February : 2008
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Cleveland, Ohio - Clinton / Obama
MSNBC is providing an utterly useless live stream feed of the debate. It's all but unwatchable. You'd think the station could provide a solid stream. Maybe we'll find a version to suffer through tomorrow.
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Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
[nationalpost] Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.
According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
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EDITORIAL & OPINION
Firstly, Mike Huckabee? Are you still hanging around? Please. Remove your noggin from your posterior and get on with the task of landing that gig on the comedy channel. Your 'sap'stick jokes and coy evasions were tired months ago. Thanks for playing.
Now, the CNN Democrat debate? Once again...how exactly does this equate to a debate? It's lame air ballet and testimonial, there is no debate there whatsoever. I liked Obama a couple of years ago for about 5 minutes. What thin gruel. Non answers, non sequiters and fantastical circular babble that ends up saying zero. You pseudo intellectuals that applaud this dreck, even before he finishes a sentence seriously need to either fire your analysts or double up on your appointments.
We haven't cared for Johnny Mac since 2000, but face the facts. There is no comparison in substance between 'Bama and McCain. If you cannot admit that then dare I suggest you have a penchant for intellectual dishonesty. Obama is like some dilettante grinning about while offering vapid platitudes. McCain, son of an Admiral, is the well earned grumpy serious man of military history. A casual glance at the current events ongoing around the globe make the choice of where to vote an obvious one. Unless of course, you are banking on sugarplum fairies to float in bringing gifts to end all problem and the infantile vacuity of chanting "change" and "we can do it, we can do it" to render all troubles of the world gone.
This is the blither that makes people faint?
It's worth also noting that emblazoning religiosity throughout speeches seems to be just fine when it comes to Democrat candidates. Obama's wife seems to have a penchant for making speeches that inform the unwashed of how terrible a place the U.S. is and bellows of the skills of the newly minted messiah. Speaking at UCLA, Michelle Obama offered this sermon:
"We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another — that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."
Imagine the screaming and wailing had the Huckman or Romney even made the slightest similarity of statement? It is blindingly ignorant, this different treatment the GOP receives. "Church and state!" would be cried from every corner and in triple size, bold text. It's pathetic. This entirely aside from the obvious that if you think it is the governments task to save your soul, well, you've got bigger internal problems than the sucking in of mere political rhetoric.
Yes, here we are. The government shall now save our souls, raise our children and spend our money on whatever they deem is best and won't we all be so much happier. Evermore.
[nyt] [...] “Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls.” This was a variation of language she had used earlier on the campaign trail: “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”
Obama seems awestruck with himself. It's written all over his face - he looks like he's dumbfounded to find himself in such a place and I'm a little surprised he hasn't fainted yet himself - and these JFK foolhardy comparisons are idiotic. JFK had fourteen years of congressional experience under his belt, not to mention policy wise only those void on reality think that he would be pumping anything like the Democrat policy positions of the last decades. Name dropping nonsense.
"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
Yup. That sounds like Obama to me. In some alternate universe maybe.
- The Cynical Bastard
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Castro Steps Down as President of Cuba
[marketwatch] : Fidel Castro resigned as president of Cuba on Tuesday, with the ailing Communist leader stepping down after 49 years in power.
The 81-year-old Castro made the announcement in a statement to the Communist Party daily Granma, the Associated Press reported.
"I will not aspire nor accept -- I repeat I will not aspire or accept, the post of president of the Council of State and Commander in Chief,'' the statement read.
In practice, his 76-year-old brother Raul has been running the country since July 2006.
The National Assembly meets Sunday to pick the council of state, including the presidency.
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Kosovo Declares Independence
[afp] PRISTINA, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) — Kosovo on Sunday declared its independence from an angry and anxious Serbia in the final fallout from the conflict-strewn breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Tens of thousands of flag waving people packed the capital, Pristina, as the Kosovo parliament voted a declaration of independence which insisted that the world's newest state would be "dedicated to peace and stability."
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Forever Young
Leon Wieseltier
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
[tnr] What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world. Different circumstances call for different talents, different sensibilities, different approaches to power. "Leadership" comes in many forms. A sterling individual may be historically inappropriate; and a person whom it is impossible to admire may accomplish significant things. The question of whether Barack Obama will make a fine commander-in chief finally depends on your view of the direction of history in the coming years. I cannot escape the foreboding that we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation. I do not mean that there will be many wars, though I cannot imagine that the threat to American security from Al Qaeda and its many associates can be met without a massive and sustained military operation in western Pakistan, and I cannot imagine any Pakistani government ordering such an operation. It is not "the politics of fear" to remind Obama's legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)
One of the striking features of Obama's victory speeches is the absence from these exultations of any lasting allusion to the darker dimensions of our strategic predicament. He makes no applause line out of American defense. And jihadist terrorism is only one of the disorders in an increasingly disordered world. The most repercussive fact of our time is surely the transformation of China. The "metrics" are all staggering. Quantities, quantities, quantities. China already has the power to wreck the American economy. However many tanks and fighters it has, its hoarding of American dollars is itself a kind of arsenal. And the bounty of wealth that it promises American business, the fantasy of greed-fulfillment that it represents, makes it almost impossible to conduct a serious discussion of the implications of this emerging world power for American principles and American interests--certainly not in Washington, where, when it comes to the art of dodging debate, Beijing is better than Bandar. What China wants, China gets. Not even the gold medal in tyranny that Beijing will win in its Olympics will make a difference. Meanwhile the authoritarian Putin has punkishly succeeded in restoring Russia to its inglorious heritage, reminding the world of the old formula that capitalism plus state power equals fascism. In Iran, none of Ahmadinejad's domestic troubles seem to have modified the state's sense of ascendancy, or its will to nuclearize itself, or its appetite for instability in its region. In Iraq, the streets are safer but the sects are not sweeter. In the Korean peninsula, diplomacy has gone ominously cold. In Palestine there are two Palestines, and one of them belongs to Hamas. In Darfur--well, you know, because everybody knows. In Latin America, the failures of liberal economics have sullied the reputation of liberal politics. And so on.
