No wonder John Edwards needs a 28,000 square foot house.

Big Baloney seems out to prove how shallow it can be. Lisa Shiffren at The Corner:

Last night I had the TV on long enough to watch a disturbing, evening-long debate on CNN. The various anchors, including the conservative Glenn Beck as well as Anderson Cooper, kept returning to the issue of biased media coverage for Senator Obama. They were happy to concede that he is getting more than twice the media coverage that Senator McCain is getting. The question, presented to various pundits and strategists, was whether this was strictly bias, or could there be another reason?

David Gergen, a man whose shallow thoughts have reached the ears of  too many presidents, made the point that Obama is a great story, and his campaign knows how to make things newsworthy, while McCain is boring, and his campaign is boring and therefore not newsworthy. That, not bias, according to Gergen, explains the majority of the additional coverage he gets. What constitutes newsworthy? Gergen cited the fact that McCain is going to give his convention acceptance speech in the normal convention venue, while Obama is going to do his at a stadium packed with 70,000 people. To me, this is evocative of something Leni Riefenstahl might have documented. But the word Gergen used, over and over was “sizzle.”

It should be noted that NRO’s David Frum was on the panel. He valiantly made the case for substance, and he argued, rightly of course, that McCain’s political story — the comeback from the ashes — was compelling political drama, and his substantive policies are worthy of attention. Normally Frum wins debates. But if the standard is “sizzle,” or sex appeal, then any rational, substantive argument is doomed to lose.

Gergen’s considered advice was that the McCain campaign needs more — and cleverer — dog and pony shows to attract and dazzle the media. This is the advice of a former advance man, to be sure. It is awful advice, if you think that democracy depends on informed citizens who make reasoned judgements about leadership abilities, experience, and judgement, let alone the substance of policies.  

It is excellent advice if you think that this race is being treated like a reality show, with the media as judges of performances that will sell.  It is worth pointing out, of course, that even American Idol, with its faux democracy, only picks a winner who manages to go on to commercial success very intermittantly. And yet, the media, and perhaps many of our fellow citizens, seem to be looking more for an American Idol than for a President.

Brian Wesbury, chief economist at First Trust :

Late next week the government will release initial estimates of real economic activity in the second quarter. Not long ago, in early April, when the quarter was just beginning, the consensus forecast for Q2 2008 real GDP growth was 0.0%, with as many economists predicting contraction as were predicting growth.

Now, three months later, the consensus is up to 2.2%. And no surprise - we are forecasting a 3% growth rate, more bullish than almost any other economist.

Yes, it is true that the home building and autos sectors have been hammered. But, it is not true that this weakness has spread. Outside those sectors, the economy is not just healthy but downright strong, reflecting relatively low tax rates and loose monetary policy.

IBD:

It’s bad enough that Rep. Pelosi refuses to embrace reality, evaluate facts and oversee meaningful debate. But the hissy fits she throws against President Bush and the Republican minority are worse yet. This is a sad situation.

Pelosi’s reaction to Bush’s lifting of the ban on offshore drilling is a perfect example. She called the action a giveaway of “more public resources to the very same oil companies that are sitting on 68 million acres of federal lands they’ve already leased.”

The key phrase is “public” resources — not Democratic resources or Pelosi’s resources — and polls clearly show Americans are behind coastal drilling. The speaker knows that.

Her demonizing of Big Oil doesn’t make sense, either. The companies want to get oil out of the ground. Their exploratory technology is very effective, and they’re drilling extensively. But not all lease properties have oil that’s readily recoverable.

Pelosi says the president’s action is a “gift of more profits for the oil companies.” Does she prefer that foreign, and often hostile, nations make the profits? Well, they are. She knows that, too.

“The Bush plan is a hoax,” Pelosi charges, ignoring the fact that we know large reserves are located off our shores, in Western oil-shale deposits and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Bush says let’s get it as quickly as possible, drilling responsibly off our shores, in the West’s oil shale formations and on 2,000 acres of the 19 million acres in ANWR. Prudhoe Bay, North America’s largest oil field, has proved we can do so and not hurt the environment. It can be done, and America needs it. Pelosi also knows that.

That swelling army of busybodies and know-it-alls that constitutes today’s Democrat party will never run out of ways to stick their noses in your business. Do you like plastic bags? Styrofoam cups for your takeout coffee? Tough.

Citing the area’s polluted streets, rivers and ocean, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday took its first tentative step toward banning public use of plastic bags and phasing in a ban on city purchase and use of polystyrene products.

Despite industry officials who said the products are recyclable - and that future technologies could deal with the problem - the council voted 13-0 to ban use of plastic bags in the city by 2010.

Smart move?

“You are just exchanging one form of litter for another,” Westerfield said. “With Styrofoam, you don’t need napkins wrapped around (food) or two cups to hold your coffee. And those paper cups aren’t recyclable. Styrofoam is.” Plastic bags also are recyclable, officials said, but require the public to place them in the appropriate recycling bins.

But council members said they want to follow the lead of cities such as San Francisco that have banned plastic bags.

Oh, there’s a good role model.

Meanwhile, California Attorney General Jerry Brown is using the cudgel of global warming (the “crisis” that keeps on giving) to curtail suburban living.

Suburbs exist because middle class people like living there. This has long irked smarty pants liberals, who like Edna St. Vincent Millay who “love humanity but hate people,” despise everything middle class while claiming to be its champion.

