A CFL mea pulpa

Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit was one of the first vocal supporters of replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFL's. It didn't turn out quite as well as he had hoped:

I have to say I’m deeply, deeply disappointed with CFL bulbs. I replaced pretty much every regular bulb in the house with CFLs, but they’ve been failing at about the same rate as ordinary long-life bulbs, despite the promises of multi-year service. And I can’t tell any difference in my electric bill. Plus, the Insta-Wife hates the light. I’ve had somewhat better luck with LED bulbs, of which I have a couple, but though the longevity is better, the light is still inferior.

So, to review...inferior light, higher up-front cost, no savings during usage, no savings from lasting longer.

Oh, and he forgot to mention the hazardous waste methods of disposing of broken bulbs, hope you don't have kids or pets!

How is it that this gratuitous transfer of wealth from consumers to major light bulb manufacturers has been allowed to stay on the books?

The national energy tax bill

As you may know, Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote today on what a "cap and trade" bill, more accurately known as "cap and tax" and what really boils down to a massive national tax increase on everybody who uses any form of energy, either directly or indirectly (for example, if you have electricity in your home or if you eat).

Since you may not have taken time to read this bill, the Powerline guys have stepped up to help you out with this handy chart...looks like a great idea to me!

Global Warmism is the great totalitarian threat of the 21st Century. Like the totalitarian ideologies of the last century, proponents pretend that it's only for your own good that they want government to take control of your life.

Truly free citizens are much too threatening to their Utopian fantasies, thus the continuing struggle between between the people and those who seek to control them. Global warming and socialized medicine are but the latest fronts in this ongoing battle.

A green caught being honest

Priceless exchange recounted by Iain Murray:

REP. CLIFF STEARNS, R-Fla.: Last September you made a statement that somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe, which at the time exceeded $8 a gallon. As Secretary of Energy, will you speak for or against any measures that would raise the price of gasoline?

SEC. CHU: As Secretary of Energy, I think especially now in today's economic climate it would be completely unwise to want to increase the price of gasoline. And so we are looking forward to reducing the price of transportation in the American family. And this is done by encouraging fuel-efficient cars; this is done by developing alternative forms of fuel like biofuels that can lead to a separate source, an independent source of transportation fuel.

REP. STEARNS: But you can't honestly believe that you want the American people to pay for gasoline at the prices, the level in Europe?

SEC. CHU: No, we don't.

REP. STEARNS: No. But somehow, your statement, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," doesn't that sound a little bit silly in retrospect for you to say that?

SEC. CHU: Yes.

The "green jobs" myth

Via Powerline, the Institute for Energy Research presents some facts on green jobs:

* The U.S. can expect 2.2 jobs to be destroyed for every 1 renewable job financed by the government.

* Only 1 in 10 of the jobs actually created through green investment is permanent.

* Since 2000, Spain has spent €571,138 ($753,778) to create each "green job," including subsidies of more than €1 million ($1,319,783) per wind industry job.
Those programs resulted in the destruction of nearly 113,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy.

* Each "green" megawatt installed destroyed 5.39 jobs in non-energy sectors of the Spanish economy.

* The total over-cost--the amount paid over the cost that would result from buying the electricity generated by the renewable power plants at market prices--between 2000 and 2008 amounts to 7,918.54 million Euros ($10 billion).

* The total subsidy spent and committed to these three renewable sources amounts to €28,671 million ($36 billion).

* Consumer energy costs in Spain would have to be increased 31 percent to repay the debt generated by the green jobs subsidies.

Central planning fails again

This is priceless:

A collapsing carbon market makes mega-pollution cheap

Europe's system to edge up the cost of emissions and boost green energy has backfired. There isn't much time to rescue it

'Roll up for the great pollution fire sale, the ultimate chance to wreck the climate on the cheap. You sir, over there, from the power company - look at this lovely tonne of freshly made, sulphur-rich carbon dioxide. Last summer it cost an eyewatering €31 to throw up your smokestack, but in our give-away global recession sale, that's been slashed to a crazy €8.20. Dump plans for the wind turbine! Compare our offer with costly solar energy! At this low, low price you can't afford not to burn coal!"

The poor are grateful to not be forced to live without electricity or heat for the benefit of the religion of others.

Depends on whose ox is being gored, etc.

So, consumers are now gouging the oil companies, do I have that right?

And speculators are artificially driving prices down, correct?

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Random factoid: Last month was the 70th warmest October in the 114 years for which we have records.

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Of the 425 Guantanamo prisoners released, 50 have been re-captured trying to kill Americans again. And I have to doubt that we’ve captured 100% of the repeat war criminals.

Yeah, closing Guantanamo sounds like a terrific idea…

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Signs of sanity across the pond:

“Italy and Germany agree that measures to cut greenhouse gases shouldn’t weigh on the economy, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a press conference Tuesday, indicating government support for tough new measures in Europe is waning.”

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Unfortunately, signs of insanity at home:

“The Governor of California has just said that the US is the greatest polluter in the world, which is manifestly untrue on any level.”

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NR offers a counter cliché on bailing out the UAW:

"We’ve heard of too big to fail. Isn’t there such a thing as too failed to bail?"

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From a must-read account of a conversation between Jay Nordlinger and the heroic Chinese dissident Jian-li Yang:

We turn back to China and the Olympics: “A park was set aside for protest,” says Jian-li — was set aside at least in theory. “But not a single application for a protest or demonstration was approved.” In addition to which, there were not as many potential protesters around as there might have been: because “everyone had been arrested before the Olympics.”

The world’s journalists letting the Olympics pass by without shining a bright light on the human rights hell that is China – shameful.

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Our conflict with Iran is becoming more intense, and looks like it will be the biggest challenge facing the Obama administration. By that I mean real, existential challenge, not a transient issue like a slowing economy.

