To clarify: the title is excerpted from Act 1 of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost. The full quote goes:
"Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile;
So ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes."
It's a warning against spending too much of your life in scholarly pursuits.
Guantanamo is still open, but there are no longer "enemy combatants" there (Perhaps the name of the camp can be changed next?). The old campaign snicker that a naïve McCain really believed that a then-stronger economy is "fundamentally sound" is now the new Obama gospel about a far weaker one. There are to be no more earmarks in spite of 8,000-plus new ones. A $3.6 trillion-dollar budget is proof of commitment to financial responsibility; the remedy of Bush’s borrowing profligacy is to increase the deficit from $500 billion to $1.7 trillion. Bush’s signing statements bad; Obama’s signing statements good. An end to lobbyists in an administration ensure there are over ten; the highest ethical standards mean the nominations of Daschle, Richardson, etc. The changing meaning of words really does trump memory and reality itself.
What hurts is the blatant contempt these clowns in Washington have for the American people and the fact that they are getting away with it. As Bob Dole used to say, "where is the outrage?"
Dramatic advances in public attitudes are sweeping Iraq, with declining violence, rising economic well-being and improved services lifting optimism, fueling confidence in public institutions and bolstering support for democracy.
The gains in the latest ABC News/BBC/NHK poll represent a stunning reversal of the spiral of despair caused by Iraq's sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007. The sweeping rebound, extending initial improvements first seen a year ago, marks no less than the opportunity for a new future for Iraq and its people.
At least ABC has the decency to note in passing that these dramatic improvements date from the time when the Good President was still in office. Of course, they waited until Obama was safely elected to report on them.
This is not to say that violence has ceased. Just three weeks ago my nephew was in a convoy [BBC reported that it was a combat mission, but it was just a "meet and greet" with local officials] that was ambushed. Three of his men and an interpreter were killed. They rounded up three of the attackers, turned them over to Iraqi authorities, and a local judge released them back onto the street.
The NHS is to advertise free operations to reverse female circumcisions, with experts warning that each year more than 500 British girls have their genitals mutilated.
Despite having been outlawed in 1985, female circumcision is still practised in British African communities, in some cases on girls as young as 5. Police have been unable to bring a single prosecution even though they suspect that community elders are being flown from the Horn of Africa to carry out the procedures.
Ron Silver was one of the good guys -- bright, talented, well-informed and vitally concerned about this nation and its people. He was a good guy (albeit misguided) back when he was a flaming liberal, and he was a good guy when he finally woke up and realized what a miserable con liberalism was. His example should serve as a caution against demonizing those who disagree with us.
Lileks cuts loose on the cheap moralistic posturing of lefties and in the process demolishes Amitai Etzioni [nee Werner Falk] one of the most pretentious of the communitarian theorists, exposing the fascist core of his social agenda. Etzioni's program seems to boil down to:
What’s the point of freedom if people waste it on themselves?
Nobody does this sort of thing better than Lileks. Read it here.
Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiew suggests that Obama's budget proposal reveals his and his advisors' deepest beliefs regarding the economy [here].
1. They are economic optimists and expect their policies to work over the course of the next few years.
2. They like to spend. Rather than reining in expensive entitlement programs they are expanding them and creating new ones.
3. They are deficit doves and plan to continue deficit spending long after the current crisis is resolved.
All of these are disturbing to conservatives, but for me the most problematic is this:
4. They are serious about climate change and not just because of environmental concerns. They see a massive cap and trade system as a major source of government revenue in the future. In a very real sense environmental reform will be a huge tax increase on the American people, but also by making the government dependent on ever more stringent environmental restrictions they will guarantee not only the permanence of their system but its future expansion. And this comes even as the the scientific consensus upon which environmental reform is based starts to crumble.
Writing in the Telegraph Christopher Booker notes that the political determination to adopt environmental legislation runs precisely counter to the best current science which holds that:
Sea levels are not shooting up but only continuing their modest 3mm a year rise over the past 200 years. The vast Antarctic ice-sheet is not melting, except in one tiny corner, the Antarctic Peninsula. Tropical hurricane activity, far from increasing, is at its lowest level for 30 years. The best correlation for temperature fluctuations is not CO2 but the magnetic activity of the sun.
But then the Left never really cares about "science". To them environmentalism is only an excuse for expanding the intrusion of government into the lives of Americans and expanding its revenue base by inflicting more taxes on them.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Saturday downplayed divisions between the U.S. and Europe over how to tackle the world's financial crisis and said China should have "absolute confidence" that its sizable investments in the United States are safe.
The tenuous peace in Northern Ireland is falling apart. AP reports:
LURGAN, Northern Ireland – Irish nationalist gangs hurled gasoline bombs at police Saturday after three alleged IRA dissidents were arrested on suspicion of killing two British soldiers in an attack designed to trigger wider violence in Northern Ireland.
Those who criticize Sarah Palin for deciding to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome should note the career of Andrea Fay Friedman.
Because Andrea was born with Down syndrome, the pediatrician told her parents to send her straight to an institution because she would not develop beyond the mental age of four or five. Her parents, Harold and Marjorie Friedman, ignored the doctor's advice, took Andrea home, loved her, taught her and worked to help her develop to her full potential.
....
In 1991, she auditioned for and won the continuing part of Amanda, Corky's (Chris Burke) girlfriend in the TV series "Life Goes On" and became a permanent member of the cast for two seasons.
In addition to "Life Goes On," Andrea has been a featured guest star on episodes of "Baywatch," "Touched By An Angel," "Chicago Hope," "Walker, Texas Ranger," "7th Heaven," "The Division," "Law and Order, SVU " and the star of her own Christmas special, "Smudge."
