* * political doodle * *

Hitchens v. Palin II [John Ennis]

Another week, another Palin-bashing piece by Slate's Christopher Hitchens. Last week, Palin was a Manchurian candidate; for round two, she's an anti-science, creationist troglodyte. Hitchens builds his case like any great mason, brick by brick. Exhibit A:

...at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."

Hitchens goes on to note that 75 years ago Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for his research in fruit flies and that there are plenty of reasons to still study them today. He doesn't provide any word on whether Morgan's research was government funded, but since Morgan's work goes back decades prior to his Nobel, presumably Hitchens supports another 100 years of fruit fly research to be placed on the tax payer's tab.

That aside, Hitchens might have missed Palin's larger point. It wasn't the research itself, but how the money was awarded (through earmarks) which was problematic. As Yuval Levin points out:

It’s worth pointing out that the particular spark that set off this latest Slate witch-burning was Palin’s criticism of a $211,000 earmark from Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) for a French study of fruit flies that damage olive groves—a criticism that came in the midst of a larger speech about the need for, among other things, more support for scientific research. The idea that opposing science-funding-by-earmark (i.e. in circumvention of the rigorous peer review process for federal R&D funds) is somehow anti-science is beyond absurd, and the notion that criticizing this earmark means Palin opposes or is ignorant of any use of fruit flies in scientific research is just unserious.

Hitchens seems to acknowledge that Palin's comments were really about earmarks when he gives his second example:

In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory.

This example is more substantive. McCain's clear point is to criticize earmarks, but he does so by attacking the need for this research. However, the title of Hitchens' piece is:

Sarah Palin's War On Science

The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.

Under Hitchens' logic, an unwillingness to fund any and all proposed research projects with public dollars is contempt for knowledge and a "War on Science." Levin's point still stands that it would seem scientists rather than politicians might make better decisions about which projects to fund in a finite budget.

Hitchens next goes into Palin's supposed creationism:

...she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now.

Hitchens speculates that Palin's own creationist beliefs are "probable." That means he can't find a recorded quote that she's a creationist. All he's got is one comment where she said if creationism comes up in the classroom, you can teach the argument. This is hardly a "war on science."

Global warming gets a brief mention:

Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.

Hitchens accuses Palin's religious beliefs of undermining her scientific thinking. The only evidence he has are the statements of other religious people. This line of argument will get you nowhere. Furthermore, if you want a fairly illuminating view on how the environmental movement is damaging science by politicizing it, Michael Chrichton gave a speech on the subject in 2003. If you believe the debate on global warming is over, be aware that global warming alarmists make that claim not due to any scientific certainty, but because they would prefer not to have a debate. Has anyone ever seen a global warming debate? They are a truly endangered species, almost never observed because the alarmists tend to lose.

If you doubt this premise, ask yourself two questions:

• How many times have you seen Al Gore talk about global warming?
• How many times have you seen Al Gore debate global warming?

The hysteria over global warming and the ensuing politicization of science has done more to damage science than anything Palin's "probable" belief in creationism has done.

Hitchens goes into more criticisms of Palin's religious beliefs and the church she used to attend, and ends with this:

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Hitchens would prefer to vote for the presidential candidate whose church for 20 years preached that the government created the HIV virus to kill blacks. The Constitution can only be protected by the candidate who views it as fundamentally flawed.

 

LUCILLE: The McCain Implosion

  By now it's evident to everyone (except maybe John Ennis) that the McCain campaign has been on self-destruct and is failing even in those "safe" GOP states. Not to say he might not win; after all, voter supression and voting machine shennanigans and malfunctions can change the entire landscape. But, I think - and here's my prediction - Obama will win handily, with electoral votes to spare.

But, the point of this post is about John McCain's obvious inablilty to control his own campaign. The manic hopping from one "solution" for the economic meltdown to another (questionable) one; the emphasis on attacking Obama's relationship to Ayers (is this the best he can come up with?) vs. actually telling voters what he'd do as President that differs from what Bush has been doing the last 7 years; the johnny-come-lately realization that the economy isn't "fundamentally sound" as he professed up until the stock market started crashing; the Palin situation - from spending $150,000 to dress their "Joe Six Pack" hockey mom in Paris Hilton attire to the $20,000+ spent in just two weeks to put lipstick on a . . . oh, you know - to her apparent decision to ignore the campaign's direction and take off on her own.

