MayerBlog: The Web Log of
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Labor Day BFDs
For many, Labor Day weekend symbolically marks the end of summer. And “Big Fucking Deal!” nicely sums up my reaction to many of the issues and controversies in politics, public policy, and popular culture that prompted much needless hand-wringing over the past three months. Hence, my wrap-up of Summer 2006:
n Gas Prices Update As I predicted in my “Thoughts for the Summer Hiatus” entry, gasoline prices remained a hot topic of conversation throughout the summer. And, as I also predicted, very little of the conversation focused on the bad government policies that are the root cause of higher prices. For example, early in August, when BP reported that maintenance problems would force it to shut down its pipeline to Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, the news media began running hysterical stories predicting sky-high gasoline prices while demagogues on Capitol Hill pledged to investigate the oil giant. Virtually no one in the news media was asking the crucial question: Why is our energy market so vulnerable that the temporary shutdown of one oil field (albeit the USA’s largest) could be so disruptive? Rather than prompting lawmakers to demagogue against energy companies like BP, the event ought to prompt them “to open up oil exploration on federal lands and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to begin drilling for oil and gas offshore on the Outer Continental Shelf in all four leasing regions.” Thus concluded Rowland Nethaway, senior editor of the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald – one of the few members of the media to get it right – in his syndicated op-ed (“We need energy policy, not investigations,” August 12). Thankfully, BP announced that it could maintain partial oil flows during the pipeline repairs – and subsequently restored half the production at Prudhoe Bay – and as anyone who has filled his gas tank recently knows, gasoline prices have been falling and are expected to continue to do so, as summer peak demand has passed. Virtually unreported in “the drive-by media” (Rush Limbaugh’s apt name for the left-biased “mainstream” news media) was the positive by-product of higher gas prices: with higher prices, it’s economically feasible for the oil industry to extract petroleum from shale rock and sand in the western USA and Canada. As one of the few newspapers to report on this development, USA Today, noted in a couple articles earlier this summer (“Oil shale enthusiasm resurfaces in the West,” June 2, and “Canada taps tough-to-obtain oil,” July 5), a Shell Oil project in western Colorado is testing a new process for extracting oil from shale, which could produce up to 3 million barrels a day – 15% of U.S. demand – by 2040; while Canadian oil sands could quadruple daily production, up to 4 million barrels a day, by 2020. An estimated 175 billion barrels of oil lie buried in the hills of western Alberta province, ranking Canada behind only Saudi Arabia in proven reserves. As Bjorn Lomborg notes in his provocative book The Skeptical Environmentalist, shale oil can supply oil for the next 250 years at current levels of consumption.
n The Ethanol Gambit Another point I noted in my previous discussion of gasoline prices is that much of the blame lies with Congress, for imposing an ethanol mandate that’s nothing more than a sop to Midwestern corn farmers. Slowly but surely, the American public is learning the facts about the federal government’s promotion of ethanol: that it has nothing to do with good energy policy (the mantra that supporters of the policy keep chanting is that it “reduces our dependence on foreign oil”) but instead has everything to do with government subsidies of agribusiness and corn growers. (Notice that the biggest supporters of government promotion of ethanol come from Midwestern corn-producing states; and that it’s truly a bipartisan cause, supported by politicians from both the Demopublican and the Replicrat parties.) And ethanol use really doesn’t reduce our dependence on petroleum, nor does it save energy. A well-regarded study by David Pimentel of Cornell University shows that more energy is consumed to make one gallon of ethanol from corn (131,000 BTUs) than is produced by that one gallon of ethanol (77,000 BTUs), meaning that we’re losing energy (some 54,000 BTUs) for every gallon we produce.
n Hezbullshit During the latter half of July and the first half of August, news reports out of the Middle East shifted from coverage of the ongoing strife in Iraq to two other crises: the ominous nuclear build-up by Iran and Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah military bases in Lebanon. With regard to the latter, many world leaders and commentators – including Kofi Annan, the corrupt thug who heads the UN, and many other morally-blind idiots – criticized Israel for its “disproportionate” use of military force. Appeasers and apologists for militant Islam have misrepresented the two sides in the Lebanon war. Make no mistake about it: Hezbollah, the so-called “Party of God,” is a militant Islamic terrorist group that has been linked to hundreds of terror attacks (including the 1983 suicide bombing that killed more than 200 U.S. Marines in their Beirut barracks); in addition to its professed goal to destroy Israel, it wants to turn Lebanon into an Iranian-style Islamic republic. Israel, on the other hand, is an oasis of Western civilization within a desert of Muslim states that desire its annihilation precisely because it represents Western values in a region that militant Islamists seek to monopolize. Israel is the only nation in the region that has followed UN resolutions ordering foreign nations out of Lebanon; when Israel withdrew its forces from southern Lebanon in 2000, the Hezbos – aided by Iran and Syria – militarized the area and formed itself as a state within a state, aspiring both to annihilate Israel and to take over Lebanon. (The political wing of Hezbollah holds 28 searts in Lebanon’s 128-member parliament; two Lebanese cabinet ministers are Hezbos.) The war was necessary, in large part, because of the fecklessness of the UN, which failed to enforce Security Council Resolution 1559, which ordered that Hezbollah be disarmed; and the fatal flaw in the latest UN resolution, which has supposedly ended the conflict, is that it fails to disarm Hezbollah – the real problem in this whole mess. Under these circumstances, Israel was justified in using as much military force as it could. The deaths of “innocent civilians” in Lebanon were caused not by Israel, which was merely defending itself, but by the Hezbos, who shamelessly used the Lebanese people as human shields, deliberately placing their missiles among them. Moreover, one might legitimately ask: Are the people of Lebanon truly “innocent,” for they have permitted this dangerous terrorist organization to use the southern part of the country as a staging-ground for their attacks on Israeli civilians as well as their fellow Lebanese. Until militant Islamic groups like Hezbollah are completely and utterly destroyed, there can be no peace in the Mideast.
