An A Capella Star Wars Tribute To John Williams

Obama, Japan

"This is weird. In Japan, officials in a small town called Obama -- there's a town in Japan called Obama -- say they're going to invite Barack Obama to visit. Yeah. And actually, a similar trip happened after Bill Clinton was elected, and he was invited to Horndog, Thailand." --Conan O'Brien

"Barack Obama spent his first day as president-elect putting together his transition team. And if you believe MSNBC, by tomorrow he will have chosen all 12 of his disciples." --Jay Leno

What A Difference One Percent Makes

Obama Headquarters

"And, of course, it was a huge celebration over at Barack Obama headquarters, otherwise known as MSNBC." --Jay Leno

"All the major networks declared Barack Obama the winner at 11 last night, except for MSNBC, which declared Obama the winner six months ago." --Conan O'Brien

"Hey, did I call it or what? Six months ago I predicted Ralph Nader would come in third. Did I call it?" --Jay Leno

"A huge turnout in Hollywood. In fact, for the first time ever, there were more celebrities in voting booths than in rehab." --Jay Leno

"Anybody get a robo-call from Bill Clinton? They had those out there, too. See, I knew it was from Clinton right away, because if a man answers, it automatically hangs up." --Jay Leno

"And in what has to be one of the most ridiculous moments yesterday, it looks like convicted Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska has won re-election. How does that make the guy who lost feel, huh? What's that concession speech like? 'We gave it our best, but the voters preferred a convicted, 84-year-old felon.'" --Jay Leno

Racism On The Hard Left

As I said in my last post, racism isn't dead. But it can be found in surprising places. It turns out that Barack Obama and I have something in common. We have both been called a name by Ralph Nader. As I explained in my very first post to this blog, Nader once referred to me as a fascist child of the ruling class. Now Nader has referred to Obama as an Uncle Tom. In this video, Shepherd Smith of Fox News tries to give Nader a chance to backtrack. But he throws it back in Smiths face.



To my mind, Nader had one redeeming feature. His third-party runs took votes away from the Democratic candidate. Alas, it seems that Nader has no redeeming features left.

A Reason To Celebrate

Let me first say congratulations to Barak Obama.

I didn’t vote for Obama and I strongly believe he was the wrong choice. Not because of a character flaw, but because I believe the policies he will attempt to enact will be the wrong ones for this country.

But there is still good reason to celebrate Obama’s victory, even if you are a Republican. Oh how far we have come. A little more than 3 months after I was born, Martin Luther King was assassinated. 40 years later an African-American has been elected president.

Some will say that this election proves racism is a thing of the past. I wish it were so. Racism is still with us, though much weaker then it was. The power of racism, in my opinion, has been both magnified and exaggerated for some time. I saw it as an employment attorney interviewing prospective clients who believed they were fired because of their race, and I saw it again with my students in the South Bronx. Racial discrimination is often blamed for adversity, even where it doesn’t exist. What is truly awful is when racism is used as an excuse not to try. Why should I work hard if people are just going to discriminate against me?

Obama’s election has conclusively demonstrated that racism and racists are not nearly as powerful as some have thought them to be. I fervently hope that this election will bring the United States closer to the dream of a color blind society.

I wish Barak Obama and our country success over the next four years. I will do my best to help by being a vocal critic of our President elect as I become a member of the loyal opposition.

RIP Don LaFontaine

Don LaFontaine, the voice of what seems like the majority of movie trailers over the past 25 years, passed away on Monday. I had known the voice but not the face until the Geico commercial and a New York Lottery commercial. The good folks at Funny or Die put together a nice tribute video.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

That's Liberal Hypocrisy

There has been a great deal of criticism over Sara Palin’s agreeing to run for vice-president even though she has young children at home. At first I dismissed it, but then I thought a little deeper about it. They may have a point. The children are our future and a parent’s first priority must be raising their children. It is far more important than personal ambition. The pressures of running the country really aren’t compatible with the responsibilities of raising young children. That is why I believe Barack Obama should drop out of the race.

Barack Obama? But he’s not a mother? But he is a father with 2 young daughters.

To be serious for a second, I find the criticism of Palin’s decision to accept the nomination deeply offensive. Remember that criticism is coming from liberals and Democrats with the media scrambling to find conservatives or Republicans that will join in with only limited success. It is the liberals that are being sexist here, that are reinforcing the glass ceiling that Hillary Clinton was trying to tear down.

I consider myself a feminist in that I believe a woman should have the opportunity to pursue any career a man might pursue, though they should also be free without social stigma to choose raising a family over a career. Women should also be free of sexual harassment in the workplace. But obviously I must be missing something because it seems to many liberal feminists are silent or are joining in the piling on of Palin. The National Organization of Women reflexively supports Bill Clinton, accused not only of sexual harassment but of rape, but attacks Sara Palin because she is “not the right woman” Ok, fine they disagree with her on the issues, But they should still be speaking out her right to raise a family and pursue the second highest office in the land.

That’s hypocrisy for you.

The Best Show On Television; The Final Season

Tonight is the season premier of The Shield, in my opinion the best show on television today. This is the last season. It is the beginning of the end for Vic Mackey, the crooked cop with a heart of gold. Mackey has planted evidence, beaten suspects, protected drug dealers for cash, committed arm robbery and murdered several including a cop. Yet, you can’t help but love him and hope he gets away with it, because what really motivates Mackey is a desire to make a difference. He risks his life and his freedom to protect his family, his team, and the innocent people of Farmington. If you have never seen it, start tonight at 10 on FX. Then add seasons 1-6 to your Netflix queue. Trust me; once you pop in that first disc you will be hooked. As it happens until just a couple of years ago I had no access to the FX network and started watching the show on DVD. I am glad I don’t have to wait until Season 7 is out on DVD. But as each episode ends, it will be hard to wait a week for the next. 13 episode left, and all I can do is hope it ends well for Vic. I doubt it will though. Karma is a bitch sometimes.

Here’s a Season 7 teaser.

Sara Palin

I don’t always agree with John McCain but I do agree with his choice for Vice-President. In fact I wouldn’t mind if they switched places on the ticket. Surprisingly, the biggest issue in this campaign is not the war but the economy. One of the largest (if not the largest) problems with the economy is oil is prices. Sara Palin, as governor of Alaska is an expert on oil and drilling. Unlike Dick Cheney, who also was an expert on oil (as CEO of an oil services firm), Palin has been a critic of big oil companies.

McCain should rethink his opposition to drilling in ANWR. T. Boon Pickens is running television ads supporting his alternative energy plans. At the beginning of the commercial he urges the U.S. to “drill drill drill” but also invest in alternative energy. That should be McCain’s message, though he need not necessarily endorse Pickens specific approach. Palin is the woman to make that argument.