In the 1960s, California Gov. Edmund Gerald “Pat” Brown laid the foundation for building modern, suburban California with massive new highway projects and one of the most significant public water projects in history. The resulting infrastructure gave us broad, low-density developments with room for millions of Californians to have a home with a backyard and two cars in the driveway.

Those were the good old days. Today, Pat Brown’s son Jerry is waging war on the very communities his father helped make possible. Why? Global warming.

Jerry Brown has been a fixture of the state’s politics for more than three decades. He was elected governor in 1974 and four years later earned the moniker “Governor Moonbeam” for his interest in creating a space program in California. In 1998, he was elected mayor of Oakland, a working-class city across the bay from San Francisco. And in 2006, he was elected attorney general. Today he is mulling a run for governor in 2010, when he will be 72.

In the meantime, Mr. Brown is taking aim at the suburbs, concerned about the alleged environmental damage they cause. He sees suburban houses as inefficient users of energy. He sees suburban commuters clogging the roads as wasting precious fossil fuel. And, mostly, he sees wisdom in an intricately thought-out plan to compel residents to move to city centers or, at least, to high-density developments clustered near mass transit lines.

Mr. Brown is not above using coercion to create the demographic patterns he wants. In recent months, he has threatened to file suit against municipalities that shun high-density housing in favor of building new suburban singe-family homes, on the grounds that they will pollute the environment. He is also backing controversial legislation — Senate bill 375 — moving through the state legislature that would restrict state highway funds to communities that refuse to adopt “smart growth” development plans. “We have to get the people from the suburbs to start coming back” to the cities, Mr. Brown told planning experts in March.

About the only thing Democrats are “pro-choice” about is abortion. For everything else, they know better than you.

William McGurn: 

David Addington and Omar Khadr are two names that will forever be linked to the war on terror.

Mr. Addington is chief of staff to Vice President Richard Cheney and a former colleague of mine. He’s the son of a West Point man who earned a bronze star in World War II and went on to become a general. Before coming to the White House, David put in stints at the CIA, at a congressional intelligence committee, and at the Pentagon — all giving him an expertise on intelligence and national security issues only a handful of others can match.

Then there’s Mr. Khadr. He is the son of a man who helped found and finance al Qaeda, and who died in a 2003 gun battle with Pakistani troops near the Afghan border.

So close were the family ties that the Khadrs lived for a while in the bin Laden family compound in Jalalabad, Afghanistan; and when Mr. Khadr’s sister was married, bin Laden was an honored guest. Mr. Khadr himself went through weapons training at an al Qaeda training camp, and was captured in 2002 after a battle in which he is alleged to have killed a Special Forces medic. Ultimately he was brought to Guantanamo, where he awaits trial before a military commission for war crimes.

Guess who gets the sympathy in the press?

Read on.

This exchange from The View happened last week. In case you missed it, Whoopi Goldberg argues that blacks can say nigger and it’s all right, among other things.

Whoopi is a rare quadruple threat: coarse, ugly, wealthy and pompous.

On the news of Jesse Jackson’s use of the “n” word, the conversation quickly developed into the double standard involved between a white and black person’s use of the word. Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg admitted there is a double standard, but added there should be. Sherri Shepherd said she uses the word “as a term of endearment,” but said to Barbara Walters “I don’t want to hear it coming out of your mouth.”

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, puzzled by the obvious double standard, questioned how she can explain to her young daughter why she is not allowed to use that word, but other kids are, when she noted “we live in the same world,” Whoopi went off on a tangent that blacks and whites do not live in the same world. Whoopi, who also dismissed Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s concerns as “very white,” added Elisabeth just does not “understand.”

GOLDBERG: We do live in different worlds. I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s the way it is Elisabeth. This is the way it is. This is how I grew up. My mother could not go and vote in the United States of America, the place of her birth. We, go- wait, wait.

WALTERS: And don’t we want that to change?

GOLDBERG: Yes, we would like to. But you don’t understand.

HASSELBECK: I’m not going to take that away from no.

GOLDBERG: No, no, I, I want you to. But what I need you to understand is the frustration that goes along when you say we live in the same world. It isn’t balanced. And we would like it to be. But you have to understand, you have to listen to the fact that we’re telling you, there are issues, there are huge problems that still affect us. And you’ve got to know this if you want to know us.

Elisabeth started to cry and asked “how are we supposed to then move forward if we keep using terms that bring back that pain?”Barbara Walters used the opportunity to promote Obama’s candidacy opining “Barack Obama and others…are trying to move forward.”

The entire transcript is below.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: I don’t know whether you’ve been watching television last night or this morning, but new footage was leaked that apparently shows Jesse Jackson using the “n” word. Fox News says the tape was leaked. They didn’t have anything to do with it. So I ask you, is any of this a surprise?

SHERRI SHEPHERD: Well, you know, what, what I think the hypocrisy is coming out because Jesse is the main, he was the main proponent of, of saying, you know, he didn’t want the rappers using it and take it out. And I thought, and we were talking about it, I thought it had been a funeral or something where they– I don’t know if Jesse came to the funeral– where they buried the “n” word.

ELISABETH HASSELBECK: Did that come after Michael Richards, when after his rage, using the “n” word? He called for a boycott of all the “Seinfeld” DVD’s and episodes telling people to take of their DVR and-

SHEPHERD: Was that Al Sharpton?

HASSELBECK: Jesse was part of that as well.

JOY BEHAR: He wasn’t talking about using the word privately. He was talking about using it publicly.

HASSELBECK: Did you ever see “Crash”? Did you guys see “Crash” the movie? See I don’t think there’s an ounce of difference, and sometimes I think it’s almost worse to talk- use it privately than publicly.

