Cool on Warming

There are two poles of thought on climate. The one endorsed by Al Gore, James Hansen, most of the IPCC, and Realclimate.com believe that atmospheric CO2 is the principal determinant in global climate and is the basis for the panic over global warming. There have been posts on RealClimate speculating on how ice ages were started and ended by variations of CO2.

The other side says that CO2 is a minor contributor along with ocean currents, solar variations, excentricities in the Earth's orbit and shifts in the Earth's axis. There are a lot of people somewhere in between these two extremes.

A new model published last week in Nature has a lot of ramifications for the CO2 crowd. This projects that changes in the Gulf Stream will cool the Earth over the next decade or so.

Climate scientists in Germany base the prediction on what they believe is an impending change in the Gulf Stream -- the conveyor belt that transports warm surface water from the tropical Atlantic to the northern Atlantic and returns cold water southwards at depth.

The Gulf Stream will temporarily weaken over the next decade, in line with what has happened regularly in the past, the researchers say.

This will lead to slightly cooler temperatures in the North Atlantic and in North America and Europe, and also help the temperatures in the tropical Pacific to remain stable, they suggest.

On one hand this takes the pressure off of the CO2 crowd. They don't have to explain why temperatures have stabilized the last decade and actually declined the last few months. This model says that this is expected but assures that global warming will eventually start up again (or that it will be there all along but masked by other fluctuations).

On the other hand, this means that Al Gore cannot keep saying that the planet "has a fever" and that all recent weather effects are caused by global warming. It also takes away a lot of the urgency. It is a lot easier to push through major changes in the global economy if you can tie it to current events instead of projected ones. (Hansen proved this 20 years ago when he testified about global warming before Congress during a heat wave in a room where the air conditioning turned off overnight.)

There is a bigger problem for the CO2 crowd. The IPCC report says that this should not happen. Figure SPM4 of the assessment report for policy makers shows observed temperatures along with plots allowing for natural forcings and anthropogenic forcings. It clearly shows that, according to the IPCC models, natural forcings are having minimal effect on the climate.

So now we have a new model that shows natural forcings having a greater effect than anthropogenic ones. This raises questions about the validity of the previous models. Is it possible that the warming that the IPCC attributed to humans was actually natural?

I checked RealClimate to see what they made of this but they have not posted since the article was announced.

Just a regular guy

Barack Obama is running as two different people. On the one hand, there is the exotic, internationalist who understands foreign relations because of his life experience. On the other hand, he and his wife insist that they are just regular people who couldn't possibly be elitists or out of touch with other regular folk. A closer look at Obama's biography shows how pitiful this characterization is. His life to this point has been anything but ordinary.

Obama describes his mother as a Christian woman from Kansas. This is ingenuous and ignores most of her life.

Obama's mother was an early 60s radical and "the original feminist". She married a Muslim from Africa (against both families' wishes) at a time when people in a mixed marriage were shot at. That she married a second Muslim implies that her marriages were as much a political statement as the product of true love. She was also twice-divorced at a time that this was very rare.

Obama's mother pretty much abandoned her native country. She became an anthropologist and spent most of her adult life overseas. Obama had to move in with his grandparents in order to attend high school in America (they were kind enough to pull up stakes and move to Hawaii for him).

Obama admits to using a lot of drugs in high school and college. His college experience was ivy-league.

After college, he took a corporate job but felt very uncomfortable - "like a mole". As soon as possible he quit to go work as a community organizer.

This is a loaded term. Obama claims that he could not have told his fellow corporate workers what it meant, that it was up to him to define it. This is incorrect. The term community organizer has a well-understood meaning. The radical, Saul Alinsky, appropriated the term as a way for socialists to push for change without admitting to being socialists.

One thing that Obama did as a community organizer was to work as a trainer for ACORN. This is exactly the sort of organization that Alinsky described. Among their causes, they have endorsed confiscating vacant houses and giving them to the poor. They have been champions of increasing minimum wage except when applied to their own organization. They have also been involved in voter registration drives, sometimes increasing the voter rolls through election fraud.

Of course, for more than a decade, Obama has been a career politician.

So what part of this gives him insights into regular people's lives?

Obama and MAD

A few days ago Hillary said that her response to a nuclear Iran would be to stress to them that if they bombed Israel then we would obliterate them. She suggested that the way to prevent Iran's neighbors from pursuing nukes would be to sign similar pacts with them.

This is a variation of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). The reason that the US and the USSR kept the peace so long was the knowledge that neither side would survive a conflict. In this version Iran would be constrained from ever using its nuclear arsenal (once it creates one) by the knowledge that we would retaliate for any first strikes that they make.

This is the best way to preserve peace - make war too expensive.

NATO existed largely for this reason and it has been the policy of the US for both parties since the USSR exploded its first atomic bomb.

So why if Obama denouncing it? In a statement he said:

It's not the language we need right now, and I think it's language reflective of George Bush" akin to "bluster and saber rattling.

This comes pretty close to saying that Obama would not retaliate if Israel was attacked. Does he really mean to declare open season on Israel?

Once again, Obama's desire for a "new way" in politics threatens to undermine US policy.

Temper Temper

The Democrats are trying to dig up dirt on McCain but they aren't coming up with much. So far no one has met slipped Mary Mapes a secret memo at a rodeo. The best they can come up with are some instances of his temper. They came up with one involving a near fist-fight in Congress that has been denied by all involved parties.

In the newest one, which took place years ago, McCain's wife ruffled his hair and made a comment about him going bald in public. He replied with a couple of choice profanities that would give a movie an R rating but would be familiar to anyone in the armed services.

The Democrats are so desperate that they insist that this makes McCain ineligible for the presidency. Recently an Obama supported and long-time Democratic operative named Marty Parrish asked McCain about the incident at a town hall meeting. Of course, he didn't bother to volunteer his background.

This amounts to a double standard. The evidence this incident is purely hearsay. I have it on at least as good authority that Hillary got mad enough to throw things at Bill while they were in the White House. Which is worse?

Then there is Bill Clinton and his purple-faced rages. These were legendary. They were also common enough that some were caught on camera. Are Democrats willing to admit that neither Bill Clinton wasn't qualified to be president? Did any of them speak up about his rages, possibly suggesting anger management therapy? Of course not. This is a fake issue that they invented.

This is an issue that could backfire. He's managed to keep it out of the news for the last year but there were rumors that Obama has a bad temper back when he announced his candidacy. Then there was the near-scuffle between Obama and an autograph-seeker just a month ago.

If the Democrats focus too much on McCain's temper and Obama has an outburst then he will look all the worse for it.

Arianna Rails about the Right

In a column on today's Huffington Post, the chief Huffer, Arianna herself, wants to know why the media still pay attention to the right? Her reasoning:

It's a paradox: the political center has clearly shifted; what used to be considered "left wing" positions have now become part of the mainstream, and the views of the Right are now at odds with the majority of the American public -- and with reality.

Yet, despite this seismic shift -- grossly underreported by the media -- the Right remains as powerful as ever when it comes to setting the national agenda and dominating the national debate.

Maybe it's underreported because it hasn't really happened. The Democratic Party has moved to the left but that does not represent the entire country.

Think about it: on Iraq and the exercise of American power, on economic fairness, on corporate responsibility, on the environment and climate change, on the universal right to healthcare, the progressive policies and positions long championed by the left have moved from union halls and MoveOn emails to the sidewalks, backyards, and kitchen tables of Main Street, USA.

This is true - if people are reading the Huffington Post on their kitchen tables.

Healthcare has been an issue since 1990. A version known as Play or Pay was almost implemented under Bush-41. Then came HillaryCare. Had Gore won the 2000 election we would have been presented with AlCare and probably rejected it.

Polls show that most people are concerned about climate change but that they put it very low on their priorities. Right now the price of gas is at or near the top. Imagine how popular climate change will be when people find out how much more they will pay for gas once carbon taxes are applied.

Economic fairness and corporate responsibility sound nice. Translate them into specific policy proposals and see how popular they are.

Nor are there two sides to the proposition that Iraq is our generation's greatest foreign policy disaster. It is. Period. Full stop.

Arianna wants us to run from Iraq as fast as possible. Even if you accept everything that she says about the invasion of Iraq (and I don't), this would dwarf it as a foreign relations disaster. The British pull-out is Basra showed this on a small-scale.

Besides, why wouldn't al Qaeda want McCain to win? He's running to give a third term to George Bush, whose disastrous policies have been the terrorists' best recruitment tool.

