Stupid Bush Again Out-Thinks His Critics

Normalization of relations with L’il Kim Jong Il’s personal pleasure playground? That’s not the sort of thing Bush — the yahoo from Yale, the cowboy from Crawford — should be capable of pulling off.

The leftyblogs — Kos, Americablog, DemUnderground — are all mystically silent on the matter. Perhaps they remember their boy Kerry trying to whop Bush during the debates, belittling the prez for not taking on NoKo one-on-one in bluster-diplomacy. Bush stood his ground, belittling right back with the results of Clinton’s one-on-ones with L’il Kim.

This little bit from today’s WashTimes coverage underscores the wisdom of the Bush approach:

Kim Kye-gwan, North Korea’s vice minister of foreign affairs, arrived in Beijing yesterday and was expected in San Francisco tomorrow, a State Department official told The Washington Times. He will continue to New York for talks with his U.S. negotiating counterpart, Christopher Hill, which will likely begin early next week.

Kim went first to Beijing, then to Washington. That action proves the wisdom of the Bush administration’s Six-Party approach. Any deal with NoKo that doesn’t include China is doomed because only China exerts any control over the Pyongyang Gang.

And in the process, Bush has skillfully drawn Beijing into a new role of Asian peace-promoter, establishing a foothold that future administrations can build on to manage all the problems and potentials China poses.

And the Leftyblogs just go on and on about conditions at Walter Reed … fiddling with non-stories while the world changes.

Not Available For Comment

If you didn’t catch the rabidly bad taste comments on HuffPost regarding the lame but fatal Taliban assassination attempt on the VEEP, you won’t find them there now.

(You can find a good representative sampling still at Amy Proctor’s blog. Don’t worry, Amy’s purged the ****-load of mindlessly obscene leftyspeak.)

There’s terrifying significance to the fact that so many Americans feel comfortable saying, and believing, comments like this:

You can never find a competent suicide bomber when you need one.

or

You can never find a competent suicide bomber when you need one.

But you know that, so let’s talk instead about blog ethics. Was it right for HuffPost to do this:

Over the last few hours, the more than 400 comments appended to the Huffington Post’s news item on the attack in Afghanistan on a base being visited by Vice-President Dick Cheney have been expunged from the site. At first the comments were closed, then gradually shrunken and for a short time completely expunged from The Huffington Post as the heat on the Cheney hate fest built up over the day. (Pajamas Media)

I would certainly have deleted the obscene ones myself, and edited some others, but HuffPost did something entirely different, deleting comments like “Cheney’s spokeswoman said he was fine. F***” and keeping comments like “glad the vp is ok.” PajamasMedia says:

The comments now visible are evidently cherry-picked out of the original thread to give some sort of “tone” to the thread that it did not originally possess. It is really amazing what you can do to history with just a few strokes of the keyboard.

Now it is one thing to close comments, another thing to erase them, but something else altogether different to actually “edit” the thread to give a false impression.

A conscious decision was made at HuffPost to allow comments to be posted without monitoring, then another conscious decision was made to delete offending comments only after the sickest of them had spread through the blogosphere and conservative radio.

Disgusting posts were going up as early as 8:15 a.m., but the comments weren’t deleted until around 2:50 p.m. — so the posts were there for about five and a half hours, and OK with HuffPost for at least four hours, assuming it would take the Huffies 90 minutes to hash out what they’d do and do it.

Their decision was a terrible one. First, it will really, really tick off HuffPost’s readers and will do longterm damage to the blog’s credibility among its primary readers.

It was hypocritical. You can’t blast the Bush admin day after day — right up to the original headline of the post, “Cheney ‘Targeted’ Deadly Afghan Blast,” — then purge the overly critical comments, creating a false impression of the blog and its readers.

And for that reason, HuffPost’s decision was terribly unethical.

As the PajamaMedia writer nicely pointed out, you can’t ask the 400 commenters what they think of being deleted: They’re not available for comment.

Gore’s Math Apparently Stuck In The Lockbox

You remember the lockbox, the famous lockbox, that was in all AlGore’s debate answers about Social Security. Well, he apparently put his carbon neutrality math in there as well.

