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MONDAY,  MARCH 1,  2010

PRAISE FOR A PUBLISHER – AT 7:49 P.M. ET:  At a time when some book publishing houses overdose on cynicism, and often defend the indefensible, Henry Holt and Company is to be praised for taking a financially painful step that maintains high publishing standards. 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Publication has been halted for a disputed book about the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945, The Associated Press has learned.

Charles Pellegrino's ''The Last Train from Hiroshima'' had received strong reviews and had been optioned for a possible film by ''Avatar'' director James Cameron. But publisher Henry Holt and Company, responding to questions from the AP, said Monday that Pellegrino ''was not able to answer'' several concerns, including whether two men mentioned in the text actually existed.

When a publisher pulls a book that has been optioned by Hollywood's hottest director, that is news.

''It is with deep regret that Henry Holt and Company announces that we will not print, correct or ship copies of Charles Pellegrino's `The Last Train from Hiroshima,''' the publisher said in a statement issued to the AP.

Many "publishers" today are just marketing operations, with few real editors or interest in editorial quality.  Often, authors have to hire their own editors to polish their texts.  At least Holt is showing some respect for the profession. 

Doubts were first raised about the book a week ago after Pellegrino acknowledged that one of his interview subjects had falsely claimed to be on one of the planes accompanying the Enola Gay, from which an atom bomb was dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945. Holt had initially promised to send a corrected edition.

But further doubts about the book emerged. The publisher was unable to determine the existence of a Father Mattias (the first name is not given) who supposedly lived in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, and John MacQuitty, identified as a Jesuit scholar presiding over Mattias' funeral.

''I read a number of books on this period of time and none of them mentioned Mattias or MacQuitty. I knew there was no way those people could have been omitted if they were real,'' said history professor Barton Bernstein of Stanford University.

Bernstein has, over the years, been a pain in the neck, but he's gotten this one right.

Pellegrino's own background was also questioned. He sometimes refers to himself as Dr. Pellegrino, and his Web site, http://www.charlespellegrino.com, lists him as receiving a Ph.D. in 1982 from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. But in response to a query from the AP, the school said it had no proof that Pellegrino had such a degree.

COMMENT:  Let us hope that Dr. Pellegrino, or Mr. Pellegrino, isn't now invited to make the rounds of talk shows as a "victim" of a "witch-hunt." 

Let us also hope that no other publisher, believing it can benefit from the publicity, picks up the book.

And let us hope that James Cameron abandons the film project.

March 1, 2010   Permalink

PROGRESS? – AT 7:38 P.M. ET:  According to the Jerusalem Post, a fatwa is about to be issued in London that can be a step forward, and away from terrorism, for Islam:

LONDON – A revered mainstream Muslim scholar is set to announce in London on Tuesday a fatwa (Muslim ruling) against terrorism and suicide bombing in the name of Islam.

Sheikh Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, a widely recognized and respected authority on Islamic jurisprudence, will issue a comprehensive fatwa prohibiting terrorism and suicide bombing at a press conference in Westminster, central London.

The Pakistani-born Dr. Qadri has authored an unprecedented, 600-page fatwa on why suicide bombings and terrorism are un-Islamic and scripturally forbidden. The ruling is the most comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism to date.

The fatwa will also be posted on the Internet and in English, making it readily accessible. It will also set an important precedent and allow other scholars to similarly condemn the ideas behind terrorism.

Dr. Qadri has used texts in the Koran and other Islamic writings to argue that suicide and other terrorist attacks are “absolutely against the teachings of Islam” and that “Islam does not permit such acts on any excuse, reason or pretext.”

The fatwa condemns suicide bombers as destined for hell, refuting the claim used by Islamists that such terrorists will earn paradise after death.

COMMENT:  Let's see if it has any effect, and if Tahir ul-Qadri survives.  There have been other statements by Muslim leaders condemning terrorism and suicide bombing, but they seem to have had little impact.  Extremists do their own "scholarship" and come up with their own interpretation of Islam.  But at least this new fatwa is encouraging.

