That means you, Mom.

Powerblogs, which has hosted this blog virtually glitch-free, is shutting down at the end of the month. My new site is here. As far as I can tell, Blogger won't let me import all the posts here, but for the inexplicably interested a lot of them are available via the Wayback Machine.

Many thanks to Powerblogs for the smooth and helpful service, and my best wishes to the proprietors for the future.

Not perfect, because no state is. But better.

Steve Sailer:

In all the brouhaha over Rush Limbaugh being prevented from buying part of an NFL team, has anybody noticed that his endlessly denounced remark -- the one he actually said in 2003, not the libelous made-up ones we've been hearing lately -- about the media overrating black quarterbacks for political reasons has been largely vindicated?

Aaron M. Renn, Newgeography.com:

Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as “cool” urban places.

But look closely at these exemplars and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.

In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for African American percentage population in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group. . . .

As the college educated flock to these progressive El Dorados, many factors are cited as reasons: transit systems, density, bike lanes, walkable communities, robust art and cultural scenes. But another way to look at it is simply as White Flight writ large. Why move to the suburbs of your stodgy Midwest city to escape African Americans and get criticized for it when you can move to Portland and actually be praised as progressive, urban and hip?

(Via Steve Sailer.)

I want to note one sentence in the piece by Stephen F. Hayes that I just linked. It's from Bruce Riedel, who led Obama's own review of the Afghanistan situation:

That's a part of the process that's a legitimate question for a president--if I do this, can I sustain it with political support at home?

He's right, it's a legitimate question, and it helps explain why Bush didn't push harder to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and why the effort he did make is significant). The Democrats were solidly against him and the Republicans were flimsy at best. Now that Obama's in office with a strong electoral victory and his own party the majority in both houses of Congress, yet he's finding he needs to tread cautiously—should we wonder that Bush couldn't accomplish more of his agenda?

(This video of a 2004 Congressional hearing on Fannie and Freddie makes for astounding viewing in these post-collapse days.)

Stephen F. Hayes has an essential piece on the current administration's criticism of Bush's approach in Afghanistan. Shameful behavior by Emanuel, Gibbs et al.

(Via Jennifer Rubin.)

Mark Goldblatt on poor political argument:

[N]ot every fact carries equal evidentiary weight. Quality and quantity matter. Cherry-picking a handful of factual outliers, in other words, is not enough to overturn the common sense view of the reality you're describing. Nor is it incumbent on those who subscribe to the common sense view to defend their position from scratch. When you're arguing against common sense, the burden of proof is astronomically higher on you than on your opponents. [. . .]

Truthers on the Left (and, to be fair, Obama Birthers on the Right) are caricatures of rational thinkers, analytical burlesques whose access to a computer modem transforms them from tightly-wound troubled loners to tightly-knit troubled communities. But their inability to grapple with the burden of proof is reflected in the broader political culture. How many left-of-center talking heads and columnists, for example, regard as axiomatic the proposition that President Bush lied the United States into war with Iraq? If you stop and think about it, though, you realize the claim is extraordinary because it presupposes moral monstrosity. It presupposes, in effect, that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, as well as their entire staffs, would intentionally authorize mass murder on a scale of thousands in order to . . . do what? Make their already rich friends slightly richer? [. . .]

There is a growing consensus that political rhetoric in the United States has become too overheated, that passions are bubbling over, and that reasonableness is on the wane. If more people understood the function of the burden of proof in rational discourse, we could begin to address that problem. Healthy debate is not measured by decibels. Not all voices deserve to be heard.

Christian Science Monitor:

Tea Party-sponsored candidates could make it more difficult for Republicans as they — Ross Perot-like — split races as they target both "tax and spend" Democrats and those they like to call RINOs, or "Republicans-in-name-only."

Glenn Reynolds:

For the Republicans, the obvious solution is to run candidates who are less RINO-ish. For the Tea Party folks, the obvious solution is to push hard for their guys in primaries, then vote for whoever wins even if they have to hold their noses a bit sometimes. That’s politics.

Yes indeed, though if either group learns its lesson before the 2010 elections I'll be amazed.

