Saturday, June 27, 2009

Palm Beach Post Attacks Jenny Sanford

I want to move on from this whole episode, but a piece in this morning's Palm Beach Post by Liz Balmaseda was infuriating. According to Balmaseda, the fact that jenny Sanford kicked her husband out of her house two weeks ago was not good enough. She should have kicked him out when she first learned of the affair five months ago. She then explains that the reason she didn't kick him out right away is that she "knew what he was about" and "she created him" and "she knew of his duplicitous streak". She also lectures the first lady that "no matter how much her husband insists the affair is over, the first lady must deal with the fact that it never will be."

None of us have any clue what was going on in that household, and what they may have been doing over the last five months to try and reconcile their marriage. And I am sure that the first lady is completely capable of deciding what is best for her and her family. Ms. Balmaseda, please leave her alone.

Our banana republic

On early Friday morning, House Democrats added a 300-page amendment to the "climate-change" bill, bringing the bill's total length to either 1,309 or 1,500 pages, depending on the report. (This recent edition of War and Peace is only 1,296 pages.) The House narrowly passed the bill later that day. Hugh Hewitt comments:

They could not have read the bill.

A 300 page amendment to a bill that greatly impacts every American and greatly burdens every American business was introduced at 3:00 AM Friday and passed 16 hours later. The spectacle of the House voting for a massive tax increase and a 300 page amendment they could not have read is a low point for post-segregationist Congresses. Never have so few read so little about so important a proposal, and yet brazen forward oblivious to the deeply embarrassing charade it presents to the world. Banana republics make a better show of governing themselves than did the U.S. House of Representatives today.

The unseriousness of our political leaders is simply breathtaking. It would be unsurprising, from time to time, for a member of Congress to vote on (or even for) a bill he or she has not read in its entirety. This is not ideal, and not particularly honorable, but given the number, breadth and scope of the bills that Congress considers each term, it's probably inevitable. A Congressman from Queens with no knowledge of agriculture could be excused for deferring to a trusted colleague from Nebraska when voting on a farm bill, for example.

But for a member of Congress to vote on -- and especially to vote for -- a bill that not one member of Congress has read in its entirety is an abdication of duty, the legislative equivalent of a soldier firing a machine gun with his eyes closed. If you think that analogy is overheated, remember that climate-change ideologues warn us that the earth is egg-shell fragile; that every increase (or decrease) in temperature anywhere around the world is evidence of man's predation and of impending catastrophe; that if we don't make things precisely right we are doomed, and that the hour is very, very late indeed. If you believe this to be true, wouldn't you also believe it is important to read carefully (and perhaps even debate) a wide-ranging piece of environmental legislation before passing it?

Our elected officials owe us their best judgment. (Based on the available evidence, many of them are capable of good judgment only intermittently, but we at least deserve their best efforts.) We don't get even that. Important bills are rushed through so quickly that even earnest representatives could not hope to read them carefully, much less analyze their potential effects. The climate-change bill and the stimulus package are two glaring examples, but as the organization Open Congress has noted, they aren't the only ones.

To vote for a bill no Congressman has read in its final form, while simultaneously declaring its passage vital to the survival of the planet, is cynicism at its worst.


P.S. Check out Open Congress's "Read the Bill" proposal, which would require Congress to provide a 72 hour reading period, beginning once a bill is put into its final form, before putting it up to a vote.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Opening Today: "The Stoning of Soraya M."

This is going to be an important film -- both on its own merits, and in the discussion it will provoke.



Here is a list of theaters where The Stoning of Soraya M. is playing.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

John Stossel to Give Short Rebuttal

In response to last night's ABC news infomercial for Obama care, John Stossel will be giving a short rebuttal to the President's health care proposal on tomorrow night's episode of 20/20.

[Update]

Here is a preview.

[Update. 6/27/09. On his blog Stossel reports that his report has been bumped to make room for coverage of Michael Jackson. His report may air next week.]

More on Sanford

1) One of the amazing things about this story is that this affair developed at precisely the same time that Mark Sanford began to gain national recognition, and it actually started right around the time the McCain campaign was looking for a Vice Presidential candidate. And many are asking, how in the world did he think he was going to get away with this? In my opinion, I'm not sure he necessarily thought that he was going to get away with this. Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News last night: "The oddity of this and the self-destructiveness would suggest even to a layman that this is a near-intentional political suicide." That seems about right to me, but who knows. Definitely a case study for someone in the psychological field.

2) Keith Olbermann certainly was enjoying the Sanford downfall. On last night's show, he reported that emails had been released between Sanford and the Argentinian, and that these emails "left out no details". My first thought was "oh no". I was imagining something very bad. I eventually summoned the courage to get online and read some of these emails, and found out that yes, they were intensely personal, but no, they were not as graphic as Olbermann had wanted his audience to believe they were. To me, the emails read like something out of a Pat Conroy novel. Still not good though.

