Senator Obama said some things the other day that some consider controversial and out of touch with the values and lives of Americans and others deem merely a blunder. Here’s part of what he said to explain his remarks:

What I was saying is that when economic hardship hits in these communities, what people have is they’ve got family, they’ve got their faith, they’ve got the traditions that have been passed onto them from generation to generation. Those aren’t bad things. That’s what they have left. And, unfortunately, what people have become bitter about — and oftentimes have told me about, as I traveled through not just Pennsylvania, but I was referring to states all across the Midwest, including my home state — is any confidence that the government is listening to them. They don’t think that government is listening to them.

“They’ve got family, they’ve got faith, they’ve got the traditions that have been passed onto them (guns, social conservatism?)…that’s what they have left.” At least until a government program comes along, apparently. Why do we keep feeling that a certain Senator learned some of his American history from watching movies like The Grapes of Wrath? Or maybe from reading a critique of Hegel? Question: what percentage of Americans now think this way about their country and their countrymen?

From Zombie’s photo shoot of the San Francisco protest:

HT: Roger Simon

A Reuters “story“:

China says foils ‘terrorist’ plot to kidnap Olympians — Chinese authorities have detained 45 East Turkestan “terrorist” suspects, and foiled plots to carry out suicide bomb attacks and kidnap athletes to disrupt the Beijing Olympics, a police spokesman said on Thursday. Uighur militants have been agitating to establish an independent East Turkestan in China’s predominantly Muslim northwestern region of Xinjiang bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

Chinese authorities cracked two “terrorist” groups, one of which belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), Ministry of Public Security spokesman Wu Heping told a news conference in Beijing. ETIM was listed by the United Nations as a terrorist group in 2002 and has links to Al Qaeda. The group asked its members to do trial runs using poisoned meat, poison gas and remote control explosive devices, Wu said.

Their aim was “to create an international incident with the goal of disrupting the Olympic Games”, the spokesman said. The first group, led by Aji Muhammat, bought explosive materials and carried out 13 test explosions, Wu said without giving the nationality of the ringleader. Suspects in custody confessed they were ordered to commit suicide when arrested, he said. Police detained 10 suspects and seized 16,000 yuan ($2,300) in cash and a large quantity of “Holy War” training materials, Wu said.

We understand all the problems with China’s authoritarian government. Having said that, if you don’t believe in the story about a “terrorist” plot to wage some kind of “Holy War,” then don’t print the story. Reuters should at least be very clear about what quotation marks mean in a “news” story, so that its readers can properly interpret their imprecise intent.

A certain someone of recent note criticizes the “sensationalist” and apparently Republican New York Times, which he says quoted him out of context, and then amazingly praises Senator Obama as the first and possibly only honest man ever to run for President of the United States:

I have never been exposed to that kind of duplicitous behavior before, and I want to write you publicly to let you know that I do not approve of it and will not be party to any further smearing of the name, the reputation, the integrity or the character of perhaps this nation’s first (and maybe even only) honest candidate offering himself for public service as the person to occupy the Oval Office…

I forgot that The New York Times was leading the bandwagon in trumpeting why it is we should have gone into an illegal war. The New York Times became George Bush and the Republican Party’s national “blog.” The New York Times played a role in the outing of Valerie Plame.

It is interesting that Reverend Wright seems to claim that Senator Obama is the Messiah — or does claiming him as perhaps the first and only honest man to stand for President in 220 years have another meaning? Perhaps it’s just another nutty statement in Wright’s long line of such statements, but it’s a particular kind of nuttiness to assert that a guy who has been a Senator for a couple of years is not just the new Lincoln, but superior to Lincoln, Washington, FDR, Jefferson, and all the others. (HT: Powerline)

UPDATE

It apparently turns out that master showman Jeremiah Wright might just be a big phony baloney who was raised in a very middle class way and is moving into a 10,000 square foot house. So is Wright just a huckster who drives a Porsche and mouths rhetoric that is the precise inverse of the way he lives his own life? This P.T. Barnum aspect to Wright adds an extra fillip to his relationship with the stirring orator he mentored. (HT: Larwyn)

It was 1963. America was A-OK. We were going into space. It was the Jet Age. Progress was non stop towards the New Frontier. And the Ad men of Madison Avenue wanted to cash in on the good feelings abroad in the land. Here was one innovation of the time:

1963: In one of the most significant demographic events in commercial history, the post-war baby boom emerges as a social and marketplace phenomenon. Pepsi recognizes the change and positions Pepsi as the brand belonging to the new generation – The Pepsi Generation. “Come Alive! You’re in the Pepsi Generation” makes advertising history. It is the first time a product is identified, not so much by its attributes, as by its consumers’ lifestyles and attitudes.

Flash forward 45 years. So many Americans are united in their victimhood. But they still want to feel that they’re the coolest, swingingest victims ever. And they’ve found a really hip new theme: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Andrew Ferguson discusses the matter:

What, after all, does “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” mean, precisely? My hunch is that the sentence is one of those things that no one will admit to being confused by, like the movies of Godard or the tenor-sax solos of John Coltrane, lest your peers think you’re a loser or a moron. Certainly Obama fans won’t admit how obscure the sentence is — though several have claimed that it’s lifted from a prophecy of the Tribal Elders of the Hopi Indians. Hopi prophecies are famously obscure.

But this is just wishful thinking. The origins of the phrase aren’t nearly so glamorous or exotic. Two years ago, before Obama even said he wanted to be president, the left wing radical feminist-lesbian novelist Alice Walker published a book of essays and called it We are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For. Believe me: If the line had come from the Tribal Elders of the Hopi nation, Alice Walker would have been more than happy to say so. Instead she said it came from a poem published in 1980 by the left wing radical-feminist-bisexual poet June Jordan. Neither Walker nor Jordan has said what the sentence means. But Walker did offer this hint in the introduction to her book of essays: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for because we are able to see what is happening with a much greater awareness than our parents or grandparents, our ancestors, could see.”

