Right Wing Nut House

For most of my adult life, I lived away from “home” which, for the Moran clan, was first Mount Prospect and then Barrington Hills, Illinois. The two suburbs of Chicago are about 15 miles apart, 4 stops separating them on the old Northwest line of the C & NW Railroad. (My current home of Algonquin is only about 7 miles north of Barrington Hills.)

For many years, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was a travel day for me. Living in Des Moines, Washington,D.C., and St. Louis meant airports, luggage, interminable flights, and the inevitable stress and strain that goes with travel.

All the feelings of frustration would fall away once I boarded the commuter train that would take me home. In those days, a taxi from the airport to Barrington Hills was considered an extravagance. So I would take a cab to the Des Plaines train station where a commuter would be along every 10 or 15 minutes at rush hour to pick me up for the nice, leisurely half hour trip to Barrington.

I used to love those old trains. In recent years, they redesigned the interior of the cars so that they’ve become much more sterile and unfriendly places. Back in the day, such was not the case. You could flip most of the seats so that they faced each other. People would take advantage of that by playing cards or just chatting. Many of the passengers obviously knew each other from taking the same train home for years. The atmosphere was usually festive thanks to the fact that everyone had Thanksgiving off.

But if you wanted to be alone with your thoughts, that was fine too. I’d spend the half hour looking out the window, finding familiar landmarks, and then passing through my boyhood home of Mount Prospect; seeing the familiar downtown with its familiar store names and streets. Pulling out of the station, we’d pass my old dentist’s office where old Doctor Heck treated me after the trauma of having three of my teeth knocked out by a baseball bat swung in a game by a playmate. I was all of 8 years old and the amount of blood scared me. Old Doc Heck fixed me up good, though, saving the roots so I could get fitted for false teeth.

From Mount Prospect, the train paralleled Northwest Highway. And the trip from there to Arlington Heights always brought back a flood of memories. I must have travelled from Mount Prospect to Dryden Street in Arlington Heights down Northwest Highway more than 3000 times over the years. St. Viator High School was just a couple of blocks down Dryden and between school, athletic events, and other activities I got to know every inch of that expanse.

Random memories would fire and it was quite pleasurable to allow the montage of images and feelings to present themselves for nostalgia’s sake. Every once and a while, some awful memory from high school would intrude on my reverie (everybody has them, I’m sure) but it was easy to ignore the pain that threatened to interrupt the warm flow of reminisces simply by clearing the screen in front of your mind’s eye and waiting for the next tableau to appear.

Then it was through downtown Arlington Heights out to Arlington Park racetrack - closed for the season but still a big commuter stop because of all the development that had sprouted surrounding the edifice with little office parks and tract homes dotting the landscape. And then a slightly longer trip to Palatine, still hugging Northwest Highway and still recalling other memories from high school as we passed several eateries where we used to hang out.

The trip between Palatine and Barrington was the longest. Here, civilization ended and the “country” began. The route was dark and nothing was visible except the trees on either side of the tracks. Often, there was sufficient snow on the ground that an eerie glow would light the way as the moonlight reflected off the trees.

Finally, Barrington. In those days it was at the outer reaches of the northwest suburbs, only recently graduated from a glorified “milk stop” where dairy farmers would send their product by rail to Chicago. One of my brothers or sisters would be waiting to pick me up and take me the last 3 miles to Barrington Hills and home.

Today, home is where my heart is. Both my parents are gone, the house in Barrington Hills sold. Our family is spread out all over the country - both coasts and several states in between. I wrote about the last time we got together here, a little more than two years ago. Everyone has their own lives and families, their own traditions at holiday time. It’s not like it was when we all made a supreme effort to travel to our parent’s house for the holidays. Back then, most of us didn’t have the complications of spouses or in laws or small children to get in the way of our goal of reuniting.

But that’s what memories are for. They remind us of what was once good and happy in life and hold out the promise of more to come.

James Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, said “God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.” In this, the December of my life, it gives me an inordinate amount of pleasure to remember those roses and that nurturing them will continue to give me joy until the day I no longer am.

You won’t want to miss today’s Rick Moran Show coming up at 3:00 - 4:00 PM Central time.

My special guest will be The Jawa Report’s Rusty Shackleford. A tireless crusader against radical Islamism both here and abroad, we found out today that Rusty’s blog played a role in the arrest of AP photographer Bilal Hussein - a man the US military is convinced aided the insurgents in Iraq and spread their propaganda.

We’ll also look at other stories Rusty has had a hand in - some he hasn’t even gotten credit for. And we’ll discuss the status of hostages in Iraq; a story that hardly anyone but The Jawa Report has been following.

To access the stream, you can click the icon below.

If you’d like to call in and talk to Rusty, the number is (718) 664-9764

A podcast will be available for streaming or download about 15 minutes after the show ends.

UPDATE

The podcast is up and can be streamed or downloaded by clicking on button above. Or you can stream it by clicking on the player below:

It was a fascinating show. Ed Morrissey of Captains Quarters (Heading Right Radio) also joined us for a while.

The Sleeper has awakened?

Well, maybe not as dramatic as that. After all, we’re talking about the mild mannered professor and senator for a quaint Midwestern state - hardly Superman material although he would probably look pretty good in tights.

But make no mistake, the times they are a-changin’. Finding himself trailing in the national polls by 2-1 against the Queen of Darkness, Senator Barack Obama - he of the “different kind of politics” school of electoral vapidity - has, not surprisingly, taken a page from the playbook of old school, bare knuckled political brawlers and begun sliming Hillary Clinton for all that she’s worth.

Well…that’s not entirely accurate. The page he’s reading is, in keeping with his citizen/scholar/politician image, the endnotes. And as for sliming Hillary, perhaps it would be more accurate to say his gums have a grip around her leg and he’s trying not to let go:

When conservative columnist Robert Novak reported on Saturday that the Clinton campaign might be sitting on “scandalous information” about Obama, close readers might have been inclined to yawn. The only sourcing was unidentified “agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton” and “word of mouth among Democrats.”

The column said the nature of the supposed scandal was unknown.