March 1, 2010   Permalink

ABC NEWS TO DOWNSIZE DRASTICALLY – AT 6:58 P.M. ET:  At one time ABC News was the weak sister of the Big Three television news operations, well behind CBS and NBC. 

In recent decades the news division, thanks in large measure to the late Roone Arledge, grew substantially, although, in my view, it hitched its wagon to the wrong star – the equally late Peter Jennings, whose left-wing bias repelled many viewers. 

Now ABC is cutting way back again, and another voice, whether we like that voice or not, will be diminished.  From The Los Angeles Times:

As part of the deep cuts announced this week at ABC News, the network plans to close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington and halve the number of its domestic correspondents.

ABC News President David Westin confirmed in an interview Friday that the network's ranks of bureau correspondents, which currently number several dozen, would be cut in half and be replaced with "digital" journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories.

“We will have as many total journalists as we do now,” he said.

Although the network will keep a minimal staff presence in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston, it will shut down its bricks-and-mortar bureaus there and ask its remaining employees to work from the local affiliates. The Washington bureau will remain open, but its size will be substantially reduced.

COMMENT:  A lot of people will be thrown out of work.  Can this new model, using "digital" journalists, work?  No one really knows.  We do know that the "standards" that news operations brag about have become rather flabby in recent years, so maybe the digital reporters will add a breath of fresh air.  At the same time, covering major stories, which often requires large numbers of troops, will certainly suffer.

The network news operations are giving way to the cable systems, which serve viewers 24 hours a day.  I don't think the journalism has improved, but the speed certainly has.  We are a long way from the early days of television, when black-and-white film had to be flown in from overseas hot spots to be shown on nightly 15-minute news shows. 

March 1, 2010    Permalink

STOP THE PRESSES – AT 6:34 P.M. ET:  Fox News is reporting that a new, improved, Toyota-tested health plan will be unveiled by the White house on Wednesday.

The new plan, according to Head Nurse Nancy Pelosi, will be smaller than the one currently in the Dem plan, but will contain elements near and dear to the Democratic Party.

We'll see on Wednesday.  Maybe a sudden reality has overcome those who can count votes in the House and Senate, or maybe we're about to see another turkey born.

March 1, 2010   Permalink

SLAMMING IT THROUGH – AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  In defiance of public opinion, and uniform GOP opposition, the president appears determined to slam his health "reform" bill through Congress, as Bloomberg reports:

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, taking charge of health-care legislation, is facing resistance from lawmakers in his own Democratic Party over the prospect of pushing the bill through Congress.

Obama plans to announce a way forward this week on the biggest overhaul of the U.S. health system in 45 years in a bid to break an impasse on the bill. Some House Democrats are uneasy over the likely use of a procedure called reconciliation that would sidestep Republican opposition by requiring only a simple majority vote in the Senate.

“It looks like we’re trying to cram something through,” said Representative Baron Hill, an Indiana Democrat who voted for the original House bill.

Hill said he might not back a measure if it goes through reconciliation, which is intended for budget matters. A “sizeable number” of the 54 fiscally conservative Democrats who call themselves Blue Dogs are also concerned, said South Dakota Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

The Dems are looking at November, when the entire House and a third of the Senate will be up for reelection.  Continued employment prospects do not look good for a number of them.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who yesterday said “time is up” for Congress to pass the legislation, can ill afford to lose votes. The first House bill passed 220-215 in November, and Democrats have lost at least three “yes” votes since then. Other party lawmakers are objecting to the substance of a new plan Obama released on Feb. 22.

COMMENT:  It's hard to remember a time when a president, and his Congressional leadership, worked so hard to push through a measure that was so unpopular with the public.  This represents a triumph of ideology over common sense, a government knows best mentality.  It's hard to see who benefits.  The public apparently thinks that it will not benefit.

