SUNDAY,  DECEMBER 21,  2008

THERE'S A PLACE FOR HIM, SOMEWHERE A PLACE FOR HIM - AT 10:01 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:  Vice President-elect Joe Biden announced Sunday that he will chair a task force charged with determining the status of the middle class — whether it's growing or shrinking, better or worse off.  It will be Biden's first major task as vice president.  "And we'll look at everything from college affordability to after-school programs — the things that affect people's daily lives," Biden said in an interview airing Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "I will be the guy honchoing that policy."

COMMENT:  Is this serious?  This requires a task force?  You can get information like that in a day.  Just assign a good labor reporter.  And wasn't Biden supposed to be the foreign-policy guy?  Why do I see Hillary's hand in this? 

CAROLINE WHO?

Posted at 9:04 a.m. ET

The most fascinating political story, rivaled only by the pain and suffering of the Illinois governor, is the attempt by Caroline Kennedy to be appointed to the U.S. Senate, succeeding Hillary Clinton, whom Caroline softly knifed in the Dem primaries.  Even in New York, this is considered a mite nervy.

Today The New York Times reports on one hurdle Caroline has to overcome - Caroline who?

Say the name Caroline Kennedy to Jensie Farrar, and she turns almost maternally protective. Ms. Farrar was married in Albany on Nov. 22, 1963, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the passage of 45 years has done little to dull her shock or to alter her image of the president’s only girl.

Say “Caroline Kennedy” to Bess Goden, 23, and she pauses, working quietly to exactly place it.

“I’m like, ‘Is she a Kennedy Kennedy, or is this one of the cousins?’"

It's hard to think of this daughter of an American president having name-recognition problems, but it's happening.  The passage of time has had its impact, and a Kennedy hasn't held high political office in New York since Robert F. Kennedy's assassination four decades ago.

Interviews with about 50 New Yorkers — people from upstate and across town, people of all ages and races and political persuasions — suggest that the Kennedy brand is rich with resonance. But it also provokes resentment and puzzlement, especially among younger voters, who are suspicious of dynastic politics as the Bush era ends, and are uncertain of where in the famous family tree she falls.

This is not terribly surprising.  The professional politicians pushing the Caroline candidacy know the details of Camelot.  Ordinary voters don't.  A 20-year-old college student was born in 1988, 25 years after JFK's death.  That student's parents may well have been toddlers, or not even born, at the time of the assassination. 

“I don’t know who her father is, but if you told me, I bet I would know,” said Michelle Kuhns, 21, a senior at St. John’s University in Queens who was working during her holiday break at a bagel shop on Long Island. “I’ve heard the name, yes. But that’s it.”

And...

Skeptics questioned whether Ms. Kennedy knows about places like Buffalo, Utica, or Utica Avenue in Brooklyn, and the pressures on working people in hard times. “What I want is someone who is going to cut spending and cut taxes,” said Jim Nowicki, 47, an insurance company employee in Buffalo, “someone who can bring business back here.”

But by far the largest gap between those stirred by the Kennedy mystique and those unmoved is time.

And there are other factors:

Many residents interviewed last week, as Ms. Kennedy began a series of meetings with political leaders around the state, spoke of her apparent reserve: Ms. Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president in January marked her first venture into electoral politics. Her phone call this month to Gov. David A. Paterson, who will make the Senate appointment, was her second.

Yeah.  When they start making comparisons with Sarah Palin, Caroline comes out second.

But there's political reality:

The public sentiments are unlikely to have any immediate weight on Ms. Kennedy’s candidacy because voters have no say in whether she gets the seat. Mr. Paterson will appoint a candidate of his choosing. About a dozen candidates have been mentioned, including Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, who represents parts of Manhattan and Queens, and the state attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo. The seat will be in play in the 2010 election and again in 2012.

An appointment lasts two years.  In 2010 she'd have to run to fill out the rest of Clinton's term.  In 2012 she could run for the full term.

Fascinating story.  In the background, of course, is Hillary Clinton, who could not be pleased about someone who opposed her for president taking her place in the Senate.  We watch for some Clinton move, behind the scenes, to send Caroline back home.

December 21, 2008.      Permalink          

AFGHAN BATTLES - AT 8:23 A.M. ET:  From The Washington Post:  KABUL, Dec. 20 -- The top U.S. military officer said Saturday that the Pentagon could double the number of American forces in Afghanistan by summer to 60,000 -- the largest estimate of potential reinforcements ever publicly suggested.  Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 20,000 to 30,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 31,000 there.

COMMENT:  We have to assume he wouldn't have said this without approval from the Obama team.

SATURDAY,  DECEMBER 20,  2008

ANYONE NOTICING?

Posted at 9:28 a.m. ET

The amen corner has led the applause for Mr. Obama's appointments, one by one.  Each is a genius, an inspired choice, a pick for the ages, possibly the greatest public servant in history.

Maybe it's time to watch more closely.  The president-elect has chosen his science, energy and environmental chiefs, and a sense of unease begins to erupt.  It appears that Mr. Obama has consumed the global-warming Kool-Aid, and asked for seconds.  Still, the mainstream media is in applause mode.  After all, these people have letters after their names.

