No, this is not a warning about global warming per se, but about the high levels of global warming blather we are certain to be hearing as the presidential campaign – you should excuse the expression – heats up. As I’m sure you can imagine, each one of the major candidates is going to be asked his/her opinion on the subject ad infinitum and it will all mean nothing because none of them knows much about the science of the matter other than what they are told by advisers who themselves usually know little. And even if some of those advisers know more, are the candidates themselves qualified to understand and analyze the information? I haven’t seen too many science PhDs in the field.
That science itself is far from unified in their view of the situation came to the fore again today when NASA’s top official, of all people, made a statement to the effect that the global warming problem was over-rated. Was he right? Beats me. (I’m not qualified to analyze it either.) But he certainly generated a response from another NASA official who evidently had made a prominent appearance in Al Gore’s film. Three guesses where he stood.
Maybe we should make people take a pop science quiz before they are allowed to offer a public opinion on global warming – something like “define the second law of thermodynamics” and if they can’t do it, they shouldn’t bore us with their opinion on the subject. That would take care of most movie stars, politicians, Hannity & Colmes and ninety-five percent of the pundits on television. Sooner or later, however, we will have to suck it up and allow the pols some say because some kind of political action will have to be taken on the matter. But it’s much simpler and far less controversial to me to look at energy consumption as a conservation and quality of life issue. That’s somewhat more, even a lot more, comprehensible than the level of anthropogenic global warming, which has to be, as we have seen, taken largely on faith. Pollution is something we have all observed. Also, easy to understand is not wanting to enrich our enemies. We’ve all seen what they’ve done with our oil money. That doesn’t take, as they say, a rocket scientist.
If the whole subject of 9-11 weren’t so serious, you could get a big laugh at the idea of Rosie O’Donnell pontificating on such technical subjects as the melting point of steel. According to Wikipedia, Rosie didn’t make it through college and my best guess is she’d have a helluva time passing high school physics or maybe even geometry. But we live in a day and age when everybody has an opinion on scientific matters whether or not they’ve seen the inside of a petri dish or even know what one is.
Of course that Rosie is mostly clueless about science only works to her advantage. She doesn’t have to trouble herself with pesky facts. This also helps her as a conspiracy theorist because they can’t show doubt-the essence of the scientific method- at any time.
Speaking of conspiracy theorists, for the most part they bore me stiff. Rosie O’Donnell certainly does. But I’m beginning to be jealous of them – there’s gold in them thar hills. And the more bizarre the accusation …. such as Rosie’s contention that 7 World Trade Center may have been taken down by Enron to avoid investigation????…. the more money can be made from it. Maybe I should think of a really good conspiracy and write a book about it. How about…. Ahmadinejad is a CIA agent? [But everyone already knows that's true.-ed. They do?]
The two most recent political polls our (Rasmussen and Zogby) show a continuing slide for John McCain. Maybe Rich Miniter is right. He will be out by Fall. F. Thompson, still undeclared, seems to be hanging around in a statistical tie with Romney and McCain beneath the still front-running Rudy.
How is Rudy’s continued popularity possible when Republicans are supposed to abjure his social views? I think Hugh Hewitt puts his finger on it:
This realism about the next decade is very much alive within large numbers of Americans, and it is what secures Rudy’s position at the top of the national polls and which presents the greatest challenge to Romney and eventually Thompson –they have to persuade the security-conscious voter that they are at least as reliable as Rudy in a crisis. If the country is struck a blow even greater than 9/11 –and many of us think such an event is inevitable– will Romney or Thompson be able to meet or exceed Rudy’s almost certain-to-be ferocious response to our enemy abroad and vigorous repair of the damage at home?
Hugh goes on to link this problem – an internal jihadist threat – to a strong stand on immigration. Although I have tremendous sympathy for the poor of Mexico and Central America, I basically agree with him. Hugely difficult as it is, if we don’t know who is in our country, we are not safe in the modern world. A national identity card – as so many nations now have – is the bottom line first step. You can’t even give amnesty without it, assuming that is what you want to do. Sorry, but I have little respect for those who feel this is an invasion of their privacy. They are living on a rigid ideological Pluto (which, I remind you, is no longer a planet). Actually, fairness itself dictates a national ID when there are so many other forms of ID out there from driver’s licenses to credit cards. At least there will be some hope of accountability in the madness. And, please, spare us the cliché-ridden nonsense that the federal government can’t do anything. It can when it puts its collective mind to it. Don’t believe me? Go here. Or here. The idea that the federal government can’t do anything is just as dopey as the reverse.
A review copy of Voices of Protest: Documents of Courage and Dissent. These documents range from Emma Goldman to Ronald Reagan. Now that’s what I call scope!
Worried about Korans in the toilet in Abu Ghraib (not)? Read this?