SHEPHERD: No, no, it’s not true, no.

HASSELBECK: Well, I’m saying, are they equally as bad if I say it to someone in, in the privacy of my household? That’s still bad. It’s not a word that should be used. I think it’s, it’s-

SHEPHERD: Don’t tell me I can’t use that word. Because I use it.

BARBARA WALTERS: Okay, there’s something I want to add.

HASSELBECK: But how is it- you’re telling me I can’t use it, but you can use it.

SHEPHERD: It’s not the same when I use it-

HASSELBECK: Why? (more…)

Omar Fadhil, from Iraq the Model:

In a matter of just a few days several important developments have taken place in the Middle East, all likely to have negative repercussions on the already tense situation in the region.

The first development was the awkward prisoner exchange between Israel and Hezbollah. Then there were the unprecedented decisions by the American administration to take part directly in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, and reportedly to resume some level of diplomatic ties with the country. Finally, we had the White House agreeing to set a “time horizon” for troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Such decisions may be viewed by many in the West as steps in the right direction since they offer more room for diplomacy in resolving outstanding issues in the Middle East. And in Iraq, this “time horizon” may be seen by the public as a reassertion of progress towards restoring full sovereignty, and by Maliki as an easy PR gain in election season.

But the regime in Tehran and its surrogates in the region view them very differently: as concessions by the enemy and as an episode of successful employment of salami tactics. Even some of the powers and politicians who are against Iran and its allies will probably read the news in the same way Iran did.

When I saw Lebanon’s president and the parliamentary majority leaders (among whom are the most outspoken rivals of Hezbollah and the staunchest figure of opposition to Iranian and Syrian influence) welcome convicted murderer Samir Quntar home, I was certain it was fear from the effect of these concessions on the balance of power that made them do that, rather than actual respect for Hezbollah.

I particularly hope that these developments will not affect the nascent move for peace talks with Israel that Syria has recently shown. Although I don’t trust the Syrian regime, I think they are now closer than ever to starting serious peace talks. And there are indicators that Assad is now considering jumping off the Iranian wagon. Assad is, after all, a young president who isn’t excited about ending up like Saddam Hussein, and doesn’t share the apocalyptic visions of Ahmadinejad and the elderly clerics of Qom. I think two factors made Assad consider taking a path different from that of Iran. First, he may have realized that Iran will be doomed if it insists on going nuclear. Also, the persistence of the international court in investigating Syria’s role in assassinations in Lebanon may have played a role. Dialogue and diplomacy can be successful with a scared young Assad. I only hope the recent sequence of “victories” does not send Syria back to Iran’s lap.

What I want to say here is that the Middle East has a different understanding of diplomacy than the West. Acceptance of demands or opening up to dialogue can very well be mistaken for weakness. On one hand, it will frighten America’s allies and those sitting on the fence. On the other hand, it will embolden Iran and will most likely lead to further more ambitious demands.

Dialogue and giving diplomacy a chance is not a bad idea, but understanding the mentality of the people sitting across the table is an important prerequisite.

From the Volokh Conspiracy.

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The paper’s decision to refuse McCain’s direct rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq’ has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.

‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

In McCain’s submission to the TIMES, he writes of Obama: ‘I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it… if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.’

NYT’s Shipley advised McCain to try again: ‘I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.’

[Shipley served in the Clinton Administration from 1995 until 1997 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Presidential Speechwriter.]

Drudge also has McCain’s op-ed as written. McCain begins:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. . . .

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.

Once the disaster stories have played out and the media have moved on, those affected are left with a mess before life can resume.

Patrick Thornburg wrote about his hometown of Oakville, Iowa. Now he’s set up a blog to show images of the painstaking work of rebuilding.

See it here.

Another gaffe from the supposed smoothie. I guess he’ll need those extra years because he’ll be busy finding those other seven or eight states.

VIDEO HERE.

From Instapundit:

RASMUSSEN: “The belief that reporters are trying to help Barack Obama win the fall campaign has grown by five percentage points over the past month.” Gee, do you think? Plus this: “A separate survey released this morning also found that 50% of voters believe most reporters want to make the economy seem worse than it is. A plurality believes that the media has also tried to make the war in Iraq appear worse that it really is.”

And newspapers wonder why they are losing influence and readers. Yesterday the LA Times featured a frontpage story headlined:

“Iraqi president embraces Obama’s withdrawal plan”

That makes Obama seem to be right about Iraq.

But wait, that was not what Maliki said or meant. Did the LAT correct the bungled story today? No.

California has suffered under one-party rule for more than a decade. Sure, we have a Republican-lite governator, and he’s vetoed some of the most outrageous schemes cooked up by the Democrats, but he can’t hold back the tide.

So the Democrats, many of whom regard those who earn profits as dirty exploiters, have created one business disincentive after another — taxes, regulations, onerous labor laws, global warming laws, land use restrictions etc.

Any half-wit could predict that businesses would exit the state or choose to grow their operations in friendlier venues. Alas, the ruling class in Sacramento is comprised of economic quarter-wits.

With the state’s unemployment now at 6.9% the blame will fall squarely on … Bush. But in the same decade Ohio drove jobs away with dumb policies, and then blamed NAFTA, Texas added 1.6 million new jobs. Policies have consequences.

