examples here and here. Original cartoon that sparked the bumper sticker idea is here. Just one of many sanctimonious endorsements of the idea here.

The Expanding, Vanishing Polar Bear Population

Question: How do you know the New York Times is misleading you? Answer: Their printing presses are running.

Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will disappear by 2050, even under moderate projections for shrinking summer sea ice caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, government scientists reported on Friday. The finding is part of a yearlong review of the effects of climate and ice changes on polar bears to help determine whether they should be protected under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists estimate the current polar bear population at 22,000. [emphasis added]

What they leave out is the fact that there were 5,000 polar bears in 1950 and 10,000 in 1970. Now there are between 20,000 and 25,000. The polar bear population is doubling every few decades. The case for anthropogenic (man-made) global warming based on carbon dioxide emissions depends absolutely on a case being made for most warming having happened since the end of World War II. It hasn't. Not that the NYT would have bothered to tell you.

The tip-offs in the first part of the piece are these:

The first sentence uses the word 'will' instead of 'might', implying a level of certainty that's laughable on its face. (Think about it for a moment: "It will rain next Friday." "The economy will grow by 3.2% through 2012." "IBM stock will more than double by 2017.") This is a 45-year forecast of an immensely complex, interdependent phenomenon. And then there's the study's political goal: protection under the ESA. Not exactly an agenda-free scientific exploration.

A Gently Forceful Take-Down of Dawkins

GK Chesterton would be proud of this articulately brilliant take-down of Dawkins that uses no more force than is absolutely necessary for the task. Short and sweet. Required reading.

A New Loss-Prevention Method for Retailers: Honesty

With this story, I note a new item on the blogroll: HappyNews.com.

About 15 shoppers walked through the front doors of a closed Dollar Tree store [in Colorado] Monday after a lock on the doors malfunctioned... it appears nothing was stolen. Police were able to contact a manager, who fixed the lock and closed the store. [A police spokesman noted that] the incident showed that people can be 'honest and good.'

Dem Fundraiser/Fugitive Hsu Skips Bail

UPDATE (Friday night): By now everyone is aware that Hsu's denouement was a pale imitation of either the Bourne movies or any of the hypotheses I offered below.
How pitiful, small, desperate and sad. A train. Colorado. A possible suicide attempt. Some stories end with a whimper that leaves one wondering what all the fuss was about and against one's previous impulses, pitying the former villain, if not his handlers and beneficiaries.

UPDATE 1:30PM: In light of this, I'm going with wild guess #1 below.

[Hsu's] San Francisco attorney -- who appeared at the hearing with another lawyer and two members of the Sitrick & Co. crisis public relations firm -- said his office had sent an employee to fetch Mr. Hsu's passport on Monday at the fund-raiser's condominium in New York City and couldn't find it after searching for 90 minutes.

Asked if he was angry, Mr. Brosnahan said he wasn't. "I have a client and I'm concerned about him," he said. As for their part, state prosecutors said there was little they could do now but wait to see whether Mr. Hsu turned up.

Which raises hypothesis #3 about Mr. Hsu's whereabouts: with Vince Foster... and the fishes.

UPDATE 1:20PM:

Hsu forfeits the $2 million bail he posted last week. Hsu's lawyer said he doesn't know where his client is. [emphasis added]

Wild Guess #1: on a 747 out of Vancouver, under an assumed name, bound for Shanghai
Wild Guess #2: his lawyer may not know, but someone on Team Clinton probably does

Musing question #1: Who would have the incentive, the will, the organization and the means (i.e., much more than $2M) to make Mr. Hsu and what he has to say/reveal... disappear?

Musing question #2: If I were writing the novel, this would be the point where Mark Rich came back into the storyline.

The WSJ has the longer story.

-----------------------
ORIGINAL POST:

12:45PM - Breaking news off the WSJ site after a scheduled 12:00Noon (EDT) appearance time. What's $2 million anyway?

"Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu skips bail hearing; bench warrant issued."

The back story as of earlier this morning:

Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu (SHOO) is due to appear before a judge in Redwood City this morning (9:00 AM PDT) as he tries to get his bail reduced.

Hsu was taken into custody Friday when he turned himself in after being a fugitive for more than 15 years.

His bail was set at $2 million, which he was able to post in about five hours.

Today the judge will consider Hsu's request to reduce the bail amount by half.

Hsu pleaded no contest in 1991 to a felony count of grand theft, admitting he'd defrauded investors of $1 million in a bogus investment scam.

Prosecutors say he was facing up to three years in prison when he skipped town before being sentenced.

Hsu headed to New York, where he remade himself as a benefactor of Democratic causes and candidates.

Federal Election Commission records show Hsu donated $260,000 to Democratic parties and candidates since 2004, including presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

More back story here. I can't wait for the episode where DOG tracks down Hsu, Hillary & Obama.