All this even before we attend to the elimination of poverty. And into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world? You might think that in such conditions he is even more of an historical necessity-but why would you think that all that stands between the world and peace is one man? George W. Bush was not single-handedly responsible for getting us into our strategic mess and Barack Obama will not be single-handedly responsible for getting us out of it. There are autonomous countries and cultures out there. The turbulence that I have described is not caused by misunderstandings. It is caused by the interests of powers and the beliefs of peoples. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Islamabad, Gaza City, Khartoum, Caracas-does Obama really believe that he has something to propose to these ruthless regimes that they have not already considered? Does he plan to move them, to organize them, to show them change they can believe in? With what trick of empathy, what euphoria, does he hope to join the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds in Iraq? Yes, he made a "muscular" speech in Chicago last spring; but I have been pondering his remarks about foreign policy in the ensuing campaign and I do not detect the hardness I seek, the disabused tone that the present world warrants. My problem is not with "day one": nobody is perfectly prepared for the White House, though the memory of Bill Clinton's "learning curve" is still vivid, which in Bosnia and Rwanda cost more than a million lives. My problem is that Obama's declarations in matters of foreign policy and national security have a certain homeopathic quality. He seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff.
"False hopes?" Obama told a crowd in New Hampshire. "There's no such thing." How dare he? There is almost no more commonplace trait of human existence (and of African American existence) than false hopes. I want universal health care, but I do not want to be relieved of the little that I have understood, and learned to accept, about the recalcitrance of the world. After Bush, who is not for a fresh start? But there is something unfresh about Obama's movement for freshness. We have been this young before. "She starts old, old," Lawrence wrote, in his discussion of the Leatherstocking Tales, "wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America." So can we agree on a ground between cynicism and myth? Or must we have Camelot once more? After all, being young again is also a way of living in the past. There was something mildly farcical about the Kennedys' endorsement of Obama-of this candidacy that is alleged to signify an alternative to the dynasties, and a break with ideological antiquity; but worst of all was its brazen delight in mythologization. (Thanks to the Obama campaign, millions of Americans now hold that John Kennedy was a great president and that Lyndon Johnson was not responsible for making civil rights and voting rights into law.) I understand that no one, except perhaps Lincoln, ever ran for the presidency on a tragic sense of life; but if it is possible to be too old in spirit, it is possible also to be too young.
*some things are found of such value that they are reprinted in entirety with attribution on chance that readers might not follow the link to read the whole writing
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Who is "Fascist"?
[townhall] : Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss -- and a major loss.
Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis.
This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time -- and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized.
Because the word "fascist" is often thrown around loosely these days, as a general term of abuse, it is good that "Liberal Fascism" begins by discussing the real Fascism, introduced into Italy after the First World War by Benito Mussolini.
The Fascists were completely against individualism in general and especially against individualism in a free market economy. Their agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-making, progressive taxation of capital, and "rigidly secular" schools.
Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run.
They were for "industrial policy," long before liberals coined that phrase in the United States.
Indeed, the whole Fascist economic agenda bears a remarkable resemblance to what liberals would later advocate. [...]
Fascism, initially recognized as a kindred ideology of the left, has since come down to us defined as being on "the right" -- indeed, as representing the farthest right, supposedly further extensions of conservatism.
If by conservatism you mean belief in free markets, limited government, and traditional morality, including religious influences, then these are all things that the Fascists opposed just as much as the left does today.
The left may say that they are not racists or anti-semites, like Hitler, but neither was Mussolini or Franco. Hitler, incidentally, got some of his racist ideology from the writings of American "progressives" in the eugenics movement.
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What Would JFK Do?
[bostonglobe] : In 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in Texas by a fervent admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In 2008, a large Cuban flag emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara, Castro's brutal henchman, is prominently displayed in a Barack Obama campaign volunteer office in Houston.
Obama has been widely compared to JFK, most notably by the late president's brother and daughter. President Kennedy, a stalwart anticommunist, despised Castro and his gang of totalitarian thugs. But when word broke last week that Obama's supporters in Houston work under a banner glorifying Che, the campaign's reaction was to brush it off as an issue involving volunteers, not the official campaign. After two days of controversy, the campaign issued a statement calling the flag "inappropriate" and saying its display "does not reflect Senator Obama's views." Would JFK have reacted so mildly?
Were he alive today, it's hard to imagine JFK feeling anything but contempt for those who extol a dictatorship that has been crushing freedom and human beings for nearly 50 years. And it would surely pain him that so many of the cheerleaders are members of his own party.
The lionizing of Che, a sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed "the pedagogy of the firing squad," is not just "inappropriate." It is vile. No American in his right mind would be caught dead wearing a David Duke T-shirt or displaying a poster of Pol Pot. A celebrity who was spotted with a swastika-festooned cap or an actress who revealed that she had gotten a tattoo depicting Timothy McVeigh would inspire only repugnance. No presidential campaign would need more than 30 seconds to sever its ties to anyone, paid staffer or volunteer, whose office was adorned with a Ku Klux Klan banner. Yet Che's likeness, which ought to be as loathed as any of those, is instead a trendy bestseller and a cult favorite. [...]
That this sadistic thug's face also adorns the office of a US presidential candidate's supporters is appalling and disgraceful. That the candidate couldn't bring himself to say so is even worse.
[photo:KRIV-TV Photo]
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Platitude Salesman
[twnhall] : There's no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns -- boat, shoe, clock -- by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.
And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions. [...]
ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cultish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience
-- to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for.
(Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek."
That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism ... ," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."
You might dismiss The New York Times' Paul Krugman's complaint that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality" as hyperbole. Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."
I've seen only one similar national swoon. As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania.
But even there the object of his countrymen's unrestrained affections was no blank slate. Pierre Trudeau was already a serious intellectual who had written and thought and lectured long about the nature and future of his country.
Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem.
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Conservative writer William Buckley dead at 82
[reuters] : Writer and commentator William F. Buckley, the patrician intellectual credited with founding the modern conservative movement in U.S. politics, died on Wednesday at age 82.
Buckley suffered from emphysema over the past year and died early on Wednesday while writing in his study in Stamford, Connecticut, said Jack Fowler, publisher of National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955.
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Court Ordered 'Shut-Down' : Pirate Bay Sails ON
[newsfactor] Publicity brings 12 percent more visitors to Pirate Bay, now sailing under a new domain name. And Pirate Bay posted instructions on how to get around the Danish court's blockade on Tele2 and said traffic from that ISP is the same. Even a Danish ISP group plans to appeal the Denmark court's decision on Pirate Bay.
The Swedish BitTorrent site Pirate Bay took raking fire from a Danish court last week, but the hostile ruling did little to slow visitors to the site.
At the request of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Danish court ordered Tele2, a Danish ISP, to refuse all efforts of its customers to connect to the IP address for Pirate Bay. Almost immediately, however, Pirate Bay registered new domain names in Denmark and set up a new site, www.thejesperbay.com, with instructions for Danes on how to get around the Tele2 ban.