n Revealing Fauxtographs Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) has coined an apt term to describe one of the latest scandals concerning the news media – “fauxtography – which refers to Reuters’ admission that one of its photographers, Adnan Hajj, had manipulated two war images from Lebanon. Reuters has pulled all 920 of the photos Hajj took for their organization, while more and more evidence of other doctored photos – and of deceptions both of and by the media – surfaces. Some examples: one of Mr. Hajj’s photos, of a dusty dead child with a clean blue pacifier clipped to his shirt, was clearly staged, as were photos taken by an anonymous photographer (dubbed the “Green Helmet Guy”) who yanked a young boy’s corpse from an ambulance and positioned it in various spots for anti-Israel propaganda photos. An Associated Press photo, of an anguished father carrying his dead 5-year-old daughter into a Gaza City hospital, was a genuine image, but its caption erroneously blamed the child’s death on an Israeli airstrike; it turns out that she had died in a swingset accident. And The New York Times ran the photo of a shirtless young man, appearing dead, his body sprawled amidst the rubble in Tyre, with a caption that originally read: “The mayor of Tyre said that in the worst-hit areas, bodies were still buried in the rubble . . . “ – until it was revealed that the “dead” young man was an alive “rescue worker” who had been photographed, posing in several other scenes, around the bombing site. Thanks to the bloggers who revealed these and other “fauxtographs” published by the news media, the truth is trumping the propaganda coming from Islamic terrorists and their sympathizers. Sadly, those sympathizers include a gullible news media that’s far too quick to blame Israel for the violence in the Middle East.
n And Still More Fauxtography Just before Katie Couric, the former co-host of NBC’s Today show, takes over the anchor chair formerly held by Dan Rather at the CBS Evening News, CBS had an embarrassing fauxtography scandal of its own: it was revealed that a publicity photo taken of Couric for the network’s magazine, Watch, had been digitally altered to make her look about 20 pounds lighter. (Her neck and waistline were both trimmed.) A CBS spokesman apologized for the doctoring by an “overzealous” photo editor, promising “This is not something that is going to happen again.” An ethics professor at a Florida school was quoted in USA Today saying that although it’s acceptable to alter a photo of an actor in a fictional project, “people like Katie Couric are in the business of reporting the truth, and if we alter the truth about them, we raise suspicions of the public.” Since when have members of the “drive-by” media – “people like Katie Couric” – ever been “in the business of reporting the truth”? What planet has the good professor been on – Pluto, perhaps? (See “Eight Is Enough,” below.) Anyone who has ever watched Couric’s interviews on the Today knows that her left-wing political bias colors her reporting. A retouched photo is a trivial problem, with regard to public credibility, for the news network that gave literal meaning to the phrase “Rather-biased news.”
n A Bolton of Fresh Air Notwithstanding criticism by weak-kneed Demopublican/Replicrat Senators (who have delayed until later this month a vote on his confirmation), John Bolton has proved his worth as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, particularly in recent weeks, with his bold criticisms of Hezbollah and the sponsors of its terrorism, Syria and Iran. The political critics’ main complaint?: Bolton is not mealy-mouthed enough to satisfy them. A man who speaks truth in the face of international bullshit – and rampant corruption in the house of Kofi Annan —Bolton ranks, along with Jean Kirkpatrick and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as one of our best ambassadors to the UN in the past half-century. He deserves not only confirmation but also the Medal of Freedom.
n The North Korean Missile Crisis North Korea’s Communist dictator, Kim Jong “Mentally”-Il, celebrated July 4 by launching a half-dozen missiles, including a long-range Taepodong-2 missile. The latter was justifiably an object of world-wide concern, for it is believed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and has a reported 9,320-mile range, capable of reaching major cities on the U.S. West Coast. Although indeed apparently aimed at the United States (the Hawaiian Islands), the missile launched on July 4 failed within a minute and fell harmlessly into the sea. The United Nations’ reaction to North Korea’s defiant acts has further demonstrated the uselessness of the organization. Russia and Red China, looking upon the episode as an opportunity to tweak the United States’ nose, have vetoed any meaningful response by the UN Security Council. President Bush’s political enemies have been equally shameless in seizing upon the opportunity to hypocritically criticize him for failing to do what they have been excoriating him for doing in Iraq: having the United States act unilaterally, by a preemptive military strike. North Korea does seem the perfect target for preemptive military action (assuming that its missile-launching and nuclear facilities could be safely targeted for surgical removal – and without igniting nuclear war with Red China), as well as for regime change: Kim Jong “Mentally”-Il’s regime is not only defiant of international law – and reality – but is also brutalizing the North Korean people, who suffer under the living hell of a totalitarian Communist dictatorship. Isn’t it interesting how those people (mostly Democrats) who ridiculed Ronald Reagan’s concept of a missile-defense system as “Star Wars” and who equally dismissed George W. Bush’s characterization of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “axis of evil” are now so silent, when both the concept of missile defense and the characterization of these evil, lawless regimes have proven to be so relevant and right?
