CoD: Hillary in Bosnia

I’m a big fan of the Call of Duty series of video games, so this one really caught my attention. “I’m going in! Cover me, Chelsea!”

Wal-Mart and Katrina

With all the self-righteous criticism of Wal-Mart among the elitist snobs in the media, I guess it’s no surprise that I’ve not heard of this before.

According to a recent report, in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster, the retail giant put the federal government to shame in providing essential goods and services to the people who needed them.

Knowing that the area was about to get hit with a disaster of unimaginable scope, the Wal-Mart CEO gave his managers almost unlimited authority to do whatever it took to help the people of their communities. As a result, while federal officials were hamstrung by skeins of bureaucratic red tape, Wal-Mart employees acting well above their pay grade made instant decisions to circumvent the idiocy and do the right thing, like driving a forklift through a warehouse door to get bottled water for a nursing home. According to one local official who was fed up with FEMA’s Keystone Cops response, “If [the U.S.] government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.”

In summary:

It is really nothing more than a terminological error to label governments “public” and corporations “private” when it is the latter that often have the strongest incentives to respond to social needs. A company that alienates a community will soon be forced to retreat from it, but the government is always there. Companies must, to survive, create economic value one way or another; government employees can increase their budgets and their personal power by destroying or wasting wealth, and most may do little else. Companies have price signals to guide their productive efforts; governments obfuscate those signals.

In other words, all other things being equal, it is the free market, not government fiat, that best serves the public good. We need to remember that in this election season, as we are treated to an endless parade of promises from politicians about all the good things the government will do for us if only they are elected.

More Sanity on Global Warming in the MSM

The LA Times has published a rather even-headed article on the position of what they call “non-skeptic heretics” — scientists who believe that global warming is occurring but it is not nearly as catastrophic as the alarmists are claiming. According to these researchers,

It is cheaper and more effective to adapt to global warming than to fight it.

Instead of spending trillions of dollars to stabilize carbon dioxide levels across the planet — an enormously complex and expensive proposition — the world could work on reducing hunger, storm damage and disease now, thereby neutralizing some of the most feared future problems of global warming.

Their approach to the problem is based on political realities, rather than apocalyptic scenarios.

The Fickle Winds of Media Adulation

It must be galling to Hillary Clinton to wake up every morning and read yet another editorial mocking her weaknesses and gaffes. For over fifteen years, she and Bill have been the darlings of the leftist media. They could do pretty much anything they wanted, and the press would dutifully run cover for them. They could do no wrong.

But in the midst of this bruising primary campaign, it now appears that Hillary can do nothing right. The critics, from both left and right, are merciless in exposing every mistake she makes.

What gives here? Why is the press — once such passionate defenders of Bill and Hillary — now tossing her under the bus?

I suspect the answer has less to do with the performance of Hillary, and more to do with the character of the media.

The Clintons got a free ride from the press for all those years, not because the press necessarily loved them, but because they were useful to the media’s larger agenda of reshaping American political discourse. The Clintons were the iconic Democratic heroes who stood up to “the vast right wing conspiracy” and prevailed. The media had no problem looking the other way when Bill or Hillary said or did something outrageous, because they served as a buffer to keep the evil Republicans at bay.

But that was yesterday. Today, there is a fresh new face on the scene, a black face at that. Barak Obama has clearly caught the media’s attention as the next great Republican slayer. The Clintons may have served a useful purpose years ago, but now they are yesterday’s news, and their usefulness has evaporated. There’s a new kid on the block now, young, energetic, bold, eloquent. Not to mention, even more consistently liberal than Bill during his reign at the top. So the party has moved on to another address, and Hillary is left behind looking haggard and used up.

Obama is the new darling of the media. He will get the same kind of fawning coverage and cheerleading from the press that the Clintons used to get. And they will ride him as long and as hard as they can, until the next fresh young face appears. Then Obama will be tossed aside for his replacement. He will learn, as Hillary is now learning, that the media has its own agenda, and politicians are merely tools to be used and discarded as necessary to achieve their more noble end.