"So what", you say, "It takes no intelligence to be an actor." Well..., granted, but then there's this:
Andrea is often invited to be a motivational speaker and supporter of causes that help other challenged people. In October, 1994, she addressed the students and faculty at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education....
She lives independently in her own apartment, which she shares with her best friend. When she is not acting, she works in the accounting department of a major law firm. She drives her own car and manages her own schedule, budget, housekeeping and social life.
Granted, Andrea is unusual, but if the eugenicists had their way she would have been judged defective and never been born at all.
Read about this remarkable human being here and here.
"She Who Must Not Be Named" has noted several times recently that I have not been blogging about any of the cultural events we have attended. I can take a hint, so in the interest of preserving domestic bliss here goes....
We are subscribers to the Shriver Hall Concert Series in Baltimore. "She" particularly likes this venue because not only do we get a chance to see new and established artists in performance, but each concert is preceded by lectures presented by faculty at the Peabody Conservatory. So a concert date involves listening to a lecture on and discussion of the evening's concert, attending the concert itself, then going to a leisurely late dinner at a local restaurant with friends. Circumstances have prevented us from attending all of this season's concerts but we get to most of them. In recent months we have seen some remarkable performances. viz
Ingrid Fliter, a lovely young pianist from Argentina who has been burning up the international concert circuit for the past few years and in 2006 was the first woman to win the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award. The LA Times describes her as a "pianistic force of nature" and proclaims "a wonderful pianist has arrived." She certainly can play with power, but I was more impressed by her fluidity.
She played Bach, Schumann and Chopin. I was unable to find any performance of her concert selections on the internet, but this performance of Chopin's "Nocturne in D-flat Major" gives a good indication of her virtuosity.
She's already a major star and has several decades of performance before her. She'll be one to watch. Interesting.
The next concert featured an established artist -- another pianist, Radu Lupu. Lupu rose to prominence back in 1966 when he won the Van Cliburn competition and followed it up with wins at the Eriscu International competition in 1967 and the Leeds International competition in 1969. Ever since he has been one of the most important figures on the international concert circuit. We heard him perform Sonatas 9 in E Major and 10 in G Major by Beethoven as well as Shubert's Sonata in B-flat Major. This time the pre-concert lecture was particularly helpful because the instructor was able to highlight continuities between Beethoven's and Schubert's treatment of the sonata form of which I had been completely unaware. It was nice during the concert to hear things you had just been discussing.
Here's Lupu's performance of the first movement of the Shubert Sonata. What amazing technique! The video also has links to the rest of the sonata. Listen to them all -- the guy is terrific.
Comparing him to Fliter's performance above illustrates the difference between a good rising artist and one of the all-time greats.
Then a couple of weeks ago we again trekked up to Schriver Hall to see a famous pianist perform. This time it was Peter Serkin and he was not performing alone. The featured artists were the Brentano String Quartet. Earlier in the season we had missed a performance by the Guarneri String Quartet. Sad, but unavoidable; particularly disappointing because this is the last season the renowned quartet will be performing. So I saw the Brentano concert as a consolation prize.
The concert started and ended with traditional material -- Haydn's Quartet in D Minor and Beethoven's Quartet #16 in B-flat major [the famous Grosse Fuge]. In between, though, was a something completely different.
Here's an excerpt from the Haydn, not by Brentano, though.
And here's the Beethoven:
I am not a great fan of the modern composers. I often say that my appreciation ends with Bartok. In the second performance of the concert Serkin joined the Quartet for a rendition of Charles Wuorinen's "New Piano Quintet". Wuorinen is one of my least favorite composers, one who has bucked the post-modernist tide and stubbornly continues to churn out modernist monstrosities. Here's an example of what I mean.
At the preceding lecture we learned that Wuorinen is currently composing an opera based on "Brokeback Mountain". Gee, that's something to look forward to. I wonder if there will be any female parts -- an opera without sopranos, strange.
I will say one thing for Wuorinen. After enduring one of his pieces, I gained a new appreciation for Arnold Schoenberg. I had always disliked Schoenberg's work, but coming after Wuorinen he sounded almost traditional. For the first time I heard and sorta liked his "Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte" [performed by the piano quintet]. I couldn't find a performance of it anywhere on the internet. Too bad, it's an interesting piece -- a "sprechstimme", a musical form the invention of which is frequently attributed to Schoenberg, in which the a spoken part is performed [actually a mixture of song and recitation] in approximate pitches to the accompaniment of the musical score. Because the pitches are only approximate the performer [in this case Thomas Meglioranza, a wonderful baritone] has wide discretion as to how the recitation should sound. From the preceding lecture we learned that Schoenberg placed only one restriction on the performance -- that it had to be done by a male singer. In one case the "Ode" was recorded with a female singer and in response Schoenberg fired off a letter in which he threatened to dedicate the rest of his life to ruining her and the group with which she performed [he wasn't entirely sane at that point].
All in all an interesting and informative evening, despite the Wuroinen.
So that's the extent of our recent participation in the music scene. I hope "She" is happy.
Oh, really? Then why all the need for so much so soon? Why the hysterical predictions of gloom that have been issuing daily from the Young Messiah himself?
Left-wing pundits have been having a lot of fun writing about Bristol Palin's pregnancy and recent announcement that she and the father will not, after all, be getting married. The tone of the articles has been that Bristol has been the victim of her mother's radical "abstinence only" ideology.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Once again the lefties are lying about Sarah. The LA Times explains:
In a widely quoted 2006 survey she answered during her gubernatorial campaign, Palin said she supported abstinence-until-marriage programs. But weeks later, she proclaimed herself "pro-contraception" and said condoms ought to be discussed in schools alongside abstinence.
