Republicans Are the Luckiest People

The Republican party doesn't deserve to be this lucky:

(Reuters) - Former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said on Thursday he was seriously thinking about another White House bid in 2008 and will decide before the year is out.

"I will make that decision toward the end of the year, but I'm thinking about it hard," Kerry said in response to a question at the Latin Economic Forum at the United Nations.

The Republicans have been incredibly fortunate in the last two presidential elections, largely because of the quality of the Democratic candidates who have been trotted out to oppose them. Another John Kerry candidacy would make it three in a row. They must be thinking that it really is too much to hope for.

On the other hand, aside from the politically skillful Bill Clinton, when in the last forty five years have the Democrats offered the nation a really good candidate for president?

Somebody Has to Do it.

Here's a great idea. If the feds are going to drag their heels on securing the borders, shame them into taking the problem seriously. This is a story worth following:

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) -- If the government doesn't build security fencing along the Mexico border, Minuteman border watch leader Chris Simcox says he and his supporters will. Simcox, whose civilian watch group opposes illegal immigration, said Wednesday he was sending an ultimatum to President Bush to deploy military reserves to the Arizona border by May 25 or his supporters will break ground for their own building project.

"We're going to show the federal government how easy it is to build these security fences, how inexpensively they can be built when built by private people and free enterprise," Simcox said.

George Bush's approval ratings are down among Republicans to 66%. Pundits say its because of the war, but we doubt that. In our view it's because he's done nothing to curb spending and even less to secure our southern border. If he won't do it, Americans will do it for him. Unfortunately, the fence can only be built on private land, and a lot of the border is public land under government control. Even so, the Minutemen have the right idea, and maybe their example will have a salutary effect on the thinking of our congressmen and president. We'll see.

Free Speech

Wang Wenyi is being given a lesson about the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution and I suspect she's somewhat confused. Perhaps the America she heard about is not the America that exists today. It seems she has been charged with the misdemeanor of willfully intimidating, coercing, threatening and harassing a foreign official.

That's rich. Read the details here.

Meanwhile, we have this item that might help to explain Ms Wenyi's outspokenness.

Back in February I posted this Potpourri Rant that mentioned how in exchange for the opportunity to do business with China, CISCO was cooperating with the Chinese government to enable the Chinese to track dissidents through the Internet, some of whom are executed and their organs harvested for sale.

It looks like the Chinese (our favorite nation trade status partner) have decided to save on the cost of the bullet. Now it looks like they simply perform the surgery on living individuals and allow nature to takes its course.

Ya gotta hand it to those Chinese. There's a certain economic efficiency and elegance to it don't you think?

CIA Leaker Fired

This is welcome news. One of the miscreants responsible for disclosing classified information to the media has been cashiered. We hope she will also be prosecuted:

WASHINGTON - In a rare occurrence, the CIA fired an officer who acknowledged giving classified information to a reporter, NBC News learned Friday. The officer flunked a polygraph exam before being fired on Thursday and is now under investigation by the Justice Department, NBC has learned.

Intelligence sources tell NBC News the accused officer, Mary McCarthy, worked in the CIA's inspector general's office and had worked for the National Security Council under the Clinton and and George W. Bush administrations.

The leak pertained to stories on the CIA's rumored secret prisons in Eastern Europe, sources told NBC. The information was allegedly provided to Dana Priest of the Washington Post, who wrote about CIA prisons in November and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on Monday for her reporting.

Sources said the CIA believes McCarthy had more than a dozen unauthorized contacts with Priest. Information about subjects other than the prisons may have been leaked as well.

Perhaps the example being made of Ms McCarthy will have a salutary effect throughout government and there will be a greater reticence among those who know and are sworn to protect our nation's secrets hereafter.

Gas Rant

I just filled up the car at the local gas station with 92 octane (middle grade) at a cost of $3.06 per gallon. Ouch! It looks like we are just about at post Katrina / Rita days except there isn't any hurricane. Or at least one we can blame on nature.