But Obama’s campaign responded as if Bob Woodward had splashed all the details on the front page, issuing a “Statement on Reports of Clinton Campaign Tactics” at 11:46 a.m., a “Response to Clinton Campaign Evasion” at 1:52 p.m., after her aides said they had “no idea” what the column was talking about, and a 4:20 p.m. broadside, “Obama Will Fight Back Fears.”

Obama’s response accused Clinton of “Swift Boat politics” — a reference to the 2004 attacks on Kerry’s military record by a group calling itself the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Kerry stayed quiet, a decision that some advisers fought at the time and that in retrospect turned out to have devastating consequences for his image in some swing states.

In Iowa on Sunday, Obama told reporters: “In the era of the blogosphere, we have seen what happened with John McCain in 2000, what happened with John Kerry in 2004. If you don’t get on this stuff quickly, then it starts drifting around, and that is not something I am going to accept.”

So there, Hillary. And there. AND THERE!

The only problem was that the “leak” almost certainly didn’t come from the Clinton camp and as John Fund revealed in the WSJ, the “scandal” appears to be nothing more than warmed over Rezko - a minor blip of a scandal here in Chicago where such sweetheart deals between developers and politicians are simply a way to “grease the wheels” and allow for poorly paid legislators to get a little extra cash. It barely raised an eyebrow in this, a city awash in graft and corruption.

As for the Clinton camp, they seemed bemused by the spectacle presented by their timid opponent trying to take the gloves off but unable to figure out how to untie them.

Give Obama an “A” for effort anyway.

But before Obama runs home and show his mother that report card with the excellent grade for trying to fight, he better look at the grade he got for this idiocy:

Barack Obama has unveiled a new line of criticism against Hillary: In speeches he’s started to point to the allegation made in Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta’s Hillary book that the Clintons secretly formulated a 20-year-plan to deliver the presidency first to Bill, and then to Hillary.

“I’m not in this race to fulfill some long-held plan or because it was owed to me,” Obama said the other day.

Asked if that were a reference to the Gerth allegation, an Obama spokesperson left virtually no doubt that it was, telling Newsday: “Barack Obama has not been mapping out his run for president from Washington for the last 20 years like some of his opponents.”

But the source that Gerth and Van Natta cited with supposed first-hand knowledge of this plan — historian Taylor Branch — has since vehemently denied that any such pact existed. “The story is preposterous,” Branch told The Washington Post, adding: “I never heard either Clinton talk about a ‘plan’ for them both to become president.”

If you are going to take a swing at someone, make sure you don’t miss and have the punch come all the way around and smack you in your own face. This, unfortunately, is what happened to Obama here. Good thing he dropped that line of attack immediately. After all, most Americans admire someone who plans out their life so far in advance. At any rate, it’s hardly a detriment to Hillary’s campaign to remind Democrats who she’s married to.

In a very large way, Obama is a victim of his own success as a “uniter not a divider.” One can hardly claim the moral high ground while accusing your opponent of all sorts of nasty things. So the Illinois Senator has been forced to temper his attacks, to pull his punches lest he turn off his younger voters who pine for his “new politics” (which is really just the old politics all gussied up and with a little makeup on).

Having now pulled even in Iowa, Obama has a chance to go for the jugular and really hurt Hillary Clinton by questioning her trustworthiness, her commitment to ending the war, her wishy-washyness, and her scandal-plagued money raising operation. This latest round of polling will renew focus on his candidacy. He is no longer the longshot. He has a credible chance to win in Iowa. And since the media likes nothing more than a horse race in an election, these next few weeks are going to be crucial.

This is why Obama must drop this pretense of being above the fray and get into the mud where he belongs. There are ways to savage an opponent without sounding mean or nasty. Hillary hasn’t quite mastered that art as yet but you could look no further than The Gipper for inspiration in that regard.

Reagan was usually pretty good natured in his criticism - jokes with an edge. Obama doesn’t have to be funny nor does he have to stray far from his own issues to highlight the stark differences between himself and Clinton. And while he’s at it, he can question her integrity and trust - attributes she has given ample evidence that they should be questioned.

What he needs is the will to carry out such attacks. And to date, I haven’t seen it. His candidacy now depends on whether he can begin to give people a reason to not only vote for him but vote against Clinton. He’s taken his positive campaign just about as far as it can go. Now he is going to have to start peeling Clinton voters away from her in order to fashion a majority of Democrats who will support his efforts to become the Democratic nominee. And he’s not going to be able to do that by talking sweetness and light.

The Tale of the Scorpion is an old Native American parable.

A scorpion was walking along the bank of a river, wondering how to get to the other side. Suddenly, he saw a fox. He asked the fox to take him on his back across the river.

“I couldn’t help it,” said the scorpion. “It’s my nature.”

Amir Taheri (writing to Norman Podhoretz) believes he knows the true nature of the Iranian regime:

What is at issue here is the exact nature of the Khomeinist regime. Is it a nationalistic power pursuing the usual goals of nations? Or is it a messianic power with an eschatological ideology and the pretension to conquer the world on behalf of “The One and Only True Faith”?

Khomeini built a good part of his case against the Shah by claiming that the latter was trying to force Iranians to worship Iran rather than Allah. The theme remains a leitmotif of Khomeinists even today. . . . Those who try to portray this regime as just another opportunistic power with a quixotic tendency do a grave disservice to a proper understanding of the challenge that the world faces.

But this is not new. Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot also had their apologists who saw them as “nationalists” with “legitimate grievances.”

Okay, Sounds believable given the rhetoric we’ve been hearing for 25 years from the regime. But Taheri does not enjoy universal respectability regarding his opinions on Iran. He has been caught at least twice in making false charges about the Iranian government and some scholars accuse him of poorly sourcing his writings.

Even if we were to take Mr. Taheri’s analysis as truth, according to Michael Eisenstadt writing for the Strategic Studies Institute, a respected arm of the US Army War College, the idea that the mullahs are “an irrational, undeterrable state with a high pain threshold” is both “anachronistic and wrong:”

Within the context of a relatively activist foreign policy, Iranian decision makers have generally sought to minimize risk by shunning direct confrontation and by acting through surrogates (such as the Lebanese Hizballah) or by means of stealth (Iranian small boat and mine operations against shipping in the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq War) in order to preserve deniability and create ambiguity about their intentions. Such behavior is evidence of an ability to engage in rational calculation and to accurately assess power relationships.