"I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues," she said during a debate in Juneau. …
Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said the governor stands by her 2006 statement, supporting sex education that covers both abstinence and contraception.
While Sarah opposes what she calls "explicit" sex instructions, she has absolutely no problem with condoms or other forms of contraception. She has said:
I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don't have a problem with that. That doesn't scare me, so it's something I would support also."
And again Sarah turns out to be a far more complex and interesting figure than Democrat propaganda would have it.
UPDATE:
Mollie Hemmingway has a good article on the way activists have misrepresented the Bristol pregnancy [here]. She makes the nice point that that it was liberals, not conservatives, who got all bothered and struggled to come to terms with the out of wedlock birth. She also notes that liberals in the media repeatedly lied about Sarah Palin's position on contraception and sex education.
How many ways can the Young Messiah screw up? Apparently there is no limit. Don Surber notes that to date Obama is averaging one major blunder every day.
The mind boggles at the level of incompetence on display in our national leadership.
Nice piece by Will Collier on the rift in the GOP -- between "Tea Party" and "Dinner Party" Republicans that ends with this call to arms:
The Dinner Party Conservatives held sway during the election, doing their part to drown out opposition to The One. Now that the emperor is in place and allegedly clothed, the day of the Tea Party Conservatives has arrived, and their voices are getting louder by the dollar.
So tuck into that arugula while you can, boys. While you're reaching for the finger bowl, the rest of us are headed down to the harbor.
This morning, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) spoke to Pennsylvania radio show “The Morning News with Nancy and Kevin,” where he was asked who led the Republican Party. Specter replied that he was “trying to bring it back in a sensible, centrist approach,” and indicated that neither Rush Limbaugh nor RNC Chairman Michael Steele are worth listening to....
Camille Paglia has not yet given up on the Young Messiah, but look at what she thinks of his tools:
[F]ree the president from his flacks, fixers and goons -- his posse of smirky smart alecks and provincial rubes, who were shrewd enough to beat the slow, pompous Clintons in the mano-a-mano primaries but who seem like dazed lost lambs in the brave new world of federal legislation and global statesmanship.Heads should be rolling at the White House for the embarrassing series of flubs that have overshadowed President Obama's first seven weeks in office....
First it was that chaotic pig rut of a stimulus package, which let House Democrats throw a thousand crazy kitchen sinks into what should have been a focused blueprint for economic recovery. Then it was the stunt of unnerving Wall Street by sending out a shrill duo of slick geeks (Timothy Geithner and Peter Orszag) as the administration's weirdly adolescent spokesmen on economics. Who could ever have confidence in that sorry pair?
And then there was the fiasco of the ham-handed White House reception for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which was evidently lacking the most basic elements of ceremony and protocol.
And here she gets to what separates the Obama administration from others:
Though every novice administration makes blunders and bloopers, its modus operandi should not be a conspiratorial reflex cynicism.
Read the whole thing here. She has a wonderful defense of Rush.
"Conspiratorial reflex cynicism" -- pretty much describes the way the Left has always operated. By identifying it as the default position of Obama's disciples, she is simply reaffirming their leftist mindset.
A few days ago we went to see "Watchmen". What to say about it? I can't compare it to the comic book on which it is based -- I haven't read it and have no interest in doing so. I haven't been much into comics since the age of fourteen. I don't particularly care for the superhero genre and frankly am a bit disturbed by its prominence in our youth culture. So what to say?
Well for one, in cinematic terms it's sorta OK. There are a lot of impressive, nicely staged shots, but the direction leaves a lot to be desired. The action scenes might have served a few decades ago, but by today's standards they are clumsily handled. There is too much gratuitous gore, too many slo-mo snaps. The pacing -- well..., it seems not to have been a consideration, especially in the last half hour which seems to drag on interminably. Interactions among the characters are wooden and the acting, with the exception of Jackie Earle Haley, who is great in the role of Rorschach, is mediocre.
There is some small attempt to provide a spine on which to hang the movie's disparate elements. Someone is killing superheroes, and Haley's character is trying to find out who and why. In the course of his investigations he introduces us to a strange menagerie of less-than-heroes, each of which supposedly corresponds to an iconic superhero from the DC or Marvel universe. These portrayals of debased heroes supposedly "deconstruct" the superhero genre, but in this regard "Watchmen" says nothing that Philip Wylie hadn't already said in "Gladiator" way back in 1930, before the birth of Superman. And the introduction of so many characters, each of whom comes with a complex backstory as does the group collectively, complicates the narrative not quite to the point of incomprehensibility, but close.
So what do we have? Mediocre acting, mediocre directing, mediocre writing, ridiculous dialogue, gratuitous violence... what else?
Oh yeah, I really, really, really hated the ideological perspective that informs "Watchmen". It is a bizarre peek into post-Vietnam left-wing paranoid delusion. The people who created this mess are quite simply deranged. Ultimately the film condones mass murder on a Stalinesque scale in order to thwart the designs of a greater evil. And what represents that evil? Why, it's..., it's..., Richard Nixon -- the president who ended Vietnam, instituted a policy of detente with the Soviet Union, and normalized relations with mainland China -- who is portrayed here as a warmonger and a tool of the military/industrial complex, whose decisions drive the world ever closer to nuclear armageddon.
