There is the real economy, then there is the Democratic version, which was on display so prominently during their convention last week — all doom and gloom.
A Wall Street Journal editorial looks at the numbers, and highlights the severe disconnect between the Democrats’ claim of a depressed U. S. economy, and the real economy, which is actually doing quite well.
So why, if most people are doing okay in their personal financial affairs, are so many people down on the economy in general? Answer: “The relentless negativity of the media.”
Colby Cosh turns a spotlight on this statement in Obama’s acceptance speech last week at the DNC.
“I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.”
Cosh asks the obvious questions: Then why do so many American employers hire the workers? And why do so many workers risk deportation by coming to the U. S. for jobs? And who benefits from the lower wages paid to these workers for the services and products they produce?
Yet Obama says with a straight face, “I don’t know anyone who benefits.”
Cosh cites this as just one example of Obama’s favorite campaign gambit: “Making a trite statement of principle and then running away from the actual issue as fast as possible.” Of course, if no one in the media calls him on these goofy pronouncements, he gets away with it.
Robert Haddick sees some startling parallels between the rapid expansion of modern China’s economic and military power, and the unification of the German states under Otto von Bismarck in the late 1800s. Germany’s European neighbors failed to adapt to Germany’s growth, and the result was World War I.
Before World War I, Europe’s great powers clashed over the allegiance of small neighboring states, engaged in a naval arms race, and squabbled over access to overseas raw materials. As a consequence of China’s growth, we are witnessing modern versions of these same conflicts. The question for today’s statesmen is whether they will do a better job adjusting to China’s rise.
Haddick lists several possible flash points that could trigger a confrontation. But the single biggest factor influencing the outcome of this growing unease is the unknown quality of China’s own intentions.
The fateful day may arrive when the United States and China’s neighbors find themselves compelled to explicitly align against China, just as France, Russia, and eventually Great Britain did when they chose to align against Germany. The U.S. government has rejected a confrontational approach to China, with apparent benefit to all. But how long can this policy last? And what will cause U.S. statesmen to change their minds?
“Ask Big Oil,” says Scott Mayerowitz of ABC News. He points to the oil companies’ deep pockets, fleets of helicopters, and years of experience dealing with hurricane evacuations in the Gulf of Mexico. The closing interview with an oil company engineer, James Kovacs, however, hints of another reason:
Many times over those years he was evacuated off rigs and platforms. The process, he said, “was pretty routine.”
“They’ve never left anybody out there. Everybody’s always been off when a hurricane hits,” Kovacs said. “The oil business is very on top things.”
So what if the government was responsible to evacuate the rigs?
“We’d still be out there,” Kovacs said. “They’d have the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] guys out there inspecting our bags.”
Private enterprises learn to be efficient, or they go broke. Governments have the luxury of ignoring that principle, so efficiency is the exception, rather than the rule.
Here is the first McCain-Palin video ad, although not produced by the McCain campaign. Pay special attention to what the governor is doing about 30 seconds into the video. My dad (R.I.P.) would have loved this gal.
The pundits are busy coming up to speed on Sarah Palin.
John Hinderaker — who initially had some reservations about McCain’s veep pick — provides a good deal of background info on Palin the woman/wife/mom, including photos. This is definitely not your average vice-presidential nominee.
While it’s hard to argue that Sarah Palin was the most qualified of the candidates McCain had to choose from, she is obviously a bold choice and one that may turn out to pay dividends.
Newsweek has a great photo gallery of the governor’s career.
Scott Conroy paints a portrait of Sarah “Barracuda” Palin as anything but average. In fact, given the early basketball careers of both Obama and Palin, Conroy has a great campaign face-off idea:
Forget the debates—how about a one-one-one contest between The Baracuda and O’Bomber?
Ann Althouse includes a couple of nice photos of her husband and kids. One of Ann’s readers comments:
Perhaps Palin is the “post-feminist” woman. She competes in a man’s world being governor of the largest state, but she can still be feminine (a mother and wife).
Finally, Ed Morrissey analyzes the risks and payoffs of this choice, and concludes that McCain has scored a brilliant coup in picking this unusual governor:
This is change you can believe in, and not change that amounts to all talk. McCain changed the trajectory of the race today by stealing Obama’s strength and turning it against him. Obama provided that opening by picking Biden as his running mate, and McCain was smart enough to take advantage of the opening.