A symbol of California’s car culture is now picking up and moving a big chunk of its operations out of state. Earlier this week, the California State Automobile Association, an affiliate of the national AAA, announced it is closing all three of its call centers in the state at a loss of 900 jobs. Spokeswoman Cynthia Harris was quite blunt about the reason: “It costs more to do business in California than other states.” Her group will now will be answering calls from California motorists from new centers in lower-cost Arizona and Oklahoma.

Few entities in California are better known than the California State Automobile Association, which for decades has provided the car-happy state with auto insurance, towing services and travel planning. Its departure is one more sign that California’s current tax and regulatory climate is driving jobs away. California’s liberals seem oblivious to such developments. One-seventh of California’s pending $101 billion state budget is red ink, the result of the state’s leadership once again failing to rein in spending and develop a less volatile tax base. The Democratic legislature has proposed over $8 billion in higher taxes to plug part of the gap, but for the last month there has been a budget stalemate as the GOP minority refuses to consider higher taxes and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dances between the two sides.

The state’s Democrats not only insist on higher taxes, but are blocking a proposal from Gov. Schwarzenegger to limit future spending increases to the growth of the state’s population and inflation in an attempt to cushion the impact of future economic downturns. “I think that we have to be very, very careful about tying the hands of future governors and future legislatures,” says Democratic Assemblyman Dave Jones. Apparently, he and his colleagues prefer tying the hands of California businesses so they feel compelled to flee the state.

Keith Barry does some entertaining stuff in this TED video. If the video doesn’t load, just click the link and watch at TED.

Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) writes:

When did we go soft? When did we develop our national tendency to cringe before we are even hit, to apologise for existing?

What’s most striking about the past 50 years of our history is how we have given in without a fight to those who want to revolutionise our society.

It is all very well going on about Winston Churchill, but Archbishop Rowan Williams is a figure much more representative of modern Britain.

This prelate whimpered last week that Christianity was ‘offensive’ to Muslims.

Offensive? I know we have been urged to stop being horrid to this inept, terrifyingly well meaning man - and it really is nothing personal - but he does rather ask for it.

A few months ago he mused on the possibilities of allowing a little light Sharia Law in this country. This is, I suppose, a point of view. I just can’t work out why the leader of a Christian church should hold it.

The same goes for the Lord Chief Injustice, Lord Phillips, whose entire career and substantial salary are based on centuries of Christian-based law.

If it is anyone’s job to suggest Muslim law should get a toehold in Britain, it isn’t his.

In my experience, Muslims aren’t in the least bit ‘offended’ by Christianity.

I’ve argued with them about it, in places as different as Peshawar, on the North-West Frontier, and Whitechapel, in the East End of London. And I had the impression they were relieved to find someone from the West who didn’t fawn all over them.

What really offends them is what also offends many of us - crudity, drunkenness, pornography and licence.

In any case, given that Christianity was founded centuries before Islam, Muslims can’t really claim to be upset by it, any more than I can be ‘offended’ by the existence of Stonehenge or a Hindu temple.

What should worry Dr Williams much more is the printing of millions of doctored versions of the Koran in Saudi Arabia, deliberately edited to encourage angry militancy.

I am grateful to Channel 4 and Antony Thomas for revealing this astonishing fact in their programme on the Koran last week.

What, you might ask, are tanks and missiles doing in a book 13 centuries old?

Well, in the Saudi edition, English translation, Surah 8, verse 60, a passage on unbelievers reads: ‘Make ready against them all you can of power, including steeds of war (tanks, planes, missiles, artillery) to threaten the enemy of Allah.’

And in a verse that speaks of those who have earned God’s anger and gone astray, someone has inserted - in brackets - ’such as the Jews’ and ’such as the Christians’.

The programme also pointed out that in Surah 5, verse 69, the Koran assures righteous Jews and Christians that ‘no fear should come upon them’.

A footnote in the Saudi version insists that this was cancelled by a later verse which claims that those of any religion other than Islam will never be accepted.

This might be something to get offended about, if you wanted to, Dr Williams.

iPets perhaps?

Nelson Mandela recently celebrated his 90th birthday. A huge rock concert was held in London’s Hyde Park as a fundraiser for Mandela’s AIDS charity.

But the tragedy of South Africa’s AIDS epidemic could have been averted  by Mandela.

We quote from the 4-hour PBS documentary, The Age of AIDS.

NARRATOR: As in the West, gay activists were among the first to warn that aids was coming.

EDWIN CAMERON, AIDS Law Project: I got infected, as thousands, hundreds of thousands of comparable gay men in Sydney and San Francisco and elsewhere. But it was already plain at that stage that there was a heterosexual African epidemic, which was going to surpass the epidemic amongst people like myself.

ZACKIE ACHMAT: We started an HIV prevention program, trying to speak to people about it, trying to say to people to use condoms, and so on.

NARRATOR: In the black townships, the activists met resistance.

MANDLA MAJOLO: People from outside come into your community, telling you how to behave, especially if they are whites and you’re black, and you can easily look at it as if they think that you are irresponsible sexually. And once you reach that feeling, you start to build walls.

NARRATOR:In pockets across the nation, like rural KwaZulu-Natal, people began to die from AIDS. Increasingly, they were women, infected by their husbands and lovers who’d worked in the mines.

D.E. NDWANDWE, Nurse, KwaZulu-Natal: We used to get more males than females, but eventually, there was a change and we got more female patients than males, you know, such a change that we actually had to change the accommodation at some stage, use the people who worked for females and use the other ward for males.

NARRATOR:For four years after Mandela’s release, the apartheid leaders and the ANC were consumed with the transfer of power. In that political vacuum, an opportunity to stem the epidemic was slipping away.