(”Deter and Contain,” pg. 225)

And herein lies the dilemma for American and western policymakers with regards to Iran and the regime’s desire to possess the ultimate insurance against anyone publishing insulting cartoons of Muhammad ever again. Just who are these guys?

As far as Taheri, I have found his insights into the regime affected by his obvious disgust for what the mullahs have done to his country. That said, his columns and writings in various publications have shown a light in some very dark corners of the Iranian government.

At its highest levels, the mullahracy is riven with factionalism. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei rides herd on at least 3 major centers of power; President Ahmadinejad conservatives, Ayatollah Rafsanjani realists, and Mohammad Khatami reformists. Of these, the most marginalized at the moment are the reformers, some of whom are actually under house arrest, including a couple of prominent clerics.

Rafsanjani, the canny, ex-president is making something of a political comeback after getting tossed from the presidency in 2005 by Khamenei who couldn’t take his gross corruption (Forbes named him one of the richest men in the world). He is now safely ensconced in the Assembly of Experts, elected last December on an anti-Ahmadinejad platform, and maneuvering his way toward the most powerful office in the land- Supreme Leader. Khamenei is rumored to be in poor health (he’s been on death’s door according to some for about 2 years).

To say that Rafsanjani is a “moderate” is ridiculous. He is as fanatical in his hatred of the United States and Israel as President Ahmadinejad. He may be more of a pragmatist, however, in that he certainly has a lot to protect in case of an attack by the US. Regardless, Rafsanjani is also perhaps the most ruthless character in Iranian politics. It is believed that he controls several para-military gangs who carry out murders and assassinations on his orders. Certainly, enough of his enemies have died for there to be questions asked.

He is at war with President Ahmadinejad and the conservatives not over dogma or ideology but because Ahmadinejad has purged the bureaucracy of Rafsanjani (and other long ruling mullahs) cronies who always managed to funnel a little something to their sponsors in the leadership in the way of kickbacks or sweet government contracts. For 25 years, first Khomeini and then Khamenei turned a blind eye to this corruption, realizing that it cemented the loyalty of the mullahs to the Supreme Leader’s throne.

But with the economy in the toilet and the people becoming cynical about the mullahs, Khamenei engineered the election of Ahmadinejad hoping the young fanatic would root out corruption and boost the economy.

It hasn’t worked. Ahmadinejad purged the ministries alright but he replaced competent technocrats with true believers who hadn’t a clue about how a modern state operates. The results were predictable; economic stagnation, higher unemployment, high inflation, and a decrease in oil productivity that would be much more noticeable if prices were any lower.

These then are the factions vying for control of the Iranian state - at odds over personalities, policies, and most importantly, who has the power.

Taheri and Podhoretz may very well be correct in their assessment of the way Ayatollah Khomenie believed more in pan-Islamism than nationalism. But does that still hold true today? Do these squabbling, greedy, kleptocrats really believe in Khomeini’s pan-Islamic vision?

It is impossible to say. And the question is can we afford to misjudge the true nature of the regime? Either way western leaders jump regarding Iran - bombing or deterrence - both choices are bad choices with catastrophe possible no matter what the decision might be.

If the Iranians don’t care about Iran, only Islam, deterrence will not work. And while bombing their infrastructure will set their program back a few years, what they will unleash in retaliation causes nightmares at the Pentagon, the State Department, and in the minds of any rational person.

But if the Iranian regime is not bound by the normal constraints of deterrence, what option do we really have? If they are able to acquire the ability to build a nuclear weapon and intend on using it, prudence dictates we try and prevent that eventuality at all costs.

On the other hand, what if the true nature of the regime is as posited by the Army War College? While the mullah’s worldview may be anachronistic and twisted, they nevertheless may very well respond reasonably to the threat of retaliation by the Israelis or the United States. In this case, they may have the bomb - but possess it only as a guarantor of the regime not as an offensive threat. If we chose to bomb, we would unleash Iranian retaliation when it was not necessary.

I think my rundown above of the factions in Iran shows there are probably both camps at large and are currently in a tug of war. The conservatives, despite poor performance by Ahmadinejad and electoral setbacks are still marginally in control. But Khamenei still has his finger on any nuclear trigger and while he sides with the conservatives on occasion, he has not been reluctant to slap Ahmadinejad publicly and put him in his place - as he did last summer when he had parliament pass a new electoral law that will shave around 14 months off of Ahmadinejad’s term.

The bottom line is that there really is no way of gleaning the true intent of the Iranian regime because of the shifting sands of power that has been the hallmark of the mullahs since Khomeini’s time. The American hostages were pawns in this game back in 1980 while the British sailors taken earlier this year also became hostage to the competition at the highest levels of the regime.

To bomb or not to bomb. There is only one right answer. And I’m glad I’m not going to be the one who has to make the decision.

I have been something of an agnostic on climate change. The politicization of the issue has become so pronounced that it is impossible to have a rational discussion on the issue with either side. Every piece of evidence that emerges for or against global warming and its anthropogenic nature is dismissed or embraced, depending on one’s point of view.

Currently, those who believe the human race is doomed unless we do something about carbon emissions are in the ascendancy, largely as a result of a clever media campaign and a demonization of global warming detractors. But reading science publications - even those geared toward a general audience - reveals a still lively debate among scientists on many, many issues that those who seek to politicize the issue have already declared settled. How much is industrial activity to blame? Just how fast is the phenomena occurring? How bad will it get? Is there anything we can do about it?

Based purely on scientific evidence, there is no doubt that the world is getting warmer - something that has been occurring since the end of the last ice age. There is compelling evidence that human industrial activity over the last 100 years is, in fact, having an effect on temperature although there are still some responsible skeptics who attempt to make a case otherwise. I personally find their evidence less and less convincing as the years go by.

How much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are actually making their way to a level in our atmosphere where they would raise temperatures? No one knows. Models trying to predict those levels of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere have not been very good. This is not because the phenomena is not occurring but rather because of a lack of raw data that would improve our modeling and allow us to glimpse the future.

Even if the climate is changing, is there anything we can do about it? No one is sure. Lowering emissions may indeed slow down or even eliminate excess global warming. Then again, it may not have any effect at all.