That’s a clue, anyway. The sentence may not have any positive content, Walker seems to be saying, but it does have an indirect meaning, an implication, as a kind of self-referential gesture for the people who claim it. When Obama’s supporters say “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” what they mean is that in the long roll call of history, from Aristotle and Heraclitus down through Augustine and Maimonides and Immanuel Kant and the fellows who wrote the Federalist Papers, we’re number one! We’re the smartest yet! Everybody — Mom, Dad, Gramps and Grandma, Great Grandpa and Great Grandma, maybe even the Tribal Elders — they’ve all been waiting for people as clued-in as us!

Is this what Obama means too? No one who’s wandered through an Obama rally and heard the war whoops and seen the cheerful, vacant gazes would come away thinking, “These are the smartest people ever.” I’m sorry, they just aren’t. What is unmistakable is the creepy kind of solipsism and the air of self-congratulation that clings to his campaign. “There is something happening,” he says in stump speeches. And what’s happening? “Change is happening.” How so? “The reason our campaign has been different is about what you, the people who love this country, can do to change it.”

And the way to change it is to join the campaign, which, once you join it, will change America. Because this is our moment. The time is now. Now is the time. Yes, we can. We bring change to the campaign because the campaign is about change. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Obama and his followers are perfecting postmodern reflexivity. It’s a campaign that’s about itself. The point of the campaign is the campaign.

“The point of the campaign” — whether an ad campaign or a political campaign — is to sell the product. (Obama strategist David Alexrod is an advertising man.) However, Americans typically tire of their ad campaigns rather quickly. The Pepsi Generation came and went and was replaced by something else in short order. We’ll just have to see how long these ad campaign slogans (”Yes we can” and “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”) stay at the top of the charts.

We noted the other day the grotesque rantings of the “uncle” of one of the leading Presidential candidates during their close relationship of two decades. Today we were reminded by Mona Charen of another, more casual, relationship of Senator Obama, a certain William Ayers. Though this is old news, we looked in on an article in the NYT about this fellow that appeared on September 11, 2001:

No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives…”I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. ”I feel we didn’t do enough.” Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970’s as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago…

In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ”Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach.”…

Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight — antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ”conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.” Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara’s picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century…

Even today, he finds ”a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,” he writes.

Swell fellow, this Ayers. Of passing interest perhaps is that Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn hosted a critical introductory event in 1995 for the current Senator from Illinois, and that Ayers and Obama served on a board together after that for a few years. Ayers also is a contributor to Obama. Hmmm. Upon further reflection, we’re pretty sure that this relationship of Senator Obama means nothing at all. After all, his relationship with Tony Rezko meant nothing. Obama only received an unsolicited job offer from Rezko in 1990. Indeed, they only had lunch “once or twice a year,” Obama only got $168,000 from Rezko and his circle, and Obama’s accepting of the essentially free backyard from Rezko was a “mistake” that was nonetheless “handled ethically.” So we’re pretty sure that neither the Ayers nor Rezko situations require any further scrutiny. (Nor does the strange case of the earmarks and the raise — nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen.)

The ultimate proof that these relationships obviously meant nothing at all is that Senator Obama apparently pays little or no attention to what his associates think or say. After all, though Pastor Wright was Obama’s “spiritual mentor” of 20 years who provided not only the title of one of his books but some of the content of his 2004 DNC speech, Senator Obama never heard of the outrageous things he was saying over the course of their long relationship and the hundreds of sermons he attended. As Obama wrote: “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.”

Evidently, Senator Obama hasn’t gone to his church’s bookstore to see the readily available DVD’s, or even read the autobiography that Obama himself wrote or the article in last April’s NYT for which the Senator himself was interviewed. (Apparently, a sermon full of profanity and references to “Bush administration bullshit” does not count as sufficiently offensive, since Senator Obama was seen at one of those.) NYT:

Mr. Obama was entranced by Mr. Wright, whose sermons fused analysis of the Bible with outrage at what he saw as the racism of everything from daily life in Chicago to American foreign policy…He was also interested in the world beyond his own; in 1984, he traveled to Cuba to teach Christians about the value of nonviolent protest and to Libya to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, along with the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Mr. Wright said his visits implied no endorsement of their views…[Wright added: “When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”]…

Mr. Wright issued a “War on Iraq I.Q. Test,” with questions like, “Which country do you think poses the greatest threat to global peace: Iraq or the U.S.?”…Mr. Wright’s political statements may be more controversial than his theological ones. He has said that Zionism has an element of “white racism.”…On the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Mr. Wright said the attacks were a consequence of violent American policies. Four years later he wrote that the attacks had proved that “people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West went on its merry way of ignoring Black concerns.”…

Mr. Obama says…He was not at Trinity the day Mr. Wright delivered his remarks shortly after the attacks…

Curious. Many Americans, even those who don’t go to church regularly, attended services on September 16, 2001, and in the weeks thereafter. Apparently Senator Obama is just never around when his supporters are doing or saying outrageous things.

We learned a lot today about the “US of KKK A“. And about how America invented AIDS. And about how the song should not be God Bless America but God Damn America. And about how FDR knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor but let it happen. And about certain nasty words that Senator Clinton has never been called. And far worse as well. Yes, it really is that bad. And we learned it all in church! Hmmm.