SALIM ABDOOL KARIM, M.D., University of KwaZulu-Natal: In a way, the complex political transition, the lack of credibility of the apartheid government at that time, which was disintegrating, in effect, and the new government was yet to be installed- and the new government had all kinds of challenges, not least HIV.

NARRATOR: In poor, crowded townships like Soweto, the epidemic accelerated. doctors at the nation’s largest hospital were soon overwhelmed.

GLENDA GRAY, M.D., Baragwanath Hospital, Soweto: It was just hemorrhaging. And we just watched this- this thing explode in our face.

NARRATOR: Babies were being infected by their mothers through childbirth and breast feeding.

Dr. GLENDA GRAY:As HIV became more frequent and more commonplace in children, and as they needed more and more care, the ICUs in the country also made decisions not to admit children with HIV into their ICUs because it was terminal, and we needed to keep the beds open for children who had better prognosis. HIV became the new apartheid in South Africa. You know, we discriminated not on race anymore, but on HIV status.

Nurses were burnt out. Doctors didn’t care, as well, you know? “Why should I care when the government doesn’t care?”

NARRATOR: In May 1994, when Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s president, he saw his job as reconciliation, holding his fractured nation together. Activists hoped he would also make time for AIDS.

EDWIN CAMERON:At the time I chaired a national convention on AIDS, my co-chair and I made every effort we could to get an audience with President Mandela, and we didn’t succeed. We got an audience instead with Deputy President de Klerk, and Deputy President Mbeki joined the meeting.

NARRATOR:Mandela delegated AIDS to his deputy, Thabo Mbeki

Mbeki, Mandela’s eventual successor and SA’s current leader, became convinced that HIV was not the cause of AIDS and thwarted efforts to deal with the crisis.

In the US, Senator Jesse Helms was blocking efforts to send aid to Africa, primarily on moral grounds. Then he got a visit from singer, Bono. Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, was also advocating help for Africa.

Then Bush stepped in, doing what Bill Clinton never did: act.

NARRATOR: Bono’s activism was backed by his own Christian faith. Franklin Graham took notice.

Rev. FRANKLIN GRAHAM: Bono has a pretty significant level of biblical understanding. He’s read the Bible. Not once, but I think he’s read it many times.

BONO: I was offended to discover that the religiosity of this country was not available to the AIDS emergency, so I asked to meet as many church leaders as I could and used examples from the Scriptures. You know, “Isn’t this the leprosy of the age,” I argued. “Isn’t this what,” you know, “the Christ spent his time with?” And yet the church now is walking across the road and looking the other way.

NARRATOR: With Franklin Graham’s support, Bono came to Washington to meet Jesse Helms.

BONO: Jesse Helms is a tough guy, but he’s also rigorous, from his point of view. So you know, Christ only speaks of judgment once, and oddly enough, it’s in regard to the poor. I think it’s Matthew 23. It’s the famous lines, “I was naked and you clothed me. I was a prisoner and you visited me.’ And then they say to Christ, “What are you talking about? You weren’t.” “I was sick and you came to me.” And he says, “No, no, I wasn’t. But as much as you do this to the least of these, you do it unto me.” And that’s a very powerful piece of Scripture.

And he was very moved. Even emotionally, he kind of welled up. And as I was leaving the room, he said - big Southern- big, tall, Southern old boy, you know, just this amazing character- he said, “I want to give you a blessing.” And he put his arms around me and then he gave me this blessing. And I take such- I take blessings pretty seriously. And I went out and of course told the assembled press what had happened, and they couldn’t believe it.

I’m very humbled. I’m having my world turned upside down, and I’m surprised that people should be so generous in letting an obvious outsider in.

Sen. JESSE HELMS: You’ll never be an outsider. You’ll always be a friend.

Rev. FRANKLIN GRAHAM: He respected what Bono was telling him, and Senator Helms changed his position to where opposing funding for HIV/AIDS, he became an advocate for funding.

Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: Thank you all. Bono, I appreciate your heart. Let me tell you what an influence you’ve had. Dick Cheney walked in the Oval Office, he said, “Jesse Helms wants us to listen to Bono’s ideas.” That’s pretty-

BONO: And he was very well informed about it. I was surprised that he knew- you know, he knew as much as he did. And to be fair to President Bush, he really responded, and he responded in a way that no one could ever have imagined.

NARRATOR: Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top scientist from the NIH, was summoned to the White House. They wanted a plan on AIDS.

Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI: It was driven by the president. He said he wanted it to be feasible, he wanted it to be bold, and he wanted it to be accountable.

NARRATOR: Bush was also getting advice from Franklin Graham, one of his spiritual advisers.

Rev. FRANKLIN GRAHAM: I tried to encourage him to- first of all, in most of Africa, not only do you have a church, but there are church-related hospitals. And we need to enlist these churches in this fight against HIV/AIDS. And we don’t need to be pouring this money into some of these governments, who are going to squander the money.

NARRATOR: A plan emerged. It would draw on both religious and government health services already in place.

Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI: Therapy prevention care for HIV can really work under these circumstances, if you do it the African way. Don’t parachute in your own preconceived notion about how things can be done, do it the way the Africans feel that they can do it.

The White House staff said, “We believe you, Tony, but you’re a white American who works for the federal government. We want to hear, is this thing feasible from people who are in the trenches.”

NARRATOR: Fauci reached out to Uganda’s leading AIDS specialist to convince the White House staff.