This has been an article of faith among the left for years. Fortunately for the world, it isn't true. Winning is the best recruiting tool. We are currently seen as winning and al Qeada is having real trouble recruiting because of it. If fact recent polls show that the world in general has a poor opinion of al Qeada because they stirred up the US. On the other hand, if we pull out then they will be seen to have won and recruitment will soar.

The third factor in the continuing power of the loony Right is the abject, across the board failure of our political leadership to adjust to the fact that the game of "right versus left" has been rendered obsolete by the emergence of a new and vital center. But political movements and political shifts do not fully succeed without bold political leadership -- and if we ever needed that kind of leadership, it is now.

Where is this center? It isn't in Washington. The right still controls the White House and the Supreme Court tilts right. Democrats have a small majority in the House but most of that comes from newly elected moderates - people to the right of Arianna's imagined "new center". The Senate is so closely divided that the Democrats only have a majority because a member they rejected still caucuses with them (Lieberman). None of this signifies a national move to the left any more than the Democratic gains in 1986. Back then the sainted Reagan had similar losses in Congress but the Democratic challenger still lost in 1988. For all of Bush's unfavorable ratings, McCain is in a statistical dead heat with both Obama and Clinton.

The most unintentionally funny part of Arianna's rant is this:

The dynamic between the dithering Democrats and the reality-be-damned Republican Right calls to mind that great line from Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity."

If the worst are defined by passionate intensity then she must not be paying attention to the Huffington Post, MoveOn, Kos, etc. They get really passionate.

This is really just a leftist attack on the press. Neither side is happy with press coverage but their approach is quite different. The right points to specific examples, often the lead stories and the network anchors. The left deals in generalities. After each loss they complain that the press wasn't a strong enough advocate on their behalf. Arianna seems to be demanding that the press stop covering things that she doesn't think are important.

That's the beauty of a free press. If you don't like the way that the cover things then you can start a rival. You can even name it after yourself and invite your friends to contribute. But you can't tell other media what to cover and you can't tell people what to watch.

In a recent interview on 20/20, Arianna implied that when they are in charge, this will change:

STOSSEL: This makes Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly very powerful if they can do this.

HUFFINGTON: They are very powerful, but they will not be as powerful after we finish dealing with them. [LAUGHS]

So much for the First Amendment.

Green Canvassers

A couple of days ago I had a door-to-door canvasser come to my house. Among other things he had a petition to force Ohio electric companies to produce 20% of their electricity through renewable sources. I pointed out that this was going to be expensive. If it was economically feasible then they would already be doing it. His reply was that it will be expensive but not as expensive as having our oil run out.

This shows just how poorly informed these canvassers are. Around half of our nation's power comes from coal. Nuclear and gas are nearly tied for distant second and third places. Fuel Oil is fifth place. Here's how they stack up.

The following amount of electricity, in gigawatt-hours (GWh), was generated from the nation's fuel mix:

• Coal: 2,013,179 GWh
• Nuclear: 781,986 GWh
• Gas: 757,974 GWh
• Hydro: 263,029 GWh
• Fuel Oil: 122,522 GWh
• Biomass: 63,856 GWh
• Other (geothermal, non-wood waste, wind, and solar): 52,142 GWh

My source is here. It only took me a minute to find this with Google.

I did take the opportunity to quietly inform the gentleman that new coal-fired power plants are being blocked by activists and replaced with gas-turbine ones. This will raise the price of natural gas a lot. It is unclear how well these will work out. Currently gas-fired turbines have been used for short-term load balancing, not constant generation. They may not cope. I expect rolling brown-outs within a decade.

I didn't take the time to tell him about the problems with wind. There are several. It comes and goes at its own schedule. You can't turn it up during a heat wave when everyone has the air conditioning on. If it blows too hard then windmills have to be shut down or they break. Worst - the power grid cannot store power. If the wind is gusting then the power plants can only take the low-end of the production in order to produce constant power.

Coal is cheap and plentiful but activists hate it so new coal-fired power plants are being blocked and many power companies aren't even trying to push them through.

But the activists have no idea of any of this.

Hillary Hangs On

Once again Hillary named a primary that she had to win and won it. Current counts with nearly all the precincts counted has her up by 10 points over Obama. That's important. There was a lot of talk the last few weeks that she should pull out if it was close. It also proves that money is not the deciding factor. As in Ohio, Obama out-spent Hillary by a wide margin and still lost.

Of course, the real winner was McCain. Hillary and Obama keep sniping at each other instead of him. Obama is losing his biggest attractions - his freshness and his elevated campaign. By the time the nomination is sewn up voters are going to be sick of him. His promise to run a positive campaign was broken some time ago. Without the novelty and high ideals, he is an inexperienced far-left liberal running against a center-right moderate.

McCain gets to travel around the country and look presidential. Obama is too busy fighting Hillary to go after McCain allowing McCain to take the moral high ground away from Obama.

I've pointed out before that despite conventional wisdom that says that a pro-war Republican cannot win against a generic Democrat, McCain does a lot better against this pair of Democrats. If Obama can't gain a clear victory over Hillary then he is a lot weaker than the pundits give him credit for.

The "Trivial" Debate

Obama supporters have spent the last week complaining about the debate hosted by ABC. Obama himself went on the Colbert Report and put "trivialities" on notice. ABC responded by pointing out that Republicans are likely to bring up the same points that they asked.

At its heart, the Obama camp and, to some extent the Clinton camp, are complaining that the debates should be there to put the candidates in the best possible light. They wanted the debates to focus on policy. Instead the first several questions were "trivial".

I think that ABC was correct. Candidates like to campaign on their platform but there are no guarantees that the platform will be enacted. Bush's platform called for a humble foreign policy and no more nation-building. Clinton promised universal health care, a small tax cut, and gays in the military. Both found that realities changed once they were in office. The signature events of these administrations - war with Iraq and welfare reform - were never mentioned on the campaign trail.

Bill Clinton also provides an object lesson that many candidates will promise anything to get elected then fall back on their core beliefs  and/or political expediency after they are elected.

In Obama's case we have a politician who is still unknown. He is probably quite a bit to the left of the image he projects but we don't know. We are forced to look at things that seem trivial as insights into his character. How does he feel about America? He has refused to wear a flag pin. His minister denounces America. His wife implies that she was never proud of her country. Does that mean that Obama himself dislikes the country he wants to lead? Maybe. The only way to find out is to keep digging.

What about Obama's claim to be a "post-racial" candidate? That one seems a bit easier. He casually mentioned that most white people in America are racist and he stereotyped rural Pennsylvanians as being religious, gun-loving racists. His first book, Dreams from my Father, is all about his quest to create a racial identity. Contrary to his claims, Obama is a racially polarizing figure. Does America want this in a leader? This is not trivial.

What is trivial is to debate minor details of primary campaign platforms. These will be modified after the national convention. If Obama (or Hillary) is elected then he can suggest legislation to Congress but once there it is open to endless amending. Anything passed will be substantially different from the current platforms.

America does not elect a platform. America elects a leader who will have to respond to events that have not yet happened. We elect the man (or Hillary) based on our confidence that he can take that 3 am call, not because of minor differences in health care proposal coverage. We want the best leader, not the highest bidder.

What's the Matter With Pennsylvania?

For the last few years the most influential book among Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives has been Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas?

Here's part of Amazon's abstract:

The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically.

This book was very comforting after the 2004 election when Blue America woke up to find that it was outnumbered. This along with Eric Alterman's Why We're Liberals assures the left that they are not out of touch with America. They just need to work harder to convince regular Americans that they have been fooled into voting for the wrong party. I won't even start with Alterman's book except to suggest that he look at his own history of liberals and try to match that to the current crop.

Frank's influence can be seen all over the place. Here's something that Arianna Huffington just wrote today:

It has been an article of faith in the Democratic Party over the last twenty years that when small town, working class whites vote for Republicans they're voting against their economic self-interest. And why do they do that? Because every four years the Republican Party comes into those small towns and, to distract folks from the worsening economic situation, trots out a bunch of divisive, hot button social issues: "Let's not talk about why you don't have a job, can't afford health care, or can't send your kids to college; let's talk about gay marriage, school prayer, illegal immigration, and flag burning amendments." And Hillary is following the blueprint.