William Tucker (emphasis in original):

It was later, when welfare became a national issue in the 1980s, that the pieces began to fall in place. The debate was between liberals who argued welfare mothers were merely unfortunates abandoned by their boyfriends and conservatives who argued that welfare was encouraging teenagers to have illegitimate children. I realized the truth fell about halfway in between. Among the African-American I had met, it was a social custom for girls to have one or two children before getting married. Their parents would support them. Then by the time the third child came along their parents would be too old and tired and the young woman would get married. Most marriages in the community had been formed that way.

I read Herbert Gutman's The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom and found the pattern stretched back into slavery. In fact you could trace it all the way to Africa, where men have much weaker paternal rights and women commonly have one or two "children of fortune" before choosing a husband. This produced a kind of lottery, where men surrendered some paternal claims for the chance to sow their own "children of fortune." It also allowed girls to prove their fertility, an important thing in a fairly monogamous society.

All this made it clear why the American welfare system had had such a disastrous effect on black family formation. Traditionally, women had had one or two children and then married. The welfare system intervened precisely at the point where they married. Instead of marrying the father of their child, they married the state. The result was something unprecedented in human history — a culture in which single motherhood became the norm[. . . .]

Strangely enough, it wasn't my experience with single mothers that made me begin to doubt the virtue of my efforts. It was a visit I made [in Alabama in 1970] to an elderly couple. I've told this story many times but still consider it the starting point of my migration over to conservatism.

The elderly couple owned a small property near the edge of town where they had farmed for many years. They were in their 80s but still working the land. Some people in town had told me about them and I went out to make my pitch. I met them working in their fields. They stood listening for a few minutes in that way Southern blacks had, politely nodding their heads while I told them about the wonders of the welfare system. They were old enough, they were sure to qualify, it would be a nice check every month.

As I carried on I suddenly realized the man had tears in his eyes. It came across me in a rush. They had worked on this land all their lives, feeding themselves, raising children, fending off god knows what kind of adversity — and now I was telling them they could become dependent on the government. I finally apologized and left. I left that field thinking, "I wonder if I'm doing the right thing down here."

Glenn Reynolds writes approvingly of a passage by Te-Nehisi Coates that includes this: "I don'’t think that you guys expect me to get it write right 100 percent of the time. I think you expect me to try very hard to be accurate, and immediately acknowledge when I'’ve failed to do so." With apologies to Coates, whom I read too infrequently to assess, I want more than that. Specifically, I also demand evenhandedness of error. What makes me avoid the New York Times and other leftist-media outlets, as well as most rightist media, isn't that they make mistakes but that those mistakes nearly always benefit their favored side. They're like referees whose calls help only one team. Yes, they also ignore their errors, but that's secondary. Their bias would render them untrustworthy even were they to note every mistake.

Especially when they cover Congress.

A galvanizing letter from a private-sector worker in Illinois.

Via John Derbyshire (emphasis added):

A lot of us, including a lot of conservatives (remarks by Mark Steyn and George Will come to mind) feel that we have become so bureaucratized, lawyered-up, regulated, and PC-whipped that great national projects of the past — the trans-continental railroad, the transformation of Manhattan, the interstate highway system, wars we can actually win in less than a decade, . . . — are no longer possible. Our system has seized up somehow, and no innovation much bigger than a hand-held gadget stands a chance.

*The right word, especially in this context.

Brian Riedl has a great article in National Review explaining so clearly that only a leftist intellectual could fail to understand. It's subscriber-only, but here's a brief summary from NCPA.

A reflection from Theodore Dalrymple.

Neil Gaiman explains, bluntly, to a correspondent.

(Via CAAF, who has similar but gentler-phrased thoughts.)

Later: I just realized what Gaiman's response makes me think of: William Shatner's "Get a life!" speech to Trekkies, from Saturday Night Live. I can't find a link to the whole thing, but here's some of it.

Lovely essay from Mary Schmich, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also writes the Brenda Starr comic strip. (One of her columns served as the text for this odd track, which I've always liked because of how good the "lyrics" are.)