PETER MUGYENYI, M.D., Joint Clinical Research Ctr.: They were very skeptical that infrastructure would not support anti-retroviral therapy on the African continent. They even went to some extremes of saying that the continent do not even have clean water.

NARRATOR: In January 2003, the plan was still behind closed doors. With a looming war in Iraq, there were worries about the White House’s priorities.

BONO: I said that to President Bush. You know, I said, “Look, paint them red, white and blue, if you want, but these drugs are the best advertisement you’re going to get right now, and that might be important right now.” And so, you know, above the moral imperatives comes the political imperative to some people. So fine, whatever brings you to the party.

NARRATOR: As the president arrived for his State of the Union speech, everyone expected him to issue an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. They were not prepared for what came first.

Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus, yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims - only 50,000 - are receiving the medicine they need. I ask the Congress to commit $15 billion over the next five years, including nearly $10 billion in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.

Dr. PETER MUGYENYI: That sounded like melodious music. From there onwards, things would never be the same. And that was victory for the people who were suffering and who were now going to have hope.

The entire documentary is online in multiple video formats.

The front page of the LA Times read like an Obama endorsement by Maliki. But wait, that’s not what he intended:

A German magazine quoted Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as saying that he backed a proposal by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months,” he said in an interview with Der Spiegel that was released Saturday.

“That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes,” he said.

But a spokesman for al-Maliki said his remarks “were misunderstood, mistranslated and not conveyed accurately.”

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the possibility of troop withdrawal was based on the continuance of security improvements, echoing statements that the White House made Friday after a meeting between al-Maliki and U.S. President Bush.

Hot Air notes:

Here’s the exchange from Spiegel’s English translation, duly hyped by Reuters as tacit evidence of Liberal Jesus’s foreign-policy sagacity.

SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?

Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we’re concerned. US presidential candidate Barack Obama is right when he talks about 16 months. Assuming that positive developments continue, this is about the same time period that corresponds to our wishes.

The unasked follow-up question: How about the 14-month timetable that Obama wanted to set in January 2007 to start pulling troops out before those positive developments could occur? How keen does that look in hindsight? To repeat a point made yesterday, the only reason a timetable or “time horizon” is arguably a responsible strategy now is because it was properly rejected as being irresponsible then. Maliki hints at that in another part of the interview:

So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat. But that isn’t the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias.

Exactly, which at least partly explains why Bush is more willing to compromise now on some sort of informal schedule. Compare Maliki’s justification for the timetable to Obama’s justification in his big Iraq speech. The pacification of the country is almost incidental, something to congratulate Petraeus on and then quickly move past.

To the extent conditions in Iraq seem to affect his rationale at all, he offers this: “In the 18 months since the surge began, as I warned at the outset – Iraq’s leaders have not made the political progress that was the purpose of the surge. They have not invested tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues to rebuild their country. They have not resolved their differences or shaped a new political compact.” I.e. it didn’t work, so let’s get out. Back to Maliki for a rebuttal:

SPIEGEL: In your opinion, which factor has contributed most to bringing calm to the situation in the country?

Maliki: There are many factors, but I see them in the following order. First, there is the political rapprochement we have managed to achieve in central Iraq. This has enabled us, above all, to pull the plug on al-Qaida. Second, there is the progress being made by our security forces. Third, there is the deep sense of abhorrence with which the population has reacted to the atrocities of al-Qaida and the militias. Finally, of course, there is the economic recovery.

Read it all.

by J.C. Phillips 

I am a fan of environmentalists and the environmental movement. Those citizens advocating for our environment provide a useful service to the rest of us – particularly those in government and industry by reminding us of the necessity for prudence when considering the current and future health of our planet. 

I am dismayed, however, at the increasing equation of environmental consciousness with moral righteousness and the rampant consumerism that has attached itself to the environmental movement. The resulting mix is an unsavory moral consumerism that stinks to high heaven. Save the planet, save your soul. All it costs you is a few dollars.

That’s the old time religion for you! And the current problem with living green is the same problem with absolution purchased with gold: the more disposable income you have the more morally superior you can become.

Where eternal damnation is not concerned, however, most folk – the rich included – tend to be guided by their economic concerns. The fact is that, right now, living eco friendly is a luxury reserved for those with plenty of mean green as they say (or used to say) on the streets. The failure to embrace green attitudes because of their expense is not a moral failure on the part of consumers, but rather an inability on the part of green manufacturers to compete in the marketplace.

There is, for example, a reason new-home builders do not equip each new home with solar panels, and if my neighborhood is any indication, our neighbors are not rushing to attach solar panels to their roofs. None of us has a love of paying the utility company each month. The fact is, however, that as promising as much of the solar technology is (and huge strides have been made over the years) it still remains an economic loser for average homeowners. 

Figures range, but for an average two thousand square foot home one could expect to pay upwards of $30, 000 (before labor) to outfit their home with solar power. Even with the tax breaks and credits that you receive, it is unlikely that your savings in energy cost will pay for the purchase within the time you own the home. To be sure, there are nations that have embraced the solar power. Japan comes to mind. However, they do it through government subsidy. Americans thankfully are still not convinced that they ought to be responsible for heating their neighbors’ homes. 

For years, home cooks have been reading about the promise of using electromagnetic energy or induction heat to cook food. Well, the future is here. The problem is that the cook tops are still relatively expensive even for home cooks looking to splurge. General Electric (GE) sells a 30 inch induction cook top for about $2,000. Compare that with the GE gas or electric cook tops that range in price from $331 to $550. Even if one is pondering high end models like Viking or Wolf, you will still pay a full $500 dollars less than the GE induction top.

