Bent Notes

I haven’t had much to say about where I stand regarding benefit of the doubt for the president-elect.  Certainly it’s on my mind a lot.  There’s no shortage of column space in this world devoted to the subject, that’s for sure. 

After much swirling around of my thoughts and feelings on the matter, I’ve landed on something pretty close to what Michael Medved comes up with in his Townhall.com piece today.  Barack Obama remains, in my estimation, a hardcore leftwinger with truly frightening policy proclivities and a majority of personality traits that I find off-putting if not disgusting.  That said, there is no alternative universe to run to.  He will take the oath of office on January 20.  He is assembling his administration in the most precarious time I have personally ever witnessed.  It would be foolish to wish him anything but the best - the most refined judgement he can muster,  and the most favorable circumstances fate can bestow.

The unfortunate quality of Medved’s let’s-hold-off-and-see-what-he-puts-in-place stance is that, given the dizzying pace with which economic and security-related events are unfolding, as well as the aggressiveness with which Obama is pursuing his vision, it becomes more superceded hourly by developments that we must decry as alarming.

Today’s Wall Street Journal is full of articles, columns and editorial comment that make plain the madness of the FHer regime’s approach.  Everything about it is the exact opposite of a real remedy for the ills of the day.  On page A8, for instance, is a story about how the regulatory machine is gearing up.  Top Obama aide Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, crows that the “agenda is going to be bold.”  “Activists” will run the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the EPA and the Department of Labor.

One can see it coming, like the next stage of a cancer:  The very measures that have damaged and possibly killed our domestic auto industry - unsustainable UAW contracts, CAFE standards - are just the beginning of what the new regime wants to impose on the (formerly) Big Three.  The editorial page of today’s WSJ features a required-reading alarm bell entitled “The Environmental Motor Company.”

Let’s continue to extend the benefit of the doubt where we can as much as we can, but let’s also plainly state things that become clear.  One is the fact that the new administration is going to distort the notion of private ownership of business, base policy on a sham scientific concept (climate change), and seize more of citizens’ assets to pay for it.  This, at a time when the economy is screaming for people to be able to keep more of what they are earning.

The American public voted for this to transpire.  That may be the most disorientingly irrational aspect of our current juncture.  These are not times to expect encouragement for proceeding in a sane and rigorously reasoned way.  The kudos in post-modern America go to those who conduct their affairs in the opposite manner.

Al Gore’s favorite source of “scientific validation” for his apocalyptic spasms gets one wrong.  Real wrong.

Sure on the surface, it looks like his forthright assertion that his cap-and-trade scheme’s effects of “skyrocketing prices” for coal-engendered energy and the bankrupting of the coal industry is all about his principled fealty to pristine air.  Don’t kid yourself.  It’s all about a Stalinist thug’s lust for absolute power.

Two great posts at Powerline today:  A report on the unraveling of the climate-change “consensus,” and a 69th birthday greeting to Dion DiMucci.

The mixed bag that is our current juncture is very mixed indeed.  Just as Iraq is looking like a stable, unified country ready to take its place as a player in its region and in the struggle against jihadism, the danger from its neighbor to the east, Iran, looks like it’s reaching critical mass.  Domestically, productivity and employment remain high, while bank failures blemish the landscape and inflation, a negligible factor for years, has come roaring back.

America is screaming for clarity and leadership.  Or maybe the problem is that it’s not screaming for clarity and leadership,at least en masse in sufficient numbers.  There is nothing plaguing us that adherence to the time-honored principles that have paved our way out of every similar past situation wouldn’t cure.

You do see little glimpses of it here and there.  Thank God W finally said that we need to drill for oil.  If the man who hopes to succeed him as a GOP president can find a graceful way to put his previous pristine-ANWR statements behind him (I guess I am calling for McCain to flip-flop, which isn’t per se a bad thing, if your previous position was stupid) and point out the stark difference between the corporation-bashing of the Freedom-Haters and the overwhelming obvious good sense of turning loose oil companies anywhere it seems likely that there’s oil, he and the congressional candidates of his pary may have a chance.

There are hopeful signs that the public is likewise beginning to see that the core of the banking and mortgage mess is likewise fairly simple: easy credit and shaky responsibility met head-on and shareholders, depositors and taxpayers were left holding the bag.  A little of that is sufficient to make the vast majority of timely bill-payers say, “Now hold on, here.  Why am I taking a whuppin’ for someone else’s failure to live up to his obligations?”

What I do not understand is this sudden overture the W administration is making to Iran.  Sending Under-Secretary of State William Burns to meet with his theocratic counterpart?  How does that jibe with the recent stories about W giving Israel an “amber light” to take care of business regarding a nuke program?  It may be that there is some highly sensitive factor at play here, some consideration that must be kept tightly under wraps for the time being, but I feel that W owes the American people at least some kind of statement along the lines of “I know this looks like an abrupt turnabout, but if it leads to the favorable changes we anticipate, I will explain it thoroughly in due course.”

Yes, it’s a complicated world.  That’s all the more reason to have a consistent set of bedrock principles that guide us as we encounter all manner of wacky twists and turns and some real threats.  In a sense, it’s like having a chart in front of you when you’re playing music.  If you get lost in the tune, you can’t blame the piece of paper on the stand.