In the end democracy has failed and is replaced by tyranny -- a partnership uniting Nixon and the monstrous Soviet leadership, all of it engineered by a ruthless utilitarian technocratic manipulator. There is no place in this maniac vision for ordinary people, who are slaughtered with abandon, or for free enterprise, or for freedom of information, or for free thought of any kind. The lone advocate for human freedom is destroyed, but even he did not think ordinary people worth saving. This is a Hobbesean universe in spades, filled with criminals, sadists, pederasts, and murderers and their victims. "Watchmen" is ultimately a profoundly anti-human film.
I left the theater sadly contemplating not just the insane carnage I had seen on the screen but also the kind of people who could create such misanthropic madness, but mostly I was dismayed at the thought of the miserable fanboys who reveled in these grotesque power fantasies and the millions who seem to be making "Watchmen" into a commercial success.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Taliban's new top operations officer in southern Afghanistan had been a prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the latest example of a freed detainee who took a militant leadership role and a potential complication for the Obama administration's efforts to close the prison.
U.S. authorities handed over the detainee to the Afghan government, which in turn released him, according to Pentagon and CIA officials.
The Bush administration kept trying to tell us that these were really, really bad guys, but we wouldn't listen, and now some of them are free to kill and kill again. These are not mere criminals -- they are our enemies. They are bent on our destruction. Witness this document written by five Guantanamo detainees:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Five men charged with plotting the September 11 attacks say the charges against them are "badges of honor" and that killing Americans was an offering to God, in court documents released Tuesday.
A few quotes:
"To us [the charges of terrorism] are badges of honor, which we carry with pride," the detainees said, adding: "We are terrorists to the bone. So many thanks to God."
....
"Therefore, killing you and fighting you, destroying you and terrorizing you, responding back to your attacks, are all considered to be great legitimate duty in our religion.
"These actions are our offerings to God," it said.
Our criminal justice system just is not capable of handling cases like these. These are our enemies, making war on us, and they are properly dealt with under military, not civilian law.
Nuf sed.
UPDATE:
Ralph Peters insists that we must pay attention to what these monsters say about themselves -- they mean it. [here]
Kaus seems to expect this kind of petty deceit and criticizes it only on the grounds that it us unwise to give Rush more publicity, but what strikes me is the meanness, the pettiness, and the nastiness of the effort being directed out of the White House by Dem thugs.
Who should we blame for the financial catastrophe? Philip Delves Broughton thinks he knows -- the Harvard Business School.
Broughton, who has an MBA from Harvard notes that the paradigms of effective business management touted by the Harvard faculty in recent years were first Enron, and when that collapsed, the Royal Bank of Scotland. Both of these were disasters and the inability of the Harvard faculty to see their problems suggests that something is rotten in the realm of Cambridge, MA.
The cult of expertise repeatedly assures us that the "best and the brightest" -- those holding prized degrees from prestige universities, can be trusted to manage society and the economy for the benefit of all. Experience suggests otherwise.
This is definitely not good. The Young Messiah, in his apparently endless naivete, has promised to remove all political and [he says] "ideological" constraints on scientific investigation [here]. The immediate case at hand is embryonic stem cell research which, Democrat lies to the contrary, was never banned [The Bush administration simply refused to release taxpayer funds to support such research, but alternative funding was always available]. But far more alarming is the implication of such a policy on the acceptance of global warming theory.
The stem-cell controversy, as falsely presented in the media and political debates, was always little more than a stalking horse for warmist zealotry. The argument, as portrayed by Democrat politicians, posited the pursuit of pure science by disinterested experts, which promised immediate and remarkable health benefits for the pubic, against obstructionist superstition and political pandering which was standing in the way of curing disease. By focusing on this argument, which could be sold easily to the public [after all, who would stand in the way of a cure for a crippling disease?] they hoped to establish the principle that public policy should be guided by scientific opinion, unfettered by moral, political, or ideological constraints.
Note the bait and switch here. The argument moves immediately from removing constraints on research to allowing scientific opinion to guide the formulation of public policy. As the article reports:
Science and politics often conflict, said Granger Morgan, professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a former science advisory board chairman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Perhaps illustrated no more wildly than in 1897 when the Indiana legislature attempted to change the mathematical concept of pi to 3.2. Science should provide the facts that politicians use for their decisions, Morgan and Leshner said.
The reference to the Indiana legislature's action is so extreme as to be laughable, but it appears regularly in technocratic polemics. The effect is to portray all political reservations about the utility of scientific expertise in the formulation of policy as simple ignorance. But that is not the case -- there are plenty of good reasons to have reservations about unfettered scientific authority. The Indiana legislature was foolish in its actions more than a century ago, but to invoke it and let the subject drop there ignores the far more important and genuinely harmful distortions of policy introduced by scientific experts in more recent times. One could point to the excesses of the eugenics movement and Nazi race theorists in the first half of the Twentieth Century, but these are only the most extreme examples of technocratic zealotry leading to public harm. One could also invoke mid-twentieth century sociological and psychological theories that have undermined and rendered dysfunctional much of our public education and justice systems. Today we are confronted with a global warming imperative that threatens our economic health and personal welfare. Given the potential for immense and harmful public consequences, it is altogether reasonable to evaluate scientific opinion in the light of its economic, moral, and political implications.
I fear that Obama is propelling our country along a dark and dangerous path toward technocratic governance and in this regard, at least, I hope he fails.
UPDATE:
Yuval Levin, in the WaPo, writes:
[S]cience policy is not just a matter of science. Like all policy, it calls for a balancing of priorities and concerns, and it requires a judgment of needs and values that in a democracy we trust to our elected officials. In science policy, science informs, but politics governs, and rightly so.