3) Perhaps the most ridiculous criticism I heard regarding the Sanford situation was from Howard Fineman on MSNBC. He explained that Sanford's political philosophy is all about states rights (and "not the racist kind"), and therefore, as a Governor, he views himself as equal in importance to the President of the United States. Since he sees himself equal in importance to the President, how could he just leave the way he did? Whatever. Yes, it's impossible to justify what happened, but this has nothing to do with his political philosophy. (If it did, leaving the state without a chief executive for several days is, if anything, entirely consistent with his philosophy of limited government.)

4) Another blog asked the question, since Sanford was on the VP short list, did the McCain campaign know? Good question.

Sarcastic but probably true

Paul Mirengoff at Powerline, commenting on Sanford:

Traditionally, French politicians have dealt with the urge that brings down guys like Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, and John Edwards by having mistresses, a phenomenon that doesn't bother the French. Unfortunately, some of these American pols would probably end up cheating on their mistresses.

My reaction to the Sanford situation

Just some initial reactions to the whole Mark Sanford situation:

1) The press conference was unlike anything I have ever seen. It was heartbreaking. It was raw. It was the most human confession of an affair from a politician that I have ever seen. Maybe that's not saying much. But it was striking how he admitted not to just having an illicit affair, but to falling in love with this woman.

2) Jenny Sanford is impressive. I had heard that she was a very impressive person, and her press release today certainly struck a chord with many people. Thank goodness she was not at the press conference. She kept her dignity and her focus on protecting the children.

3) On a political note, this whole episode was depressing. I had high hopes. As a friend of mine wrote to me earlier today, "he not only betrayed his wife, but he betrayed the conservative movement". I don't want to go that far, but I am left wondering where to go now. The prospect of a Mitt Romney nomination is, well, depressing.

...more thoughts to come.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Administration report on "climate change" relies on non-peer-reviewed sources, ignores peer-reviewed ones that contradict its thesis

John Tierney, the science writer for the NY Times, reports:

The new federal report on climate change gets a withering critique from Roger Pielke Jr., who says that it misrepresents his own research and that it wrongly concludes that climate change is already responsible for an increase in damages from natural disasters. Dr. Pielke, a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, asks:

[Why] is a report characterized by [White House] Science Advisor John Holdren as being the “most up-to-date, authoritative, and comprehensive” analysis relying on a secondary, non-peer source citing another non-peer reviewed source from 2000 to support a claim that a large amount of uncited and more recent peer-reviewed literature says the opposite about?

(Tierney's post is here. Dr. Pielke's website is here. Via Instapundit)

This sort of thing is disturbingly common. When evaluating a scientific claim, it's important to "follow the footnotes" -- i.e., to check the sources cited by the author to see if the sources really support the proposition for which they are cited. Given the hyperbole surrounding climate change and the grandiosity of the proposed solutions for it, following the footnotes is crucial task these days.

The same goes for historical claims. Two authors who have done yeoman's work in this vein are Ramesh Ponnuru and Christina Hoff Sommers. Ponnuru debunked a famous legal brief that 281 historians submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to influence the decision in the abortion case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services. The historians argued that at the time of America's founding, abortion was legal under the common law -- and that therefore even the modest restrictions on the abortion license at issue in Webster should be struck down. Ponnuru followed the footnotes and discovered that "the published work of the signatories disproved [the brief's] historical arguments." The brief was, for the most part, an utter falsehood. (Read Ponnuru's article on this subject here. It's also discussed at length in his book, which I strongly recommend).

Sommers has similarly unmasked a number of claims made by the shriller left-wing feminists, such as the claim that there is a dramatic increase in spousal abuse on Super Bowl Sunday, a widely quoted "statistic" that has, quite literally, no basis in fact.

Feeling trampled by the "herd of independent minds" in the press and the academy? Follow the footnotes.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

WSJ Poll Results

From a NBC/WSJ poll released today, the following question was asked:

Which of the following two statements comes closer to your point of view?

Statement A: The President and Congress should worry more about boosting the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits now and in the future.

Statement B: The President and Congress should worry more about keeping the budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover.


Statement A.....35%
Statement B.....58%


I think the question poses a false choice, but the idea that people are becoming increasingly concerned about the out of control spending from Washington is certainly good news. But now for the bad news.

Which ONE of the following groups do you feel is most responsible for the federal budget deficit?

The Bush Administration...... 46
Democrats in Congress........ 21
Republicans in Congress...... 7
Obama Administration......... 6

On the positive side, maybe this means that there is some upside for the opposition party, assuming they can somehow put together a coherent message. For starters, how about making every voter very familiar with this chart:

Elections really do matter

On the same day the Obama administration predicted that within five years North Korea will have an ICBM capable of hitting the west coast of the U.S., and with turmoil in soon-to-be-nuclear Iran all over the news, Democrats on the Armed Services Committee thwarted Republican attempts to restore funding to our missile defense programs. Jennifer Rubin is on the case.

