MONDAY,  NOVEMBER 17,  2008

UPDATE AT 7:31 P.M. ET: Drudge is reporting a Guardian (UK) story that Hillary Clinton will accept the job of secretary of state.  Well, it may be true, but I don't think the Guardian is a particularly good source on these things, so I think we'll wait for something more solid - like Hillary taking a ruler into Foggy Bottom and measuring the drapes.   

NOTE AT 7:20 P.M. ET:  One of the issues for Republicans to come out of the election was the party's poor showing among Hispanic voters.  My friend, Silvio Canto Jr., (http://www.cantotalk.blogspot.com) a sharp observer of the Hispanic scene, comments to us on why:

Hispanics voted for Obama because they believe  that the new administration will create a path to legalization. I don't believe that they will, primarily because the labor unions are against any temp work visas.
Also, Obama can not fight the unions on the auto bailout and then fight them on temp work visas.

So I actually think that Hispanics will take a fresh look at the Republican party in 2012.  Why?  Because we will be running against a record rather than "hope and change."

Also, Hispanics are very conservative on abortion and same sex marriage.

Common sense from Silvo.  Republicans must listen.

BAMWATCH

Posted at 6:24 p.m. ET

Watched the president-elect and first-lady-select on "60 Minutes" last night.  The show has been in the tank for liberalism for so long that I didn't expect much.  Didn't get much either.  It was a softball interview, but the program's ratings soared. 

We learned about the search for a White House puppy.  Nixon made good use of a dog also, so there is presidential precedent.

We learned little else.  The president-elect has been in that status for two weeks.  He is eloquent and articulate, as is Michelle Obama.  But Americans are an impatient people.  In the midst of a major economic crisis, they will want to see their new president a bit more publicly active - at least making the key appointments that will affect the economy.  Mr. Obama was correctly criticized for vagueness during his campaign, and that vagueness continues.  There is often a conflict between intellect and action, and he must balance the two.

Douglas MacArthur told of the advice given him by his own father, a Civil War general.  "Councils of war," the elder MacArthur said, "breed defeatism."  He was cautioning against the over-intellectualization of every situation.  We may be seeing some of that, and it can quickly destroy public confidence.

A Reuters dispatch today says this:

With United States facing two wars abroad and the expanding financial crisis, the president-elect is focusing on the decisions over a secretary of state and a new Treasury secretary.

He has been coy about the timing of such moves, saying only that one will come "soon."

Coy doesn't work.  The in-the-tank press cannot protect Obama if he is seen as indecisive and unready.  He should move quickly to appoint a Treasury secretary, and the vetting of Hillary Clinton should also move quickly.  You can't put her name out there and then drag it out for weeks. 

The president-elect may have another week or two to start naming key people and indicating a clear direction for his administration, before the public starts to wonder whether it's gotten a president or, like Carter, an indecisive ponderer.

November 17, 2008.      Permalink          

HOTWATCH

Posted at 5:51 p.m. ET

Another great, world-ending crisis the Obamans plan to take up as soon as the oath is administered is "global warming," which we now put in quotes because the doubts are rising by the hour.  Now some Irish filmmakers, probably putting their careers in jeopardy, are preparing to take on Al Gore Inc., and the whole "hot" cause:

A new Irish film claims that climate change guru Al Gore is an alarmist and that those who think they are saving the planet are only hurting the poor

IF THE ADVANCE publicity is anything to go by, Not Evil Just Wrong will do for Al Gore what Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 did for George W Bush.

"This is the film Al Gore and Hollywood don't want you to see," declares the website for the latest work by film-makers Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer. The site even features a big picture of Gore, with his lips in the photograph seemingly digitally enhanced to make them look like Heath Ledger's Joker from the latest Batman film.

The writer of the article does everything possible to trash the filmmakers and stay in the good graces of the coffee-house crowd, but somehow we get the idea that there is much here. 