There is a silver lining in the rising price of gas though and there is benefit to be appreciated. SUVs that get 12 miles to the gallon will start to disappear from the roads. You know them, their the vehicles that blind you at night when they're behind you and their headlights are so high that they reflect in your rear-view mirror causing a nearly total inability to see where you are going.

When they're in front of you, you can't see anything beyond them so you have no idea what the rest of the traffic might be doing. In addition, statistics show that the other party of an accident involving an SUV is 5 times more likely to be killed.

To me, high gas prices are a God-send. I hope they go to $5 a gallon and with our present administration hard at work on their "energy policy", I suspect they will. Then the SUVs will become a thing of the past and as far as I'm concerned, good riddance.

Perhaps the legacy of the Bush administration will be that he single handedly enacted policy to rid the roads of these monster vehicles that consume twice the gas as the average vehicle does thus driving prices up for everybody although I find it odd that the biggest SUVs are eligible for tax credits. I haven't figured that out yet but I suspect it was simply one of those lobbying things that slipped through on the national defense budget legislation.

There's one other way we might be rid of the SUV. Ford Motor company lost 8% today on the stock market and GM is struggling to outdo them but only lost just under 4%. What amazes me is that in the world of stocks, in order for someone to sell their shares, someone has to buy them. What thinking person would spend money on either of these companies?

At any rate, both companies are going down the toilet and when they do, the SUVs as we know them will be flushed along with them. Driving will be a much safer and more enjoyable...for those that can afford the price of gasoline.

Darn!

Yesterday gold plunged over $20 per ounce and silver followed with over a $2.00 loss.

I was almost in tears as a sat there looking at the real-time graphs that illustrated the greatest plunge in recent history in the metals...and I had no spare cash to take advantage of a buying opportunity that hasn't happened since the bull market in gold began five years ago. Ugh.

Of course, in less than twenty four hours the market recovered almost completely as to almost sneer at me for being caught off balance.

From Richard Russel tonight:

And gold, that unprincipled sneak -- it turned around and closed up 12.40 today -- and up another 3 in the after-market to 638.50 on the June futures. The previous high on the June futures was 636.00 recorded on April 19, so Monday it would not surprise me to see June gold at a new high! Silver did not do as well. But for those who were knocked out of the box in gold, sorry, it's never easy to trade the bull. All that's happened is that the gold bull has succeeded in shaking thousands of non-believers off his back. Amazing!

Experience is a great teacher although it's usually a very expensive one. I've learned my lesson well. There will be more corrections to come during this bull market in gold. In 1980-'81 there were corrections of $100 to $150 dollars that happened just as quickly as yesterday. I'm going to be ready for the next one.

Just in case...

there is anyone left who would believe that our government doesn't lie to us consider this article.

Let's take the official inflation rate, tracked using the consumer price index, or CPI. The idea behind the CPI is to have a fixed basket of goods and track how the prices of these things change from year to year. It only gained prominence after World War II, as a way to adjust autoworkers' labor contracts, a practice that soon spread.

Over time, its importance grew and more people looked to it as a gauge of general price inflation - and, hence, to get a feel for the health of the economy.

The thing is, the way the CPI is calculated changed dramatically over the years. Politicians have figured out that these statistics are useful in winning elections. Ergo, nearly every administration has altered the calculation. And always, the changes made the CPI lower. Every effort to change the CPI, by design, aims to make the economy look "better" than it looked before the changes.

The accumulation of these changes creates a huge difference over time. It's like making a series of small changes to a ship's course in the midst of a long voyage. Soon, you wind up way off course, miles and miles from where you think you are. The chart below on William's Web page shows the extent of the difference, which is just massive. The rate of inflation using only the pre-Clinton era CPI is closer to 7%!