In trying to defuse "Bittergate" Obama made similar statements. In fact, this is what he was trying to say in his original speech but he mangled it beyond recognition. If you assume that he was trying to say that the factory jobs left 25 years ago and people have stopped believing economic promises and now vote on the basis of religion, guns, etc. then his speech doesn't sound so outragious.

So should Obama get a pass? No. He's had three chances at explaining himself and it still has not come out right. He may have internalized Frank's message but he added in some of his own beliefs. He's not only explaining why Pennsylvanians vote wrong, he is explaining why they believe the wrong things.

Frank has problems of his own. The whole assumption of the book is that a) People would vote on economic matters if they only believed that the candidates would follow through, and b) Republicans are evil.

Frank is taking an almost Marxist class-based approach to politics. Class identity and economics should be the main determination in party loyalty. The Democrats are the party of the working-class and the Republicans are the party of the factory-owners. The Democrats will bring prosperity to the workers by taking their rightful share from the rich. You can hear that thinking in most of Obama's speeches. He talks about "the rich" a lot.

One cognitive dissonance is that the Republicans also sincerely believe that they are the party of prosperity. They believe (and can point to specific examples) that excessive government regulation and redistribution of wealth costs jobs and that Democrats are slaves to many anti-industry special-interest groups. Frank and his followers do not recognize any of this. They confuse being pro-union with being pro-worker. They don't even notice that shutting down eastern coal mines over exaggerated dangers from sulfur dioxide or shutting down logging because of spotted owls might hurt the working-class that they claim to represent.

They also fail to notice that other things matter to people besides economics. Democrats are the party of gun control. Many of them are defending DC's strict gun laws while trying to convince hunters that they are safe. Public expressions of Christianity, especially Christmas, have been all but outlawed by Democrats and groups associated with them. Religious people notice these things.

Obama and Frank offer a simple bargain - follow me and I'll take care of your material needs but you will have to change everything that you believe in. To quote his wife:

Barack Obama is going to demand that you shed your cynicism, that you put down your divisions, that you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones, that you push yourself to be better and that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved and uninformed.

How ungrateful are those who do not accept the rule of Doctor Doom! Do I not give them shelter--provide them food? And all I ask is total, blind obedience!

Update - I'm embarrassed to admit that I had to see someone else point this out but the group of poor, bitter Pennsylvanians that Obama was talking about vote Democratic. Pennsylvania is a blue state and the poorer sections are some of the bluest. Maybe they are voting against their best interests, after all.

Guns and Politics

Obama's "bitter" comments where he equated gun ownership and religion with racism, xenophobia, and being anti-trade will cost him. He had been courting the religious vote and this will not help his case with them. The gun lobby is another group that should not be angered. Obama has forgotten the lessons of the Clinton years.

Gun control was a big part of the early Clinton years. Some centerpiece legislation included a three-day waiting period for gun ownership (which was replaced with instant background checks). The Clinton administration also tried to severely reduce the number of gun dealers and gun shows. Clinton's Attorney General, Janet Reno, was seen as being very hostile to gun ownership. During his administration, Bill made several comments that proved that gun control was something that he believed in, not a position he adopted out of expediency.

This cost the Democrats. In 1994 the Republicans gained control of Congress for the first time in a generation. The two big issues that helped the Republicans were Clinton's gas tax increase and his attempts at gun control. The NRA doubled its membership and raised significant lobbying funds during this period as gun owners looked for protection.

The gun legislation that did pass made it through the Senate on a 50-50 vote with Al Gore casting the deciding vote. The Clinton administration praised him at the time as their "magic bullet" for getting legislation passed. Gore's anti-gun votes ended up costing him the presidency.

In 2000, Gore would have won the election if he had won one more state - any state. One state that he lost was his home state of Tennessee. Exit polls showed that the number of single-issue pro gun voters was greater than Bush's victory margin. If gun owners hadn't voted against Gore then he probably would have won Tennessee and the presidency.

This was not lost on the Democrats in 2004. Gun control was officially given a low priority in the party platform. Howard Dean ran as a pro-gun Democrat. John Kerry made a show of going duck hunting. This didn't actually help him much since the tags were still on his brand-new hunting outfit and he was the only member of his group to return without a duck. Kerry was every bit as good at hunting as Obama is at bowling. Regardless, Kerry tried to assure voters that gun control was off the table (at least for hunters).

Hillary learned this lesson. Over the weekend she ran from Bill's record on gun-control by telling about her grandfather in Pennsylvania teaching her to shoot when she was young. Whatever her private views on gun control and gun ownership (and they are probably close to Bill's views) you will not catch her denigrating gun owners.

This will cost Obama. All that Republicans need to do to appeal to gun owners is remind them that Obama thinks that they are bitter racists.

What Obama Meant, and Why His Appologies Aren't Working

It started here where Obama gave a speech to a small, private fund-raiser in California. This was attended by a Huffington Poster who had some reservations about his tone. It quickly got picked up by both the Clinton and the McCain campaigns.

What he said:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Clinton picked up on the bitter part and her campaign handed out "I'm not bitter" stickers in North Carolina.

Obama's first reaction was to insist that rural Americans are bitter and that Clinton and McCain are out of touch if they think otherwise. But that doesn't address the rest of what he said. To paraphrase:

People in a lot of these small towns lke guns and religion too much. They don't like people who aren't like them or are immigrants and they don't like world trade. But it isn't their fault that they are like this. The jobs went away 25 years ago and never came back. This made them what they are - bitter. But if we can bring back the jobs then they will get over their bitterness and be like the rest of us.

I think I am being fair in this restatement. He said that they are bitter then he gave a list of presumably undesirable traits that he ascribes to her bitterness.

At least he didn't throw in a comment about "typical white people."

I don't doubt that Obama has heard from some people who are angry about the lack of jobs Some of them probably qualify as bitter. But this doesn't matter. He applies a stereotype to rural (white?) people then offers bitterness as an excuse for their undesirable traits.

How many of the bitter Pennsylvanians Obama talked with would be willing to give up guns and religion in exchange for jobs?

And the worst thing is that he still doesn't seem to understand what he said. He's still apologizing for the "bitter" part without understanding how offensive the rest of it was.

The Terrorist Attack that Wasn't Was a Threat After All

In August of 2006, British authorities announced that they had stopped a terrorist plot designed to blow up multiple airplanes flying between London and North America. This is the reason that you can only carry tiny amounts of liquids on board.

The reaction from the left was instructive. They were sure that the plot either did not exist or would ever have worked. The first reaction was that the announcement of the plot was timed to distract the world from the most significant democratic event since the signing of the Declaration of Independence*. When it was pointed out that the announcement came from Tony Blair's government, not George Bush's they went on to condemn Blair for doing Bush's handiwork.

The most common reaction was that the British had picked up on some people who were talking big but whose plan could never have actually worked.

The terrorists planned on smuggling explosives on board in pieces and assembling the bomb on the airplane. The left picked up on that and speculated that the terrorists would be using a binary explosive. They went on to list the difficulties of mixing the most common binary in a rest room. This was widely picked up and used as evidence that there was never any real threat. The politicians were just using a half-formed plot to scare people into giving up their civil liberties.

Several plots have been discovered since 9/11 and the left has reacted the same way over each of them. They insisted that the plotters were never a threat and the government was simply using scapegoats to scare the populous.

The trial of the British terrorists started recently and a funny thing is emerging - they were a serious threat. At least one of them had already filmed his "martyr" video.

More important, it turns out that the left got things all wrong about the explosives. The terrorists were going to use a hypodermic needle to empty drink containers then inject a fairly stable hydrogen peroxide-based explosive into the container. The hole would be sealed with super glue. They had already done experiments on how much coloring to use to make the explosive look like the original contents. They figured that security would never question a sealed container. They also had detonators hidden in C cell batteries.

They planned on attaching the detonators to the explosives in the restrooms.

I looked up the explosives they were dealing with. I'm not going to provide the link but I found someone telling how to create an unstable version of the same explosive. This was strained through coffee filters and left to dry. The site included a picture of the hole that one of the coffee filters blew in the bench it was drying on after it was left in the sun.

So the threat was real.

This reaction is related to Bush Derangement Syndrome. The left hates President Bush so much that they need to believe that everything he does is a lie. The extreme cases of this believe that the World Trade Center was brought down by explosives planted internally. Even the milder cases believe that the only reason that anyone int he world hates us is our president and that we will be universally loved once we replace Bush with an internationalist president.

In the meantime, there are people who want to kill us and our allies.


