The need to believe

There has been a lot of propaganda about vitamin supplements and, more recently, Anti-oxidants preventing aging. A new study says otherwise:

CHICAGO (AP) -- Antioxidant vitamins, including A, E and C, don't help you live longer, according to an analysis of dozens of studies of these popular supplements.



The new review showing no long-life benefit from those vitamins, plus beta carotene and selenium, adds to growing evidence questioning the value of these supplements.

It might even be worse than that:

When they eliminated the lower-quality studies and looked only at the most trustworthy ones, they actually found a higher risk of death for people taking vitamins: 4 percent for those taking vitamin E, 7 percent for beta carotene and 16 percent for vitamin A. [Emphasis added]

This is consistent with a long line of studies that say vitamin supplements, as opposed to real foods, generally (calcium supplements would be an exception) have no value. There are many people who will simply dismiss such results. There is one example of where the human mind can have a need to believe, in this case, a need to believe that it has some control of its own future, that, through "virtue" (taking vitamins), it will live longer.

The Urge to Apologize

From the NYT, Louis Farrakhan discusses Pres. Bush:

“If you don’t want to impeach him,” Mr. Farrakhan said, “censure him, say to the world something went wrong with our leadership and we repent after our wrongdoing.” [emphasis added]

US liberals and the left, ranging from Bill Clinton to John Kerry to the Dixie Chicks, have the urge to go abroad and apologize. By contrast, how often to Republicans do anything similar? No matter how despicable, for example, Bill Clinton may have seemed to conservatives, I don't remember any conservatives going abroad to denounce him? They didn't go to China to apologize for Clinton's bombing of the Chinese embassy. They didn't go to Russia to apologize for Clinton picking the side of Russia's enemies in the Balkans. They didn't go to Africa to apologize for the bombing of the aspirin factory.

Democrats seem to take (alleged) government irresponsibility personally as if it was something for which their foreign friends would blame them individually. By contrast, Republicans have no such expectation and seem, instead, to be surprised if the government does something right.

RELATED: The issue of appearances was brought up by Democrat fundraiser David Geffen:

Not since the Vietnam War has there been this level of disappointment in the behavior of America throughout the world

Here again, his issue is not that America was doing right or wrong, the issue that concerns Republicans, but rather that "the world" was "disappointed," as if foreign relations was a popularity contest.

The Oscar for best politics goes to

Al Gore for his global warming agitprop. While global warming advocates want major reductions in consumer energy use, Al Gore is showing no leadership in this area. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research looked into Al Gore's energy usage:

Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own “Inconvenient Truth”

Gore’s home uses more than 20 times the national average

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

The problems with Gore's version of science are addressed more substantively by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels who, for instance, addresses the sea rise issue:

The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland’s 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.

Where’s the scientific support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent Policymaker’s Summary from the United Nations’ much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.

Dr. Michaels has a Ph.D. in Ecological Climatology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1979) and is Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Virgina. He was a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was an author of the 2003 climate science "Paper of the Year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers. This makes is hard for his detractors to call him out of the mainstream but they do anyway.

UPDATE: Gore responds to the house electricity issue here, claiming that he tries to consume "green" energy and, among other things, he uses "solar panels and uses compact fluorescent bulbs." It would seem that solar panels and fluorescents must not be very effective if, despite their use, his electric bills are so high.

RELATED: Michelle Malkin has a post on strikingly similar story of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do in animal rights: PETA activist Pamela Anderson says she had no idea that the sheepskin boots that she made famous were actually made of sheep's skin.

UPDATE: From James Taranto:

Of course we don't begrudge Gore his life of luxury--only his sanctimonious insistence that the rest of us sacrifice our comforts to the dubious god of global warming.

It is interesting to contrast Al Gore's energy consumption with Pres. Bush's relatively eco-friendly Crawford ranch.

UPDATE: For hypocrisy similar to Sen. Gore's, see this report:With five private jets, Travolta still lectures on global warming.