And here is where politics insinuates itself into the debate to the detriment of science as well as the debate itself. Scientists argue whether the Greenland glaciers are growing or shrinking, whether the Antarctic ice cap is melting, whether the cyclical nature of sunspots are to blame for the increase in temperature, even whether polar bears are at risk of becoming extinct or not. But it is politicians and advocates who argue about climate change “solutions” and charge their opponents with being mindless fanatics or anti-science zealots depending on whose ox is being gored.

Where does that leave rational, thoughtful science enthusiasts like you and me who may not have the technical acumen to judge the efficacy of scientific arguments but who try and follow the debate anyway?

On the outside looking in, I’m afraid. Not committing to either camp in this debate means that we are ignored, even ridiculed for not seeing “the truth” of global warming - as if it were some kind of religion that demanded obeisance to a set of beliefs rather than a hard eyed look at the evidence. Recognizing the danger of climate change while trying to maintain a certain skepticism about evidence coming from both sides is enough to drive those of us who respect the scientific method to distraction. But we can certainly examine the political climate in which the debate takes place.

And here is where you will find the most bizarre collection of anti-globalists, anti-capitalists, “sustainable growth” nuts, and population control fanatics allying themselves with Third World kleptocrats in order to soak the west with “carbon offsets” and other gimmicks without reducing emissions by one single molecule. This was the now defunct Kyoto agreement, the first attempt by this motley coalition to radically alter western industrialized civilization.

At least on the other side of the political coin with the most organized efforts to debunk global warming there is the rationality of promoting an anti-warming agenda based largely on economic interests. Lost profits may not be a very noble reason to oppose efforts to reduce emissions but at least it has logic so sorely lacking on the other side.

This then is the political atmosphere in which charge and counter charge is hurled back and forth, with the global warming cadres spewing nonsense about comparing skeptics with “Nazis” while the skeptics accuse climate change advocates of being Luddites.

To say that most conservatives fall into the latter category is a given. Their natural enemies are found in the NGO’s, the non-profits, and the UN offshoots who seek to undermine capitalism and free markets while strangling economic growth - all in a good cause, of course. And the fact that they want to carry out these draconian measures while much of the scientific debate still rages causes most conservatives to blanch when any proposals to fight climate change are proposed.

I believe this to be a shortsighted and wrongheaded approach to the political problems of climate change. There is something to be said for the global warming advocate’s argument that we simply can’t afford not to do anything. Simply ignoring the problem as Republican Presidential candidates are doing is not only bad politics, it’s bad science as well. As Tigerhawk points out, we risk much by not engaging in the debate over what to do about climate change:

The key is to separate the increasingly convincing scientific arguments substantiating the fact of anthropogenic climate change from the remedies for that change, which can take many forms and will shape the world in which we live for generations to come. In theory it should be easy to do so — after all, one can never derive what “ought” from what “is.” The fact of anthropogenic climate change does not tell us what we ought to do about it. Unfortunately, politicians, activists, lawyers, journalists, and other advocates specialize in claiming, falsely, that “what ought” follows inexorably from “what is,” no matter how intellectually dishonest those claims may be. My advice to conservatives, therefore, is that we stop arguing about whether human activity causes global climate change and start getting in front of solutions that will accelerate the creation of wealth over the long term.

(Hat Tip: MVG)

The fact is, there is plenty that we can do as a society to lower our emissions without experiencing the kind of catastrophic pain that would have been caused by following Kyoto dictates. Start with our automobiles - developing sensible timetables to drastically lower emissions from cars would be an excellent start. This would almost certainly force automakers to heavily invest in hybrid technology while improving the performance and lowering the price of those kinds of cars.

We could also start building nuclear power plants to replace the old, carbon spewing coal fired plants that have caused other environmental problems like acid rain. Small scale development of solar, wind, and geothermal power would also contribute to a lowering of emissions, despite the fact that industrial scale power production using those methods of generating electricity are extremely expensive and inefficient.

And doing what America does best - invent, improve, and innovate - spurred on by the free market will no doubt produce other solutions down the road. Hydrogen powered cars, more efficient public transportation, and things unimagined and unglimpsed will contribute in the future to reducing our emissions of greenhouse gases.

All of these are conservative alternatives to the bloated, government centered, confiscatory ideas advocated by Al Gore and his acolytes in the Democratic party as well as the even more draconian measures advocated by global warming advocates overseas or in the United Nations.

The political question is simple; can conservatives continue to ignore the implications of climate change? Or, as Tigerhawk writes, should we get out in front of the issue to advocate “solutions” that are mostly market based and not so damaging to our economy?

Color me a skeptic who thinks the time has come for conservatives to step up on this issue.

As media scandals go, the flap over CNN’s use of Hillary-friendly Democratic questioners at last Thursday’s debate probably won’t rise to the level of full scale nuclear annihilation, where the network becomes so radioactive that it disappears from cable never to be seen again.

That might be what it deserves. And if life were fair, the next glimpse we got of Wolf Blitzer on television would be as a weatherman in Minot, North Dakota, wearing stupid hats and sponsoring contests for viewers on how much snow would fall for the month.

But life isn’t fair and multi-billion dollar corporations just don’t up and disappear no matter how seriously they transgress against the trust viewers place in their integrity as journalists. Hence, CNN will continue, albeit with a lot more scrutiny directed its way and a definite loss of credibility that it will have a hard time earning back.

To put it succinctly, CNN blew it. Everything about that Las Vegas debate - from the distribution of tickets, to the choice of moderators and commentators, to the absolute control of questions asked by audience members, to their agreement to pick Democratic operatives as “average voters” to ask questions - stinks of rank partisanship and boosterism for the Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton.

It is impossible to imagine any other network now or in the past behaving in such an arrogant manner.

Consider:

* 2000 tickets were available for the debate with 1000 going to UNLV (on whose campus the event was held) and another 1000 going to the Nevada Democratic party. It appears that the NDP packed the house with Hillary supporters while only 100 students from UNLV - younger voters more disposed to supporting Obama or Edwards - were allowed tickets while the other 900 apparently went to faculty and staff of the University.

While CNN was not directly responsible for this gaming of the audience, they might have made an effort to make the ticket distribution fairer. Especially in light of what occurred when CNN used that audience to ask questions of the candidates.