* You can be forgiven if you don't remember the momentous event. It was the defeat of Joe Lieberman by Ned Lamont in the Democratic primaries. Lieberman ran as an independent and retained his seat.

Hillary and the Emergency Room

I complained a couple of days ago about Hillary telling a story that may not be true. I'd like to examine this in more detail. First, here's the story as it was told to her by Sheriff's Deputy Bryan Holman.

"I'd like to tell you a story of a young woman I know that didn't have health insurance. She worked at a little pizza place around here, and she was pregnant and worked, of course, for minimum wage. She went to the hospital, and the hospital told her that she needed a $100 up front, which she didn't have."

He continued, "Of course, didn't make a lot of money. So they had billed her a couple times for it. And after getting pregnant she went back, like I say, went back again. They told her she needed $100, which she didn't have. And so they refused to see her because of-- she had a bill and stuff from being there before. So she went to another local hospital, and they'd seen her and stopped her labor and told her to come back in two days. Well, before she got back within those two days, her baby died."

Hillary grimaced.

"So they life-flighted her to a hospital in Columbus, and within 15 days, she died," Holman added. "And they come to find out that they'd misdiagnosed what the problem was. And it was a smaller hospital and didn't have the needs to take care of what she needed at that time. But-- her family and them think that if she'd had good insurance and stuff and was taken care of at the first hospital, of course, that had the medical needs to take care of her, that her and her baby would, you know, of course, they'd still be here. That's just, you know, I think that the health insurance thing really needs to be addressed and for people, you know, who work for minimum wage and different things."

Without verify any of the details, Hillary started repeating this story at campaign stops. Recently a hospital complained that the facts were wrong. The woman did have insurance and was treated. Hillary supporters have pointed out that the story mentions three hospitals. The first one remains un-named and is the one that turned the woman away. It was the second hospital that complained. I don't think that this matters.

The first point is that Hillary was using this story to promote some form of nationalized health care but she heard the story second-hand and repeated it without verifying any details. It does not matter if any of the story was true or not. What matters is that she did not know. That's no way to justify legislation that will affect the entire country.

The second point is that there are problems with the story. According to the deputy the woman was turned away from a hospital because she couldn't pay $100. Federal law says that emergency rooms cannot turn people away because of inability to pay. If a hospital did turn her away it would have been for a standard prenatal checkup. There is nothing in the story to show that a prenatal checkup would have made a difference.

The third point is that one of the hospitals involved says that she did have insurance.

Finally there is the expected end result. The second hospital mis-diagnosed the problems. Deputy Holman is sure that the first hospital would have provided a proper diagnosis and he seems to think that, if we provided insurance to everyone, then hospitals would be better equipped or that people could skip the smaller hospitals and go straight to the betters ones. That's not how nationalized health care has worked in other countries. If you provide health care free of charge then the demand overwhelms the supply. The government looks for ways to cut costs and hospitals end up under-equipped and under-staffed.

But none of this matters to Hillary. She sees a chance to use a sad story to get into the White House.

Who Would Tell Us - II

A couple of weeks ago I asked who would tell us if the climate models are wrong? Among my worries is that anyone in the media who tried to suggest such a thing would be silenced. Here is an example of this happening. Last week the BBC ran an article about the current cooling phase associated with a La Nina event. They were challenged on the wording of the headline and one paragraph because it suggested that skeptics might have a valid point. After a few email exchanges the BBC changed the offending article. Here is a detailed account of the exchange and here is self-congratulatory post by the person responsible.

One interesting thing in the Register article in my first link, they included a graph of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This shows a preponderance of cool events through the mid-1970s followed by a preponderance of warm events. This can be interpreted two different ways - 1) Global warming caused the balance of events to shift to warming, or 2) a natural cycle of ENSO warmed the atmosphere causing most of the warm years since the 1980s independant of the influence of CO2.

I have seen #2 discussed before but not in the major media. This just wouldn't be allowed.

What counts as foreign policy experience

According to Huffington blogger Mayhill Fowler, Obama recently claimed that he had superior foreign policy experience to Hillary or McCain.

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty countries'--I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then--you go.

"You do that in eighty countries--you don't know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa--knowing the leaders is not important--what I know is the people. . . .

"I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college--I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . .

"Nobody is entirely prepared for being Commander-in-Chief. The question is when the 3 AM phone call comes do you have somebody who has the judgment, the temperament to ask the right questions, to weigh the costs and benefits of military action, who insists on good intelligence, who is not going to be swayed by the short-term politics. By most criteria, I've passed those tests and my two opponents have not."

So, what should we make of this?

First off, it strikes me as arrogant, but a lot of what Obama does strikes me that way. Also he should have kept quiet about knowing the difference between Sunni and Shia - it just reminds people that he was raised as a Muslim when he lived in Indonesia.

Speaking of Indonesia, yes he lived there but he was a young child at the time. From the excerpts I have read of Dreams From My Father, his visit to Africa was all about meeting family, not about finding out how governments are run.

So where does that leave his assertion that it is more important to know people than to know foreign affairs? I have some secondhand personal experience with this. My sister-in-law recently lived in China for three years. You might think that this gave her deep insights into US/Chinese relations and knowledge about some of the repression practiced by the Chinese government. You would be wrong. She has great admiration for the Chinese people and that blinds her to the actions of the Chinese government. She has trouble separating the two.

Does Obama have this problem? Maybe. He certainly seems to think that he knows everything there is to know about foreign relations.
 
Finally, Obama's experience gives him insight into northern Africa and the Indian Ocean. That still leaves a lot of the world that he does not have a personal relationship with including the rest of Asia, sub-Sahara Africa, Europe, South America, and out North American neighbors (who he sometimes says that he no longer wants to trade with).

He might have gained some experience in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He even chairs a sub-committee but he hasn't bothered to hold any meetings. The same is true for immigration reform where he was theoretically part of the group but didn't actually show up for 7 am meetings.

Do we need a president who feels that his childhood experiences make him an expert on foreign affairs?

The Truthiness Campaign

Hillary has been telling the story of an Ohio woman who was pregnant and had complications. There were no hospitals in her county and the hospital that the woman went to demanded $100 up front before they would see her since she was not insured. Originally Hillary simply said that someone told her this story but she didn't know any specifics. Later she came up with the name of the woman and the hospital.

Then the hospital objected. The woman in question was insured and was admitted. The Clinton campaign explained that they try to vet Hillary's stories but medical questions are confidential by federal law so they could not verify the details of the story. So they let Hillary go ahead and tell a story that may or may not be true because it was such a good story. Does anyone see a problem here?

Not that Obama is a font of font of veracity. While he was telling Ohio factory worker that he was against NAFTA one of his advisers was telling the Canadian government that this was just campaign talk, not his real views.

Then there is his position on gun control. He says that he will not take peoples' guns away, or at least not hunting weapons. A recent comment about the gun control case before the Supreme Court led conservatives to look at Obama's record on gun control. This is at odds with some of his current statements.

Then there's Obama's Iraq strategy. Last week he was asked how any troops he would leave in Iraq. He stammered something about enough to protect the embassy. But some of his campaign aides are talking about a 60,000 strong strike force which is pretty close to what McCain and Clinton have proposed.

Clearly Clinton and Obama will say anything that will get them elected. The trouble is that we don't know what to believe.

Hating McCain

With the general election campaign in sight, the left feels an obligation to start hating McCain. I'm not sure their hearts are in it, though. After hating Bush so long, is there room in their hearts to hate anyone else as much or as deeply?

Then there is the distraction of Hillary (or Obama depending on your sympathies). Can the left hate McCain and Hillary while continuing to hate Bush?

They are trying but it's not McCain that they hate, it's being out of power for another 4-8 years. Look at their attacks. The primary one, 100 years of war, is based on a gross misrepresentation (a polite term for "outright lie"). The other ones - not knowing enough about the economy and being an opportunist - are pretty weak since they apply to Obama and Clinton at least as well as to McCain.

All they are really left with is McCain=Bush. Here's an example from Arianna herself.

Here's John McCain circa 2000:

"I'd institute a policy that I call 'rogue state rollback'...I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments."

Now over seventy percent of Americans believe that "rogue state rollback" has not worked out that well.

Notice how she's hoping that no one will notice the difference between arming rebels and invading.

The other thing that the let is doing is resorting to name-calling. ex. McSell-Out and McNasty.

This is pretty weak stuff. It's hard to imagine Democrats mobilizing the troops to beat McCain when this is the best they can muster.

UPDATE: Anti-McCain groups lag in fundraising.