The "Experimental C-CPI-U" is another innovation, introduced by the Bush administration to lower the CPI yet again, once again to paint a kinder portrait of the old hag known as the U.S. economy.

But it's about more than just making the economy look better. For example, since increases in Social Security payments link to the CPI, a lower CPI also saves the government money. According to Williams, if you used the CPI when Jimmy Carter was president, you'd get Social Security checks 70% higher than today's levels. Yes, 70% higher.

The government also duped all those people who thought it was such a great idea to buy TIPS (Treasury inflation-protected securities). Changes in the CPI determine the interest paid on these bonds. The higher the CPI, the more interest paid to bondholders. Some people loved the idea, figuring here was a bond that would keep pace with inflation. Given the government manipulates the CPI, you can be sure the interest rate paid will not keep pace with inflation - nor has it ever.

The manipulation of the CPI explains the great disconnect between what the man in the street feels when he pays his bills and what the confident, well-dressed Fed chiefs and politicians try to tell him. The cost of living is rising a lot more than they want you to believe. At a 7% annual rate of inflation, the cost of living would double in about 10 years. Looked at differently, the purchasing power of your dollar will fall in half.

...

What about unemployment? The government, since the time of the Kennedy administration, has been changing the definition of "unemployed." Again, many small changes over time lead to dramatic end results. According to Williams, if you back out the changes, you get an unemployment number closer to 12%!

Let's look at the federal deficit - basically, the amount of money the government is losing every year. The official deficit for 2005 was $319 billion. However, this excludes unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations. Throw them into the mix and calculate the deficit the way a business does in its financial statements - and you get an annual deficit around $3.5 trillion.

That's more than 10 times the so-called "official" deficit. By Williams' calculations, you could raise the tax rate to 100% - dump everyone's salaries into the U.S. Treasury - and still have a deficit.

Years of such deficits have created a mountain of obligations for the U.S. government. As Williams says, "The fiscal 2005 statement shows that total federal obligations at the end of September were $51 trillion; over four times the level of GDP." These debts are unsustainable. The bills must go unpaid. If the U.S. government were a private corporation, its bankruptcy would be beyond dispute.

There are only two ways to protect yourself from this kind of abuse. Buy gold and ride the storm or buy gold and leave the country.

So What's Your Point?

Farmers in Mexico have staged a nude protest. It's hard to tell exactly what they're trying to demonstrate by posturing sans clothing except maybe that whatever their grievances might be, they're not starving.

Fighting For the First Amendment

Consider the tale of Ruth Malhotra in the LA Times:

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant. Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy. With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. Evangelicals have been suspended for wearing anti-gay T-shirts to high school, fired for denouncing Gay Pride Month at work, reprimanded for refusing to attend diversity training. When they protest tolerance codes, they're labeled intolerant.

A recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 64% of American adults - including 80% of evangelical Christians - agreed with the statement "Religion is under attack in this country."

"The message is, you're free to worship as you like, but don't you dare talk about it outside the four walls of your church," said Stephen Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Assn. Center for Law and Policy, which represents Christians who feel harassed.

Others fear the banner of religious liberty could be used to justify all manner of harassment. "What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn't mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn't work?" asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal.

Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different - a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.

By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. He predicts the government will one day revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that preach homosexuality is sinful or that refuse to hire gays and lesbians. "Think how marginalized racists are," said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom. "If we don't address this now, it will only get worse."

Christians are fighting back in a case involving Every Nation Campus Ministries at California State University. Student members of the ministry on the Long Beach and San Diego campuses say their mission is to model a virtuous lifestyle for their peers. They will not accept as members gays, lesbians or anyone who considers homosexuality "a natural part of God's created order."

Legal analysts agree that the ministry, as a private organization, has every right to exclude gays; the Supreme Court affirmed that principle in a case involving the Boy Scouts in 2000. At issue is whether the university must grant official recognition to a student group that discriminates.