Hillary to Dems: It’s Me or Nobody

Maureen Dowd presents evidence that Hillary is playing her cards so that either she gets the nomination outright, or Obama will be so damaged he can’t possibly win the general election — which will set her up for one last run in 2012. (Dowd’s original NYT article is behind a registration log-in here.)

Some top Democrats are increasingly worried that the Clintons’ divide-and-conquer strategy is nihilistic: Hillary or no democrat.

(Or, as one Democrat described it to ABC’s Jake Tapper: Hillary is going for “the Tonya Harding option” — if she can’t get the gold, kneecap her rival.)

Shocked? Shouldn’t be. After all, this is a Clinton we’re dealing with here. When it comes to getting what the Clintons want, nothing is off-limits.

The Wright Strategy

Michael Barone quotes an earlier piece from Steve Sailer suggesting a curious strategy on the part of Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright: Wright is deliberating sabotaging Obama’s campaign, in order to buttress his black racist message.

I bet that Wright doesn’t want Obama to win—that would disprove his whole world view that whites will never give a black man an even break. He wants Obama to go down in flames to prove he was right, and he wants to be the torch. Just as the conventional wisdom has become that white racism cost Michael Dukakis the Presidency in 1988 over Willie Horton, he wants to go down in history in conjunction with the next myth—that white racism cost Obama the Presidency or Vice-Presidency over Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.

Makes sense to me. And the fact that Obama still refuses to disassociate himself from this racist hate-monger proves that Obama is either too dumb to figure out what his “friend” is doing to him, or he shares his pastor’s twisted view of America. Either way, this whole episode has not been good for Obama’s campaign.

UPDATE: Victor Davis Hanson thinks Obama’s recent speech trying to explain all this was not a master stroke, as the elite media is trying to spin it, but the final nail in his campaign’s demise.

Even elites will wake up to the fact that they’ve been had, in a sense, once they deconstruct the speech carefully and fathom that their utopian candidate just may have managed to destroy what was once a near-certain Democratic sweep in the fall. And a number of African-Americans will come to resent that they are being lumped into a majority akin to the Rev. Wright, millions of whom the majestic Sen. Obama has nobly chosen not to “disown,” despite their apparently similar embarrassing racialism.

Hillary’s War Experience

The biggest risk with relating your old war stories is overlooking the presence of others who were there — and remember the stories differently.

If Hillary is going to make up this stuff, surely she can come up with something better. Like that time she single-handedly charged a machine gun nest, flinging grenades and spraying the enemy with her automatic weapon, sending the enemy fleeing in panic, and saving her entire platoon.

Yeah, I know, who would believe it? Probably more than you would expect.

Global Cooling Goes Mainstream

This story has popped up on Drudge and Instapundit.

The Australian Broadcasting Company National Radio recently aired an interview with Dr. Jennifer Marohasy, on the subject of global warming. The interviewer, Michael Duffy — not Dr. Marohasy — brought up the question of whether or not the planet is still warming.

Marohasy took advantage of the opening to present evidence indicating that the warming trend has actually reversed over the last decade. The interview veered into a discussion of the accuracy of the climate models that have served as the foundation of the current warming hysteria.

Duffy: “The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?”

Marohasy: “That’s right … These findings actually aren’t being disputed by the meteorological community. They’re having trouble digesting the findings, they’re acknowledging the findings, they’re acknowledging that the data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they’re about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.”

It’s encouraging to see some mainstream media organs at least giving a voice to global warming skeptics. This is the true spirit of science.

You can read more of Dr. Marohasy’s work on her website and her blog.

Place Your Order Now

I’m sure these yachts will sell like hotcakes.

