Can't say what you feel: Become a Democrat!

Much of what is wrong with how Democrats approach the world is exemplified in Matthew Yglesias' post:

It would be useful, for the purposes of electoral politics, for liberals in the media to avoid expressing the view that the belief -- adhered to by millions of Americans -- that failure to accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior will result in eternal damnation is daft. On the other hand, the evangelical view of this matter is, in fact, completely absurd. And not just absurd in a virgin birth, water-into-wine, I-believe-an-angel-watches-over-me kind of way. On this view, a person who led an entirely exemplary life in terms of his impact on the world (would an example help? Gandhi, maybe?) but who didn't accept Jesus as his personal savior would be subjected to a life of eternal torment after his death and we're supposed to understand that as a right and just outcome. That, I think, is seriously messed up.

But I shouldn't say so!

Note the recommendation that liberals should not say what they really think. Whatever the topic, be it health care, Iraq, or religion, Democrats often think that they should try hard to avoid saying what they really believe. This is corrosive on two levels. For one, it prevents a serious honest debate in this country when one side feels that it has to dodge and weave in order to defend positions that it doesn't honestly believe in. For another, not admitting out loud what they believe seems to prevent them from ever developing a coherent thought on national policy. That seems true here where Mr. Yglesias seems to be so busy reviling Christians that he doesn't seem to realize that his position (that, if there is a God who admits people to a heaven, then that God will admit all virtuous people regardless of which sect they happened to adhere to) is a mainstream Protestant Christian belief. That is not a belief that Democrats would need to hide.

Furthermore, note that Democrats seem unable to politely say they disagree over an issue: they feel compelled to declare the opposing view to be "daft" or "absurd." Such declarations may be fine for political commentators. But it is not useful for politicians who need to build coalitions. Further, since deciding who gets into heaven is not on anyone's list of pressing national issues, there is no harm in being polite.

Political Ignorance

As reported by the Australian, Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tn, currently running in a close race for the Senate in Tennessee, spoke on the nuclear issue:

"Here we are in a world today where more countries have access to nuclear weapons than ever before," Mr Ford said, adding that when he left college in 1992 he thought the nuclear age had come to an end "and America would find ways to eliminate the number of chances that a rogue group or a rogue nation would get their hands on nuclear material".

"Today nine countries have it - more than ever before - and 40 are seeking it, including Argentina, Australia and South Africa," he said.

Now, anybody can misspeak, especially while on an exhausting campaign. But what makes this gaffe remarkable is that Rep. Ford's campaign refused to correct it when pressed on the issue by an Australian reporter. He continued in this confused fashion:

On North Korea, he claimed Pyongyang had conducted two nuclear tests, the first of which he said occurred on July 4. This confuses the ballistic tests Pyongyang carried out on that date with the single nuclear test earlier this month.

It is too bad that the skills that make a good politician don't include knowledge of the issues.

It is also curious no Tennessee, or even American, reporter saw fit to report on this: we learn about this from an Australian paper.

UPDATE: Power Line has more on this here.

While we are on the topic of political ignorance, ABC interviews Michael J. Fox who admits he doesn't know what is in that controversial Michigan Initiative. On the positive side, he comes across as respectful of those who disagree with him, something that so many of our national politicians are incapable of.

Lasers, popular myths, and Reuters

Reuters reports on progress on the US Air Force's airborne laser and includes the following bit of popular disinformation:

Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under former President Bill Clinton and now at the private Center for Defense Information, said in an e-mail reply to Reuters that its real effectiveness appeared doubtful.

"If a laser can be developed with enough power to penetrate the atmosphere and still be lethal once it reaches a target, an enemy would only need to put a reflective coating on the outside of its missiles to bounce off the laser beam, making it harmless," he said.

Now, remember that we are talking about a laser power enough to burn through a rocket's casing. A mirror exposed to that would not be a mirror for very long. Even the best mirrors under laboratory conditions are not 100% reflective. Further reflective coatings are, by their nature, fragile. Consequently, damage thresholds for laser mirrors even in a laboratory are much lower than damage thresholds for just the rocket. Worse, a mirror on the outside of a missile travelling through the atmosphere at high speed would soon look more like the chrome on an old car than like a mirror. In other words, any laser powerful enough to destroy a missile will easily destroy any reflective coating.