The students say denying them recognition - and its attendant benefits, such as funding - violates their free-speech rights and discriminates against their conservative theology. Christian groups at public colleges in other states have sued using similar arguments. Several of those lawsuits were settled out of court, with the groups prevailing.

In the public schools, an Ohio middle school student last year won the right to wear a T-shirt that proclaimed: "Homosexuality is a sin! Islam is a lie! Abortion is murder!" But a teen-ager in Kentucky lost in federal court when he tried to exempt himself from a school program on gay tolerance on the grounds that it violated his religious beliefs.

Malhotra said she had been reprimanded by college deans several times in the last few years for expressing conservative religious and political views. When she protested a campus production of "The Vagina Monologues" with a display condemning feminism, the administration asked her to paint over part of it.

She caused another stir with a letter to the gay activists who organized an event known as Coming Out Week in the fall of 2004. Malhotra sent the letter on behalf of the Georgia Tech College Republicans, which she chairs; she said several members of the executive board helped write it.

The letter referred to the campus gay rights group Pride Alliance as a "sex club ... that can't even manage to be tasteful." It went on to say that it was "ludicrous" for Georgia Tech to help fund the Pride Alliance. The letter berated students who come out publicly as gay, saying they subject others on campus to "a constant barrage of homosexuality."

"If gays want to be tolerated, they should knock off the political propaganda," the letter said.

The student activist who received the letter, Felix Hu, described it as "rude, unfair, presumptuous" - and disturbing enough that Pride Alliance forwarded it to a college administrator. Soon after, Malhotra said, she was called in to a dean's office. Students can be expelled for intolerant speech, but she said she was only reprimanded.

Still, she said, the incident has left her afraid to speak freely. She's even reluctant to aggressively advertise the campus lectures she arranges on living by the Bible. "Whenever I've spoken out against a certain lifestyle, the first thing I'm told is 'You're being intolerant, you're being negative, you're creating a hostile campus environment,' " Malhotra said.

A Georgia Tech spokeswoman would not comment on the lawsuit or on Malhotra's disciplinary record, but she said the university encouraged students to debate freely, "as long as they're not promoting violence or harassing anyone."

Tolerance of the choices of others is an absolute which must not ever be violated, unless of course, the choices others make involve adhering to traditional moral opinions about homosexuality based upon the 2000 year tradition of the Christian Church. Then tolerance and diversity go out the window and the solitary voices which dare to defy campus orthodoxy must be silenced.

Anyone can say anything on campus, no matter how hateful, about George Bush. Anyone can promote plays like the Vagina Monologues which discusses approvingly the seduction of a minor girl by an older lesbian. Anyone on campus can cheer the murders of Israeli children by Palestinian suicide bombers. But let a young woman stand up and say that homosexuality is wrong and immoral and the wheels of university justice are set in motion to grind her down. Some opinions simply can not be permitted a hearing lest they offend someone.

We have a suggestion for Ms. Malhotra. Next time she plans to voice her thoughts on homosexuality she should don a hijab and pretend to be a Muslim. The university administration will let her say whatever she wants.

Oil

According to this article, oil futures hit $75 per barrel today. This is based on futures which are a time-dated contract that two parties enter into that requires the buyer to take delivery (although often settled in cash) of the underlying commodity and the seller is required to provide the underlying commodity at some future date. Futures contracts often tend to be "derivatives" of the underlying commodity as the buyers don't actually want to possess the commodity rather they're betting on what it will be worth at some time in the future.

If the price of oil at the time the contract expires is lower than $75, the people who purchased the contract lose money because they have to pay $75 for a barrel of oil that costs less than that at that point in time. On the other hand, if people are buying futures contracts for oil at $75 a barrel today, they must believe it will be much, much higher by the time the contract expires.

Here's the take-home message...first, note that the futures contract reference in the article is short-dated which means the expiration of the contract is May. Secondly, the people that participate in the futures market mostly do it for a living and they tend to know what they're doing. This inclines me to believe that in another month or two oil is going to be very expensive.