Which is what makes French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s take so unsettling. Sarkozy calls Obama’s stance on Iran “utterly immature” and characterizes it as “formulations empty of all content.”

Sarkozy also fears that Obama will undermine the united European resistance by “arrogantly” ignoring the UN Security Council and opening direct talks with Iran with no preconditions.

Let us hope that Sarkozy underestimates the president-elect, our future depends on it.

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Did Al Qaeda number two Ayman Zawahiri really call Obama a "house Negro" in an audio tape released Tuesday? I though that was a slur used exclusively by American racists to refer to blacks who did not think the way they are damned well told to think, who choose to stray away from the ideological plantation.

How odd to hear it coming from an Arab.

He’s even better at water polo, etc.

Christ runs for 232 yards in Catholic victory

I’m recruiting the guy who was able to tackle him…

God Shammgod could not be reached for comment.

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Some perspective: You can tell by the reference that this Dan Henninger quote came at the start of primary season, but it’s worth rehashing as we hear the hyperbolic carping about how bad we have it as Election Day nears:

“Later today some people who will start their evening with Iowa's caucus by watching angry Lou Dobbs--convincing themselves, again, that they and this country are getting shafted, and coming to this conclusion while watching a $700, 32-inch Samsung flat-panel, high-definition TV with Lou's sad song flowing through Monster digital coax cables to five Onkyo HT-SR800 home theater speakers.”

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It did not work, but this attempted power grab by the state of California (excerpted from an LA Times editorial) should give everybody a look into the mindset that could end up controlling the federal government in a few months:

California is proposing revisions to its housing code that would require all new or remodeled homes to have a "programmable communicating thermostat." Equipped with special "nonremovable" FM radio receivers, these devices would allow state power authorities to set the temperature in your home as they see fit. Ostensibly to manage demand during "price events" and other "emergencies," you would basically cede control of your home's heating and air conditioning to the state (when and if state officials wanted to exercise it).

These are the kinds of things that will make their way into new laws and regulations in a one-party government, all in the name of “climate change” (as “global warming” was rebranded a few years into the current global cooling cycle) or other well-intentioned causes.

The movement that would have government control every aspect of our lives is gaining momentum. Hopefully the people will push back while they are still allowed to do so.

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Remember children, there are no illegal guns, there are only undocumented firearms.

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Great moments in regulation: When the state of Indiana tried to legislate 3.2 as the value of pi.

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Left/liberal vs. conservative/libertarian visions of economics: the left thinks that business should be accountable to bureaucrats, while the right thinks business should be accountable to customers.

To that end, a potential Democrat-controlled government will pass laws by the dozens and regulations by the tens of thousands to tell businesses what they can sell and how they can sell it. I hope you’ve enjoyed the innovation in (for example) cell phones, computers and televisions, because that kind of progress is likely to slow to a crawl if Washington is taken over by control freak nanny statists.

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No matter how bad you might think the Weather Underground were…they were worse. Sure, they committed some murders and tried some mass murders, but they had loftier goals.

Namely, reeducation, to rid Americans of their capitalist and traditional American ideas. And for those who resisted, death – the WU estimated that they would need to kill 25 million Americans to achieve their goals.

Nah, launching your political career in the house of, having your political career nurtured and advanced by, maintaining a personal and professional friendship with, and sharing an office for three years with a one or sometimes two of these genocide fantasists, these modern-day Hitlers…no problem at all.

An honest politician! etc.

A refreshingly honest quote from Alabama congressman and Congressional Black Caucus member Artur Davis:

“Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.”

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Woops: "Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's last name is spelled 'Osama' on hundreds of absentee ballots mailed out last week to voters in Rensselaer County. he misspelling, which elections officials on both sides of the aisle insist was simply a typo, is causing embarrassment for the county."

If only it had been O-same-a, it would have been accurate for this ultimate business-as-usual Democrat.

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Bill Simmons pens a great article on basketball’s most underappreciated all time great, Elgin Baylor.

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My favorite headline of the election season came from Reuters:
"McCain and Obama on Same Side in War on Cancer"

The political courage to take a position against cancer, now that’s change we can believe in!

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The generation gap on nuclear power: those 32 or over know how overblown anti-nuke rhetoric has been in the past and thus favor nuclear power plant construction, but those 18-31 have only the propaganda with which they’ve been bombarded all of their lives as a frame of reference and thus oppose it (but only by 38-35%).

Another example of why the left is so focused on control of academia, brainwashing takes better if begun earlier. An educated and open mind is a dangerous thing.

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Mark Steyn points out:

If Obama is elected in November, at G7 meetings, for the first time since they began, America will have a more left-wing leader than any other member of the group - Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Britain (and that's before Gordon Brown loses to David Cameron). Right-of-center government throughout the western world - except Washington.

And, if you say, "Hang on, isn't it the G8? What about Russia?", I'm not sure whether Putin and his stooge still regard themselves as socialists, but, if so, for good or ill, it's certainly of a more muscular variety than Obama's.

Strange times.

Indeed, and not in a good way here.

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22-Year-Old Auctions Off Virginity to Pay for College

If she hadn’t been saving herself for marriage, and is still a virgin at 22…buyer beware!

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Michael Barone makes the sensible argument that the current mood is amenable to more government intervention in the economy because there is now a whole generation of adults who do not remember what it was like the last time government tried to control things – the gas lines, unemployment and stagflation of the 1970s.

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NBA fans would do well to keep in mind Kelly Dwyer’s mantra: For every dumb contract move a player makes, NBA GMs will counter it with 14 dumber moves of their own.