UPDATE: And here is a photo of the guv that is sure to lock down the Minnesota Vikings vote.
Victor Davis Hanson reviews the imperial trappings of Obama’s Berlin speech and his DNC acceptance speech at Invesco Field, and is moved to ask this obvious question:
Isn’t there one sane person on his staff who can stop this divine madness, a single henchman who can whisper in his ear as puts on his golden crown notVero possumus (”Yes! We can!”), but as was true of returning heroes during Roman Triumphs—”Respica te, hominem te memento” (”Watch behind you; remember you’re just a man!”)?
Ah, but Obama is not just a hero. He is the Messiah!
The palatial columns that made up the gaudy “West Wing” stage at Obama’s acceptance production reminded me of the cheesy set design in swords-and-sandals epics. But what really popped into my head was the image of Peter Ustinov as Nero in “Quo Vadis?” — “Do I live for the people or do the people live for me? … These people expect me to shine both day and night!”
I returned this evening from my week-long business trip to Boulder. I was sufficiently removed from all the DNC events in Denver that all the hoopla really never affected me (except for the exorbitant hotel rates I had to pay). However, going through the Denver airport today was entertaining — there were hundreds of DNC participants heading home with Obama tee-shirts, buttons, and convention signage.
As far as I’m concerned, the highlight of the DNC week was McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin for veep. Very gutsy move.
On a personal note, I got to spend several evenings with a good friend of mine who preaches in Longmont. We went up into the mountains one evening to do some hiking. You can see a great aerial photo of our destination, Button Rock Reservoir, here.
I’m in Boulder CO this week on business. Yeah, I know — poor planning, with the DNC going on in nearby Denver the same week. From the moment I set foot in the Denver airport, I knew it would be an interesting week.
I won’t be paying much attention to the conference proceedings while I’m here. What’s the chance of anything interesting happening?
After a miraculous come-from-behind charge to take the league championship in my rookie season last year, I’ve been eager for this new season to arrive. My buddies and I had the draft party last night, and I think I ended up with a fairly decent team. Some of the same players return — Peyton Manning, Jason Whitten, Laurence Maroney, the Pittsburg DST. But I’m a little concerned about my wide receiver corps, populated with long shots like the Jets’ Laveranues Coles, who might sparkle as Brett Favres’ favorite receiver. Who knows?
It’ll be a tough season, I’m sure. After all, I’m the defending champ, and everyone will be gunning for the top dog. Bring ‘em on!
George Will takes a hard look at all the outrageous promises that Obama is making about what he will do when he becomes President, from requiring that 10% of our energy come from renewable sources within four years, to getting a million 150mpg vehicles on the roads within six years. Obama flings these promises about without a hint of how the government will intervene in the markets to make them happen, or how much it will cost. If the American people took the trouble to tally up the bill on all of Obama’s wild claims, they would laugh him off the stage. As Will notes,
In this year’s campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?
Joshua Green, writing in The Atlantic, reveals what brought down the Hillary campaign. Taking advantage of access to a lot of internal campaign emails and memos, Green paints a picture of a campaign in chaos, beginning at the top.
In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.
It’s a fascinating insight into what was really going on inside Hillary’s inner circle of advisors — and the lack of her own decisive leadership that allowed the campaign to spin out of control.
If this is any indication of the kind of President Hillary would be, we can thank Obama for knocking her out of the race.
Engineers at MIT have figured out a way to deal with virus that is better than just killing them: they’re putting them to work. The researchers have developed a new technique wherein a key component of a microscopic battery is assembled by viruses, allowing for the cheap and simple construction of very small power sources.
Great idea . . . until the viruses unionize. If you think your last bout with flu was bad, wait until these little puppies go on strike.
According to John Weidner, read Alice in Wonderland and the energy crisis suddenly makes sense — in a perverse, progressive sort of way.
So who’s blocking “alternative power?” “Renewable energy?” Greens. Leftists. Democrats. No surprise there; once you abandon the use of logic, anything is possible . . .
“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
Barack Obama is a flake, and the American people have begun to see it. The chief characteristic of a flake is that he makes choices that are impossible to either understand or explain. These are not the errors of the poor dope who can’t grasp the essentials of a situation, or the neurotic who ruins things out of compulsion, or the man suffering chronic bad luck.