The European model is not always what liberals hope it to be

There has always been a strain of American thought that glorified the Old World: Liberal supreme court justices have used foreign laws as the basis for their decisions and Democrats have on occasion praised the European model for fighting terror as a law enforcement issue. However, as Bret Stephens points out, the French model for "law enforcement" includes powers for the government that Democrats would oppose even when fighting a war:

Warrantless wiretaps? Not a problem under French law, as long as the Interior Ministry approves. Court-issued search warrants based on probable cause? Not needed to conduct a search. Hearsay evidence? Admissible in court. Habeas corpus? Suspects can be held and questioned by authorities for up to 96 hours without judicial supervision or the notification of third parties. Profiling? French officials commonly boast of having a "spy in every mosque." A wall of separation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies? France's domestic and foreign intelligence bureaus work hand-in-glove. Bail? Authorities can detain suspects in "investigative" detentions for up to a year. [France's investigative minister] Mr. Bruguiere once held 138 suspects on terrorism-related charges. The courts eventually cleared 51 of the suspects--some of whom had spent four years in preventive detention--at their 1998 trial.

FLASHBACK: As an earlier example of Democrats sympathizing with Europeans when they shouldn't, consider a New York Times editorial from February 26, 1916 accused the some Democrats of siding with Germany against Pres. Wilson during the lead up to World War I:

By their Constitution, the American people created the Congress as a branch of the Government of the United States, not as an instrument to serve the purposes of Germany.

Yet, among the abhorrent forces now at work in Congress to obstruct the President in his policies, to prevent the expression of the country's will, and to bring dishonor upon the nation, that alien influence is too conspicuous for concealment.

It is a monstrous anomaly, a hideous solecism, that the American Congress should be the field of a contest in which a foreign government can display such power, or any power at all, over our national decisions.

The skeptics of democracy

Mr. David Geffen, Hollywood mogul and, currently, an Obama supporter, is concerned that Sen. Clinton might win the primaries. Mr. Geffen concludes:

I think that America was better served when the candidates were chosen in smoke-filled rooms.

Such scepticism of popular choice has a long history in American politics. Alexander Hamilton was the first leader of this group. His biographer, Ron Chernow, quotes Mr. Hamilton (p.233):

"Give all the power to the many and they will oppress the few. Give all the power to oppress the few, they will oppress the many." The system needed an impartial arbiter to transcend class warfare and regional interests, and here Hamilton [used] the word monarch: "This check is a monarch.... There ought to be a principle in government capable of resisting the popular current."

Conservatives, as represented by Hamilton's foe, Thomas Jefferson support democracy but not because it is perfect: they also share a scepticism of "popular currents." However, Jeffersonians have a much greater scepticism of any "monarch" or other authority which claims to "transcend" class or region. The Jeffersonian idea was wittily and famously expressed by Winston Churchill in 1947:

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

In the US, Democrats would like the president to take the role of transcendent "monarch" or, maybe more precisely, the role of ideal parent. The idea of the voters being children of the president, was explicitly addressed during a debate of presidential candidates in 1992, as recounted by Dr. Edwin Feulner:

During one of the 1992 presidential debates ... a young man with a ponytail stood up to ask a question of the candidates. He said, "We are your children, we have our needs. What will you do to take care of us-to take care of our needs?" All three candidates predictably fell all over themselves explaining what they would do for this young man.

Dr. Feulner continues by quoting a typical Jeffersonian reaction to this concept:

My friend and Heritage Foundation colleague Bill Bennett commented about this episode: "Wouldn't it have been refreshing," he said, "wouldn't it have been great if any one of them had said, 'Just a minute. Get a life. I'm not your father. This is America. This is a do-it-yourself society. I'm only running for the head of the government... satisfy your own needs. See a minister, see a priest, see your wife. Take care of yourself, man; get a hold of yourself."'

I believe that BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) can be explained by the fact that Pres. Bush, by going to war in Iraq, violates the Democratic concept of ideal parent. His presence in White House is as much an abomination to Democrats as, say, Andre Serrano's "Piss Christ" is to Christians.