But, NBC to the rescue.  After having gone completely into the tank for Barack Obama, one has no right to expect NBC to raise any serious questions about the brand-name trendy issue of our age, "global warming."  And they don't.  The Today Show does its part for the cause.  NewsBusters reports:

The full "Today" show cast went to "The Ends of the Earth," as a part of NBC Universal's "Green Week," all in an effort to, once again, do the bidding of the likes of Al Gore, to create hysteria about global warming. With live reports from Matt Lauer worrying about reefs off the coast of Belize, Meredith Vieira fearful about drought conditions in Australia, Ann Curry watching the snow caps melt on Mt. Kilimanjaro and Al Roker troubled by glacier extinction in Iceland, the cast pushed the green agenda throughout Monday's "Today" show.

What, journalistically, is so corrupt here is the refusal to take the time to examine the issue through the eyes of first-class scientists.  Any questioning of global warming is dismissed as the work of crackpots or sinister people working for, check one 1) oil companies, 2) coal companies, 3) car companies, 4) imperialist forces of darkness out to pollute the oceans.

Yet, what is needed is a detailed scientific review, which would include the awkward issue of whether research funding decisions are based on the research producing the "right" results.

Any interest, NBC?  I hear silence.

November 17, 2008.      Permalink          

HEALTH SCARE

Posted at 4:20 p.m. ET

Health care will be a big item on The One's agenda once he takes office.  A little reminder about government health plans, from Bloomberg.  Don't miss this:

Jack Rosser's doctor says taking Pfizer Inc.'s Sutent cancer drug may keep him alive long enough to see his 1-year-old daughter, Emma, enter primary school. The U.K.'s National Health Service says that's not worth the expense.

Rosser, 57, was told the cost of Sutent, 3,140 pounds ($4,650) per treatment for his advanced kidney cancer, was too high for the NHS -- the government agency that funds the nation's health care. The resident of the town of Kingswood, in southwest England, has appealed the decision twice, and next month may find out if his second plea is successful.

``It's immoral,'' Rosser's wife, Jenny, said. ``They are sentencing him to die.''

But, you see, dear, you don't understand the system.  It's not about saving lives.  It's about what's good for the whole of society, and the Earth, and the universe.  If only you read the right publications.

``It's outrageous,'' said Kate Spall, a full-time activist who has helped about 100 patients appeal NHS denials of cancer medicines. ``We are not asking for anything new or exciting or novel. We are asking for what the rest of the western world is getting.''

Another one who doesn't understand the new order, the new narrative, the new way of thinking.  Oh, by the way, in America we do get what is new, exciting and novel.  That must stop.

Kidney cancer patient Kathleen Devonport, a 65-year-old retired factory worker, called it ``heartbreaking'' to have to beg her local health officials to provide her with Sutent. The County Durham Primary Care Trust, in northern England, initially turned her down in March 2007, then agreed to supply the Sutent seven months later only after she responded to a cheaper medicine paid for by an anonymous donation.

This is the dignity of socialism.  But you can be sure there's plenty of British cash for "multicultural" education.

Jenny Rosser, 41, said she is looking into getting her husband into a clinical trial for Sutent, but so far she has been told that his cancer would need to advance further to qualify.

Just look at that last paragraph again.  Consider sending this story to friends. 

WARNING:  This can happen here.

November 17, 2008.       Permalink          

UPDATE AT 4:05 P.M. ET:  The Dow closed down about 231, ending at about 8,265.  A few more days like this and we'll be in the seven thousands.  Remember, point losses become increasingly more significant as the market goes down because the same loss number is a greater percentage of the whole.

UPDATE AT 3:58 P.M. ET:  From The New York Times:  BEIJING — A high-ranking Chinese military official has hinted that China’s fast-growing navy is seeking to acquire an aircraft carrier, a move that would surely stoke tensions with the United States military and its allies in Asia.

COMMENT:  China is having severe economic problems.  But we've learned that dictatorships will sacrifice economic good sense to inject money into their military, which is why weak, dictatorial economies can still pack a severe military punch.

UPDATE AT 3:51 P.M. ET:  The Dow is down 129.