That’s one reason I think she is a great choice. Other reasons include her being a pro-life fiscal conservative. She seems to me to be a person of strong conviction and great conviction. She is a great conservative and feminist role model. She has both a large loving family and a high powered career. Best of all she drives the lunatic left positively off the deep end.

Sorry For Months Without Updates

I haven’t updated my blogs in months, and for that I apologize. But as the Democratic Convention is over and the Republican Convention is getting started (after a one day hurricane induced delay) I have some things to say. So here goes…

The Switch Hitter vs. the Ambidextrous Pitcher

Pat Venditte is a minor league pitcher with the Staten Island Yankees. He was selected in the 20th round of the 2008 draft with the 620th overall pick. But that is not his claim to fame. Venditte’s claim to fame is that he is a “switch pitcher” in that he throws both right and left handed. He has a special glove with two thumbs so he can quickly shift the glove from hand to hand.

Only one pitcher of the modern era has ever thrown both right and left handed in a major league game and he only did it once. Greg A. Harris, in the next to last game of his career, alternated between throwing right and left handed (depending on whether the hitter was right or left handed). But he apparently did not face a switch hitter. For those of you who do not really follow baseball (shame on you) right handed pitchers are generally more effective against right handed batters and left handed pitchers more effective against left handed batters. This is why many hitters learn to switch hit (hit from both sides of the plate).

But what happens when a switch hitter faces a switch pitcher? If the pitcher throws right handed can the batter switch to bat left handed? What if the pitcher then switches too? That was the situation at the end of last nights Coney Island Cyclones-Staten Island Yankees game.



There may or may not be an MLB rule that deals with this. But if Pat Venditte makes the majors there will be.

The Effect of Gay Marriage

"It's already having a ripple effect, this gay marriage thing. In fact, since it was instituted yesterday, marriage proposals to Liza Minnelli have dropped 65 percent." --Jay Leno

Top 10 Ways The Mets Can Turn It Around

A Disgaceful Firing

While I primarily write about politics here, I am also a New York Mets Fan. The story of the week for the Mets has obviously been the firing of manager Willie Randolph.

I do not believe Randolph should have been fired. I understand why he was. The Mets, with the second highest payroll in baseball, have been playing in a mediocre fashion for over a year now. They had one of the biggest collapses in the history to end last season and with expectations of a world series this season, they have a losing record this season.

But I don’t believe that the mediocre play has been a result of Randolph’s managing. I think the problem this season has been aging injury prone players and a bullpen performing far below expectations. But sometimes a change can make a difference. You can’t fire the players so you fire the manager.

But I am not sure the Mets or GM Omar Minaya could have handled the firing in a worse way. The details of the firing were leaked almost a week in advance. But Randolph was allowed/required to fly all the way to California and manage the first game of a series against the Angels (which he won) before being fired at 3:15 am (Eastern Time). In fact, Randolph had one 3 of his last 4 games. The way Randolph was fired was disgraceful.

Here is The Daily Show’s Take on the firing.

Should Barack Choose Hillary?

"There's a lot of pressure on Barack Obama to put Hillary on the ticket. Even his advisers are telling him that Hillary can deliver the woman vote. And, of course, Bill can deliver the other woman vote. So between the two of them, that's, you know, that's a lot of women." --Jay Leno

"Now, political experts are saying that Barack Obama is hesitant to name Hillary Clinton as his running mate, because he's not sure what role Bill Clinton would want to play. Yeah. Bill says he's comfortable playing many roles, like boss interviewing secretary, or pizza guy surprising housewife. He doesn't care." --Conan O'Brien

"Meanwhile, after Hillary's meeting with Barack, Bill Clinton is now saying it's only fair he have a private meeting with Michelle Obama and Salma Hayek." --Jimmy Kimmel

"Barack Obama is set to enjoy his first weekend as the Democratic nominee for president. He and Hillary Clinton had what they called a secret meeting last night in Washington, DC. ... One of the topics they are rumored to have discussed is Hillary's $20 million campaign debt. Obama may help her cover some of that, but she's still going to be on the hook for most of it. Today, she outlined a broad-based plan for recouping that money. Her plan is to marry, and then divorce, Paul McCartney." --Jimmy Kimmel

"Barack Obama took time off this weekend from campaigning to spend time with his family. In fact, he said on Saturday night, he was going on a date with his wife. A date with his wife, Michelle. When Bill Clinton heard that, he said to Hillary, 'We need to stay away from these people. They're freaks!'" --Jay Leno

Classic Photos Recreated With Legos

An artist who goes by the name Balakov on Flickr has used Legos to recreate classic photographs. Here are three examples. See more here.

Raising the flag on Iwo Jima

V.J. Day Times Square
Tiananmen Square

Hillary Drops Out

"Hillary Clinton is ending her campaign, but really in the bigger sense it's sad because, think about it, there goes right down the drain the Clinton dream of a being a two-impeachment family." --David Letterman

"Hillary is taking it pretty well, I think. She actually said she's looking forward to spending more time with Chelsea, Bill, and Gina Gershon." --David Letterman

"There's a new Vanity Fair article coming out that insinuates, among other things, that he has been canoodling with actress Gina Gershon. Clinton lashed out at the reporter who wrote the story. I guess he's furious about this accusation, in particular, with Gina Gershon, because now he's gonna have to explain it to Megan Fox." --Jimmy Kimmel

"But, you know, people are now talking about the ticket, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Would that be a good ticket? Would you folks like that ticket? And I think this would be the first, if you think about it, first combination of an African American man and a white woman since, well, Michael Jackson." --David Letterman

"There's been a lot of speculation about John McCain's possible running mate. Experts say he wants someone who's not afraid to attack Barack Obama. That's who he's looking for, yeah. Which explains why McCain has decided to pick Hillary Clinton" --Conan O'Brien

"The good news: the whole voting process ended. The bad news: the 2012 Democratic primary starts on Thursday." --Jay Leno

The Importance of Voting

Voting was important to my father. In November of 2000 he was very ill and living in a nursing home in Manhattan. A worker at the home had helped him fill out an application for an absentee ballot. As of Election Day, he hadn’t received it, but he wanted to vote. I called my state senator asking what I could do. I ended up driving to the Bronx County Board of Elections, obtaining an absentee ballot and application, and driving to the nursing home, before helping my dad fill out the application and ballot. Then I drove back to the Bronx County Board of Elections to drop off them off.

By the way, my dad voted for George Bush, though I would have helped him just the same if he wanted to vote for Gore. It might seem like an awful lot of trouble to go to. After all, we lived in NEW YORK and it wasn’t like Bush had much of a prayer of winning the Empire State. But my dad felt, and I agree that it is both a civic responsibility and a privilege to vote. So my dad voted. Gore won New York, but Bush won Florida (after some controversy) and the presidency. I watched Bush being inaugurated as I dressed for my father’s wake.

The following November, I was once again exercising my right to vote. I bent over to sign the voter roll and saw my dad’s name above mine. Then I saw someone had signed his name. That’s my dad for you, not even being dead would keep him from voting. He didn’t even live in Chicago.

