Surreal Display at White House

Surreal is the only adjective that I can think of upon seeing the news videos of yesterday's White House meeting.

From The Politico:

Analysts of race relations said the benefits of the White House encounter were murky, at best.

Mary Frances Berry, a former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said the lack of any substantive message from the meeting was a missed opportunity. “The President has been forced to apologize and drink beer with the combatants in an almost comical photo-op,” Berry said. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25637.html#ixzz0MqgHjyPL

I believe the following to be true:

1. This is as much (or more) about the advantages of class status as opposed to race. There is no evidence of racial profiling in this case as the police just showed up as a result of a call. Professor Gates was not beaten, shot or abused. The charges were dropped and the professor was released at the station. President Obama, without all the facts, appeared to side with Professor Gates during a press conference that was supposed to be a platform for healthcare proposals. Professor Gates and later President Obama appear by their comments to be snobbish cronies who just happen to belong to a minority group in this drama.
2. The 'stupid' officer comes off as pretty even-keeled. Since this happened in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Sgt Crowley appears to be the least objectionable candidate for racism ever observed on national TV, the professionalism on the part of the officer as well as his overall department only improves my perception of them. With this bright of a spotlight, I am pretty sure anything negative would have showed up by now.
3. Largely, this is a referendum on presidential judgement. This became a big deal because of a petty comment made during an unguarded moment by a president. Unfortunately, this moment occurred at a prime-time, televised news conference and it was observed by all.

Again, as the official scribe for the great unwashed, it is very important for us to note that we in the great unwashed were not the only ones who noticed this.

Do Not Worship Thy Favorite Politician

I read this at the Huffington Post: Mark Joseph: The Only Thing Weirder Than the Birthers...

This article reflects much of my thinking on the Obama Birth Certificate. I have never given the subject much prior thought because, on the whole, it just seems too far-fetched that a candidate, nominee and later elected president would not meet the requirements of the elected office. But I wonder if it is that far of a stretch when considered today. Too much cheerleading, not enough vetting, and the same bunch now defending what appears to be the indefensible. At some point there is a put-up or shut-up factor that either festers or gets put aside.

An affidavit is not the same as an original. See this at WikiAnswers: Is a certification of live birth the same as a birth certificate in Hawaii?

From even the liberal Talking Points Memo: Sorry to State the Obvious... Read the last update.

Now, folks, I may truly be a nutjob, but forgive me that I don't accept an affidavit from a bureaucrat instead of evidence of the real thing. Especially when most all the wrong people seem to be insisting that I do so.

What a Difference Three Days Make

Here I go, deadbeating on posting for three days, and the world changes in unexpected ways.

Read Peggy Noonan's Commentary: Common Sense May Sink ObamaCare.

The common wisdom the past week has been that whatever challenges health care faces, the president will at least get something because he has a Democratic House and Senate and they’re not going to let their guy die. He’ll get this or that, maybe not a new nationalized system but some things, and he’ll be able to declare some degree of victory.
And this makes sense. But after the news conference, I found myself wondering if he’d get anything.

And this from Byron York: Obamacare Haunted By Big Promises of Stimulus.

"People are less trusting now."

That diminished trust can be traced directly to the stimulus. When Obama and his Democratic allies pushed it through Congress, they spoke constantly of "crisis" and warned of "catastrophe" if their bill was not passed. So the public, ready to give the new president a chance, supported him, even though the stimulus spent billions on the pet projects of Democratic lawmakers.

Again, I think that the failure to recognize the severity of the economic downturn is having an effect that our betters are just not picking up.

Update from Instapundit: A “TERRIBLE TIME” to raise the minimum wage.

What can I say? Not a clue as to how real growth is created.

Jail-order Brides - This is Just Wrong

This is pretty bad. Per The Jerusalem Post via Mark Steyn :

In the Islamic Republic it is illegal to execute a young woman, regardless of her crime, if she is a virgin, he explained. Therefore a "wedding" ceremony is conducted the night before the execution: The young girl is forced to have sexual intercourse with a prison guard - essentially raped by her "husband."

Read Jail-order brides . This is an article that I noticed at The Corner at National Review Online. The writer, Mark Steyn, subs for Rush Limbaugh and writes the way that I wish I could.

Explain to me one more time how this is representative of a religion of peace how we should have a dialogue with their leaders. Or that our standards are so poor that we must be tolerant so as not to judge other cultures and religions by our standards. I guess that it's shame that they weren't handling snakes. Boy, we could really look down on them then!