n Putin on the Ritz Meanwhile, in mid-July Russian President/dictator Vlad Putin hosted the G-8 summit of leaders from the world’s industrialized countries at, appropriately enough, the old Russian Czars’ winter palace in St. Petersburg, Russia. Why do President Bush and the leaders of other (relatively) free economies continue to indulge Putin in the pretense that Russia belongs among the group? As the Wall Street Journal noted in a July 15 editorial, “Russia doesn’t deserve its place among the G-8 democracies, and the task of the U.S. and other members is to encourage reform that will make it worthy of membership.” Such reform, however, may require another Russian revolution, or at least another constructive “regime change.” Putin is a neo-Communist thug, a dictator, whose "governing approach undercuts the very gains” he advertised at the G-8 summit, as the Journal reports. Russia’s remarkable economic gains since the fall of the Soviet Union – the country’s economy has grown 65% since 2000 – can be attributed mostly to high oil prices, up sixfold during Putin’s rule. Early in Putin’s rule, in 2001-2002, smart economic policies – chiefly Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov’s 13% flat income tax and overhauling of a corrupt tax system – helped fuel the growth. Since then, as the Journal editorial adds, “Mr. Putin’s commitment to free markets has proved as fleeting as to democracy. Mr. Kasyanov, dumped in 2004, went into opposition with other disenchanted liberals. Monopoly control, be it over the Duma or media or business, is the defining characteristic of the Putin era. The slide toward single-man rule put a halt to efforts to modernize Russia’s broken institutions and open up the economy.” With the share of state-controlled companies at 40% and rising, Russia is still mired in its communist past.
n The Only Good Castro Is a Dead Castro Freedom-lovers in the USA, especially in the Cuban-American community, rejoiced at the beginning of August, at the news that Fidel Castro, Cuba’s Communist dictator since 1959, was temporarily ceding power to his younger brother, Raul, while Fidel underwent abdominal surgery. It turns out that celebration – whether of Fidel Castro’s demise, or of the fall of Cuban communism – was clearly a case of premature jubilation. Fidel seems to be recovering. And even if he weren’t, it seems – just as the Wicked Witch of the West was “worse than the other one,” her dead sister, the Wicked Witch of the East, in The Wizard of Oz – that the younger Castro may be worse, or at least just as bad, as his brother. The No. 2 strongman of the Cuban communist regime and head of its military, Raul Castro may lack the personality of his older brother but is equally despicable: he’s a hard-liner who was active in the Communist Party even before it came to power in Cuba in 1959. (Some historians believe it was Raul, along with Che Guevara, who pulled Fidel into the Communist movement.) He has been Fidel Castro’s designated successor since the beginning of his dictatorship. For the people of Cuba to be at last free of communist dictatorship, it will take more than the death of a Castro or two. It will require the people of Cuba – along with many so-called “intellectuals” in the USA who’ve been far too complacent about the Castro regime – to realize how truly evil the philosophy of communism is.
n “There are no hereditary Kings,” but there are life-tenured idiotic judges “There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.” This obvious point was piously proclaimed by U.S. District Judge Anne Diggs (of Detroit), in her ruling in mid-August that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program is unconstitutional. Of course, the Bush administration has vowed to appeal the decision. “We couldn’t disagree more with this ruling,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said. The program, which started just days after the September 11, 2002 Islamic terrorist attacks on the U.S., involves monitoring communications between people in the U.S. and terrorism suspects abroad. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales continues to maintain the program is “lawful” and said the administration will do “everything we can to allow this program to continue.” The Bush administration may be too self-confident; the program does raise serious constitutional issues and may indeed violate the Constitution. But you wouldn’t know about those issues by reading Judge Taylor’s 43-page opinion. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh noted on a recent post to his “Volokh Conspiracy” blog (“Lower Court Opinions Are Briefs to Higher Courts,” August 17), the judge’s opinion was “not just ill-reasoned, but rhetorically ill-conceived.” Volokh was one of many commentators who noted that Judge Taylor’s opinion seemed angry and partisan (for example, the hyperbolic statement about “hereditary Kings,” as well as this gem: “[The orders] violate the Separation of Powers ordained by the very Constitution of which this President is a creature” [emphasis added]). Such highly-charged rhetoric, Volokh persuasively argues, “is unlikely to sway other judges – especially when the opinion is rich in generalities, platitudes (“There are no hereditary kings . . .” [again]), . . . and poor in detailed discussion of some of the government’s strongest arguments.” (And there are good arguments – based in sound separation-of-powers constitutional principles about the executive powers of the presidency – that are not given serious attention in the decision.) Judge Taylor – an incompetent federal judge appointed by an incompetent president (Jimmy Carter) – is exactly the sort of leftist judge who gives credibility to conservative complaints about (left-wing) “judicial activism.” If, as many commentators expect, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reverses Judge Taylor’s decision, it will be not because the Bush administration’s position is right but rather because Judge Taylor’s critical analysis of it is so unsound.