COMMENT:  Have you ever noticed, when these stock numbers are given on some of the "news" sites, that they immediately explain why the market is either up or down?  You get something like this:  "The market is up today on news that..."  How do they know why all those thousands of people are doing what they're doing?  Journalists too often assume rational action, when in fact irrational panicking or euphoria often drives markets.

WE'RE TERRIBLE!

Posted at 7:52 a.m. ET

Indeed we are.  How do we know?  Why, the AP tells us so.  They're so used to telling it to us that they just can't stop.  I guess it's an emotional thing.

As the AP has it, America, since the election, is awash in racial incidents.  Our terribleness is out of control.

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting ''Assassinate Obama.'' Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

We've all noticed.  Why, the riots, the burning cities, the millions piling onto old Liberty ships to escape the U.S.  You saw it, didn't you?  Are you not ashamed to be an American?

There have been ''hundreds'' of incidents since the election, many more than usual, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate crimes.

I have no doubt that there have been some despicable incidents.  But is this panic time?

Potok, who is white, said he believes there is ''a large subset of white people in this country who feel that they are losing everything they know, that the country their forefathers built has somehow been stolen from them.''

Yes, I saw them with their Obama buttons.  They were in disguise.  I knew it at the time.

Change in whatever form does not come easy, and a black president is ''the most profound change in the field of race this country has experienced since the Civil War,'' said William Ferris, senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. ''It's shaking the foundations on which the country has existed for centuries.''

Do you feel the shaking?  Do you feel the country coming down?  Why, all the print on the Constitution in the National Archives faded away just yesterday, I'm told.

''Someone once said racism is like cancer,'' Ferris said. ''It's never totally wiped out, it's in remission.''

If so, America's remission lasted until the morning of Nov. 5.

Oh please!  Another clown with a Ph.D. heard from.  And this from a...a sociologist:

''We saw the same thing happen after the 9-11 attacks, as a wave of anti-Muslim violence swept the country."

Really?  Do you remember it?  Why can't I remember it?  I looked at newspapers?  I saw TV?  Maybe my channel didn't cover the anti-Muslim riots.

Come on, enough of this!

Look, there are going to be some incidents.  But this is a nation of 305 million people, and I don't think I've ever been more proud of the way Americans have conducted themselves than in the days following this history-making election.  Mr. Obama - and we did not support him in this space - has been welcomed and accepted as the next president.  There have been no mass demonstrations, Americans are not flooding into Australia, and the airwaves have been remarkably free of paranoia. 

One of President Bush's first acts after 9-11 was to visit a mosque to tell parishioners that we were not engaged in a war on Islam.  He set the tone.  There was no wave of anti-Muslim violence, despite what some sociologist says.

There seems to be an element in the press and in academia that is reflexively anti-American.  They wallow in national shame.  They look for confirmation of what they teach, or have been taught - that this is a racist, evil society.  They must throw examples, however small, in our faces, week after week.  The election of Barack Obama is not a great moment to this crowd, is a moment to re-tool their anti-American rhetoric.

We should shame them, and then ignore them.

I have no problem with AP running a story on racial incidents.  I have a big problem with the lack of proportion or context.  Welcome to journalism, 2008.  The authors of the First Amendment would be so proud.

November 17, 2008.      Permalink          

"I DID NOT HAVE..." - TAKE TWO

Posted at 6:35 a.m. ET

Or, as the FBI might say, "Not so fast, Barack."

Mr. Obama's possible wish to name Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is running into some questions.  As reported here yesterday, attention is focusing, not on Hill, but on Bill.  The Obama team wants and needs answers before there is an embarrassing, blue-dress revelation.  The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama’s advisers have begun reviewing former President Bill Clinton’s finances and activities to see whether they would preclude the appointment of his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state, Democrats close to the situation said Sunday.

His finances?  This should take ten to twenty years.

Many Democrats close to both camps said Sunday that it seemed likely that Mr. Obama would ask her to take the job, assuming they could work something out regarding Mr. Clinton’s role.

Ambassador to one of those island chains in the Pacific sounds right.

