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Gabriel Schoenfeld parses the Dem Iraq rhetoric.
… Last night I listened to Henry Kissinger speak at a dinner (honoring Norman Podhoretz for his new book) that was put on by the amazing trio running Power Line. He made one point that struck me with special force: American withdrawal from Iraq will be an unmistakable American defeat, and the consequences will not be long-term, they will be immediate and grave.
No one can predict the future, but Kissinger’s analysis and warning seems irrefutable. Is that what America wants? This election is shaping up to be even more critical than the Carter-Reagan choice of 1980. Am I correct in thinking that, of the post-war elections, only the Nixon-McGovern race in 1972 had more riding on it?
Mark Steyn reminds us that lost in the Canterbury flap were some of the outrageous inroads the fundamentalist Moslems have made in British culture.
The other day I got an e-mail from a British reader passing on a low-key press release. It announced that the Department for Work and Pensions had ruled that polygamous men were entitled to receive spousal welfare benefits for each of their wives. My correspondent then wondered whether I’d planted someone deep within Her Majesty’s Government “who comes out with this stuff just to boost sales of your book?â€
Well, no, that would be pretty expensive. Still, to reprise the line of Canadian cynics apropos James Jesus Angleton’s belief that Pierre Trudeau was on the Soviet payroll: Why bother paying someone when he’s prepared to do it for free? Every day around the developed world, minor government bureaucrats get advice from minor government lawyers and make small incremental adjustments to Western civilization. “Where there is a valid polygamous marriage the claimant and one spouse will be paid the couple rate,†read the new British guidelines. “The amount payable for each additional spouse is presently £33.65.â€
You can’t (for the moment) marry multiple wives within the United Kingdom, but if you contract a polygamous marriage in a jurisdiction where polygamy is legal, such as certain, ahem, Muslim countries, your better halves (or better eighths?) are now recognized as eligible for British welfare payments. Thus the concept of “each additional spouse†has been accepted both de facto and de jure. …
A post from the Captain reminds us of more Clinton slime.
Interesting campaign analysis from Charlie Cook of National Journal.
One of the fascinating byproducts of this remarkable presidential campaign is that so many people, not just political junkies, are watching with rapt attention.
My 18-year-old, fairly apolitical son was recently grilling me about the race, and I found myself saying that there had not been such a weird and turbulent presidential campaign in my lifetime.
In fact, I told him I doubted I would ever see one like it again. …
WSJ Editors note more studies showing the foolishness of ethanol.
The ink is still moist on Capitol Hill’s latest energy bill and, as if on cue, a scientific avalanche is demolishing its assumptions. To wit, trendy climate-change policies like ethanol and other biofuels are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Then again, Washington’s energy neuroses are more political than practical, so it’s easy for the Solons and greens to ignore what would usually be called evidence. …
John Stossel thinks the stimulus is nonsense.
… The federal government is in the red. Bush’s new budget has a $400 billion deficit. There’s no lockbox with $100 billion in it. So to give everyone a tax rebate, the government will have to borrow more money. But that only moves the cash from one part of the economy to another. As (George Mason University economist) Roberts says, “It’s like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end.” …
… Economists call this the “broken window fallacy.” In the 19th century, French economist Frederic Bastiat illustrated it with the story of a boy who breaks a shop window. At first the townspeople lament the loss, but then someone points out that the shopkeeper will have to spend money to replace the window. What the window maker earns, he will soon spend elsewhere. As that money circulates through town, new prosperity will bloom.
The fallacy, of course, is that if the window had not been broken, the shopkeeper would have “replaced his worn-out shoes … or added another book to his library.” The town gains nothing from the broken window.
This logic is lost on the stimulus promoters. I’m surprised they don’t suggest that we prevent recessions by breaking lots of windows. …
ECO – World gives us the latest case against globalony.
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. …
John Tierney on NASCAR physics.
When Junior Johnson entered the Daytona 500 in 1960, he’d already achieved fame in two careers — first as a moonshiner who kept outrunning federal agents, then by applying those skills to win stock-car races.
Now he was ready for a new career as an “intuitive physicist,†a term borrowed from Diandra Leslie-Pelecky, who teaches nonintuitive physics at the University of Nebraska.
Johnson was stuck driving an old Chevrolet that was slower than the Pontiacs at Daytona that year. But in practice he discovered that he could keep up with a Pontiac if he stayed close to its rear bumper. He suspected, as he put it, that “the air was creating a situation, a slipstream type of thing.†…