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Ross Douthat was in Pickings October 14th with this Nobel advice.
This was Barack Obama’s chance.
Here was an opportunity to cut himself free, in a stroke, from the baggage that’s weighed his presidency down — the implausible expectations, the utopian dreams, the messianic hoo-ha.
Here was a place to draw a clean line between himself and all the overzealous Obamaphiles, at home and abroad, who poured their post-Christian, post-Marxist yearnings into the vessel of his 2008 campaign.
Here was a chance to establish himself, definitively, as an American president — too self-confident to accept an unearned accolade, and too instinctively democratic to go along with European humbug.
He didn’t take it. Instead, he took the Nobel Peace Prize.
Big mistake. …
Was Douthat right? Toby Harnden in the Daily Telegraph, UK has some answers.
… Obama will need all his famed rhetorical skills to persuade an angry Left, sceptical Americans and churlish Norwegians that he is a worthy recipient of the prize. By the end of Thursday, I’d hazard that he will well be wishing he’d never accepted the damn prize and had stayed at home trying to fix the economy instead.
The Daily Beast reports on some unhappiness in Oslo. Are they still in love? Not so much.
A day before President Obama receives his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the president’s treatment of his Norwegian hosts has become hot news across Scandinavia.
News outlets across the region are calling Obama arrogant for slashing some of the prize winners’ traditional duties from his schedule. “Everybody wants to visit the Peace Center except Obama,” sniped the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, amid reports the president would snub his own exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center. “A bit arrogant—a bit bad,” proclaimed another Aftenposten headline.
“It’s very sad,” said Nobel Peace Center Director Bente Erichsen of the news that Obama would skip the peace center exhibit. …
… “It’s very strange that he is unwilling to meet the press,” said Marie Simonsen, political editor at Dagbladet, one of Norway’s biggest daily newspapers. “I’m very disappointed. You get the impression he is not proud of the prize.” …
Jennifer Rubin liked parts of Obama’s speech.
… the president gives perhaps his most robust defense yet of America’s role in the world and of his responsibilities as a wartime commander in chief. Moreover, he uses the E world — yes, evil. He explains:
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago – “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak –nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
This will stick in the craw of the Left, which found George Bush hopelessly daft and downright dangerous for identifying “evildoers” and an “axis of evil” and which vilified (and still does) the vast neocon conspiracy (or Manichean conspiracy, as Peter Beinart recently sneered) — namely, those who have made the case for robust wars against the forces of evil that threaten America and the West. …
Roger Simon blogs on the Iran protests. Where is the leader of the free world during all of this?
It’s not a secret to readers of this site that I am not a fan of Barack Obama. I have not been since I learned he remained in the pews of the Reverend Wrights’ church for twenty years. But even more disturbing than that for me has been his Iran policy, which can described as somewhere between dysfunctional and reactionary. In the face of the incredibly brave freedom demonstrators – who, almost on a daily basis, put themselves at risk of beatings and death – we have from our president nothing but silence. Does the man have blood in his veins? This is real “hope,” yet he ignores it. Of course, the freedom fighters themselves have noticed, chanting in the streets “Obama, Obama, are you with us or are you with them?” Good question.
Now the action has escalated to the point that even the New York Times itself has noticed: “Iran’s broadest and most violent protest in months spilled over into a second day on Tuesday, as bloody clashes broke out on university campuses between students chanting antigovernment slogans and the police and Basij militia members.”
Michael Ledeen, as always, has more, including a violent confrontation between the Basij and the wife of reform leader Mousavi. But worth noting from the NYT coverage is the following: “Monday’s protests marked a striking escalation in direct attacks on the country’s theocratic foundation and not just on the June presidential elections, which the opposition has attacked as fraudulent. Protesters burned pictures of Ayatollah Khamenei, and even the father of the 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. They held up flags from which the “Allah” emblem, added after the revolution, had been removed.” …
…Meanwhile, if you want to stay updated on matters in Iran, as we all should, I would direct you to PJTV correspondent Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi’s Planet Iran. I will be on PJTV with Banafsheh discussing recent events in the country on Wednesday, but for now check out her site. It has many videos from Monday’s demonstrations – not to mention continued frustration on the part of the demonstrators with, you guessed it, Barack Obama.