March 1, 2010   Permalink

GUESS THEY HAVEN'T HEARD ABOUT AMERICA'S "OUTREACH" TO THE ISLAMIC WORLD – AT 8:56 A.M. ET:  There's a worrisome report from AP this morning, via Fox News, about the growth of Al Qaeda in North Africa.  There are possible implications for attacks on the United States:

WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda's terror network in North Africa is growing more active and attracting new recruits, threatening to further destabilize the continent's already vulnerable Sahara region, according to U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials.

The North African faction, which calls itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), is still small and largely isolated, numbering a couple hundred militants based mostly in the vast desert of northern Mali. But signs of stepped-up activity and the group's advancing potential for growth worry analysts familiar with the region.

Americans sometimes hear numbers like "a couple hundred" and don't stop to think what several hundred terrorists can do, especially if they're willing to return their souls to Allah in the process. 

The rapid recent rise of the Al Qaeda group in Yemen — which spawned the Christmas airliner attack — is seen by U.S. officials and counterterrorism analysts as evidence that the North African militants could just as quickly take on a broader jihadi mission and become a serious threat to the U.S. and European allies.

The Mali-based militants have yet to show a capability to launch such foreign attacks, but are widening their involvement in kidnapping and the narcotics trade, reaping profits that could be used to expand terror operations, officials and analysts said...

...Those advances have set off alarms within the counterterrorism community, which watched as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula quickly transformed over the past year from militants preoccupied with internal Yemeni strife to a potent group recruiting and training insurgents for terror missions inside the U.S.

That threat was underscored by the failed Christmas airliner attack, which officials say was planned and directed by Yemeni insurgent leaders.

A key fear is that as AQIM expands, its criminal and insurgent operations will continue to destabilize the fragile governments of heavily Islamic North Africa, much as it has in Mali. The Maghreb includes the North African nations of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania.

COMMENT:  The left wing of President Obama's party wants us to wrap up the war on terror, as if the threat never really existed, and was somewhat the creation of BUSH (!!).  It's clear that the threat is expanding once again, despite outreach efforts by the administration.

We must finally realize that the jihadists are not simply "against" the United States.  They are for something, as the Nazis and Soviet Communists were for something.   They have an affirmative ideology that is too rarely discussed and presented in the American media.  (Do you ever recall a newspaper printing the Hamas charter?)  The multiculturalists believe that we must "understand" these views, "respect" them and give them validity, since all cultures are "equally valid."

No they're not.  And, while we must understand, we certainly don't have to "respect."  I find it hard to "respect" an ideology under which women aren't permitted to go to school, and can have their heads severed for defying their husbands.  What about you?

March 1, 2010   Permalink

BLUE STATES IN WORST FINANCIAL SHAPE – AT 8:30 A.M. ET:  I found this fascinating.  There is, at least according to a reporting piece in Forbes, a correlation between a state's financial condition and the number of its people identifying themselves as Democrats:

Want to know which states are in the worst financial condition? One telling indicator that might not immediately come to mind is whether most of its citizens identify themselves as Democrats.

The five states in the worst financial condition--Illinois, New York, Connecticut, California and New Jersey--are all among the bluest of blue states. The five most fiscally fit states are more of a mix. Three--Utah, Nebraska and Texas--boast Republican majorities and two--New Hampshire and Virginia--skew Democratic.

I'd have a question about Virginia skewing Democratic, given the landslide victory by Republicans in the recent statewide elections there.  But we'll let it pass.

Why do Democratic states appear to be struggling more than Republican ones? It comes down to stronger unions and a larger appetite for public programs, according to Kent Redfield, professor emeritus of political studies and public affairs at the University of Illinois' Center for State Policy and Leadership.

Yeah.  You add two and two, and it always comes out to four, except in Hollywood accounting and Democratic Party accounting...often the same thing.