If Reuters had wanted to write an honest and accurate story, they could have found all this out by asking an informed person at the Pentagon to comment on Mr. Coyle's claim. They didn't.

Why didn't they do this sooner?

Opening a new front in the war on terror, the DoD is now highlighting perceived errors in MSM reporting on an open web site. They take on, for example, a Newsweek article:

INCORRECT NEWSWEEK CLAIM: “In the countryside over the past year Taliban guerrillas have filled a power vacuum that had been created by the relatively light NATO and U.S. military footprint of some 40,000 soldiers, and by the weakness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s administration.”

RESPONSE:

* Qari Mohammed Yousaf Ahmadi, generally viewed as the Taliban’s current chief spokesman, stated publicly on Sept. 15, “The Taliban forces have conducted a tactical retreat.” It is difficult to fill a power vacuum if your forces are retreating. ....

It seems unlikely that this, or any effort, would cause the MSM improve its accuracy. But it is, at least, helpful for the public to have access to more information.

Affirmative racism

A retired high school english teacher, Edmund Janko, writes in today's Wall Street Journal about double-standards in discipline. After a federal agency notified the high school that that is discipline was not racially balanced, they applied a racial double-standard to achieve balance:

What this meant in practice was an unarticulated modification of our disciplinary standards. For example, obscenities directed at a teacher would mean, in cases involving minority students, a rebuke from the dean and a notation on the record or a letter home rather than a suspension. For cases in which white students had committed infractions, it meant zero tolerance. Unofficially, we began to enforce dual systems of justice. Inevitably, where the numbers ruled, some kids would wind up punished more severely than others for the same offense.

One suspects that this benefited the white students two ways: (1) they were forced to learn to behave better, and (2) they learned at an early age that life is unfair. One wonders, though, if this isn't creating some new racism in the school's graduates.

Tolerating free speech, IV

Rush Limbaugh claims that Michael J. Fox got several of the facts wrong in his campaign commercials, such as the substance of Missouri Amendment 2 and which candidate is the one supporting stem cell research. On ABC's Good Morning America, Diane Sawyer ignores all that and asks instead:

"If you have Parkinson’s disease, and you believe embryonic stem cell research is the, is the answer, a possible answer, a possible cure, don't you have a right to speak up?”

The question is highly dishonest because no one questioned Mr. Fox's right to speak. The implicit premise is that Mr. Fox has a right to speak without being criticized: In Ms. Sawyer's world, free speech is only for her side.

Summary of election issues

If you like politics quickly summarized and put to music, have a look at this:

Hat tip: Redstate.

Absentee ballot and dishonest elections

States like California have been promoting the use of absentee ballots and this only makes vote fraud easier. Ballots sent by mail can be intercepted in either direction, discarded, or filler out by cheats. In today's Wall Street Journal, John Fund reviews some example of fraud:

The growth of absentee ballots has been explosive in recent years, exceeding 30% of all ballots cast in 2004 in such states as California, Washington and Iowa..... They clearly increase the potential for fraud "The lack of at-the-polls accountability and protection from intimidation makes absentee ballots the tool of choice for those who commit fraud," the Florida Department of Law Enforcement concluded in 1998 after a mayoral election in Miami was thrown out when it was learned "vote brokers" had submitted hundreds of phony absentee ballots. More recently, in Wise County, Va., three elected officials were charged this past March with 900 counts of ballot fraud. They had filled out absentee ballot applications for others, intercepted the ballots in the mail, and then filled them out themselves. Last year a Connecticut state representative admitted, according to the Hartford Courant, that he "illegally induced elderly residents of the Betty Knox housing in Hartford to cast absentee ballots for him." He got off with a $10,000 fine and community service.

In the six years since the 2000 vote controversy, the US has made little progress toward honest elections.

UPDATE: More on the ACORN/Democratic voter registration fraud scandal here.

RELATED: Federal district judge Tom Lee found racially motivated voter discrimination in Noxubee County, Mississippi, by party boss Ike Brown, a twice-convicted felon.