I think about someone using my Dad’s name to vote whenever I hear a Democrat complain about the idea of requiring a photo ID to prove your identity before you vote. The Supreme Court upheld an Indiana law requiring photo ID in April. I previously wrote about it here.

Democrats complain there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. I say why does there need to be evidence fraud is widespread to make it difficult. We require a government issued photo ID to fly, to enter many government buildings, or to simply buy alcohol or tobacco. I really have no idea how many registered voters do not have a photo ID, but I imagine it is a small number, probably a smaller number than the number of dead people voting.

As Fox News has reported: Dead Voters Still Showing Up on Election Records, Puzzling Officials. The story talks about a woman that discovered here deceased mother was recorded as having voted in Connecticut The story continues:

Journalism professor Marcel Dufresne, at the University of Connecticut, led a class investigation into dead voters and said his group of 11 students discovered 8,558 deceased people who were still registered on Connecticut’s voter rolls. They discovered more than 300 of them appeared somehow to have cast ballots after they died.

“We have one person who appeared to have voted 17 times since he died,” Dufresne said. Dufresne said there is no evidence of any election fraud, but the number of dead voters “shows the system is vulnerable and it shows that people who are clever and have a little cooperation in the town level, you could use this and get people to vote for people who died.”

Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz is adamant that “actually no dead people voted.”

“I want to be very clear about that,” she said, explaining that while votes were cast and counted in the names of the dead, “there was no voter fraud at all in the state of Connecticut.”

How could she possibly be sure? Well I agree the dead people didn’t actually vote themselves, at least not without help. The story continues:

In Washington State, Republican Dino Rossi ran for governor in 2004, and lost by only 133 votes. Officials confirmed that the names of 19 dead people somehow cast ballots. Rossi is running this year for governor and reflected on his experience in 2004.

“It was the closest governor’s race in U.S. history. After the fact we found a number of dead people voted. I don’t know how they voted — you have to talk to Shirley MacLaine about that,” Rossi said.

Much as my dad might have liked to continue voting from beyond the grave, I am not sure he would have approved of who he was voting for. Perhaps it would it would be best if we restricted voting to the living and required poll workers to check ID. Voting is too important not to do that.

If the NBA Eastern Division Playoffs Were Like The Race for the Democratic Party Nomination

From the New Republic.

A Sports Parable

A statement from Detroit Pistons general manager Joe Dumars:

I wanted to say a few words about the Michigan Solution. No, not that travesty of justice. I'm talking about a fair, common-sense resolution of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Some in the media are declaring the series over because the Boston Celtics have won four of the six games played so far. But I don’t understand why, with a series this close and hotly contested, anyone would want to shut it down before we play a seventh game and have all the results in. As anybody who follows the NBA knows, a seven-game series would be good for the league, and the added competition would make the eventual victor, whomever it might be, a stronger opponent against the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals.

Read the rest here.

Mr. Met Needs Your Help

In honor of the Draft Day and the Mets vastly improved play of late, here is more baseball related blogging. Home Run Derby is currently running a bracketed competition for the best baseball mascot. Number I seed Mr. Met is competing against Number 8 seed Homer the Brave. Mr. Met was introduced at Shea Stadium in 1964 and is believed to be the first baseball mascot to be portrayed by a live human. Homer was introduced in 1988 after the Braves were forced to drop their former mascot Chief Noc-A-Homa because of political correctness. But Homer is clearly a knock off of Mr. Met and cannot be allowed to win. So please vote here early and often.

Here is a video of Mr. Met in action.

By the way I voted and saw that Mr. Met was winning 99% to 1%. But don't let that stop you from voting. Crush Homer the Brave!!!

MLB Amateur Draft Starts Today At 2:00 pm Eastern

The Mets have the 18th, 22nd, and 33rd picks in today's draft. As the Mets pretty much depleted the upper echelons of their farm system acquiring Johan Santanna, we Mets fans are hoping that Omar Minaya will choose wisely.

Here is a draft preview from ESPN's Baseball Tonight. The first round of the Draft airs on ESPN 2.

George Will On the Colbert Report

Impact of Inflation

With perhaps the exception of those that regularly fly First or Business Class, the first reaction of a person reading an article titled “Airlines May Start Treating Passengers `Like Freight” might be “Start?”

I think most people who have flown have had the experience of being treated more like cargo than people. But what this article is talking about is an idea being floated by airlines to cut cost and raise revenue. Airlines have already cut meal services, and American Airlines is charging $15 for each checked bag, but this new idea is worse.

Imagine two scales at the airline ticket counter, one for your bags and one for you. The price of a ticket depends upon the weight of both.

That may not be so far-fetched.

``You listen to the airline CEOs, and nothing is beyond their imagination,'' said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group. ``They have already begun to think exotically. Nothing is not under the microscope.'' He declined to discuss what any individual airline might be contemplating, including charging passengers based on weight.

As a horizontally challenged American, I can tell you I really don’t like that idea. It’s not even the money so much as the idea of having to get on a scale at the airport. That, I think, is why it would never actually happen. It would risk offending far more people than just raising fares.

Also speaking as a horizontally challenged American, I must object to what I perceive to be a horrible conspiracy in the Ice Cream Industry. When I was a kid I remember Ice Cream being sold in half-gallon containers. At some point those containers shrunk, becoming 1.75 quarts. First I noticed that Edy’s containers had shrunk to 1.5 quarts. Now I see Breyers has done the same thing.

If this keeps up I might not even get charged extra to fly….

Searching For Life In The Solar System

Bi-Wingal Conspiracy Versus The Clintons

McCain Invites Obama to Visit Iraq

Last Sunday, I wrote about a group of veterans that were criticizing Barack Obama because he had failed to meet one on one with David Petraeus and because Obama had not visited Iraq in two and a half years. John McCain has now taken up this issue as well, at least the latter part. Here is the LA Times headline.

McCain challenges Obama to visit Iraq

Now you can’t always trust an LA Times headline, but this was actually seems to fit the story. McCain has invited Obama to accompany him on a trip to Iraq. Obama reportedly is planning a trip this summer, though not with McCain. Obama’s campaign called such a joint trip a “political stunt.”

Well it would be a political stunt, as well as a security nightmare, but it might have value beyond that. Having the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees touring Iraq together would send a message to world in general and Iraq in particular that the United States is united in support of out troops and committed to ensuring a stable Iraq. Unfortunately, while I am sure Obama supports our troops in a general way, I don’t think he is nearly as committed to a stable Iraq.

Jim Carrey Is The Walrus

YouTube Terrorism?

Senator Joe Lieberman is trying to get Google, the parent company of YouTube, to take down videos he believes were posted by Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda sympathizers. As I understand it, Google has taken down approximately 80 videos identified by Lieberman which the company found violated their community guidelines, but have left up others, including one video which purportedly shows an American soldier being killed by sniper fire. This video shows Senator Lieberman being interviewed by Fox News about the videos.