* How did a Democratic operative from Arkansas end up asking a question at a debate in Nevada? This question is especially relevant since CNN vetted and approved each question from the audience that was asked.

* Why did CNN allow an anti-war activist hardly your “average voter” - to make a statement about not attacking Iran in the thinly disguised form of a question from the audience?

* Why didn’t CNN disclose James Carville’s connections to the Clinton camp during the post debate wrap up?

And those are just the obvious questions. Among others, one could also ask about Wolf Blitzer’s choice of questions and his tone toward Clinton (a might too deferential?) considering the threats issued by Hillary staffers toward him in the lead up to the debate.

All of this raises the ultimate question; is CNN surreptitiously promoting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton? Even asking the question seriously damages CNN’s credibility. To cross the line from journalism to political advocacy is something the left accuses Fox News of doing. Will Democrats now refuse to appear on CNN as well? Will they forgo appearing in any more debates on that network?

Media bias is one thing. What CNN is accused of doing is something entirely different. Throwing the weight of a multi-billion dollar corporation with such a large political presence on the media landscape behind a candidate would be almost unprecedented. Not since the national news networks worked to bring the Nixon Administration down has there been such a blatant attempt to influence the opinion of the American people regarding a single politician.

The network may see Clinton’s candidacy as a great story - first woman president and all that. But is that any reason to cross the line and advocate her nomination and election? Given the economics of the news business, we certainly shouldn’t put it past CNN to play this kind of game. Face it; a Hillary presidency would be more interesting than a Giuliani or Romney presidency. More people will watch CNN during a Clinton tour in the White House than any other candidate running in either party, including Obama. It wouldn’t be the first time “bottom line journalism” was practiced by a network. And it probably won’t be the last.

How badly does this damage Mrs. Clinton? Watch the polls over the next 10 days or so. Even with weak opponents like Obama and Edwards, if Clinton loses any ground, it could be significant in that she will start reminding people just how the Clinton’s operate - the ruthlessness, the “win at all costs” attitude that marked her husband’s years in politics.

The American people may very well not want to relive those years when scandal after scandal rocked the White House and people got royally sick of the machinations by both parties. But until someone emerges to challenge her, Hillary Clinton will be the one to beat for both the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

This won’t be directed at any one party or media outlet. Nor will it be about one candidate or another from either party or even about the efficacy of one ideology over another, although I suspect the situation I will describe has its roots in new left nanny statism.

No matter. The modern conservative movement is just as guilty as liberalism. I am talking about the babying of the American voter in which all media, parties, ideologies, and candidates insist on engaging. It isn’t just “dumbing down” political messages or coverage of politics that is the issue here, although it is certainly one of the symptoms. What I am talking about goes to the very heart of the relationship between those who govern and those who are governed with the media as a combination intermediary and watchdog and the utter contempt for the intelligence and discernment of the American voter exhibited by these elites who have deliberately infantilized the process of how we elect our leaders.

I’ve often thought that one reason Americans don’t trust their government is that their government doesn’t trust the American people very much. This goes double for the mass media whose sneering contempt for much of their audience is made abundantly clear in the way they cover politics and issues as well as what they choose to program as entertainment on their networks.

Even the 24 hours news nets - with rare exceptions - waste most of the day on trivialities. A story involving some pretty, blond, white woman who disappears or is murdered by her husband will get more attention for days or weeks at a time than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or issues of war and peace with Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, or any other place in the world where informing the people would mean spending more than 3 minutes with both sides shouting back and forth about who is at fault.

The bottom line is that even with 24 hours of programming to fill, the promise of all news networks to greatly enhance our knowledge base about the world at home and abroad has been miserably wasted as a result of a deliberate decision to make their broadcasts as a whole appeal to the lowest common denominator. And the problem there is that most media executives have such a titanically low opinion of the average American voter, that they inevitably find not the lowest common denominator but rather the lowest denominator period. A half wit would understand more nuance and depth than that given on most news broadcasts.

It’s all for our own good, of course. Witness last night’s Democratic debate where ordinary people simply weren’t trusted to ask decent questions of the candidates. The sponsoring network had to vet and approve all questions prior to their going on the air:

Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred “diamonds or pearls” at last night’s debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

“Every single question asked during the debate by the audience had to be approved by CNN,” Luisa writes. “I was asked to submit questions including “lighthearted/fun” questions. I submitted more than five questions on issues important to me. I did a policy memo on Yucca Mountain a year ago and was the finalist for the Truman Scholarship. For sure, I thought I would get to ask the Yucca question that was APPROVED by CNN days in advance.”

CNN’s condescending explanation:

Sam Feist, the executive producer of the debate, said that the student was asked to choose another question because the candidates had already spent about ten minutes discussing Yucca Mountain.

“When her Yucca mountain question was asked, she was given the opportunity to ask another question, and my understand is that the [diamond v. pearls] questions was her other question,” Feist said. “She probably was disappointed, but we spent a lot of time with a bunch of different candidates on Yucca Mountain, and we were at the end of the debate.”

Note the tone: “She was given the opportunity to ask another question…” as if the most important thing in the world was face time on TV for Luisa. And given the extraordinary importance that the nuclear waste issue to the people of Nevada, who the hell is this guy Feist to say that they talked enough about it and it was time to move on to something else?

What he’s really saying is that this affects only the people in Nevada and the ignorant rubes in other parts of the country aren’t interested. The fact is that there is the real possibility that the nuclear power issue will once again be of overriding national importance very soon. There are plans to start building more reactors so the equally vital issue of what to do with waste from the new plants will have a direct bearing on the Yucca Mountain project which was, after all, conceived as a large part of the solution to the problem of spent fuel.

It seems to me that Feist and CNN had their heads so far up their large intestine about the “entertainment value” of their show that they missed the staggering implications of talking about Yucca Mountain as much as possible in order to inform the rest of us about an issue that will be of seminal importance in the near future.

CNN is not the only network whose arrogance causes them to treat the American people as if they were three year olds. Fox and MSNBC are equally guilty of supplying coverage of politics and issues that will fit in 3-5 minute segments and are more likely to offer “opposing viewpoints” on a candidate or an issue that accomplishes absolutely nothing except proving which side has the more colorful invective they can hurl at each other.