Oh - and the endorsement of McCain by Al Qaeda. Who needs Colin Powell?

Can anyone disagree - other than John - that things are out of control in McCain Land?

Media Swears They Never Saw Any Statues [John Ennis]

Newsbusters has a long analysis about declining newspaper coverage of the Iraq War. Bottom line: as Coalition forces started winning, coverage plummeted. A week or two ago the Washington Post also addressed the decline in media attention. They implausibly blamed 60% drops in coverage on "financial strains."

If you're looking for other explanations, the Post spoke with Alissa J. Rubin, the New York Times' acting Baghdad bureau chief. She noted that Iraq “remains important and it remains interesting... But what's in front of us now is almost a static situation. There's not a clear narrative line. The stories are more complex."

So, when events get complex, less will be written about them even though their importance remains?

Maybe the theory is testable?

If you look beyond the Post and Times, you see more and more Iraqi stories like this one from a couple of days ago:

The Interior Ministry of the Kurdistan Regional Government has honoured a fallen American soldier at the opening of a police college in Erbil.

At a ceremony led by Mr Karim Sinjari, the Minister of State for the Interior, a statue of First Lieutenant Ashley Henderson of the 385th MP Battalion, Fort Stewart , Georgia , was unveiled last week. Lieutenant Henderson’s father Mr Mark Henderson attended the ceremony...

A ceremony where Iraqis honor American sacrifice with a statue to one of the fallen doesn't seem too complex. I wonder if the Times covered it?

A Nexis search shows that Ashley Henderson's name has appeared in the paper only once: September 26, 2006, when the Dept. of Defense confirmed her death.

Her death will make mention in the paper of record, but not the monument to her sacrifice. Does anyone believe it was because the latter was complex, while the former was not?

Palin Doesn't Need to Answer to the Press, Just Hitchens [John Ennis]

Slate columnist Christopher Hitchens really went after Sarah Palin yesterday. Here's one of his complaints:

At numerous rallies where the atmosphere has been, shall we say, a little uncivil, Gov. Palin has accused Sen. Obama of accusing our forces in Afghanistan of simply bombing villages. Only a moment's work is required to discover that the words complained of were never uttered in that form and that they occurred in a speech that stressed the need for more ground troops as opposed to more airstrikes (a recommendation, by the way, that begins to look more sapient each week, at least in respect of the airstrikes). Again, I have a question: Did Palin know that she was telling a lie? Or did her handlers simply assume that she would read anything that was put in front of her, however mendacious? And which would be worse? And when will she issue the needful retraction?

Hitchens does not supply a link to, or provide a quote of the objectionable comment made by Palin. Nor does he provide a link or a quote of what Obama said. Hitchens did have time to put in a total of ten links to other—more important—items, including an insinuation that Palin is a 'Manchurian candidate'.

In any case, it's hard to say he nailed Palin with his argument. The documentation of Palin's lie may be in Hitchens' head, but he has not enhanced the public record of her supposed transgression.

I would like to rely on his integrity as a journalist, and believe his assertion that Palin lied, but I've seen too much of his brethren's work from this campaign. As for Hitchens' work, here's a second dubious claim from the very subtitle of the aforementioned piece:

Stop covering Palin until she gives a press conference.

If Palin wants to be spared the wrath of Hitchens, I think the location of her press conferences is more important than whether they occur. Because if the press conference isn't in Hitchens' living room, he ain't going to know about it.