"So what has happened in Denmark now the past days?," the Pirate Bay blog asked. "Actually, the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12 percent thanks to IFPI. Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter -- our guess is that a lot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk."
Pirate Bay and its operators are not the only ones outraged about the Danish court's ruling. In a podcast interview with the Danish edition of Computerworld, Danish ISP Business Association director Ib Tolstrup said his group plans to appeal the decision. The problem, he said, is that the court found that Tele2 was aiding copyright infringement by making copies of protected content in its routers.
Tolstrup argued that such copying is specifically excluded from copyright infringement liability not only by Danish law but also by the InfoSec Directive of the European Union, which forms the basis of Danish copyright law. [...]
As various commentators have pointed out, if the Danish appellate courts uphold the trial court's ruling, it could have significant implications around the globe. Tolstrup, for instance, suggested that even massively popular sites like Google (which serves up thumbnails as part of its image-search results) could be subject to a similar block for "router copying."
Some countries, of course, like China and Thailand, have already put strong restrictions on the availability of Internet content by controlling the external data pipes that bring the Internet to their countries. But as the continued popularity of Pirate Bay in Denmark demonstrates, that is far more difficult in western society.
Perhaps John Gilmore, civil libertarian and computer entrepreneur, said it best: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Danish citizens are busy demonstrating just how true that is.
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Human Rights Commission complaint against Ezra Levant Being Withdrawn
[nationalpost] : The complaint was launched in February 2006, after the Western Standard and the Jewish Free Press reprinted cartoons from a Danish newspaper that many in the Muslim world felt insulted the prophet Muhammad. The cartoons sparked violent protests in a number of countries.
"Over the two years that we have gone through the process, I understand that most Canadians see this as an issue of freedom of speech, that that principle is sacred and holy in our society," said Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.
"I believe Canadian society is mature enough not to absorb the messages that the cartoons sent. Only a very small fraction of Canadian media decided to publish those cartoons."
Mr. Levant said he isn't buying Mr. Soharwardy's promise, calling it a "temporary, tactical truce."
"I don't believe him. He thought this would be easy to do, just sic the human rights commission on me and it would be done. But I decided to fight back," said Mr. Levant.
"He's hurting right now. . . . What he's now saying he is going to do is not a true reflection of his feelings."
Mr. Levant said he plans to launch a civil lawsuit against Mr. Soharwardy to recover the tens of thousands of dollars he said he has spent battling the complaint.
"I put in at least 100 hours fighting this guy. He may want to run away from this issue, but I'm not going to. His values are out of sync with Canadian society."
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Marinating in 'Decline'
[wsj] In 1788, Massachusetts playwright Mercy Otis Warren took one look at the (unratified) U.S. Constitution and declared that "we shall soon see this country rushing into the extremes of confusion and violence." This, roughly, is the origin of American declinism -- and it's been downhill ever since.
A couple centuries later, an international relations theorist at Yale named Paul Kennedy sought to explain the decline of great powers in terms of a ratio between military commitments and economic resources. The Reagan military buildup and the deficits that went with it, he warned, had brought the United States to the point of "imperial overstretch." Not quite. Within a few years, the Soviet Union collapsed, Europe and Japan (with no military burdens to speak of) entered a long period of economic stagnation, and the U.S. consolidated its position as the world's only true superpower.
Declinism is again in vogue. "America's unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order," writes Parag Khanna in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story titled, cheerfully, "Who Shrank the Superpower?" In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Fred Kaplan observes that "the United States can no longer take obeisance for granted." Mr. Kaplan's new book, "Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power," sounds just a bit derivative of Nancy Soderberg's "The Superpower Myth" (2005), Roger Burbach's "Imperial Overstretch" (2004) and Charles Kupchan's "The End of the American Era" (2003). [...]
Yet each of these assumptions collapses on a moment's inspection. In his 2006 book "Überpower," German writer Josef Joffe makes the following back-of-the-envelope calculation: "Assume that the Chinese economy keeps growing indefinitely at a rate of seven percent, the average of the past decade (for which history knows of no example). . . . At that rate, China's GDP would double every decade, reaching parity with today's United States ($12 trillion) in thirty years. But the U.S. economy is not frozen into immobility. By then, the United States, growing at its long-term rate of 2.5 percent, would stand at $25 trillion."
Now take military expenditures. Yesterday, the administration released its budget proposal for 2009, which includes $515.4 billion for the regular defense budget. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this would be the largest defense appropriation since World War II. Yet it amounts to about 4% of GDP, as compared to 14% during the Korean War, 9.5% during the Vietnam War and 6% in the Reagan administration. Throw in the Iraq and Afghanistan supplementals, and total projected defense spending is still only 4.5% of GDP -- an easily afforded sum even by Prof. Kennedy's terms.
Finally there is the issue of our allegedly squandered prestige in the world. There is no doubt America's "popularity," as measured by various global opinion surveys, has fallen in recent years. What's striking, however, is how little of this has mattered in terms of the domestic political choices of other countries or the consequences for the U.S.
In the immediate aftermath of the Iraq War, nearly every government that joined President Bush's "coalition of the willing" -- Australia, Great Britain, Denmark and Japan -- was returned to power. France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, the war's two most vocal opponents, were cashiered for two candidates who campaigned explicitly on a pro-American agenda. The same happened in South Korea, where the unapologetically anti-American President Roh Moo-hyun has been replaced by the unapologetically pro-American Lee Myung-bak. Italy's equally unapologetic pro-American Silvio Berlusconi seems set to return to office after a brief holiday. [...]
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Climate Change:
Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.
[ibd] Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.
To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
And they're worried about global cooling, not warming. [...]
As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.
For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."
Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.
A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."
The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."
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Romney Suspends Campaign for Presidency
[marketwatch] : Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney suspended his campaign Thursday, saying that a Republican should remain in the White House in order to continue the war on terror. [...]
Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., that Republicans must unite to ward off plans by Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to withdraw troops from Iraq.
"In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," Romney said.
The Associated Press reports that McCain has collected 763 delegates to Romney's 269.
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It speaks a fair volume of the state of affairs when you have to ask the very people being courted for votes to not boo the presumptive front runner for their party. In fact, it's a surreal and dreadful position to be in for the GOP, certainly compared to the fluffy love-fest currently under way with the Democrats and their two possibilities. It seems all but given that come November the country will find itself with a Democrat in the White House and in control of each level of government.
As has been suggested around the web, a better tact would be, if one is in disagreement with McCain, to offer up entire silence as a response. That would be grand and classy. Good luck with that and stemming the distaste that many feel for the GOP front runner.
