More Good News for Algore

This Associated Press article reports that the Arctic ice pack is shrinking. That is good news for the global warming crowd, and they need all they can get.

On the other hand, the article laments the passing of the Arctic as follows:

Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route, but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there.

Let's think...the Arctic is perhaps the least hospitable part of the planet and doesn't support much animal life. So...remind me, what are we losing? The other DrC says we will lose the krill and thus the whales and many sea birds which feed on it, perhaps she is right.

Quote of the Day

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, cracking wise about our national legislature:

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

That will definitely suffice as Friday's quote of the day. In reacting to General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, Congress went out of its way to demonstrate the accuracy of Twain's observation.

Why Blue States Are Sad

Here is a great piece of politico-economic analysis from National Review Online that nails an important point: blue states are blue because they aren't doing well and want relief. The author looks at employment growth in states that voted for Democrats in both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections ("blue states," n =18) and states that voted Republican in both elections ("red states," n = 29).

Over the last six years of economic growth, average employment growth for the blue states was 3.3% while that for red states was 7.5%, more than double. Friends, that is a "wow!" Of course it may also be an argument for Marx's notion that all politics is really economics in disguise. The article concludes:

Red states with no income taxes — Nevada (25.7%), Wyoming (15.2%), Florida (13.9%), Alaska (10.2%), Texas (9.1%), South Dakota (8.3%), and Tennessee (5.5%) — have all witnessed above-average job growth.

Labor is colorblind in the political context of Red and Blue states. And as long as the Red states let Americans keep more of what they earn, jobs will unevenly flow their way.

For conservatives, this is some fun analysis, read the whole article. Full disclosure requires I reveal I am a citizen of the red state of Wyoming, mentioned above.

Ambassador Crocker's Grim Message

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker gave a tough assessment of the U.S. position in Iraq, grim but not defeatist. In doing so he won over an editorial writer at the normally skeptical Washington Post.

I watched Crocker give this same assessment to Brit Hume on Fox and later to Jim Lehr on PBS. I concur with the WaPo; it was careful, measured, and thoughtful. I particularly agree with his conclusion:

Our current course is hard, the alternatives are far worse.

I also agree with the conclusion of the Post's editorial:

That's not a very hopeful or inspiring message, and it could be a tough sell in Congress. But it has the advantage of being grounded in rational judgments about what is happening in Iraq.

The whole editorial is worth your time.

Kristol Ruminates on 2008

Bill Kristol writes in Time a remarkably balanced analysis of the 2008 presidential race. He believes this is the most unpredictable race in many years. His five reasons make a lot of sense.

First, there is no incumbent or quasi-incumbent. Second, it is a wartime election. Third, the primary schedule is compressed and confused. Fourth, the Democratic front runners are a woman and an African-American. And fifth, the Republican front runners are a Mormon governor of Massachusetts, a pro-choice New York mayor, and a TV actor who is a former lobbyist.

Kristol gives excellent explanations of the salience of each of these factors. His conclusion is that someone not in the top tier might win the whole game. I don't know if he is right but his arguments are persuasive. I like his conclusion:

Every presidential election, it's been said, breaks one political rule. This one may break them all.

Fred...Not Ready for Prime Time

On the Real Clear Politics website, conservative pundit George Will takes a very dim view of the Fred Thompson candidacy. He points out apparent inconsistencies in Fred's positions on campaign finance. To be fair to Fred, these technicalities are mostly of interest to inside-the-Beltway types like Will and probably have little traction with voters.

More importantly, Will notes that Fred admits not being a regular church-goer while he is trying to land the support of conservative Christian voters. This is not a winning strategy in today's GOP. Will's conclusion drips with sarcasm:

New Coke was announced on April 23, 1985, with the company's president piling on adjectives usually reserved for Lafite Rothschild -- "smoother, rounder yet bolder." Almost 80 days later, the public having sampled it, the company pulled the product from stores. Perhaps Thompson's candidacy will last longer than New Coke did.