n “Guilty Sicko” or “Innocent Wacko”? CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin aptly characterized one of the latest twists in the JonBenét Ramsey murder mystery, the arrest in Bangkok, Thailand of John Karr, a 41-year-old teacher who has confessed his responsibility for the 6-year-old girl’s death ten years ago in Boulder, Colorado. Karr, as Toobin put it, is one of two things: “a guilty sicko or an innocent wacko.” Now that the Boulder prosecutor has dropped all charges against Karr, it turns out the guy’s both a “sicko” and a “wacko,” innocent of the Ramsey murder but perhaps guilty of other pedophilic crimes, for which he’s being extradicted to California. So, the murder of the Ramsey child remains an unsolved mystery. What is certain about the case is that the parents, John Ramsey and the late Patsy Ramsey, are guilty at least of having abused their daughter – by giving her the ridiculous name JonBenét and by stealing away her childhood by exploiting her as a “beauty queen.”
n (More than) Fifteen Minutes of Plame The biggest BFD – as I’ve previously written, the “mother” of BFDs (a B.M.F.D., perhaps?) – “which is to say, the most stupid news story that never seems to go away” – is the alleged crime of the alleged “leak” of the identity of alleged CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former Clinton administration ambassador Joe Wilson. (See my previous discussion, “The Ms. Plame/Mrs. Wilson CIA “leak” scandal,” in “B.F.D.,” February 23, 2006). Well, it turns out that the charges that the Bush administration tried to destroy the careers of Ms. Plame/Mrs. Wilson and of ex-ambassador Mr. Wilson were complete lies. As even the leftist/anti-Bush Washington Post conceded in a recent editorial, “One of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House – that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson – is untrue.” The phony story dominated news headlines for months after Mr. Wilson first made his false allegation, and it kept resurfacing – as a special prosecutor was appointed; as his costly and prolonged investigation proceeded; as the investigation concluded with the vindication of both Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush advisor Karl Rove (whom many Democrats hoped to implicate in the scandal) but the indictment of Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges of lying to the grand jury; and this summer, as Ms. Plame and Mr. Wilson filed a lawsuit against Vice President Cheney and 12 other former or current government officials, accusing them of trying to ruin her career and seeking unnamed millions of dollars in damages. (The lawsuit was announced at about the same time, in mid-July, that Ms. Plame’s “seven-figure” book deal for writing her memoirs for Simon & Schuster was announced.) It turns out, as the Post editorial also concedes, that Plame’s “outing” as a CIA agent actually came from Richard Armitage – a Bush administration critic. And, as the Post editorial further concedes, that “the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson.” It also turns out, as Robert Bidinotto observes in a recent entry in his Bidinotto blog (“Why no headlines for this? Sept. 3), that Joe Wilson falsely claimed that he had “debunked” White House charges that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy uranium in Niger. In fact, Saddam had been trying to buy uranium, so that Iraq could build nuclear weapons. Thus, as Bidinotto notes, “it turns out that the White House stands vindicated on one of its key arguments for going to war against Saddam: that this thug and his regime were actively pursuing a WMD program.” Yet, for reasons that Bidinotto explains, the news media has been relatively silent about the truth behind this supposed scandal, except for the editorial admission by the Post which, as he notes, “implies that the newspaper had been taken in, rather than playing a key role in disseminating the lies.” “Where are the media mea culpas, retractions, and apologies for many months of false, anti-Bush `conspiracy’ stories? Don’t hold your breath.” Mr. Libby still faces trial in January on these phony charges (the non-crime of “lying” to a grand jury about a non-crime). President Bush should immediately pardon him, to save both Libby and the American people one more minute of this absurd nonsense – and to give Libby some justice. And, if our legal system truly dispensed justice, it’s he, along with Vice President Cheney and all the other officials named in Ms. Plame’s lawsuit, who ought to be awarded damages against Ms. Plame/Mr. Wilson for their libels. The Wilsons’ victims deserve at least a good portion of whatever money she makes from her “memoirs.”