Democratic talk of an early, hard-hitting campaign to "define" and tar Arizona Sen. John McCain appears to have fizzled for lack of money, leading to a quiet round of finger-pointing among Democratic operatives and donors as McCain assembles a campaign and a public image relatively unmolested.

See? They just can't muster up much hate for McCain.

Bad News or Good News?

Dylan Loewe at the Huffington Post takes a look at a recent poll which shows McCain within a statistical dead heat with Obama. He sees this as good news for Democrats. To his way of thinking, McCain can only go down. His reasoning is that Hillary is attacking Obama while McCain has nearly dropped out of the news and that the voters have not yet begun to associate McCain with Bush's policies and war (meaning that the Democrats haven't started tarring him yet).

While this is true it is not the entire picture. Assuming that Obama gets the nomination, he is still fairly untested. The primary race has been between two progressives playing to the party's left wing. Neither is questioning the other's policies except to say that they are not progressive enough. The assumption is that the country has moved to the left but this assumption has not been tested. The Democrats won the 2006 election by running moderate candidates and capitalizing on resentment against the war, Republican ethical misconduct, and a general wearying of Bush. No one really knows if the country will back a candidate who wants to make it illegal to be uninsured. Obama will have to move to the center to be elected but it is unknown if he can do this and maintain his credibility.

More important, freshness is important in polls taken this early. McCain has been around for decades. This is his second run at the presidency. His name has been in the news as a Senator for years. In contrast, Obama is still shiny and fresh. He may be fleshing out his platitudes but most voters haven't heard the specifics. All they know is that he is the candidate of hope and change.

It is fairly common for a fresh candidate to do well in the Spring polls only to crash and burn by November. Voters are attracted to a candidate who seems to represent everything they want. This will change as the campaign wears on. Obama will have to define his platform and Republicans will challenge him on it. He will have to make specific proposals for Iraq and stick with them. If he proposes a quick pull-out then McCain will accuse him of cowardice. Voters will become learn all about Obama's college years when he would only associate with Marxists and radical feminists and Reverend Wright's quotes will be played constantly.

Once Hillary is out of the race Obama will be able to heal some of the damage but it remains to be seen how well he can do this. How much of her support is actually Anyone But Obama?

If McCain is lucky (and he's had quite a bit of luck already) then he will benefit from his age the same way that Reagan did. When Carter tried running a negative campaign against Reagan it hurt Carter. It came across as kicking someone's grandfather. McCain's age and service for the country may protect him from some of the more outrageous attacks.

So, my prediction is that McCain's numbers may sink over the next few months but that he will surge by or before the Republican convention. Obama will surge during the convention when he gives a blockbuster of a speach but his numbers will sink constantly starting as soon as the convention ends.

Circular Reasoning

What to do about Michigan and Florida? This is a big dilemma for the Democrats. Howard Dean is all for seating the delegates but not until the candidate has been selected. Hillary is still pushing a second vote. Obama has suggested that the delegates be split evenly. Someone else proposed giving Hillary all of her Michigan delegates and Obama the remaining ones.

Most of these solutions will anger the voters from these states. Other states were allowed to move up their primaries and only lost half their delegates. The DNC is practicing preferential treatment. This is understandable, they are Democrats and that's what Democrats do. Still, the experience can be galling for those left behind. Neither of these states voted so solidly that they can afford to alienate voters.

Many, especially among the Obama supporters, are quite happy to leave things the way that they are. After all, these states brought it on themselves by moving their primaries even thought they are not among the favored states that are allowed to vote early.

Here is a bit of circular reasoning in favor of leaving things as they are.

Myth: If they don't get seated until the convention but a nominee is selected before these poor people get counted then these states are disenfranchised.

There are two ways to debunk this myth: semantically and practically. The first is based on the word "disenfranchised:" these people have not been deprived of their right to vote. Through the actions of their states, their votes don't impact the outcome. Now, you may say that that is specious semantics (Myth: I do say that!) but practically speaking, this is the usual effect of the nominating process, anyway.

This in effect says that these states have a choice between letting other states select the nominee before Florida and Michigan get to vote or losing their vote. I understand their frustration. Here in Ohio we vote so late that the nominee has normally been chosen a long time before our vote. While Ohio got to keep Hillary in the contest, McCain was already a forgone conclusion.

The powers that be have allowed certain states to select our elected candidates. They aren't even representative states. The Republicans at least allowed a trade-off - vote early and lose half your delegates. If the Democrats had done the same thing then Hillary would still have likely carried those states but Obama would still be ahead and unsullied.

Obama the Regular Guy

In order to prove that he is a regular guy, Barack Obama went bowling yesterday in Pennsylvania. He ended up proving that he is as comfortable in a bowling alley as Dukakis was in a tank. Obama bowled a 37.

Politicians feel the need to prove that they are regular people. It worked for Bush who most Americans would like to share a beer with. It didn't work for John Kerry who kept going off message by doing things like this.

What Obama proved is that he is a terrible bowler. He claimed that he last bowled back during the Carter administration but he must have done it on a dare, even back then.

This will not hurt him but I doubt that it will help him either. Kerry learned that when he went hunting.

A Civil War?

No, not in Iraq. I'm talking about the fight between Hillary and Obama supporters and how the superdelegates should vote.

On one side we have Obama supporters who say that the superdelegates should be powerless. Their only function is to ratify the candidate who is ahead in committed delegates and/or votes. Recently House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined this camp. In addition to this logic, Obama's supporters are passionate and are promising a level of violence worse than Chicago in 1968 if their man isn't on the ballot.

On the other side are the Hillary supporters. They point out that she has done better in large states which Democrats have to win. Many of Obama's wins have been in states that almost always go Republican. They point out that the whole point of having superdelegates is to choose the most electable candidate when no single candidate gets a majority of committed delegates. She was recently joined by a group of major donors who suggested that they would withhold cash from the congressional race if Pelosi continues to tell the superdelegates how to vote.

Then there are polls showing that a significant percentage of each candidate's supporters will vote for McCain if their candidate doesn't lead the ticket.

I'm glad I'm not a superdelegate. The pressure on them has to be fierce and half of the party is going to hate them no matter how they vote.

Some other considerations:

News reports make it seem like Obama has a huge lead over Hillary in committed delegates. It is around 150 which is only a 6% difference.

Obama may be damaged goods. First, he can't shake Reverend Wright quotes. Then there is the matter of equating Wright and the grandmother who raised him. He compounded this by excusing her as a "typical white person" who has racism "breed into them in this country." This seems to disqualify him as the first post-racial candidate. I'm not sure that the country is ready for a candidate who stereotypes whites as racists. The controversy hasn't hurt him much so far. Most of the country hasn't heard these quotes - yet.

Democrats in Michigan and Florida are upset that their votes were disqualified. The whole idea that only a handful of select states can vote before Super Tuesday is annoying to the rest of the country. The Republicans had a good compromise - let the states vote early but penalize them by reducing their delegates in half. The Democrats did not compromise leaving millions of Democrats in swing states upset with the party. Rumor is that the Obama campaign kept them from having a do-over election. Regardless, it is clear that many Democrats wanted to avoid a do-over in order to help Obama. The Democrats are certain to lose a lot of votes in these states. If the election hinges on Florida and McCain wins then the party can blame Howard Dean.

A lot more Hillary supporters say that they will vote for McCain than Obama supporters if the other candidate is on the ballot. I'd like to know why. Are they turned off by the cult of personality? Did they hear about the Reverend Wright? Are they reluctant to vote for a black man (I know, Democrats are supposed to be above that sort of thing but let's get real).

In the meantime, Democrats are sharpening their knives for McCain. Their main attacks are going to be:

A third term for the Bush/McCain administration. Obama loves this line. The Democrats will blame everything they can on Bush then insist that there is no difference between Bush and McCain. Both Obama and Hillary are pushing for more government scrutiny into everything and attacking Bush/McCain for not already doing the same thing.

He is for 100 years of war. This is a gross misrepresentation of what he said. He said that he was in favor of 100 years of occupation as long as the troops were safe and compared it to Japan and Germany.

He is ignorant of economics. Mitt Romney, a successful businessman, could use this line. Two ivy-league lawyers are going to have trouble backing it up.