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PMS: From a hilarious letter to the Washington Post editor from a Lisa Orenstein of Baltimore:

In a country with more than 300 million people, with plenty of accomplished men and women, why would we settle for Ms. Palin's mediocre credentials? Most companies would place her résumé in the reject pile for far lesser jobs.

Yes, because nothing gets a resume rejected faster than experience as a mayor, state cabinet member and governor.

Can you imagine how quickly Ms. Orenstein would have discarded a Bill Clinton résumé in 1992?

Scoreboard, etc.

With the arrival of another September 11, it’s worth noting (for those of you scoring at home, or even those of you who are by yourselves) that since Islamic terrorists launched their war against America:

Bush 7, Islamic Terrorists 0.

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It’s also worth noting on this day to note the reaction of then State Senator Obama to the events of that day. In an editorial in the Hyde Park (Chicago) Herlald on 9/19/01, the future Democrat presidential candidate uttered some gems.

In addition to cleaning up airport security and intelligence, we "must also engage . . . in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness."

Funny, by about 9am Central time that day I understood perfectly the source of such madness: evil. It’s not like it took a rocket scientist to deduce.

For Obama at the time the madness "grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair."

Given that the 9/11 perpetrators were extremely well-educated, wealthy and not only not in despair but instead in ecstasy at the opportunity to murder thousands of Americans, that’s stunning in its ignorance. Terrorists from the host of Obama’s first fundraiser (Bill Ayers) to the spiritual leader of the 9/11 attacks (Osama bin Laden) have consistently fit the exact opposite profile of the one he imagined here.

And of course, "We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad.”

As if in modern warfare this was not already the case. America has and continues to be willing to sacrifice its own soldiers in order to avoid civilian casualty.

“We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent."

File this one under even a blind squirrel finds an acorn. While the expectations of hate crimes perpetrated by Americans turned out to be (shocker, I know) massively overblown, it was still laudable for him to speak out against it. This served as the ninth inning dribbler that kept him from an otherwise all-strikeout day.

But history will show that he got the fundamental question we have faced since the end of the Cold War completely wrong, an error in judgment that is unacceptable for a potential president.

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Having noted that, I have to give equal time to a couple of things he got absolutely right in his interesting interview with Bill O’Reilly.

First, he came out unequivocally in favor of nuclear reactor construction, significant in that it has been taboo on the left and flies directly in the face of the desires of environmental special interest groups. It’s an energy position that is so sensible that it should be near unanimous, yes, but embracing it still took a lot of courage and he is to be commended for it, assuming he doesn’t back away from it.

Second, he came out strongly in favor of missile shields in Poland. Again, this should be wholly uncontroversial in this country; Putin’s silly rhetoric to the contrary, this is a purely defensive action and one that should be pursued at home as well as anywhere we have a threatened ally. And again, he deserves a ton of credit for taking on an entrenched special interest group, in this case the anti-American and antiwar left. They have always been adamant in their opposition to R&D and implementation of systems protecting the US and its allies from incoming missiles, and for him to oppose them is very courageous, again assuming he sticks to it.

As an addendum, Obama also pledged not to raise capital gains taxes to any higher than 20%, but I doubt his sincerity on that one, and even if true it’s kind of like giving praise to a thief who steals only half of your money instead of all of it – he’s still a thief.

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John Hinderaker on the ever more bizarre attacks on Palin by the media and elected Democrats:

The Democrats in Congress and the press see the election slipping away from them. Their reaction is much like that of a toddler who screams, holds his breath until he turns blue, and generally threatens to wreak havoc if he doesn't get his way.

She’s a pig, she’s Pontius Pilate, her only qualification is not having had an abortion…it is as if the party is consciously trying to alienate the sane portion of the electorate. Can the far left blogs have gained that much influence, really? You would think not, but when a presidential candidate and other high ranking party officials are starting to sound like the comment threads on the Daily Kos…it’s just incomprehensible.

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This is what it must have felt like to have drafted Tom Brady in the first round of a fantasy football draft.

She made the right choice, etc.

My favorite take on the Palin pick comes from Mark Swanson (via James Taranto):

I think we can all agree that Palin's pick of an experienced statesman like John McCain to head her ticket shows that she is much better prepared to be VP than Biden who is trying to thrust an unqualified youngster who was a do-nothing state legislator before being elected to the Senate where he put in a few months of attendance before going AWOL to run for president.

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If only John Edwards had been the father of Bristol Palin’s baby, it would never have made the news. Then again she would have had to sleep with John Edwards, which might be too much of a burden to take for the team.

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As for the pregnancy itself, I don’t really see it as having any effect on the election unless it turns abortion into a campaign issue. I suspect that the Democrats are smart enough to avoid that at all costs.

The only other possibility is some electoral blowback, particularly from women, over the relentless attacks on Sarah and Bristol by the mainstream media. The Dems are practiced in distancing themselves from the kooks at Kos and such, and fortunately for them only the tiniest minority of voters is aware of the over the top hate speech that is the site’s stock in trade.

But it’s a bit harder to distance from the vitriol that is coming from the editorial and front pages of most major newspapers and newsmagazines and all of the TV news organizations except Fox News. Surveys show that voters have become sophisticated enough to realize that big media is openly campaigning for Obama, and are thus likely to associate the Palin family attacks with the Democrat party.

But even with this factor, and even if Democrats overplay their hand in their newfound distaste for women with children having careers (which would be there even without the pregnancy), it’s hard to see this whole thing swinging more than a point or two on election day, which is still two months away after all.

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College basketball’s greatest rivalry spills over to the gridiron:

Two parachutists who was supposed to drop into Cahpel Hill’s Kenan Stadium with the game ball for the UNC-McNeese State game instead dropped into Wallace Wade Stadium, where Duke and James Madison were warming up, startling players and coaches. One of them almost landed on a player and the JMU coach compared it to a scene from Red Dawn.