The flake has a genius for discovering solutions at perfect right angles to the ordinary world. It’s as if he’s the product of a totally different evolutionary chain, in a universe where the laws are slightly but distinctly at variance to ours. When given a choice between left and right, the flake goes up — if not through the 8th dimension. And although there’s plenty of rationalization, there’s never a logical reason for any of it. After awhile, people stop asking. . . .
We’ve never had a flake as president. We’ve had drunks, neurotics, cripples, louts, and fools, but never a career screwup. (I except Jimmy Carter, whose errors arose from sincere, misguided goodwill.) And I don’t think we’re going to get one now. Another three months of flailing, incompetence, and a collapsing image will do little to assure voters concerned with terrorism, the oil crunch, a gyrating economy, and a bellicose Russia.
It was all fun for awhile, but the fun is beginning to wear off.
Be sure to check out these instructions for setting the equalizer to get “perfect” sound from your speakers. The instructions are for a Mac — the Windows instructions are slightly different:
Access the equalizer via View > Show Equalizer
Set the individual levels first, then rename the preset label in the drop list.
AJStrata provides the best wrap-up of Saturday evening’s “debate” between Obama and McCain at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church: “McCain wants to lead America, Obama wants to be the Tooth Fairy.”
The internet is all abuzz with news that a couple of men have found the carcass of a Bigfoot specimen in a remote area of northern Georgia (USA). They’ve stashed the corpse in a home freezer for safe keeping, but have promised a scientific study in short order to establish the validity of their claims.
Given the shady history of at least one of the men involved, Jason Daley at Popular Sciencemakes a prediction:
I’ll bet that this Bigfoot sighting will follow the same disappointing script as other cryptozoolofical finds–after they release their photos and (likely inconclusive) DNA evidence and the body goes behind the “armed guards,” it will then be lost, “destroyed” by a freak event, or never seen again, except on grainy film shot by a horrible photographer that will be endlessly examined on the History Channel.
The downfall of John Edwards, due to his own self-confessed “egocentric and narcissistic” character, exposes some troubling questions for the Obama campaign — not relating to any marital fidelity, but to the underlying motivation behind his candidacy. Michael Medved notes the disturbing parallels:
With both candidates, there’s a lingering suspicion on the part of many voters that we’re really dealing with empty suits — appealing packages, full of sound and fury, signifying….nothing.
There’s also the sense that these are two guys who love to gaze longingly in the mirror, who are a bit too full of themselves, too cock-sure and glib and arrogant for their own good. . . .
In the deepest sense, the Edwards explosion will hurt Obama because it reminds us of the core similarity of two charming, media-genic guys who believe that despite their lack of meaningful experience they are the only ones who can rescue the United States and represent “the change we’ve been waiting for.”
One of Medved’s readers adds this comment:
[Edwards] reminds voters that Democrats keep sending boys to do a man’s job. Edwards adds another layer of tarnish to the Democrat brand.
Historians, by definition, are students of history, not current events. Of course, today’s current events are tomorrow’s history, but we are usually too close to today’s news to view it in its larger context. It is up to the historians to sift through all the evidence, long after the fact, and make sense of the details.
That’s why Bush has not been too concerned about his negative polling numbers throughout his two terms. On the issue of the Iraq War, in particular, he knows that the whole story hasn’t been written yet, and when it is, history will be kinder to him than his contemporary critics.
That more measured study of the Iraq War is already underway. Historian Arthur Herman has a lengthy piece at Commentary that recounts the history leading up to the decision to invade Iraq. His conclusion: If Bush had not invaded Iraq, some American President eventually would have had to do it — ironically, probably either Al Gore or John Kerry.
Whatever one wants to say about the conduct of the Iraq war, going to war to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003 was a necessary act. It should and could have been done earlier, had not the Clinton White House, which understood the need, not wasted the opportunity through timidity and bluster. If, after 9/11, Bush had then blinked in his turn, he might indeed have found himself out of office by January 2005, and someone else would have had to tackle the job under much more disadvantageous conditions.
To judge by his unequivocal pronouncements pre-2003, and as improbable as it sounds now, that someone might well have been Al Gore, the erstwhile hawkish Vice President who had championed the Iraq Liberation Act, or indeed John Kerry, who back in 1998 told Scott Ritter that containment of Saddam was not working and that the time had come to use force. If Bush had failed to act, either one of these two men might have come to office in January 2005 publicly prepared to deal with the “gathering threat” that his predecessor had unaccountably allowed to grow larger and closer and ever more virulent.
