EVENING EDITION:  MAY 23,  2008

Posted at 7:08 p.m. ET

POLLS

It's a holiday weekend, which may explain why Gallup didn't publish any new trackers today.  Rasmussen did, showing both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a tie with John McCain in the general election. 

Once again Senator Clinton shows great strength.  It's hard to believe that this is all a pro-Clinton vote.  I suspect there is now real resistance among many voters to Obama, who seems to be spending a great deal of quality time explaining past positions, never a good sign for a politician under scrutiny.

Still, it's a Democratic year, and McCain will have to work extremely hard to overcome the national bias, and the press bias, to defeat the cash-rich Obama.

May 23, 2008.      Permalink          

GAFFE OF GAFFES

Obama has been anointed, but, even so, Clinton didn't need the gaffe that uttered forth from her mouth today in an interview with a South Dakota paper:

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

The Obama forces responded:

"Sen. Clinton's statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign," Obama campaign spokesman said in a statement.

Clinton later apologized:

"I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation and in particular the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that whatsoever," the former first lady said.

When one describes the virtues of Hillary Clinton, the word "integrity" does not come immediately to mind.  However, in this case, when you look at the context of the incident, her apology is probably sincere.  Citing an assassination is always risky, though, and, with an African-American running, is doubly insensitive.  This comment will hurt Clinton, and may eliminate any chance, tiny as it already was, that she could be picked for the Obama ticket.

May 23, 2008.      Permalink          

NOONAN ON HILLARY

It hasn't been a good day for the senator from New York.  Peggy Noonan comes down hard on Hillary Clinton for suggesting that sexism has played a role in the campaign against her: 

It is insulting, because it asserts that those who supported someone else this year were driven by low prejudice and mindless bias.

It is manipulative, because it asserts that if you want to be understood, both within the community and in the larger brotherhood of man, to be wholly without bias and prejudice, you must support Mrs. Clinton.

It is not true. Tough hill-country men voted for her, men so backward they'd give the lady a chair in the union hall. Tough Catholic men in the outer suburbs voted for her, men so backward they'd call a woman a lady. And all of them so naturally courteous that they'd realize, in offering the chair or addressing the lady, that they might have given offense, and awkwardly joke at themselves to take away the sting. These are great men. And Hillary got her share, more than her share, of their votes. She should be a guy and say thanks.

It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton's supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.

It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say "Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other's bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it's like that for the boys and for the girls."

And because the charge of sexism is all of the above, it is, ultimately, undermining of the position of women. Or rather it would be if its source were not someone broadly understood by friend and foe alike to be willing to say anything to gain advantage.

Well, take that, Senator.  And I thought Peggy Noonan had gone soft, and that her Reaganesque spine had begun to curve.  This is Noonan in the old form.  I don't entirely agree with her.  Some of the slurs against Clinton were inappropriate, even if "inappropriate" is her own middle name.  But, on balance, Noonan gets it right. 

Clinton will now return to the Senate, where she will plot her next move.  There is talk of her becoming majority leader.  However, having worked for a senator, I can tell you that senators don't like to be manipulated.  I doubt if they'd rush to depose Harry Reid simply to pacify the Clintons, who are today without much power in their own party. 

One thing that is sure:  There'll now be a new industry in books about the Clintons.  Soap operas, if one judges from TV, have long lives.

May 23, 2008.      Permalink           

FRIDAY:  MAY 23,  2008

Posted at 6:58 a.m. ET

JUNK SCIENCE = JUNK POLITICS

"Global warming" is the in-cause of the decade.  But any thoughtful person - which rules out much of our political and journalistic class - should have questions about the quick-and-easy arguments of Al Gore and his chorus line of "scientists." 

Now S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and the former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, writes an important piece for The New York Sun, taking on the alarmists, pointing out the extent of the dissent among real environmental researchers, and outlining the problems with the "consensus" on global warming, a consensus that he argues does not exist:

The science-based arguments for a more rational approach to global warming and climate change can be summarized as follows:

* The Earth's climate always has changed, with cycles of both warming and cooling, long before humans were a factor. The cycle lengths range from decades, to the 1,500-year cycle discovered in Greenland ice cores, to the 17 ice ages that dominated the past 2 million years.

* The NIPCC report presents solid evidence that any man-made global warming to date has been insignificant in comparison with these natural climate cycles. By contrast, the IPCC has no real evidence to support their claim of anthropogenic global warming.

* While recent man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide may, in principle, make some contribution to temperature rise, the linkages assumed in order to predict significant future global warming are not proven.

* Contrary to the computer simulations of climate models, temperatures have not risen over the last decade — despite a continuing rise in CO2 levels.

* Other factors, such as variable solar activity, solar wind, and cosmic rays, all seem to have a more significant impact on the earth's climate.

* Panicky reactions to exaggerated scenarios of global warming are bound to be costly and do great damage to world economic development.

* Adaptation, not mitigation, is a more appropriate response to climate change — particularly for poorer countries.

Read the whole thing.  Highly recommended.  There actually are people, like Fred Singer, who know something about the subject.  What I'd also like to see now is a series of articles in a responsible publication based on the first rule of journalism - "follow the money."  Who's making money on global warming?  Who's losing?  How is the distribution of grant funds and fellowships affecting our "knowledge" of the subject?  How many of the "public-spirited citizens" among the alarmists have investments in "new technologies"? 