“We’re Owed and They Aren’t”

Via Rush’s show today:

Ed Kaitz has a superb piece in the American Thinker comparing the plights of two different minority groups in America: Blacks and Asians. Specifically, he points to the experiences of these two groups in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster and its aftermath. While black leadership was moaning and complaining about the poor government response, the Vietnamese quietly went about rebuilding their lives.

The success of Asians in American culture and the continued struggle of blacks is due less to racism and more to a difference in mindset. In the words of a black friend with whom Kaitz discussed this issue, it’s an attitude of “we’re owed and they aren’t.”

I may be just another one of Obama’s “typical white persons,” but this analysis goes a long way toward explaining why so many whites have a hard time maintaining sympathy for the plight of blacks in America. This is America — where anyone can succeed if they’re willing to accept responsibility for their actions, work hard, and pass that ethos on to their children.  Continual whining about racism — especially after all the extraordinary efforts that white Americans have gone through to overcome that evil — is beginning to get a little old.

The Asians understand that. Blacks (at least their leaders) don’t.

Who is the True Environmentalist?

This has been around the internet quite a bit over the last year, but it bears repeating.

House #1

A 20 room mansion (not including 8 bathrooms) heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this residence consumes more energy than the average American household does in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is not situated in a Northern or Midwestern “snow belt” area. It’s in the South.

House #2

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university. This house incorporates every “green” feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet (4 bedrooms) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American Southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer. The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

HOUSE #1 is outside of Nashville, Tennessee; it is the abode of the “environmentalist,” Al Gore.

HOUSE #2 is on a ranch near Crawford, Texas; it is the residence of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

For the skeptics: The integrity of this comparison has been confirmed by the folks at Snopes.com.

Rumblings on the Left?

I recently linked to an article by playwright David Mamet explaining why he is no longer a “brain-dead liberal.” Mamet gave a refreshing glimpse into the mind of someone whose liberal background could not cope with the harsh light of reality. His own experiences, coupled with an open mind, eventually led him to embrace conservative-libertarian principles.

Daniel Henninger (Wall Street Journal) read the Mamet piece, too, and has been waiting for the firestorm to erupt from Mamet’s former liberal friends in Hollywood and the media. But the chattering classes have been strangely silent about his defection. Henninger wonders: What’s going on?

He offers two reasons for the silence:

First, the Left is too busy consuming itself in the struggle between Obama and Hillary, and all the bad blood this street fight is spilling. This internecine battle is exposing the dark underbelly of the liberal Democratic machine, and it’s not pretty.

Second, the spirit of the times can be summed up in the word autonomy. The spirit of the modern liberal Left is Big Brother control. Mamet eventually woke up to the basic contradiction between liberalism’s fawning talk of “freedom” and their strategic dependence upon government coercion.

Perhaps, Henninger wonders, Mamet’s friends are quiet because they, too, are beginning to question the foundation of their world-view. Perhaps Mamet has given voice to a growing unease among the Left that the Government may not always be the answer.

The ‘08 Election: A Prediction

Simon at Classical Values goes out on a limb and makes a bold prediction:

I see a Republican landslide coming. McCain in the upper 50s. . . .

What is the basic fault line of Democrat politics? Identity politics. I don’t know who conceived of getting the first major Black Candidate to run against the first major Woman Candidate, but it was a brilliant move for fracturing the Democrat coalition.

Personally, I think he may be overstretching here. But I’ll admit the chances of a Republican victory in November are looking a lot better than they did only a few months ago.

The Missing Heat

Richard Harris on NPR documents the mysterious case of the missing global heat.

A fleet of aquatic robots has been measuring the oceans’ temperatures around the globe for the last several years. And the data this system has provided is puzzling: “It has recorded no warming of the global oceans.”

Harris’ report is loaded with unanswered questions, caveats, and suppositions. One of the scientists he interviewed for this report admitted that “what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board.”

In other words, scientists simply don’t know all the answers about the systems that regulate our planet’s temperature.