I agree that the proper adjective to describe the videos is disgusting. I think Senator Lieberman should be applauded bringing the videos to the attention of both Google and the American people. But near the end of the video, Senator Lieberman brings up the possibility of legislation if Google fails to take down the video. Disgusting as those videos may be, and regardless of whether such videos might attract those sympathetic to Islamic terror organizations, I do not believe government censorship is the answer. Ultimately it won’t work, and it doesn’t seem right that the United States should try to join China in censoring the Internet.

Young Hillary Clinton

This is hillarious.

Vice-Presidential Humor

"Of course, a lot of people now are starting to talk about who Barack Obama will choose as his running mate. That's now what everyone's discussing. This is the latest, folks, true story. Time magazine says that former President Bill Clinton is pushing very hard for Barack Obama to choose Hillary as his vice president. Yeah. Yeah, Bill says Hillary would be a great vice president, or a great ambassador to any country that's far, far away." --Conan O'Brien

"I guess McCain is scheduled to meet with three possible vice presidential nominees this weekend at his home. The candidates are very excited to go. They say the only downside -- they hate it when he keeps pushing that bowl of ribbon candy on them." --Jay Leno

"The only other uncomfortable thing about McCain's household is plastic on the furniture." --Jay Leno

"Earlier this week, Vice President Dick Cheney gave the commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy. He was given a 19-gun salute. And two Coast Guard members were slightly injured when Cheney returned fire." --Jay Leno

No Such Thing As Media Bias. Riiiiiight.

As I have written before, I support the legalization of same sex marriage. I just don’t understand how allowing two men or two women to marry would in any way undermine a heterosexual couple’s marriage. My favorite anti-gay marriage argument is that gay men are too promiscuous to be allowed to marry. So the best way to reduce promiscuity is to prevent gay men from entering a legally recognized monogamous relationship?

While I would happily vote for a law to legalize same-sex marriage, I object to judges that feel free to substitute their personal beliefs (even when I share those beliefs) for the law. That is something a majority of the California Supreme Court did recently in overturning California’s recent voter enacted ban on same sex marriage.

Not surprisingly, this decision has led to a backlash as opponents seek to amend the California Constitution to overturn this decision. Here is where that unbiased reporting comes in. The La Times and KTLA polled registered voters in California about support for this Constitutional Amendment. The Times online addition has this headline:

Times Poll: Californians narrowly reject gay marriage

The picture at right is from the print edition. Reading the article, it is not until the sixth paragraph that the Times gives the actual poll numbers. It seems California registered voters support the Constitutional Amendment by a mere 19% (54-35%). That’s a “narrow” and “slim” 19%. In most elections 19% is a landslide, but that must only be when the 19% is “wide” and “chubby.”

If the LA Times wants to argue on its editorial page that voters should reject the amendment they have every right, in fact I encourage them to do so. But misrepresenting polling results in the way they did is not journalism. It makes me wonder how the Times framed the polling questions in the first place. It might well be support for the amendment is actually higher.

But at least there is no liberal bias in the media.

Try And Watch This Without Getting Misty Eyed

Obama Will Meet With Foreign Dictators But Not Vets Or Their Commander

Barack Obama has said that he will meet, without preconditions, with leaders like Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il. Charles Krauthammer most recent column is one of the most compelling and well reasoned criticisms of this policy I have read. Like the Michelle Malkin column I discussed the other day, Krauthammer talks about Obama’s gaffes, arguing that one gaffe was so bad he was stuck with it and actually turned into a policy.

Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."

After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.

Should the president ever meet with enemies? Sometimes, but only after minimal American objectives -- i.e. preconditions -- have been met. The Shanghai communique was largely written long before Richard Nixon ever touched down in China. Yet Obama thinks Nixon to China confirms the wisdom of his willingness to undertake a worldwide freshman-year tyrants tour.

Most of the time you don't negotiate with enemy leaders because there is nothing to negotiate. Does Obama imagine that North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela are insufficiently informed about American requirements for improved relations?

But what is the problem with talking?

A meeting with Ahmadinejad would not just strengthen and vindicate him at home, it would instantly and powerfully ease the mullahs' isolation, inviting other world leaders to follow. And with that would come a flood of commercial contracts, oil deals, diplomatic agreements -- undermining precisely the very sanctions and isolation that Obama says he would employ against Iran.

As every seasoned diplomat knows, the danger of a summit is that it creates enormous pressure for results. And results require mutual concessions. That is why conditions and concessions are worked out in advance, not on the scene.

What concessions does Obama imagine Ahmadinejad will make to him on Iran's nuclear program? And what new concessions will Obama offer? To abandon Lebanon? To recognize Hamas? Or perhaps to squeeze Israel?

Chalk it up to inexperience, naiveté, or political calculation, but Obama’s policy is a mistake. But how do you explain Obama’s failure thus far to meet one on one with General David Petraeus? Also, Obama hasn’t been to Iraq to see things for himself in more than two years. On April 8, a group of more than a dozen Illinois veterans went to Obama’s office and requested a meeting. Though Obama was in the office he refused to meet with these veterans who had not only served their country in Iraq, but who were his constituents.

Vets For Freedom produced this ad.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Yesterday, I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it though I think it wasn’t quite as good as the earlier films.

This film was certainly much much better than the Star Wars sequels (well technically prequels). I think the credit for that goes largely to Steven Spielberg. I read that Spielberg insisted on using stuntmen instead of CGI, and CGI effects were used only when absolutely necessary. I think the film is much better off for it.

For the most part I enjoyed the Star Wars prequels. I think each of them improved on the previous one, not coincidently because each successive film had less Jar Jar Binks. But none approached the quality of the original trilogy. I think they suffered in part because of George Lucas’s fascination with digital effects and the emphasis of those effects over the story. While I originally thought the idea of revisiting the original trilogy and improving the special effects was a good one, watching those films now many of those new effects seem superfluous and distracting.

But the Indiana Jones film does not suffer from these problems at all. It is a very good film in it’s own right. Also, Indiana Jones is now clearly a Republican. When asked for his last words by the villain, he replies “I like Ike.”

That’s something else I liked about the movie. While filmed in brilliant color, it was one of the more black and white films of recent memory. Aside from a nod to McCarthyism, the Americans were clearly the good guys and the Soviets were clearly the bad guys. Not that every film has to be like that, but it would be nice to see Hollywood produce a few more patriotic action films. I think they would do well at the box office.

In the meantime here are two interesting articles I found about Indiana Jones I would recommend.

10 Awesome Indiana Jones Facts

Indiana Jones 10 Finest Moments

Who Is Battlestar Galactica's Final Cylon?