The official explanation: “Bad weather nearly forced the skydivers from Virginia-based Aerial Adventures to cancel the leap, but the clouds opened enough for them to see a stadium, and they jumped.”

My guess: they just wanted to meet Sonny Jurgensen.

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Random stat: According to the CBO, a 15% cut in CO2 emissions would raise the average household’s annual energy bill by $1300.

I’m sure they won’t mind…

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The Copenhagen Consensus estimates that merely lowering trade barriers would increase global output by $3 trillion per year, well over 5%. And that more than 80% of that gain would go to poor countries.

The breakdown of the Doha trade talks was a severe blow to those living in poverty. We can mitigate some of the damage by signing as many smaller free trade agreements as we can negotiate, but something that everybody buys into would be a great thing for all of the world’s citizens.

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I’m not sure which is funnier:

- That there is a town called Intercourse, PA
- That it has a newspaper called the Intercourse News
- Or that Intercourse is in Amish country, of all places

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The more government has gotten into the college financial aid business, the more college costs have gone up. Funny how that works. Thomas Sowell has a great alternative to the usual “government confiscates assets from taxpayers, wastes a significant portion on administration, distributes what’s left over haphazardly” manner of subsidizing college expense, as well as keep parents from having to run up huge amounts of debt.

Allow students to sign contracts with lenders who would pay their college expenses in exchange for a set percentage of their future earnings over some period. It would essentially be a system of students selling stock in themselves. The competition of lenders shopping for the best students and students shopping for the best deals on lenders would benefit all concerned. And even the poorest of students would find college within their reach.

As with most of Sowell’s ideas, it’s brilliant but so simple that you wonder why it hasn’t already been done.

What about Blogging Americans? etc.

We know that Democrats love defining people by group membership instead of acknowledging them as individuals, but I still find this list of categories of Obama supporters to be hilarious.

They alphabetized it, presumably to avoid offending anybody, but I think they missed a golden opportunity to rank the groups in order of how much they are oppressed by evil white men. Should African Americans or LGBT be ranked higher? I can’t say, but I’m sure there is some platform approved answer.

What about people who cross over into more than one group? If I’m a senior lesbian Pacific islander woman of faith living abroad who’s an environmentalist and a union member, which group do I join?

And hey, why isn’t White Guys a category? Is this tent truly big? I don’t see Verbose Americans either, so I have no idea where Joe Biden fits.

My favorite is the priceless new euphemism for American Indians…First Americans. For those occasions when “Native American” is no longer sufficiently politically correct.

My favorite line is “We're ready to take the offense for organized labor.” If this list tells me anything, it’s that they’re ready to take offense on behalf of pretty much anybody for pretty much anything. And what about disorganized labor, like the day laborers that congregate at a local convenience store waiting to be hired for cash. Oh, never mind…Latinos!

And why would Americans with Disabilities vote Obama, when his party believes in the right to eliminate them before birth precisely because they are to be born with said disability? Curious group there, maybe it should be called “Americans Democrats Think Should Be Aborted.”

This page is just a fascinating glimpse into the mind of the modern liberal.

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Obama’s formal nomination last Thursday should prove to even the remaining knuckle-dragging holdouts that America is the least racist society in the world. That has been obvious to most of us for 2-3 decades by now, but there is still a bigoted element that is desperate to keep alive the myth of the US as an inherently and irredeemably racist society.

That notion looks pretty indefensible today, but it won’t stop those who get rich from the politics of grievance from continuing to pretend that it’s still 1963. Nor will it convince the academics who promote “[insert group name] Studies” pseudo-scholarship from preaching their message of hate. But you have to think that those few reactionary holdouts are becoming marginalized in the way that their ideological brethren in the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements were a few decades back.

However you feel about Obama the man, politician or candidate, we owe him a debt of gratitude for that.

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The old joke “World ends; blacks, women hardest hit” is supposed to be a slap at media bias. But then you hear that House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said that African-Americans are/would be “disproportionately impacted” by climate change.

Proving once again that parody in this age of rampant political correctness is no longer possible.

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In 1970, almost 60% of the oil consumed by the US was produced domestically. Now it’s 25%. Since the peak in 1970, US oil production has declined by a stunning 47%.

Any politician that has ever, at any point since 1970, done anything to block new oil exploration and drilling or new refinery construction has been derelict in the service of his constituents. May history judge them harshly.

The supposed rationale for this nearly four decades of obstruction has been that the people should sacrifice for the benefit of the environment (or, to be more accurate, environmental special interests). But that does not stand up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny, as the most advanced and safest drilling and transporting technologies are those of US companies.

Diminishing US production means more from places like Venezuela, the “Stan” countries, and Africa, as well as the usual laundry list of countries whose goal is the establishment of a global caliphate. Closing the Arctic to the US means that Russia will explore and drill it. Keeping us from drilling off the coast of Florida means that China (with cooperation from Cuba) does instead.

How many of those countries do you expect to do a better job of drilling, transporting and refining in an environmentally sound manner than we could? I’ll submit that it’s the same as the number of Texas Rangers World Series games I’ve attended.

I will go back to a conclusion I frequently reach after these types of discussions: it’s not about a desire to avoid damage to the environment, it’s about a desire to damage the US. And to make a few green special interests and a whole bunch of lawyers filthy rich in the process, on your dime.

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Management consultant types love to talk about thinking outside the box, but that doesn’t keep some people from thinking inside the box.

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Socialized medicine 101: 64-year-old Barbara Wagner of Springfield, Oregon has lung cancer. The Oregonian describes her experience with the state’s health care rationing scheme:

After her oncologist prescribed a cancer drug that would cost $4,000 a month, the newspaper reported, "Wagner was notified that the Oregon Health Plan wouldn't cover the treatment, but that it would cover palliative, or comfort, care, including, if she chose, doctor-assisted suicide."