Palin holds press conferences with her beat writers on a somewhat frequent basis. They just happen to be occurring on the campaign trail—where Palin, the VP nominee, is, and where Hitchens, the Slate scribe, clearly is not. As CBS reports:

It was less than two weeks ago when Sarah Palin astonished her traveling press corps by lifting the curtain (literally) and journeying to the back of her campaign plane to answer reporters’ questions for the first time after 40 days on the campaign trail. But the candidate who has been criticized for having a bunker mentality when it came to the national media can now lay legitimate claim to being more accessible than either Joe Biden or Barack Obama.

In the past two days alone, Palin has answered questions from her national press corps on three separate occasions. On Saturday, she held another plane availability, and on Sunday, she offered an impromptu press conference on the tarmac upon landing in Colorado Springs. A few minutes later, she answered even more questions from reporters during an off-the-record stop at a local ice cream shop.

By contrast, Biden hasn’t held a press conference in more than a month, and Obama hasn’t taken questions from his full traveling press corps since the end of September.

Didn't Palin also do something a few weeks ago, where she answered questions for 90 minutes from a member of the press and from her opponent, Sen. Biden? I know we call them debates, not press conferences, but can we add that event to the tally too?

ERIC: Palin Experience

Palin is a joke.  Republicans actually have the gall to compare her experience to Obama's.  John has said himself that she has "executive experience".  But a few months ago, Palin didn't even know what the VP's job was.  Here's a comical video comparing Palin to the brilliant Miss Teen USA:

And now... (huffington post, new window)

ERIC: Voter Supression Continues

While the GoP continues to attack the Democrats by claiming ACORN has been submitting thousands of fake voter registrations in effort to steal the election, their voter suppression strategy continues.  However, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to their suppression campaign.  Read about it at freepress.org.(Opens in new window)

The case was raised as the GOP attempted to cage 200,000 voters, most of which were Democrats.

The 200,000 voters targeted by the Republican Party were all registered since January 1, 2008. News source estimates suggest 75-80% of these newly-registered voters are Obama supporters.

...

Nappygate [John Ennis]

The British government gave some bad environmental advice, and they don't want to admit it. It turns out disposable diapers are less damaging to the environment than reusable ones. The London Times reports:

A government report that found old-fashioned reusable nappies damage the environment more than disposables has been hushed up because ministers are embarrassed by its findings.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has instructed civil servants not to publicise the conclusions of the £50,000 nappy research project and to adopt a “defensive” stance towards its conclusions...

The conclusions will upset proponents of real nappies who have claimed they can help save the planet.

Restricted Whitehall documents, seen by The Sunday Times, show that the government is so concerned by the “negative laundry options” outlined in the report, it has told its media managers not to give its conclusions any publicity.

 

The British government also runs their Health Service. I wonder if this bureaucratic obstinance permeates those halls? Will the next buried report highlight faulty government recommendations concerning the relative benefits of surgery vs. chemotherapy for cancer patients?

If corporations lie to their consumers they get sued out of business. Governments can fire employees and compensate at taxpayer expense, but the bureaucracy survives.

Government is a necessary evil and should be left to running as little as possible. I realize that view isn't very popular in these times.

JOHN: Obama: Legal Scholar

Harvard Law School graduate and former University of Chicago law professor, Senator Barack Obama, displayed an atrocious view of the judiciary in last night's debate. Jennifer Rubin provides an outstanding explanation here. When asked about what sort of judges he'd appoint if President, Obama said:

I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through...

I think that it’s important for judges to understand that if a woman is out there trying to raise a family, trying to support her family, and is being treated unfairly, then the court has to stand up, if nobody else will. And that’s the kind of judge that I want

Obama was talking about a pay discrimination case where he disagreed with the Supreme Court's decision that went against the plaintiff. Rubin notes, though you should read the whole thing:

... judges aren’t supposed to consider the economic, social or political status of litigants. In fact, they take an oath not to. (”I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me . . . ) It is irrelevant whether the plaintiff was a working stiff, a struggling mom, or an heiress.

This all reminds me of a poll I saw last month (emphasis added):

During his acceptance speech last night at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, John McCain told the audience, “We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench.” Most American voters (60%) agrees (sic) and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution, while 30% say rulings should be guided on the judge’s sense of fairness and justice.