Of the 10 states in the worst financial condition, eight are among a total of 23 defined by Gallup as "solidly Democratic," meaning the Democrats enjoy an advantage of 10 percentage points or greater in party affiliation. These states include the ones listed above as making up the bottom five, plus Massachusetts, Ohio and Wisconsin.

And...

Utah, the fiscally fittest state, has debt of just $442 and unfunded pension obligations of $7,272 per resident. It is also America's second reddest state with a 21-percentage-point Republican advantage in party affiliation. The Beehive state boasts a triple-A credit rating from Moody's.

Illinois is in the worst financial condition, with per-capita debt of $1,877 and unfunded pensions of $17,230. Moody's rates Illinois' general obligation debt A1, ahead of only California's.

Barack Obama represented Illinois in the Senate, and still has his home there.  Maybe someone should slip this article under his door.

March 1, 2010   Permalink

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS - AT 8:01 A.M. ET:  Mr. Obama made an emergency visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago to boost the sagging political fortunes of Senate Majority Harry Reid, who is running for reelection this year, and who has lost favor with his Nevada voters.

Apparently, the president's visit didn't do the trick.  The Las Vegas Review-Journal has the story:

WASHINGTON -- During his whirlwind visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago, President Barack Obama mentioned U.S. Sen. Harry Reid by name four dozen times, gave him a big hug and talked him up as if he was a long-lost brother.

The hug is key.  They do the same thing in organized crime.

But as Reid faces an uphill path to win re-election to a fifth Senate term, Obama's enthusiastic endorsement does not appear to have improved the Senate majority leader's standing among constituents, according to a new poll conducted for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

A larger percentage of voters surveyed (17 percent) said they would be less likely to vote for Reid following the president's visit than said they would be more likely to vote for him (7 percent). Seventy-five percent said Obama's visit would have no effect on how they vote.

"Reid was not helped, and Obama was not any more popular than he was before he came to the state," said Brad Coker, managing director at Mason-Dixon Polling & Research.

COMMENT:  Damn these voters who think for themselves!  What's a liberal to do with these people?

It wasn't very long ago that a visit from Barack Obama brought expectations of huge political dividends.  Now a yawn is the more common reaction. 

March 1, 2010   Permalink

OBAMA'S PERFECT BALANCE – AT 7:33 A.M. ET:  President Obama, who, as we've been told, is perfect in so many ways, has now achieved an even higher form of perfection, but perhaps not the kind he's been seeking in his mysterious ways.

Mr. Obama has now achieved, in the Real Clear Politics survey of presidential approval polls, essentially perfect parity between those who approve of him, and those who disapprove.  Some 47.8% approve, whereas 47% disapprove.  The report is here.

This is an emotional moment, rarely achieved this early in a presidency.  Write it down and tell your children.

March 1,  2010   Permalink

SUNDAY,  FEBRUARY 28,  2010

OH, YEAH...ACCOUNTABILITY – AT 10:14 P.M. ET:  Frank Miele is an excellent editor and writer, with the Daily Inter Lake in northwest Montana.  There is a long tradition of fine journalism in smaller American newspapers, and Miele continues it.   Here he looks at one of the major stories of the day – the Iranian nuclear program - and wonders about something many of us have wondered about:  Why is there no accountability about the way our intelligence services have botched the issue?

Two years ago, the Democrats and their friends in the liberal media were patting themselves on the back because of a National Intelligence Estimate that baldly stated, "Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003."

This was thought to make President George Bush look bad because he was insisting that Iran was a rogue nation that presented a growing threat in the Mideast and throughout the world.
Since it made George Bush look bad, it was therefore considered of major significance...

...The only problem was that the sum total of evidence in the National Intelligence Estimate that supported the proposal that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 was the sentence that declared it so.

Yeah, we've kind of wondered about that.

This month, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency issued its own report and warned that Iran may indeed be working on building a nuclear warhead.
Right on schedule.