In foreign policy, Democrats place the United Nations in the role of Ideal Parent, expecting it to be above class or region and provide the sound judgment that the world needs. Republicans, by contrast, see nothing ideal or parental about the UN: they see it, rather, as a group of thugs, thieves, and tyrants that may occasionally be useful but should never be respected.

MORE DETAIL: The "young man with a ponytail," mentioned by Dr. Feulner, spoke at the October 15th of 1992 presidential debate between Perot, Clinton and Bush 41 in Richmond, Virginia. His question was:

The focus of my work is domestic mediation, is meeting the needs of the children that I work with by way of their parents and not the wants of their parents, and I ask the three of you, how can we as symbolically the children of the future president expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our needs?

Group guilt

Consider a recent murder in New Orleans:

A recent murder encapsulated the difficulties. After a 17-year-old was beaten up, his mother gave him a gun and told him to get revenge, and he killed the boy he fought with.

When police went to his home to investigate, they found the mother with cocaine and a family photo on display of the son with a gun in one hand and a fistful of cash in the other.

"For us to correct this, we have to look at the root of the problem. The root of the problem is our education system," Police Superintendent Warren Riley said in an interview.

In this case, talking about "root" cause certainly seems like an excuse to avoid assigning individual guilt.

Via BoTW.

Group vs. Individual

The FAA bans handguns from private space flights, in orbit or otherwise.  The FAA, however, has changed the reason why.  Their previous explanation claimed that the 2nd amendment right to bear arms was a "collective right" not an individual right.  The new explanation says that the FAA has the right to ban guns from spaceflights, as it does from planes, as a reasonable exception to the 2nd amendment.

The trend here is that the left thinks of group rights while the right wants to protect the rights of individuals.  For example, affirmative action, strongly supported by the left, is intended to provide group justice regardless of the injustice that it does to many individuals.  The claim that the Bill of Rights was intended to protect governments ("collective rights") against individuals is perverse: History shows that the Bill of Rights was passed out of concern that the newly created federal government might have too much power, not too little.

Foreign Policy and Selective Ethics

Paul Campos condemns Glenn Reynolds for suggesting covert action, including assassination, against Iran's nuclear program.  Glenn Reynolds responds by pointing to Democrats who have advocated similar policies during the Clinton years and concludes:

It's not only important to have the right opinions -- it's important to have them at the right time.

The difference is that Democrats assume when, say, Bill Clinton attempted to assassinate bin Laden, that Bill Clinton had a good reason. They extend no such assumption to Republicans. In either, they will phrase their argument as if it involved basic inviolable principles of ethics or morality or law.



The liberal view of free speech is similarly situational.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker looks at the legal issues that Prof. Campos raises in his attack on Prof. Reynolds.

RELATED: Those who advocate "peace" yet become violent seemingly display a similar hypocrisy.

The FAA and those 10-hour plane waits

The well-publicized 8 or 10 hour long waits in an airplane are explained by the WSJ:

The FAA's air-traffic-control system can penalize flights that go back to a gate, even for a temporary bathroom break. Air-traffic controllers generally take flights first-come, first-serve, unless the airline can badger officials into giving a flight higher priority, or trade places in line with another of its own flights.

Indeed, last month a JetBlue flight ended up on the ground for eight hours at JFK because it returned to the gate and then was required to file a new flight plan, the FAA says.

The bigger the bureaucracy, the stranger the rules.

Sen. Obama on economic policy

Is the world perfectible? Democrats seem to believe so. For example, Sen. Obama declared:

Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America.

The past 40 years of the US "war on poverty" not only didn't end poverty but seems, in many ways, to have made it worse. Marxism also did not work. Poverty stubbornly remained in the USSR and China. Homelessness remained in the USSR even when all housing was owned by the government. None of that seems to affect the liberal belief that the next government program will be the solution. What is Sen. Obama's suggestion?

Every single person willing to work should be able to get job training that leads to a job, and earn a living wage that can pay the bills, and afford child care so their kids have a safe place to go when they work. Let's do this.