We never heard such things in church before. We must have gone to the wrong Sunday School. Speaking of that, would it be considered child abuse to put the kids through sermons of this sort? Does such a church deserve a $22,500 donation from a presidential candidate? What does it say that he attended sermons by this fellow since 1988 or 1990? VDH also has some very pertinent comments on Reverend Wright and Senator Obama.

Question: if this chap were your “uncle“, would you sit next to him at dinner or lock him in the attic?

UPDATE

Spengler explains elements of the strange theology at work in this case. Excerpt:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

This seems as weird as the idea of President Tom Cruise.

Global warming was a Planetary Emergency. Will this current global cooling merit its own emergency declaration, or is it just a passing thing?

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on…

The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time…it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists…link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn’t itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

We’ve discussed this cooling and its potential causes previously. If it continues, it is only a matter of time until the global huckster community does a 180 and finds a way to blame this too on human activity, exploiting this new form of “climate change” as an excuse for more taxation and regulation.

CNN’s guidance on the reporting of the Castro resignation:

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

Appalling.

You have to admit there is an odd aspect to some of the populist multi-millionaires who have been running for president. They seem to have gotten ahead very nicely in life, but seem to despair of others doing so without the larder of Washington and the generosity of high-achieving politicians and their spouses to redeem our benighted past. VDH:

Barack Obama may have gone to exclusive private schools. He and his wife may both be lawyers who between them have earned four expensive Ivy League degrees. They may make about a million dollars a year, live in an expensive home and send their kids to prep school. But they are still apparently first-hand witnesses to how the American dream has gone sour. Two other Ivy League lawyers, Hillary and Bill, are multimillionaires who have found America to be a land of riches beyond most people’s imaginations. But Hillary also talks of the tragic lost dream of America.

(The “lost dream of America” was recently found in Kazakhstan.)

The tyrant Fidel Castro, called by Diane Sawyer a “dashing revolutionary,” retired today. Here’s a bit of AP’s attempt at even handed treatment of the event:

Castro’s supporters admired his ability to provide a high level of health care and education for citizens while remaining fully independent of the United States. But his detractors called him a dictator whose totalitarian government systematically denied individual freedoms and civil liberties such as speech, movement and assembly.

“Provide a high level of health care.” That would be a laugh if it weren’t tragic. The average monthly salary in Cuba is $16 a month, according to the State Department. Cuba is a nation so poor that people keep the family pig in the bathroom so he won’t get stolen by the neighbors. The fools in the MSM are would also be a laugh, if they weren’t dangerous in their ignorance and smugness.

A story from the alleged news organization Reuters:

Gangs of rioters set fire to cars and garbage trucks in northern Copenhagen on Friday, the sixth night of rioting and vandalism…Scores of cars and several schools have been vandalized or burned in the past week. Police could give no reason, but said that unusually mild weather and the closure of schools for a winter break might have contributed.

“Unusually mild weather and the closure of schools for a winter break might have contributed.” Hmmm. That doesn’t seem as plausible as this explanation. Maybe Reuters should consider a different line of work. They don’t seem to be much interested in the news, after all.

This is the 50th anniversary of the hula hoop fad that swept America in 1958. We seem to have a new version of the same phenomenon today in the Obama craze that has gripped the media and a good chunk of the populace. John Dickerson, Mark Steyn, and Tom Maguire contribute a few more stories and quips in the Ehrenreich genre of ethereal unreality about America’s current instant messiah, King of Kings, and Man of Steel who will save the planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men:

Barack Obama just seems to get cooler and cooler. He’s the most popular topic on the New York Times topics page…Internet widgets allow you to see what great thing Barack Obama has done for you…on the New York subway Friday morning, one of our copy editors…heard one woman joke to another: “Obama, will you pick me up after my noninvasive minor surgical procedure?” To which the other replied: “Obama, will you hold my hair back when I puke?”…

John Lewis, the venerable civil rights hero and congressman, put words to this feeling recently. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” he said, suggesting that he might switch his superdelegate vote from Hillary Clinton to Obama. “Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”…On Facebook, people write about dreams featuring Obama. There is only one correct reaction to the will.i.am “Yes We Can” video and that is to start chanting along…

There was the woman in New Hampshire who compared him with Christ. There was Maria Shriver’s comparison of the candidate with the state of California, with the rhetorical fervor usually seen only after a preacher shouts, “You are healed!”…

“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”…

“Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat.”

Questions: (a) the 1958 hula hoop craze lasted two years — how long will this one last? (b) if today’s fad politician is the hula hoop, who will be the frisbee (the second fad invented by Wham-O in the late fifties)? (c) and finally, what’s the deal with all the women who faint at the Senator’s rallies and rather disturbing revival meetings — is it real or is it something else entirely? (The list of these suspicious fainting spells seems to be getting longer and longer.)

Barbara Ehrenreich in the Huffington Post:

When did you begin to think that Obama might be unstoppable? Was it when your grown feminist daughter started weeping inconsolably over his defeat in New Hampshire? Or was it when he triumphed in Virginia, a state still littered with Confederate monuments and memorabilia? For me, it was on Tuesday night when two Republican Virginians in a row called C-SPAN radio to report that they’d just voted for Ron Paul, but, in the general election, would vote for… Obama…

Thanks to Iraq and water-boarding, Abu Ghraib and the “rendering” of terror suspects, we’ve achieved the moral status of a pariah nation. The seas are rising. The dollar is sinking. A growing proportion of Americans have no access to health care; an estimated 18,000 die every year for lack of health insurance. Now, as the economy staggers into recession, the financial analysts are wondering only whether the rest of the world is sufficiently “de-coupled” from the US economy to survive our demise…

Obama is different, really different, and that in itself represents “change.” A Kenyan-Kansan with roots in Indonesia and multiracial Hawaii, he seems to be the perfect answer to the bumper sticker that says, “I love you America, but isn’t it time to start seeing other people?” As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, Obama’s election could mean the re-branding of America. An anti-war black president with an Arab-sounding name: See, we’re not so bad after all, world!