Robert Tracinski says that the green-lifestyle pussy-footing and token gestures of the trendy celebs and the Freedom-Haters is their way of feeling good without really carrying that stuf they spew to its logical conclusion: dismantling Western civilization and living like squalid peasants.

Larry Kudlow interviews Alaska governor Sarah Palin.  This is the stuff that can win elections.  This is the stuff that can rescue America and Western civilization.

Here’s how dire our situation is.  Neither our (ostensible) guy nor the Chicago Marxist were present for the climate-change bill vote in the Senate (which, thankfully, was shot down), but staffers from each office said their bosses both would have been yays.

Per the post below, McCain ain’t our Travis, so I’ guess we’ll each just have to channel his spirit our own bad selves.

One of the five finest opinion writers on the planet today gives us the last word on Shultz, Durbin et al.

(Who are the other four?  What a delicious discussion-thread topic.)

30,000 - count ‘em - 30,000 scientists who say man-made global warming is a bunch of hooey.

He Who Definitely Doesn’t Walk On Water in Oregon, pronouncing on Iran and Venezuela and environmental leadership.

Oh, and on Good Morning America, he tries to  delare his wife untouchable.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has listed the polar bear as an endangered species.

We are so hosed.

Blogging has been light the past few days.  That’s because life is good, professionally speaking.  I’ve knocked out a couple of things for Indie-music.com’s May issue - a review of a lackluster CD, but also a very cool interview to which I’ll link when it comes out.  Also doing some copywriting for a PR / marketing guy I’ve worked for over the years.  I also had to do next Sunday’s Republic column (on why nuclear proliferation isn’t a bigger issue this political season).  I’ve also been lining up musical associates for several upcoming gigs.  Also grading papers and getting ready to administer tonight’s final exam.

I have been paying attention to the world around me, though.  It’s wacky out there, ain’t it?

Were you like me when you heard about Miley Cyrus’s Vanity Fair photo shoot?  I immediately thought, “Oh, no, our sordid, rotten culture nabs another Disney kid.”

I doubt if Obama’s denunciation of Rev. Wright yesterday ends the matter.  That would depend on the Trash Talker from Trinity not shooting his mouth off any more.  How likely is that?  Plus, He Who definitely Doesn’t Walk On Water sounded, shall we say, less than resolute when he said, “I mean it.”  Not the man he met twenty years ago?  Oh, please.  And if he’s that poor a judge of character, we sure as hell don’t want him sitting down one-on-one with Kim, Ahmadinejad and Chavez.

Iran looks to be a front-burner issue.  There’s yet another warning-shot-to-a-speedboat incident in the Persian Gulf, another American aircraft carrier sailing into that body of water, more proof of Iranian weapons and Iran-trained bad guys turning up in Iraq, and, of course, Dennis Ross’s warning to that Toronto congregation that the West has less than a year to prevent Iran from having nukes.

Gas prices won’t be coming down any time soon, for two main reasons: Mideast tensions and Congress’s refusal to allow drilling in places like ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico.

Environmentalists aren’t just dweebs; they’re agents of misery.  Riot-causing food shortages are menacing the entire world, in no small part because of the diversion of perfectly edible grain into biofuel production.

Zimbabwe’s oppostion is bravely trying to see that political justice and national stability prevail.  Robert Mugabe is showing us how evil dictators operate when they have no more ability to dress up their motives as anything civilized, like “the national interest.”

As I say, it’s wacky out there, ain’t it?

An Investors Business Daily editorial on the faux-Iwo Jima Time cover.

Hugh Hewitt has been doing great work following the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s wrongheaded and potentially disastrous attempt to get the polar bear listed as an endangered species.

http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/9f0cc053-5d87-4799-9aaa-083a5e2fdb84

The Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, now taking place in New York.  http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/newyork08.cfm

 A whole different bag from the Bali confab at which Al Gore was deified.

That’s how the founder of the Weather Channel characterizes global warming.  By the way, Icecap, the site where his article appears, is a great resource.  Check out the Facts & Myths page.

Tom Borelli says Pepsico’s genuflection before the green goons is gumming up the works for shareholders.

An MSM meteorologist says there are “inaccuracies” in An Inconvenient Truth.  What occasioned his remark was a British father of a public-school child protesting the pumping of propaganda into his kid’s brain.  My kind of dad.  My kind of weather guy.

Must be getting near the end of the line for eco-hysteria if the House That Ted built is weighing in like this.

I run into situations like this from time to time at the nexus of my professional life and my life as a human being with deeply held convictions.

Seven area restaurants are contributing special dishes - a lot of them pumpkin-related, given the season we’re entering into - to an event early next month called Sustainable Table.  It’s a fundraiser for the Bloomington chapter of the Sierra Club.  Because these are indeed cool, creative dishes, and because I know a lot of the chefs and proporietors involved, it ought to be the kind of thing I’d talk up on Stirring Something Up, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to help the Sierra Club further its agenda.

So I’ll just find other stuff to talk about.