So how can politicians declare so emphatically that “the debate is over”?

Enchanted

Now out on DVD.

This clip notwithstanding, Enchanted is really not a musical, but a clever take on a Disney-animation-meets-modern-romance idea. The fresh-faced innocence of Amy Adams and the good-hearted but world-weary Patrick Dempsey make a perfect couple. Highly recommended.

The Obama Speech

Barack Obama’s speech in Philadelphia yesterday was an attempt to distance himself from the inflammatory rhetoric of his black liberation theology pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The pundits are still busy dissecting the speech, but this analogy from Michael Gerson in the Washington Post pretty well sums up the crux of the matter.

What if a Republican presidential candidate spent years in the pew of a theonomist church — a fanatical fragment of Protestantism that teaches the modern political validity of ancient Hebrew law? What if the church’s pastor attacked the American government as illegitimate and accepted the stoning of homosexuals and recalcitrant children as appropriate legal penalties (which some theonomists interpret as biblical requirements)? Surely we would conclude, at the very least, that the Republican candidate attending this church lacked judgment, and that his donations were subsidizing hatred. And we would be right.

It really doesn’t matter what Obama says now about Wright’s theology. The fact that he sat in the man’s pew for twenty years and supported his church with his money means they are joined at the hip.  He can’t just wave that history aside now that it’s inconvenient to his campaign.

Hillary-Obama Street Fight: The Movie

Okay, the interactive version.

Pay close attention to the two faces that occasionally pop out of the left and right of the screen. And take a moment to try the “Taunt” move.

A Little Consistency, Please

John Derbyshire compares the media’s treatment of Obama and his America-hating pastor with the treatment of Don Imus.

Americans are a fair-minded people, who find double standards obnoxious. A guy who says “nappy-headed ho’s” in an irreverent radio show is dragged round the city walls behind a chariot to the delighted howls of a mob of self-righteous “anti-racists”; yet a man who uses the authority of the cloth to damn our country and curse white people, is praised as a “biblical scholar” by a candidate for the presidency? I don’t think so. This won’t stand. The man is toast.

Farewell, Nighthawk

The original stealth fighter is being retired.

The F-117 Nighthawk was the world’s first generation stealth aircraft. Its ungainly appearance disguised a remarkable ability to fly almost undetected by radar. The fighter plane saw service in Panama, Iraq, Kosovo, and Yugoslavia.

The plane was developed during the Carter Administration. I still remember the furor over Carter’s revelation of this top secret project during the 1980 presidential election, apparently in an attempt to strengthen his credentials as a strong-on-defense leader.

I saw one of these at an air show at McConnell Air Base here in Wichita a number of years ago. A really remarkable bird.

The F-117 is being replaced by the latest generation stealth fighters, the F-22 and F-35.

American (Mis)Management

Daniel Gross bemoans the loss of America’s prestige as a leader in financial management.

Americans’ ability to manage complex systems has been the ultimate competitive advantage. It has allowed the United States to enjoy high growth and low inflation—a record we haven’t hesitated to lord over our foreign friends. . . .

But now, thanks to widespread incompetence, American management is on its way to becoming an international laughingstock. Faith in American financial sobriety has been widely undermined by the subprime mess. The very mention of the strong-dollar policy now elicits raucous bouts of knee-slapping in even the most sober Swiss banks.

Okay, the American economy hasn’t been managed very well. Someone please educate me: Is that the fault of corporate management, governmental policy, or both?

The Cats of Kilkenny

Michael Hirsh in Newsweek provides a St. Patty’s day angle to the Obama/Clinton cat fight, by recalling this nursery rhyme.

There once were two cats of Kilkenny
Each thought there was one cat too many
So they fought and they fit, and they scratched and they bit
Till excepting their nails and the tips of their tails
Instead of two cats there weren’t any.

And the winner was: The junkyard dog, who hung around to pick up the scraps.

The general election is McCain’s to lose.