Do we really want to talk to these folks? This is just one more example that demeans the credibility of our betters in government. Do I believe what I see or read or do I conveniently overlook this to get along. Just the same kind of nonsense like Homeland Security without locking down the borders. I don't know how we could ever justify tolerance of this kind of religious belief, but I doubt that the networks will mention this.

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Chappaquidick - The Lion of the Senate and The End of Camelot

Posted at Powerline .

I am getting to the age where I sometimes am astonished when I read of history that I remember watching on TV as a child. Astonished in that it occurred right at the time that we had such intense coverage on all TV channels about the Moon Landing. I do not associate one with the other.

Now, it may amaze some of you who live in the age of Tivo, but in northeast Indiana in 1969 there were only three broadcast channnels available. And if you had a directional antennae in a rural area, there was actually only one that was clear. To give you an idea of the nightly adventures, Dad was squarely in front of the TV judging the clarity of the picture (fine tuning was by sound), Mom was stationed at the open kitchen window shouting and your blogger here, as an only child, was up on a ladder going up the roof of the garage to turn the pipe on which the antennae was mounted with a pair of rusted-on vice grips. Using Mom's shouted directions, I would turn the pipe until I heard her shout, "Your Daddy says you went too far." Being a refrain heard my entire life, nonetheless, I would back it up a tad with hopes that I had not went too far that in that direction. Luckily, this little task became a multiple nightly occurrence only during good weather. In the winter, if John-Boy was the first program of the evening, well guess what, you are watching CBS that night.

So when I read this today, I keep in mind that a lot of people today believe that Ted Kennedy represents the best of his generation at his brand of politics. The Lion of the Senate as he stands today, unfortunately, is direct contrast to JFK. Now, if you are like most people my age (and many of our elite conservative pundits), we were at one time classical liberals who remember the politics of John Kennedy. My Dad held me on his shoulder at a political rally in Spartanburg, SC when I was a squirt. My babysitter had a husband, Heyward "Slim" Powers, who was the biggest fan of JFK and could opine on the greatness of JFK for hours. Camelot suggested of a royal family blessing a worthy country. But throughout the sixties, we lost so much as a nation as we watched three major assassinations, social unrest, and a war that we could lose only by talking it down. By the time that the events at Chappaquiddick unfolded, we were pretty numb and Camelot had quietly died without much fanfare. Only the moon landing stands out in a positive way for me.

JFK's politics on national security and the economy today would be considered very conservative because they were the politics held by people different than the people of today. People who had lived through a great world war and a depression (and had won hard-fought battles) had politics that were optimistic and 'can do.' Compare that to the politics of today where not putting a wind farm on Cape Cod is seen as enlightenment. Hell, the very idea of shooting monkeys into space would drive some quarters into apoplexy if we suggested it today. Liberal politics during the sixties changed from the politics of optimism to the politics of limitation, entitlement and envy. Ted Kennedy epitomizes this modern-day liberal politics and overlooks Chappaquiddick.

As I have said before, it is important to remember that our elected leaders are chosen from the human race and are elected by the folks that want them to represent their interests. Very few are heroes and none are worthy of deification. Unfortunately, the events at Chappaquiddick serve to remind us of a sense of family entitlement that is best left out of politics.

Today Is Global Warming Scepticism Day

Are we needing to look at a demand-side global-warming solution?

Read Could We Be Wrong About Global Warming? From the article:

Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The report found that only about half of the warming that occurred during a natural climate change 55 million years ago can be explained by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What caused the remainder of the warming is a mystery.....The conclusion, Dickens said, is that something other than carbon dioxide caused much of this ancient warming. "Some feedback loop or other processes that aren't accounted for in these models -- the same ones used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for current best estimates of 21st century warming -- caused a substantial portion of the warming that occurred during the PETM."

From all that I have read on global warming and this article, I wonder if we are not looking at a chicken and egg problem here. The popular assumption is that excess carbon dioxide gases are causing global warming. Maybe the excess gases are the result of something else or a lagging indicator of global warming. Personally, I think that there are too many variables involved with climate change and I don't see any single variable as holding precedence.

Even so, my betters only see an economic solution to a scientific problem and using that, they lay all blame at the suppliers of carbon dioxide. For a change, why don't we instead look at the demand side and the consumers of carbon dioxide? Maybe we need to plant a bunch of these?

Still Does Not Look Over To Me

At The Atlantic, we see a take-down of a Newsweek article that contends the recession is over. Over?

In both my professional and my personal life, I have always believed in the experts. You know, the folks that, by way of education and/or experience, knew the right thing and then ethically did the right thing. In fact, I had no problem in accepting them as my betters. With an ever-increasing sense of impending doom, I have come to the realization that my betters are a bunch of dumbasses.