There are, of course, different ways for politics to exert authority over science. To distort or hide unwelcome facts is surely illegitimate. But to weigh facts against societal priorities -- economic, political and ethical -- in making decisions is the very definition of policymakers' duty. And to govern the practice of scientific techniques that threaten to violate important moral boundaries is not only legitimate but in some cases essential.
John Hawks has a nice piece on his blog on the fact that until quite recently nearly all evolutionary scientists, including leaders of the field, firmly rejected the possibility of recent and ongoing human evolution despite the fact that there was considerable and indisputable evidence for it. In short, for more than half a century leading scientists working in the field of evolutionary studies have been systematically ignoring clear data on human evolution. [here]
[The scientists] must have been ignoring the data.
Or perhaps those biologists really [believed what the data told them], but claimed otherwise for some purpose. Maybe they were all exaggerating -- human evolution hadn't really stopped, but had slowed down substantially. Some of them may have been lumping together what they didn't really know about the last 10,000 years with their thoughts about the last 100 years, when mortality rates in Western nations really have decreased. But it's clear that most of them weren't considering the actual data of the last 50,000 years of human evolution.
Why?
Hawks really has no clear explanation for this massive denial of reality but that is because he is a scientist who accepts a somewhat idealistic view of his profession. He writes:
I think that biologists are mostly convinced not by theory -- however simple -- but by concrete examples.
But as Thomas Kuhn showed in his famous Structure of Scientific Revolutions, theories and interpretive paradigms do shape scientists' perceptions of concrete evidence and its meaning and scientists are not unaffected by broader cultural and political conditions.
In the wake of Germany's defeat in WWII cultural and ideological imperatives throughout the West tended to privilege explanations of human development and differences grounded in sociology, psychology, and cultural anthropology. Evolutionary explanations of human differences were too closely associated with Nazi race theory to be acceptable. To advance them was unthinkable and, for those who might privately recognize the implications of data, dangerous. Data pointing toward recent human evolution were therefore unrecognized, ignored, or suppressed.
That such explanations are beginning, for the first time in half a century, to be taken seriously by scientists is a significant cultural indicator. We are, I think, in the midst of a classic "paradigm shift" such as Kuhn described in his work. And, I also believe, this shift in perception is not unrelated to the collapse of the Soviet empire and the consequent discrediting of Marxist theory.
Whether or not the new emerging paradigm will represent an improvement on the one that has dominated Western thought for half a century I cannot say, but the fact that such a shift is taking place should give pause to those who somewhat naively assert the objective authority of "science". There is no such thing as disinterested authority. Science is ultimately a human endeavor and as such, despite institutional and procedural correctives, is subject to human error.
I haven't paid much attention to the "Rush is the Leader of the Republicans" hoo ha. Perhaps I should. This is really scary:
Peter Roff writes:
Politico’s Jonathan Martin wrote Wednesday [about], “a full-scale effort first hatched by some of the most familiar names in politics and now being guided in part from inside the White House.”
According to Martin, an unidentified “senior White House aide” has been given the responsibility of “helping to guide the Limbaugh strategy,” a very scary thing indeed.
A political operative, based inside the White House, employed by the president of the United States and receiving a salary from the American taxpayer, goes to work every day to help direct a strategy against a broadcaster whose opinions are supposed to be covered by every protection the First Amendment can provide. To quote Shakespeare, “Something is rotten.”
The criminally naive assumption, oft proclaimed, of the Obama administration has been that the source of conflict throughout the world was somehow related to Republican policies. A change in administration, we were repeatedly assured, would bring new policies and with them an era of international peace, a restoration of American prestige and influence, or something like that. International hostilities, it was argued, would at the very least be reduced to a tolerable level.
Well, we'll see. As Joe Biden prophesized, the testing has come.
Just a few weeks ago Russia engineered the expulsion of American military forces from Kazakhistan [whereupon the Kazakh government, having extracted a hefty bribe from the Russians, let it be known that they were willing to negotiate a continuing American presence in their country -- for an adequate bribe, of course]. We don't know yet how that is going to turn out.
Then Obama sets a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, whereupon the suicide murderers once again took to the streets of Baghdad [here].
Both Britain and India -- America's most reliable allies in Europe and South Asia respectively, suffered diplomatic snubs due to the ineptitude of Obama's team.
And sectarian violence has again emerged in Northern Ireland [here].
And China has begun to harass U.S. naval vessels in the South China Sea [here].
And Russia is making threatening noises toward the E.U. and our East European allies.
And the North Korean nutjobs have placed their military on full alert and are again making threatening noises against the U.S. They're talking war. [here]
And the political and military situation is deteriorating in Afghanistan and Pakistan [here].
And Hamas is gaining popular support again in Palestine [here].
And so far, no response from the White House.
The world is not going to sit by quietly and wait until Obama completes his ideologically driven restructuring of the American economy and society. Danger presses in on all sides and the Young Messiah must soon rouse himself from his seemingly perpetual state of exhaustion to meet it.
I've had a bit of a bad luck patch over the last month (losing my job, watching my 401k completely disintegrate, etc., etc.) and ended up relocating from a high rise in Lincoln Park to a new neighborhood along the Fullerton underpass on the Kennedy Expressway. I was a bit worried about the move at first, but my new neighbors have been great. In fact on move-in day they greeted me with a grocery cart "welcome wagon" containing with some lovely and practical gifts like cans of Sterno, cardboard, fortified wine, and a hypo-allergenic harmonica. I would like to show my appreciation with thoughtful "thank you" gifts. Can you recommend something nice that won't break my budget ($3.00 total for 6 gifts)? Please help!