Of course, job training is important. It is important for the young to learn key job skills such as (a) show up on time, (b) when interacting with customers, be nice to them, and, most importantly, (c) just because the boss asks you to do something, it does not mean that he is 'dissing' you. Most Americans learned these skills, without government subsidy, in their first entry-level jobs. Curiously, Democrats have just taken pride in their attempt to eliminate entry-level jobs (i.e. the minimum wage increase). In a perfectible world, of course, such trade-offs do not happen and do not need to be considered.

Sudden Jihad Syndrome, circa 1997

The New York Daily News exposes a 10-year cover-up. The 1997 shooting spree by Kamal, a Palestinian, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building was jihad. At the request of the Palestinian Authority, the media had played the story as if it was caused by the shooter's depression over a business failure.

But three days after the shootings, Kamal's family got a copy of a letter that was found on his body, they said. The letter said he planned the violence as a political statement, his daughter said.

"When we wanted to clarify that to the media, nobody listened to us," she said. "His goal was patriotic. He wanted to take revenge from the Americans, the British, the French and the Israelis." ....

"He wrote that after he raised his children and made sure that his family was all right he decided to avenge in the highest building in America to make sure they get his message," said [Kamal's daughter] Linda, who works for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. [emphasis added]

via LGF.

Some economic ideas die hard

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result indicates, they say, insanity. Oil-rich Venezuela has implemented price controls. The results appear to be the same as previous attempts:

Shortages of basic foods have been sporadic since the government strengthened price controls in 2003 after a debilitating strike by oil workers. But in recent weeks, the scarcity of items like meat and chicken have led to a panicked reaction by federal authorities as they try to understand how such shortages could develop in a seemingly flourishing economy....



With shoppers limited to just two large packages of sugar, a black market in sugar has developed among street vendors in parts of Caracas.

It is not within the power of governments to repeal the law of supply and demand. Yet, they try over and over again.

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Singing "we are the world"

The leftists in Venezuela think it "illogical" that Al Qaeda would want to attack them:

ARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuela's defense minister said Thursday that the nation would reinforce security measures after a branch of al Qaeda called for attacks on suppliers of oil to the United States.....



Luis Cabrera, a military adviser to the president, earlier had questioned the authenticity of the threat in comments published by local media.



He said it was illogical that "al Qaeda, which is against North American imperialism, would go against a state that is fighting, though in a different way, against that hegemony."

As James Taranto notes, this confusion is longstanding. After Pres. Bush referred to islamist terrorists as "extremists" in his speech at the UN, Venezuela 's President Chavez replied as if So. American socialists and Islamists were all allies:

Yes, you can call us extremists, but we are rising up against the empire, against the model of domination.

Al Qaeda, of course, will consider Venezuela an enemy until Venezuelans convert to Islam and impose Shari'a law, Chavez does have the advantage that South America is not currently on Al Qaeda's priority list but that is all. He, however, imagines that he and bin Laden are allies. agit-prop filmmaker Michael Moore also shares a similar delusion as shown in his comment on the 9/11 attack:

Many families have been devastated tonight. This just is not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California--these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

George McGovern also has a similar reaction, as explained by James Taranto:

[R]emember George McGovern's analysis of a few years ago:

President Bush has said repeatedly that the terrorists hate us because of our freedom. I don't believe that. The world's people have always admired our freedom. What they don't like is the arrogance and indifference to world opinion inherent in so much of our international policy. Plenty of my fellow citizens don't like that either. I'm not alone....

Note how McGovern equates "terrorists" with "the world's people," then moves on quickly to "plenty of my fellow citizens" and finally to himself. It seems he is simply unable to imagine someone seeing the world through anything but a McGovernite prism.

This is similar to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa) who believed that bin Laden was a strong advocate of daycare centers.



It is a conceit of the left/liberals that the whole world (or almost the whole world) believes the same things they do.

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Character assassination by forged blog comment

Comments on blogs are often deleted because of offensive content or language. Some blogs delete comments from those who simply disagree however politely and reasonably. Well, blog ownership does have its privileges. However, it is something else entirely for a blog owner or administrator to use his access to forge a comment and attribute it to someone else. That appears to have happened in a very offensive way in this case.