And what about everyday consumer items? 

A quick and admittedly unscientific survey of my local grocery store revealed that there is often a staggering price difference between eco friendly products and those that we morally depraved consumers choose to purchase. 

The cost of an everyday name brand cleaner was half as much as the eco friendly cleaner. The name brand laundry detergent was 10 cents per load cheaper than the eco friendly soap. Store brand butter was half as much per pound as the organic brand and the energy smart light bulbs were four times as expensive as the traditional incandescent bulbs, (which for my money give off a brighter light).

There was some good news. A 12 roll pack of eco friendly toilet paper was exactly the same price as my name brand. In pursuit of a greener lifestyle this is, I imagine, as good a place to start as any.

Many of the price differences of other products were admittedly small – a few cents here or there, and as I am as eager to breathe clean air and drink clean water as anyone else, there is room for my family to incorporate some changes into our lifestyle. 

I don’t mind a little prodding by the tree huggers. I do object to the moralizing when there could be time better spent creating products that will enable all of us to live more cleanly while still enjoying that jingle in our pockets.

Study: Most Children Strongly Opposed To Children’s Healthcare

Remember the much touted “consensus of scientists” about man-made global warming? Well, it is dead.

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.  The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science.  The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming “incontrovertible.”

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,”There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution.”

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity — the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause — has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling.   A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.

Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton’s paper an “expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and “extensive errors”

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, “I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC’s 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central ‘climate sensitivity’ question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method.” 

These dolls make Chucky seem cuddly. 

POLICE smashed a window to rescue a seemingly unconscious baby from a vehicle in Queensland last week, only to find it was a doll.

The embarrassing mistake, made in regional Gympie, is not an isolated incident and passionate creator of the “reborn” baby dolls Vynette Cernik knows just how easily they can be mistaken for the real thing, The Courier-Mail reports.

Ms Cernik said last week’s case of mistaken identity mirrored a similar incident in the US when the window of a new Hummer was broken by police trying to rescue a “baby” that turned out to be a doll belonging to the owner’s wife.

Selling for up to $1000, the painstakingly hand-painted dolls are so lifelike with eyelashes, fingernails, milk spots and wispy hair that they are constantly fooling people, Ms Cernik said.

“They’re even weighted to feel like a baby’s weight and they flop like a baby,” she said. The dolls can even come with umbilical cords, cord clamps and their own birth certificates.

…a self-righteous fool. And a fool that could become president.

This is worth revisiting. The pledges Obama makes here are foolish and sometimes contradictory (missile defense is a way to end nuclear threats). But consider how righteous he seems in making such statements. HT: Maggies Farm.

In photography, HDR stands for high dynamic range — a technique which combines several exposures of a scene to create a single image. They can look realistic or artificial.

These obviously fall into the latter category. Both show high rise reflections from my balcony of the Hyatt Regency on Peachtree Street in Atlanta. 

by Burt Prelutsky

It amazes me that Barack Obama continues to score points for having opposed the war in Iraq. But, considering how much the left-wing media adores this guy — and let us never forget that Obama has managed to send shivers up Chris Matthews’ leg — I suppose nothing should surprise me. I mean, Sen. Obama is a man who’s been around for nearly 47 years and apparently every single person who is near and dear to him is a creep I would cross the street to avoid. Also, isn’t it high time that people quit oohing and ahing about his oratorical skills? I’m willing to grant that so long as he is reading the work of his speech writers, he’s okay. But ask him a question off the cuff and he turns into Mortimer Snerd. Still, I suppose if I were desperately trying to pass myself off as a centrist when I was really a left-wing radical, I’d get nervous, too.

Much has been made of Sen. Obama’s reluctance to meet with General Petraeus and his refusal to travel to Iraq with or without Sen.McCain, but I, personally, don’t blame him. After all, what could he possibly say afterwards when all the evidence suggests that, thanks to the surge, things are turning out just swell over there? It’s one thing to pat oneself on the back for being the most prescient member of the Illinois legislature and quite another to admit to having been a nincompoop. I know I sure wouldn’t want to go into a general election as the candidate who’s still insisting on a deadline for troop withdrawal, thus ensuring that we and the Iraqi people would suffer the same sort of ignominious defeat that we and the South Vietnamese endured 35 years ago.

The left makes no secret of the fact that they hate war. But the truth of the matter is that their opposition to armed conflict is situational. It depends entirely on the party affiliation of the commander in chief and, of course, on the politics of the enemy. For example, the left was eager for the U.S. to enter the Spanish Civil War in order to fight Franco and his fascist allies because the Soviet Union and the Communists were lined up on the other side. However, as soon as Hitler and Stalin signed a mutual non-aggression pact, the American left decided we had no business getting involved in European affairs, even as Poland, France and Holland, were being swallowed up by the Nazis. Of course that changed just as soon as Germany invaded the Soviet Union. As that icon of the left, Lillian Hellman, was reputed to have announced to a group of fellow Communists on that fateful day, “We’ve been attacked!”

During the Cold War, these were the same people, as devoted as ever to serving the interests of Joseph Stalin, who insisted that America unilaterally disarm itself and turn its atomic arsenal into plowshares.

When Bill Clinton sent U.S. troops into Kosovo, a place where no American interests were involved, the left raised no objections. And heaven knows that the MSM never embarrassed him by calling attention to the fact that although he promised that the troops would all be home within 12 months, they were still there when he left office. I suppose he was so busy granting last minute presidential pardons to his campaign contributors that it simply slipped his mind. 