*** McCain has delivered a strong speech, probably the best that we have heard from him this cycle and he looked strong. Although there was some scattered booing when he touched upon immigration, generally he was met with applause and cheers for what was a quite powerful oratory.
All said though, words are words and time will tell if people are ready to accept them given the laundry list of ill policy via McCain in the eyes of many conservatives. As they say, what have you done for me lately? There's never a shortage of wind-baggery from politicians and simple toastmaster speech reading has never impressed me.
Was the speech pre-loaded with McCain supporters to drown out booing? It has been said.
CPAC to all CPAC-ers: Don't boo McCain
[politico] : John McCain may have it easier than he expected today when he commandeers the podium at CPAC this afternoon. Conservatives from all over will predictably fill the room to the brim to listen to what the now GOP front-runner has to say, despite a hate/love relationship with the guy.
CPAC it seems, is directing its loyal goers to not boo McCain. They must be more excited that McCain has finally signed on to appear after years of snubs than they want to let on.
During registration last night at the Omni Shoreham a registrant was asking to upgrade his CPAC package and then proceeded to ask what time GOP front-runner John McCain was going to speak today. “Oh good,” he said to the response — answer: 3 p.m. today — “I hope they boo him out of the room.”
“No, no no no no” came the reply from the person registering him. “We’ve been instructed to tell participants not to boo McCain.”
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Tories threaten election over crime bill
[cbc] The Conservatives have threatened to ask the Governor General to dissolve government if the Senate doesn't pass their crime bill by March 1.
The ultimatum came Thursday, when the Conservatives announced they had tabled a confidence motion in the House of Commons demanding the March 1 deadline be issued to the Liberal-dominated Senate.
If senators don't obey the motion, which is expected to pass, House leader Peter Van Loan suggested the Tories could approach Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean and have an election called because all levels of government are not able to move forward together. [...]
The Tory-designed bill was passed by almost all MPs in the House of Commons in November, but still needs Senate approval to become law.
The bill, among other things, calls for:
* Mandatory prison terms for serious gun crimes.
* Stiffer penalties for impaired driving.
* Tougher bail laws.
* Tougher rules for repeat offenders.
* Increasing the age of sexual consent to 16 from 14 in certain cases.
"The [bill] has now been at the Senate for 71 days, almost twice as long as it took to pass in the House of Commons," Van Loan said, although he conceded that the Christmas break fell was part of the 71 days.
"It's clear that the Liberal Senate delay-and-obstruction grinding machine is back at work." [...]
Van Loan said it is unlikely the confidence motion to issue the deadline will fail to pass in the House, considering the level of MP support for the crime bill.
"They approved it through all stages in 41 days. If they then turned around and changed their mind and suggested they didn't want it to pass now, that would be highly unusual, but I have seen the Liberals reverse their positions before," he said.
Van Loan said he expects debate on the motion to begin Monday in the House of Commons. He said a vote should come by Friday.
A confidence motion does have the power to topple the government. If it doesn't pass in the House, the government is defeated and an election called immediately.
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Confidence vote on Afghan mission expected for March
[cbc] : Prime Minister Stephen Harper could be ready to put the future of Canada's mission in Afghanistan to a confidence vote, a move that may trigger a federal election.
Harper's minority Conservative government will give notice Thursday that it is preparing a motion to extend Canada's role in Afghanistan past February 2009. The motion won't be voted on until late March. It will be partially based on the review of the Afghan mission prepared by a panel led by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley.
But Liberal Leader Stéphan Dion told reporters on Wednesday that while he will add amendments to the motion, he won't compromise on his belief that the combat mission in Kandahar must end by February 2009.
Asked whether he would be willing to go to the polls over the issue, Dion said he didn't want to speculate with respect to an election.
"Debate will happen, and our party will come with amendments, and we hope that consensus may happen," Dion said.
So far, neither Harper nor Dion seem willing to compromise on the main issue of whether to extend Canada's combat role beyond February 2009. [...]
The NDP and Bloc Québécois oppose any mission extension.
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In "Living Large," Drew Carey and reason.tv examine the plight of the American middle class.
To hear the Lou Dobbses and Bill O'Reillys of the world--not to mention politicians ranging from Ron Paul to Hillary Clinton--the middle class of America (however you define that term) has never had it so tough. Between credit squeezes, out-of-control immigration, rising costs of education and health care and everything else, it's all darkness out there for those of us who are neither millionaires nor welfare cases, right?
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You Want a More 'Progressive' America?
Voters should remember what happened under Woodrow Wilson.
By Jonah Goldberg
[csmonitor] I'm thinking of an American president who demonized ethnic groups as enemies of the state, censored the press, imprisoned dissidents, bullied political opponents, spewed propaganda, often expressed contempt for the Constitution, approved warrantless searches and eavesdropping, and pursued his policies with a blind, religious certainty.
Oh, and I'm not thinking of George W. Bush, but another "W" – actually "WW": Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who served from 1913 to 1921.
President Wilson is mostly remembered today as the first modern liberal president, the first (and only) POTUS with a PhD, and the only political scientist to occupy the Oval Office. He was the champion of "self determination" and the author of the idealistic but doomed "Fourteen Points" – his vision of peace for Europe and his hope for a League of Nations. But the nature of his presidency has largely been forgotten.
That's a shame, because Wilson's two terms in office provide the clearest historical window into the soul of progressivism. Wilson's racism, his ideological rigidity, and his antipathy toward the Constitution were all products of the progressive worldview. And since "progressivism" is suddenly in vogue – today's leading Democrats proudly wear the label – it's worth actually reviewing what progressivism was and what actually happened under the last full-throated progressive president.
The record should give sober pause to anyone who's mesmerized by the progressive promise.
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Results After Super Tuesday
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Cleveland, Ohio - Clinton / Obama
MSNBC is providing an utterly useless live stream feed of the debate. It's all but unwatchable. You'd think the station could provide a solid stream. Maybe we'll find a version to suffer through tomorrow.
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Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age[nationalpost] Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.
According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
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EDITORIAL & OPINIONFirstly, Mike Huckabee? Are you still hanging around? Please. Remove your noggin from your posterior and get on with the task of landing that gig on the comedy channel. Your 'sap'stick jokes and coy evasions were tired months ago. Thanks for playing.
Now, the CNN Democrat debate? Once again...how exactly does this equate to a debate? It's lame air ballet and testimonial, there is no debate there whatsoever. I liked Obama a couple of years ago for about 5 minutes. What thin gruel. Non answers, non sequiters and fantastical circular babble that ends up saying zero. You pseudo intellectuals that applaud this dreck, even before he finishes a sentence seriously need to either fire your analysts or double up on your appointments.