The IAEA is under new management.  Its previous chief fronted for the Muslim world and is now a candidate for president of Egypt.  No conflict of interest there, I guess.

So...where is the accountability now that the United Nations has confirmed the danger presented by the Iranian nuclear program?

It doesn't exist. This story, although reported extensively, has not been properly used to gauge the earlier befuddlement of both the U.S. intelligence operations and the major media outlets in their blithe acceptance of incredibly incompetent analysis.

And...

We also found out from the new report that part of the evidence the U.S. had to ignore to write its tepid 2007 report was documentary evidence smuggled out of Iran in a laptop computer filled with smoking guns and burning fuses, figuratively speaking.

The people who wrote the 2007 report had a political agenda, and saw what they wanted to see.  One of the original purposes of the CIA was that it would be a central intelligence agency, not attached to any other department of the government, and without its own policies to push.  That has clearly not worked out.

Between the Mr. Magoo glasses and the Pinocchio nose, America's spies are starting to stick out in a crowd. Move over, Inspector Clouseau; there's a new bumbling cop in town.

One of the great unexplored stories of the last nine years is the degree to which agencies of the United States Government worked covertly against Bush administration polices, and the degree to which Bush overlooked it. 

We should have had, by now, a complete investigation of that 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which misled us.  But there is little chance of such a probe.  It isn't in the interest of either the Democratic Party or its camp followers in the media.  Thus, it won't be done, and we will be weaker as a nation for the lack of accountability.

February 28, 2010   Permalink

SCIENCE QUESTION FOR THE TEACHER – AT 7:13 P.M. ET:  From AP:

HONOLULU — The warning was ominous, its predictions dire: Oceanographers issued a bulletin telling Hawaii and other Pacific islands that a killer wave was heading their way with terrifying force and that "urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property."

But the devastating tidal surge predicted after Chile's magnitude 8.8-earthquake for areas far from the epicenter never materialized and by Sunday, authorities had lifted the warning after waves half the predicted size tickled the shores of Hawaii and tourists once again jammed beaches and restaurants.

Scientists acknowledged they overstated the threat, but defended their actions, saying they took the proper steps and learned the lessons of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami that killed thousands of people who didn't get enough warning.

COMMENT:  If they can't accurately predict a tsunami a day in advance, how can they predict global warming a half century in advance?  Just asking.

February 28, 2010   Permalink

OLYMPIC VERDICT – AT 6:59 P.M. ET:  In a superb column in the Washington Post, Sally Jenkins says what a lot of us have been thinking – there need to be big changes in the international Olympic "movement."

I love the Olympics, always have.  My wife and I are big figure skating fans.  But the International Olympic Committee has always been a farce, and a farce that doesn't do its job:

The IOC, confronted in Vancouver with a couple of lethal issues and fresh human rights concerns at the next Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, instead reserved some of its toughest words for this late-breaking scandal: the drinking of champagne by women in public.

The IOC's treatment of the Canadian women's hockey team as scandalous for being photographed swilling from bottles of bubbly after winning a gold medal was typical of the organization's recent fecklessness. Gilbert Felli, the IOC's executive director for the Olympic Games, a man apparently devoid of humor except for the jokes he perpetrates unwittingly, said, it was "not what we want to see." He intoned, presumably between bites of scallops, "I don't think it's a good promotion of sport values," and promised, "We will investigate what happened."

There's the problem, as Jenkins points out.  Trivial issues are treated with great gravity.  Major issues, like the death of the Georgian luger at the start of the Vancouver games, are wished away.

Kumaritashvili's death requires a serious investigation, and it should include deep internal soul-searching by the IOC about its leadership. Are the Winter Games pushing athletes too far? How did the track get 20 mph faster between its design and construction? It was designed by the International Luge Federation and built to specifications by Vancouver organizers, neither of which has incentive to investigate itself, or to admit that athletes voiced serious fears and complaints about the course for a year. Oversight is surely the role of the IOC, especially when something goes wrong.