He is not a moderate maverick, he is an ultra conservative flip-flopper. The feeling is that it worked on Kerry so it will work on McCain. The Bush tax cuts are being mentioned. McCain voted against them but would continue them. What is not mentioned is that he was against them because he wanted accompanying budget cuts to pay for them. He is against eliminating the cuts because, after this amount of time it amounts to a tax hike which he is against. As for painting McCain as a conservative, that will be tough when Rush and Ann Coulter are saying that he is too moderate.

In the meantime, McCain has the luxury of being able to travel around the world and look presidential while Obama and Hillary are stuck talking about what relationship they would have with a minister.

Who would tell you if the models are wrong?

At its heart, global warming theory is based on computer models that show that raising the CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the Earth's temperature. There has been attempts to reconstruct temperatures prior to modern records but these are based on computer models also. So, are the models right? Consider this:

World temperatures showed warming from the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century but, according to the same monitors used by the IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change) world temperature peaked in 1998 and has been fairly stable since then (except for the last few months when it lost a good deal of the previous century's warming). Global warming experts have an explanation for this. The temperature is still rising. The oceans are absorbing the heat but this will end soon when the oceans disgorge all of that stored heat and the atmosphere heats rapidly. That's what the models say but actual measurements fail to find any warming.

Then there is the effect of increased water vapor in the atmosphere. The models say that this water vapor will absorb even more heat than CO2 leading to enhanced global warming. This is where the more alarming estimates of warming come from. According to NASA satellites, this prediction is also wrong. More water vapor leads to more clouds which reflect heat away from the Earth instead of trapping it. This means that water vapor is part of a negative feedback instead of a positive one. The climate tends to regulate itself. In fact this article says that the head of the IPCC has accepted this fact.

So, who will tell the rest of the world?

Think about it. We are already turning corn into fuel in the name of sustainable energy. This has caused record food prices. Planned power plants are being stopped or switched to less reliable gas turbines. In the near future we will experience power shortages and increased gas prices because of these decisions. Europe is considering sanctions against the US and China unless we cripple our manufacturing capabilities. Cars will soon become more expensive as new technologies are added to improve fuel economy. Britain has proposed replacing over half of its housing with more energy efficient buildings. The list goes on and gets far more expensive in the future.

If there is some doubt about the validity of the global warming computer models, shouldn't someone say something? And who would be believed?

Al Gore won't say anything. He considered it settled science since he wrote Earth in the Balance nearly 20 years ago. Warning people about global warming has made him hundreds of millions and won him a Nobel Peace Prize.

We aren't likely to hear much from the IPCC either for several reasons. They were created specifically to prove that global warming exists. It would take a lot to convince them. Most of the IPCC members aren't even scientists specializing in global warming. They cover a wide spectrum of fields. Most of them are there to shed light on how global warming will affect their specialty. They never deal with the computer models so they would be unaware of problems in them. Also, they are under a great deal of political pressure to emphasize unity on global warming and to stress the potential damage. Beyond all of that, think of the repercussions if they reversed themselves. Governments have been setting policy based on their predictions.

It is possible that some members of the IPCC could realize the truth and make statements on their own. The track record of previous IPCC members who have gone this route is not encouraging. Through his organization, The Climate Project, Al Gore has been training people to denounce anyone who questions global warming. If you are labeled a denier then some link will be found between you and "big carbon". As an example, the left-libertarian web site Punch was labeled as being in the pocket of the oil companies. After some effort they tracked down the allegation. It seems that a few years before they had jointly sponsored a conference with the right-libertarian web site TechCentralStation (now TCSDaily) and their founder had received a grant from an oil company. With links as tenuous as this, anyone can be denounced as an oil company mouthpiece.

This is exactly what happened a few weeks ago when a group of global warming skeptics held a convention. Rather than cover the content of the papers presented, most press concentrated on their funding.

Even if a number of unimpeachable scientists do gather together and announce that global warming is not happening, the press is not likely to cover it. Polls show that reporters feel that they have to be advocates for the environment. Science reporters seldom understand what they are writing about. They go to sources they trust for advice. In the case of global warming, these sources are advocates trained by Gore's people.

Then there are politicians. Some believe in global warming. Others feel that anytime there is a problem, they have to be seen doing something to solve it. In some cases, they have to be seen solving a problem before it can be proved that the problem does not exists. Nearly 20 years ago Congress rushed legislation into effect to deal with acid rain. They had to hurry because a major report that they had commissioned showed that the threat of acid rain was overstated and very little actual harm was coming from it. Rather than wait for a report that suggested that they do nothing, they implemented restrictions against high-sulfur coal among other things.

Given that many voters will believe that global warming is a problem that has to be solved, no matter who says otherwise, politicians will feel obligated to act, regardless.

So how do we stop this runaway train?

Hillary and Bosnia

The press has dedicated itself to the election of Barack Obama. How else to explain the story carried by all of the wire services and news reports about her trip to Bosnia. In examining events like this it is important to remember the Vorlon* proverb: Truth is a three-edged sword. In other words there is your version of the truth, my version, and what actually happened.

What Hillary said was that they were under sniper fire when she accompanied a good will tour to Bosnia. They had to skip the welcoming ceremonies and hurry from the plane to armored vehicles.

The press quoted actor Sinbad as saying that he didn't remember any of that and they found file footage of a young girl presenting something to Hillary.

What actually happened - there were threats of snipers so the plane had to come it on a steep approach to present less of a target. The official welcoming was canceled but an unofficial welcoming with the young girl happened.

So Hillary exaggerated the threat. Al Gore did the same thing in 2000 when he claimed that he had been under fire in Viet Nam. The press presented something that was not an official welcoming as something different and ignored the reports of possible snipers, giving the impression that Hillary told a bare-face lie instead of an exaggeration.

* Vorlons were ancient aliens in the TV series Babylon 5.

UPDATE: Hot Air points out that Obama has a few problems with the truth, also. He claimed that his father came to America as a result of the Selma marches but he was born before the marches happened.

Obama's grandmother

Common wisdom is that Fred and Rudy lost the nomination because they didn't want it enough, they weren't willing to do whatever it takes to be elected president. Barack Obama proved that he is willing to do just about anything including through his own grandmother off the train.

In his speech on racism he mentioned Reverend Wright then told about his grandmother's fear of black men and use of racial epithets. He then said that he could not disown his pastor and spiritual adviser any more than he could his grandmother.

This is a clever bit of verbal slight-of-hand. He brought up both and dismissed them both in the same breath. He did it so quickly that most people will not notice how dissimilar the two instances are.

Reverend Wright consistently gave anti-American speeches to an approving audience of thousands. He perpetuated the idea that blacks are the continuing target of multiple conspiracies by whites. And this was from the man that these thousands look to as their spiritual head.

In contrast, Obama's grandmother confided to him that she fears black men and sometimes used language normally reserved for black comedians.

Exactly how are these similar?

I hope that he at least called ahead of time to warn his grandmother that he was going to tell the world that she is a vile racist.

I have several objections to Obama's use of his grandmother in this fashion. I will grant that both offer spiritual guidance of some sort but that is where the similarity ends. Obama's grandmother was one of the people who raised him. Apparently and prejudice that she has did not interfere with her love for him or his love for her. A lot of people have secret, unreasoning fears that do not conform with what their rational mind tells them and many people continue to use words after they have fallen out of favor.

Contrast that with the Reverend Wright who built up a failing congregation by preaching black power and white hate.

Plus, of course, Obama did nto choose his grandmother but he did choose him minister. When someone I respect says something I strongly disagree with I feel a little sick inside. If it continues then I stop respecting that person and possibly stop associating with him. Obama did not do this. He continued to sit in the pew as his minister damned the country Obama wants to lead.

Why didn't he leave? Because his grandmother used racial epithets? Come on.

There are two possibilities. Thomas Sowell pointed out that many blacks who grew up without the ghetto experience try to overcompensate and become "blacker than thou." Dick Morris speculated that Obama needed local black credentials in order to make it in Chicago politics. It would be nice to know which represents the real Obama.

A Transcendent Candidate?

The hardest question for someone from an identifiable minority running for president of the United States is "Will you represent your minority group first or will you represent the people as a whole, even to the detriment of your minority group?"

JFK and Romney had to answer this because of their religion. Lieberman had to assure the country that he would put the US ahead of Israel. The question is slightly different for someone who is not from a minority group. In that case the question is "Are you a racist?"

The question is not always asked outright. Sometimes it is assumed by the candidate's history. Hillary has been jettisoning campaign workers as an indirect answer for the racism question.