n Some Reasons to Vote for the GOP This Fall Some time ago I concluded that there’s very little essential difference between the two major American political parties today – that neither party supports limited government and individual freedom, and that most “Demopublican/Replicrat” politicians are more or less equally dangerous to liberty and self-responsibility. Nevertheless, as I explained my support for George W. Bush and other Republican candidates in past elections, in general it seems that the Republicans are the lesser of two evils, or more accurately, that the Democrats are the evil of two lessers. That observation still holds true, and it will explain why I will continue to vote for some Republican candidates in this fall’s elections. The prospect of the Democrats winning enough seats to take over control of the U.S. House will be sufficient for me to overcome my qualms about my representative in Congress and vote for his re-election. If that’s not reason enough, I’ve found a few more. Congressman Charlie Rangel (D.-N.Y.), senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee and one of the worst assholes in Congress (and that’s saying a lot!) would become chairman of the tax-writing committee if the Dems win the 15 additional seats they need for the majority. (Rangel has said he’ll resign from Congress if his party doesn’t recapture control of the House – which, by itself, may be reason enough for rational people to vote Republican.) Alcee Hastings (D.-Fla.), who was removed from his office as federal judge after he was impeached and convicted of extortion, perjury, and falsifying documents in 1989, was elected to Congress in 1992; he’s now second in seniority on the House Intelligence Committee and in line to become chairman of this important committee, entrusted with the nation’s most sensitive secrets, if the Dems regain control of the House. Last, but not least, of the reasons to vote Republican, to prevent a Democrat takeover of the House – just three words: Speaker Nancy Pelosi!
n The “Gay Marriage” Scare Just as Democrats plan to emphasize the minimum-wage issue to get labor thugs and other leftists to turn out at the polls this fall (a topic for an upcoming MayerBlog entry), many Republican candidates continue to emphasize their support for “traditional” marriage (that is, the heterosexual coupling of a man and a woman), in an effort to turn out the social conservative vote. Although a proposed federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage failed in the Senate (in the early June vote, it failed on a 49-48 procedural vote, far short of the 60 needed to move ahead on the measure and even shorter of the 67 needed to pass a constitutional amendment), some Republicans plan to continue trying to exploit the issue this fall. As I have written previously here (see my essays on “Marriage, American Style,” May 19, 2004, and “In Defense of Sex,” May 16, 2005), the definition of marriage ought to be broadened to include same-sex couples, to fully comply with the American principles of individual freedom and of equal rights under law. I also fail to see how same-sex marriage – that is, extending to same-sex couples the same rights as married persons under the law that are extended to opposite-sex couples – threatens anything other than the homophobia of its opponents. Also as I’ve previously written, the institution of marriage is threatened far more by heterosexual couples who do not take it seriously. For those who truly care about the future of marriage as an institution, there’s some good news out of Las Vegas. As a cost-cutting move, the city’s marriage service office announced this summer that it will no longer be open around-the-clock but instead will be closed between midnight and 8 a.m. That’s expected to discourage spur-of-the-moment nuptials, like celebrity Britney Spears’ first (and remarkably short-lived) marriage. Thus does smart government budgeting (itself a remarkable phenomenon) do far more to help “save” marriage than all the homophobes’ scheming.
n The Immigration Scare With the House and Senate passing irreconcilable bills – and with Republicans split on the issue, while Democrats would prefer to do nothing but exploit it – Congress this summer failed to pass any legislation reforming U.S. immigration laws. As I argued in my previous discussion of the issue (see my blurb on “Borderline Lunacy” in my “Thoughts for the Summer Hiatus,” May 30), immigration – whether legal or illegal – is not a problem worthy of concern, except about the ways that U.S. law interferes with persons’ natural rights to cross national borders and employers’ rights to hire whomever they wish. As I wrote, “Behind the political posturing of those calling for a `tough’ approach to illegal immigration lies the unsavory policy of protectionism, using the coercive power of government to shield certain groups of people in society – in this case, U.S. laborers – from competition. All the professed concern for protecting U.S. borders – and the entire attempt to demonize foreign workers in the U.S. as `illegals’ – is, at best, disguised protectionism; at worse, it’s racism and jingoistic lunacy.” I’m proud to report that in June I signed the Independent Institute’s Open Letter on Immigration, which states in part: “Overall, immigration has been a net gain for American citizens, though a modest one in proportion to the size of our 13 trillion-dollar economy. “Immigrants do not take American jobs. The American economy can create as many jobs as there are workers willing to work so long as labor markets remain free, flexible and open to all workers on an equal basis. . . . “We must not forget that the gains to immigrants coming to the United States are immense. Immigration is the greatest anti-poverty program ever devised. The American dream is a reality for many immigrants who not only increase their own living standards but who also send billions of dollars of their money back to their families in their home countries—a form of truly effective foreign aid. “America is a generous and open country and these qualities make America a beacon to the world. We should not let exaggerated fears dim that beacon.”