As I have discussed before, I am a big fan of the SciFi Channel’s Battlestar Galactica. The show details the trials and tribulations of the last of humanity fleeing genocide perpetrated by a race of self aware machines, 12 of which look human. 11 of the human models are known (at least to viewers), the 12th has yet to be revealed. Now a Costa Rica-based betting site BetCRIS.com recently placed odds and is accepting bets as to the identity of the final Cylon. Read more about it here.

Here are the posted odds
· Aaron Kelly: 5-4
· Diana "Hardball" Seelix: 33-20
· Tom Zarek: 23-20
· Anastasia Dualla: 4-5
· Felix Gaeta: 3-2
· Brendan "Hot Dog" Costanza: 2-1
· Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson: 9-4
· The field (any other character): 2-7

When Bodybuilding and Steroids Go Too Far

The blog Life in the Fast Lane has an interesting (and somewhat grotesque) article entitled When Bodybuilding and Steroids Go Too Far. The article discusses the dangers of steroids and includes photographs of bodybuilders (both male and female) that have simply gone too far. The picture at the left is just one example.

How Could Anyone Think Of Voting For Hillary?

I know as a loyal Republican I should want Hillary Clinton to stay in this race as long as possible, but I honestly don’t know how anyone could still be supporting her.

In case you haven’t heard, earlier today while speaking to the editorial board of Argus Leader Hillary Clinton in part justified staying in the race because “[w]e all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.” Read all about it here.

Everyone makes mistakes, saying something that we later realized came out the wrong way. But Hillary Clinton must have walked into that editorial board meeting prepped with all kinds of talking points. Are we supposed to believe her campaign didn’t expect to be asked, with Obama’s victory all but certain, why she was still in the race? So her statement was almost certainly a planned response. How stupid are her advisors?

For better or worse, Hillary Clinton’s message has been that she is more electable than Barack Obama. More subtly her message is that a lot of working class white democrats will not vote for a black man. To argue that she should stay in the race just in case Obama is assassinated is at best colossally stupid and at worse a suggestion.

I really don’t envy my former colleagues at the Huffington Post. Last week, when it was suggested Obama should choose Hillary as his running mate, I had to delete hundreds of comments along the lines of “if he does that, he better hire a food taster.” Maybe they were right.

Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of herself. Watch the video below.

Best One Liner Ever

Anyone Want To Buy A Jet Bike?

Anybody want a jet powered bicycle? You can put in a bid on eBay if you like (current bid $900.). Wired has a profile of creator Bob Maddox. Maddox, a sky diver, first decided to strap a pulse jet engine to his back to become a human missile, and then thought it might be safe to put the jet engine on a bicycle. You can watch video of Maddox riding his jet bike here. (Sorry it wouldn’t let me embed). With the price of gas as it is, I wonder about the mileage, though according to the article "It'll run on propane, gas, kerosene, absolutely anything except cryogenic fuel," he says. "They'd run on peanut oil if you want." What I bet you can’t do however, is register it with the DMV.

My Next TV (I Wish)

My brother is in the market for an HDTV and I am going to reccommend he get this one. Then I am moving in with him. Unfortunately. Samsung's new Quad HDTV which features 4X the resolution of a standard HDTV (3820x2160 pixels) is not yet for sale. If it was on sale it would most likely cost well over $40,000. So if I win the lottery maybe I will buy my brother one for his birthday. The good news is that Sang Soo Kim, executive vice president of the LCD Technology Center at Samsung Electronics, called it the “optimal display for future TVs.” Read more about it here.

Hillary's New Plan

"But don't discount this Hillary, because she's nothing if not shrewd. Now she has another back-up plan to get to the White House. She's going to marry John McCain." --David Letterman

"And I tell you, Hillary knows how to appeal to those voters. Like, she promised the people of Kentucky, if elected president, she would lower the price of pay-per-view wrestling fifty percent." --Jay Leno

"On Sunday, Hillary Clinton attended a church service at a church, a Methodist church in Bowling Green. She just went to the church there. It just so happens the minister gave a 60-minute sermon on adultery. Yeah, she had to sit through a 60-minute sermon. And here's the really embarrassing part. Right after the minister finished, Bill stood up and gave a 20-minute rebuttal" --Jay Leno

"Hillary Clinton is expected to win in Kentucky. Barack Obama is expected to win in Oregon. And John McCain is expected to win at bingo. So everybody wins." --Conan O'Brien

Obama: Perpetual Gaffe Machine?

Michelle Malkin’s column today is called Barack Gaffes; The Obama machine. Michelle premise is that while one gaffe will taint a Republican for life (as examples she gives Dan Quayle’s potato and the elder George Bush’s encounter with a supermarket scanner), Barack Obama (who she calls a “perpetual gaffe machine”) gets a free ride from the media.3

Here are some of the gaffes she notes.

Last May, he claimed that tornadoes in Kansas killed a whopping 10,000 people: “In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died — an entire town destroyed.” The actual death toll: 12.

Earlier this month in Oregon, he redrew the map of the United States: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.”

Explaining last week why he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky, Obama again botched basic geography: “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.” On what map is Arkansas closer to Kentucky than Illinois?

Earlier this month in Cape Girardeau, Mo., Obama showed off his knowledge of the war in Afghanistan by homing in on a lack of translators: “We only have a certain number of them, and if they are all in Iraq, then it’s harder for us to use them in Afghanistan.” The real reason it’s “harder for us to use them” in Afghanistan: Iraqis speak Arabic or Kurdish. The Afghanis speak Pashto, Farsi, or other non-Arabic languages.

And in perhaps the most seriously troubling set of gaffes of them all, Obama told a Portland crowd over the weekend that Iran doesn’t “pose a serious threat to us” — cluelessly arguing that “tiny countries” with small defense budgets can’t do us harm — and then promptly flip-flopped the next day, claiming, “I’ve made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave.”

There are more in her column.

I don’t think there is a media conspiracy to cover up Obama’s gaffes and promote those of Republicans. But I do think stories that support the conventional wisdom about a politician or party get more coverage. Even before Quayle thought potato should be spelled with an “e” at the end, he was seen as someone chosen to be VP because of his good looks not his intelligence. It was easy to look at Bush, who had a definite patrician bearing and who after serving as vice-president for 8 years before becoming president, as being out of touch with the common man. It was pretty likely that he hadn’t done his own grocery shopping since some time in the 1970’s. So Bush being unfamiliar with supermarket scanners re-enforced this pre-existing view.

Barack Obama on the other hand is without question a brilliant man. After all, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard law School and was President of the law Review. The conventional wisdom about Obama is that he is an elitist. Gaffes for which George W. Bush would be excoriated are not given the same attention when made by Obama.

Obama's Rally

"It was quite a weekend, politically. Yesterday, an estimated 75,000 people attended a Barack Obama rally on the banks of the the Willamette River. ... And if you believe the media, listen to this. After the rally, Barack Obama fed them all with just five loaves of bread and two fish. Amazing!" --Jay Leno

"Earlier today, Barack Obama gave a speech in South Dakota. At the end of the speech, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Yeah, very cool. Obama got the standing ovation not for his speech, but for being the first black person in South Dakota." --Conan O'Brien.