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that a state that would encourage and pay for a cancer patient’s suicide but not pay for her chemotherapy is going in the Obama column in November.

The notion that some lives have less value than others, especially before birth and near death, is a core principle of leftist political thought. It’s good that we have laboratories like Oregon to inform us of some of the consequences of unchecked liberalism.

Female feticide, etc.

I wonder if the abortion movement realizes how the procedure is used in developing countries? It’s a cruel irony that what is sold as “a woman’s right to choose” is so often used to decrease the population’s percentage of women.

Everybody knows (but few advocates admit) how prevalent sex-selective abortion is in China. The “one-child” policy that is so emblematic of the collectivist mindset has now been around long enough to have produced its first generation of adults. Since the policy was enacted, China’s birthrate has been 119 boys for every 100 girls.

What is less well-known is that the practice is also standard in India. Nationwide the female birthrate has declined to 90 girls for every 100 boys, and in some Punjabi cities the rate is, remarkably as low as 30 girls to every 100 boys. Indians in Great Britain give birth to 114 boys for every 100 girls.

Sex-selective abortion is also on the rise in Africa, in tandem with an increase in the availability of abortion itself.

And it’s not as if females in the good old USA are spared, either. Among Chinese, Korean and Indians in this country the combined ratio for firstborns is 105 boys for every 100 girls, a slight but significant effect. But here’s the kicker: if the firstborn is a boy, the same 105-100 ratio continues for subsequent children in a family. But if the firstborn is a girl, the ratio rises to 117 boys for every 100 girls for the second child, and if the first two children are girls the ratio rises to an amazing 151 boys for every 100 girls for the third child.

Colleen Carroll Campbell (from whom, along with Mark Steyn, the statistics quoted in this post originate) writes that abortion was “touted as the key to liberating future generations of women” but has instead become “the preferred means of eradicating them.”

As with so much of the “social progress” promoted by the various flavors of progressive and leftist political thought in the last century, said progress comes with a steep price. The abortion movement began with the desire for keeping down the black population, and having moved past that is now widely used as a means for keeping down the female population.

How long will women in free countries put up with the feminist movement’s suicidal tendencies before revolting?

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I’ve seen a lot of concerts better than the Tom Petty show I saw on Wednesday, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one more visually stimulating. 6 large video boards ringing the top, 5 cubic video boards hanging halfway up, and one massive video board in the back, along with an impressive array of lights and superb production, it was a concert that a deaf man could enjoy.

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Wall Street Journal correspondent Bill Walsh nails it: "I can think of only one liberal that Obama ought to start talking like: John Locke."

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New England last season was the first team in NFL history to use the shotgun on more than half of their offensive plays (per Pro Football Prospectus). That sound you heard was Woody Hayes rolling over in his grave.

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Hopefully the easing down of oil (and thus gasoline) prices will end any ideas for a “windfall profits tax” expropriation on oil companies. We tried that in 1980, and it decreased domestic production from 9% to 6% and increased OPEC imports from 8% to 16%. And as with all taxes it would be passed on directly to consumers, driving up already high energy prices.

That a scheme to drive up prices, lower production and increase our dependence on foreign oil is even discussed is unfathomable. They must really think we are ignorant.

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One of the funnier talking points of this election year has been the repeated claim that NAFTA causes American jobs to be sent overseas.

I’m not sure if it’s the Great Lakes, the Rio Grande or both that the protectionists consider to be seas/oceans.

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Football prep and a busy social life have kept blogging light lately, but that should ease up some now. Whether or not that's a good thing is left as an exercise for the reader.

"We're inferior!", etc.

Government 101: India has a form of “affirmative action” in the form of state sanctioned discrimination in favor of the lowest castes. The practice runs directly counter to fundamental laws preventing discrimination based on caste, much as racial preferences (aka “affirmative action”) in the US directly contradict the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

As you would expect, the Indian version creates to the same kind of perverse incentives as does our own. Enter the Gujjar tribe, which is part of a group called (I’m not making this up) the “other backward classes.” This puts it one rung above the bottom of India’s traditional social structure. And this really pisses off the Gujjar.

Well, sure, you say, who would want to be considered a backward class?

Umm, no, you’re forgetting how “affirmative action” works. See, the Gujjar have been rioting throughout this year because they want their caste to be downgraded. So they too can get preferential treatment from the government for university placements and government jobs. In one particularly ugly stretch in May, more than 45000 police were deployed and at least 39 Gujjar were killed during daily rioting.

Could anything possibly better capture the essence of “affirmative action?”

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I’m a fan of the new Hornets uniforms and logos, which is notable since I am usually a bit of a curmudgeon on such things.

As for the team wearing them, I’ll continue to hate, thank you.

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A London Telegraph poll of Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia showed Obama preferred over McCain by a 52% to 15% margin. The poll also found “a striking level of anti-American feeling in every country.”

Kind of goes together, doesn’t it?

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Do you remember the last president who made raising taxes on high earners and increasing protectionist trade policies the centerpieces of his economic plan? You’re probably not old enough, it’s been a long time since the Herbert Hoover administration.

Worked out well, didn’t it?

Trade rose from 40% to 55% of world GDP between 1990 and 2004, according to the World Bank. During the same period, the world economy grew by 50%. The five fastest-growing countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Ireland and Vietnam) all had double-digit percentage increases in trade. The countries that traded the least (Iran and most of Africa) have stagnate economies.

Free trade is the world’s best hope for lifting people out of poverty. No other issue, not even school vouchers, so clearly pits the desires of narrow special interest groups against the welfare of the poor.