There will be no serious investigation.  The IOC has always been a political, not an athletic organization.  Its record of collaboration with Nazi Germany before World War II is notorious.  That record of casualness about fascism continued after the war.  Strangely, until recently, IOC presidents always seemed to have some relationship to fascist regimes.

But they don't even try. They abdicate, and that abdication has been a huge moral failure. It's a cold hard fact that the Olympics have become vehicles for evil, partly thanks to their scale. In 2007 and 2008, Human Rights Watch documented scores of human rights abuses directly linked to the Beijing Games. From forced evictions to the arrest of dissidents, the Olympics led to "an overall deterioration of human rights in China." The Olympics are leaving huge debts -- of all sorts -- in their wake. In some cases, they left men and women broken and in jail. For the moment, this is the IOC's real legacy.

Finally...

It shouldn't be to much for the IOC to demand that host countries sign contracts guaranteeing they won't perpetrate naked evils in the name of the Olympics, the charter of which insists on "human dignity."

If the Olympics aren't ruined yet, it's only because they are indestructible. Each quadrennial, the athletes deliver competitive masterpieces, spectacles so dazzling that we forget the problems that went into making them. In the end, that's what the Olympics are really about...But the danger is that under this IOC, they are turning into the ultimate political cover.

COMMENT:  Well said.  The athletes are the show, but some of the producers should be retired.

February 28, 2010   Permalink

"CRAZY" – AT 5:01 P.M. ET:  Ah, I can hear Patsy Cline singing it now, right at Nancy Pelosi:

WASHINGTON — The White House called for a "simple up-or-down" vote on health care legislation today as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama's chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers.

COMMENT:  Huh?  The only way it could threaten their political careers would be if their constituents are overwhelmingly against it.  So what Queen Nancy is saying is, "Who's more important, the American people or us, your leaders here in Washington?"  She certainly is blunt about it. 

I can understand risking your political career over a national-security issue, and members of Congress have done so.  But over a particular health-care plan?  When others are available?  When your own party has made a mess of it?

Nancy, of course, comes from a safe district in the People's Multicultural Republic of San Francisco, and Bar & Grill, so she has nothing to fear but smear itself.  Others are in greater jeopardy.

February 28, 2010   Permalink

FROM THE WONDERFUL GUYS WHO GAVE YOU MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD – AT 10:51A.M. ET:  I guess they felt they weren't making themselves clear.  From Reuters:

Iran could make European countries suffer by cutting off energy supplies and can target any adversary with its missiles, a senior Iranian military official said on Sunday.

Iran is locked in dispute with the United States and its allies over its nuclear energy program which Western countries fear is aimed at allowing Iran the chance to develop nuclear weapons. Tehran says it is only interested in electricity.

"Iran is standing on 50 percent of the world's energy and should it so decide Europe will have to spend the winter in cold," Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, said in a meeting with war veterans and volunteers in Kerman, according to Fars news agency.

"Our missiles are now able to target any spot in which the conspirators are in, and the country is making advances in all fields," he said.

COMMENT:  Let's see how the Europeans react to this direct threat, a threat of a missile attack.  Europe doesn't have a great record of reacting firmly, unless the United States is holding its collective hand.  And the American grip, under Obama, has become weaker.

This is a direct challenge.  The Iranians are probing Western intentions and strength.

February 28, 2010   Permalink

MAYBE SOME PROGRESS – AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  While Al Gore continues to argue that nothing is wrong in the global-warming kindergarten – just a few student crayon drawings out of place – more serious people are starting to move...maybe, maybe.  From today's Wall Street Journal:

The world's leading authority on climate change announced Saturday it is appointing an independent committee to investigate whether it needs to change its procedures to ensure it practices rigorous science.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, beset in recent months by a string of allegations of factual mistakes and improper scientific behavior in the preparation of its high-profile reports, said it will share details of how the independent review will work in early March.