"Well, New York Daily News says that Barack Obama's biggest problem now is how to get rid of Hillary Clinton gently. To which Bill Clinton said, 'Hey, good luck with that! Tell me how that's going.'"

"The oldest serving member of Congress, former Klan member, Senator Robert Byrd, has endorsed Barack Obama for president. That's got to make Hillary feel good, huh? Even the Klan guy is going, 'I'm gonna go with the black guy.'" --Jay Leno

Obama: Iran Is Not A Threat

In the following video, Barack Obama says “[s]trong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries.” Fair enough. But then he goes on to say that countries like Iran, because they are small and spend less on their militaries than we do, are not a threat.

As Jennifer Rubin writes for Commentary:

Obama apparently believes that Iran and other rogues states (he lists Iran, Cuba and Venezuela) “don’t pose a serious threat to the U.S.” Iran, specifically, he tells us spends so little on defense relative to us that if Iran “tried to pose a serious threat to us they wouldn’t . . . they wouldn’t stand a chance.”

So, taken literally, he seems not much concerned about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorist organizations, its commitment to eradicate Israel, its current actions in supplying weapons that have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, and its role in eroding Lebanon’s sovereignty through its client Hezbollah.

And then there is is unbridled faith in diplomacy, unaffected by the lessons of history. Was it presidential visits with the Soviet Union that brought down the Berlin Wall? Or was it the 40 year history of bipartisan military deterrence, the willingness of Ronald Reagan to walk away from Reykjavik summit, the resulting bankruptcy of the Soviet Empire, the support of dissidents and freedom fighters in the war against tyranny, and the willingness to identify Communism as a center of evil in the late 20th century?

You can understand why every attempt by John McCain to discuss global threats is labeled “fear-mongering” by Obama. In his world this is all a fantasy and we are not at risk. All perfectly logical . . . if you divorce yourself from reality.

Here is the video.




Of course Obama's speech may cause other problems as well.

Obama’s “Size Matters” Foreign Policy Creates Jitters In Antarctica

Ok, that's a parody. Too bad Obama's speech wasn't.

The Problem With Boston Legal

I kind of have this love hate thing with David Kelly legal dramas such as Boston Legal. I find them very entertaining, but annoying and frustrating at the same time. As a lawyer, I suppose it’s hard to have that willing suspension of disbelief when so many things that happen are unrealistic or just flat out wrong. Of course I am sure that’s true for police officer’s with cop shows, theoretical physicists with science fiction and mathematicians with Numb3rs.

Some of the issues I have are true of almost all legal dramas. For instance, cases do not walk into law offices in the morning and go to trial in the afternoon. In real life, criminal cases take months and civil cases take years to go to trial. The only show that got this mostly right was a show called Murder One which took an entire season to deal with a single high profile criminal case. Still, I understand cases must be time condensed for dramatic purposes. But David Kelly, who is himself a lawyer, will do things in his show that clearly violate legal rules. For instance, on The Practice, they decided to make the receptionist a partner in the firm. When told she was being made a partner, Lisa Gay Hamilton’s character noted that legally only attorneys can be partners in a law firm. Then the issue was ignored.

Boston Legal is one of the worst examples. On last week’s show, a woman that wanted to become a Catholic priest sued the Church for sexual discrimination. While the First Amendment came up in conversation, the fact that Supreme Court precedent is clear that neither the government nor a court may enquire into the reasonableness of a religious belief was not addressed. The plaintiff, in a state court, sought to strip the Church’s tax exempt status, though a state court would have no jurisdiction over federal tax law. In an earlier episode, they got a state court injunction to stop a nuclear power plant from being built, though again a state court would have no jurisdiction. The other case last week involved an argument that the law against prostitution is unconstitutional. The argument boiled down to its still going to happen, why not regulate and tax it, after all we need money for the war. Support our troops, legalize prostitution!!!

I understand that it’s only a TV show. But I think shows like this have a negative effect on the audience. In many of these cases, the lawyers do not make legal arguments at all. Rather they make impassioned arguments that we should have a different public policy. I often agree with the arguments. I think prostitution should be legal. While the Catholic Church is free to have whatever rules it wants, I think that it would be well served by opening the priesthood to women. My problem isn’t with the arguments they make. The problem is that by making these types of arguments to a judge week after week. It reinforces the idea in the public consciousness that it is appropriate for a judge to substitute their judgment for that of the people as a whole. It is the proper role of a judge to interpret and follow the law, not to make up the law to suit their personal preferences.

There are plenty of laws I disagree with, but my disagreement does not make those laws unconstitutional. So I get frustrated watching. But I watch because Denny Crane and Alan Shore are funny.

John McCain on SNL Weekend Update

Obama In The Spotlight

"Barack Obama is in the spotlight, and he is dealing with a little, well, a small controversy. Not a big controversy, but a small controversy. This is the latest. Last night, Barack Obama had to apologize for calling a reporter 'sweetie.' Yeah, meanwhile, Bill Clinton apologized for calling a reporter when her husband was home." --Conan O'Brien

"Hillary Clinton, I mean, God bless her, and it looks like now there is no possible way she can win the nomination, so she's not dropping out. ... Her campaign is 21 million dollars in debt. $21 million in debt. So her campaign is the world's most expensive fantasy camp. ... She is counting on her stimulus check to keep her going." --David Letterman

Trailer for Dollhouse

This is a trailer for a new series by Joss Whedon the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, starring Elisza Dushku. Fox has picked it up to be a midseason replacement.

Hey Jude

Beatles The Next Generation

Lazy Sunday

I just saw Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and I thought it was very good. So here courtesy of SNL is lazy Sunday.

Sympathy For The Devil

Or as the liberals call him, Karl Rove.

California and Same Sex Marriage

Ellen DeGeneres and her partner Portia de Rossi have announced that they are going to be married. They have this opportunity thanks to the California Supreme Court’s In Re Marriage Cases decision which found that California’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the California Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

Let me first congratulate Ellen and Portia on their upcoming wedding and wish them a long and happy marriage. That said, I strongly disagree with the California Supreme Court, even though as a political matter I am in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage.

One of the greatest responsibilities of our courts is to protect individual liberties from the tyranny of the majority. But those rights must first be protected by the constitution (or other higher law). The 4-judge majority in this case found a basic civil right to same-sex marriage simply because they wanted to find it, not because that right was present in the text or envisioned by those that wrote and/or ratified it.

In this case, the court ruled that California’s Equal Protection Clause requires “Strict Scrutiny” when dealing with discrimination based on sexual orientation. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first classification other than race or national origin to warrant strict scrutiny (though it is also used when a fundamental constitutional right is infringed). Gender discrimination only warrants “intermediate scrutiny.” Most everything else is subject to a rational basis test.

