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Remember the Newsweek article on glo’warming? Jeff Jacoby goes after it in two parts. Here’s part one.
… Meacham, … assures his readers, Newsweek’s climate-change anxieties rest “on the safest of scientific ground.”
Do they? Then why is the tone of Sharon Begley’s cover story — nine pages in which anyone skeptical of the claim that human activity is causing global warming is painted as a bought-and-paid-for lackey of the coal and oil industries — so strident and censorious? Why the relentless labeling of those who point out weaknesses in the global-warming models as “deniers,” or agents of the “denial machine,” or deceptive practitioners of “denialism?” Wouldn’t it be more effective to answer the challengers, some of whom are highly credentialed climate scientists in their own right, with scientific data and arguments, instead of snide insinuations of venality and deceit? Do Newsweek and Begley really believe that everyone who dissents from the global-warming doomsaying does so in bad faith? …
… A few weeks ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis published an article opposing mandatory limits on carbon-dioxide emissions, arguing that Congress should not impose caps until the technology exists to produce energy that doesn’t depend on carbon dioxide. In response to Lewis’s reasonable piece, the president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, Michael Eckhart, issued a threat:
“Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America.”
This is the zealotry and intolerance of the auto-da-fé. The last place it belongs is in public-policy debate. …
John Fund has good news for the Supremes.
Good news for Chief Justice John Roberts: Everyone knows the American people lack confidence in the White House and Congress right now, but a new Quinnipiac University poll finds that, of the three branches of the federal government, Americans have the most confidence in the Supreme Court. …
Debra Saunders notes many disquieting things about John Edwards. We dodged a bullet in 2004. He was almost the vice president.
… Every time an Edwards opens his or her trap, you can feel the desperation. And no matter how nasty they get, it can’t help, because John Edwards’ biggest problem is that he comes across as the biggest phony in the race.
He’s the swell who charged UC Davis $55,000 — for a 2006 speech on poverty; the self-styled populist who not only treated himself to two $400 haircuts, but also passed the tab along to his campaign; the global warming scold who built a 28,000-square-foot mansion.
Edwards is so full of himself that he doesn’t do his homework. He demanded that fellow Democrats forswear contributions from Rupert Murdoch, the man behind Fox News — oblivious to the fact that Murdoch’s HarperCollins had paid him a $500,000 advance, and $300,000 in expenses, for Edward’s 2006 book, “Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.”
Elizabeth Edwards disingenuously told the Progressive that when her husband voted for the war resolution, “Mostly the antiwar cry was from people who weren’t hearing what he was hearing. And the resolution wasn’t really to go to war. The resolution, if you recall, was forcing (President) Bush to go to the U.N. first.”
That’s simply not true. The resolution title was clear: “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.” There was no language requiring Bush to win U.N. approval.
And how does Edwards deal with a vote he now calls a mistake? At a February Democratic forum, John Edwards crowed, “I think I was the first, at least close to being the first, to say very publicly that I was wrong.”
Elizabeth Edwards is trashing the front-running Democrats because her husband is trailing in the presidential primary — and rather than take each of them on directly, he is hiding behind his wife’s skirt.
Victor Davis Hanson on anonymous abusers.
… More often, the misuse of anonymity involves journalists’ “unnamed” sources. Michael Isikoff wrote a story in 2005 for Newsweek, apparently based on an anonymous but “solid, well-placed” source, that told of callous military guards at Guantanamo flushing a Koran down the toilet.
The account turned out to be false, but the supposed blasphemy may have caused riots in the Islamic world — and untold damage to the prestige of the U.S. military at a time of war. Yet Isikoff never identified from whom he got such a tale or why he rushed to print something so explosive based on evidence so shaky.
Then, of course, there was CBS anchorman Dan Rather, whose career imploded over the use of anonymity. An unnamed source had given CBS News a supposedly authentic memo showing that George W. Bush had weaseled out of many National Guard obligations. But despite Rather’s insistence that the anonymous source was reliable, bloggers easily demonstrated how the document was an abject forgery.