If you visit the "Liberal Avenger" blog, it seems that it would be wise not to post comments there.

UPDATE: Another eerily similar example is here.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

The selective right of free speech

Using mostly student fees, College of William Mary held a "Sex Workers Art Show." College president Gene Nichol issued a statement:

"I don't like this kind of show and I don't like having it here," he said. "But it's not the practice and province of universities to censor or cancel performances because they are controversial."

This is the same Pres. Nichol who had no problem censoring the display of a cross in a university chapel.



Previously on this topic:

The Right of Free Speech, Selectively Applied

Tolerating free speech, IV

Tolerating free speech, III

More on tolerating free speech

Those who cannot tolerate free speech

Rep. Murtha's Foreign Policy

Movecongress.org shows their true intentions:

Chairman Murtha will describe his strategy for not only limiting the deployment of troops to Iraq but undermining other aspects of the president's foreign and national security policy[emphasis added]

Naturally, after this was exposed, movecongress.org deleted the part about "undermining."

Previously in this series:
More on how Democrats treat allies
Attacking your allies
Who is being "confrontational"?
Despising your allies

More on how Democrats treat allies

How do you treat a friend? Sen. Dodd explained his approach on March 12, 1975:

"The greatest gift our country can give the Cambodian people is not guns but peace. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." -- Rep. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.)

Congressional Record

March 12, 1975

As James Taranto points out, the results of Sen. Dodd's "greatest gift" was not good. In the words of Dith Pran:

On April 17th, 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist guerrilla group led by Pol Pot, took power in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. They forced all city dwellers into the countryside and to labor camps. During their rule, it is estimated that 2 million Cambodians died by starvation, torture or execution. 2 million Cambodians represented approximately 30% of the Cambodian population during that time.

Dith Pran, by the way, is the Cambodian refugee whose war time story was portrayed in the movie, The Killing Fields.

Sen. Dodd is currently recommending a similar "gift" to Iraq.

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Attacking your allies

Among the Democratic talking points is that Pres. Bush did not have a large enough coalition and that Democrats, with their superior skills, would have encouraged more mor countries to join us. At the same, Democrats have have insulted our allies. The latest is from Sen Obama who has been picking a fight with Australia:

I would also note that we have close to 140,000 troops on the ground now, and my understanding is Mr Howard [Australia's PM] has deployed 1,400, so if he is (ready) to fight the good fight in Iraq, I would suggest that he calls up another 20,000 Australians and sends them to Iraq. Otherwise it's just a bunch of empty rhetoric.

Among other things, this tirade indicates that Mr. Obama is not aware that Australia has a small population to begin with.



The Democrat's hostility to US allies was noted earlier in a post entitled "despising your allies."

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And, the Grammy for best politics is:

Jimmy Carter! Ex. Pres. Carter won a grammy award in the spoken-word category for the audio-book version of his bestseller “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.” Separately, the Dixie Chicks won 5 Grammys this year.



Who won last year's spoken-word Grammy? Sen. Barack Obama for the audio-book version of his book “Dreams From My Father.”

RELATED: The George Polk Awards for 2006, which honor journalism in the tradition of George W. Polk, also seem to be political. It is even questionable that Geo. Polk was who he claimed to be.

What is looks like when a foreign policy succeeds

The city of Katowice, Poland, is considering erecting a statue to former Pres. Reagan in a square that may be renamed "Ronald Reagan Freedom Square." City hall spokesman Waldemar Bojarun said that he had "enormous respect" for Reagan. The AFP writes

Reagan, who dubbed the Soviet Union an "evil empire," is widely credited by Poles with having driven communism to the wall.

Separately, there are plans to erect a statue in memory of Reagan in the center of the Polish capital, Warsaw.



Democrats widely believe that the end of the Cold War was caused by Gorbachev who planned on having his Soviet Union undergo a simultaneous military, economic, and political collapse leading to the USSR's disintegration into numerous separate countries. Apparently, the Poles don't buy into that interpretation of history.

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