Once upon a time there was a serious country called the United States of America. It often had serious men, from all over the political spectrum, as leaders and as citizens. That was before “the re-branding of America,” however. Heaven help us all.

An IBD editorial warns that some very unpleasant Global Cooling could be just around the corner:

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century. Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe…if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere…

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology…says that “CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales…I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet…Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth…Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again…If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than ‘global warming’ would have had.”

A Hoover Institution Study…says that “try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures.” The study concludes that if you shut down all the world’s power plants and factories, “there would not be much effect on temperatures.”

(HT: Powerline) Question: could it be that Newsweek was actually right in 1975?

Michael Barone and Victor Davis Hanson both write about this “crazy year” with its topsy-turvy politics. Barone notes one oddity:

absent from political coverage, and even from many of the candidate debates, has been discussion of public policy. Voters lacking signposts in this open field have responded in ways that don’t make much sense: Republicans concerned about the economy tilted toward Mr. McCain, who once said he didn’t know much about the economy, and Democrats eager to withdraw from Iraq tilted toward Mrs. Clinton. The ideas vacuum in campaign 2008 still remains to be filled, and opinion may still take sharp and unpredicted turns.

Yes, it’s a very odd year. But is anything significant changing, or is the strangeness just one of those things that happens from time to time? We believe there is a reasonable likelihood that something significant might be afoot. It’s hard to say precisely what it is. However, one factor might be generational.

We have had it good in America for a very long time now, and memories are short. Indeed, memories of economic privation among the last two generations of Americans are, broadly speaking, non-existent among the young in much of the middle class. Unemployment is 4.9%, almost non-existent, and yet some people seem hysterical. The last time unemployment averaged over 10% in a year was 1940; the last time it touched that level even briefly was a quarter century ago, in 1983. (By contrast, unemployment is many of the grittier parts of the world often averages 20% or 30% or more.) So young Americans really haven’t seen hard times like those that were common to previous generations.

Thus, at least a generation and a half of American middle class young people have a very different perspective, and sense of entitlement, to relative comfort and the boons of technology than did their immediate forbears. We’ve made this point before, but it seems to get ever more acute. Thomas Sowell notes, for example, that the statistical reason that the “middle class is disappearing” is that its members have moved up, not down.

Toys, technology, entitlement, and a decline in paper routes and mowing lawns. There is no end to the mischief that idle minds and idle hands can get into, and this we have the strange obsessions with nonsense in the US and much of the world in recent years — from cigarettes killing a billion (yes, billion!) people to the so-called Planetary Emergency we face.

As Burke said: “Example is the school of mankind and they will learn at no other.” Thus we would not be surprised to see some nutty experimentation in Utopian ideas in the next few years as the younger generations of Americans come up and the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers continue to fade or disappear. That generational shift might be one of the things that contributes to this topsy-turvy political year.

But we think there might be something beyond the generational shift at work. We have had many asset bubbles over the last several decades. The oil bubble, the internet bubble, the housing bubble, and on and on. But we have also had a bubble in Utopianism itself. Just look around. Bubbles often end in a desperate frenzy. We wouldn’t be surprised if one aspect of Obamamania, for example, is the wish to cling to a utopian dream in a time when so many significant stresses threaten to burst the bubble.

Thugatarian Hugo Chavez is beginning to remind us a certain movie character. The Miami Herald has details:

”I chew coca every day in the morning…and look how I am,” he is seen saying on a video of the speech, as he shows his biceps to the audience. Chávez…added that just as Fidel Castro ‘’sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana,” Bolivian President Evo Morales “sends me coca paste…I recommend it to you.”

It was not clear what Chávez meant. Indigenous Bolivians and Peruvians can legally chew coca leaves as a mild stimulant and to kill hunger. But coca paste is a semi-refined product — between leaves and cocaine — considered highly addictive and often smoked as basuco or pitillo.

Regarding those forms of coca, one source says this: “Initially, a crude chemical extraction process takes place to form a smokeable base (alkaline) form of the drug sometimes called basa, basuco, or pasta, paste, pitillo. This base form of the drug is extensively used in South America as a cheap, potent form of the drug usually smoked with tobacco.”

Sounds like a fun way for a dictator to jumpstart the day. It is then perhaps no wonder that Chavez and Spicoli get along so well.

The other day the NYT slandered the military, suggesting that returning veterans were disproportionately to become murderers, when precisely the opposite is true, as various statistics show, and as we discussed in some detail. Now AP joins the anti-military or anti-American chorus, asserting or implying that war causes homelessness among veterans:

Why does Johnny come marching homeless?…How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars? What lessons have we not learned? Who is failing these people? Or is homelessness an unavoidable byproduct of war, of young men and women who devote themselves to serving their country and then see things no man or woman should?…

most painfully, there was Vietnam: Tens of thousands of war-weary veterans, infamously rejected or forgotten by many of their own fellow citizens. Now it is happening again, in small but growing numbers. For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified…

The homeless advocacy group that the AP story uses for its statistics says that there are on average of 3 million Americans who are homeless at some point in a given year, about 1% of the country. If 1500 recent veterans are among the homeless, that equates to something like 0.1-0.2% of the relevant population — far less than the national average calculated by the advocacy group. And this holds true even if the advocacy group is substantially overstating the problem of homelessness in the US.