[Update: Rubin has written a follow-up story describing some of the scuttled programs. Both of her articles are worth your time.]

Maybe the Republicans are not in such bad shape after all

I was watching CNBC this morning and stumbled on this segment with Rep Jeb Hensarling (R) and Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D). The contrast in intelligence, articulateness and overall sleaziness is astounding.






Monday, June 15, 2009

The Health Care Debate Heats Up.

Some interesting reading(and watching) from today's news on the health care debate:

Arnold Kling writes:
One illusion about healthcare reform is that the only problem we have to tackle is the uninsured. The larger problem is that those of us with insurance have too much coverage, so that neither patients nor doctors have to pay attention to costs when making decisions. That is going to have to change.


And then Robert Samuelson writes:
It’s hard to know whether President Obama’s health-care ‘reform’ is naive, hypocritical or simply dishonest. Probably all three. The president keeps saying it’s imperative to control runaway health spending. He’s right. The trouble is that what’s being promoted as health-care ‘reform’ almost certainly won’t suppress spending and, quite probably, will do the opposite.


And here was Dr. Ron Paul on CNN this morning.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Two Movie Recommendations and a Short Rant on Sean Penn's Oscar

Gran Torino, starring Clint Eastwood in what may be his last role, was released on video yesterday. I highly recommend the film, and once I get a little further down my Netflix queue, it is likely to be at or near the top of my list of 2008's best movies. Andrew Breitbart wrote the following about the film for National Review earlier this year:

Clint Eastwood directs and stars in the ultimate family movie unsuitable for the family. He plays Walt Kowalski, a caricature of an old-school, dying-breed, Polish-American racist male, replete with post-traumatic stress disorder from having served in the Korean War. Kowalski comes to realize that his exotic Hmong neighbors embody traditional social values more than his own disaster of a Caucasian nuclear family. Dirty Harry blows away political correctness, takes on the bad guys, and turns a boy into a man in the process. He even encourages the cultural assimilation of immigrants. It feels so good, you knew the Academy would ignore it.


The Academy not only ignored the film for Best Picture, but also ignored Clint Eastwood's performance, which I thought was also worthy of recognition. Perhaps Clint's portrayal of an old, white, bigoted, self-reliant, gun-owning, man, was not as appealing to the Academy as Sean Penn's portrayal of gay activist from San Francisco.

Yes, there is a lot to admire about Harvey Milk, but if it was up to me, I would ask the Academy to go back and watch footage of the real Harvey Milk and then let them decide whether or not Mr. Penn was really worthy of the Oscar for Best Actor. I recently watched the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (another Academy Award winner), a film that included plenty of footage of Milk being interviewed and making speeches, and it quickly became obvious to me that Sean Penn did a terrible job of portraying Milk, and did a wonderful job playing a caricature of a gay man from San Francisco.

Another film that deserves to be watched is the gut-wrenching documentary Dear Zachary, about a filmmaker's quest to memorialize the life of his best friend Andrew Bagby after he was murdered by a psychotic ex-girlfriend. It is a true story that features perhaps one of the most evil villains in film history, as well as two of the most heroic. Rent it.

John Zeigler on MSNBC is Always Interesting

Documentary filmmaker and radio show host John Zeigler appeared on MSNBC earlier today and had this lively exchange with Contessa Brewer. The interview starts with Zeigler saying "Thanks for having me, it's always interesting appearing on Barack Obama's official network" and ends with the MSNBC anchor saying "cut his mic".

Dreher on "Unvisited Tombs"

I have been meaning to mention a beautiful post Rod Dreher offered a month ago today. It's a reflection on, of all things, a trip he took to a cemetery with his young son on Mother's Day. It begins:

My mother has a lovely custom of placing candles on the graves of family members in the local graveyard on certain holidays. On Saturday evening, Matthew and I went with her and my dad to the Starhill Cemetery to light candles on the graves of various women in my extended family who had been mothers. It was an occasion for me to visit graves and explain to Matthew who these people were.
In particular, it gave Rod the chance to think about -- to remember -- what a difference these people made in his life. I get the impression that his son wasn't too interested in hearing the stories, but someday he will be. Rod ends by quoting the final line from George Eliot's Middlemarch:
But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
It is a deeply conservative thought, and a deeply humbling one. In a celebrity-obsessed age, when many of us keep current with every jot and tittle of Brad and Angelina's day but know very little about the life stories of our own relatives, it wouldn't hurt for us to spend a bit more time paying our respects at those unvisited tombs.