This is a winning issue for McCain, and he should make plenty of reminders to the voters about what Obama said last night.

JOHN: Obama's One Policy Idea Not In His Stump Speech

Have you ever wondered why there is so much talk about global warming, but no one really does anything about it? Sure, some countries signed the Kyoto Treaty, but their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are still increasing. European legislatures didn't put any teeth into their cap-and-trade schemes, which have too many emissions allowances. You want to know why? Because reducing CO2 emissions makes energy more expensive.

You might think expensive energy only affects the cost of operating frivolous luxuries (Hummers), but, there are many socially beneficial things it will also make costlier (ambulances). The millionaire's swimming pool may be more expensive to heat; but so will a ghetto apartment.

That is why legislatures balk when it comes to making significant emissions reductions. There is just no getting around the fact that coal and oil (which emit CO2) produce far cheaper energy than solar or wind (which do not). Legislators, who like job security, worry that a meaningful cap-and-trade program will trigger a voter revolt the next time they go to the polls.

This is why I've always believed the courts would be the ones to bring about crippling CO2 reduction mandates. Judges are usually not accountable to voters, tend to think they know what's best, and lean to the Left.

Well, we now have word of another potential way to put in place a CO2 reduction scheme without going through Congress. Bloomberg news reports that:

Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.           

The Democratic senator from Illinois will tell the Environmental Protection Agency that it may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, his energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said in an interview. President George W. Bush declined to curb CO2 emissions under the law even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the government may do so.

The notion that CO2 is a "dangerous pollutant" and should be covered by the Clean Air Act is an abomination to the English language. CO2 is the source of all life on this planet. If there were no CO2, we would not be here.

Obama's plan would be an appalling expansion of power for an administrative agency. We'll see how many critics of the Bush administration's expansive view of the power of the Presidency will chime in on Obama's plan. At least many of Bush's arguments were based on the Constitution's clear language that names the President Commander-in-Chief and responsible for defending the United States. Surprisingly, the Constitution says very little about which branch is in charge of regulating the source of all life on the planet. Presumably, its authors didn't think anyone should.

Once Obama's rule change is in place, CO2 decisions will be made by bureaucrats armed with a mandate and entirely unaccountable to the electorate. Give last year's dreadful Supreme Court precedent, the courts will allow it.  If Congress wants to stop it, they'll need to override an Obama veto with a 2/3 majority (unlikely).

Every once and awhile the United States goes on a decades long crusade that ends in a disaster (for example, the temperance movement culminated in Prohibition). It shouldn't give that much comfort that Prohibition required huge popular support in order to get enacted (Constitutional amendments require support from 2/3 of Congress and 3/4 of the States). But, our 21st Century disaster of needlessly spending trillions of dollars while accomplishing absolutely nothing will only have needed the votes of six people: five Supreme Court justices and a President Obama.

November 4th just became  a whole lot more important. John McCain’s cap-and-trade plan would never hand this issue to the EPA.

JOHN: Everything Will Always Be Bush’s Fault

A couple of weeks back, during the height of the negotiations with Congress over the Treasury bailout plan (the Emergency Economic Stabilisation Act of 2008), the British magazine, The Economist, wrote a scathing indictment of George Bush and his administration. Their argument can best be summed up as: Everything will always be George Bush’s fault. Since we’re going to see more and more of these anti-Bush screeds as his term comes to an end, I thought I’d address the arguments The Economist presented.

It starts by lamenting the failure of Congress to pass the bailout plan  (Congress would pass it on a second vote shortly after this article was written):

PLENTY of people can be blamed for the calamity on Capitol Hill on September 29th.

Don’t be fooled by this start. They’re merely getting a formality out of the way. They know who to blame:

But there is no doubt where the lion’s share of the blame belongs: with George Bush. The dismal handling of the financial crisis over the past fortnight is not only a comment on Mr Bush’s personal shortcomings as a leader. It is a comment on the failure of his leadership style over the past eight years.

In other words, when Congress votes against a bill The Economist wants to see pass, those voting are not responsible, George Bush is.