Mark Steyn has a somber commentary on defending Western culture and values.
… “Think globally, act locally” works for environmentalism and jihad. Adherents of both causes are saving the planet from the same enemy — decadent capitalist infidels living empty consumerist lives. Both faiths claim their tenets are beyond discussion. Only another climate scientist can question the climate-science “consensus” … Likewise, on Islam, for an unbeliever to express a view is “Islamophobic.” As to which of these competing globalisms is less plausible, I leave it to readers: Barack Obama promises to lower the oceans; Hizb ut-Tahrir promises a global caliphate. The Guardian’s ecopalyptic Fred Pearce says Australia will be uninhabitable within a few years; Islam4UK says Britain will be under sharia within a few years. I’m not a betting man but if I had to choose . . .
“Think globally, act locally”: but, if you’re on the receiving end of globalized pathologies, it’s very hard to act locally. … If you truly believe that Islam is the cuckoo in your clock, you might ban new mosque construction or even Muslim immigration. Instead, they have banned a symbolic architectural flourish, while the mosque-building and the immigration continue — which means that one day the minaret ban will be overturned. And were the country a member of the European Union, even this forlorn gesture would not be permitted.
… Recently, the writer Barbara Kay testified to the House of Commons in Ottawa about a Jewish teacher at a francophone school in Ontario. Around 2002 she began to encounter explicitly anti-Semitic speech from Muslim students: “Does someone smell a Jew? It stinks here.” “You are not human, you are a Jew.” Had Anglo-Saxon skinheads essayed such jests, Oliver Kamm’s warriors of secular pluralism would have crushed them like bugs. But when the teacher went to the principal, and the school board, and the local “hate-crimes unit,” they all looked the other way and advised her that it would be easier if she retired. Sixty out of 75 French teachers at the school opted to leave: A couple were Jewish, a few more practicing Catholics, and most of the rest were the liberal secularists on whom Oliver Kamm’s defense of the West rests. The francophone children withdrew, too. And now the principal and most of the students and faculty are Muslim. …
In US News & World Report, MSNBC’s Michelle Bernard discusses her concerns about Obamacare.
I am black. I am a woman. And, with all due respect, I think Harry Reid has lost his mind.
Yesterday, on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Reid compared those who oppose his healthcare reform package to those who opposed ending slavery, fought against women’s suffrage, and thwarted civil rights. What’s next, Holocaust comparisons?
Many assume that given my race and gender, I would support the Senate health reform bill as a savior of the masses. I do not. And thousands, if not millions, of blacks, Hispanics, women, low-income, and at-risk communities feel the same.
There are many reasons why I don’t support the proposed healthcare legislation. I worry about how Congress’s regulations will drive up insurance premiums, a “public” option might strangle private health insurance, employer mandates might exacerbate the job crisis, and that ultimately this program will add to our already exploding debt. …
…I firmly believe that decisions about my care should be left between me and doctor. I worry that for millions of American women, these kinds of personal choices will increasingly become influenced by government bureaucrats. …
Ed Morrissey blogs about Canadian waiting lines, and Obama’s prescription for care in one town hall meeting.
Why does Cheryl Baxter’s story sound so familiar? Baxter needed a hip-replacement surgery, but since she lived in Canada, she had no choice but to wait for a surgical date that never came. Instead of curing her problem with the common surgery, Canadian doctors just gave her painkillers while she waited … and waited … and waited. Finally, as Reason TV reports, Baxter decided to head south for some free-market medicine and an actual cure:
The Canadian approach sounds familiar because it mirrors what Dr. Barack Obama offered five months ago in an ABC town-hall forum on ObamaCare:
Jane Sturm told the story of her nearly 100-year-old mother, who was originally denied a pacemaker because of her age. She eventually got one, but only after seeking out another doctor.
“Outside the medical criteria,” Sturm asked, “is there a consideration that can be given for a certain spirit … and quality of life?”