To be against free trade is to be for poverty, it’s really as simple as that.

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Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus: "The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious,
arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism."

At least I’m in good company!

The possibility that governments will gain the power to ration energy is one of the greatest threats we face in the coming decades. Like the rationing of food and other necessities that are fundamental features of the various flavors of communism and socialism, it will always be sold in moral terms and as for the good of the people, even as it destroys their lives.

We must diligently work to defeat it, at every opportunity and at any cost.

My opponent is a psychic, etc.

Obama’s camp is running an attack ad in Indiana that shows McCain saying, "I don't believe we're headed into a recession." It’s from a debate in January, and it proved to be absolutely correct as we did not end up having a recession.

As far as attack ads go, pointing out your opponent’s dead-on predictions is not the greatest strategy.

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This is from a commercial that’s been ubiquitous on the Ticket lately, but it still cracks me up. I can’t even remember what it’s selling, so I guess they’ve failed on me, indeed I don’t even notice it’s that ad until I hear the relevant line start.

Brian Billick on commitment: “In a bacon and egg breakfast, the chicken’s involved, but the pig’s committed.”

The thing is, I can easily hear a football coach saying such a thing.

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Check out this video: “A World Without the American Soldier”
Especially notable in that it was created by Brits.

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From the Virginian, via Instapundit:

[R]obber barons like Pickens, allied with the MSM and the Democrats are on the way to making billions on “alternative energy.” The formula is simple: keep oil prices high, prevent the use of coal, stop nuclear power production, scare people with doomsday scenarios of global warming via “greenhouse gasses,” pass laws mandating the use of power sources that Pickens and the Greens own and rake in the billions as consumers get financially raped.

And of course Al Gore, who is on his way to becoming a billionaire via what amounts to pump and dump tactics for his green investments.

I like the suggestion of Walter Williams: if you want to drill in ANWR, turn over ownership of it to green groups and watch the regulatory and litigative hurdles disappear like magic.

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Massachusetts has been considering adopting 20-year mandatory sentencing for pedophiles convicted of raping a child under the age of 12. Democrat State Rep. James Fagan isn’t fond of the idea, which is fair enough as reasonable people can disagree on the issue.

But his description of how he would handle the law in his other job as a defense attorney is one of the most shocking and appalling things I have ever read. He says he would “rip apart” 6-year old victims and “make sure the rest of their life is ruined,” and ultimately grill them so hard that “when they’re 8 years old they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”

I hope this miserable cretin does not have children, and is not an influence on the life of anybody else’s children. It’s a cliché, but some people really should not reproduce.

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Did you know that the first minimum wage law, 1931’s Davis-Bacon Act, was designed for the specific purpose of keeping blacks from taking jobs from whites? Now you do.

In a related note, the last year in which the black unemployment rate was lower than the white unemployment rate was…1930.

Global drying, etc.

I’ve been critical of global warming alarmism, but there does seem to be a problem of global drying. You can guess why: global warming advocates, specifically the madness of the boifuels movement forcing land to be utilized for energy instead of for food. Author Peter Brabeck-Letmathe says it “could be the single most destructive set of policy mistakes made in a generation.”

I have become convinced that the global warming movement is the most dangerous enemy that civilization faces today, and in a world of radical Islamist hegemony that is not an easy distinction to earn.

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How often are you reminded that JFK was killed by an anti-American Communist and that RFK was killed by a Palestinian Arab who hated the Senator/presidential candidate for his support of Israel? Not often enough, I’d wager.

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Sad truth: China, in cooperation with Cuba, is drilling for oil closer to the US coastline than US companies are presently allowed to drill.

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A Jay Nordlinger correspondent found this text of a Harley-Davidson ad that makes me want to go buy one myself:

We don’t do fear. Over the last 105 years in the saddle, we’ve seen wars, conflicts, depression, recession, resistance, and revolutions. But every time, this country has come out stronger than before. We’ve watched a thousand hand-wringing pundits disappear in our rearview mirror. Chrome and asphalt put distance between you and whatever the world can throw at you. Freedom and wind outlast hard times. And the rumble of an engine drowns out all the spin on the evening news. If 105 years have proved one thing, it’s that fear sucks, and it doesn’t last long. So screw it. Let’s ride.

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Nordlinger also goes off on a rant worthy of Dennis Miller, which took me a while to post because I had to stop and applaud:

[From an Obama commencement speech at Wesleyan University]
We [Barack and she] left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.

Just once — one friggin’ time in my life — I’d like to hear a commencement speaker say, “You know what I think you should do? If you can, I think you should start a business. You should think of an idea, and act on it. Give the public a product or service it needs. And make your company grow, and enrich your shareholders. That is a wonderful thing you could do for yourself, your neighbors, and mankind.”

But we are unlikely to hear that at a commencement ceremony, and you know why? Because America is a capitalist country where, curiously, a socialist mindset holds sway. Does Obama have any idea why he has such a rich country to play with, politically? Where does he think those tax revenues come from? Does he have any idea at all?

Building a better mouse trap, and selling it at an affordable price, is a public service. Michelle Obama speaks of a “money-making industry” and a “helping industry.” Evidently, she didn’t learn very much at Princeton and Harvard, or wherever she went. Henry Ford and Bill Gates have “helped” her a lot. Only she doesn’t know it.

Same old Edwards, etc.

John Weidner calls BS on Walter Shapiro’s claim of John Edwards disillusionment:

What malarky. You were besotted with Edwards because he was (or was pretending to be) a liberal Democrat. And Edwards almost certainly paid flattering attention to the guy who was writing a book about his campaign. You dolt, Edwards and his wife almost certainly coldly planned how to woo you, and knew what your weaknesses are. That's what trial lawyers do with a jury. They study every scrap of information available on each juryman, and, like chameleons, tailor the message, and paint their very selves, to fit them. (I know about this stuff; my dear wife's on the other side, the good side, fighting scoundrels like Edwards every day.)