The Worst President Ever?!

Historian Sean Wilentz grinds his anti-Bush axe at Rolling Stone in an article which concludes that George W. Bush may be the very worst president we've ever had. Far be it from us to dispute the learned judgment of a Princeton historian, but might professor Wilentz be substituting ideological prejudice for objective judgment? In case the reader is inclined to wince at such presumption, this seems also to be the opinion of others who know far more history than do we.

At any rate, the things for which Wilentz indicts Bush seem either trivial or patently false, and he inexplicably ignores those things upon which history is most likely to judge his success. For example, he's prepared to consign Bush to the dustbin of history for the NSA spying business, for lying about WMD in Iraq, and for the Valerie Plame affair, but these are tempests in teapots for which Bush has been, or will very likely be, exonerated. He criticizes Bush for being divisive, but the Democrats, in a snit over the 2000 election, have made division their sole domestic policy over the past five years. Mohatma Ghandi could not have wooed the petulant Democrats after that disappointment. Wilentz points to Bush's low approval ratings as proof that he's doing a terrible job, but these are in fact a consequence primarily of two things -- a relentless and tendentious media campaign to destroy his presidency by accusing him of, and blaming him for, anything they can, and rising gasoline prices.

Wilentz ignores completely what his colleagues in the future likely will not: Bush has liberated 50 million people from almost unimaginable oppression, more than any single president in history - indeed, more than any other man in history. He has successfully presided over an economy that was in recession when he took office, was further rocked by 9/11, Katrina, and Rita, and which today is bounding along as the envy of the rest of the world. Furthermore, the war on terror has been a success. Most of al-Qaeda's top leadership has been killed or captured, and they're on the run everywhere in the world. We do not have bin Laden, to be sure, but he's afraid to show his face for fear that there's a predator drone flying figure eights overhead ready to launch a hellfire missile with his name on it. It's worth noting, too, that there has not been a single terrorist attack on our soil since 9/11. He has also implemented a medicare plan that looked at first like a disaster, but which some analysts are beginning to think may be better than they first thought.

Compared to these achievements the faults of which Wilentz accuses him would be piddling were they fair or accurate, but for the most part they are neither.

Bush has had failures, but they're not what Wilentz condemns him for. He has failed to curtail spending, to secure our borders, or to fix social security. These are not all his fault, but he must take some of the blame for them. Even so, he has three years left. If he can get just one out of these three, if medicare doesn't bankrupt us, and Iraq and Afghanistan remain stable, he'll be considered by historians as one of the better presidents ever to sit in the White House. If he gets two out of three, solves either the Iranian or the North Korean nuclear problem, keeps the Afghans and Iraqis pacified, if our economy continues its healthy trend, and there are no further attacks on our soil, he will be regarded by historians, even at Princeton, as perhaps the greatest president in our history.

These are admittedly big "ifs," but the point is that it's awfully premature to be proclaiming him a total failure. Such a judgment cannot be a purely scholarly conclusion, but must rather be an attempt to promote an ideological agenda which involves destroying George W. Bush.

Bush's enemies are consumed with a passionate hatred for him that is astonishing to behold, and his successes simply stoke that hatred to ever higher levels of intensity. If things do turn out for this country as we hope they will, the haters will be driven completely to the brink of madness. That Bush should achieve a place in the upper tier of presidents will push them to the breaking point. Yet is that not what every sane person should be hoping and praying for? Should we not be praying for success in the Middle East, security at home, a disarmed Iran and North Korea, and a healthy economy? It's tragic that so many would rather see these things not come to pass than to see Bush get credit for them. I think Sean Wilentz might come close to being one of those who just doesn't want to give the president any credit and he's willing to jeopardize his professional reputation and credibility in order to avoid doing it.

The Dems' Idea Man

Howard Dean had some thoughts to share recently in The Christian Science Monitor.