Action vs. Analysis

Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump have written a book on how to get rich. While both are very successful at making money, the Wall Street Journal was not impressed with the book:

The book, however, doesn't suggest conventional solutions. According to the introduction, saving money is "obsolete and bad financial advice" and "the 401(k) savings plan will not be adequate for approximately 80 percent of all workers." ....

Mr. Kiyosaki stresses that mutual funds are risky, while building your own business can be a predictable path to prosperity. Yet he also notes that 90% of start-up businesses fail within the first five years.

When I ask Mr. Kiyosaki about this apparent contradiction, he responds that starting a business isn't risky if you know what you're doing. "Most small-business owners have no financial education when they started," he says. "They weren't trained to be entrepreneurs."

Halfway through the book, all this talk about entrepreneurship gets particularly puzzling. Mr. Kiyosaki says that, in 1996, he started an oil company, a gold-mining company and a silver-mining company. The oil company failed, which would seem to be a sign of risk.

In the next paragraph, however, he writes that, "While there was some risk [in launching these companies], to me it was very little. I could mitigate the risk simply because I know we all use -- consume -- oil and gas."

It is likely that good instincts make a good businessman and Mr. Kiyosaki and Mr. Trump undoubtedly have these. The ability to organize thoughts into a coherent philosophy is separate skill, one that is apparently not their strong point.

Art or hate crime: you decide

Which of the following are art and which are hate crimes:

• Cow dung splattered on an image of the Virgin Mary
• A statue of Jesus on the cross immersed in urine
• A Koran placed in a urinal

Liberal opinion is that the first is art worthy of display at the government subsidized Brooklyn Museum. The second, Andre Serrano's Piss Christ, is also art worthy of an NEA grant. The last, however, was found at Pace University in NY and is being investigated as a hate crime with the police looking to make an arrest.

Ozone hole ignores treaty

Following the 1987 Montreal protocol, ozone-depleting chemicals have been banned. This exceptional example of international cooperation led Kofi Annan reportedly to claim it is "Perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date...". The ozone hole, however, seems to have been ignoring the treaty:

This year's ozone hole over Antarctica is bigger and deeper than any other on record, U.S. scientists reported on Thursday. .... Concentrations of ozone-depleting chemicals in the lower atmosphere have been declining since 1995,

It is undisputed that the banned chemicals deplete ozone. What was never settled, and is still debated in science journals, is whether their effect was significant or insignificant. It was found that the chemical effects were insignificant based on usual gas phase reaction chemistry. It was then proposed that maybe there were catalysts which greatly magnified what would have been an otherwise small effect. This question may not be settled for decades.

Global warming is similar. CO2 is indisputedly a global warming gas but, by itself, it is quite minor. It only becomes important if there is a feedback mechanism whereby changes in CO2 cause changes in atmospheric H2O which magnify the effect. The scientific uncertainty in this feedback mechanism is a key reason why even global warming advocates cannot settle on a number for how much warming will happen.

Unfortunately, uncertainty is unacceptable to political activists who always must claim to have absolute answers and have no qualms about using their received wisdom to rearrange the lives of the rest of us.

UPDATE: NASA attributes part of ozone hole increase to "colder than average temperatures."

Supreme court rebuked by congress

John Yoo, professor of law at UC Berkeley, writes on the "military commission law," which was Congress' response to the Hamdan decision, explaining that it is much more than just that:

[Congress and the president] told the courts, in effect, to get out of the war on terror, stripped them of habeas jurisdiction over alien enemy combatants, and said there was nothing wrong with the military commissions. It is the first time since the New Deal that Congress had so completely divested the courts of power over a category of cases. It is also the first time since the Civil War that Congress saw fit to narrow the court's habeas powers in wartime because it disagreed with its decisions.

The law goes farther. It restores to the president command over the management of the war on terror. It directly reverses Hamdan by making clear that the courts cannot take up the Geneva Conventions. Except for some clearly defined war crimes, whose prosecution would also be up to executive discretion, it leaves interpretation and enforcement of the treaties up to the president. It even forbids courts from relying on foreign or international legal decisions in any decisions involving military commissions.