Glenn Reynolds makes one of those smack-myself-in-the-forehead-because-it's-so-obvious-now-that-I've-read-it-that-I-can't-believe-I-didn't-figure-it-out-myself observations that keep me reading blogs when I should be working (or sleeping):

The more vulnerable he becomes, the easier it is for the Democratic leadership to keep him in line.

I knew the Dems place power far above principle, but I couldn't see why they'd want to keep someone around who makes them look so bad. Finally I understand.

To suppose that the same international customs, and the same rules of international morality, can obtain between one civilized nation and another, and between civilized nations and barbarians, is a grave error, and one which no statesman can fall into, however it may be with those who, from a safe and unresponsible position, criticise statesmen. . . . [T]he rules of ordinary international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate.

John Stuart Mill, "A Few Words on Non-Intervention," published in 1859 (via Ted R. Bromund)

StrategyPage:

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians remain stalled. The basic reason is that Israel will not accept a deal that destroys Israel, and the Palestinians will not accept a deal that doesn't destroy Israel.

James Piereson, in his review of Sam Tanenhaus's forthcoming book The Death of Conservatism, addressing Tanenhaus's "argument that contemporary conservatives are reactionaries or revanchists":

Nor does the intervention in Iraq, whatever its ultimate outcome, support Tanenhaus’s case. That intervention, after all, was endorsed not only by conservatives and neo-conservatives, but also by every Democratic candidate for president in last year’s election, save for Barack Obama (who was a member of the Illinois legislature when the war began). President Bush, in addition, justified the war on liberal or Wilsonian grounds, so that if the war discredited anything, it was the liberal ideal of achieving collective security through the promotion of democracy. One may argue that such an approach is misguided or impractical, or even that it is inconsistent with conservative principles, but it is not possible to say that it is revanchist.

(Via John J. Miller.)

ZDNet:

Security researchers are raising an alarm for a potent malware cocktail — backdoor Trojans and password stealers — being pushed to Windows users from about 55,000 hacked Web sites. . . .

It is not yet clear which vulnerabilities are being exploited in this attack but, judging from recent history, end users should ensure that operating system and desktop software programs are fully patched.

The most common programs under attack include Adobe Flash, Adobe PDF Reader, Apple’s QuickTime, WinZip and RealPlayer. In addition to Microsoft Windows patches, these desktop applications should be updated to the newest version immediately.

In one profanity-laced video. (You've been warned.)

Via David Henderson, who comments, "Notice his understanding of opportunity cost at 0:16 to about 0.20. I would love to teach him economics. He already understands some basics at a gut level. Every one of his f-word usages is justified. I especially like his last statement."

From an interview by Nick Gillespie of Michela Wrong, author of It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle-Blower:

GILLESPIE: [W]hat's the best thing that the West can do to help Africa become a richer, freer place?

WRONG: I think at the end of the day it's not going to be in Western hands, and that's something that we need to recognize, and something we haven't wanted to recognize with all this emphasis on upping aid. We can save lives in terms of malarial bed-nets [and] treatment for HIV; we can prevent people from starving. We cannot make an African administration do the right thing, and most of the key developments in Africa, the most encouraging ones, have come from the private sector in Africa. . . . [S]everal examples are routinely quoted: the spread of the Internet across Africa, the role of the mobile phone, in terms of linking people up, making them more aware; the spread of the private radio station, spreading the word about governance, democracy, anti-corruption—these are the really important factors, and actually these are things that have happened without that much donor involvement.

(By the way, here's a piece arguing, convincingly to me, against bed-nets and for pesticides such as DDT to combat malaria.)

A not-to-be missed exclusive from The Onion.

I just found this musical setting of some of the Declaration of Independence. It predates mine by about eight years. I won't try to influence you, the prospective downloader, in any way. I'll just note that while the Boyds' recording features one cute kid, mine features four. You, the prospective downloader, might wish to consider that sizable difference when attempting to determine which version is the better value.* I'll say no more. The country is free. The choice is yours.

*Both downloads are free too.

Dave Barry:

What we need is a law prohibiting brides from planning their weddings more than, say, a week in advance. A bride caught violating this law would be subject to severe punishment, such as being forced to walk down the aisle to the tune of "I Shot the Sheriff."