There is a consensus that we cannot continue to have a permanent commitment to a failed strategy.... One, we are going to support our troops and two, you are going to see a ... desire to resolve the situation ... by turning this over to the Iraqis and bringing our folks home. The only thing that is left up to some modest differences is what the timetable is.

In other words, there's no debate among Democrats as to whether we should surrender. The only question is what time the Last Helicopter departs from Baghdad. The Democrats give a new twist to an old adage: When the going gets tough, the Dems get going.

And wait until the African American clergy, the folks at Sojourners magazine, and all the other liberal-left anti-war clergy read this:

The religious community has to decide whether they want to be tax exempt or involved in politics.

We're quite sure that when Howard realizes what he has said and how it would affect the Democratic party if the religious community really were to distance itself from politics, he'll be eager to let this latest piece of intemperance fade quietly into political oblivion.

The Democratic party without a politically active African American church and religious left is in the same shape as a hiker in Death Valley with no water. He may not be dead, but he soon will be.

He also suggests this as a Democratic slogan for 2008:

One of our slogans is probably going to end up being 'tough and smart.' Because what the Republicans have done is tough and not very smart.

Tough and smart. Catchy. Ironic, too, considering that their plan for Iraq is best described as wussie and dumb.

Take Our Rights and Let Us Alone.

Old free speech warhorse Nat Hentoff laments the deplorable state of the first amendment on the American campus. Not only are our colleges worshippig at the altar of all the liberal pieties, but in some cases they're actively suppressing any challenge to the fashionable orthodoxies adhered to by leftist true believers. Now it appears that many of our institutions, both educational and entertainment, have voluntarily submitted themselves to a state of abject dhimmitude.

Muslims must be surprised that the putative bastions of free speech have caved with so little resistance. Who would have thought that the West would have surrendered their precious rights so easily. "Here, take what you want," we seem to be saying, "Just don't hurt us."

No Hurry. Yet.

Edward Luttwack argues at length that there are three reasons why it would be a mistake to takemilitary action against Iran just now. His essay is a little long but well worth the time it takes to read.

Making Moral Judgments

Ann Coulter draws some good lessons from the Duke Lacrosse team fiasco and along the way remarks upon our peculiar reticence to condemn certain behaviors as stupid and/or immoral. Here's an excerpt:

Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. I have always been unabashedly anti-murder, anti-rape and anti-false accusation -- and I don't care who knows about it!

But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.

Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar -- whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape. But in a nation of people in constant terror of being perceived as "judgmental," I'm not sure most people do recognize that anymore.

It shouldn't be necessary to point out that girls shouldn't be bar-hopping alone or taking their clothes off in front of strangers, and that young men shouldn't be hiring strippers. But we live in a world of Bill Clinton, Paris Hilton, Howard Stern, Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman," Democratic fund-raisers at the Playboy Mansion and tax deductions for entertaining clients at strip clubs.

Read the whole thing. She's right on target.

We might add the observation that as a society we've become conditioned to dread being called "judgmental," and as a consequence we're loath to make moral judgments. We've become so accustomed to hearing the refrain that we shouldn't impose our morality on others that we shrink from asserting that hiring a stripper, or being one, is morally wrong.

The fact of the matter is that "being judgmental" is merely making moral judgments without a proper consideration of all the relevant facts. Of course we shouldn't do that, but it doesn't follow that we should not, therefore, make moral judgments at all. Moreover, the person who takes us to task for being "judgmental" when we make a moral judgment is a hypocrite. By making a judgment about our behavior he's doing exactly what he criticizes in us.

Besides, the idea that we shouldn't impose our morality on others is itself a moral notion. It has force only if one believes that moral right and wrong actually exist, but there can only be moral right and wrong if there exists a transcendent moral law-giver. If there is no such moral law-giver then whatever I do is neither right nor wrong. Thus, whatever I have the power and the desire to do, I may do. That includes imposing my morality on others. I am obligated to respect the "rights" of others only by God. Nothing else can obligate me in any moral sense.