We haven't cared for Johnny Mac since 2000, but face the facts. There is no comparison in substance between 'Bama and McCain. If you cannot admit that then dare I suggest you have a penchant for intellectual dishonesty. Obama is like some dilettante grinning about while offering vapid platitudes. McCain, son of an Admiral, is the well earned grumpy serious man of military history. A casual glance at the current events ongoing around the globe make the choice of where to vote an obvious one. Unless of course, you are banking on sugarplum fairies to float in bringing gifts to end all problem and the infantile vacuity of chanting "change" and "we can do it, we can do it" to render all troubles of the world gone.
This is the blither that makes people faint?
It's worth also noting that emblazoning religiosity throughout speeches seems to be just fine when it comes to Democrat candidates. Obama's wife seems to have a penchant for making speeches that inform the unwashed of how terrible a place the U.S. is and bellows of the skills of the newly minted messiah. Speaking at UCLA, Michelle Obama offered this sermon:
"We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another — that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation."
Imagine the screaming and wailing had the Huckman or Romney even made the slightest similarity of statement? It is blindingly ignorant, this different treatment the GOP receives. "Church and state!" would be cried from every corner and in triple size, bold text. It's pathetic. This entirely aside from the obvious that if you think it is the governments task to save your soul, well, you've got bigger internal problems than the sucking in of mere political rhetoric.
Yes, here we are. The government shall now save our souls, raise our children and spend our money on whatever they deem is best and won't we all be so much happier. Evermore.
[nyt] [...] “Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls.” This was a variation of language she had used earlier on the campaign trail: “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”
But they can be repaired. Indeed, she had said a couple of weeks before, in Los Angeles: “Barack Obama ... is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”
So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.
John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves.
Obama seems awestruck with himself. It's written all over his face - he looks like he's dumbfounded to find himself in such a place and I'm a little surprised he hasn't fainted yet himself - and these JFK foolhardy comparisons are idiotic. JFK had fourteen years of congressional experience under his belt, not to mention policy wise only those void on reality think that he would be pumping anything like the Democrat policy positions of the last decades. Name dropping nonsense.
"In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
Yup. That sounds like Obama to me. In some alternate universe maybe.
- The Cynical Bastard
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Castro Steps Down as President of Cuba
[marketwatch] : Fidel Castro resigned as president of Cuba on Tuesday, with the ailing Communist leader stepping down after 49 years in power.
The 81-year-old Castro made the announcement in a statement to the Communist Party daily Granma, the Associated Press reported.
"I will not aspire nor accept -- I repeat I will not aspire or accept, the post of president of the Council of State and Commander in Chief,'' the statement read.
In practice, his 76-year-old brother Raul has been running the country since July 2006.
The National Assembly meets Sunday to pick the council of state, including the presidency.
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Kosovo Declares Independence
[afp] PRISTINA, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) — Kosovo on Sunday declared its independence from an angry and anxious Serbia in the final fallout from the conflict-strewn breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Tens of thousands of flag waving people packed the capital, Pristina, as the Kosovo parliament voted a declaration of independence which insisted that the world's newest state would be "dedicated to peace and stability."
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Forever YoungLeon Wieseltier
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
[tnr] What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world. Different circumstances call for different talents, different sensibilities, different approaches to power. "Leadership" comes in many forms. A sterling individual may be historically inappropriate; and a person whom it is impossible to admire may accomplish significant things. The question of whether Barack Obama will make a fine commander-in chief finally depends on your view of the direction of history in the coming years. I cannot escape the foreboding that we are heading into an era of conflict, not an era of conciliation. I do not mean that there will be many wars, though I cannot imagine that the threat to American security from Al Qaeda and its many associates can be met without a massive and sustained military operation in western Pakistan, and I cannot imagine any Pakistani government ordering such an operation. It is not "the politics of fear" to remind Obama's legions of the blissful that, while they are watching Scarlett Johansson sway to the beat, somewhere deep inside a quasi independent territory we might call Islamistan people are making plans to blow them to bits. (Yes, they can.)
One of the striking features of Obama's victory speeches is the absence from these exultations of any lasting allusion to the darker dimensions of our strategic predicament. He makes no applause line out of American defense. And jihadist terrorism is only one of the disorders in an increasingly disordered world. The most repercussive fact of our time is surely the transformation of China. The "metrics" are all staggering. Quantities, quantities, quantities. China already has the power to wreck the American economy. However many tanks and fighters it has, its hoarding of American dollars is itself a kind of arsenal. And the bounty of wealth that it promises American business, the fantasy of greed-fulfillment that it represents, makes it almost impossible to conduct a serious discussion of the implications of this emerging world power for American principles and American interests--certainly not in Washington, where, when it comes to the art of dodging debate, Beijing is better than Bandar. What China wants, China gets. Not even the gold medal in tyranny that Beijing will win in its Olympics will make a difference. Meanwhile the authoritarian Putin has punkishly succeeded in restoring Russia to its inglorious heritage, reminding the world of the old formula that capitalism plus state power equals fascism. In Iran, none of Ahmadinejad's domestic troubles seem to have modified the state's sense of ascendancy, or its will to nuclearize itself, or its appetite for instability in its region. In Iraq, the streets are safer but the sects are not sweeter. In the Korean peninsula, diplomacy has gone ominously cold. In Palestine there are two Palestines, and one of them belongs to Hamas. In Darfur--well, you know, because everybody knows. In Latin America, the failures of liberal economics have sullied the reputation of liberal politics. And so on.
All this even before we attend to the elimination of poverty. And into this unirenic environment strides Obama, pledging to extract us promptly from Iraq and to negotiate with our enemies. What is the role of a conciliator in an unconciliating world? You might think that in such conditions he is even more of an historical necessity-but why would you think that all that stands between the world and peace is one man? George W. Bush was not single-handedly responsible for getting us into our strategic mess and Barack Obama will not be single-handedly responsible for getting us out of it. There are autonomous countries and cultures out there. The turbulence that I have described is not caused by misunderstandings. It is caused by the interests of powers and the beliefs of peoples. Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, Islamabad, Gaza City, Khartoum, Caracas-does Obama really believe that he has something to propose to these ruthless regimes that they have not already considered? Does he plan to move them, to organize them, to show them change they can believe in? With what trick of empathy, what euphoria, does he hope to join the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds in Iraq? Yes, he made a "muscular" speech in Chicago last spring; but I have been pondering his remarks about foreign policy in the ensuing campaign and I do not detect the hardness I seek, the disabused tone that the present world warrants. My problem is not with "day one": nobody is perfectly prepared for the White House, though the memory of Bill Clinton's "learning curve" is still vivid, which in Bosnia and Rwanda cost more than a million lives. My problem is that Obama's declarations in matters of foreign policy and national security have a certain homeopathic quality. He seems averse to the hurtful, expensive, traditional, unedifying stuff.