I think what Will is tapping into is a sort of "not ready for prime time" feeling about the Fred campaign. I believe I see that too. Fred needs to get his political stuff together immediately or go back to Law and Order.

Perhaps we will have to settle for Rudy or Mitt...or, gasp, eventually Hillary? Our robust country survived four years of Jimmy Carter wussiness; it can probably survive four more years of Clinton sleaze and cronyism. Anybody wanna rent the Lincoln bedroom or buy a pardon?

Quote of the Day

The Note on the ABC News website, quotes Col. Steve Boylan, General Petraeus' spokesman during his Congressional testimony, as follows:

"I'd much rather be back in Iraq. . . . It's much safer."

I don't expect to be able to improve on that as my quote of the day.

Bilingual Belgium Breaking Up

This is an interesting article in the New York Sun, concerning the centrifugal forces pulling bilingual Belgium apart. Roughly sixty percent of the Belgian populace - the Flemish - speak Dutch. About a third of the Belgian populace - the Walloons - speak French. Surprise, surprise, they don't like each other much.

Belgium is in fact an artificial creation of nineteenth century geopolitics. As the article points out, Belgium has had no government since early June. The people of Belgium might well vote to separate with the southern Walloon section joining France and the northern Flemish section joining the Netherlands. This tends to be the fate of multilingual nations.

The United States should do some vicarious learning here; we should watch what is happening to Belgium and resolve not to become a bilingual nation. We should only print government documents in English, should require English for a driver's license or a ballot or a green card, and should make teaching English as a Second Language a major component of public education.

Barone Sees a Silver Lining

Michael Barone reads a poll as insightfully as Tiger Woods reads a green. Here he analyzes a poll which looks at Americans' views of terrorism, what causes it, and the extent to which our being in Iraq makes it better or worse. The findings are refreshingly realistic:

Will the threat from Islamic fundamentalism be significantly reduced once George Bush is no longer president? By a 58 percent to 35 percent margin, Americans say no. Will that threat be significantly reduced once U.S. troops leave Iraq? By a 58 percent to 37 percent margin, they say no.

And Barone gives us his interpretation of these findings:

Democrats are giving voters the impression that they believe everything will be just fine in the world once Bush is back in Crawford and the troops are home from Iraq. The Public Opinion Strategies poll indicates that that is a notion a solid majority of American voters reject. They know that the Sept. 11 attacks were planned long before Bush became president and that our enemies will try to launch new attacks after he is gone.

It certainly sounds like our fellow citizens have grasped the nature of "the Long War" against Islamofascism, even if many in Congress have not.

Salt Water as Fuel?

This Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article reports experiments using salt water as fuel, in the presence of a radio frequency generator developed for other purposes. Actually, what supposedly occurs is that the salt water breaks down, giving off hydrogen which then recombines with the oxygen in a combustion process.

We are right to be skeptical of this claim. We are also correct to wonder if the energy given off by the combustion exceeds that required to drive the RF generator. Remembering the bad science in the "cold fusion" bubble of a few years ago, we should be highly cautious about this claim.

On the other hand, if it is true, and if it means virtually unlimited power from salt water, which covers over half the globe, then this could possibly be the biggest story in our lifetimes. Perhaps OPEC becomes no more important than the copper cartel or DeBeers.

Bottom-Up Partition in Iraq

Dr. Charles Krauthammer, writing in the National Review Online, describes what is happening in Iraq as "bottom-up partition." He notes that the Kurds in the north have been more-or-less independent for 15 years, and that current U.S. policy in Anbar which is to work with local tribes to drive out al Qaeda is creating a Sunni middle. Finally, the south of the country has been overwhelmingly Shia the whole time. The only really disputed territory is Baghdad itself, and it tends to be sorting itself out over time. He concludes:

What’s happening today on the ground is not geographical line-drawing, colonial style. The lines today are being drawn organically by self-identified communities and tribes. Which makes the new arrangement more likely to last.