So, just like the New York Times, the Associated Press gets the story precisely 180 degrees wrong. The story once again should be about how well the men and women of the armed forces do, not how poorly. But there’s as much chance of seeing such positive stories about America’s veterans as there is of seeing this tremendous military success trumpeted by our media.

Sonny boy:

Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience — a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful…The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak…We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players)…

Gramps:

“I am as certain as I am dictating these words that the stoniest German heart will melt [if only the Jews] adopt active non-violence. Human nature…unfailingly responds to the advances of love. I do not despair of his [Hitler's] responding to human suffering even though caused by him.”

They say all human traits are heritable. Maybe so.

We won’t bother to give you the context of this government inquisitor’s attempt to probe the mind of a magazine publisher to determine whether his inner being is acceptable to the state. The whole story is fairly chilling. For many years, the proper response of a publisher to the thought police would have been a three word interview (”go to hell”) but it appears that times are different now:

The performance of the grand inquisitor in the video, a “blandly unexceptional bureaucrat,” is, its way, Oscar-worthy and reminiscent of past films that cover similar ground. The government apparently thinks it is its business to enforce a regime where “tolerance means accepting and defending everyone’s values but your own.” More of the interview here and here. (Finally, Scott Johnson manages to work Alexis de Tocqueville into the discussion.)

Camille Paglia is apparently not endorsing Senator Clinton for President:

Hillary’s disdain for masculinity fits right into the classic feminazi package, which is why Hillary acts on Gloria Steinem like catnip. Steinem’s fawning, gaseous New York Times op-ed about her pal Hillary this week speaks volumes about the snobby clubbiness and reactionary sentimentality of the fossilized feminist establishment, which has blessedly fallen off the cultural map in the 21st century. History will judge Steinem and company very severely for their ethically obtuse indifference to the stream of working-class women and female subordinates whom Bill Clinton sexually harassed and abused, enabled by look-the-other-way and trash-the-victims Hillary.

How does all this affect the prospect of a Hillary presidency? With her eyes on the White House, Hillary as senator has made concerted and generally successful efforts to improve her knowledge of and relationship to the military — crucial for any commander-in-chief but especially for the first female one. However, I remain concerned about her future conduct of high-level diplomacy. Contemptuous condescension seems to be Hillary’s default mode with any male who criticizes her or stands in her way. It’s a Nixonian reflex steeped in toxic gender bias. How will that play in the Muslim world?

The Clintons live to campaign. It’s what holds them together and gives them a glowing sense of meaning and value. Their actual political accomplishments are fairly slight. The obsessive need to keep campaigning may mean a president Hillary would go right on spewing the bitterly partisan rhetoric that has already paralyzed Washington. Even if Hillary could be elected (which I’m skeptical about), how in tarnation could she ever govern?

The current wave of support for Barack Obama from Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans is partly based on his vision of a new political discourse that breaks with the petty, destructive polarization of the past 20 years. Whether Obama can build up his foreign policy credentials sufficiently to reassure an anxious general electorate remains to be seen.

But Hillary herself, with her thin, spotty record, tangled psychological baggage, and maundering blowhard of a husband, is also a mighty big roll of the dice. She is a brittle, relentless manipulator with few stable core values who shuffles through useful personalities like a card shark (”Cue the tears!”). Forget all her little gold crosses: Hillary’s real god is political expediency. Do Americans truly want this hard-bitten Machiavellian back in the White House? Day one will just be more of the same.

Whew — what a workout. And Paglia didn’t even get to the part about Socks the Cat. It’s hard to mistake the writing of either Ms. Steinem or Ms. Paglia, or many of the other female boosters or detractors of Hillary Clinton, for that of Alan Greenspan or Henry Kissinger.

France has its environmentalist non-conformists, as do the Czechs and so many others now. The list is growing. Thank goodness for that. Bloomberg:

The most conspicuous doubter in France is Claude Allegre, a former education minister and a physicist by profession. His new book, Ma vérité sur la planète (”My Truth About the Planet”), doesn’t mince words.

He calls Gore a “crook” presiding over an eco-business that pumps out cash. As for Gore’s French followers, the author likens them to religious zealots who, far from saving humanity, are endangering it. Driven by a Judeo-Christian guilt complex, he says, French greens paint worst-case scenarios and attribute little-understood cycles to human misbehavior.

Allegre doesn’t deny that the climate has changed or that extreme weather has become more common. He instead emphasizes the local character of these phenomena. While the icecap of the North Pole is shrinking, the one covering Antarctica — or 92 percent of the Earth’s ice — is not, he says. Nor have Scandinavian glaciers receded, he says. To play down these differences by basing forecasts on a global average makes no sense to Allegre.

He dismisses talk of renewable energies, such as wind or solar power, saying it would take a century for them to become a serious factor in meeting the world’s energy demands. To his relief, France has taken another path: Almost 80 percent of its electricity comes from nuclear reactors. What’s more, France has a talent for eating its cake and having it, too: Although it signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the country is nowhere near meeting the agreed targets.

So others around the world apparently think that Al Gore is some sort of dope or ignoramous or con artist. That’s refreshing. Alas, free thinking in France and the EU has its limits. Bloomberg again:

France bans smoking in cafes, hotels and clubs on Jan. 1, stamping out the habit popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre puffing Gauloises in hazy brasseries. In Germany, 11 of the country’s 16 states plan similar restrictions for 2008. Six of those, including Berlin and Bavaria, start Jan. 1. France banned smoking in offices and public places this year. Germany prohibits puffers at train stations and federal buildings. The limits are part of the European Union’s public health plan initiated in 1985.