It is a matter of informing the public of the issues. Yes they are complex and can’t be broken down easily. But there is a real hunger for information in this country. Otherwise, people wouldn’t tune in as often as they do during the day. Nor would they be abandoning TV altogether in order to get their news on the internet where on line newspapers, blogs, and other publications devote considerably more time and space to giving information and offering informed opinion.

But that internet audience, compared the the electorate as a whole, is still relatively tiny. And here is where the candidates and parties fail to pick up the slack and force the issue of treating voters as adults and not children to be led around by the nose.

Candidates are more apt today to simply sound off on their positions on issues without giving any background to their thinking of how they arrived at a particular conclusion. The only candidate who is doing this today seems to be Barack Obama who takes great pains to talk about his position on the Iraq War and how he arrived at his anti-war position. I don’t agree with him but you can certainly respect someone who obviously gave the matter a great deal of thought.

It is clear that Obama trusts the voter more than most candidates. Not so his Democratic or Republican rivals who rarely delve into the meat of their positions and cite reasons why they think the way they do.

The reason they don’t is that it is too revealing. They are afraid that we, the ignorant voter, might get the wrong idea or more likely, lose track of where a candidate’s position shifted or was changed by the acquisition of new information and simply believe the simplistic mantra thrown out by his opponent that he is a “flip-flopper.”

The media plays along with this little game, dutifully reporting the idiotic charge and counter-charge with little effort to give context or meaning to the smears. It is politics as mud wrestling. And while there is a long, storied history of it in America, it appears to me that this something into which all politics has morphed; a slugfest that is as bereft of ideas and substance. Politicians have simply given up trying to explain themselves and have decided that going for the jugular is the best way to win.

It didn’t used to be this way. Read the campaign speeches of Eisenhower or Kennedy and prepare to be shocked. Sure there was plenty of fluff. But both men were fully prepared to have a conversation with the American people about their candidacy. They didn’t shrink from complex issues nor did they “dumb down” their positions and treat the voters as if they were 3 year old children whose diaper needed changing.

I realize I’m rambling a bit but I hate the feeling of being talked down to and treated by the media and candidates as if I wasn’t smart enough to make my decision on who to vote for and base that decision not on the treacle that passes for media coverage of a candidate or a candidate’s own cynical attempts to manipulate my emotions but rather on the candidates well thought out stands on the issues.

I am not naive. There has always been a certain amount of manipulation of voter emotions in politics. But one of the reasons for the extraordinary polarization today has got to be the demonization of the other side and fear mongering the notion that electing them will be the end of the world. This simplistic formulation for victory began in the 1970’s and gets worse every election cycle.

We enter an extraordinarily dangerous period in our history hopelessly divided and completely unable to work together on issues vital to our security and economic well being. And fully half of all registered voters will probably not vote in 2008 - mostly out of disgust and loathing for this state of affairs. There is plenty of fault to go around. The problem did not arise on January 20, 2001 nor will it end on January 20, 2009. The question isn’t “Who’s to blame” but rather “What do we do about it?”

We can start by demanding that the elites in media and politics begin to treat the American voter with more respect. A candidate and a government that starts to trust the people a little more will help. But given all that I’ve seen and heard, that day is a long way off.

The long expected indictment of baseball slugger Barry Bonds has come down as the four year investigation into his shady dealings with steroid supplier Victor Conte and his sports supplement company BALCO resulted in charges that Bonds lied to a grand jury and obstructed justice:

“During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances for Bonds and other athletes,” the indictment read.

In August, the 43-year-old Bonds passed Hank Aaron to become baseball’s career home run leader. Late in the season, the San Francisco Giants told the seven-time National League MVP they didn’t want him back next year. He is currently a free agent.

While Bonds was chasing Aaron, the grand jury was working behind closed doors to complete the long-rumored indictment.

“I’m surprised,” said John Burris, one of Bonds’ attorneys, “but there’s been an effort to get Barry for a long time. “I’m curious what evidence they have now they didn’t have before.”

The indictment charged Bonds with lying when he said that he didn’t knowingly take steroids given to him by his personal trainer, Greg Anderson. He also denied taking steroids at anytime in 2001 when he was pursuing the season home-run record.

Bonds told the grand jury that he thought his friend and personal trainer Greg Anderson was injecting him with vitamins, not steroids. His ex-girlfriend, who will almost certainly be a key witness against him at any trial, told the grand jury that Bonds knew exactly what was in the injections, even joking about how much muscle the steroids and human growth hormone regimen that BALCO was supervising at the time put on his physique.

There were other incredible lies told by Bonds, according to leaked grand jury testimony. He said that be believed one of the anabolics he was taking - “The Clear” - which was administered by placing a small amount underneath the tongue, was actually “flaxseed oil.” And he testified he thought his trainer was applying an arthritis treatment when actually, the creme Anderson was rubbing into Bonds’ arms contained a potent and unregulated anabolic steroid.

As I made clear in my article back in August for PJ Media, today’s indictment was a foregone conclusion:

The Feds have him cold. Not only grand jury testimony from a dozen people connected Bonds directly to steroid use, but Victor Conte—owner of the sports “supplement” company BALCO—produced voluminous records tracking Bonds steroid use over several years. The ledgers and calendars Conte gave the Feds show exactly what steroids Bonds took, his levels of testosterone from month to month, and other evidence that left absolutely no doubt that Bonds used banned substances to enhance his performance.

And so another superstar athlete goes on trial. I’m dead sure we can expect another media circus, another wall-to-wall cable free for all. The case will be analyzed ad infinitum until we and the press are so sick of it that the inevitable “Whither the Press” stories begin to come out and the media wrings its hands and bemoans its inability to resist the siren call of scandal. They will blame us, the viewer, for their dilemma, taking us to task for our compulsion to watch these train wrecks masquerading as trials, whining that they are only giving the people what they want and it’s not their fault if the American people are obsessed with celebrity.

Meanwhile, the world becomes an even more dangerous place and real news is confined to 5 minute updates at the top and bottom of the hour. And 24 hour news channels can’t find the time to outline what is at stake in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, or any of the half dozen other vital areas of the world that will lose out to Barry Bonds and his soap opera trial for lying to the grand jury that he cheated while playing a kid’s game.