When Jesse Jackson was asked this question it was phrased as "Are you a black man who happens to be American or an American who happens to be black?" His answer was that he was a black man first which essentially disqualified him from the presidency.

Barack Obama has not had to answer this question until now. His life's narrative was considered answer enough. He is the son of a white American woman and a black African man. He was partly raised by a second back man in a 3rd world country and partly by his mother and grandparents. The implication is that he is as much a part of white culture as black culture and would be an American first. Ironically this impression was reinforced by his name.

Then came some revelations. The first one was that his wife doesn't think much of America. Obama tried to explain this away, saying that she is more proud than ever.

But the big one is his minister, the Reverend Wright. Conservatives have been saying for months that Obama's church was a cause for concern but only recently did someone from the mainstream news bother to buy copies of Wright's sermons and listen to them.

Wright is part of a movement known as Black Liberation Theology. This is a subset of Liberation Theology which interprets Christianity as a metaphor for socialism. Wright's version of this officially focuses on social justice and helping the poor. It also contains a great deal of conspiracies by whites. AIDS was created by whites to subjugate blacks. Crack cocaine exists in order to entice blacks to commit multiple felonies and be locked away by the three-strikes laws. He recently compared Obama's problems running for president with Christ who, along with the Israelis, was black (or at least African) and subjugated by white Romans.

Obama dismisses these statements insisting that we should judge everything that Wright does instead of just a few selected sermons. Considering how hard society comes down on someone like Don Imus (nappy-haired hoes) or Mel Gibson (anti-semitic ranting while drunk) for a single instance of unapproved speech, Obama is asking for a double standard.

His speech on race in America says some good things but it leaves me unimpressed. Like most of his campaign, he is promising great things if elected but has no record of accomplishment to prove that he is capable of these things. There is a lot that he could do from the position that he already holds. He complains about unequal schooling but fails to mention black students who reject white man's learning. Obama could do quite a bit of good if he sounded more like Bill Cosby.

Obama has been listening to Wright's various conspiracy theories for years. When he talks about the anger and resentment among blacks he needs to acknowledge that much of this comes from people like Wright who stoke that anger. Obama needs to go beyond asking each side to understand the other and tell his own side that whites are not conspiring against them. Only someone in his position can do this and it would go a long way toward his goal of perfecting race relations.

Obama is in a difficult position. His personal narrative was crafted to sooth whites into thinking that he thought of himself as mixed race instead of black. Early in the race people were questioning if he was black enough meaning if he was actually part of black culture. There is no question of that now but that raises an entirely new set of questions.

Wright is his spiritual leader and the person who is supposed to have brought him to Christ. Obama first came to national attention as a black Democrat who was comfortable talking about religion (as opposed to Kerry whose religious experience began and ended with being an altar boy). Now Obama's religious background is tainted. That has to hurt him.

Sympathy for the Devil

There is no way I would actually vote for her but I am beginning to feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. The Obama campaign has figured out how to go negative without seeming to. They comb the press for any comments made by anyone remotely connected with the Clinton campaign then they examine these comments with a magnifying glass looking for any possible crypto-racist spin. This allows them to continually complain that Hillary has gone negative.

The Obama campaign has always been prickly about race. When a fellow senator used the word "articulate" to describe Obama he was instantly condemned for implying that it was unusual for blacks to be articulate (considering Bush, Gore, and Kerry he obviously meant that it was unusual for a presidential candidate to be articulate).

Since January this focus has been trained on Hillary's people. One of her people suggested that Republican background research might turn up that Obama not only used drugs, he might have sold them, also. This was judged as racist because it implied that black drug-users were more likely than white to sell some on the side.

Hillary was asked if Obama was a Muslim. She said in no uncertain terms that he was not. The question was repeated and she continued to deny it. Partway through this questioning she slipped in a "as far as I know." Politicians and lawyers always leave themselves a little wiggle room, especially when vouching for someone else. Obama's supporters seized on this as if it was part of a carefully prepared statement and the only thing she said. To hear them, this tiny disclaimer was code words to mean that he really is Muslim.

Geraldine Ferraro pointed out that Obama's race had a lot to do with his success. She would know since she was Mondale's vice-presidential pick because of her gender. Given that Obama is 99th in seniority in the Senate and never sponsored any significant legislation, Ferraro can be forgiven for thinking that Obama's success has to do with more than his vast experience. For making this rather obvious observation she is being called a racist and Hillary is being pilloried for not condemning her strongly enough.

The 3:00 am ad has been examined in a new light by Orlando Patterson who discovered a hidden, racist message. It turns out that the children in the ad can sleep, not because an experienced president is there to take the 3:00 am call, but because a black man is not in the White House.

All of this is causing a frenzy on the left. Hillary is the new George Bush. James Moore wrote a column comparing Hillary to Karl Rove and Darth Vader. The comments following the column are full of Hillary=Bush invective. Keith Olbermann did one of his special commentaries, also comparing Hillary with evil Republicans.

There just isn't much that Hillary can do to fight back. I expect that Obama will continue to discover crypto-racism in Hillary's campaign.

This is probably the roll-out for Obama's campaign against McCain.

A Question I would Like to Ask Senator Obama

This is from an Obama position paper on Hillary Clinton's experience:

Senator Obama’s speech opposing the war in Iraq shows independence and courage as well as good judgment. In the speech that Senator Clinton says does not qualify him to be Commander in Chief, Obama criticized what he called “a rash war . . . a war based not on reason, but on passion, not on principle, but on politics.” In that speech, he said prophetically: “[E]ven a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” He predicted that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would “fan the flames of the Middle East,” and “strengthen the recruitment arm of al Qaeda.” He urged the United States first to “finish the fight with Bin Laden and al Qaeda.”

My question:

Senator Obama, you often refer to a speech that you gave against the war as proof that you have better judgment than your opponents who voted in favor of the war. At the time you were not in the US Senate and did not have access to Senate Intelligence Reports. Your insistence that had you been a senator you would still have been against the war is a bit hypothetical to be your only claim for judgment. Can you give an example of your judgment where you were actually there to cast a vote instead of in the Illinois Senate?

Will They Be Dancing in the Street?

Representative Steve King said that if Barack Hussein Obama is elected, al Qaeda will be dancing in the street. Arianna Huffington is having a fit over this. Who is right?

King is basing his statement on two things. The first is that Obama has promised to start withdrawing troops from Iraq immediately. Various al Qaeda leaders have said that Iraq is their current battleground. They brought in foreign fighters under the franchise of al Qaeda in Iraq. If they are still there in January, 2008 then they win by virtue of being the last ones on the field.

Last week Obama said that he would halt or reverse troop withdrawals if there was any signs of al Qaeda entering the country. When McCain pointed out that they are already there, Obama declined to clarify his intentions. Instead he pointed out that they had not been there five years ago when the invasion started. So, will Obama withdraw the troops or will he leave them in Iraq to fight al Qaeda? I'm betting that he will withdraw the troops and blame the loss of Iraq on Bush.

A good reason for al Qaeda to celebrate.

King also mentioned Obama's middle name which is Arabic for hansom and a common name among Muslims. King is not reminding people that Obama was born and raised a Muslim. The name has real meaning among Muslims. His grandfather took it when he converted. Mainstream news organizations have quoted people in the Muslim "street" as saying that it is important to them.

Arianna says this:

So our enemies will see that Obama's middle name is Hussein and... what exactly? Hate us even more? See it as a green light for a new wave of attacks? Not only are King's ravings offensive -- they are head-scratchingly moronic.

Obviously our enemies will not hate us more but they will see it as another sign that they are winning. They will see that America's reaction to the war on terror is to elect a Muslin-friendly president. While this might endear us to the Muslim street, it will also encourage al Qaeda. How can it not? How often does someone say, "Our tactics are working, our enemy is retreating, let's change tactics"?

Huffington and others really wants to pretend that there is no war and that the only reason anyone ever attacked us was because of President Bush. Anyone who reminds us that our country does have merciless and implacable enemies is guilty of scare-mongering.

Huffington and Obama also want to believe that the reason for starting the war, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, invalidates any reason for staying. McCain has pointed out that regardless of why we got into Iraq, we are now there and we are fighting al Qaeda there.

The election will probably end up being a referendum on the war - not on how it started but on who should win it. Obama and Huffington are on al Qaeda's side in this.

Why the Democrats Can't Dump Hillary

I keep seeing liberals demanding that the Democratic party elders get rid of Hillary somehow. There are rumors that this was planned until she won the Ohio and Texas primaries. There are several reasons that they cannot (or at least should not) simply dump Hillary.