A team of lawyers trying to facilitate the potential nomination spent the weekend looking into Mr. Clinton’s philanthropic organization, interactions with foreign governments and ties to pharmaceutical companies, a Democrat close to both camps said. While Mr. Clinton has used his foundation to champion efforts to fight AIDS, poverty and climate change around the world, he has also taken millions in speaking fees and contributions from foreign officials and businesses with interests in American governmental policies.

Inappropriateness has always been his style.  Since Obama hails from the Chicago political machine, surely he understands.  The slogan out there is, "Lead me into temptation."

Speaking at an economic conference in Kuwait, Mr. Clinton openly acknowledged the possibility. “If he decided to ask her and they did it together, I think she’ll be really great as a secretary of state,” he said. “She worked very hard for his election after the primary fight with him, and so did I, and we were very glad that he won.”

What precisely did Bill do?  I don't remember.  Remind us.

While Mrs. Clinton would bring exceptional political wattage to the Obama cabinet, it would be an open question how her role would intersect that of Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has a strong interest in foreign policy.

And no wisdom about it, which Obama may have noticed.

It was unclear whether the review extended beyond publicly available records or whether Mr. Clinton had opened his private records. But he has powerful incentive to do so. “For the first time in 16 years,” one Democratic adviser said, “he has to cooperate with someone else since it has become clear she wants the job.”

Yeah.  I wouldn't want to be in the room if he refuses cooperation and short-circuits her.  Actually, I would.

Among the known Clinton Foundation donors are the Saudi royal family, the king of Morocco, a foundation linked to the United Arab Emirates, the governments of Kuwait and Qatar, and a tycoon who was the son-in-law of Ukraine’s ousted authoritarian president.

And people worried about Monica being a bad influence.

No donor to the Clinton foundation has raised more persistent questions than Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining executive. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Giustra shared a midnight banquet in September 2005 with Kazakhstan’s authoritarian president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev. Mr. Clinton praised Mr. Nazarbayev’s bid to head an international election-monitoring organization, undercutting American foreign policy and his wife’s sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s human rights record.

Two days after the trip, Mr. Giustra’s company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan. Spokesmen for both men said there was no connection between the trip and the deal. Months later, a foundation controlled by Mr. Giustra gave $31.3 million to the Clinton foundation, its largest known donation.

I just love it when we return to the good old days.  Don't you?

November 17, 2008.      Permalink          

SUNDAY,  NOVEMBER 16,  2008

UPDATE AT 6:51 P.M. ET:   They don't call Henry Kissinger a seasoned diplomat for nothing.  The former secretary of state and veteran of Republican administrations said today that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, under consideration for secretary of state in the administration of Democratic President-elect Barack Obama, would make "an outstanding appointment'' and display "great courage'' on Obama's part.

COMMENT:  It's hard to see how Obama could not offer Clinton the job, with all the publicity.  He can't risk offending her constituency again.  The question is, does she want it?  Remember, in 2016 she'll only be 68.

UPDATE AT 6:45 P.M. ET:   A captured Iraqi terrorist known as the "mother of the female suicide bombers" has taunted interrogators that her network of volunteers is too big to be destroyed by her arrest.   Itisam Adwan, who is accused of grooming young and vulnerable women for bomb attacks, has told police in Baquba that so many others are following her lead that they will not be able to stop them.

COMMENT:  Please notice that mom never volunteered herself for one of the glorious missions.

UPDATE AT 2:51 P.M. ET:   From AP:  WASHINGTON — Top Republican senators said Sunday they will oppose a Democratic plan to bail out Detroit automakers, calling the U.S. industry a “dinosaur” whose “day of reckoning” is coming. Their opposition raises serious doubts about whether the plan will pass in this week’s postelection session.

COMMENT:  This is a painful discussion we must have.  These companies have had decades to get their acts together, and have failed.  True, there are legions of workers involved.  But we'd better go about these bailouts with two eyes.  The reports on the handling of the $700-billion bailout passed only weeks ago should reinforce our skepticism.

THE HILLARY THING

Posted at 8:58 a.m. ET

Another fine British journalist, Phil Sherwell, has a good take on all the chatter that Hillary Clinton is headed for the State Department.  There's a little problem, Sherwell notes, and its name is Bill. 