You may like or dislike smoking as you wish. We’ve always enjoyed the pungent fumes of Gitanes in the Paris cafe air; and the aroma of pipe tobacco seems positively pleasant to us. Chacun à son goût. What we abhor is the odor of government regulation of such petty freedoms, as it makes the infringement of greater freedoms all the more acceptable.

Mark Steyn:

The notion that a Norwegian imam can make a statement in Norway but if a Canadian magazine quotes that statement in Canada it’s a “hate crime” should be deeply shaming to all Canadians.

HT: Powerline

Anne Applebaum raises some questions:

the real reason Saudi teams aren’t kicked out of the Olympics is that “Saudis have succeeded in pulling a fast one on the world by claiming their religion is the reason they treat women so badly.” Islam, she points out, does take other forms—in Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia, and elsewhere. But Saudi propaganda, plus our own timidity about foreign customs, has blinded us to the fact that the systematic, wholesale Saudi oppression of women isn’t dictated by religion at all, but rather by the culture of the Saudi ruling class…

the women of contemporary Saudi Arabia need a much more fundamental revolution than the one that took place among American women in the 1960s, and it’s one we have trouble understanding. Unlike American blacks, it has been a long time since American women grappled with issues as basic as the right to study or vote. Instead, we have (fortunately) fought for less fundamental rights in recent decades, and our women’s groups have of late (unfortunately) had the luxury of focusing on the marginal. The National Council of Women’s Organizations’ most famous recent campaign was against the Augusta National Golf Club. The Web site of the National Organization for Women (I hate to keep picking on them, but it’s so easy) has space for issues of “non-sexist car insurance” and “network neutrality” but not for the Saudi rape victim or the girl murdered last week in Canada for refusing to wear the hijab.

The reigning feminist ideology doesn’t help: Philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers has written, among other things, that some American feminists, self-focused and reluctant to criticize non-Western cultures, have convinced themselves that “sexual terror” in America (a phrase from a real women’s studies textbook) is more dangerous than actual terrorism. But the deeper problem is the gradual marginalization of “women’s issues” in domestic politics, which has made them subordinate to security issues or racial issues in foreign policy. American delegates to international and U.N. women’s organizations are mostly identified with arguments about reproductive rights (whether for or against, depending on the administration), not arguments about the fundamental rights of women in Saudi Arabia or the Muslim world. Until this changes, it will be hard to mount a campaign, in the manner of the anti-apartheid movement, to enforce sanctions or codes of conduct for people doing business there.

“Turkey, Morocco, Indonesia…” Hmmm. We’ll have to take a closer look at those countries. But the idea that Wahhabism is merely a product of the “Saudi ruling class” seems quite a stretch to us, considering how ubiquitous are the problems of other, similarly ordered societies.

Some things change, some don’t. Carbon dioxide emissions haven’t changed much in the last quarter century in the US, while they have quadrupled or quintupled in China, which is now the largest emitter of CO2. But you wouldn’t know that from the media’s handling of the party that just concluded in Bali, the results of which have been widely misreported.

One thing that never changes is the self-importance of bureaucrats and politicians, and their desire to arrogate power to themselves. The Sydney Morning Herald sympathetically describes the self indulgent, appalling scene in Bali as the deadline approached for the vacation of the 15,000 to end, and the scores of private jets to leave:

Deadlines came and went. Things were so bad on Saturday that at one point the UN’s chief negotiator, Yvo de Boer, fled the podium. He was holding back tears. That afternoon, well into extra time, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, made an unscheduled return, walking in alongside Indonesia’s Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. It was too late for cajoling; time instead for rebuking and pleading. Ki-moon spoke of disappointment, and urged compromise on “everybody”. The host president said: “The world is watching anxiously and I beg you not to let them down.”

Their words “electrified the room”, de Boer said. The European Union — having earlier bowed to American pressure to tone down wording on emissions targets — swiftly kicked over another roadblock, acceding to demands from developing countries for promises on technology sharing.

Still the Americans held out. No, Dobriansky said once more, to more boos and jeers. The deadlock remained, but with a difference: no nation, not Australia, nor Japan, nor Canada, backed them.

Going down to the wire, Bali rules applied, and those rules meant niceties could be stomped on. The most powerful man in the room could be mugged in broad daylight by one of the weakest. Kevin Conrad, the delegate from Papua New Guinea, did not waste time taking the Americans down a dark alley. He wanted billions of witnesses.

“We seek your leadership,” he said. “But if for some reason you are not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please, get out of the way.” The room was silent as he said it, and drowned in explosive applause as he returned the shiv to its sheath. Dobriansky surrendered. A deal could be done, propelling the world forward to negotiating a new accord by 2009.

There was rejoicing. “A historic breakthrough,” said Gordon Brown in London. “A pivotal first step,” said Ban Ki-moon. “An incredible drama” that ended in a “brilliant strategy to unite the world”, said the Union of Concerned Scientists. America had been “humbled”, said Bill Hare of Greenpeace.

There is little in the world more revolting than the spectacle of such men congratulating themselves, except perhaps the fawning media coverage bestowed upon them. Moreover, the media appear to have misstated the essence of the story, centering it on America, as in the example above. Though developing nations like China and India were brought on board in a weak agreement, the media have in general acted as if they know nothing of what has actually transpired in the years since Kyoto, and that the story was about American intransigence. The American Thinker provides some background about the fact that the US is no longer the real story when it comes to global environmental regulation:

If we look at that data and compare 2004 (latest year for which data is available) to 1997 (last year before the Kyoto treaty was signed), we find the following:

* Emissions worldwide increased 18.0%.
* Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%.
* Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%.
* Emissions from the U.S. increased 6.6%.