Maybe Glenn Reynolds is still on vacation, but even so:

a higher percentage of Tennessee Titans cheerleaders have formal science training than do members of Congress

Am I right or am I right?

(Via Jennifer Rubin.)

From Greg Scandlen of the Heartland Institute:

1. Give the money back to the people.
2. Get the hell out of the way.

Makes sense to me.

An amazing defense of Obama.

Jay Nordlinger on the Obama administration's attitude toward Cuba.

An Egyptian journalist in Saudi Arabia begs for help.

It isn't Israel practicing apartheid.

Later: Also worth noting: "Palestinians Blame Arab Leaders For The 'Nakba.'"

A stirring recollection from a former POW.

(Via Jay Nordlinger.)

I write slowly because I write badly. I have to rewrite everything many many times just to achieve mediocrity.

From Conversations with William H. Gass

One of them commits an act such as this, and prominent coreligionists, though they may criticize the act on various grounds, refrain from declaring it un-Islamic. We'll see what happens this time.

(Via Robert Spencer.)

Later: In a column about an American-born "Muslim jihad fighter," Robert Spencer specifies "the key question":

[W]hat are self-proclaimed Muslim moderates doing to teach against Qur’anic literalism, the jihad doctrine, and Islamic supremacism in their own communities? The answers should be forthcoming, and they should be specific and detailed.

Ben Stein contends that "[t]he staggering 2008 run up in [oil prices], which beggared hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, was caused by the sinister machinations of a few dozen oil traders and speculators in the commodity pits and lush offices of hedge funds and investment banks."

It's expensive, but Nate Hale has me convinced: the plane is "[a] revolutionary fighter that simply out-classes everything in the sky."

In mock combat exercises in Nevada, Alaska and elsewhere, the F-22 has racked up a kill ratio of at least 250:1. The ratio for existing, fourth-generation fighters (like the F-15 and F-16) is much, much lower. That is an obvious concern, considering that in some scenarios (say, defending the Taiwan Strait) our pilots would face an equal (if not greater) number of Chinese fighters with similar capabilities. It shapes up as a war of attrition that we simply can't afford to fight.

In response, opponents say that the odds of a war with China are low, and we can still dominate other adversaries (think North Korea, Iran and Syria) with a mix of F-22s, F-35s and older fighters. But that argument ignores a much more pressing threat, posed by advanced surface-to-air missiles.

As Air Force leaders have testified, the F-22 is the only aerial platform that can operate-- and survive--in a dense air defense environment populated by "double-digit" SAMs, like the Russian-made SA-20. But what about the JSF; it's a stealth platform, right? Well, some platforms are "stealthier" than others, and the F-22 has a much smaller radar cross section than the newer F-35. In other words, if you want an aircraft with precision attack capabilities--and one that can survive against state-of-the-art air defense systems, you want the Raptor. Did we mention that the SA-20 is being aggressively marketed around the globe, and will eventually show up in places like Tehran and Damascus?

Not to worry, Raptor critics respond; we can do it with UAVs. Or can we? Retired Air Force General Ron Keys, a former commander of Air Combat Command, told a defense audience a couple of years ago that China's ability to knock down our drones would be limited only "by the time required to reload their SA-20s." General Keys understands that combat UAVs--like the ones needed to target advanced SAMs--are still on the drawing board. Maybe we should ask the Russians to stop selling the SA-20 until we have enough stealth drones, or request that China delay any attack on Taiwan for at least another decade.

Unfortunately the Senate voted to strip funding for the F-22 from the defense funding bill, thereby (I'd say) placing short-term budgetary concerns above the welfare of our troops and the security of the nation. (Max Boot, whom I respect greatly, had reservations about the funding pre-vote.)

But (or "Thus"?) instructive: "Twelve questions for John Derbyshire."