Everybody who retained any objectivity could see that he was a phony, and were not surprised by this. When a guy talks populism and green-ism while building the biggest mansion in the county, there's a 99% chance that he's a sham. When a guy spends minutes in front of a mirror fluffing his hairdo, there's a 99% chance that he will not resist the sexual temptations available to a celebrity.

And when you make millions as a trial lawyer, it means you are skilled at convincing people of things that just ain't so.

Hammer. Nail. Head. I’ve called Edwards the Empty Suit from North Carolina, but I think Dennis Miller is correct in saying that’s an insult to coat hangers.

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How does Michael Phelps swim 17 times in 9 days at the Olympics? Your standard 2000 calorie diet will not get it done. Try 4000 calories…every meal.

Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase "Breakfast of Champions" by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise.

He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes.

At lunch, Phelps gobbles up a pound of enriched pasta and two large ham and cheese sandwiches slathered with mayo on white bread - capping off the meal by chugging about 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

For dinner, Phelps really loads up on the carbs - what he needs to give him plenty of energy for his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week regimen - with a pound of pasta and an entire pizza.

He washes all that down with another 1,000 calories worth of energy drinks.

Man...I think I need a pizza and a pitcher, I'm feeling a little tired today.

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Man attacked bus, tried to rob 7-Eleven, stripped, fought dog and withstood Taser

Or, as we call it around here, Friday night.

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Those who claim that abortion is “settled law” based on a 35 year old Supreme Court precedent must have been mortified when the current Court extended habeas corpus rights to POW’s in Boumediene v. Bush. After all, it overturned 58 years of settled law in that the Court had ruled, in 1950’s Johnson v. Eisentrager, that nonresident alien enemy combatants had no right to habeas corpus.

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Isn’t “entitlements” an odd term for government programs that transfer assets from those who earned them to those who did not?

Wouldn’t “slavery” be a more proper term? That’s what one person being forced to work in the service of another, with no legal claim to the fruits of his labor, has traditionally been called. We should just be honest and call effective tax rates what they are, slavery rates – the percentage of their work time each year that an individual is required to function as a human slave.

Indeed, the difference between slavery and charity is one of freedom vs. coercion.

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Lat November, Brazil discovered a reserve of billions of barrels of oil in an area 180 miles offshore from Sao Paulo and Rio. And here’s the punch line: they are already working on the drilling platforms and pipelines to bring this oil into the market.

Why is it that there was no resistance by the international environmental movement? No moralistic pronouncements, no demonstrations against Brazil or its interests, no lawsuits filed in Brazilian or international courts to delay or prevent development.

You might conclude that the gnashing of teeth and legal maneuvering to prevent the US from drilling off its own coasts is not about concern for the environment at all, that it’s instead purely about trying to damage America.

And you would be correct.

You're lucky I typed this, etc.

I suppose you do about 99.44% of your writing on either your keyboard or your phone/PDA these days, like I do. So what happens when you try to put pen to paper?

For me, it’s ugly. I used to be an obsessively neat writer, and I can still print very well if I don’t try to rush it. But my cursive writing is just awful unless I slow it to an absolute crawl, and even then it’s probably not up to my fifth grade standards.

I guess that it’s not like riding a bike, as they say.

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Happy 34th birthday to one of the finest human beings in public life: Lakers G Derek Fisher.

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John Hinderaker has a question that, for me at least, is pretty easy to answer:

So, how should we deal with our energy needs? By aggressively seeking new sources of energy, including domestic petroleum reserves that would have been accessed already but for Congressional bans, or by inflating our tires, turning down our air conditioning, staying home instead of going on vacation, and generally accepting a less prosperous future?

My answer is the same as his:

We do, however, need the government to increase energy supply--not because the government should go into the energy business, but because various statutes and regulations are now blocking private industry from developing energy reserves. Government action is necessary because past, ill-advised government action is the problem.
For politicians to hector us to reduce our energy consumption in the face of rising prices is both unnecessary and condescending. Out of necessity, most of us will do that. But a lowered standard of living isn't the solution to the problem of high energy costs, it is the problem.

As usual, the main reason we need government is to fix the previous mistakes made by government. It’s a theme you will see repeatedly here.

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Media 101: A man threatens to assasinate Obama and Bush. CBS and CNN report the threat to kill Obama but edit the threat to Bush out of the story. The full story would have obscured the anti-Obama = racist narrative, indeed you might call it an inconvenient truth.

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So who’s going to launch havingfunbabieswhilethewifefightscancer.com in honor of the empty suit from North Carolina?

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Glenn Reynolds echoes what so many of us have been wondering:

SO NOW THAT WE KNOW THAT THE PRESS COVERED FOR EDWARDS -- just as, pre-invasion, they covered for Saddam -- that raises a question: What else are they not telling us for fear it will hurt the Democrats' prospects?

I guess we'll get some of the answers sometime between January 2009 and never.

Funny that a fourth hand rumor of a rumor that McCain might have had an affair is a front page story for the New York Times, but visual evidence that Edwards had one is not even worthy of the kind of bottom of page 21 paragraph that is usually reserved for Democrat indiscretion in the paper.

RIP Alexander Solzhenitsyn etc.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of the great heroes of the 20th century, passed away last night in Moscow. His courage in writing and publishing The Gulag Archipelago in 1974 was immeasurable. The book itself is one of the most important in human history. Those who lived under the horrors of communism, indeed under any totalitarian nightmare, had no greater ally. RIP.