It was great to see AP’s tough story on Al’s electric bill today, as the MSM picked up the story with gusto. Even greater were these snippets:

The Gores used about 191,000 kilowatt hours in 2006, according to bills reviewed by The Associated Press spanning the period from Feb. 3, 2006, to Jan. 5. …

Utility records show the Gore family paid an average monthly electric bill of about $1,200 last year for its 10,000-square-foot home. …

Gore participates in a utility program that sells blocks of “green power” for an extra $4 a month. Gore purchases 108 such blocks every month, covering 16,200 kilowatt-hours and helping subsidize renewable energy sources. …

[Electric company spokeswoman] Laurie Parker…said Gore has been purchasing the “green power” for $432 a month since November.

Let’s see. Gore’s “carbon footprint” for electricity use at home is $1,200 a month for the electron juice the clan burns each month. For that, he buys $432 in credits — $768 short each month.

Well, that’s $768 short each month since November. Before that, he was $1,200 short each month. And that’s just for electricity; we’re not even talking about natural gas, gasoline or jet fuel yet.

Warmies say conservatives don’t understand the concept of carbon neutrality. I say they don’t understand the concept of math — and here I thought math was at the core of global warming modeling.

(Also of note was this little bit:

The Gore home is also under renovation to add solar panels, [Gore spokesgal Kalee Kreider said.

Under renovation?! Gore’s been laying guilt on us for years about global warming and he’s just now getting around to adding solar to his house? He’s made tens of millions of dollars since he left office, so his only excuse must be that solar is … Inconvenient.)

Art: RSchultz

Left Circles The Wagons Around Al

Holy glowing lightbulbs, this is wierd.

Drudge runs an item from the Tennessee Center on Policy Research on the Gore’s personal electrical use and not a soul denies the content of the release — just the fact that it got reported at all. There’s a lot of foam being flung from a lot of mouths on the rabid left this morning; I can imagine keyboards drenched in foam as blogscribe after blogscribe defends their demi-god Gore.

“Did you honestly think that the Right Wing $mear machine was going to let Al Gore stand up with the terrific team who created and direct the movie and receive an Oscar for ‘An Inconvenient Truth?'” asks Dave Johnson at Seeing the Forest. He continues:

Did you really believe they would stand by and watch a Democratic leader validated for his life’s work?

No chance in hell.

Johnson is not one to ask questions of Gore; rather he attacks the source — not a fact beyond low web hits on the group’s Web site, but that doesn’t stop him — and when he’s sufficiently riled up, he concludes:

But guess what? We’re going to fight back. All of us.

Why? Well, first of all, Al Gore turning his lights on doesn’t make him a hypocrite, it makes him a human.

Second, we’ve seen this game a few too many damn times. The trick is for them to create doubt and distraction. They need to create doubt all around the country about Al Gore. But there is no doubt.

Al Gore is a hero.

Even heroes need help – join us, add to the comments, let’s find out everything we can about these guys and stop them in their tracks. Now.

Hey, we’re all humans, after all. So do we all get a hall pass like Al does? Not a chance, not even if your name is Barack Obama:

Note to Senator Obama: spare us the hope and bi-partisanship talk and help us fight back.

Man, that’s bleak.

The Anonymous Liberal bleats:

Moreover, Gore lives in a large home (10,000 sq. ft.). If you look at the data, it’s clear that Gore’s energy usage per square foot (even assuming the 221,000 kWh number is accurate) is well within the average range for his climate region.

His math is a bit screwy, but consider this: Lefties are quick to attack any overt sign of over-consumption — a Hummer, for example — but they’re letting Al and Tipper, a household of two, get by with 10,000 sq. ft. of living space without a raised eyebrow?

Another meme is carbon footprint forgiveness, as enunciated here by Unqualified Offerings:

Curiously, the “free market” think tank that gives us our first link declares that Gore’s free choice to use his own money to offset his family’s carbon output makes him a “hypocrite,” since he thinks global warming is bad.

Several of the leftyposts have challenged the Tennessee Center’s math — not with facts, but with suppositions — but none raise a question about the foundational mathematical assumptions of carbon neutrality.

Suppose Al buys trees to offset the carbon footprint of his private jet. If they’re seedlings, they’re not scrubbing the amount of carbon of mature trees, the trees that are used in neutrality calculations. If the money preserves mature forests, is he compensating for the tree-buying organization’s management costs and over-contributing to take care of his true carbon footprint?