Yes, I am a Chickenhawk. Since my last fight – a brief one in the schoolyard in the seventh grade, which I lost – I have never fought, not even once.
I never joined the Army, wouldn’t have thought of it, in fact did everything I could to avoid the draft during Vietnam short of burning my draft card because … I was too chicken even to do that (there … I’ve said it!).
But wait, as they say, there’s more.
When I so much as see violence in the street I do my best to avoid it. Once, sitting on a restaurant patio in Venice CA, when I witnessed some gangbangers bashing in the face of a member of another gang, I bolted back inside the restaurant like the Road Runner, ostensibly to make sure someone was “calling the cops,” but really because I was scared out of my knickers they’d beat the crap out of me. On other occasions I have crossed the street when I have seen scary characters coming down the sidewalk, sometimes two or three blocks off. I don’t go too close to the weight lifters on Muscle Beach and I generally steer clear of bikers. I don’t even own a gun and, although the Second Amendment makes some sense to me, I have never seriously considered buying one.
My family’s military history isn’t very distinguished either. My father served in World War II, but was sick most of the time and never left the US. An uncle of mine went to West Point but dropped out after two years.
In much more recent times, I have been invited, once or twice, to visit Iraq to report on the situation over there but declined, saying I have a wife and eight-year old daughter (don’t our troops?) and that didn’t allow me to go. Actually I was thinking “no-way-hosay-I-don’t-want-be shot.”
But then I wondered. Maybe I would go … Now … If I were single. And therein lies the reason for this post: More than anyone I can think of, this onetime war protester, who had pacifism drummed into his head as child by his mother, admires the US troops. Not only are they defending our county, they are defending the best of our civilization. They are more than our hope. They are humanity’s hope, even if some sections of our body politic and media do not want to admit it.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if … just like us “Off the Pig” hippies calling the cops in days of yore when our houses were broken into … those same anti-war “progressives” will soon be screaming bloody murder for the help of that military to whom they now pay only lip service. That would be poetic justice, but much as I might enjoy it, I sincerely hope that it is justice that doesn’t have to be served. And if it isn’t, it will be, ironically, because of our military.
UPDATE: Something you can do for our military on Memorial Day – donate your frequent flier miles to wounded soldiers. [Full disclosure: I am donating some, not all, of mine.]
… biased reviews. [Even if you have written them yourself?-ed. All the more reason.]
How could I missed this important post from Louis la Vache with which I am completement d’accord. (Well, not completely. Au Japon, on mange de tofu. En France…)
A new Zogby Poll is out and what’s interesting is it still doesn’t show that much movement in the presidential derby. Giuliani continues to lead the Republicans with McCain a surprisingly distant second (although Romney and F. Thompson are practically neck and neck with McCain…. What does this mean when F. Thompson enters officially?). On the Dem side, no big movement either. Hillary still leads comfortably over Obama with “John of Edwards” (if that sounds like a hair salon, it’s deliberate) luffing in the rear.
What’s significant in this poll is the potential power of Obama in a general election. He is evidently quite popular with swing/independent voters. He defeats the Republican leaders in head-to-head polling. Hillary does not.
Looking down the list, it’s worth noting that Mike Huckabee is creeping up on the Republican side. He is a candidate with practically no money or organization, but is acquitting himself very well in the early debates and TV appearances. He seems to have quite a bit of wit and grace.
Huckabee is now at four percent. Compare this with Ron Paul (still under one percent here and on Gallup) whose supporters continue to bombard Pajamas Media like so many lemmings on steroids. It’s an oldie… but maybe they should have a look at this book.
Not much more than a day after the military appropriations bill finally slogged through Congress without a troop withdrawal deadline, the NYT is locked and loaded with a new inside story on Iraq policy – White House Said to Debate ‘08 Cut in Iraq Troops by 50% “Said?” If that weasel-ish word right in the headline weren’t enough, how about this sentence, which is run as a full paragraph in itself? “The officials declined to be quoted for attribution because they were discussing internal deliberations that they expected to evolve over several months.”
In other words, you’ll never be able to check the truth of this. By the time a decision is made this article will be irrelevant (and long forgotten) anyway – so don’t blame us if it turns out to be hooey. We’re all in the game of propaganda anyway… wink, wink.
It’s a long way from the days of “All the News that’s Fit to Print.” Seems like a distant hieroglyph, doesn’t it? These days the Times is in essence a convenient quasi-scandal sheet for disaffected administration officials, intelligence agents, lobbyists, insert your favorite leaker here, to dump their info/disinfo on an increasingly numb public. At least I know I’m feeling numb. And now it’s getting to be a battle of the scandal sheets as the NYT complains about the WaPo in the race to expose the latest Hillary dish.
And how about those Hillary rumors? In this long election, it looks as if we’re going to be subject to more lurid marital details than a shelf full of Judith Krantz novels. Hillary better win after all this – or she’s going to be mighty angry.