This is not the best outcome, but it is far better than the savage and dangerous dictatorship we overthrew. And infinitely better than what will follow if we give up in mid-surge and withdraw — and allow the partitioning of Iraq to dissolve into chaos.

We can hope Dr. K is correct.

The Incredible Shrinking Tunnel

Driving across the Nevada emptiness recently, listening again to Jim Dale's excellent CD recording of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the other DrC and I identified a Harry Potter anomaly, that is, a place where reality in one book changes or is different in another volume. The example we put before you today deals with the secret passage which runs from under the Whomping Willow on the Hogwarts grounds to the Shrieking Shack on the edge of Hogsmead.

In book 3, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, that tunnel is tall enough for three adult wizards - Lupin, Pettigrew and Black - to walk in side by side chained together. The ceiling is low enough that a stunned, levitated Snape bumps his head but apparently nobody else does.

In book 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Ron, Hermione, and Harry discover that they now have to crawl to traverse that tunnel. None of the three remarks on this change so we cannot attribute it to a magical shrinking of the tunnel, instead it is implicitly attributed to their growth over the four years from age 13 to age 17. However, it is unlikely that they have grown so tall that they dwarf Lupin and Black.

It appears that a continuity editor missed this anomaly.

Rebuild New Orleans?

In the Big Easy, it isn't easy to understand the rationale for building a large city in a swamp below sea level. This is particularly true if, unlike the Dutch, your country has plenty of land above sea level. Next, when large parts of that city are destroyed by a hurricane and flood (think Katrina), it isn't easy to understand why the ruined parts should be rebuilt in perilous locations.

Much of New Orleans was not destroyed, for example the tourist-magnet French Quarter stayed dry. Now, two years after Katrina, the people of New Orleans whine about the fact that we haven't rushed in to rebuild their flooded neighborhoods. I find myself asking why people whose houses sat below sea level didn't have flood insurance? I ask why the city hasn't taken responsibility for its own levee construction and maintenance, that is, its survival? I wonder why the State of Louisiana hasn't shared this responsibility for its largest, most historic city?

The adjacent state of Mississippi suffered similar damage but has done a much superior job of pulling up its socks and getting damange fixed. Meanwhile the New Orleans mayor who presided over the Katrina debacle managed to get reelected. Unfortunately, New Orleans and Louisiana are notoriously corrupt and inefficient political entities. The widely circulated photo of hundreds of yellow New Orleans school buses half submerged in a flooded parking lot makes that point more clearly than I ever will.

I think it is time for New Orleans, and perhaps Louisiana, to take responsibility for its own fate, for its own outcomes, and stop waiting for more handouts from Washington.

Teachers Send Kids To Private Schools

You know the old saying, "I'm less interested in what you say than in what you do?" Here is a great example of this. Who really knows the state of the public schools better than the teachers who work there every day? Nobody. Where do public school teachers send their kids to school? It turns out substantial numbers of public school teachers send their own children to private schools. This article states its thesis thusly:

Public school teachers in urban areas are far more likely than city residents in general to send their children to private schools, according to a new analysis of 2000 Census data.

The difference in the choices made by public school teachers and the general public were especially striking in America's largest cities, where public schools are often the most troubled. For example, in the New York City area, 32.5 percent of public school teachers send their children to private schools, compared to 22.7 percent of the general public. In Chicago, 38.7 percent of public school teachers, versus 22.6 percent of the general public, send their children to private schools. In Los Angeles, private schools are chosen by 24.5 percent of public school teachers and 15.7 percent of the public.

Maybe No Child Left Behind isn't the best way to improve the public schools. However, with somewhere between a quarter and a third of public school teachers sending their own children to private schools, it is hard to argue that the public schools are doing a fine job.

Do Dems Have An Electable Major Candidate?