Traditionally, treaties have been considered politics not law and consequently the Supreme Court should have no business interpreting them. During Pres. Washington's administration, for example, France went to war with England and tried to force the US to obey our mutual defense treaty and go to war on France's side. No politician on the US side agreed. If the Supreme Court had claimed jurisdiction then and forced a war, the American experiment might have come to a quick and painful end.

Professor Yoo's interpretation of how the press missed the meaning of this law is also interesting:

All this went overlooked during the fight over the bill by the media, which focused on Sens. McCain, Graham and Warner's opposition to the administration's proposals for the use of classified evidence at terrorist trials and permissible interrogation methods. In its eagerness to magnify an intra-GOP squabble, the media mostly ignored the substance of the bill, which gave current and future administrations, whether Democrat or Republican, the powers needed to win this war.

In other words, the press was so busy trying to make Republicans look bad that they missed the big picture.

Liberal gay bashing

Three weeks before the election, Dailykos and Mike Rogers are "outing" a supposedly gay Republican senator. As I have noted before, the usual conservative reaction is mind-your-own-business. (The exceptions to this rule, rape, sexual harassament, and pederasty, don't seem to apply here.) The liberals doing the "outing" likely don't understand the conservative reaction. In fact, many expect a backlash against Democrats over gratuitous "outing." The liberal defense seems> to be to claim "hypocrisy." Apparently, the argument is that any gay Republican who disagress with the liberal gay agenda is a hypocrite. The possibility of a mere difference of opinion is unthinkable to them.

The liberal reaction to Black Republicans seem similar. Not understanding the concept of differing opinions, they regard Black Republicans as "inauthentic" or worse.

UPDATE: More on the hate motivation here and here.

Medical care and governmental control

The CDC made quick work tracking down the cause of 21 deaths in Panama, according to an AP report:

U.S. health officials this week cracked the case of what caused the mysterious deaths of 21 people in Panama since midsummer _ an industrial chemical in red cough syrup....

Some of the people who grew ill had been taking a sugarless cough medicine that was made in a pharmaceutical factory operated by Caja de Seguro Social, a government hospital system. That led investigators to test the medicine.

So the deadly medicine was manufactured by the government.

Problems with medical care are often greeted with calls for more government control. This Panama example illustrates that more government control is not always the answer.

UPDATE: China has several thousand coal mines that Chinese regulators say should be shut down for safety and environmental reasons but the mines are controlled by local governments (or local government officials) that won't obey the regulators. In this case also, more government involvement is not answer.

Tolerating free speech, III

From the Omaha World Herald:

Two African American teachers have filed a racial complaint against Lakeside School, claiming that the elite private institution created a hostile work environment and discriminated against them.

Among the plaintiffs' complaints was Lakeside's invitation to conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza to speak as part of a distinguished lecture series.

After [some] faculty members and parents complained, the school in January rescinded the invitation to D'Souza, who has argued that the underachievement of African Americans has more to do with cultural attitudes and behaviors than with white racism.

In other words, Mr. D'Souza's opinions are somewhat similar to Bill Cosby's. By suing the school over his invitation to speak, these two teachers are claiming the right to limit views expressed at the school to those that they agree with. As James Taranto writes:

In the plaintiffs' view, equality requires that dissenters from the racial orthodoxy be treated as nonpersons. This attitude is totalitarian in its essence.

The publics right to know vs. journalism

When it is convenient for them, the press touts the public's right to know, a principle which has been enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act. The BBC, however, doesn't think that the public's right to know applies to them. They are currently fighting an expensive court battle to keep secret a 2004 report by a senior editorial adviser, Malcolm Balen, that is rumored to be critical of the BBC's anti-Israel bias. The BBC's secrecy is understandable if you remember that the release of the Hutton report, on bias in Iraq coverage, led to the resignation of the BBC's two top officials: Greg Dyke, editor-in-chief, and Gavyn Davies, the chairman of the BBC's board of governors.