The data have additional interesting aspects. For example, if you look at the spreadsheet by country from 1980 until 2004, you will see that the rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions (not that we care all that much about carbon dioxide concentrations) has been less than 1% per year in the United States. China, on the other hand, had an increase from 397 metric tons to 1284 during the same period, and even surpassed the US in total CO2 emissions earlier this year.

The media have misreported the Bali story. They have reported it as though the US was hobbled and humbled. But the reality is that the developing nations like China and India were brought on board in a final, tepid agreement, and that this made it possible for the US to participate as well. The watered-down nature of the agreement left a number of developed countries dissatisfied.

In a way you have to give the Bali revelers their due. By watering down a final agreement sufficiently to get the countries with the largest CO2 increases on board, they assured themselves that there would be plenty of such pleasant retreats in the future, as they work out further silly “frameworks” of this and that. (China will likely never agree to anything that cuts its growth rate to a level that would increase unemployment.) Moreover, by bringing the likes of India and China into the fold, they have increased the number of wealthy pockets they can pick, as they continue to revel in the usufructs of their power and to strut about like peacocks on island resorts.

Finally, as bad as the politicians and bureaucrats are, we can only expect the mainstream media to be even worse.

One of the jobs that American apparently have to seek out foreigners to perform is chaining their girlfriends to engine blocks, according to information buried at the very bottom of a story in the Deseret Morning News:

Investigators believe the woman was held captive in her apartment, near 2900 West and 3500 South, for several days, possibly a week or more. When her boyfriend was home, she was allowed to roam freely in the apartment. But when he left, a chain was tied around her ankles, said West Valley police Capt. Tom McLachlan. The other end of the 20-foot dog chain was tied to a 6-cylinder engine in the closet, he said…

Fernando Orozco-Trevizo, 32, was arrested Tuesday while working construction in South Jordan. When investigators asked him about chaining up his girlfriend, he said, “It was just a game,” according to jail records. Orozco-Trevizo further told investigators that he believed his girlfriend was having an affair with someone else in the apartment complex and that she got her injuries from falling down.

Orozco-Trevizo was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail for investigation of aggravated kidnapping and assault. He also had an immigration detainer put on him for aggravated re-entry into the United States. Orozco-Trevizo told police if he got deported again, “he will come back for the victim,” according to jail records.

On the other hand, there are plenty of jobs that Americans apparently are willing to do. These include carrying out terrorist attacks against National Guard facilities, Army recruiting centers and something referred to as the “camp site of Zion,” according to the LA Times:

Kevin Lamar James and Levar Haney Washington, members of the homegrown radical Islamic organization dubbed JIS, entered guilty pleas in front of U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney in federal court in Santa Ana. James, who founded the group while in California state prison in 1997, recruited Washington years later when they were both inmates at New Folsom prison near Sacramento…

in a search of James’ prison cell, authorities found a draft of a statement that was to be released to the media after the group’s first fatal attack. “This incident is the first in a series of incidents to come in a plight to defend and propagate traditional Islam in its purity,” the statement read. It warned “sincere Muslims” to avoid potential targets, including “those Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of an Israeli state.”…

James founded Jam’iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, also known as a JIS, in 1997. It was then that he began drafting the lengthy JIS protocol, a 103-page collection of writings about his religious “movement,” aimed at teaching his “students” about Islam and how to practice their faith. The document — parts of which are neatly handwritten in Arabic — covers required readings for his followers. One section for new recruits tells them to show “obedience to established authority” within the organization and instructs them on the “importance of being esoteric or clandestine in our activities.”

The group’s tenets were based on “James’ radical interpretation of Islam, which imposed a duty to attack infidels, or enemies of Islam, including the United States government and supporters of Israel,” [Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles] said…

“James’ radical interpretation of Islam, which imposed a duty to attack infidels, or enemies of Islam…” Yes, that old time “radical interpretation.” Lots of that going round.

It’s oblivion again, say partiers at a tropical resort. AP reports that the UN wants nations to ban greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of “between 25 percent and 40 percent by 2020″:

The human race faces oblivion if it fails to confront global warming…U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived on the resort island of Bali to preside over the final days of the two-week conference. “The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically,” Ban said in a speech to delegates. “We are at a crossroad,” he added. “One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear.”

“Oblivion.” Got to avoid oblivion of course. What to ban next? Maybe caffeine? Or maybe go all the way and attempt to ban new humans. Medical Journal of Australia:

Professor Barry Walters said every couple with more than two children should be taxed to pay for enough trees to offset the carbon emissions generated over each child’s lifetime. Professor Walters, clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, called for condoms and “greenhouse-friendly” services such as sterilisation procedures to earn carbon credits.

There would appear to be more than a little Margaret Sanger in all this:

“the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit,’ admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation….On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.”

Of course the West appears to have gone well beyond that point in our time.

China played the West for suckers at the Boondoggle in Bali. The WSJ explains:

BALI, Indonesia — China said Friday it will not consider mandatory cuts on greenhouse gases, saying the U.S. and other industrialized countries should take the lead in fighting climate change by embracing a less-extravagant lifestyle.

China, which some believed has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top emitter of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, also questioned the fairness of binding cuts when its per capita emissions are about one-sixth of those by the U.S.

It also noted that it’s only been pumping pollutants into the atmosphere for the last few decades, whereas the West has done so for much longer.

“China is in the process of industrialization and there is a need for economic growth to meet the basic needs of the people and fight against poverty,” said Su Wei, a member of the country’s delegation at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Bali.

“I just wonder whether it’s fair to ask developing countries like China to take on binding targets or mandatory targets,” Mr. Su said. “I think there is much room for the United States to think whether it’s possible to change [its] lifestyle and consumption patterns in order to contribute to the protection of the global climate.”