Just thought a little perspective might be in order before the circus begins…

I hadn’t watched The Wizard of Oz in close to twenty years - a consequence of having seen the movie so often in my youth. But just recently, I saw a beautiful retrospective of Judy Garland’s career on PBS in which I was reminded of what a spectacular instrument her voice had been. Then, this past weekend, Ted Turner’s TNT and TBS networks ran the restored version and I took the opportunity to sit down and watch it.

The emotional reaction I had to the film shocked me. It brought back a flood of memories from childhood I had long ago buried under the wearied cynicism and callousness of adulthood. I recalled sitting in front of the TV with the whole family and watching the film on what was then the new technology of color television, being amazed, scared, entrhralled, and amused at the goings on in Oz. At that point in my life, I believed monkeys could fly, witches could really perform magic, trees could talk, and scarecrows could dance.

I suppose that’s part of the attraction in the Harry Potter series of books and films, although there is a much darker, more sinister element in J.K. Rowhling’s characters and plots than either Frank Baum, author of the Oz series of books or Hollywood would have possibly thought appropriate for children. The identification of children today with the young wizards in the Potter series also has a lot to do with the characters able to control their immediate surroundings simply by waving a magic wand - a tempting prospect for kids who, by nature are unable to affect their own lives except at the margins.

And that was on my mind when, right in the middle of my reveries about childhood and enjoying the innocence and pure entertainment found in The Wizard of Oz , a trailer for a new Walt Disney film was shown. Entitled Enchanted, to these adult eyes the film certainly looks like a winner:

A classic Disney animated fairy tale meets with the modern, live-action romantic comedy in Walt Disney Pictures’ ENCHANTED. Featuring an all-star cast, the film follows the beautiful princess Giselle (AMY ADAMS) as she is banished by an evil queen (SUSAN SARANDON) from her magical, musical animated land and finds herself in the gritty reality of the streets of modern-day Manhattan.

Shocked by this strange new environment that doesn’t operate on a “happily ever after” basis, Giselle is now adrift in a chaotic world badly in need of enchantment. But when Giselle begins to fall in love with a charmingly flawed divorce lawyer (PATRICK DEMPSEY) who has come to her aid — even though she is already promised to a perfect fairy tale prince (JAMES MARSDEN) back home – she has to wonder: can a storybook view of romance survive in the real world?

The juxtaposition of the two films was jarring indeed. Both can easily be enjoyed by adults. But trying to combine the fairy tale world and the grit and cynicism of the real world may be taking the modern “children’s movie” too far. While the film will come out with a “PG” rating, most parents won’t hesitate to take their kids to see it given that it is a Walt Disney movie and features classic fairy tale characters.

Perhaps it’s because the trailer so jarringly interrupted my trip down memory lane watching Oz that it started me thinking about today’s Hollywood fare for kids and ask are we cheating our children by forcing them to grow up earlier and confront the reality of becoming adults before it is really necessary?

The whole point of fairy tales is to stimulate children’s imaginations and place them in another world different than the one they inhabit. The themes and characters are designed to pass on cultural traditions to the next generation in a fun and memorable way.

Serious critiques of common stories like “Sleeping Beauty” and “Snow White” try to make the point that these cultural touchstones actually work to undermine gender equality and may even foster racial hatred and stereotypes. For example, Disney’s extraordinary technical achievement of combining live action and animated segments in the 1946 release Song of the South is never shown on television and has never been released on DVD due to the racially insensitive attitudes of the characters toward “Uncle Remus” and his oral creation of the Br’er Rabbit adventures. The original stories written down by Joel Chandler Harris were actually African folk tales told to him by former slaves in rural Georgia and tended to depict race relations in the post Civil War south in an idealized manner.

Too politically correct? Not according to the feminists:

Feminist criticism and re-visioning of fairy tales has centered on exposing the gender ideology that is perpetuated in tales. Criticism has focused on the passivity of young girls waiting to be rescued, the encoded binaries in a text that equate beauty with goodness, the representation of evil stepmothers, and the closures which seal a girl’s dependency on a prince.

All of that may be true. But does it do any harm otherwise? One might also note the strength to endure hardship with a determination to change their lot in life in both Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, their innate intelligence, their resourcefulness, and their eventual triumph. Aren’t these qualities to which young girls should be aspiring as well?

Being passed down through an oral tradition in western society, fairy tales like Rapunzel and Hansel and Gretel change from telling to telling, embellished to make a point or altered to obscure another. Some of the harsher cultural critiques posit that such touchstones were actually used to oppress women, that this was their purpose all along. Such nonsense may pass muster in academia but you and I see these tales for what they are; ways for children to imagine a different world from the one they inhabit on a day to day basis while passing on important moral lessons in such a way that they will listen and learn.

Most modern children’s films like the Shrek and Ice Age franchises try to walk a fine line between an appealing kind of smarminess and wide eyed innocence, ostensibly to keep adults entertained as well. The Shrek films may turn fairy tales upside down by having the monster marry the princess but it works because the “monster” isn’t really evil, just different.

But Enchanted is an entirely different kind of children’s film altogether. It may create a memorable world that will expand the imaginations of youngsters. But the moral verities one usually finds in fairy tales are mocked and satirized as being totally out of place in modern New York. The purity and innocence of the Princess is transformed into a kind of empty headed naivete while the gallant and courageous Prince becomes something of a buffoon. Their moral universe - where people are supposed to behave a certain way toward one another - is ruthlessly taken advantage of and exploited for selfish reasons by world weary New Yorkers.

I don’t see anything unhealthy or harmful for children in Enchanted, having only read about it and seen the trailers. But it nevertheless caused an indescribable sadness as I watched the beautiful fairy tale princess being treated abominably by caricatures of cynical New Yorkers. Of course, adults realize that life is not a “happily ever after” proposition, that tragedy and loss are a part of living. But must children be disabused of the notion so early in life?

It’s depressing to think that a film like Enchanted will color a child’s outlook on the world of make believe and fairy tales after they see the film. They won’t see the world of Snow White or Sleeping Beauty quite the same way again. It’s not a question of whether this is right or wrong but whether it is necessary. I know if I had little ones, I would think about taking them to see this film. One must measure what would be gained from seeing it against what might be lost. In that respect, the trade offs for some parents might be too high.