Moreover, the person who says that you shouldn't impose your morality on others is, of course, doing himself exactly what he reproaches you for doing. He's trying to foist upon you his sense of what is right and what is wrong, but he's too dull to see his own hypocrisy.

At any rate, as Ann Coulter suggests, whatever happened at that house in Durham, none of it was good, and a lot of it was morally debased. All concerned should feel deeply ashamed of themselves.

Much Spoken, Nothing Said

The following exchange on CBS's Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer nicely illustrates the Democrats' difficulty. They can't talk about Iraq and Iran without sounding like they've been fraternizing with Jefferson Airplane's white rabbit. Here's New Mexico governor and potential Democrat presidential candidate Elliot Richardson traipsing along the edge of incoherence:

SCHIEFFER: Where do you think we are right now [in Iraq]? And, I guess, more importantly, Governor, where do you think we go from here?

Gov. RICHARDSON: Well, where we go from here is, I believe the time has come for a strategy, an announcement on disengagement. I believe that the war is very badly run; our objectives are not being fulfilled. I would redeploy those forces that we have in Iraq to the surrounding area to deal with real threats to America--the war on terrorism, our increasing lack of influence in Afghanistan with al-Qaeda. Right now the situation in Iran is potentially another Iraq. I believe what you need now is a very strong effort to get the three leaderships in Iraq, the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Kurds, to form a coalition government, put maximum pressure for them to do that, and then redeploy American forces to where we really have true national security threats. Our problem right now...is our obsession with Iraq has caused us to lack paying attention to real threats to our country like terrorism...

When Richardson is not simply saying that we should do what Bush is already doing his suggestions are either recipes for disaster or they are incomprehensible. What does he mean, for example, when he refers to our increasing lack of influence with al-Qaeda? When have we ever had any influence with al-Qaeda? Even Schieffer isn't sure what the governor is trying to say:

SCHIEFFER: But are you saying that we just need to turn and get out of there? Because won't that be taken as a sign of weakness, won't the terrorists think they have won, and won't that encourage them to strike someplace else?

Gov. RICHARDSON: No, what I would do, Bob, is early next year I believe we fix a date certain for the start of an American withdrawal because right now our policy is just not working, and the civil war is getting worse. What I would do is call a Mideast conference, a summit, of Muslim countries to help with training the Iraqi security forces along with us; and then secondly, a real reconstruction effort among other Arab countries, wealthy countries, that deal with the reconstruction of Iraq. But our policy is not working, and we have to change course, and this is why Secretary Rumsfeld and the president need to at least admit that what we're doing is not working and have some course corrections. They're unwilling to even do that.

Now there's a brilliant strategy. Place Iraq in the tender care of other Muslim countries. How clever. May we ask, though, which ones? Which of the Muslim countries is best suited to tutor Iraq in its quest to establish democratic institutions and to nurture a decent regard for human rights? Tough question? Well, no matter. Our current policy isn't working. We've been at it now for three whole years and Iraq is still unsettled. We need to do something different. It doesn't matter how idiotic, as long as it's different.

SCHIEFFER: Let's shift to Iran. You just mentioned that there are reports that the Iranians, of course, are enriching uranium, the next step toward building a bomb. What should we do about that?

Gov. RICHARDSON: Well, first, we recognize that we cannot tolerate nuclear weapons in Iran, but, having said that, I would do totally different from what the Bush administration is doing. I would engage the Iranians directly, talk directly to them about nuclear weapons, about Iraq. They have major influence on Iraq.

Of course! Talk to them. Why didn't the Bush administration think of that? How much is CBS paying Mr. Richardson to appear on this show, anyway?