Mark Steyn, from the print National Review (no link):

Whenever I cite some particularly lurid tale from the front lines of Euro-Canadian health care in National Review Online's "Corner," I get a flurry of e-mails from American readers offering horror stories from U.S. hospitals. And yes, it's true, bad things happen in American hospitals. But the Euro-Canadian stories are not really about the procedure, the operation, the emergency room, the doctor, the nurse. They're about impotence — not in the "Will Obama pay for my Viagra?" sense but in terms of civic dignity and individual liberty. I think of a young man called Gerald Augustin, of Rivière-des-Prairies, Quebec, who went to the St. André medical clinic complaining of stomach pain. He'd forgotten to bring his government medical card, so they turned him away. He was a Quebecker born and bred, and he was in their computer. But no card, no service: That's just the way it is. So he went back home to get it and collapsed of acute appendicitis, and by the time the ambulance arrived he was dead. He was 21 years old, and he didn't make it to 22 because he was forced to accept the right of a government bureaucrat to refuse him medical treatment for which he and his family have been confiscatorily taxed all their lives. "I don't see what we did wrong," said the administrator. "We just followed the rules." No big deal, M. Augustin wasn't anything special; no one in the clinic even remembered giving him the brush.

One can't reduce both poverty and income inequality. The best tool for reducing poverty, the free market, increases income inequality. The best tool for reducing income inequality, governmental confiscation and redistribution, increases poverty.

I vote for reducing poverty. I consider the passion for income equality a fetish. I don't care how many people are richer than I; I want it as easy as possible to raise or keep myself out of poverty.

Harrumph.

Charles Murray finds it in Las Vegas.

William Kristol and Jennifer Rubin on the president's remarks to prominent American Jews. (Rubin has criticism for Obama's audience as well: "This is what comes from obsequiousness.")

Mark Steyn, typically sharp.

Maybe, but I find it hard to believe.

Funny post (from 2004; mild profanity) by Shannon Love, of the mysterious-gender Loves. (Love now blogs at Chicago Boyz.)

Theodore Dalrymple:

I must be one of the few people in the western world who would not recognize a song by Michael Jackson. No doubt I have heard one or several of his songs, pumped inescapably into a public place like poison gas, but I have spent a number of decades reducing my exposure to this kind of thing to an absolute minimum.

The other people in the western world who would not recognize his songs are my friends.

David French, who blogs at NRO's Phi Beta Cons:

When I went to war, I figured I’d meet at least a few other political junkies. However, what I found were line troops who - with few exceptions - would rather watch ESPN than Fox or CNN and were only vaguely attuned to the political debates raging in Washington. The things that really mattered were the next mission, the next fight, and the next call home.

My entire life, I firmly believed the pen was mightier than the sword and that great armies moved under the inspiration of great men. Now, I’m not so sure. In one year, my small unit — an armored cavalry squadron of less than 1,000 men — liberated hundreds of square miles of Diyala Province from the darkest evil. It was not stirring rhetoric that stopped AQI terrorists from torturing and beheading entire villages, or shooting children in the face to “send a message,” or imposing the worst forms of Sharia law while they spent their days high on drugs, raping women, and watching Turkish porn. It was not the pen that cleared mine-laden roads or brought the first signs of economic life to communities trapped in grinding poverty.

As long as Obama continues to draw the sword, I don’t care much what he says with his pen. It should humble our political classes to know that the important decisions— the actions that truly decide the fate of nations — are made by Americans who care more about the NBA playoffs than a speech on the floor of the Senate, who rarely watch a cable news broadcast, and for whom Facebook is the lifeline for all the news that truly matters . . . of first steps, birthday parties, and little league baseball games far, far away.

Roger Scruton:

At any time between 1750 and 1930, if you had asked an educated person to describe the goal of poetry, art, or music, “beauty” would have been the answer. . . . Philosophers of the Enlightenment saw beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form. And no Romantic painter, musician, or writer would have denied that beauty was the final purpose of his art.

At some time during the aftermath of modernism, beauty ceased to receive those tributes. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, subvert, or transgress moral certainties, and it was not beauty but originality—however achieved and at whatever moral cost—that won the prizes. Indeed, there arose a widespread suspicion of beauty as next in line to kitsch—something too sweet and inoffensive for the serious modern artist to pursue.