What can we learn from all this — while savoring the irony of authors and journalists fudging on their own ethical standards as they race to uncover the supposed ethical lapses of their government officials?
If an “I accuse” author like Scott Thomas Beauchamp or Michael Scheuer avoids using his own name, or reporters like Dan Rather or Michael Isikoff won’t name a source for a potentially history-changing story, there is often a good suspicion why: They apparently don’t look forward to questions about why — and how exactly — they wrote what they wrote.
Instead, anonymity gives them free rein as judge and jury, exempt from cross-examination. This “trust me” practice goes against the very grain of the American tradition of allowing the aggrieved the right to face his accusers. …
George Will with a nifty column combining a history lesson with a warning about the Hillary tendencies.
… Clinton leapt to explain the subprime problem in the terms of liberalism’s master narrative — the victimization of the many by the few. In a speech favorably contrasting a “shared responsibility” society with an “on your own” society, she said, in effect, that distressed subprime borrowers are not responsible for their behavior. “Unsavory” lenders, she said, had used “unfair lending practices.” Doubtless there are as many unsavory lenders as there are unsavory politicians. So, voters and borrowers: caveat emptor.
But this, too, is true: Every improvident loan requires an improvident borrower to seek and accept it. Furthermore, when there is no penalty for folly — such as getting a variable-rate mortgage that will be ruinous if the rate varies upward — folly proliferates. To get a mortgage is usually to commit capitalism; it is to make an investment in the hope of gain. And if lenders know that whenever they go too far and require inexpensive money the Federal Reserve will provide it with low interest rates, then going too far will not really be going too far.
In 2008, as voters assess their well-being, several million households with adjustable-rate home mortgages will have their housing costs increase. Defaults, too, will increase. That will be a perverse incentive for the political class to be compassionate toward themselves in the name of compassion toward borrowers, with money to bail out borrowers. If elected politicians controlled the Federal Reserve, they would lower interest rates. Fortunately, we have insulated the Federal Reserve from democracy. …
Speaking of the sub-prime problem, Dick Armey thinks the market has the proper cure, and intervention will only make things worse.
… When you go beyond the demagoguery and look at the economics, it is clear the mortgage market is correcting itself and that a government bailout would only make matters worse. …
… Subprime loans have expanded homeownership by introducing new, risk-laden borrowers to the market. As in any market, the price of a loan reflects this added risk by the lender. Even in the best of times, subprime loans are much more likely to go into default, given their greater inherent risk. …
… Let’s put this in perspective. For all of the media’s hysteria, less than 15% of the 44 million mortgages in America are in the subprime sector. As a total of all mortgages, foreclosure rates are 0.6%, up slightly from 0.5% last year.
While these foreclosures are often individually difficult, this hardly has the potential for wholesale economic catastrophe. Losses are estimated to be $35 billion at most — equivalent to a stock market decline of 0.2%, according to Stephen Cecchetti of Brandeis University.
The real estate and mortgage markets are a textbook example of a market imbalance and its inevitable correction. Lenders overexposed to subprime loans, such as New Century, lost their bets and are now in bankruptcy. While the subprime market will be painful in the short term, it will inevitably lead to a healthier economy in the long run. …
Remember last week when the Boston Globe treated us to the Harvard study of ‘diversity gone awry’? Daniel Henninger looks at the implications.
Diversity was once just another word. Now it’s a fighting word. One of the biggest problems with diversity is that it won’t let you alone. Corporations everywhere have force-marched middle managers into training sessions led by “diversity trainers.” Most people already knew that the basic idea beneath diversity emerged about 2,000 years ago under two rubrics: Love thy neighbor as thyself, and Do unto others as they would do unto you. Then suddenly this got rewritten as “appreciating differentness.”