“I don’t think that we can make judgments based on peoples’ spirit,” Obama said. … “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking painkillers.“ …
Thomas Sowell explains how government destroys jobs and makes it more expensive for companies to hire workers. Here is the opening:
President Obama keeps talking about the jobs his administration is “creating” but there are more people unemployed now than before he took office. How can there be more unemployment after so many jobs have been “created”?
Let’s go back to square one. What does it take to create a job? It takes wealth to pay someone who is hired, not to mention additional wealth to buy the material that person will use.
But government creates no wealth. Ignoring that plain and simple fact enables politicians to claim to be able to do all sorts of miraculous things that they cannot do in fact. Without creating wealth, how can they create jobs? By taking wealth from others, whether by taxation, selling bonds or imposing mandates.
However it is done, transferring wealth is not creating wealth. When government uses transferred wealth to hire people, it is essentially transferring jobs from the private sector, not adding to the net number of jobs in the economy.
If that was all that was involved, it would be a simple verbal fraud, with no gain of jobs and no net loss. In reality, many other things that politicians do reduce the number of jobs. …
We have National Review shorts today. Here a few:
Liberals are pushing for a temporary surtax on the rich to fund the war in Afghanistan — and it is only to spare our readers eyestrain that we have omitted quotation marks around most of those qualifiers to indicate our disbelief. Keep in mind that we are still paying telephone taxes that were introduced as a temporary measure to get the rich to pay for the Spanish–American War. We should fund the wars by cutting domestic spending. Raising taxes on a weak economy would be masochism masquerading as virtue.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D., R.I.) said that the Catholic bishops ought to speed the passage of health-care legislation by dropping their objection to abortion funding. After his bishop, Thomas Tobin of Providence, criticized him in return, Kennedy claimed that the bishop had ordered the priests in his diocese not to give him communion because of his support for abortion. The bishop then clarified that the letter he sent Kennedy in early 2007 included a request, not an order: “I believe it is inappropriate for you to be receiving Holy Communion and I now ask respectfully that you refrain from doing so.” Public commentary has predictably centered on the alleged church-state issues raised by the bishop’s action. But the bishop is of course not ordering Kennedy to vote a certain way, nor can he. He is explaining the spiritual consequences of certain political decisions, as is his duty. Complicity in injustice — including the denial of legal protection to the unborn — takes a Catholic out of communion with his church. Moved by the same principle, the archbishop of New Orleans in 1962 took the stronger step of formally excommunicating Catholic politicians who supported white supremacy. Meanwhile, everyone is missing the real story. John F. Kennedy, Patrick’s uncle, was elected president nearly 50 years ago. It is not too soon for the bishops to outgrow the family’s mystique.
The Iranian government has done something curious, in regard to Shirin Ebadi. She is the lawyer and human-rights activist who, in 2003, won the Nobel Peace Prize. The government recently confiscated her Nobel medal and diploma. For good measure, according to reports, its goons beat up her husband and threatened close relatives. (Ebadi herself has been out of the country since June.) Ebadi has not been a particularly outspoken or troublesome critic of the regime. Indeed, some other activists have faulted her for her relative restraint. Yet the government has moved against her. Why? Ebadi has the shield of the Nobel Peace Prize. And yet the government felt it could move. Why? They are in a period of extreme boldness, Iran’s rulers. They believe they can do anything they like, without bringing the wrath of the “world community” down on them. What ever gave them that idea?
Boy Scouts have overcome many enemies over the years: mosquitoes, bears, anti-religious zealots, and gay-rights activists. Now the group has faced down its fiercest foe of all: the Service Employees International Union. After Kevin Anderson, a 17-year-old aspiring Eagle Scout in Allentown, Pa., cleared a new footpath in a public park, the local SEIU branch threatened to file a grievance, on the grounds that landscaping is union work. No great surprise there; the SEIU thinks government exists for the purpose of employing its members. But when word of the union’s power play got out, the outpouring of scorn from the public was merciless. The SEIU withdrew the complaint, its local officials resigned, and on Thanksgiving weekend, union members were among the 40 volunteers who performed repairs in Kimmets Rock Park — under Anderson’s supervision. However much the SEIU may like to throw its weight around, it’s no match for a Boy Scout with justice on his side.