"False hopes?" Obama told a crowd in New Hampshire. "There's no such thing." How dare he? There is almost no more commonplace trait of human existence (and of African American existence) than false hopes. I want universal health care, but I do not want to be relieved of the little that I have understood, and learned to accept, about the recalcitrance of the world. After Bush, who is not for a fresh start? But there is something unfresh about Obama's movement for freshness. We have been this young before. "She starts old, old," Lawrence wrote, in his discussion of the Leatherstocking Tales, "wrinkled and writhing in an old skin. And there is a gradual sloughing off of the old skin, towards a new youth. It is the myth of America." So can we agree on a ground between cynicism and myth? Or must we have Camelot once more? After all, being young again is also a way of living in the past. There was something mildly farcical about the Kennedys' endorsement of Obama-of this candidacy that is alleged to signify an alternative to the dynasties, and a break with ideological antiquity; but worst of all was its brazen delight in mythologization. (Thanks to the Obama campaign, millions of Americans now hold that John Kennedy was a great president and that Lyndon Johnson was not responsible for making civil rights and voting rights into law.) I understand that no one, except perhaps Lincoln, ever ran for the presidency on a tragic sense of life; but if it is possible to be too old in spirit, it is possible also to be too young.
*some things are found of such value that they are reprinted in entirety with attribution on chance that readers might not follow the link to read the whole writing
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Who is "Fascist"?
[townhall] : Those who put a high value on words may recoil at the title of Jonah Goldberg's new book, "Liberal Fascism." As a result, they may refuse to read it, which will be their loss -- and a major loss.
Those who value substance over words, however, will find in this book a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research and brilliant analysis.
This is the sort of book that challenges the fundamental assumptions of its time -- and which, for that reason, is likely to be shunned rather than criticized.
Because the word "fascist" is often thrown around loosely these days, as a general term of abuse, it is good that "Liberal Fascism" begins by discussing the real Fascism, introduced into Italy after the First World War by Benito Mussolini.
The Fascists were completely against individualism in general and especially against individualism in a free market economy. Their agenda included minimum wage laws, government restrictions on profit-making, progressive taxation of capital, and "rigidly secular" schools.
Unlike the Communists, the Fascists did not seek government ownership of the means of production. They just wanted the government to call the shots as to how businesses would be run.
They were for "industrial policy," long before liberals coined that phrase in the United States.
Indeed, the whole Fascist economic agenda bears a remarkable resemblance to what liberals would later advocate. [...]
Fascism, initially recognized as a kindred ideology of the left, has since come down to us defined as being on "the right" -- indeed, as representing the farthest right, supposedly further extensions of conservatism.
If by conservatism you mean belief in free markets, limited government, and traditional morality, including religious influences, then these are all things that the Fascists opposed just as much as the left does today.
The left may say that they are not racists or anti-semites, like Hitler, but neither was Mussolini or Franco. Hitler, incidentally, got some of his racist ideology from the writings of American "progressives" in the eugenics movement.
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What Would JFK Do?
[bostonglobe] : In 1963, John F. Kennedy was murdered in Texas by a fervent admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. In 2008, a large Cuban flag emblazoned with the image of Che Guevara, Castro's brutal henchman, is prominently displayed in a Barack Obama campaign volunteer office in Houston.
Obama has been widely compared to JFK, most notably by the late president's brother and daughter. President Kennedy, a stalwart anticommunist, despised Castro and his gang of totalitarian thugs. But when word broke last week that Obama's supporters in Houston work under a banner glorifying Che, the campaign's reaction was to brush it off as an issue involving volunteers, not the official campaign. After two days of controversy, the campaign issued a statement calling the flag "inappropriate" and saying its display "does not reflect Senator Obama's views." Would JFK have reacted so mildly?Were he alive today, it's hard to imagine JFK feeling anything but contempt for those who extol a dictatorship that has been crushing freedom and human beings for nearly 50 years. And it would surely pain him that so many of the cheerleaders are members of his own party.
The lionizing of Che, a sociopath who relished killing and acclaimed "the pedagogy of the firing squad," is not just "inappropriate." It is vile. No American in his right mind would be caught dead wearing a David Duke T-shirt or displaying a poster of Pol Pot. A celebrity who was spotted with a swastika-festooned cap or an actress who revealed that she had gotten a tattoo depicting Timothy McVeigh would inspire only repugnance. No presidential campaign would need more than 30 seconds to sever its ties to anyone, paid staffer or volunteer, whose office was adorned with a Ku Klux Klan banner. Yet Che's likeness, which ought to be as loathed as any of those, is instead a trendy bestseller and a cult favorite. [...]
That this sadistic thug's face also adorns the office of a US presidential candidate's supporters is appalling and disgraceful. That the candidate couldn't bring himself to say so is even worse.
[photo:KRIV-TV Photo]
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Platitude Salesman
[twnhall] : There's no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it (Aquafina was revealed to be nothing more than reprocessed tap water) and charge more than they pay for gasoline. Or consider how Google found a way to sell dictionary nouns -- boat, shoe, clock -- by charging advertisers zillions to be listed whenever the word is searched.
And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions. [...]
ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cultish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience
-- to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for.
(Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek."
That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism ... ," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."
You might dismiss The New York Times' Paul Krugman's complaint that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality" as hyperbole. Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."
I've seen only one similar national swoon. As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania.
But even there the object of his countrymen's unrestrained affections was no blank slate. Pierre Trudeau was already a serious intellectual who had written and thought and lectured long about the nature and future of his country.
Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem.
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Conservative writer William Buckley dead at 82
[reuters] : Writer and commentator William F. Buckley, the patrician intellectual credited with founding the modern conservative movement in U.S. politics, died on Wednesday at age 82.
Buckley suffered from emphysema over the past year and died early on Wednesday while writing in his study in Stamford, Connecticut, said Jack Fowler, publisher of National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955.