Good questions. Don’t expect the Warmie Left to answer them.

Several blogs pointed to Dave Johnson’s post as a great rebuttal to the statements about the Gores’ energy use. He’s got solar. He’s got flourescents. His house is big, so it’s average use isn’t that big.

Look, if he’s got solar and flourescents, it just makes matters worse. He’s really, really got to be burning electrons 24/7 to be 20 times the natural average if he’s greened up his house that much.

This is simple stuff, not rocket science. But it doesn’t protect Al, so it’s not going to be covered by his allies on the Left.

hat-tip: memeorandum

The Religion of "Piece"

Islam’s backwardness has many measures, not the least of which is its treatment of women. Long before Mohammed, Christ set a guideline for greater respect of women — his treatment of the adultress, the woman at the well and Mary Magdeline.

Unfortunately, Mohammed ignored Christ’s revolutionary acceptance of women. For women, the Religion of Peace has become a religion that treats them like pieces of flesh, as evidenced (yet again!) in this story:

HYDERABAD (Reuters) – A teenage girl in southern Pakistan, whose late father lost her in a poker game when she was 2 years old, has asked authorities to save her from being handed over to a middle-aged relative.

Rasheeda, 17 (above), said she has filed applications with the police and a local councillor asking them to prevent Lal Haider, 45, from taking her to his home.

Her mother, Nooran said her husband racked up a debt of 10,000 rupees ($151) to Haider playing cards.

“My husband didn’t have money to pay, and instead he told Lal Haider that he could take Rasheeda when she grows up,” she said.

Yeah, so what? It’s just a girl.

Pakistan is a supposed ally in our confrontation with terror, but women there are routinely terrorized by its culture, and the religion that fires the culture. If all that happens to Rasheeda is an unwanted and unloving marriage, she won’t be doing too badly for a woman in an Islamic culture — as long as she can avoid an honor killing, or worse, a failed honor killing.

Do We Want A Woman President?

Ugh. A frightening thought. More photos available at Worth1000.com.

Are There No Liability Lawyers In Pakistan?

Either the Pakistani legal profession hasn’t had John Edwards over to give a seminar on class action and liability lawsuits yet, or there’s something to that “not valuing life as we do” thing:

LAHORE, Pakistan — An annual kite festival Sunday in eastern Pakistan has left at least 11 people dead.

Officials said two died after their throats were cut by metal kite strings. Kite flyers often use string made of wire or coated with ground glass to try to cut the strings of rivals or damage other kites.

The festival is also often marked with celebratory gunshots fired into the air. Five people died after being hit by stray bullets. Two people were electrocuted when they tried to untangle kites from overhead power cables.

Two others fell from roofs. One was a boy chasing a stray kite. Another was a woman trying to stop her son from going after a kite. (source)

Could you imagine such a thing in America, where a whole generation of children has been raised with a deathly fear of getting on a bicycle without head, knee and elbow protection?

Hat-tip: Incredible Daughter #1

More Iran-Iraq Weapons Links

Following on the heels of the LATimes’ Sunday story doubting Iranian involvment in nukes and Iraq — it acutally quoted a guy saying Iran wants a “stable” Iran, and the reporter didn’t bother to ask how Iran intended to make Iraq stable — comes this:

The U.S. military showed on Monday what it said was further evidence of Iranian-made weapons being used by Iraqi militants, including explosives linked to sophisticated roadside bombs.

The weapons, which included mortar bombs and 122 mm rockets, were found during a raid by U.S. forces and Iraqi police on Saturday near the volatile city of Baquba, north of Baghdad.

Washington, which accuses Iran of fanning violence in Iraq, is particularly concerned about what it calls “explosively formed projectiles” — bombs which, on detonation, shoot out a copper plate that becomes a large bullet-like projectile capable of penetrating armored vehicles.

The U.S. military say such bombs, which it calls EFPs, have killed 170 U.S. soldiers in Iraq since 2004. …

One completed bomb was found as well as around 150 copper discs — the key component of EFPs — rolls of electrical wire, plastic pipes to use as casings, ball-bearings and batteries.