But John Tierney, one of the few cautious dissidents writing opinion pieces for The New York Times, blows the whistle.  The president-elect's science adviser, a Harvard professor, may be a certified crackpot:

Does being spectacularly wrong about a major issue in your field of expertise hurt your chances of becoming the presidential science advisor? Apparently not, judging by reports from DotEarth and ScienceInsider that Barack Obama will name John P. Holdren as his science advisor on Saturday.

That wakes us up.

Dr. Holdren, now a physicist at Harvard, was one of the experts in natural resources whom Paul Ehrlich enlisted in his famous bet against the economist Julian Simon during the “energy crisis” of the 1980s.

In 1980 Dr. Holdren helped select five metals — chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten — and joined Dr. Ehrlich and Dr. Harte in betting $1,000 that those metals would be more expensive ten years later. They turned out to be wrong on all five metals, and had to pay up when the bet came due in 1990.

Well, a little mistake...or five little mistakes. 

Now, you could argue that anyone’s entitled to a mistake, and that mistakes can be valuable if people learn to become open to ideas that conflict with their preconceptions and ideology...

...But I haven’t seen much evidence of such open-mindedness in Dr. Holdren.

Oh.  Well, the man must be bright.  He's at Harvard.  He's...

Consider what happened when a successor to Dr. Simon, Bjorn Lomborg, published “The Skeptical Environmentalist” in 2001. Dr. Holdren joined in an an extraordinary attack on the book in Scientific American — an attack that I thought did far more harm to the magazine’s reputation than to Dr. Lomborg’s. The Economist called the critique “strong on contempt and sneering, but weak on substance”; Dr. Lomborg’s defenders said the critics made more mistakes in 11 pages than they were able to find in his 540-page book.

Hmm.  Now we see.

Dr. Holdren’s resistance to dissenting views was also on display earlier this year in an article asserting that climate skeptics are “dangerous.” (You can read about the response to that article at DotEarth.)

Tierney is spot on.  Declaring skeptics "dangerous" is not science.  It's medieval religious dogma.

Dr. Holdren is certainly entitled to his views, but what concerns me is his tendency to conflate the science of climate change with prescriptions to cut greenhouse emissions.

And...

Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado and the author of “The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics,” discussed Dr. Holdren’s conflation of science and politics in a post on the Prometheus blog:

The notion that science tells us what to do leads Holdren to appeal to authority to suggest that not only are his scientific views correct, but because his scientific views are correct, then so too are his political views.

That of course is the point.  Much of the talk about "global warming" isn't real science, it's political science, generated by people who simply want us to live different kinds of lives.

Tierney asks the basic question:

What kind of White House science advisor you think Dr. Holdren would make?

It's important that others start asking that question.  We've been sold a bill that says Mr. Obama is making "moderate" appointments to his administration.  There's nothing moderate about Holdren.  He could cost us trillions of dollars, do enormous economic damage, increase poverty and hunger...with no good result.

Oh, by the way, a very knowledgeable Urgent Agenda reader, a distinguished academic, refers us to a minority report, just issued by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.  It's here, and asks the most serious questions about the global-warming "consensus."  It's well worth reading.

December 20, 2008.      Permalink          

TRUTH TELLING

Posted at 8:45 a.m. ET

It's always refreshing when a public official tells the truth, the whole truth, unvarnished and unprotected by political correctness.

Britain's defense secretary, John Hutton, has spoken out about the nature of the Taliban, in Afghanistan.  What is remarkable is that the things he's saying are now considered in many Establishment circles here in the United States, especially as we're about to enter the Age of Obama.  Consider: 

Defence Secretary John Hutton has compared Taliban fighters in Afghanistan to the Nazis, saying British forces are defending Western values rather than borders as they did in the Second World War.

Mr Hutton said that the military campaign in Afghanistan was "a vital national security mission" just as the battle against Hitler was.

It's wonderful to have the air cleared.

"The argument is very clear. This is where our national security is determined. We must tackle the threat at source, it's not just going to go away," he told The Times this week. "It is a struggle against fanatics that may not challenge our borders but challenges our way of life in the same way the Nazis did."

I hope he doesn't try to say that in the precincts of an American university.  He'll be tagged 1) a racist, 2) Islamophobic, 3) a lackey of the United States, and 4) a neo-colonialist.

"We have to stay the course," he said. "The key thing now is not that the Taleban or al-Qaeda can defeat us in Afghanistan, their tactic is to outlast us. That's what we've got to deal with. That's the nature of this counter-insurgency operation. It doesn't lend itself to instantaneous results. This is a very complex, challenging environment for us to be operating in."

Truth telling, truth telling.

Finally, a great statement:

As to whether there is any likelihood of peace in a country with such a history of war, he said: "You've got to understand history but you can't be a prisoner of it. "We make history. History doesn't set precedents. You've got to be prepared to get involved when something is wrong."

I wonder how long this man will keep his job.  For years, I hope.

December 20, 2008.      Permalink          

PART OF THE DAMAGE - AT 7:47 A.M. ET:  From Fox Business:  ALBANY, N.Y.--Gov. David Paterson said Friday that the loss of tax revenue from just six Goldman Sachs' (G: 8.06, 0.39, 5.08%) executives will cost New York $178 million.  The executives complied with the urging of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and others who said in November that major Wall Street companies benefiting from federal bailouts shouldn't pay out the usual huge bonuses to executives.

COMMENT:  This shows us just how sick things had become.