George Bernard Shaw is said to have demurred from the Golden Rule. “Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” Shaw advised. “Their tastes may not be the same.” No such voluntary opt-out is permissible in our time. The parsons of the press made diversity into a secular commandment; do a word-search of “diversity” in a broad database of newspapers and it might come up 250 million times. In the Supreme Court term just ended, the Seattle schools integration case led most of the justices into arcane discussions of diversity’s legal compulsions. More recently it emerged that the University of Michigan, a virtual Mecca of diversity, announced it would install Muslim footbaths in bathrooms, causing a fight.
Now comes word that diversity as an ideology may be dead, or not worth saving. Robert Putnam, the Harvard don who in the controversial bestseller “Bowling Alone” announced the decline of communal-mindedness amid the rise of home-alone couch potatoes, has completed a mammoth study of the effects of ethnic diversity on communities. His researchers did 30,000 interviews in 41 U.S. communities. Short version: People in ethnically diverse settings don’t want to have much of anything to do with each other. “Social capital” erodes. Diversity has a downside.
Ann Coulter gives the lowdown on the left’s loony liars.
… Joe Wilson went from being billed in the media as a trusted adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and billed (by himself) as an eyewitness to the president’s “lies,” to being an apron-wearing househusband who had been sent on an errand by his wife.
Not only did he fail to debunk the Niger yellowcake story, he also forgot to bring home the quart of milk his wife had requested. (Wilson is now demanding a congressional investigation into who leaked the classified information that his wife wears the pants in the family.)
The Joe Wilson celebrity tour officially ended when The Washington Post editorialized: “It’s unfortunate that so many people took (Wilson) seriously” — not the least of whom were reporters at The Washington Post itself.
Most recently, The New Republic’s “Baghdad Diarist” has been unveiled as a liar, another illustrious chapter in that magazine’s storied history of publishing con men and frauds.
If conservatives are the ones driven by ideological passions, then why are liberals the ones always falling for laughable hoaxes in support of their anti-war ideological agenda? And if liberal beliefs are true, why do they need all the phony stunts to prove them? How about liberals keep hoaxes out of politics and return them to their rightful place: “proving” Darwinian evolution.
Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, exposes the nursing home problems in the socialist paradise. This, in a country with billions in oil revenues.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported Wednesday that it’s becoming more and more difficult for elderly Norwegians to get a bed in a nursing home, nearly all of which are public institutions in Norway. Few private options exist.
The vast majority of those who are allocated a nursing home room are over 90 years old, and those who win admission also are much weaker and sicker than successful applicants were just 10 years ago. …
… So serious have nursing home deficiencies become that the government minister in charge of health and social care, Sylvia Brustad of the Labour Party, had to promise an investigation this week into charges that those who do secure a spot in state homes are often undernourished. …
Slate’s Explainer tells why lead is used in paint.
… Why would a toymaker ever use lead paint?
Because it’s bright, durable, flexible, fast-drying, and cheap. Paint manufacturers mix in different lead compounds depending on the color of the paint. Lead chromates, for example, can enhance a yellow or orange hue. Municipal workers often use lead paint because it resists the color-dimming effects of ultraviolet light: The double yellow line in the middle of the road? That’s loaded with lead. …
Right Coast with the solution to Chinese quality problems.
… the market is already reacting.
Consumers are thinking twice about buying no-name Chinese products with long lists of ingredients. U.S. distributors are checking their sources. Retailers, especially those who stock a lot of Chinese goods, are becoming a lot more concerned about their reputations. And Chinese firms and their partners are investing in brands.
How does all this happen? Firm by firm, case by case and step by step. You might recall the recent case of the 1.5million Thomas & Friends toy rail cars and accessories with lead paint. Fair or not, Thomas & Friends has lost quite a chunk of its brand-name capital, and its very survival is in question. No doubt Thomas & Friends has some new protocols.
How long will it take for the market to respond? Pretty much the same amount of time it takes other branded toy manufacturers to check and recheck for lead paint on their products. …