China didn’t hit a false note. They have to “fight poverty”, while the West, particularly the US, should “change lifestyle.” Perfectly pitched for the suckers who swallow this tripe. Well done.

A nation of ignoramuses who do not know how to read, apply logic, or do simple math, has no future. We don’t need jihad to undo the Enlightenment. We can do it all by ourselves. Consider the academic program that has a 20% market share in the nation’s grammar schools. NY Sun:

The state of Texas has dropped a math curriculum that is mandated for use in New York City schools, saying it was leaving public school graduates unprepared for college. The curriculum, called Everyday Mathematics, became the standard for elementary students in New York City when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the public schools in 2003.

About three million students across the country now use the program, including students in 28 Texas school districts, and industry estimates show it holds the greatest market share of any lower-grade math textbook, nearly 20%.

Some questions for 5th graders:

A. If math were a color, it would be –, because –.
B. If it were a food, it would be –, because –.
C. If it were weather, it would be –, because –.

The situation with 4th graders:

“The curriculum’s failure was undeniable: Not one of my students knew his or her times tables, and few had mastered even the most basic operations; knowledge of multiplication and division was abysmal…what would you do, if you discovered that none of your fourth-graders could correctly tell you the answer to four times eight?”

The song School Days dates from 1907. Who would have thought that, a century later, “readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmetic,” not to mention the hickory stick, would have vanished from broad reaches of the American scene? HT: MM

UPDATE

A fellow who was taught Everyday Mathematics illustrates its worth, via AP:

Police say a man tried to open an account with a $1 million bill, which does not exist. The teller refused and called police while the man started to curse at bank workers, said Aiken County Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Michael Frank. Alexander D. Smith, 31, of Augusta, Ga., was charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of forgery, Frank said. The second forgery charge came after investigators learned Smith bought several cartons of cigarettes from a nearby grocery store with a stolen check, Frank said.

What a country.

Below is a letter from the extraordinary Jessica Mitford, aka Decca Treuhaft, wife of lawyer Bob Treuhaft, friends and employers to Hillary Rodham three decades ago. (The letter is part of an interesting profile in the NY Sun.) It is an fascinating glimpse into another time, and into a certain mindset. The Treuhafts are pictured above. Among other little tidbits, Mrs. Treuhaft describes Senator Clinton as “smashing.” Excerpt:

July 4, 1992
Excerpts of letter from Mitford to a civil rights activist and longtime friend, Virginia Durr

…in 1980 I had a furious falling out with the Clintons and Jerry Brown. It concerned the extradition to Arkansas of an escaped convict [James Dean Walker] who had lived for 4 1/2 blameless years in California…

When I was researching the articles [on Walker], I went to Little Rock & had lunch with Gov. Clointon and Hillary via an intro. From Bob. All to no avail. The interesting thing is the Bob/Hillary connection.

Hillary Rodham, as she then was, came to work for Bob as a student intern when she was a Yale law student in the 1960’s [sic, actually 1971]. Top students like Hillary were much sought after by huge prestigious Wall Street type law firms—some, like Hillary’s were far more interested in left-wing firms like Charles Garry’s in SF and Bob’s.

Fast-forward to 1992, & the election campaign. There was a v. long article in Vanity Fair by Gail Sheehy, an interview with Hillary in which every detail of her life from childhood on was explored—no mention of the internship in Bob’s law office. Quite right, I thought, as obviously if that came out it would be prime meat for the Bush campaign.

Last act in this mini-drama: Bob & I were having dinner with Diane Johnson (a v. good writer, neighbor of ours) & she said, “I hear that Hillary Clinton once worked for you when she was a Yale law student.” How did you know that, we asked? Turns out her son-in-law works in the White House dirty tricks division…whose job is to dig up dirt on all the Bush opposition. So the son-in-law mentioned to Diane that “your friend Treuhaft” once employed Hillary. Presumably, the Bush campaign is hoarding this bit of non-news for later springing on the public.

From all I know about her, Hillary seems to be an excellent person—president of Children’s Defense Fund etc. [sic, Mrs. Clinton served as the group's chairwoman from 1986-92]….Viv. Cadden [a magazine editor and writer] spent some days with Hillary (can’t remember the context) and thought she was smashing, which is also our impression….

Jessica Mitford’s sisters, Unity and Diana, became notorious because of their support for Adolf Hitler, while Jessica took the more respectable road of becoming a Communist, as did both her husbands. Undoubtedly, Hillary Rodham, now Clinton, has a fascinating and perhaps diverse group who consider her to be “smashing.”

The AP reports another piece of good news from Iraq:

Iraq’s government, seeking protection against foreign threats and internal coups, will offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership, two Iraqi officials said Monday. The proposal, described to The Associated Press by two senior Iraqi officials familiar with the issue, is one of the first indications that the United States and Iraq are beginning to explore what their relationship might look like once the U.S. significantly draws down its troop presence….

The two senior Iraqi officials said Iraqi authorities had discussed the broad outlines of the proposal with U.S. military and diplomatic representatives. The Americans appeared generally favorable subject to negotiations on the details, which include preferential treatment for American investments, according to the Iraqi officials involved in the discussions. The two Iraqi officials, who are from two different political parties, spoke on condition of anonymity because the subject is sensitive. Members of parliament were briefed on the plan during a three-hour closed-door meeting Sunday, during which lawmakers loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr objected to the formula.

The political and media criticism had already shifted in tone once because of recent gains in Iraq. Can we now expect to see certain politicians and the MSM taking the Muqtada al-Sadr line if things progress along the outlines of the Iraqi proposal?

Daily Mail:

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing