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Snow in strange places catches David Warren’s attention.
… Surprise plays an important part, alike in humour and in military tactics. Perhaps it is even more important to humour, for as we’ve seen through recent history, the United States Army is more or less irresistible even when you can see them coming from miles away. And for human events, this paradoxical metaphysical conceit seems written into nature. Here we were preparing the dykes against global warming, when some ship’s anchor did more economic damage than the perfect storm.
More, anyway, than the perfectly wonderful storm: the blanket of snow that descended this last week over large parts of the Middle East, and indeed also right across China. It was snowing, even near Riyadh (for the first time since 1968), and on Abu Dhabi, with lots on Persia. It was really snowing, in towns at higher elevations, such as Jerusalem and Amman. Beautiful snow, piling up inches deep, bringing almost everything to a stop, except the gleeful children. (Alas, no evidence of snow in Gaza.) …
David Harsanyi turns down the anti-McCain volume, but still makes the point.
… Anger towards McCain, despite the spin of his supporters, isn’t exactly irrational. McCain has shown an elastic sense of principle. To conservatives, it seems like temperamental predilections are just as likely to determine his positions as poll numbers. He’s a man they have trouble trusting.
Conservatives may remember that after losing the South Carolina primary in 2000, McCain derided conservative evangelical leaders as wielding “evil influence” on the Republican Party. (“Evil influence” apparently means convincing people not to vote for John McCain.)
Now, he’s one of the believers.
Conservatives may wonder why McCain joined Russ Feingold in writing legislation that allows the federal government to dictate free speech in ways never before imagined. Or that he joined Ted Kennedy on an immigration bill that was opposed by most conservatives. Now, McCain sounds like he’s ready to join the Minutemen.
Free-market types may wonder why John McCain supports cap-and-trade schemes. Others may wonder why he not only buys into end-of-world global warming scenarios, but opposes drilling in ANWR — comparing that stretch of tundra in Alaska to the Grand Canyon and Florida Everglades. …
Invoking Goldwater Fred Barnes wants us to think about winning in November.
… McCain, probably alone among Republicans, can win this fall, but not without the full-blown support of conservatives. If he continues to reach out to them while running as a conservative, they need to heed Barry Goldwater’s advice in 1960. “Let’s grow up, conservatives,” he said. “If we want to take this party back, and I think we can, let’s get to work.”
The Captain looks at the Dem’s problems.
… What happens if Obama comes to the convention — and Hillary beats him with the superdelegates?
It could create a huge firestorm in Denver that could consume the party’s oxygen for the next several years. The African-American vote would see this as a stolen nomination and could walk away from the Democrats. Rank-and-file voters, especially those who supported Obama’s call for change in politics, would likely see this as smoke-filled-room maneuvering — which is exactly what it would be. The bitterness would extend to the House and Senate members of the superdelegate assembly who backed Clinton over Obama, and it could threaten the Democrats’ down-ticket races as well as their presidential election chances.
Under that scenario, would Hillary follow Bowers’ suggestion and push the superdelegates to support Obama and concede power? Or will Hillary and Bill lean heavily on them, call in their chits, and fracture the party on the chance that they could unite it afterwards? Given the Clintonian attraction to power, I’d call the latter scenario a lot more likely.
Another problem for them is the slime around Bill Clinton. Marty Peretz calls him out.
“The Clintons’ shadiest donors” are featured on an adjoining spot on our home page. Generally, it is not entirely new. Still, in accumulated detail, one cannot quite get over how Bill and Hillary live with these scummy personages. And have the insolence, besides, to lecture others on ethics in public life. I’ve made this point once before: the former president’s latest book should not have been called “Giving” but “Taking.”
In any case, we owe the New York Times enormous gratitude for having unearthed the tale of Bill Clinton’s shenanigans with Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, dictator of Kazakhstan …
Here’s the NY Times piece. You will read it in open-mouthed incredulousness.
Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton. …
… Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges. …
John Stossel writes on foreign adoption restrictions from our government.
Do you want to rescue an abandoned child and give him a loving home?
Don’t even try, says the U.S. State Department.
That’s not exactly what the bureaucrats said, but it’s close. The State Department says the Guatemalan adoption system “unduly enriches” so-called baby brokers and that “Guatemala has not established the required central authority to oversee intercountry adoption.”
“Central authority”? This from our government? They sound like Soviet apparatchiks. …
Evolutionary economics discovers what’s fair.
Because 99 percent of our evolutionary history was spent as hunter-gatherers living in small bands of a few dozen to a few hundred people, we evolved a psychology not always well equipped to reason our way around the modern world. What may seem like irrational behavior today may have actually been rational 100,000 years ago. Without an evolutionary perspective, the assumptions of Homo economicus—that “Economic Man†is rational, self-maximizing and efficient in making choices—make no sense. Take economic profit versus psychological fairness as an example.
Behavioral economists employ an experimental procedure called the Ultimatum Game. It goes something like this. You are given $100 to split between yourself and your game partner. Whatever division of the money you propose, if your partner accepts it, you are both richer by that amount. How much should you offer? Why not suggest a $90–$10 split? If your game partner is a rational, self-interested money maximizer, he isn’t going to turn down a free 10 bucks, is he? He is. Research shows that proposals that deviate much beyond a $70–$30 split are usually rejected. …
NY Times reports on bad air at the Chinese Olympics.
Every day, monitoring stations across the city measure air pollution to determine if the skies above this national capital can officially be designated blue. It is not an act of whimsy: with Beijing preparing to play host to the 2008 Olympic Games, the official Blue Sky ratings are the city’s own measuring stick for how well it is cleaning up its polluted air.
Thursday did not bring good news. The gray, acrid skies rated an eye-reddening 421 on a scale of 500, with 500 being the worst. Friday rated 500. Both days far exceeded pollution levels deemed safe by the World Health Organization. In Beijing, officials warned residents to stay indoors until Saturday, but residents here are accustomed to breathing foul air. …