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Court Ordered 'Shut-Down' : Pirate Bay Sails ON
[newsfactor] Publicity brings 12 percent more visitors to Pirate Bay, now sailing under a new domain name. And Pirate Bay posted instructions on how to get around the Danish court's blockade on Tele2 and said traffic from that ISP is the same. Even a Danish ISP group plans to appeal the Denmark court's decision on Pirate Bay.
The Swedish BitTorrent site Pirate Bay took raking fire from a Danish court last week, but the hostile ruling did little to slow visitors to the site.
At the request of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Danish court ordered Tele2, a Danish ISP, to refuse all efforts of its customers to connect to the IP address for Pirate Bay. Almost immediately, however, Pirate Bay registered new domain names in Denmark and set up a new site, www.thejesperbay.com, with instructions for Danes on how to get around the Tele2 ban.
"So what has happened in Denmark now the past days?," the Pirate Bay blog asked. "Actually, the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12 percent thanks to IFPI. Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter -- our guess is that a lot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk."
Pirate Bay and its operators are not the only ones outraged about the Danish court's ruling. In a podcast interview with the Danish edition of Computerworld, Danish ISP Business Association director Ib Tolstrup said his group plans to appeal the decision. The problem, he said, is that the court found that Tele2 was aiding copyright infringement by making copies of protected content in its routers.
Tolstrup argued that such copying is specifically excluded from copyright infringement liability not only by Danish law but also by the InfoSec Directive of the European Union, which forms the basis of Danish copyright law. [...]
As various commentators have pointed out, if the Danish appellate courts uphold the trial court's ruling, it could have significant implications around the globe. Tolstrup, for instance, suggested that even massively popular sites like Google (which serves up thumbnails as part of its image-search results) could be subject to a similar block for "router copying."
Some countries, of course, like China and Thailand, have already put strong restrictions on the availability of Internet content by controlling the external data pipes that bring the Internet to their countries. But as the continued popularity of Pirate Bay in Denmark demonstrates, that is far more difficult in western society.
Perhaps John Gilmore, civil libertarian and computer entrepreneur, said it best: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Danish citizens are busy demonstrating just how true that is.
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Human Rights Commission complaint against Ezra Levant Being Withdrawn
[nationalpost] : The complaint was launched in February 2006, after the Western Standard and the Jewish Free Press reprinted cartoons from a Danish newspaper that many in the Muslim world felt insulted the prophet Muhammad. The cartoons sparked violent protests in a number of countries.
"Over the two years that we have gone through the process, I understand that most Canadians see this as an issue of freedom of speech, that that principle is sacred and holy in our society," said Soharwardy, president of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada.
"I believe Canadian society is mature enough not to absorb the messages that the cartoons sent. Only a very small fraction of Canadian media decided to publish those cartoons."
Mr. Levant said he isn't buying Mr. Soharwardy's promise, calling it a "temporary, tactical truce."
"I don't believe him. He thought this would be easy to do, just sic the human rights commission on me and it would be done. But I decided to fight back," said Mr. Levant.
"He's hurting right now. . . . What he's now saying he is going to do is not a true reflection of his feelings."
Mr. Levant said he plans to launch a civil lawsuit against Mr. Soharwardy to recover the tens of thousands of dollars he said he has spent battling the complaint.
"I put in at least 100 hours fighting this guy. He may want to run away from this issue, but I'm not going to. His values are out of sync with Canadian society."
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Marinating in 'Decline'
[wsj] In 1788, Massachusetts playwright Mercy Otis Warren took one look at the (unratified) U.S. Constitution and declared that "we shall soon see this country rushing into the extremes of confusion and violence." This, roughly, is the origin of American declinism -- and it's been downhill ever since.
A couple centuries later, an international relations theorist at Yale named Paul Kennedy sought to explain the decline of great powers in terms of a ratio between military commitments and economic resources. The Reagan military buildup and the deficits that went with it, he warned, had brought the United States to the point of "imperial overstretch." Not quite. Within a few years, the Soviet Union collapsed, Europe and Japan (with no military burdens to speak of) entered a long period of economic stagnation, and the U.S. consolidated its position as the world's only true superpower.
Declinism is again in vogue. "America's unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order," writes Parag Khanna in a recent New York Times Magazine cover story titled, cheerfully, "Who Shrank the Superpower?" In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Fred Kaplan observes that "the United States can no longer take obeisance for granted." Mr. Kaplan's new book, "Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power," sounds just a bit derivative of Nancy Soderberg's "The Superpower Myth" (2005), Roger Burbach's "Imperial Overstretch" (2004) and Charles Kupchan's "The End of the American Era" (2003). [...]
Yet each of these assumptions collapses on a moment's inspection. In his 2006 book "Überpower," German writer Josef Joffe makes the following back-of-the-envelope calculation: "Assume that the Chinese economy keeps growing indefinitely at a rate of seven percent, the average of the past decade (for which history knows of no example). . . . At that rate, China's GDP would double every decade, reaching parity with today's United States ($12 trillion) in thirty years. But the U.S. economy is not frozen into immobility. By then, the United States, growing at its long-term rate of 2.5 percent, would stand at $25 trillion."
Now take military expenditures. Yesterday, the administration released its budget proposal for 2009, which includes $515.4 billion for the regular defense budget. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this would be the largest defense appropriation since World War II. Yet it amounts to about 4% of GDP, as compared to 14% during the Korean War, 9.5% during the Vietnam War and 6% in the Reagan administration. Throw in the Iraq and Afghanistan supplementals, and total projected defense spending is still only 4.5% of GDP -- an easily afforded sum even by Prof. Kennedy's terms.
Finally there is the issue of our allegedly squandered prestige in the world. There is no doubt America's "popularity," as measured by various global opinion surveys, has fallen in recent years. What's striking, however, is how little of this has mattered in terms of the domestic political choices of other countries or the consequences for the U.S.
In the immediate aftermath of the Iraq War, nearly every government that joined President Bush's "coalition of the willing" -- Australia, Great Britain, Denmark and Japan -- was returned to power. France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, the war's two most vocal opponents, were cashiered for two candidates who campaigned explicitly on a pro-American agenda. The same happened in South Korea, where the unapologetically anti-American President Roh Moo-hyun has been replaced by the unapologetically pro-American Lee Myung-bak. Italy's equally unapologetic pro-American Silvio Berlusconi seems set to return to office after a brief holiday. [...]
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Climate Change:
Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.
[ibd] Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.
To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
And they're worried about global cooling, not warming. [...]
As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.
For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."
Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves — and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" — by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.
A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."
The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."
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Romney Suspends Campaign for Presidency
[marketwatch] : Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney suspended his campaign Thursday, saying that a Republican should remain in the White House in order to continue the war on terror. [...]