n The Flag-Burning Scare Over the summer, Congress came within one vote of proposing a constitutional amendment that would authorize making desecration of the U.S. flag a federal crime. The House had passed the measure last year, 286-130 (well above the two-thirds vote needed for a constitutional amendment), but on June 27 the Senate voted 66-34 – just one vote shy of the two-thirds necessary for passage. Although this marked the fifth time since 1990 that such a proposed amendment failed in the Senate, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah) and other supporters vowed to continue the fight to protect the Stars and Stripes as a symbol of freedom. How like members of the U.S. Congress, to so disregard their oaths to support the Constitution – and what the flag symbolizes – that they would so vote to gut First Amendment freedom of speech! It’s worth noting – something not given much attention in the left-leaning mainstream news media – that the vote in favor of the flag amendment was bipartisan and that among the many Democrats to vote “yea” were Senators Baucus (Montana), Bayh (Indiana), Feinstein (California), Johnson (South Dakota), Landrieu (Louisiana), both Nelsons (Florida and Nebraska and Florida), Rockefeller (West Virginia), and Stabenow (Michigan). Only a few Republicans voted “no” – one of them (who thus could be considered as having cast the decisive vote) was Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, perhaps the First Amendment’s greatest friend in the Senate (simply because of his opposition to campaign finance regulations that similarly gut free-speech rights).
n The “Conservative” Roberts Court The notion that the U.S. Supreme Court is “conservative” is a myth propagated by paranoid leftists. A more accurate description of the Court would be that it is more or less evenly split between a left-liberal constitutional jurisprudence and a conservative constitutional jurisprudence, with four “liberal” justices (Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer), four “conservatives” (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito), and one “moderate” justice who swings both ways (Kennedy), depending on the type of case. Two apparently “liberal” decisions that the Court issued in late June illustrate this. In Randall v. Sorrell, the Court declared unconstitutional Vermont’s stringent limits on both the amount of money that candidates for state office may spend on their campaigns and the amounts that individuals, organizations, and political parties may contribute to those campaigns. What should have been a relatively simple case of enforcing First Amendment freedom of speech against state laws that clearly abridged it, turned out to be a decision in which almost all the justices wrote separate opinions. Justice Breyer broke ranks with his fellow left-liberals, joining Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Kennedy, Thomas, and Scalia in forming a six-justice majority (albeit with several separate concurring opinions). The other three left-liberals (Justices Souter, Stevens, and Ginsburg) dissented, adhering to the left-liberal view that government regulation of campaign finance isn’t really an abridgement of free-speech rights. (Left-liberals are as blind to this form of free-speech abridgement as conservatives are to laws that limit speech that’s “obscene” or “indecent.”) And in Hamdan v. Rumsfield, the Court found unconstitutional the special military commission created by the Bush administration to try an alleged member of al Qaeda charged with war crimes. The five-justice majority was comprised of Justice Kennedy joining the four left-liberals; the four conservative justices dissented, with Justice Thomas writing a separate opinion that most explicitly took a deferential view of executive powers. Neither of these decisions characterizes a “conservative” Court. Rather, they characterize a Court that has a majority of members (a shifting majority, whose composition depends on the type of issue(s) before the Court) who are all-too-willing to engage in judicial activism.
n Goosed by Big Brother Chicago’s far-too-powerful City Council continued its recent paternalistic rule by enacting the nation’s first ban on the sale of foie gras. It seems that some animal-rights activists regard the production of the delicacy – which requires artificial fattening to enlarge the livers of ducks or geese – to be “cruel” treatment. (Of course, “cruelty” is a human notion, and the right not to be subjected to “cruel or unusual punishments” – the right enshrined in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – like all other rights, properly considered, pertains only to human beings.) Even Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has called the ban “the silliest law” that Chicago City Council ever passed (which is saying a lot because the Council has passed a lot of silly laws). There’s already plenty of evidence that the ban has backfired – and that by attempting to use the coercive power of government to force their silly beliefs on everyone else, animal rights activists have really caused more harm to the very ducks and geese they’re professing to help. A number of Chicago restaurants have kept foie gras on the menus in protest. It seems the law, technically, bans only the sale of foie gras: it’s not a crime for restaurants to give it away, as a complimentary accompaniment to, say, $15 mashed potatoes. And demand for foie gras now seems to be soaring, as Chicago consumers apparently are telling the City Council members where they can stick it. Restaurants in other cities are joining in the protest. Here in central Ohio, the Bexley Monk restaurant (one of the Columbus area’s finest) has announced that it will feature foie gras in an entrée and an appetizer, beginning at the start of last week, to support the protesting Chicago restaurants as well as to support the concept of free choice. Bravo to the Monk! I think that’s where I’ll go for dinner one of these nights – and I might very well sample the foie gras, a food I wouldn’t ordinarily eat, if it weren’t for the “food police” telling Chicagoans they can’t!
n Heat Wave? Despite all the media-hyped hysteria about this summer’s “record heat,” it turns out that this summer’s weather was not all that unusual. The true record for hottest summer was set back in the 1930s. Indeed, the hottest single days recorded in modern times in the U.S. and the world occurred, respectively, in 1913 and 1922. Environmentalist nuts may ascribe this summer’s high temperatures to global warming; religious nuts may ascribe them to God’s wrath against human sins; but there’s a much simpler, common-sense explanation for this year’s heat wave. In one word, it’s summer!