A story in The Wall Street Journal on Friday detailed the IPCC's current effort to resuscitate its reputation and a longstanding tension within the organization between the desire by policy makers for clear, usable conclusions about climate science and the massive complexities of that science, many aspects of which scientists continue to debate.

And now the required garbage:

In the statement, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said that leaders of the United Nations-sponsored organization "stand firmly behind the rigour and robustness" of the IPCC's 2007 report. That report concluded that climate change is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activity, notably the burning of fossil fuels.

"But we recognize the criticism that has been leveled at us, and the need to respond," Mr. Pachauri said in the statement.

COMMENT:  Announcements like this need to be looked at very carefully.  And we need especially to look at how the investigation is executed.  Organizations, including universities, investigate themselves all the time, and the result is a whitewash.  Maybe this will be different, but I have my serious doubts.  Remember, there are people who have staked their entire careers on "global warming."  And there are billions of dollars involved. 

It will take heavy lifting by journalists, who themselves might well worry about their careers, to determine whether there'll be a real investigation, or a UN-style investigation. 

At the same time, the Obama administration continues to act as if there are no questions.  What strikes us is the anti-intellectualism of this position...although anti-intellectualism is a common malady among those who call themselves intellectuals.

February 28, 2010   Permalink

A DECENT MOMENT IN JOURNALISM – AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  The New York Times, which too often has disgracefully groveled before the great god of diversity, and has done real social damage in the process, has recently had some moments of reformation.

First, The Times took on African-American Governor David Paterson.  It was revelations in The Times that forced Paterson to drop out of the gubernatorial race.  And now The Times, on its very leftist editorial page, no less, takes on another powerful African-American:

Congressman Charles Rangel was far from humbled after the ethics committee admonished him for taking corporate-paid Caribbean junkets in violation of the House ethics code. Rather, the New York Democrat berated the panel’s leaders on the House floor.

The moment was characteristic of Mr. Rangel’s arrogance throughout the investigation, which continues into more serious allegations about his official behavior. It is one more reason why Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who championed ethics reform — should stop protecting him and relieve him of his crucial role as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

COMMENT:  Hurrah.  Finally, some sense at The Times.  It does no good to the African-American community to paper over the sins of some of its leaders.  It is patronizing and bigoted. 

Maybe the current Times establishment is growing up.  Or maybe some of the editorial staff is crawling out from under the boot of the paper's maturity-challenged publisher, who rules only because he's a member of The Times's royal family.

Or maybe The Times is finally recognizing that its economic tailspin is not due to the internet, but to the fact that many, many readers lost faith in the paper.

February 28, 2010   Permalink

OBAMA DOES A TITANIC IN BELLWETHER STATE – AT 9:43 A.M. ET:  Politics Daily has a new roundup of Obama's approval ratings by state.  Some of the polls are old, but others are right up to date.

There are, in some cases, the usual results.  My own state of New York still loves Obama.  The instruction sheet we receive regularly from the Commissar of Political Correctness instructs us to love and admire The One.  Otherwise our license to attend parties on the west side of Manhattan will be revoked.

But there is a stunner:  Ohio, a bellwether state.  The latest poll was taken a week ago:

Quinnipiac says 52 percent disapprove of the way Obama is handling his job while 44 percent approve, with 5 percent undecided. This is the highest level of disapproval in the state since Obama took office. Independents disapprove by 57 percent to 38 percent, with 5 percent undecided. Last September, 53 percent approved and 42 percent disapproved. Fifty-seven percent disapprove of Obama's handling of the economy while 39 percent approve, with 4 percent undecided. The percentage of those who disapprove is up 4 points since November. Independents disapprove of his handling of the economy by 64 percent to 33 percent, with 4 percent undecided. 

COMMENT:  Given the recent Dem disasters in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Ohio should have the White House breaking out in a cold sweat, or a global-warming sweat.  But the president's actions, and a certain cutting arrogance, don't indicate great concern.

February 28,  2010   Permalink