U.S. military sources quoted in the story refused to link the explosives to Iran, saying that even if they are manufactured in Iran, there is no proof the Iranian government is supplying them directly to the Mehdi Army militia that dominate the area where the explosives were found.

It seems to be too fine a point, since it’s unlikely a paranoid regime like Ahmadinejad’s would allow controls on state-manufactured munitions to be so loose that anti-theocracy, pro-democracy forces could obtain them.

Nevertheless, in the messaging war we are taking a very conservative stance, hounded as we are by our own media if we ever overstate or leave a loophole unclosed. The enemy, of course, exploits our careful language and returns strong language short on qualifiers of any kind, which the media then use to pound down our spokespersons so they become weaker still.

It’s my old lament: Ernie Pyle, where are you?

Hmmm … Immigration Edition

My friend Jim sent along this thought:

The American Indians found out what happens when you don’t control immigration.

While we’re being politically incorrect, saying “American Indians” instead of “Native Americans,” let’s also consider this: The indigenous people here lost their continent to a superior civilization, one that was more industrious, learned, expansive, solidly centered and compassionate than these shores’ original inhabitants.

The waves of immigrants that are flowing north into America are some of those things, for sure, but they are primarily the dregs and drop-outs of Mexico and Central America, the ones who can’t secure a fortune there. And they are not superior to the civilization they are coming to.

And unlike the waves of immigrants who preceded them who came here for keeps, to become Americans, the new wave came here just to be temporary burdens who take the money and the benefits, then return home.

Kudos To U.S. MSM On Climate Report Coverage?

Yes, it’s true. An award-winning climate scientist says the U.S. media wasn’t all that hysterical in its coverage of the recent UN’s IPCC report (actually, the non-scientific executive summary of a pending scientific report) on global warming. Media in the UK, however, were a very different story.

Mike Hulme, of the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia and winner of the 1995 Hugh Robert Mill Prize of the Royal Meteorological Society, wrote to Nature Magazine:

Communicating science to wider, public audiences, however – in this case on matters of important public policy – is an art that requires careful message management and tone setting. It seems that confident and salient science, as presented by the IPCC, may be received by the public in non-productive ways, depending on the intervening media. With this in mind, I examined the coverage of the IPCC report in the ten main national UK newspapers for Saturday 3 February, the day after the report was released.

Only one newspaper failed to run at least one story on the report (one newspaper ran seven stories), but what was most striking was the tone. The four UK ‘quality’ newspapers all ran front-page headlines conveying a message of rising anxiety: “Final warning”, “Worse than we thought”, “New fears on climate raise heat on leaders” and “Only man can stop climate disaster”. And all nine newspapers introduced one or more of the adjectives “catastrophic”, “shocking”, “terrifying” or “devastating” in their various qualifications of climate change.

Yet none of these words exist in the report, nor were they used in the scientists’ presentations in Paris. Added to the front-page vocabulary of “final”, “fears”, “worse” and “disaster”, they offer an insight into the likely response of the 20 million Britons who read these newspapers.

In contrast, an online search of some leading newspapers in the United States suggests a different media discourse. Thus, on the same day, one finds these headlines: “UN climate panel says warming is man-made”, “New tack on global warming”, “Warming report builds support for action” and “The basics: ever firmer statements on global warming”. This suggests a more neutral representation in the United States of the IPCC’s key message, and a tone that facilitates a less loaded or frenzied debate about options for action.

Hulme is conveniently overlooking some over-amped US coverage, particularly on the broadcast networks, but his point is well taken. The European media, because they brand themselves as “conservative” or “liberal” quite openly, are unfettered by the U.S. media’s on-going futile efforts to appear objective.

Hulme, like all good scientists, went beyond mere observation to state a theory:

Campaigners, media and some scientists seem to be appealing to fear in order to generate a sense of urgency. If they want to engage the public in responding to climate change, this is unreliable at best and counter-productive at worst. As Susanne Moser and Lisa Dilling point out in Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), such appeals often lead to denial, paralysis, apathy or even perverse reactive behaviour.

Unfortunately, they also lead to acceptance of half-baked, unproductive and expensive schemes to force global warming solutions on a skeptical public. And that, of course, is what the media wants: Big new programs to cover, and later turn on as they become, as they unevitably will, massive sinkholes of waste, corruption and do-nothingness.

hat-tip: Greenie Watch