What Did Obama Know, and When Did He Know It?

Obama is in deep trouble over his close association with — and admiration for — his pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. This “man of God” has been preaching a fiery message of black supremecy and anti-American hatred for years, yet Obama swears he knew nothing about it.

But there’s just too much public history here for Obama to wiggle out of this one. Tom Maguire (JustOneMinute) has compiled the evidence for a long and close relationship with this radical, a relationship that has deeply influenced the kind of person Obama is today.

It is hardly as if this is the church Obama’s parents selected and he inherited. He sought out Wright, was moved by Wright, and is now pretending he had no idea Wright said these things.

Obama is desperately trying to distance himself from his pastor, but it’s going to be a tough sell. His best option now is to plead the only defense that most ordinary Americans can sympathize with: He must have slept through all those sermons.

“It’s Just Sex”

In the fallout over the Elliot Spitzer sex scandal, we are treated to more sniveling about the prudishness of our hang-ups over sex. “It’s just sex between consenting adults,” we are told, “so what’s the big deal?”

Ross Douthat makes an interesting observation on that line of reasoning:

Given the premises of the pro-prostitution worldview, what’s so abusive and damaging about incest and molestation in the first place? If there’s no moral distinction between giving a handjob in exchange for twenty dollars and getting paid twenty bucks to wash dishes or mow lawns, then why is there a moral distinction between a father who teaches his daughter how to pound nails and one who teaches his daughter to do something more intimate and (to go all wisdom-of-repugnance on you) disgusting? I understand that the kids involved aren’t “consenting adults,” but if selling sex is just like selling labor, and adults force kids to perform all kinds of menial tasks as part of their education, why can’t adults force kids to have intercourse too – especially if they’re safe about it? If selling sex is no big deal because sex itself is no big deal, what’s the big deal about incest?

Sex is not just a service that can be commoditized like any other labor exchange. It is the ultimate expression of human intimacy, reserved for those who have committed their lives to each other in a very unique relationship. Societies that lose sight of that basic rule of human nature are sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

Obama for the No. 3 Spot?

Gotta love this line from a recent piece by Clive Crook in The Atlantic:

The Clinton campaign’s offer of the VP slot to Obama is clever politics. . . . The idea gels nicely with the Clinton’s argument that Obama is inexperienced: here is his chance for some on-the-job training as number three in the Clinton White House.

Exactly. And that’s why Obama will never accept such an arrangement.

Infections are Everywhere

This is unnerving:

From iPods to navigation systems, some of today’s hottest gadgets are landing on store shelves with some unwanted extras from the factory: pre-installed viruses that steal passwords, open doors for hackers and make computers spew spam.

I’m sure it’s an isolated problem, but it’s another reason to keep one’s virus protection software up to date.

Race and Gender Politics Destroying the Dems

For years, the Democratic Party has made a career out of championing race and gender issues in an effort to be “all-inclusive.” As a result, the Party has gotten into bed with the NAACP and NOW , and is quick to hurl charges of “racist!” and “sexist!” every time a member of one of the aggrieved classes gets their feelings hurt.

So there is something deliciously ironic in seeing the Party now tearing itself apart over race and gender. They have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in promoting members of their two base constituencies to the point that they now have a woman and a black running for the highest office in the land. But in a hot political campaign they know no other hand to play except the same old fear-mongering based on the usual identity labels. So they are turning on each other.

Kathleen Parker summarizes the problem well:

What’s clearly wrong is the convenient labeling — and silencing — of people as racist or sexist for expressing opinions that run counter to acceptable speech codes as determined by the minders of outrage.

Thus distracted, we ignore the real monster, whose name is Identity Politics.

It has two faces — and always bites the hand that feeds it.

UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer sees the silver lining:

This primary campaign represents the full flowering of identity politics. It’s not a pretty picture. . . .