n Eight Is Enough Astronomers made headlines in late August when the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the leading worldwide body for astronomers, adopted a new definition of planet that resulted in Pluto’s demotion from the ranks of “planet” to that of "dwarf planet.” Officially, Pluto is no longer a planet; and, once again (as it was before Pluto’s discovery in the 20th century), the solar system has only eight planets. Another proposal considered by the astronomers would have adopted a broader definition of planet that would have included Pluto. That broader definition – which would have labeled as “planet” any object orbiting a star that had been pulled by its own gravity into a ball shape and is not a satellite of another planet – however, would have added at least three other such “planets” to the solar system: Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter; Charon, Pluto’s so-called “moon” (both it and Pluto revolve around one another, in the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system); and another object discovered in the Kuiper Belt just last year, UB 313, dubbed “Xena” (after TV’s “Warrior Princess”) by some astronomer/geeks. Had the AIU adopted that broader definition of planet, the solar system would have had 12 “planets” – and counting – for there are many other (at least two dozen) “plutons,” or Pluto-like objects, likely to be discovered. Some people (both astronomers and laymen) are upset, because for decades schoolchildren have been taught that the solar system has nine planets, one of them being Pluto. But as USA Today noted in a common-sensical editorial on August 21, the demotion of Pluto merely recognizes reality: “Pluto is demonstrably different from the other eight planets in our solar system and shouldn’t have been classified as a planet in the first place.” The IAU’s new definition requires a “planet” to have, in addition to the characteristics noted above, the additional characteristic of having “cleared the neighborhood around its orbit,” meaning not being surrounded – as Pluto is – by objects of similar size and characteristics. That new definition makes sense, and is consistent with our current state of knowledge about the solar system. After all, what science is all about is simply making sense of reality. People may be upset, but in this case, logic trumps tradition – as it should, in the field of science.
n Mel Gibson: Anti-Semite or Just Asshole? Actor/director Mel Gibson’s July 28th arrest for drunk driving sparked a furor in the celebrity news-media because of the allegedly anti-Jewish rant Gibson uttered while being handcuffed by the police. Although Gibson promptly issued two abject apologies, pundits couldn’t resist predicting the end of his career. Accusations of bigotry, of course, have become the modern version of the witch hunt: nothing can be so damaging to anyone’s career (especially to a celebrity whose success depends largely on popularity) as to accuse him of racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual prejudice. And many had already prejudged Gibson, in turn, as an anti-Semite because of his film The Passion of the Christ, which in the eyes of some critics fostered anti-Jewish bigotry simply because it faithfully portrayed the role of Jewish religious leaders in the criminal prosecution of Jesus, as described in New Testament accounts. (Personally, I think possible anti-Semitism is among the less troubling aspects of Gibson’s film and the literal interpretation of the New Testament that it depicted. Far more disturbing, to me, is the film’s explicit violence and glorification of Christian dogma.) Barbara Walters, host of ABC’s The View and an arrogant moralist herself (witness her treatment of former fellow host Star Jones), declared: “I don’t think I want to see another Mel Gibson movie” (the same sentiment many of us have about Ba-ba Wa-wa’s specials). And opinionated bitch Ariana Huffington swore she would keep “the drumbeat” going to boycott Gibson’s films. Commenting on the Holocaust mini-series that Gibson’s production company had been developing for ABC, Huffington likened the project to “a Saturday Night Live joke.” ABC canceled the project. Now many pundits are speculating that all this bad publicity has doomed Gibson’s new movie about ancient Mayans, Apocalypto, which is slated to be released by Disney on December 8. More likely, the movie – with its Mayan dialogue and English subtitles – will doom itself.
n Other Anti-Semitic Assholes Less well publicized in the “drive-by” news media were the anti-Semitic comments made by members of the media (including the BBC) and other left-wing-Israel-haters during the war in Lebanon. Also largely ignored were some comments made by so-called “civil rights” activist Andrew Young, former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador. In an interview published in a Los Angeles newspaper, Young – who had been hired by Wal-Mart to help the company improve its public image – speculated why so many mom-and-pop stores close, especially in black neighborhoods: “But you see, those [mom-and-pop stores] are the people who have been overcharging us – selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was the Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it’s Arabs; very few black people own these stores.” To its credit, Wal-Mart accepted the resignation of this repugnant racist.
n From “Macaca” to Ca-Ca Senator George Allen (R.-Va.) is also in hot water, for his “racially insensitive” comment about a young dark-skinned Indian-American man on his Democratic rival’s campaign staff, whom he publicly called a “macaca” – which apparently is a slur referring to a monkey. That one comment may have torpedoed the chances of the only decent GOP candidate for the presidency in 2008. (Allen, a self-described “Jeffersonian,” is a limited-government conservative.) In other words, his unfortunate choice of words may have turned his political future into “ca-ca.”
n Dwarfs and Stooges Top the “Supremes” It’s a sad commentary on the failure of civics education in the United States. According to a survey released on August 14 by veteran political pollster John Zogby, more Americans can identify two of the Seven Dwarfs (77 percent) than can name two of the Supreme Court justices (only 24 percent). More could name Larry, Moe, and Curly as the Three Stooges (74 percent) than could identify the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the federal government (only 42 percent). Perhaps Jay Leno’s amusing “Jaywalking” bits on the Tonight show aren’t so funny: Those dumbies are all-too-typical Americans!