Obama and the militant environmentalists march on, undeterred by facts and the Constitution. David Harsanyi explains.
Every now and then, apparently, history challenges us with a crisis far too important to be left to the democratic process or the vagaries of public opinion. In these instances, the enlightened, the powerful, the moral must act swiftly.
So sayeth the Obama administration this week, empowering the Environmental Protection Agency to police greenhouse gases as a danger to public health and welfare, giving the agency discretion to regulate . . . well, anything it pleases. Or, I should say, whatever is left.
“These long-overdue findings cement 2009′s place in history as the year when the United States government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas pollution and seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform,” explained EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. “This continues our work towards clean energy reform that will cut GHGs and reduce the dependence on foreign oil that threatens our national security and our economy.” …
…In effect, the EPA is warning most of the nation’s businesses that burdensome regulations are coming unless the president is suitably mollified with a law that severely caps carbon emissions. Or, in other words, figure out your own punishment, kids, or we’ll have to come up with one for you. You know, choice.
The administration also acts as if this is the last chance to save mankind, when, in fact, on the heels of the Climategate scandal, sagging poll numbers on warming hysteria and genuine economic worries (worries that would be exacerbated by more growth-inhibiting regulations) it might only be its last chance to cram through a framework for harsh emission standards.
Granted, there are a few obstacles standing in the way. Votes. People. Process. And so on . . . .
One of our favorites wails on one of our favorites. What to do? How ’bout we let you look for yourself. Christopher Hitchens discusses his dislike of Palin in no uncertain terms.
Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her. Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchanan button, but only because she thought it was the polite thing to do. She and her husband had both attended meetings of the Alaskan Independence Party—he as a member—but its name, she later tried to claim, only meant “independent.” (The AIP is a straightforward secessionist party.) She didn’t disbelieve all the evidence for evolution, only some of it. She hadn’t exactly said that God was on our side in Iraq, only that God and the United States were on the same side. She says that she left the University of Hawaii after only one year because the climate was too sunny for an Alaskan; her father (whom she considers practically infallible) tells her most recent biographers that she quit because of the preponderance of Asian and Pacific islanders: “They were a minority type thing and it wasn’t glamorous. So she came home.” And so on. As I tried to summarize the repeated tactic:
So there it is: anti-Washington except that she thirsts for it, and close enough (and also far enough away to be “deniable”) to the paranoid fringe element who darkly suggest that our president is a Kenyan communist. …
Now we’ll go back to an investigation of data about climate as reported to us by scientists. Jim Lindgren of Volokh Conspiracy has posted a lengthy inquiry by Willis Eschenbach of Watts Up With That. This post made Pickings long for the day. However, it is the end of the week, so if you are inclined to dig into this you will be rewarded by learning how data is manipulated or to put it more delicately, how “ inhomogeneities” are removed.
When the CRU at East Anglia disclosed that it had lost some of the raw temperature data, leaving only the “homogenized” data, some honest commentators expressed the hope that the homogenizing was competently done.
Anyone who has been following Climate Audit for the last few years knows that at least some of the adjustments to the raw data done by the major data depositories appear to have been incompetently done at best. The statistical techniques used in the scientific backwater of historical climatology are often ad hoc, bearing little relation to the techniques that are standard in other fields. In particular, their techniques for handling missing data are particularly unscientific.
Perhaps the most accessible blog post demonstrating the effects of homogenization adjustments on a set of temperature records is by Willis Eschenbach at Watts Up With That. …
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To get the full flow of the argument, please read Eschenbach’s whole post.
Turning declines in raw data into rises in one’s tables is one of the things that led to Michael Bellesiles’s resignation from Emory in the Arming America scandal.
Remember, people are usually at least somewhat circumspect in writing emails to professional colleagues around the world. Thus, is it likely that the corruption in this subfield of climatology is LESS serious or MORE serious than the scientists would disclose to their colleagues in their own emails?