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John Fund gives his send off to Michael Deaver.
Mike Deaver was always on the lookout for ways to present Ronald Reagan in the best possible light, and I saw that firsthand as a Sacramento high school student during Reagan’s last year as California governor.
Reagan, who had come to office in 1967 promising to crack down on campus unrest, frequently clashed with student protesters and hippies. Once Reagan told a crowd that “the last bunch of people here were carrying signs that said ‘make love, not war,’ but they didn’t look capable of doing either.”
Yet Reagan was determined to connect with young people. Deaver and his deputy, the late Joe Holmes, came up with the idea that the governor should hold a weekly “news conference” with high school students and answer their questions about state government and national issues. “The theory was that high school students still lived at home with their parents, hadn’t been radicalized by liberal professors yet, and still showed some respect to adults,” Deaver once told me.
The 30-minute show, “The Governor and the Students,” was taped on a weekday after school, then sent to TV stations all over the state for them to air as they wished at no cost. During the program’s last year, my civics teacher recommended me as a “panelist” on the show. After the first taping, Deaver pulled me over and asked if I would like to do it again. Flustered, I stuttered “Sure.” I wound up appearing on a few more shows asking the governor questions. …
The Captain posts again on Edwards.
John Edwards had a tough week. Not only has he descended into an immature name-calling obsession over Ann Coulter, not only did the Wall Street Journal expose him as a towering hypocrite on predatory lending, but on Friday Edwards demonstrated that he has no real knowledge of foreign affairs or of movies — even the films he recommends. When pressed in Iowa as to whether the US should adopt the Cuban model for healthcare, his answer exposed his lightweight status (h/t CQ reader Rush L):
When an Iowa resident asked former senator John Edwards Thursday whether the United States should follow the Cuban healthcare model, the 2004 vice presidential contender deflected the question by saying he didn’t know enough to answer the question.
“I’m going to be honest with you — I don’t know a lot about Cuba’s healthcare system,” Edwards, D-N.C., said at an event in Oskaloosa, Iowa. “Is it a government-run system?” …
Yesterday, the Telegraph reported that Western officials expect a complete collapse of Zimbabwe’s economic and political systems, by Christmas or even sooner. Today, the Los Angeles Times picks up where the Telegraph left off, explaining in detail the disintegration of Africa’s one-time breadbasket. The farms that once sustained the entire region have returned to pre-agricultural times, and manufacturing and retail will soon join them: …
Michael Ledeen reminds us of the fruitlessness of talks with Iran.
For some time now, the chattering classes have debated whether the United States should negotiate with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both sides have endowed the very act of negotiating with near-mythic power.
The advocates suggest that “good relations” may emerge, while opponents warn it is somehow playing into the mullahs’ hands. Both seem to believe that the three recent talks in Baghdad are historically significant, since they are said to be a departure from past practice.
That claim is false. Every administration since Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power in 1979 has negotiated with the Iranians. Nothing positive has ever come of it, but most every president has come to believe that a “grand bargain” with Tehran can somehow be reached, if only we negotiate well enough.
Washington diplomats have steadfastly refused to see the Iranian regime for what it is: a relentless enemy that seeks to dominate or destroy us. …
Michael Barone with his early Rove verdict.
The resignation of Karl Rove ends the tenure of a man who has occupied a unique place in American history. No other presidential appointee has ever had such a strong influence on politics and policy, and none is likely to do so again anytime soon. Only Robert Kennedy exerted similar influence, and he had little to do with electoral politics during his brother’s presidency.
Rove brought to his work a wide and deep knowledge of U.S. history, political statistics, demography, and public policy. He worked hard and, for most of three years, under an unjustified threat of indictment. He does not seem to have weighed in much on foreign or military policy, and there is no reason to believe that George W. Bush sought his advice on whether to take military action in Iraq. …
Sydney Morning Herald with good overview of global warming’s bad month.
Imagine if the American government agency responsible for temperature records had announced a fortnight ago that it had overestimated annual temperatures since the year 2000. Imagine if, at the time of correcting this error, the hottest year on record was mysteriously altered from 1998 to 1934. Imagine further that if you considered the 10 hottest years on record after these corrections, the hottest decade changed from the 1990s to the 1930s.
Would that change your views on global warming? It should, because climate change theory says increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere raises the temperature. Yet the hot 1930s was hardly a decade of carbon-spewing industrial growth.
Well, all these things have happened. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies calculates the average US temperature figures. It does this by processing data from land measurement sites. Earlier this year a Canadian mathematician named Steve McIntyre approached the institute and pointed out an error in its more recent calculations. Figures since 2000 had been inflated by about 0.15 of a degree Celsius.
The institute thanked him and on August 7 quietly changed these figures, and some of the rankings on its list of the hottest years on record, which extends back to 1880. It did this without any public acknowledgment of the changes.
The Goddard Institute is a major supporter of the climate change orthodoxy, and the discovery that it got one of the central data sets of global warming science and debate wrong is embarrassing and disturbing. …
American Thinker posts on another global warming scold who can’t tolerate disagreement.
Ward Churchill could tell NASA’s James Hansen what it is like when your work goes under a microscope. Churchill ended up losing his job over the academic misconduct that was uncovered. The intemperate response Hansen has displayed toward his critics begs for an explanation.. Will the global warming game be over if the scrutiny goes too deep?
Last week, Hansen, NASA’s lead scientist on global warming, penned a rather strange ad hominem attack against critics that questioned the validity of his work in the wake of corrections prompted by Steve McIntyre at Climate Audit http://www.climateaudit.org/
Under most circumstances, it is inappropriate for a Federal Agency Administrator to pen such a highly political polemic, although Hansen has a long history of doing just that. Rather than respond with a proper full acknowledgement of his error and a promise to uncover other potential flaws which may be lurking in his data and analysis, his technical explanation is interspersed with swipes at his critics, whom he sees involved in a sinister conspiracy to discredit the impeccable science he claims to represent. …
The New Scientist gives us more reason to doubt the efficacy of governments ethanol regs.
It sounds counterintuitive, but burning oil and planting forests to compensate is more environmentally friendly than burning biofuel. So say scientists who have calculated the difference in net emissions between using land to produce biofuel and the alternative: fuelling cars with gasoline and replanting forests on the land instead.
They recommend governments steer away from biofuel and focus on reforestation and maximising the efficiency of fossil fuels instead.
The reason is that producing biofuel is not a “green process”. It requires tractors and fertilisers and land, all of which means burning fossil fuels to make “green” fuel. In the case of bioethanol produced from corn – an alternative to oil – “it’s essentially a zero-sums game,” says Ghislaine Kieffer, programme manager for Latin America at the International Energy Agency in Paris, France …