n Captain Jack vs. Superman At the end of my “Thoughts for the 2006 Summer Hiatus” entry, I previewed this summer’s movies, predicting a lackluster summer of unoriginal action films. I was right – but that doesn’t mean it was a disappointing summer. Hollywood enjoyed modest success, with box office receipts up from last year’s disappointing numbers. That success was fueled in large part by the summer’s clear winner, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean II: Dead Man’s Chest, which led the pack both with its box-office success and its entertainment value. Pirates had the biggest opening in movie history, taking in a staggering $132 million in its first three days, and continues to set records. Superman Returns was, relatively speaking, a disappointment at the box office but was rousing entertainment, and a worthy addition to the Superman genre, nevertheless. Brandon Routh was quite credible as the “man of steel,” notwithstanding the big shoes he had to fill – not only the memory of the previous big-screen Clark Kent/Superman, the late Christopher Reeve, but also the excellent performances on the little screen by Lois & Clark’s Dean Cain and Smallville’s Tom Welling, in the years since Chris Reeves’ last two Superman movies (the truly forgettable Superman III and Superman IV). An unexpected success was Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Will Farrell’s NASCAR comedy, which took in an impressive $47 million its first weekend, early in August – the biggest-ever debut for a Ferrell movie. It was crude – and funny – like NASCAR itself. (Perhaps the main reason why the movie was such an unexpected box-office success was the elitism of movie reviewers and other “intellectuals” who are virtually ignorant of NASCAR and other aspects of real American culture.) In contrast, Snakes on a Plane had truly disappointing box-office returns, failing to live up to all the hype generated by bloggers and other writers on the Internet – and perhaps proving that hype alone won’t carry a silly movie.
n Convenient Lies An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore’s alarmist “documentary” movie about global warming was relatively successful, in terms of box-office receipts – at least as documentaries go – even though it fell far short of environmental activists’ (and Gore-groupies’) exaggerated expectations that it might be as successful as Michael Moore’s partisan diatribe, Fahrenheit 9/11, was in 2004. (The Gore movie's box office take of $19 million made it the 4th highest grossing documentary, well behind both Moore's film and last year's hit, March of the Penguins.) The movie enjoyed glowing reviews, which gushed about Gore’s sincerity and the importance of his message, and which ignored the fact that the “truths” espoused by Gore are anything but. Gore is a scaremonger, who presents as “fact” a supposed consensus about the dangers of global warming, or “climate change” (the p.c. preferred euphemism for the theory), which does not in fact exist. As Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, observed in a thoughtful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (“There Is No `Consensus’ on Global Warming,” June 26), there’s still plenty of room for debate in the scientific community because weather and climate sciences are still in a relatively primitive state. Those things about which there’s widespread agreement – that global mean temperatures have increased about one degree Fahrenheit over the past century but have remained relatively flat since 1998, that the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen slightly (from about 280 parts per million by volume in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today), and that carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas” (that is, an infrared absorber) – are not the basis for alarm. The critical question – whether a concerted effort to reduce man-made carbon-dioxide emissions will make any appreciable difference in global temperatures – is still incapable of any definitive answer, as I noted in summarizing the issue (and explaining the problem of the unknowns in the science) in my previous entry, “Merchants of Fear” (May 17). The title of the film is the height of irony. Al Gore is an idiot, and anyone who takes seriously his alarmist nonsense is even more idiotic than he is.
n Amazingly, a Good Oliver Stone Movie! Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center is a moving, inspiring, and true story of some real heroes: two survivors of the twin towers attack on 9/11/2001 – Sgt. John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage), a veteran transit cop, and his fellow officer, Will Jimeno (Michael Pena) – and of the men who rescued them. Although most commentators have praised the film (noting, among other things, the refreshing absence of politics and the nutty conspiracy theories that seemed to characterize many of Stone’s earlier films), a few conservative pundits have criticized the movie for leaving out the politics and the real-life conspiracy (by al Qaeda Islamic terrorists) responsible for the tragic events of that day. As Brian Carney noted in Wall Street Journal (“None Dare Call It Conspiracy,” August 5-6), “9/11 was not an act of God or nature. It was an atrocity carried out with malice aforethought by evil men bent on killing innocents. Put differently, it was a conspiracy – one that Oliver Stone has left out of his film. . . .World Trade Center tells a powerful story of the basic goodness so many people felt and acted on in the wake of a heinous act. But to the extent that it omits any direct reference to the crimes that made those good deeds necessary, its version of the truth is incomplete.” This critic has a point – and, of course, as I’ve written here many times before, it’s vitally important that Americans never forget 9/11, and with it, never forget that we’re still at war with militant Islamists who want to destroy our civilization. But the criticism is unfair. A film like Stone’s World Trade Center isn’t meant to tell the “complete” truth about the 9/11 attacks. Like other good movies, it tells its own story – a story that focuses on just one aspect of what happened that awful day – and on one of the uplifting aspects of that bigger story, the story of ordinary persons’ extraordinary heroism in the face of tragedy. That’s a story that deserved to be told, too.
| Link to this Entry | Posted Monday, September 4, 2006 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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