From his conclusion:

In art, beauty has to be won, but the work becomes harder as the sheer noise of desecration—amplified now by the Internet—drowns out the quiet voices murmuring in the heart of things.

One response is to look for beauty in its other and more everyday forms—the beauty of settled streets and cheerful faces, of natural objects and genial landscapes. It is possible to throw dirt on these things, too, and it is the mark of a second-rate artist to take such a path to our attention—the via negativa of desecration. But it is also possible to return to ordinary things in the spirit of Wallace Stevens and Samuel Barber—to show that we are at home with them and that they magnify and vindicate our life. Such is the overgrown path that the early modernists once cleared for us—the via positiva of beauty. There is no reason yet to think that we must abandon it.

That's Ralph Peters's view, and it makes sense:

MISCALCULATING blindly, al Qaeda suffered a catastrophic defeat in Iraq. Now our approach to Afghanistan bears an uncanny resemblance to the terrorists' failed strategy.

Certainly, there's a vast difference between our humane agenda and al Qaeda's monstrous appetite for blood. There's no moral equivalence.

Yet our ambition to convince local populations to change their culture to suit us turns us into al Qaeda's kindly twin. . . .

A more effective strategy would allow Afghans to be Afghans -- getting us out of the aid-as-bribery business -- while reducing troop numbers and concentrating on killing our enemies: al Qaeda terrorists and their protectors.

Instead, we're putting our weapons on safe to focus on development in a country that doesn't matter. . . .

In Afghanistan, we're asking people to change who they are. Al Qaeda made the same mistake in Iraq. But at least the terrorists knew why.

Daniel Pipes:

Washington's long delay has cost Americans heavily, starting with thousands dead and hundreds of billions of dollars, then going on to poisoning American politics. . . .

Worse, occupying Iraqi cities has a yet-incalculable but frightening long-term impact. More than any other factor, taking responsibility for Iraqi cities discredited George W. Bush and built the groundswell of support that swept the furthest left-wing politician ever to the presidency. . . . Americans for many decades will likely pay for mistakes made in Iraq.

I agree with Pipes (who recommended this move in 2003, long before I had an opinion) that the withdrawal is years overdue, for all the reasons he gives. But I'm not sure.

First, Iraq would've cost the GOP the presidency regardless of when our forces withdrew, because Iraq was and remains destined for carnage, and Bush would've been blamed whenever it occurred. Iraq is, as Pipes writes, "a historically violent country . . . replete with corruption, tension, hatred, and desire for revenge." (AP yesterday: "Bombs killed nearly 60 people in Iraq on Thursday in the worst violence since U.S. combat troops withdrew from urban areas last week[.]") A withdrawal in 2003 might have caused Iraq to collapse (or implode, or explode) before the 2004 elections, in which case Kerry would likely have won. Basically, the decision to invade rendered almost inevitable a Democrat victory.

(Still, we were right to invade.)

Second, as Ralph Peters noted last week, al-Qaeda chose to make their stand against us in Iraq, and we crushed them there. A frequently fierce critic of our conduct of the war, Peters nonetheless concludes, "That single development made Iraq worthwhile."

Third, and this may read as armchair-generalship at its worst (I've never served), we now have not just the world's most powerful military, but also the world's most skilled and experienced large military. I feel that more than 4,000 dead and (by this count) more than 30,000 wounded is too high a price for what we gained, but events could demonstrate otherwise.

Finally, and this is more speculation, did Iraq's example give Middle Eastern Muslims a taste for freedom? Christopher Hitchens hypothesizes a connection between "the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part," and "the astonishing events in Iran" recently. Was our troops' continued presence in Iraq's cities necessary for those elections to occur? Maybe, and maybe.

Again, I think Pipes is right. We spent too much money, we fought among ourselves too bitterly, and, most important, too many troops lost their lives to justify our decision to retain control of Iraq after we'd removed Saddam. History may decide differently, though.

As Chris Horner writes, that admission by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson "is of inescapable importance" and deserves the widest possible publicity. Even if reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide is a worthy goal, Waxman-Markey would do nothing—nothing—to accomplish it. There's no justification for supporting cap-and-trade, and plenty of reason to oppose it.