The optimist will say that when this is over, we will look back on the Clinton-Obama contest, and its looming ugly endgame, as the low point of identity politics, and the beginning of a turning away. The pessimist will just vote Republican.

From Left to Right

David Mamet has a great piece in The Village Voice explaining his journey from a “brain-dead liberal” to a more conservative stance. He recounts many lessons he learned along the way about the nature of man, the function of free markets, and the role of government. But I found this description of the Constitution’s blueprint for government to be especially delightful:

The Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. . . .

I agree. Welcome to the light, David.

I’m From the Government — I’m Here to Help

Uh, no, thanks.

Jeff Jacoby notes two good examples of why the good intentions of government meddling in the free market usually ends up causing more problems than it solves.

First, the big push to create more corn-based ethanol, in order to reduce CO₂ levels and fight global warming.

The problem, laid out in two new studies in the journal Science, is that it takes a lot of land to grow biofuel feedstocks such as corn, and as forests or grasslands are cleared for crops, large amounts of CO₂ are released. Diverting land in this fashion also eliminates “carbon sinks,” which absorb atmospheric CO₂. Bottom line: The government’s ethanol mandate will generate a “carbon debt” that will take decades, maybe centuries, to pay off.

Second, the sub-prime mortgage fiasco is a problem entirely of the government’s making.

The crisis has its roots in the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, a Carter-era law that purported to prevent “redlining” – denying mortgages to black borrowers – by pressuring banks to make home loans in “low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.” Under the act, banks were to be graded on their attentiveness to the “credit needs” of “predominantly minority neighborhoods.” The higher a bank’s rating, the more likely that regulators would say yes when the bank sought to open a new branch or undertake a merger or acquisition.
. . .
Banks nationwide thus ended up making more and more subprime loans and agreeing to dangerously lax underwriting standards – no down payment, no verification of income, interest-only payment plans, weak credit history. If they tried to compensate for the higher risks they were taking by charging higher interest rates, they were accused of unfairly steering borrowers into “predatory” loans they couldn’t afford.

Trapped in a no-win situation entirely of the government’s making, lenders could only hope that home prices would continue to rise, staving off the inevitable collapse. But once the housing bubble burst, there was no escape. Mortgage lenders have been bankrupted, thousands of subprime homeowners have been foreclosed on, and countless would-be borrowers can no longer get credit. The financial fallout has hurt investors around the world. And all of it thanks to the government, which was sure it understood the credit industry better than the free market did, and confidently created the conditions that made disaster unavoidable.

And people want to turn over their health care to the same bunch of bungling bureaucrats? The free market can be an ugly mess sometimes, but at least it is a self-correcting mechanism that eventually drives out inefficiencies and improves the standard of living for everyone. Government mandates work in the opposite direction. When will we learn that?

Better Late Than Never

Conservatives are pleased to be joined — finally — by a lot of liberals who have finally had enough of the Clintons. We’ll resist the temptation to say, “I told you so.”

What conservatives saw in the Clintons wasn’t based on any remarkable and hard-to-discern insights. After all, the Clintons’ character problems were not being hidden from public view; they were, in fact, out there for all to see, often flashing in bright neon lights. Yet people like Chait were, for political and ideological reasons, blinded to the ruthlessness and corruption of the Clinton Machine. Now that the Clintons are using their tactics on an inspiring liberal figure like Barack Obama, the scales are suddenly falling from their eyes. We are now seeing the zeal of the recent converts in action.

However, I harbor no illusions that they will not be equally blinded by the next liberal darling, be it Obama or whoever.

Can Science Be Wrong?

Critics of a British government push to eliminate plastic bags:

The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence. This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive.

“Bad science”?? How can this be? I thought science was our savior, the voice of reason that would save us from the irrational extremists who wish to foist their biased agendas on the rest of us.

Hmmm. So I guess science can be wrong after all. And maybe a little skepticism can be a healthy thing — especially when politicians use the science to set policy.