Romney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., that Republicans must unite to ward off plans by Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to withdraw troops from Iraq.
"In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror," Romney said.
The Associated Press reports that McCain has collected 763 delegates to Romney's 269.
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It speaks a fair volume of the state of affairs when you have to ask the very people being courted for votes to not boo the presumptive front runner for their party. In fact, it's a surreal and dreadful position to be in for the GOP, certainly compared to the fluffy love-fest currently under way with the Democrats and their two possibilities. It seems all but given that come November the country will find itself with a Democrat in the White House and in control of each level of government.As has been suggested around the web, a better tact would be, if one is in disagreement with McCain, to offer up entire silence as a response. That would be grand and classy. Good luck with that and stemming the distaste that many feel for the GOP front runner.
*** McCain has delivered a strong speech, probably the best that we have heard from him this cycle and he looked strong. Although there was some scattered booing when he touched upon immigration, generally he was met with applause and cheers for what was a quite powerful oratory.
All said though, words are words and time will tell if people are ready to accept them given the laundry list of ill policy via McCain in the eyes of many conservatives. As they say, what have you done for me lately? There's never a shortage of wind-baggery from politicians and simple toastmaster speech reading has never impressed me.
Was the speech pre-loaded with McCain supporters to drown out booing? It has been said.
CPAC to all CPAC-ers: Don't boo McCain
[politico] : John McCain may have it easier than he expected today when he commandeers the podium at CPAC this afternoon. Conservatives from all over will predictably fill the room to the brim to listen to what the now GOP front-runner has to say, despite a hate/love relationship with the guy.
CPAC it seems, is directing its loyal goers to not boo McCain. They must be more excited that McCain has finally signed on to appear after years of snubs than they want to let on.
During registration last night at the Omni Shoreham a registrant was asking to upgrade his CPAC package and then proceeded to ask what time GOP front-runner John McCain was going to speak today. “Oh good,” he said to the response — answer: 3 p.m. today — “I hope they boo him out of the room.”
“No, no no no no” came the reply from the person registering him. “We’ve been instructed to tell participants not to boo McCain.”
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Tories threaten election over crime bill[cbc] The Conservatives have threatened to ask the Governor General to dissolve government if the Senate doesn't pass their crime bill by March 1.
The ultimatum came Thursday, when the Conservatives announced they had tabled a confidence motion in the House of Commons demanding the March 1 deadline be issued to the Liberal-dominated Senate.
If senators don't obey the motion, which is expected to pass, House leader Peter Van Loan suggested the Tories could approach Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean and have an election called because all levels of government are not able to move forward together. [...]
The Tory-designed bill was passed by almost all MPs in the House of Commons in November, but still needs Senate approval to become law.
The bill, among other things, calls for:
* Mandatory prison terms for serious gun crimes.
* Stiffer penalties for impaired driving.
* Tougher bail laws.
* Tougher rules for repeat offenders.
* Increasing the age of sexual consent to 16 from 14 in certain cases.
"The [bill] has now been at the Senate for 71 days, almost twice as long as it took to pass in the House of Commons," Van Loan said, although he conceded that the Christmas break fell was part of the 71 days.
"It's clear that the Liberal Senate delay-and-obstruction grinding machine is back at work." [...]
Van Loan said it is unlikely the confidence motion to issue the deadline will fail to pass in the House, considering the level of MP support for the crime bill.
"They approved it through all stages in 41 days. If they then turned around and changed their mind and suggested they didn't want it to pass now, that would be highly unusual, but I have seen the Liberals reverse their positions before," he said.
Van Loan said he expects debate on the motion to begin Monday in the House of Commons. He said a vote should come by Friday.
A confidence motion does have the power to topple the government. If it doesn't pass in the House, the government is defeated and an election called immediately.
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Confidence vote on Afghan mission expected for March
[cbc] : Prime Minister Stephen Harper could be ready to put the future of Canada's mission in Afghanistan to a confidence vote, a move that may trigger a federal election.
Harper's minority Conservative government will give notice Thursday that it is preparing a motion to extend Canada's role in Afghanistan past February 2009. The motion won't be voted on until late March. It will be partially based on the review of the Afghan mission prepared by a panel led by former Liberal cabinet minister John Manley.
But Liberal Leader Stéphan Dion told reporters on Wednesday that while he will add amendments to the motion, he won't compromise on his belief that the combat mission in Kandahar must end by February 2009.
Asked whether he would be willing to go to the polls over the issue, Dion said he didn't want to speculate with respect to an election.
"Debate will happen, and our party will come with amendments, and we hope that consensus may happen," Dion said.
So far, neither Harper nor Dion seem willing to compromise on the main issue of whether to extend Canada's combat role beyond February 2009. [...]
The NDP and Bloc Québécois oppose any mission extension.
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In "Living Large," Drew Carey and reason.tv examine the plight of the American middle class.
To hear the Lou Dobbses and Bill O'Reillys of the world--not to mention politicians ranging from Ron Paul to Hillary Clinton--the middle class of America (however you define that term) has never had it so tough. Between credit squeezes, out-of-control immigration, rising costs of education and health care and everything else, it's all darkness out there for those of us who are neither millionaires nor welfare cases, right?
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You Want a More 'Progressive' America?
Voters should remember what happened under Woodrow Wilson.
By Jonah Goldberg
[csmonitor] I'm thinking of an American president who demonized ethnic groups as enemies of the state, censored the press, imprisoned dissidents, bullied political opponents, spewed propaganda, often expressed contempt for the Constitution, approved warrantless searches and eavesdropping, and pursued his policies with a blind, religious certainty.
Oh, and I'm not thinking of George W. Bush, but another "W" – actually "WW": Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat who served from 1913 to 1921.
President Wilson is mostly remembered today as the first modern liberal president, the first (and only) POTUS with a PhD, and the only political scientist to occupy the Oval Office. He was the champion of "self determination" and the author of the idealistic but doomed "Fourteen Points" – his vision of peace for Europe and his hope for a League of Nations. But the nature of his presidency has largely been forgotten.
That's a shame, because Wilson's two terms in office provide the clearest historical window into the soul of progressivism. Wilson's racism, his ideological rigidity, and his antipathy toward the Constitution were all products of the progressive worldview. And since "progressivism" is suddenly in vogue – today's leading Democrats proudly wear the label – it's worth actually reviewing what progressivism was and what actually happened under the last full-throated progressive president.
The record should give sober pause to anyone who's mesmerized by the progressive promise.
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Results After Super Tuesday
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