It seems an absurd question to ask about an American president, but it's consistent with his behavior. (I just read this post by Michael Ledeen, which gave me the idea.) Obama seeks ever-greater power over the rest of us. Why wouldn't he be drawn to tyrants, and disdain those who want freedom?

Most are funny even to this non-coder.

(Via Craig Newmark.)

Senate Democrats and President Obama, trying to assuage fears about the cost of health reform, yesterday touted new estimates that put the price tag for one bill at $611 billion over the next decade. . . .

 

Under the new proposal, any business with more than 25 workers would be required to offer coverage or pay a $750 penalty per employee.

Michael Ledeen:

The real question is, how are we doing in the broad war (the one that stretches from Afghanistan into Europe, with active battlefields in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine and Lebanon)?

The answer must involve Syria and Iran–the two countries that are providing the bulk of the terrorists’ support–and Saudi Arabia, which funds the global indoctrination of would-be terrorists. If we’re going to win the war, we have to thwart Tehran and Damascus, and, at a minimum, get the Saudis to stop paying for pre-terrorism radicalization all over the world.

The answer, then is: we are doing very badly. Indeed, we’re not doing at all. Au contraire, we and our feckless Western allies are, for the most part, actively appeasing those whom we should be confronting.

Other than vastly increasing government's power over the rest of us:

China will not make a binding commitment to reduce carbon emissions. . . . Japan failed to make a significant commitment to reduce emissions

and

India said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security.

(Via Tim Blair.)

Stephen F. Hayes and William Kristol on Obama's failure to support the protestors in Iran:

Obama had promised in Cairo, in his address to the Muslim world, a "new beginning" in U.S.-Muslim relations. He spoke of his belief in democracy and of his "unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn't steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose."

Those are not just American ideas, he said, but universal human rights. "And that is why we will support them everywhere."

Except not in Iran. And not when it matters.

Tim Blair on a murder by Pakistani Taliban.

Mark Steyn's Song of the Week is "Dance Me To The End Of Love," written by Leonard Cohen. (Steyn recommends this recording by Madeleine Peyroux.) As usual, Steyn's analysis is sharp, with fascinating tangents:

I'd heard [Cohen's song] but paid no particular attention to it until ten years ago when I was writing a Valentine's Day column on the language of love. It made the rather obvious point that the preoccupations of romantic songs are often restrained by the limited rhymes for the word "love". In French, amour rhymes with dozens of other useful words - toujours (always), jour (day), carrefour (crossroads), tambour (drum)... So, with nary a thought, you have a zillion potentially amorous scenarios. In Portuguese, it's different. Coracao (heart) rhymes with violao (guitar) and cancao (song), which is why there are a ton of sambas and bossas about giving you my heart while I play you a song on my guitar.

The constraints of language help define our notion of romance, and in English we're more constrained than most. There are just four and a half rhymes for "love," approximately three-quarters of which offer very meagre possibilities: "above," "dove," "glove," "shove," and (the half-rhyme) "of," pronounced "uv." The last is the reason why, in English songs, "love" is a thing you spend a lot of time "dreaming uv."

Enlightening, and a comfort to me in my English-only lyrical travails. And yet . . . Here are some lines Steyn praises:

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance Me To The End Of Love...

Steyn writes, "A 'homeward dove'. Isn't that better than all those turtle doves? And the olive branch sets up the image, so that, like the best song lyrics, it has a kind of inevitability." But the olive branch and the dove together are symbols of peace. What does peace have to do with the rest of the song? Nothing as far as I can tell. Steyn also likes this:

Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance Me To The End Of Love...

Steyn writes, "'Limits of'. Very novel after decades of 'dreaming of'." Well, maybe (can something be "very novel"?), but among the meanings of "limit" is "end," so when I hear these lines or read them they seem self-contradictory. I have to pause until I've disentangled what Cohen meant and what he wrote.

It continues to puzzle (and often frustrate) me that people forgive in songs inadvertent or conflicting ambiguity they'd find unacceptable in their own work.