The answers, if correct, could be fascinating.

May 23, 2008.      Permalink          

HILLARY FOR VEEP?

Well, the trial balloons are up.  The hints are out.  The leaks are flowing.  We're told by The New York Times that the campaign to get Hillary Clinton the v.p. nod on the Democratic line is underway:

While Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers insist that she is determined to win the Democratic nomination, friends of the couple say that former President Bill Clinton, for one, has begun privately contemplating a different outcome for her: As Senator Barack Obama’s running mate.

The reports about Mr. Clinton’s musings surface as the Obama camp has quietly begun the process of searching for a partner on the Democratic ticket.

And...

Friends of the former president say his musings have been more casual: He believes that an Obama-Clinton ticket could help unify the party, and he thinks she has earned a meeting with Mr. Obama to discuss the possibility.

According to these friends, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to be identified revealing private talks, Mr. Clinton believes that his wife’s victories in major primary battles, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and the 16 million votes cast for her candidacy make her the proper choice for Mr. Obama.

“If she’s not going to be the nominee, then he wants her in the second spot,” said one friend of the Clintons. “In the long run, it’s the best way for her to run again in 2016.”

Ah, there's the rub.  The Clintons do nothing except that which advances the Clintons.  I have no doubt that 2016 is the key number in Clinton planning right now.  It could even be 2012, if Obama loses.  (I just heard Hillary mutter, "From your mouth to God's ear.")  But I really wonder how wise Obama would be to choose someone whose disloyalty would be obvious.  And would he want Bill Clinton strolling through the executive offices giving advice?  Somehow, I think he's looking elsewhere.

May 23, 2008.      Permalink          

OBAMA'S FOREIGN ADVENTURES

Charles Krauthammer examines Barack Obama's latest struggle to convince the country that he's sound on foreign policy.  Of course, it might be a good idea for Senator Obama actually to become sound on foreign policy before trying to convince us that he is.  Krauthammer:

Before the Democratic debate of July 23, Barack Obama had never expounded upon the wisdom of meeting, without precondition, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, Hugo Chávez, Kim Jong Il or the Castro brothers. But in that debate, he was asked about doing exactly that. Unprepared, he said sure -- then got fancy, declaring the Bush administration's refusal to do so not just "ridiculous" but "a disgrace."

After that, there was no going back. So he doubled down. What started as a gaffe became policy. By now, it has become doctrine. Yet it remains today what it was on the day he blurted it out: an absurdity.

And...

Most of the time you don't negotiate with enemy leaders because there is nothing to negotiate. Does Obama imagine that North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela are insufficiently informed about American requirements for improved relations?

And...

Obama pretends that while he is for such "engagement," the cowboy Republicans oppose it. Another absurdity. No one is debating the need for contacts. The debate is over the stupidity of elevating rogue states and their tyrants, easing their isolation, and increasing their leverage by granting them unconditional meetings with the president of the world's superpower.

And...

A meeting with Ahmadinejad would not just strengthen and vindicate him at home, it would instantly and powerfully ease the mullahs' isolation, inviting other world leaders to follow. And with that would come a flood of commercial contracts, oil deals, diplomatic agreements -- undermining the very sanctions and isolation that Obama says he would employ against Iran.

As every seasoned diplomat knows, the danger of a summit is that it creates enormous pressure for results. And results require mutual concessions. That is why conditions and concessions are worked out in advance, not on the scene.

Finally...

Having lashed himself to the ridiculous, unprecedented promise of unconditional presidential negotiations -- and then having compounded the problem by elevating it to a principle -- Obama keeps trying to explain. On Sunday, he declared in Pendleton, Ore., that by Soviet standards Iran and others "don't pose a serious threat to us." (On the contrary. Islamic Iran is dangerously apocalyptic. Soviet Russia was not.) The next day in Billings, Mont.: "I've made it clear for years that the threat from Iran is grave."

That's the very next day, mind you. Such rhetorical flailing has done more than create an intellectual mess. It has given rise to a new political phenomenon: the metastatic gaffe. The one begets another, begets another, begets . . .

Will the American people get this message in time?  With all the false talk floating around that a McCain victory would mean a third Bush term, reader Jon Dorbecker refers me to a piece that argues that Obama's election would mean a Jimmy Carter second term.  That is a nightmare.

May 23, 2008.      Permalink          

ANOTHER MOUTH FROM THE SOUTH

We now have great wisdom from the president of Ecuador, who informs us that America is too racist to elect Barack Obama.  This gentleman, Rafael Correa, is described as an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.  "They're still quite racist there," he says, speaking of the United States.  So racist that a man of color, whose middle name is Hussein, is about to be nominated for president by the Democratic Party.  So racist that another man of color, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, is on the short list of vice presidential possibilities for the Republican Party.  Why, we're all dressed in white sheets here.

Oh, by the way, Mr. Correa studied in the United States, at the University of Illinois.  Last time I looked, that school is publicly supported, meaning that the people of Illinois paid, at least in part, for Mr. Correa's education.  Perhaps a simple "thank you" would do, President Correa.  Or is that below the dignity of a Marxist clown?

May 23, 2008.      Permalink