And isn’t it odd that nobody, including the New York Times, John Murtha or Barack Obama, ever asked Bill Clinton if he actually had an exit strategy?

These days, it must be apparent even to the goofiest liberal that victory in Iraq has been snatched from the jaws of defeat by the U.S. military. Aside from the obvious reason why it gladdens the hearts of most decent Americans, that would be wonderful news if only because it meant that Cindy Sheehan had once and for all been condemned to that shadowy world inhabited by the likes of Amy Fisher, Heidi Fleiss and Lorena Bobbitt, and gone from being front page copy to simply being old-what’s-her-name.

…relating to his energy challenge. Steven Den Beste, who gave up blogging a few years ago, still posts from time to time and wrote this as a response to a question/challenge about alternative energy.

…I never enjoyed blogging about energy, anyway, because for too many people “alternate energy” is more about religion than about physics. They believe that if we are just creative enough, we can overcome fundamental physical limitations — and it’s not that easy.

In order for “alternate energy” to become feasible, it has to satisfy all of the following criteria:

1. It has to be huge (in terms of both energy and power)
2. It has to be reliable (not intermittent or unschedulable)
3. It has to be concentrated (not diffuse)
4. It has to be possible to utilize it efficiently
5. The capital investment and operating cost to utilize it has to be comparable to existing energy sources (per gigawatt, and per terajoule).

If it fails to satisfy any of those, then it can’t scale enough to make any difference. Solar power fails #3, and currently it also fails #5. (It also partially fails #2, but there are ways to work around that.)

The only sources of energy available to us now that satisfy all five are petroleum, coal, hydro, and nuclear.

My rule of thumb is that I’m not interested in any “alternate energy” until someone shows me how to scale it to produce at least 1% of our current energy usage. America right now uses about 3.6 terawatts average, so 1% of that is about 36 gigawatts average.

Show me a plan to produce 36 gigawatts (average, not peak) using solar power, at a price no more than 30% greater than coal generation of comparable capacity, which can be implemented at that scale in 10-15 years. Then I’ll pay attention.

Since solar power installations can only produce power for about 10 hours per day on average, that means that peak power production would need to be in the range of about 85 gigawatts to reach that 1%.

Without that, it’s just religion, like all the people fascinated with wind and with biomass. And even if it did reach 1%, that still leaves the other 99% of our energy production to petroleum, coal, hydro, and nuclear.

By all means read the rest of this, plus the comments. Good stuff.

This post goes back two years, but it still makes a good point about the way numbers are used to create illusions about the vanishing middle class.

Don Boudreaux got out his 1975 Sears catalog (note: the middle class person today would shop via the Internet, a major boon) and compared costs versus wages.

Here’s what I found:

Sears’ lowest-priced 10-inch table saw: 52.35 hours of work required in 1975; 7.34 hours of work required in 2006.

Sears’ lowest-priced gasoline-powered lawn mower: 13.14 hours of work required in 1975 (to buy a lawn-mower that cuts a 20-inch swathe); 8.56 hours of work required in 2006 (to buy a lawn-mower that cuts a 22-inch swathe. Sears no longer sells a power mower that cuts a swathe smaller than 22 inches.)

Sears Best freezer: 79 hours of work required in 1975 (to buy a freezer with 22.3 cubic feet of storage capacity); 39.77 hours of work required in 2006 (to buy a freezer with 24.9 cubic feet of storage capacity; this size freezer is the closest size available today to that of Sears Best in 1975.)

Sears Best side-by-side fridge-freezer: 139.62 hours of work required in 1975 (to buy a fridge with 22.1 cubic feet of storage capacity); 79.56 hours of work required in 2006 (to buy a comparable fridge with 22.0 cubic feet of storage capacity.)

Sears’ lowest-priced answering machine: 20.43 hours of work required in 1975; 1.1 hours of work required in 2006.

A ½-horsepower garbage disposer: 20.52 hours of work required in 1975; 4.59 hours of work required in 2006.

And so on.

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace [AP].

Al Gore’s house uses 20 times the national average.

But even as Gore is expected to ask legislators to turn away from fossil fuels and embrace alternative energy sources, the current environmental policy proposals in Washington seem to be tending in the opposite direction.

Hmm. Maybe pie in the sky isn’t so attractive when gas costs $4.50.

The Interior Department on Wednesday made 2.6 million acres of potentially oil-rich territory in northern Alaska available for energy exploration…. The decision will open up for drilling much of the northeast section of the Northeast National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, holding an estimated 3.7 billion barrels of oil [The New York Times], with production expected to begin in 2010. Congressional Democrats are not opposed to this move, which leaves the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge untouched for now.

Not real estate. And not oil.

Oil prices tumbled below $130 a barrel for the first time in more than a month Thursday, as crude’s dramatic slide entered a third day accompanied by a sharp sell-off in natural gas.

The declines accelerated amid growing concerns that the weakening economy and creeping inflation are eroding demand for fossil fuels in the U.S. and other large energy-consuming nations.

Growing concerns for whom?

I was in a cab en route  to the Atlanta airport this morning and told my fellow passenger about the purported Blackhawk Down - Global Warming connection (see post below). Suddenly the cabbie burst out laughing.

His name was Eule and was from Somalia, and had been living in Mogadishu when the incident happened. He thought the global warming angle was a real hoot. He chuckled about for at least half a mile.

Eule loves America, by the way. “You can do anything here!” he exclaimed.