We spent the weekend at the Harbor. When we got back this afternoon we found that the Snowdrops have finally popped. Only three weeks late -- a measure of how bad a winter it has been. The Snowdrops are my personal harbinger of Spring and seeing them in full flower gladdens my spirits immensely. Now, if I could only forget what Obama and his cluster of clowns are doing to the land I love...
According to Bill Gray, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, there has been a weak cooling trend since 2001, based on ocean temperatures. He avers that contrary to what the global warming Cassandras hold, increases of carbon dioxide could have contributed only "a small fraction" of the roughly one degree Fahrenheit warming that has been observed since 1850. His prediction? A "modest naturally driven global cooling over the next 15-20 years," similar to what took place from the 1940s to the 1970s. Then there was hysteria about the coming of the next ice age, according to Ross.
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Two British soldiers were shot to death and four other people were wounded in a drive-by ambush Saturday night that politicians blamed on Irish Republican Army dissidents.
This is the first real test of the peace agreement. For a while the GWOT, which discredited terrorism, and domestic prosperity in Ireland helped to sustain peace, but both of those pretty much came to an end in the past year. Will peace in Northern Ireland collapse too? Let us sincerely hope not.
Barack Obama's offhand approach to Gordon Brown's Washington visit last week came about because the president was facing exhaustion over America's economic crisis and is unable to focus on foreign affairs, the Sunday Telegraph has been told.
Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.
...
Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.
A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".
....
The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.
At the least, this indicates that the President and his team were not prepared for the responsibilities of the positions they sought. But this also raises the question of Obama's personal inadequacies, both physical and mental, for the job he now holds.
We've heard the tiredness excuse before, during the campaign when Obama's lapses were blamed on his exhaustion [here]. At the time there were some questions raised concerning his health, but they were brushed aside. Now with more evidence of Presidential frailty, they emerge again. Is Obama physically and mentally up to the task of the Presidency? He seems to be wearing down quickly. It can't be that he is working too hard. He takes regular vacations and parties a lot..., a lot!
Maybe that's the problem.
UPDATE:
Villainous Company has started an "Obama Exhaustion Watch" [here]. Check it out -- some funny stuff there.
Remember how they used to savage Reagan for taking naps? Of course you do.
UPDATE:
Former spook over at "In From the Cold" also finds this report to be "scary stuff". He notes that other presidents, FDR, Reagan, Dubya, etc. faced similar or even greater crises early in their terms, yet none complained about the burdens of their jobs, recognizing that whining would simply diminish their credibility and their ability to confront the crises.
He writes:
As President Obama is about to discover, his sabbatical from international issues will soon come to an abrupt end, with potentially disastrous consequences. His recent decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan were comparatively easy, following courses already established by the Bush Administration.
Now comes the hard part. North Korea..., Iran...., Israel..., possible energy crises, [and the like].
....
If Mr. Obama is already overwhelmed by the requirements of his office, just wait a few months. His learning curve is just beginning.
This is scary stuff indeed. It is time for the Young Messiah to man up, to get serious about his job, and to begin to assume the responsibilities of the position to which he was elected.
I wonder when we are going to see SNL comics portraying Obama complaining about how hard the Presidency is.
AND THIS:
Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club writes:
Everything is changing. Now they are facing the revenge of the second derivative: the rate of the rate of change. They are trying to restructure the government so it is run with Czars instead of cabinet secretaries; “engaging” hostile nations with little or no preconditions and getting blown off; changing the basis of the economy to conform to their untried vision of the future; creating the single greatest expansion of government since FDR; redesigning health care; holding consultations on everything and planning to save the world from Climate Change. They’re busy because crisis creates an “opportunity” for their own vague revolution.
The cumulative consequence of these actions is a vast increase in the amount of risk the entire system has to endure because variables are being added faster than they are being solved. The margins are gone — removed by design. The margins are in the way. But while things might hold together for so long as the road ahead is smooth, what happens if things hit a bump? What happens in the Obama administration, too preoccupied to “even fake an interest in foreign policy meets a sudden challenge?
So far the Obama administration has only had to deal with the economy. And despite their campaign handwringing about how much less safe America has become, its foreign enemies, perhaps still picking themselves up off the ground from the pasting they received at the hands of George W. Bushchimp, have not yet made a move. But one day they too may notice that nobody is at home.
Sarah Palin is turning out to be a far more complex and interesting figure than anyone assumed when she was running for Vice President. Yesterday she defied pressure from pro-life groups and chose a former board member of Planned Parenthood to serve on the Alaska Supreme Court. At the same time she is supporting legislation that would require parental notification for girls under the age of seventeen, a law that Planned Parenthood opposes. The nominee, Morgan Christen, also was a partner in an environmental law firm with which is currently opposing Governor Palin.
Yet more proof that Sarah is anything but the one-dimensional idiot liberal bigots assumed she was. The lady does nuance.
This time his target is the self-styled "intellectuals" in the Republican party who fell for Obama before the election and now want to reform the party to make it less "populist".
T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII Editor, the National Topsider Membership Chairman, The Newport Club
Much has been written about the fate of the conservative movement in the months since last I corresponded with you. I won't belabor the barrels of ink expended in the printing of its obituary, nor will I bore you with further reading of its entrails. Suffice it to say the grand old ship is in the doldrums, adrift in the electoral currents, with nary a harbor on the horizon. But it is time we leave such map room mopery aside and navigate a bold new course for the conservative armada. One needn't have a 400-year old heirloom scrimshaw sextant for this task; but, fortunately, I do.
The White House on Wednesday fessed up to lowering the quality of public discourse and acknowledged that its sniping at radio show host Rush Limbaugh has been "counterproductive," even as Democratic political committees continued to use the issue in a political line of attack approved by the Obama administration itself.