First and most obvious, there are the Hillary supporters. Some of them believe in her personally. Some are simply for her because she is the serious first woman candidate. These supporters are not fainting at Hillary's rallies but they still believe in her. They will probably turn out for Obama if they feel that he won fair and square but they might well stay home on election day if they think that Hillary was robbed.

This dovetails into Obama's lack of support. It seems like he is sweeping the primaries but, between Hillary's big state wins and proportionate representation, Obama isn't all that far ahead of Hillary. If he was doing as well as the press make it appear then he wouldn't need the superdelegates. After all, McCain has the Republican nomination wrapped up and he started much further back in the pack.

There are other issues. Hillary has pointed out that Obama has trouble winning big states. These are important since these are how Gore and Kerry almost won in the last two elections. The Democratic challenger needs to be strong in these states.

All of this has been pointed out by others. Here are a couple of new points that are my own.

If their positions were reversed, Obama would still be in the race. Prior to Super Tuesday it was widely assumed that Hillary would take the majority of the delegates and that Obama has little hope after that. Even so, he always planned a fifty-state (plus territories) fight. He was already making media buys for the post-Super Tuesday races before Super Tuesday.

Obama's fifty-state strategy is important and seldom remarked on. Hillary didn't have as much money to work with and she ran through it quickly in an effort to knock her rivals out early. She hadn't planned on needing to continue the campaign past Super Tuesday. She actually ran out of money for a while and had to loan her campaign a few million to tide it over.

This has been covered in terms of problems in Hillary's organization but it is seldom mentioned how this affected Obama. He won those 11 states because Hillary didn't have the resources in place to oppose him.

That's why Bill and Hillary drew the line in the sand as Ohio and Texas. These were big enough to matter and far enough away to give Hillary a chance to restart her campaign.

Did you get that? Obama won in 12 states where Hillary wasn't contesting him but he lost the two states where she ran hard. This shows that he is not as popular as portrayed.

There are other places that Obama appears weak. There has been a lot of talk about Hillary going dirty with the 3 am ad. In fact, it was pretty mild compared to what McCain and his supporters will do to Obama. The 3 am ad's message was that you can sleep easy because Hillary is on the job. It didn't even mention Obama.

So, Democrats who have been paying attention will have noticed that Obama's record is spotty in states that the Democrats have to win and where he faced strong competition.

The Democrats may eventually give Obama the nomination but the ones who are paying attention will be asking if he is he strongest possible candidate? If they pull the plug on Hillary they are stuck.

A Campaign of Surprises

Every time it seems like things have been settled in the primary it switches around again. Before the first votes were cast, Hillary looked like a sure thing. Then she placed third in Iowa and Obama was a sure thing. Hillary won by an unexpected margin in New Hampshire and was back on track. Super Tuesday was supposed to be the vote that cemented her status as the candidate-elect. Super Tuesday came and went. At first it looked like Hillary was still ahead but by only a few votes. A day later some super delegates started committing and she was behind.

Then came a run of twelve losses and it looked like Hillary had overstayed her welcome. Obama was the sure thing. All he had to do was win Texas and Ohio.

The Texas and Ohio votes are over. Texas was close but Hillary won. Ohio was supposed to be close but Hillary ended up winning by a good margin.

Where are we now?

Obama has pointed out that he is still ahead by about as many delegates as before. That is true but his string of victories is broken. That is far more important. For a while it looked like the super delegates would vote for him based on his momentum. It appeared that the mood of the country had shifted for him and Hillary's earlier victories should be given less weight.

Ohio changed all of that. Obama did everything right in Ohio. He out-spent Hillary. He beat her in every form of advertising - TV, radio, newspaper, direct call, and web ads. He had the better campaign organization complete with a better get out the vote drive. He had her beat on hot topics such as support for the war and NAFTA.

So what happened?

The Ohio vote can only be described as a rejection of Obama. Not only did whites vote for Hillary, so did the party faithful.

The last few days have been tough on Obama although it was not obvious. SNL ran two opening sketches on how the press has fawned on Obama. People on the fence looked at Obama-mania and recoiled.

Obama made some mistakes himself. This is nothing new. He has been making foreign policy blunders all along but people started taking him seriously when it looked like he was a sure thing as the next president.

Take the example of Fareed Zakaria. A few months ago he was gushing over Obama's background growing up in a foreign country overshadowed by the US. Zakaria echoed his own experience growing up in India and expressed his hope that Obama would work for the general good instead of the good of the US. Earlier this week Zakaria criticized both candidates for their protectionism. He quoted an unnamed South American diplomat as saying that they might look back with nostalgia at the days of George Bush.

I suspect that this is a typical reaction. For some time Obama has been a mirror. People saw in him their own hopes. Now they are looking at the man himself and turning away.

All of this is good news for McCain. As a pro-war Republican and potentially the oldest man to be sworn in to that office, he looked like a long-shot. Now he has time to consolidate his position and build up his national campaign. Obama (and Hillary) will be too busy running to the left to appeal to the center.

On a different note - the Democrats must really hate Ohio right now. First we tipped the last two elections for Bush. Now we gave a Hillary a boost and kept the campaign going when Obama was hoping to wrap it up. The Democrats now have seven weeks of limbo before the next major primary and the continuing prospect of the primaries being settled at the convention.

Obama and McGovern

The Clinton campaign has suggested that Obama is the next McGovern, too liberal to be elected. Assuming that Hillary makes it through the Ohio and Texas primaries and takes her campaign to the convention floor, there will be some striking parallels.

Like Obama, McGovern ran as a candidate from a new generation challenging an unpopular president and an unpopular war. He didn't inspire his crowds to the point of swooning as Obama does but he did have very dedicated followers. Like Obama, McGovern's support was deep but not very wide.

Let me go into more detail about this last part. As I said, in both cases the candidate had a very loyal following. While passionate, it was not deep enough to guarantee the nomination. McGovern did not win enough delegates to get the nomination. He needed the 1972 version of the superdelegates. Similarly, Obama has racked up a lot of wins but may not get a clear majority of the committed delegates.

Like Obama, McGovern was the face of a new generation. He represented youth and energy. His opponent had strong ties to the previous president. Obama's opponent was married to the previous president, McGovern's was vice-president.

The 1972 convention began with a vote over credentials. There was a dispute over how California's delegation should be handled. If McGovern had lost this it would have been a sign that he did not have enough support to win the candidacy. In 2008 the convention will possibly begin with a motion to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates. This will benefit Hillary unfairly. If it passes then things look bad for Obama.

After the convention, the wheels came off of McGovern's campaign. He was extremely liberal and he had run to the left in order to win the nomination. Once the main campaign started he backed off of several proposals he had made. This opened the way for the most effective anti-McGovern ad. Paid for by the "Democrats for Nixon" the ad featured a coin goig back and forth as an announcer repeated positions that McGovern had switched positions on.

Obama will have problems with promises he has made on the campaign trail. Canada has already expressed concern about his views on NAFTA. After implying that he is totally against NAFTA, aything that Obama does will seem like a flip. He has put himself out on a limb with other positions.

The thing that probably hurt McGovern the most was his vice-presidential choice. The man he chose, Eagleton, turned out to have problems. He had been given electro-shock therapy for stress. This was obviously someone who should not be a heartbeat away from becoming president.

It is unlikely that Obama will make a choice this bad. A lot more background research is done on potential running mates these days to keep this from happening again.

McGovern's campaign never caught fire. His support never grew beyonf his initial supporters. His promises to end the war sounded alternately like pandering, surrender, or desperation. It turned out that the war was not unpopular enough to elect McGovern. He went down to a historic defeat.

Obama might follow this path. His following seems creepy to many independent voters. Iraq was never as unpopular as Viet Nam and recent gains in Iraq will give McCain an edge over Obama's call for a quick pull-out.

It is possible that Obama will not follow McGovern's path. I a recent column, E. J. Dionne speculated that Obama is like Reagan. Maybe, but I doubt it. Reagan had been a political fixture for some time before running for president. He had been governor of California and ran in 1976. He was an experienced administrator and a known quantity. He was also pushing a new philosophy. Obama was unknown four years ago and does not have any major accomplishments to his name. He talks about change and being a new type of politician but his platform is boilerplate liberal. If he has a new idea he has yet to articulate it.

In his inaugural address, Reagan said the eight scariest words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." These eight words also sum up Obama's governing philosophy.