Other courts have construed equal protection clauses to require a rational basis for prohibiting same-sex marriages. That means that in order for the law to be found constitutional, the government has to offer up a legal (as in not illegal) reason for the discrimination that a reasonable person might feel justified the law. Personally, I don’t find any of the reasons offered as justifications for the law to be persuasive. I really don’t see how allowing same-sex unions is going to undermine the marriages of heterosexuals. But that is not the standard. The question is whether no reasonable person could believe it.

In footnote 52 of the majority opinion is this quote. “[O]ur nation’s culture has considered [those types of relationships] inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry.” In this quote, the court is explaining why the new right does not extend to polygamy or adult incest. But that quote would be equally true if it was talking about same-sex marriage. Leave incest out of it because I think there are other reasons besides tradition to bar incest, adult or otherwise. But here’s the thing. I can’t think of a single justification for banning polygamy that couldn’t also be applied to justify a ban on same-sex marriage. If these 4 judges were intellectually honest they would admit as much.

I don’t mean to pick on polygamy. So long as everyone involved is an adult I have no problem with it. Big Love is one of my favorite shows. I am simply trying to point out how this decision is rooted in the values of those judges and not in the constitution itself.

Again I approve of the result, if not the method. I think that the gay rights movement should focus on getting the same rights as married couples through civil union laws (which they already had in California) and worry about calling it marriage down the road when it won’t freak out quite so many people. Doing it through the courts instead of the ballot or the legislature has led to a backlash with many states passing constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage.

But that backlash has a silver lining (at least for Republicans). This will help John McCain, especially if there is a constitutional amendment to overturn this decision on the November ballot. If this measure brings out social conservatives who might not otherwise be inclined to vote it is possible (but still not likely) that California could be in play in November. Obama could not win if he lost California. Obama by the way is officially opposed to same-sex marriage, favoring instead civil unions. But I bet he comes out against a constitutional amendment enshrining his position.

Damn, who ever would have thought I would be to the left of Barack Obama?

The Democrat Rules

"Howard Dean is on the show tonight. Anybody here from Florida or Michigan? All right. You can't be seated. You'll have to leave." --Jay Leno

"Although, Hillary Clinton was quick to point out Dennis Kucinich still has not endorsed anyone yet. Still on the fence there. I don't want to say Hillary is doing badly in the delegate count, but her numbers are so low, her Secret Service code name is now NBC." --Jay Leno

"Senator John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama for president of the United States. Wow! Wow. With that endorsement, I believe the Obama camp has won the support of its first white male." --Stephen Colbert

"Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia primary with nearly 70% of the vote. That's a lot. Hillary would've gotten even more votes from the West Virginians, but on the way to the polls, some of their houses got a flat tire." --Conan O'Brien

"You can tell Hillary was kind of pandering to voters in West Virginia. Like today, she promised if elected, she would impose a heavy tax on anybody with teeth." --Jay Leno

The Campaigns the Candidates Wish They Could Run

Cracked.com has a piece called The Campaigns the Candidates Wish They Could Run. It was basically a contest to create/Photoshop the funniest fake campaign ad. Here are three of my favorites.

A Remake of Chico & the Man?

"Have you heard about this? This is kind of an interesting idea. In a move they say could revolutionize politics, John McCain and Barack Obama said they might campaign together, go out together. Yeah, they're going to bill themselves as 'Ebony and History.' No, but they would go out and they would debate each other on the road. You got the older, grumpy white guy, and you got the young, smooth-talking black guy. Doesn't that sound like the premise for the worst sitcom of all time? Coming to NBC, it's 'Grandpa and the Brother!'" --Jay Leno

"How about this economy, ladies and gentlemen? Doesn't it stink? And we're really starting to notice it, because in the beginning it was sort of like, okay, a little bit here. But we are really starting to notice the effects of a sour economy in this country. Over at St. Patrick's Cathedral, they're watering down the holy water. Honest to God. That's right. It's only 60% holy now." --David Letterman

"Here's the thing that troubles me. I mean, win, lose or draw, at the end of the day, the bottom line, cut to the chase, it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money to elect a president, don't you think? Really it's an awful lot of money. Hillary Clinton's campaign right now, this very minute, is $20 million in debt. Now, when she gets that 3 a.m. call, it's from a collection agency." --David Letterman

"I don't know if Barack Obama's getting tired or what, but in a recent speech, Barack Obama made a mistake. He said he had visited all 57 states. Yeah, that's what he said. Yeah, after hearing this, President Bush said, 'Haha, he forgot Alaska and Hawaii!'" --Conan O'Brien

"Hillary Clinton, big blowout in West Virginia's primary tonight. Yeah, she's the big winner in West Virginia. Which means that one day, she could be president of West Virginia." -Jay Leno

Stay Cool On Global Warming

Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish statistician and author of the book Cool It!: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. He believes that global warming is real but that the rhetoric of climate change is overwrought and the policies advanced to combat it are ineffective and counterproductive. Lomborg’s book takes a cold, hard look at the empirical facts, and weighs the costs and benefits of global warming and the policy solutions advanced to restrain it. He recently gave an interview to NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. The article is entitled Don’t Freak Out: Bjørn Lomborg speaks climate sense to nonsense.

Lomborg was asked about John McCain’s recent speech on climate change.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What did you think of John McCain’s speech on climate change Monday?

Bjørn Lomborg: McCain strikes some of the right notes — he says he recognizes the need for clean, affordable alternatives to fossil fuels; he acknowledges that climate change is real (although there are very few leaders these days who don’t) and he says that we need to deal with the central facts.

But then he doesn’t stay focused on the central facts himself, and ends up reaching some conclusions that are not so sound: he pushes for a cap-and-trade scheme which will do very little good while imposing very high costs. In his speech notes, McCain planned to call for punitive tariffs on China and India, but he omitted that from his delivered speech: hopefully because he realized that protectionism for green reasons can be just as harmful as protectionism for plain old economic reasons.

Lopez: What’s the most disappointing part of his approach?

Lomborg: Instead of looking at the best answers to this problem, McCain is embracing those that are talked about the most.

Lopez than asks about the central idea of a cap-and-trade system.

Lopez: His “free-market” talk is good stuff though, isn’t it? I know I like free markets.

Lomborg: To some, a cap-and-trade system might sound like a neat approach where the market sorts everything out. But in fact, in some ways it is worse than a tax. With a tax, the costs are obvious. With a cap-and-trade system, the costs are hidden and shifted around. For that reason, many politicians tend to like it. But that is dangerous. It’s misleading not to recognize that the costs of cap-and-trade — financially and in terms of jobs, household consumption, and growth — will be significant. Some big businesses in privileged positions could make a fortune from exploiting this rather rigged market — but their gain is no reason to support the system.

For more criticism of a cap-and-trade system read Just Say No to Climate-Tax Hikes by Phil Kerpen. But in the meantime back to Lomborg.