So they admit that these Nixonian tactics were run out of the White House. Interesting! The enemies list is back.
Let me translate: "We went after Rush, but he's too smart for us so we're backing down."
UPDATE:
The Anchoress writes:
And, just have to say it… President Bush - who was as put-upon by the press as a man could be - never wasted his time going after individual journalists (or any) and he certainly didn’t take on after private citizens like this. But he was “the nazi fascist” right? Bush also dealt with recessions quite differently.
The ranks of the oh-so-smart and sophisticated rubes who threw all sense to the winds and supported the New Messiah, but who are now feeling buyers' remorse are growing. Maureen Dowd has now joined the club. Jennifer Rubin, over at Pajamas Media, writes:
The ranks indeed are filling with the disaffected and the disappointed — Chris Buckley, Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, David Gergen, and even that gynecological sleuth and blogger Andrew Sullivan. And then there is the very angry Marty Peretz. Their complaints are varied but expressed with equal amounts of remorse and bitterness. They all have been done wrong by Barack.
What is remarkable is just how easily these fools were duped. As Neo-Neocon pointed out [here and here] Barak Obama time and again during the campaign stated just what he planned to do. Yet many people endorsed him anyway, hoping against hope that he didn't mean what he said, even though he told us repeatedly that "words matter". That's not exactly a good strategy.
Well, he did mean exactly what he said -- and now we are stuck with him and his cluster of clowns. And what makes this more shameful is that these are all people who make their living with words. They should know better.
It's an interesting question -- back in the sixties and seventies sitting in dark theaters looking at flickering images on the screen was considered to be a serious intellectual exercise. Even more so the endless conversations that followed about what you had seen.
I think what happened was:
People grew up -- the interests and involvement of adult life are many and diverse, and leave little time for obsessive/compulsive behavior. What is more, the experience of life makes a lot of those ideas that we found so exciting as youths look shallow and silly -- no longer worth our time.
The mainstream Hollywood product, available at the cineplex, is technically brilliant but intellectually barren. There are plenty of really good movies out there, but unless you live in a shabby/bourgeois neighborhood in a major metropolitan area, you aren't going to see them in a theater. You will order the CD, or watch late-night cable presentations where they occasionally appear. And of course there is always the wonderful TCM.
And there is the internet where you can find lots and lots of movie talk. Some of it is quite good. Who needs to sit in a dingy coffeeshop talking to semi-sane self-absorbed and alienated kids when you can read their rants in the comfort of your home? Of course, their concerns are seldom applicable to your own life so why bother?
All this came to mind while reading an extended review of the new Watchman movie opening this weekend [here]. Charlie Jane Anders, the author of the piece, argues that the tone of the film is reminiscent of another world -- the era of the Cold War, a time of alienation and paranoia and societal madness. To Anders it is an alien environment, a dark forbidding place in which monsters like Nixon and Reagan and Kissinger stalked the land.
Well, I lived through that time and my experience of it was quite different from that of the reviewer or presumably that of Alan Moore, the writer of the "Watchmen" comics. It is their sensibility that, to me, seems absolutely insane. I will go to see Watchmen. I don't know if I will like it, never having read the comic books, but do know that I will see it through a very different lens than does Anders, whose views seem to me to be more than a little silly and shallow. Long ago, when I could fairly be called a film fan, I might have found those views at least respectable. Today I can no longer do so, and so even if there was an interactive local community of cinephiles I would not seek their company. Their mindset would be completely alien to me and it wouldn't be worth my time.
And when I say "alien" I mean alien. Here's a picture of the creator of "Watchmen". You don't get any farther from my sensibilities than this.
Image from Lileks. It looks like the coming of the New Messiah was prophesized long ago. The guy looks mad, maybe he will rise up to smite those who afflict him. Maybe we will....
Whoops, he did it again. The list of nations the Young Messiah has dissed continues to grow. The Telegraph [UK] reports:
The morning papers and TV last night featured plenty of comment focused on the White House's very odd and, frankly, exceptionally rude treatment of a British PM. Squeezing in a meeting, denying him a full press conference with flags etc. The British press corps, left outside for an hour in the cold, can take it and their privations are of limited concern to the public.
But Obama's merely warmish words (one of our closest allies, said with little sincerity or passion) left a bitter taste with this Atlanticist. Especially after his team had made Number 10 beg for a mini press conference and then not even offered the PM lunch.
We get the point, sunshine: we're just one of many allies and you want fancy new friends. Well, the next time you need something doing, something which impinges on your national security, then try calling the French, or the Japanese, or best of all the Germans.
Hey, weren't we supposed to be loved universally now that we are in the age of O? What happened? Could it be tin-eared incompetence? Why, yes it could.
Check out the remarkable set of graphs over at Doug Ross's blog. He shows quite conclusively that as Obama's political fortunes rose markets responded with declines.
His conclusion:
Put simply, the markets have reacted with expected fury to Obama's promises of economic "fairness", "spreading the wealth" and raising taxes on the job creators of society.
This thinly disguised form of class warfare, the policies of which many have termed socialism (fairly or unfairly), has had an indelible impact on the markets.
French revolutionaries published lots of lies about Marie Antoinette and they have been accepted uncritically by many historians ever since. As E. M. Vidal points out, poor Marie's popular reputation is a libel.
I certainly hope this is not photoshopped. David Brooks is one of the elite Republicans who fell under the spell of the Young Messiah and broke with the party to support him in the last election. In Brooks' case all it took was a short discussion of Reinhold Niebuhr's theology to do the job. His ludicrous assumption was that since Obama had an Ivy education, had read Niebuhr, and could be considered an intellectual he would be better equipped to take on the responsibilities of the Presidency than a military guy like McCain or [shudder] a lumpenprole breeder like Sarah Palin.