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30 years ago today, Jimmy Carter established the Department of Energy. $4.00 a gallon gas, major decreases in domestic energy production and dramatic increases in our reliance on foreign sources for our energy tells you that it worked out exactly as one would expect from a major government expansion.

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With the Olympics set to begin next week in by far the greatest polluting country in the world, there will never be a better time for Al Gore to show up and forcefully speak out. We shall see if there is any sincerity in his fire and brimstone rhetoric or if the whole thing is just a ruse designed to make him a billionaire. Tick, tock…

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While on the subject of the rotund VP cum preacher, enjoy this limerick from Scott Cram:

There once was a man named Gore,
who thought he had a climate change cure,
then things like grain and rice,
went far up in price,
now he's to blame for starving the poor!

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Why does the notion that the concept of “mutually assured destruction,” which kept the US and the Soviet Union from engaging in nuclear war in the Cold War, still have traction in some circles as being applicable to the Iran dilemma? Soviet communism was a rational (albeit evil) ideology, more interested in survival than the destruction of its enemy.

Can we really assume that Shiite fundamentalism’s apocalyptic tendencies are all just an act? It’s not like the willingness to sacrifice most of their own in order to destroy Israel is a fringe position in the Iranian government, it comes from so many including from those at the very top.

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When David Beckham moved from Madrid to Los Angeles, did he have to learn Spanish?

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Wisdom from the great Thomas Sowell on how it is that a 9/11 or the constant attacks on Israel can happen at this point in history:

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.

Random thoughts

An irony of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s reactionary, racist hate mongering: he was born in 1941, which means he lived 23 years (until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) when it was legal for the government to discriminate against blacks on the basis of their race…and has now lived 30 years (and counting) since the legality of the government discriminating against whites on the basis of their race was affirmed (in the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision).

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My favorite bird? Yep, you guessed it.

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Maybe the most amazing NBA stat I’ve ever seen: in April, Jose Calderon dished out 66 assists and turned the ball over…once.

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From an Obama speech: “[A Pennsylvania man] can't afford four more years of an energy policy written by the oil companies and for the oil companies; a policy that is not only keeping gas at record prices but funding both sides of the war on terror and destroying our planet.”

Psst, Barack…one of the sides in the war on terror is the good guys, funding them is a good thing.

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That deserves a “Wow!”: Argentine Olympian and occasional NBA rotation player Walter “Fabio” Herrmann can palm a basketball using just his index finger and thumb. Try that out sometime.

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This Israeli story would seem certain to be a parody were we not so well-acquainted with hate speech as academic scholarship:

A research paper that won a Hebrew University teachers' committee prize finds that the lack of IDF rapes of Palestinian women is designed to serve a political purpose.

The abstract of the paper, authored by doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, notes that the paper shows that "the lack of organized military rape is an alternate way of realizing [particular] political goals."

The next sentence delineates the particular goals that are realized in this manner: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can be seen that the lack of military rape merely strengthens the ethnic boundaries and clarifies the inter-ethnic differences - just as organized military rape would have done."

The paper further theorizes that Arab women in Judea and Samaria are not raped by IDF soldiers because the women are de-humanized in the soldiers' eyes.

Did you get that? If Israeli soldiers rape Arab women, it is evidence of racism. And if Israeli soldiers do not rape Arab women, it is evidence of racism. Could you imagine a more perfect illustration of modern education?

Random stuff

I could not prouder to live in Dallas, but every village has its idiot. Our continual source of embarrassment is County Commissioner John Wiley Price, one of the country’s most despicable and consistent racists. His latest escapade, complaining when a fellow commissioner said that the central collections office "has become a black hole," was typical of his career, but this one made the national news. That Judge and fellow ignorant bigot Thomas Jones demanded an apology was just piling on, we were already ducking our heads in shame.

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Apparently NBC now stands for No Barack Criticism.

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According to a recent World Bank study, biofuels have forced up global food prices 75% while only negligibly reducing worldwide oil demand. Can we stop this nonsense immediately before it drives people back into poverty faster than the growth of global capitalism and trade lifts them out of it? Biofuel research and production should be strictly limited to non-food sources. Not that we'd expect greens to care about easing poverty or anything - it's antithetical to their mission.

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Was it really Raul Castro that said "Socialism means social justice and equality, but equality of rights, of opportunities, not of income. Equality is not egalitarianism."? When a Castro brother makes more economic sense than one of our own presidential candidates…should I be happy for Cubans or fearful for my own countrymen?

I think the answer is “yes.”

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Terrorist Mohammed Siddique Khan, ringleader of the 2005 London subway suicide bombers, made a farewell video to his infant daughter on which he said "I love you to bits."

I guess he wants to also see her die in an explosion some day?

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I could not agree more with this from Jay Nordlinger:

While in Japan, President Bush placed a message on a “wishing tree.” Apparently, this is an old tradition. (Is that a redundancy?) Bush’s message: “I wish for a world free from tyranny: the tyranny of hunger, disease; and free from tyrannical governments. I wish for a world in which the universal desire for liberty is realized.”

That is what I would have expected from him — and one reason I admire him so much. Most people, it seems certain, would have wished for “peace.” Bush is a man who recognizes that genuine peace comes from freedom.

And this, from the same column:

Was talking to a friend of mine back home in Michigan. Bright guy, well educated, very successful. And very much a liberal Democrat. He said we had to have Obama in November — because “we can’t have Big Oil running the government any longer.”

I ask for the millionth time: How can perfectly normal and non-crazy people believe that stuff?

I ask myself the same question of so many people in so many settings. How is it that otherwise educated people can lose (or never gain) the ability to think critically in the area of politics? Can it be as simple as university brainwashing?

There are some fascinating psychological research possibilities here, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for any such studies.

Talk to you soon, or at least sooner than last time I hope.