Secondly, I would stop outsourcing our foreign policy to the Europeans, to the International Atomic Energy Agency, to the UN Security Council. I believe if we talk directly to them, but build an international consensus, international support--this is why the fraying of our relationship with the Europeans, with the allies, has been so costly is because we can't build a true international coalition that engages the third world also and surrounding countries to get Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons.

No, the fraying of our relations with the Europeans had more to do with the fact that toppling Saddam cost them some lucrative military contracts and deprived them of a handsome income from oil for food kickbacks. Europe is Europe. They're not going to confront Iran over nuclear weapons any more than they were willing to confront Hitler, Stalin, Milosevic, the Hutus, or Saddam. Heck, France won't even reform its own laws to save itself from economic dilapidation if it means having to confront a few thousand malcontent students. It's certainly not going to stand up to a lunatic like Ahamdinejad.

Now, we have some time. We have five to 10 years before they develop a nuclear weapon. What we need to do, in that process, Bob, is use diplomacy, coercive diplomacy, potentially sanctions, special envoys, instead of talking about using military options. The fact that the Pentagon leaked that we would use tactical nuclear weapons is ridiculous.

What on earth is he talking about? Nobody in the administration has said anything about using nukes. Seymour Hersh, a journalist, said that. Of course, that nukes would be an option if matters came to war is not news. It's simply common sense. If you have a weapon then that weapon is an option. That doesn't mean that the weapon will be used. Much less does it mean that the administration is talking publically about using them.

Military options should always be on the table, but you don't bring it out first. You exercise your full diplomatic engagement and tools, and the start of that is talking directly to them about borders.

Thanks Elliot. Great advice. You'd make a fine president of the Kiwanis Club.

Ramirez Cartoon

Thanks to No Left Turns.

Finally Seeing the Light

It only took Patrick Moore 35 years to learn what most people have known all along:

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

Every argument Mr. Moore adduces in the rest of this article in support of nuclear power has been in circulation for over three decades. They're certainly not new. Meanwhile, because of the efforts of radical environmentalists like him, our energy efforts have focussed on carbon-based fuels which have filled the atmosphere with carbon dioxide and acid and lined the pockets of Arab sheiks. When future historians consider the number of lives lost because of pollution and the toll taken by terrorism funded by oil-rich Muslims; when they consider the economic cost of both the damage caused by pollution and the attempts to control it; when they consider that a relatively clean and cheaper (in the long run) method of energy production was all the while available in nuclear fission, they will shake their heads at our stupidity.

We can be happy that Mr. Moore has finally seen the light, but we're entitled to ask, what took him so long?

Screwing in a Light Bulb

The question debated is "How many Darwinists does it take to screw in a light bulb." Check out Cartago for a humorous bit of satire at the expense of some of the major players in the ID/Darwinism debate.

Israel's Three Choices

Another Palestinian suicide murderer claims seven Israeli lives. Hamas justifies the atrocity by calling it a legitimate act of self-defense. Evidently, in the radical Palestinian mind, such as it is, Israeli restaurant patrons are serious threats to the safety of the Palestinian people.

Israel cannot allow the slaughter of their citizens to continue. The Palestinians have clearly shown they're not interested in living in peace with Israel. Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters puts it this way:

The Palestinians will never disarm under their present political structure. They have proven over and over again to have Israel's annihilation as their national goal. The only hope that the world has in ending this conflict is either to allow Israel to complete its withdrawal and border wall to seal off the Palestinians altogether, or to allow both sides to fight an open war with the entire area as a winner-take-all. The Palestinians have voted for this approach twice. They will not change until they understand that they still have something to lose in the process. Until the impulse for peace and rational co-existence comes into being in the West Bank and Gaza, we have to acknowledge the reality that the Palestinians do not want either.

There is a third alternative for the Israelis. They could pack up and move to Greenland. Their choices are wall, war, or walk. The last isn't likely, and the left, by opposing the first, makes the second almost inevitable. War would be tragic, but that's what the Palestinians voted for when they voted for Hamas.