Well he, and others like him who were seduced by Obama's elegance and erudition, screwed up -- big time. Obama has so far been a disaster and there is no reason to suppose that he will change much in the future. If this is a true picture and not a manipulated image, Brooks has realized the error of his ways. And maybe, just maybe, he will begin to reconsider the class-based bigotry that led him into error.
HT: Instapundit
UPDATE: Brooks gives the reason for his disenchantment with the Young Messiah:
But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.
So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.
The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide.
David. This is what happens when you let the loony values and standards of academia out into the real world and infuse it with the resentment/revenge fantasies of urban ethnic communities. As astute an analyst of American political culture as you purport to be shoulda seen this coming miles away.
UPDATE: Looking closely at this picture it does indeed seem to have been photoshopped. There is a line on the neck where the skin tones do not quite match. I'll leave it up anyway, if only to illustrate what should happen.
WASHINGTON — President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.
So Russia gets aggressive, seeks to restore the old Soviet empire, and Barak responds by abandoning the defense of Europe. Not only is this a betrayal of Eastern Europe, it renders all of the continent more vulnerable to Russian intimidation. And then the administration has the gall to try to portray this as getting tough with the Russians, making them put up or shut up on Iran.
Sheesh!
What it shows is that the much derided "missile shield" is likely to be a far more effective defensive program than the Democrats have heretofore been willing to say. Russia has already admitted such with its intense opposition to the shield and threats to target Eastern Europe. Now Democrats are admitting such by offering the shield deployment as a bargaining chip.
The message to the new democracies of Eastern Europe is that the United States is an unreliable partner. Obama sees them as pawns and is willing to trade their security for a pittance.
Obama is incredibly naive if he expects Russia to actually take a hard line against Iran. Putin's thugs have far too many interests in the region for that to happen. And what makes Obama think that such a union would be effective in influencing Iran. Russia doesn't control the mullahs. What is far more likely is an American backdown that is not reciprocated on the part of either Russia and Iran who will continue to cooperate against the U.S.
This is sheer folly, but then Bush also thought Putin was someone he could work with. Eventually Bush recognized the folly of trying to enlist Russia in a global security arrangement, let us hope Obama wises up quickly. Right now his proposal is a lose-lose proposition for the West.
UPDATE:
Russia tells Obama to stuff it. From Drudge [here].
Questions abound -- was this a coup or an attempt to forstall a coup? Raul says he is just streamlining the bureaucracy by consolidating agencies, but is this just a convenient excuse. Or, has he become as disillusioned by bureaucratic inertia as American Presidents have been. Experts also make the point this this does not necessarily foreshadow a change in US-Cuba relations. But it could. And just where does Fidel fit into all this?
Neo-Neocon looks at our fine young President and finds him and his programs..., well..., "repellent". A lot of people supported Obama hoping against hope that he didn't really mean what he said. Well, increasingly we are coming to understand that he meant it, all of it.
I so far have been of the opinion that Obama is simply in over his head, thrashing around, and in his confusion falling back on the silly theories and resentments he learned in the sheltered environs of academia and the activist community. Neo sees something a lot more sinister. Maybe she's right, but I hope not.
Only a month into his presidency and it has already come to this -- a debate over whether he is incompetent or evil.
Started off this morning snug in bed. Then the alarm clock went off..., slap, snooze, second alarm..., slap, snooze..., third..., grumble, grunt, scratch. OK, I'm up!
Looked out the window.
Oh, Gawd! How are we going to get over the mountain in this mess?
"She Who Must Not Be Named" turned on the TV -- to the Weather Channel. I fired up the computer and checked out Accuweather. No relief in sight. Checked out the driveway and access road. No joy there. The township plows were obviously busy elsewhere. We're snowed in.
Then the phone rang. The people we were supposed to meet on the other side of the mountain were calling to cancel. Yay!
Back to bed.
Got up a couple of hours later. "She" was already up and puttering around in the kitchen. "Take some pictures of the hydrangea -- it's got a snow cap and it's cute" she said.
OK!
Here's a hydrangea -- not the one she meant, but that would have involved going out in the cold and I wasn't planning to do that yet. This one was just outside the bathroom window.
Since I was dressed and had my camera in my hand and plenty of time on my hands I went around taking pictures. The white stuff was still coming down hard and the new fallen snow on the branches was kinda pretty. Here's some of what I saw.
Azaleas, buds covered with snow, leaves curled tight against the cold.
Boxwood. A screech owl used to live here. Kinda got used to seeing him staring at me. Haven't seen him in a couple of years, though. Hope he's all right. Hawk Mountain is a dangerous place for small birds.
Late afternoon, the kid with the snowplow finally arrives. He has had a busy day, looks tired. A couple of quick swipes up the driveway and we are free.
Not that it matters. My plans for the rest of the day involve a warm blanket, a Lazyboy, and a good history book [and going online, of course].
On the other hand, we haven't seen numbers this low since 1996 and Obama did promise to restore the Clinton economy.
Roger Simon argues that the media should bear the brunt of the blame for the current mess. He writes:
I think it is the media that has led us into this, led the country to vote for an unprepared man with a self-destructive program. It will be interesting to see if they ever admit it.
Of course they won't. They will argue that the social and cultural benefits of electing a black president will far outweigh any economic costs.
If George W. Bush were hosting weekly parties and conga lines in the White House while this exact same situation were going on, the press would be mouth-frothing in hysterics and the Dems would be calling him “insensitive” and “mentally ill” and demanding his impeachment.