Lopez: Is there anything worthwhile about Kyoto?

Lomborg: Kyoto burned a lot of political capital to create a response to climate change that costs a fortune but achieves very little.

The climate models show that the Kyoto protocol would have postponed the effects of global warming by seven days by the end of the century. Even if the U.S. and Australia had signed on and everyone stuck to Kyoto for this entire century, we would postpone the effects of global warming by only five years — at a cost of $180 billion each year.

Lopez: What could the planet do instead of Kyoto?

Lomborg: We need to make carbon-emissions cuts much easier. The typical cost of cutting a ton of CO2 is about $20 right now — but we know that the damage from a ton of carbon in the atmosphere is about $2. We need to reduce the cost of cutting emissions from $20 to somewhere nearer $2.

We can achieve this by spending dramatically more researching and developing low-carbon energy. Ideally, every nation should commit to spending 0.05 percent of its gross domestic production exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies — be they wind, wave, or solar power — or capturing CO2 emissions from power plants. This spending could add up to about $25 billion a year, but it would still be seven times cheaper than the Kyoto protocol, yet increase global research and development tenfold. All nations would be involved, but the richer ones would pay the larger share.

Today, solar panels are ten times more inefficient than the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many “green” approaches, right now, do little more than make rich people feel like they are helping the planet.

We can’t solve climate change by just forcing more inefficient solar panels onto people’s rooftops. The solution is to dramatically increase R&D so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050 — we would have solved global warming then, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn’t be the preserve of rich Westerners.

Here is the problem with Lomborg’s approach. The message of climate change alarmists such as Al Gore has been so ingrained in the public consciousness that to argue against the alarm is to be seen as unintelligent, eccentric, or lying for some nefarious purpose (such as being in thrall to “Big Oil”). I disagree with John McCain on a great many issues, climate change included. I am not sure if his position is what he truly believes or is simply one taken because he can’t afford NOT to have a plan to combat climate change.

Too often public fear leads politicians to do something about a problem in the short-term that makes it worse in the long-term. Expensive measures might make us feel better about ourselves, but they will do little to help. They will, however, hurt our economy, make us less wealthy in the future and thus less able to afford things that WILL help.

Ronald Reagan on "I've Got a Secret" (1955)

This video is from a special on gameshows hosted by Wiliam Shatner. Gary Moore is on to remember I've Got A Secret. Starting at the 4:56 mark, they show clips of Ronald Reagan. Reagan's secret was that whenever a panelist said "umm" he would get up, walk off, and then they would start over. The idea was to show the difference between working in the movies with retakes and live television.

Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Historic 2018Blockbuster2019 Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Spiderman, Iron Man, & The Hulk

Again, Bush Didn't Lie

Undoubtedly one of the reasons for President Bush’s low approval rating is the often repeated charge that “Bush lied and people died.” As I have written before, while mistakes were certainly made, I do not believe Bush lied.

On NRO this morning, Michael Barone looks at a new book by Douglas Feith, the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon from 2001 to 2005. It is entitled War and Decision. Barone writes:

The picture Feith paints is at considerable variance from the narratives with which we’ve become familiar.

One such narrative is, “Bush lied; people died.” The claim is that “neocons,” including Feith, politicized intelligence to show that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction. Not so, as the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Silberman-Robb Commission have concluded already. Every intelligence agency believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, and the post-invasion Duelfer report concluded that he maintained the capability to produce them on short notice. There was abundant evidence of contacts between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Given Saddam’s hostility to the United States and his stonewalling of the United Nations, American leaders had every reason to believe he posed a grave threat. Removing him removed that threat.

The bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission while finding he Intelligence Community was "dead wrong" in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction did not find even a single case of improper pressure on intelligence analysts to change or "cook" intelligence in order to support political positions.

Barone relates the following criticism of Bush.

Unfortunately — and here Feith is critical of his ultimate boss, George W. Bush — the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren’t found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.

Not even I will believe that Bush’s only mistake on Iraq was issue framing. But I do agree that even if Saddam had no WMD stockpiles, we are safer with him gone.

Bush Reaches Out To Gay Community

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Meet Cindy McCain

Katherine Jean Lopez on NRO has an interview with potential First Lady Cindy McCain. In the interview she talks about what its like to be the mother of two sons in the military, her daughter’s Meghan campaign blog, and the unexpected adoption of her daughter Bridget from Mother Theresa’s Calcutta orphanage.

You know, she chose me, I’m convinced. She was only ten weeks old but she captured my heart. As you know, she had a very severe cleft palate and she had a number of other little problems along with another little baby. hen I realized, when the nuns prevailed upon me and said: You know these babies need help you could help them, all of a sudden a light bulb kind of went off in my head and it
was like: “Yeah you know I can help them.” I’m in a situation where I can get some help for these kids. It was just a matter of really responding to the call and then of course realizing on the flight home that I just couldn’t give her up. I didn’t go there with any intention of adopting or adding to our family in any way, and as luck and God would have it she is our lovely daughter to this day. And even though it was a surprise to my husband, he loves her just the way I do, and she adds such a special dimension to our family.

Read the entire interview here.

James Mullaney on The New Destroyer: Dead Reckoning

I have been reading the Destroyer Series since I was a kid. The series which was created by Warren Murphy and Dick Sapir in the 1960's follows the adventures of Remo Williams an assassin working for a super secret government agency known as C.U.R.E . I can understand how that synopsis might not seem attractive to a lot of people, but what I truly love about them is how satirical the books are. The best of them are truly funny. Sometimes the books are truly inspired as when a retiring president and first lady steal white house furniture on the way out of the White House (a story written, incidentally, months before Bill and Hillary actually did that).

The books have had various ghost writers over the years and at times certain writers have written some pretty bad books. One of the best ghost writers was Jim Mullaney. He stopped writing the books because the then publisher refused to pay him what he was worth, but Warren Murphy has changed publishers and teamed up with Mullaney to write the New Destroyer series in a return to the old style. Here then is a Jim Mullaney audio interview with NR’s John J. Miller.

James Mullaney on The New Destroyer: Dead Reckoning

Congratulations Jenna Bush and Henry Hager

From all reports the wedding was a beautiful affair. It’s a shame that some people decided to use the wedding as an occasion to bash President Bush. I on the other hand think Bush deserves credit for how the wedding was handled. Jenna’s wedding, while not exactly a secret, was an intensely private affair. Tricia Nixon’s Rose Garden wedding, was in contrast televised live.

Had they wanted it, Jenna’s wedding would have received tremendous positive publicity, not just this weekend, but over the past few weeks and months as the wedding was planned. President Bush currently has one of the lowest approval ratings in history. There is no question that positive wedding publicity would have rubbed off on Bush’s approval rating. But it was more important to President Bush to respect Jenna’s privacy. I think that says things about his character, no matter what some on the left might think and say.