Ron Rosenbaum, writing in Slate, notes a basic contradition in two articles that appeared in a recent edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The editorial defended the role of journalists as giving voice to dissenters from the established consensus. But an article on climate change in the very same issue of the journal demanded that dissenters be ignored in the face of the consensus that has defined the global warming debate.
This was the contention that stunned me—that reporters must protect us from dissent—especially in light of the CJR editorial deploring the “dangerously narrow borders of our public discourse.”
As Rosenbaum points out later in his article, AGW believers are no longer practicing science; they have established a religion, and like all religions, dissent must be crushed to preserve the True Faith.
The great “oil up” story has finally revealed itself not as the fundamental reflection of scarce supply that its adherents liked to claim, but as a simple, speculative bubble that was always going to burst.
No doubt you have heard by now of John Edwards’ confession about his affair with a younger woman two years ago. There are still some unanswered questions about this whole matter (such as, if the affair was dealt with two years ago, why was he caught in the same hotel with this woman just last month?). Whatever.
But buried in the details of his statement today was this revealing comment:
In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.
Egocentric and narcissistic? A lot of people have had that opinion of John Edwards for years — there was certainly plenty of evidence — but their concerns were brushed aside as irrelevant and not representative of the real measure of the man. It turns out they were right all along.
This just reinforces the age-old lesson our grandmothers taught us long ago: humility can’t be faked. And most honest people can spot a phony.
I thought bicycles were the ultimate “green” transportation option. But somehow that option didn’t make it past the planners at the upcoming Democratic Party convention in Denver.
This is what happens when you put politicians, especially liberals, in charge of energy policy.
Okay, the fine print says it’s a security issue. But I suspect that could have been overcome with a little creative planning.
Ralph Peters places the modern Left, with it’s desire to silence opposition, in its proper historical context. Every totalitarian regime in recent history has been an enemy of free speech.
The extreme left loves to pretend it stands for freedom. It never has and never will. From the Reign of Terror in Paris onward, its core agenda has been the tyranny of egomaniacal intellectuals. The hard left hates an open debate – especially these days, when it’s out of new ideas.
The left pretends that campuses should enjoy freedom of speech, yet activist students shout down, harass and even attack speakers whose views they dislike. That’s brownshirt behavior, folks – as surely as show trials are Stalinist.
Kathleen Parker takes a break from the rantings of this political season to reminisce with a friend about what’s really important. Hint: it’s not the government.
The family is what gives our life meaning and makes our nation strong. The family is also what keeps government at a respectful distance — working for us and not the other way around.
All our political choices should be made in the service of that understanding. That’s all. And we’ve got work to do.
British researchers have uncovered an intriguing new way to reconstruct past climate trends. They are poring over thousands of ships’ logs from the British Navy, some dating back to the 1600s.
The logbooks kept by every naval ship, ranging from Nelson’s Victory and Cook’s Endeavour down to the humblest frigate, are emerging as one of the world’s best sources for long-term weather data.
The research thus far has revealed several weather anomalies that mimic today’s weather patterns — but long before anthropogenic global warming could have had any influence on the climate. For example:
It is commonly believed that hurricanes form in the eastern Atlantic and track westwards, so scientists were shocked in 2005 when Hurricane Vince instead moved northeast to hit southern Spain and Portugal.
Many interpreted this as a consequence of climate change; but Wheeler, along with colleagues at the University of Madrid, used old ships’ logs to show that this had also happened in 1842, when a hurricane followed the same trajectory into Andalusia.
One of the researchers, Dr. Dennis Wheeler, says that these old records argue for caution in the current global warming debate.
What our data shows is that climate science is complex and that it is wrong to take particular events and link them to CO2 emissions.
Belgium is slowly becoming two distinct nations speaking two languages, one Flemish, one French. Political division may be inevitable.
It’s about culture in the end. In its escalating dysfunction Belgium demonstrates the inextricable link between culture and nationhood.
Belgium’s experience holds lessons for America and our own indifference to preserving a common “American” culture in the face of a growing — and insular — Hispanic culture.