Disney is marketing this film to families so it’s a good bet a large part of the audience will be young children. No doubt some will dub the film a “classic” if for no other reason than the premise of combining reality with the fairy tale world. But in truth, I see this film (and the upcoming Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, a “re-imagining” of the Wizard of Oz called Tin Man) as “anti-classics” in that they deliberately set out to separate themselves from the classic genre and either parody it or, in the case of Tin Man, create an opposing vision of the original.

I really do wish both films success. It just saddens me that it comes at the expense of childhood visions of make believe and fantasy.

Kevin Drum is extremely distrustful of anything the Bush Administration says or does. This is all well and good as the Bushies have made a nasty habit of surprising the country by saying one thing and later having the exact opposite of their claims revealed as the truth.

But don’t let Drum’s jaundiced eye toward politicians fool you. He is actually the most trusting of souls, willing to generously give the benefit of the doubt to all sorts of people - especially those disposed to vote for Democrats:

The State of Indiana has the most stringent voter ID laws in the country. Democrats are always griping about this, and have even gone so far as to challenge Indiana’s law in the Supreme Court. But this is just silly. In this day and age everyone has a photo ID anyway, so what’s the problem?

Just in case, though, the Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race decided to check and see if this was really true. The three charts reproduced here illustrate the guts of their findings. By a substantial margin, the Indiana residents most likely to possess photo ID turn out to be whites, the middle aged, and high-income voters. And while this is undoubtedly just a wild coincidence, these are also the three groups most like to vote for Republicans. (2006 exit poll data here for the suspicious.) Overall, 91% of registered Republicans had photo IDs compared to only 83% of registered Democrats.

In truth, voter ID laws are highly discriminatory. The problem for Drum and other Democrats is that they discriminate against people who want to cheat the system and commit voter fraud. In Drum’s universe, anyone who shows up to vote should be taken at their word that they are who they say they are.

Just so we’re clear on this, in 2004 when the voter registration fraudsters at ACORN submitted registrations with names like Mary Poppins and Dick Tracy, Drum believes the poll workers should have just gone ahead and allowed anyone to vote who chose to use those names - even though Mary Poppins couldn’t possibly have been in Ohio at the time since she was working as a waitress at the greasy spoon down the street from where I lived in 2004, her being between nanny gigs at the time.

How very trusting of Mr. Drum. And how oblivious can you be to the widespread potential for abuse of the system when Democratic partisans like ACORN and the NAACP Voter Fund register non-existent or dead people to vote and then have these phantoms show up on election day, presenting themselves as legitimate?

The Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v Sims in 1964 that there should be “one man, one vote” not “one man, one vote per registration.” But if we were to listen to the Kevin Drum’s of the world, everyone is basically law abiding and there is very little chance to game the system by faking registrations and then organizing an election day party where groups of Democratic party supporters vote early and often.

To be fair, this excellent article from Slate last May by Richard Hasen outlines the difficulty in carrying out an effective fraud scheme at the polls. But Hasen, like Drum, suffers from an acute case of overtrusting their own interest groups as well as the individual voter.

How could an effective fraud scheme be carried out? This piece by Marc Ambinder reveals the AFL-CIO’s plans for the 2008 election:

AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman will oversee the deployment of more than 200,000 volunteers to 23 priority states, including Ohio, pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Five house seats in “union-dense” districts and six Senate seats will be targeted.

In Ohio, where union households comprised 28% of the vote in 2006, the AFl-CIO plans to reach out to more than 1.4 million voters.

The labor federation will partner with other groups and use reams of consumer data to market precise political messages neighborhood-by-neighborhood.

“Our members are building an army to make more calls, knock on more doors and turn out more voters than ever,” said AFSCME President and AFL-CIO Political Committee Chair Gerald McEntee. “We’re going for the Trifecta: the House, the Senate, and the White House.”

In total, the AFL-CIO unions will spend about $200 million on Election 08 efforts, according to AFl-CIO estimates.

I would say that $200 million is lowballing it. AFSCME alone plans to spend $50 million in 2008. And some independent studies point out that staff time and other in kind contributions by labor raise that number by a factor of at least three, making the real figure closer to $600 million - almost all of it spent to aid Democrats.

The point is simple; there is ample money to organize, fund, and carry out voter fraud using labor allies in ACORN, the NAACP, ACT, and other organizations to supply the fake registrations, sharing that info with unions (unions help fund ACORN and ACT). And given the fact that there is massive resistance to purging voter registration rolls of the dead, of convicts, and others who may have moved out of state or otherwise become ineligible to vote, it seems abundantly clear that the potential exists not only to carry out fraud on a large scale but also, just as importantly, to escape detection doing so.

It is simply naive to believe otherwise.

The fact is, voter ID opponents do not have a good argument against a system that demands voters prove who they are prior to casting a ballot. Instead, they fall back on the tired old canard that requiring identification to vote is tantamount to a “poll tax” or “discourages minorities from voting” - even if, as the state of Georgia recently did, offer to give away state ID’s to those who couldn’t afford them.

They cannot argue simply on the merits of the plan. They must play the race card to obscure the real reasons for their opposition - that it would make voter fraud by labor and other Democratic allies extremely difficult.

Republicans, of course, have their own problems with voter fraud. I outline some of the ways the GOP attempts to tamp down minority voting in my PJ Media article here. Robert F. Kennedy estimates in his widely circulated Rolling Stone article that up to 350,000 minorities were intimidated or otherwise prevented from voting in Ohio in 2004. That number seems very high but there is no doubt that GOP efforts at “election monitoring” and spurious mailings to black precincts warning residents not to vote if they have so much as a parking ticket depressed black turnout.

I am not advocating making it difficult to register or vote. The process should be as simple as possible while still maintaining the integrity of the system. Otherwise, why bother?

I’m not revealing any privileged information by saying that our electoral system is in big trouble and needs to be fixed. Now that states are going to programs such as election day registration, it becomes paramount to make sure that each person votes only one time and that his vote is counted only once.

And if Kevin Drum and other Democratic partisans can quit playing the race card when it comes to voter ID programs, it might help in not only cutting down on fraud but also raising the confidence level of the American people that the most sacred of our democratic institutions is being safeguarded to the best of our ability.