Take a look at this very interesting article by an American working and writing in England. Sarah Churchwell makes the point that, with one notable exception, the only Democrats elected President since FDR have all been Southerners. The exception was Kennedy and that was a long time ago.

Churchwell is making an argument for the Party of the Donkey to take a closer look at John Edwards. On the other hand, senior political observer Robert Novak reports that Edwards isn't popular with the folks who run the Democratic Party:

Once their great hope for the future, Edwards now is massively unpopular among party regulars who neither like nor trust him.

On the surface, he seems a perfect candidate: eloquent, smart, handsome and shrewd. Yet, the prospect of an Edwards-led ticket evokes the deepest apprehension inside the party as another flawed presidential nominee.

If Clinton, Obama, and Edwards are the only likely candidates for the Democrats, and Clinton and Obama have the curse of "northernness" while the party doesn't want Edwards, does that leave the Democrats with an electable candidate? It would appear the answer is "no." If true, that is a relief.

WSJ on Wooing Women Voters

Kimberley A. Strassel, writing in the Wall Street Journal's online Opinion Journal, talks about two major ways in which GOP candidates can make a pitch for women's votes. One deals with fighting for flextime rights for employees, a topic unions dominated by men, and their Democratic clients, have opposed. The other, dealing with the tax code's discrimination against married women, is even more interesting:

Most married women are second-earners. That means their income is added to that of their husband's, and thus taxed at his highest marginal rate. So the married woman working as a secretary keeps less of her paycheck than the single woman who does the exact same job. This is the ultimate in "inequality," yet Democrats constantly promote the very tax code that punishes married working women.

Quote of the Day

The following statement is attributed to Bill Buckley, in an Opinion Journal column by Peggy Noonan:

Politics is not an ennobling profession.

I don't believe I've read a truer statement today; it will certainly do as my quote of the day.

Here Comes Fred Thompson

An event we've been waiting for will apparently occur next week, and may have been put in motion today. It is reported that Fred Thompson will announce on September 6. This gives him a good excuse to miss the New Hampshire GOP debate on September 5. You can't blame him for not wanting to share a stage with political irrelevancies like Brownback, Tancredo and Paul.

According to this Associated Press article on Breitbart.com, Fred Thompson will announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President next week. Another source, on the Red State blog, says close supporters and insiders are being notified today by phone. Jonathan Martin, writing on The Politico website, says a campaign source has told him the formal announcement will happen on September 6. Finally, The Trail, a WaPo website, says he may announce on Leno on Wednesday, Sept. 5.

Now we will learn whether the wait has been worth it. Is Fred Thompson this generation's Ronald Reagan or just a tall Southern politician with some acting credits? For the sake of us former idealists who've been mugged by reality, I hope he is a Reagan clone.

Hot News for Al Gore

This article from The Arizona Republic reports that the Phoenix area will hit a record today for the summer with the most days over 110 degrees (n=29). They have already tied the previous record of 28 days.

We try to be fair and report milestones on both sides of this issue. Recently, most milestones have been on the global cooling side of the argument. This event is much-needed good news for the folks concerned about global warming.

U.S. Poverty Rate Drops

Check out this Associated Press article reporting the first significant drop in U.S. poverty rates since 2000. Do you suppose George Bush will get any credit for this? I doubt it; the poor guy cannot get a break, and the fault for that is probably his.

The reporter writing the article says some very politically incorrect things, check this out:

Poverty has not been a big issue in the campaign, and political scientists said they doubted the new numbers would change that.

"The poor are politically mute," said Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. "What rational politician would listen to the poor? They don't vote, they don't write checks, why care?"

Democrat John Edwards has made fighting poverty a centerpiece of his campaign. But, Jacobs noted, "He's struggling to raise money and he's lagging in the polls."

I have wondered why Edwards keeps harping on this issue. He gets less traction with his "two Americas" theme than Al Gore does with his "global warming" screed.