TALL, SLENDER, INCOMPREHENSIBLE, AND SIMPLISTIC
Watching Obama glide through his foreign trip so far, nervous Republicans and other patriots have to hope that American voters will not view Obama through the eyes of a Hollywood casting director. That's because one could not cast a man who visually can portray a worldly statesman better. We all must envy his ability to effortlessly drape his tall, imperially slender form in gilded Louis XV chairs in foreign palaces. Mixing just the right combination of worldly bonhomie and serious mien, his presentation (conveniently presented to the world with video but no audio) make, by comparison, Henry Kissinger, FDR and Winston Churchill all look like clumsy provincial oafs. The visual is everything in his campaign, for when he does submit himself to the occasional press interview, his actual words read in print must make his handlers as nervous as his visual images make Republicans nervous. His discussion of his Iraq policy is almost incomprehensible, and his understanding of the world stunningly simplistic.
THERE IS NO EVIDENCE CARBON EMISSIONS CAUSE GLOBAL WARMING
I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects. The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet. But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.
THE REAL OBAMA IN AFGHANISTAN
[Last Saturday, July 19, Barack Hussein Obama paid a brief visit to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on his way to Kabul. US Marine Battle Captain Jeffrey S. Porter wrote a brief eyewitness account in an email to his family and friends, which To The Point is able to publish here.] Hello everyone, As you know I am not a very political person. I just wanted to pass along that Senator Obama came to Bagram, Afghanistan for about an hour on his visit to 'The War Zone'. I wanted to share with you what happened. He got off the plane and got into a bullet proof vehicle, got to the area to meet with the Major General (2 Star) who is the commander here at Bagram. As the Soldiers were lined up to shake his hand he blew them off and didn't say a word as he went into the conference room to meet the General.
HALF-FULL REPORT 07/16/08
So many of you have said they miss the Half-Full Report during our summer schedule that I figure I better change the schedule rather than give the HFR a summer hiatus. So here we go, although with so many goodies to choose from, where do we begin? Let's start by trying to decide who gets this week's prize for being The World's Most Wonderful Hypocrite - Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh or the Editors of the New Yorker Magazine. Is there a single person possessing a three-digit IQ on the entire planet who actually believes New Yorker editor David Remnick's claim that his cover cartoon of Obambi as a Moslem imam, Mrs. Obambi as a Black Panther, and them fist-bumping in America-hating admiration of Osama bin Laden is a satire? ...Nonetheless, When it comes to sheer straightforward look-you-in-the-eye hypocrisy, India's leaders leave the guys at the New Yorker in the dust. In lyrical words full of glowarming pieties, they've just announced India will be increasing its CO2 emissions by twenty times in the coming years. ...There's even happier glowarming news. The world's most fascist scientist, the founding guru of global warming and Algore's mentor, James Hansen, may be about to get what he deserves. And now it's time for us to retire to a quiet table off in a corner of the barroom where we can talk and not be overheard. This will be between just you, me, and bottle of Famous Grouse.
DEMS AND OIL
On July 15, President Bush announced he was lifting the executive branch moratorium on offshore drilling. In the 24 hours that followed, crude oil futures plunged $9.26 (6.3 percent), the biggest oil price decline in 17 years. Oil prices fell again yesterday (7/16) when the Bureau of Land Management overrode the objections of environmentalists and opened 4.9 million acres of land in Alaska to oil exploration. Now reflect on these words. "Coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick, it's global warming, it's ruining our country, it's ruining our world, we've got to stop using fossil fuel," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) said last month. No, Harry, it's Democrats who are ruining our country. What we've got to do is throw you and your ilk out of office.
GOOD NEWS AND CRITICAL QUESTIONS FROM TUSCANY
Villa Santa Colomba, Sienna, Italy. Robert Mundell, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1999, has been holding a small, annual conference here in Tuscany at an exquisite castle he purchased several decades ago and restored. His wife, Valerie, is a charming hostess and an accomplished organizer of the conferences. The castle is the family's principal residence, though Dr. Mundell continues to teach one semester each year at New York's Columbia University, where he is a professor of economics. To get fresh ideas about the current global economic problems of the day, Dr. Mundell invites not only academic economists to his conferences but also central bankers and other financial and business professionals to obtain a variety of perspectives. Some of the questions discussed at the conference will be found below, and you may wish to think about them yourselves. But first, the good news is that...
OBAMA THE MILQUETOAST FLIP FLOPPER
During his eight years in the Illinois state senate, Barack Hussein Obama voted "present" 130 times. That's an astounding 12-13 times a year in which he said, in effect, "I'm here, but I'm not going to take a stand on this issue." Given that record of bold leadership, I'm surprised Sen. Obama acted as he did on the legislation Congress passed July 9 to renew the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Sen. Obama had pledged to filibuster FISA if it contained a provision to provide retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies which cooperated with the government, and then reneged on that promise. The FISA flip flop is the latest of er, ah, "pivots" Sen. Obama has made recently on campaign finance, NAFTA, gun control, the death penalty, and abortion. Now get ready for the Mother-of-All-Pivots he is about to make on the Iraq war.
WHAT IF, MR. BERNANKE?
What if Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and the other Fed board members actually believe that the Consumer Price Index means the same thing as it did in the 1970s? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (an agency of the Labor Dept.) calculates the CPI, not the Federal Reserve. If the Fed Governors are unaware of the changes since then in how it is calculated, it would explain why they aren't in a panic over the current real consumer inflation rate. It would explain why they really seem to be certain that we are not in a recession. It would also mean that unless they wake up from their time warp, the dollar and our economy are truly doomed.
ADVICE FROM ST. PAUL TO JOHN MCCAIN
A Rasmussen poll released Tuesday (7/08) indicated the approval rating for the Democrat-led Congress has declined by 36 percentage points from last year's "high." Just 9 percent of respondents said Congress was doing a "good" or "excellent" job, while 52 percent of us think it's doing a "poor" one. That's the lowest rating ever. Much of the dissatisfaction with Congress is due to its unwillingness to do anything about the soaring price of gasoline. "Right now, our strategy on gas prices is 'Drive small cars and wait for the wind'," a Democrat congressional aide tells The Hill newspaper. "So why are the Republicans running scared, and why aren't they going after the 'new Democrat Congress' hammer and tongs?" wonders Web logger Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit. "Beats me. Because they're idiots, I guess." I disagree. Some Republicans in Congress are crooks, and many are cowards. But few are idiots. For idiocy, you have to look to the campaign of Sen. John McCain.
WEST OF THE DEAD SEA
You're lazily swimming in the Mediterranean Sea just off a beautiful beach. The beach goes on for miles, lined with resort hotels, and it's crowded with people. Young fit men playing volleyball, beautiful bikini-clad young women sunbathing, families relaxing under umbrellas, children making sand castles, multitudes of folks peacefully enjoying themselves in the sun, the sand, and the gentle sea. You swear you're at one of Spain's great beaches, like Valencia, Marbella, or Barcelona. But you've noticed that a small light plane has flown along the shoreline several times. Your son asks, "Dad, why does that plane keep flying by?" "It's an IDF spotter plane," you tell him. "Watching for a boatload full of Arab terrorists who might land to machine gun to death as many Jews on this beach as they can. Stuff like that can happen here anyplace, anytime. That's life in Israel." Nope, we're not in Valencia. We're in Tel Aviv.