More on tolerating free speech

Patterico writes about a L.A. Times columnist, Meghan Daum, who praises the violence of the leftists at Columbia University. Ms. Daum writes of the incident:

The speaker, Jim Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project, a citizen's border patrol group, had been invited to campus by the Columbia University College Republicans. Reports in the New York Times said students holding banners reading "No One Is Illegal" jumped on the stage and were soon joined by dozens more protesters as well as supporters of Gilchrist. Protesters later said Gilchrist was knocked backward and his glasses were broken. The student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, reported that "one student was kicked in the head and bleeding." [Emphasis added]

What does Ms. Daum think of these violent efforts to shut down what was supposed to be a civilized discussion of the issues? She writes:

But considering that most young people are considered to be politically apathetic, you have to credit the Chicano Caucus and the International Socialist Organization for trying. .... I'll give them an A (OK, maybe a B+) for trying.

So her concern is with "political apathy." But, the College Republicans didn't show apathy: they organized an event and brought in a speaker. Ms. Daum doesn't find that praise-worthy. She gives high marks instead to those who would shut down the debate.

In a related post, Brian at IowaVoice also writes more generally on the gap between the ideals that liberal profess and their actual policies.

Those who cannot tolerate free speech

Peggy Noonan outlines four recent instances of liberals not tolerating dissenting opinions. One instance was out Columbia University where protestors silenced a Republican-sponsored speaker. It was explained that silencing one's opponent is part of "free speech":

"We were aware that there was going to be a sign and we were going to occupy the stage," said a protestor who was on stage and asked to remain anonymous. "I don't feel like we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech. ... The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration."

The psychology of this rage can understood by looking at a much smaller example, also from Ms. Noonan:

On "The View" a few days earlier it was Rosie O'Donnell. She was banging away on gun control. Guns are bad and should be banned. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who plays the role of the young, attractive mom, tentatively responded. "I want to be fair," she said. Obviously there should be "restrictions," but women have a right to defend themselves, and there's "the right to bear arms" in the Constitution. Rosie accused Elizabeth of yelling. The panel, surprised, agreed that Elizabeth was not yelling.

To Rosie, even polite dissent sounds, in her mind, like "yelling." Something similar might have happened in Bill Clinton's mind when he was questioned by mild-mannered Chris Wallace and responded: "So you did Fox's bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me."

This leads to a related issue: paranoia. Notice that, after being asked a substantive question, Mr. Clinton jumps to a conclusion about Mr. Wallace doing "Fox's bidding" on a "conservative hit job." This is reminiscent of Mrs. Clinton's theories about the "vast right-wing conspiracy." Jonah Goldberg reviews examples of this in his essay "The magnifying trick of liberal paranoia."

Alexander Hamilton had similar paranoid delusions about the evil things Thomas Jefferson would do if Jefferson was elected president. He thought Jefferson would ally with France and start a war with England. He didn't, even after two terms in office. History showed that Hamilton's concerns were merely based on delusions.

It is impressive that democracy continues to work even when so many of its participants appear insane.

"Soft racism of low expectations"

While a person must present photo ID to board an airplane, drive a car, or cash a check, Democrats have been arguing that it is too much of a burden to ask a voter to do the same when voting. Here is House minority leader Pelosi on this subject:

Though the right to vote is the foundation of our democracy, the bill we debate today would in effect disenfranchise millions of American voters: the elderly, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, people with disabilities; and the list goes on.

OK, I understand that the elderly and disabled might have a hard time because one can only obtain a picture ID by walking 5 miles through the snow uphill. Also, historically, southern Democrats had taken extraordinary measures to prevent Blacks from voting. (However, that was 40+ years ago and hasn't recurred.) But, why does her list include "Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans"? Are these groups supposed to less able to get IDs than other types of hypenated and non-hyphenated Americans? Is this just racism ("low expectations) on the part of Ms. Pelosi?

More on Rep. Pelosi and vote fraud here.

Liberal fears

Have you ever felt that powerful evil forces are out to get you? That seems to be how a columnist, Chris Reardon, at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst newspaper feels:

Students are among the many victims of an American economy, an entity that pays little attention to individual citizens and benefits a tiny upper-class. Every time tuition is increased, or a new edition of a textbook is published, capitalism is at work taking advantage of every available dollar on the market.

A problem with this critique of capitalism is that Mr. Reardon is a student at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, a state school. Consequently, the university and its policies on tuition and choice of textbooks are not a part of the evil capitalist system.