The President-Elect has reportedly sounded out his former bitter rival to be the international face for his new administration - just months after she mocked his foreign policy inexperience and criticised his plans to talk to America's enemies.

But the ex-First Lady would first have to go through a gruelling confirmation process on Capitol Hill at which, The Sunday Telegraph has learned, Republican senators will raise her husband's secrecy-shrouded business deals and fund-raising for his glitzy presidential library and foundation.

Are those right-wing primitives suggesting that our Bill Clinton would do something shady?  Those people never learn.

Former President Bill Clinton has consistently refused to provide the names of the donors, but newspaper investigations have identified a slew of foreign contributors, many from oil-rich Gulf states. His lucrative consultancy work for a friend's investment group has also involved dealings with Arab partners.

Republican strategists are dusting off plans to expose Mr Clinton's financial ties, which they will argue represent a serious conflict of interest for his wife as the country's top diplomat.

Question:  Hillary knows this is ahead of her.  Does she really want to go through an interrogation when she has a great career in the Senate?  And the conflict-of-interest issue is serious.  Could it affect her view of Middle East terrorism, or the Arab-Israeli conflict?

His (Obama's) aides consistently urged Sen Clinton to provide full details of financial transactions which made the couple rich after they left the White House in debt - and separately helped turn the Clinton Foundation into one of the world's leading philanthropic organisations. Mr Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe once dubbed Mrs Clinton "one of the most secretive politicians in America today."

Unlike Barack "I never knew my pastor believed that" Obama. 

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson and Massachusetts senator John Kerry are also on Mr Obama's short list for Secretary of State. But after Mrs Clinton flew to Chicago for talks with the president-elect on Thursday, aides to both briefed that he had asked her if she would be interested in the job and that she said she would consider it.

Other problems:

Her appointment would also cast fresh doubt over the direction of Mr Obama's foreign policy after he said during the primary campaign that he would be willing to meet with the leaders of countries such as Iran and North Korea without preconditions.

Mrs Clinton heavily criticised that view as proof that he did not have the experience or knowledge to run oversee American foreign policy. So, if nominated, she would have to implement a policy that she ridiculed just earlier this year. 

She's a Clinton.  That's what life is about.

Look, it's fascinating.  We certainly don't want Kerry in that job.  He'd never speak English to us again.  And Richardson, despite much experience, doesn't come across as a heavyweight.  At least with Clinton we'll get some entertainment, and four year of rumors.

November 16, 2008.      Permalink          

IT'S TOO DARNED HOT.  NOT.

Posted at 7:51 a.m. ET

Well, there's trouble in River City.  More precisely, there's trouble at NASA.  Haven't seen too much about it in the American press, which is still in the tank.  But Britain's Telegraph picks up a story that raises the most troubling questions about the global-warming craze:

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

Notice the affectionate connections.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand.

Hmm.  You think there was a mistake?

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The people who did this produce the figures that Gore and his co-religionists use to demand that we spend trillions of dollars and dislocate our entire economy.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission.

Houston, we have a problem.  A real big one.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore.

Ah yes, I remember.  We're going to a fiery hell.

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

And he keeps his job.

The conclusion, obvious:

..whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

Thought is not what it's about.  Trendiness is what it's about.

November 16, 2008.       Permalink          

UPDATE AT 7:02 A.M. ET:  From The Politico:  Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials. 

COMMENT:  And Rahm Emanuel is chief of staff.  And Hillary may go to the State Department.  You know, all they need is that chubby girl with the blue dress...  No, no, no, I did not write that.  I absolutely did not. 

NOTE AT 6:47 A.M. ET:   As readers know, we search the world each day for something absurd.  It takes about a minute to find it.  So, drumroll please, here is the most absurd quote for today, thus far:  "Feel like you know Michelle Obama already? That's because the first black First Lady in history is just like the people she represents. Namely, every one of us."

COMMENT:  Really?  She's just like every one of us?  When have I ever worn those dresses?  If any of you remembers, let me know by e-mail.