The Democratic ticket and the John Edwards affair

By Byron York
The Hill
http://thehill.com/
Posted: 07/23/08 06:54 PM [ET]


John Edwards and Barack Obama (May, 2008): Photo by Beth and Christian Bell (CC)

There’s been a lot of talk lately that former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) will have some sort of role in the Obama administration, if there is one.

A few months ago, Edwards, the Democratic Party’s 2004 vice presidential candidate, seemed to pull himself out of the VP race. But then, a couple of weeks ago, Edwards quietly put himself back in, telling National Public Radio, “I’m prepared to seriously consider anything, anything [Obama] asks me to do for our country.”

“Anything” could, of course, mean running for vice president. But Edwards has done that before, and he didn’t exactly put Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) over the top.

Of course, “anything” could also mean serving as Obama’s attorney general, a position that has been mentioned for the former trial lawyer from North Carolina.

In any event, Edwards has shaped up as someone to watch should Democrats win in November.

But now there’s another reason to watch: an extensive story in the National Enquirer providing new evidence that Edwards, in the midst of his presidential campaign, had an extramarital affair that has, perhaps, resulted in a child.

The story began in 2006, when Edwards commissioned a woman named Rielle Hunter — sometimes described as a documentary filmmaker and sometimes as an aspiring actress — to make a series of brief behind-the-scenes Web videos about his campaign.

Newsweek did a short item on the videos, mentioning that Edwards met the filmmaker “at a New York bar where Edwards was having a business meeting.”

That’s all we heard about it until September 2007, when the Huffington Post published a story headlined “Edwards Mystery: Innocuous Videos Suddenly Shrouded In Secrecy.”

The website’s Sam Stein reported that the videos made by Hunter had suddenly disappeared from Edwards’s campaign website. “No longer am I working on a piece about new media and politics,” Stein wrote. “Now, I just want to know why these webisodes are shrouded in such mystery.”

Then, the Enquirer got into the story, reporting last October that Edwards was “caught in a shocking mistress scandal that could wreck his campaign.”
When Edwards was asked about the allegation, according to the Enquirer, he strongly denied it.

“The story is false. It’s completely untrue, ridiculous,” Edwards said. “Anyone who knows me knows that I have been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years.”

Later, in December 2007, the Enquirer published more details. A pregnant Hunter had moved to North Carolina, living in a house “owned by an Edwards backer” and driving a BMW sport utility vehicle registered to a longtime Edwards aide.

Hunter denied any affair, saying that the longtime, married Edwards aide was actually the father. A lawyer for that aide confirmed to the Enquirer that the aide was indeed the father.

Now the Enquirer has published a new story under the screaming headline "SEN. JOHN EDWARDS CAUGHT WITH MISTRESS AND LOVE CHILD!"

The tabloid reports that Edwards visited Hunter in a Los Angeles hotel Monday night, leaving her at 2:40 Tuesday morning. When the Enquirer’s reporters confronted Edwards, the story goes, he tried to escape.

Critics might question the Enquirer’s involvement in all this. Perhaps, they might charge, money changed hands to make the story happen.

Maybe it did. But one reads an Enquirer story just like one reads a story in The New York Times. You look at the allegation and try to sort out how much evidence the paper is presenting.

For example, after carefully reading the Times’s front-page story alleging that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had had an affair with a lobbyist, one could only ask, Where’s the evidence?

That’s not the case with the Edwards story; there’s quite a bit of detail.

What will happen now? Well, we probably won’t hear as many mentions of Edwards as a possible key player in an Obama administration.

But so far, Edwards is going on as if nothing happened. The morning after the Enquirer story appeared, he was in Denver, promoting an anti-poverty project.

Asked about the vice presidency, he said, “I’m not seeking the job. But anything Sen. Obama would ask me to do in his campaign or presidency I would consider seriously.”

Will Obama ask? Not likely.

- Byron York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: byork@thehill.com
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Cover me: Bruce Springsteen's top 7 cover songs

By David Hinkley
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Wednesday, July 23rd 2008, 12:23 PM


This July 17, 2008 file photo shows Bruce Springsteen, right, as he performs alongside Clarence Clemons on saxophone during a concert in Madrid, Thursday, July 17, 2008.
Bruce Springsteen will be at Giants Stadium on July 27, 28, and 31.
(AP Photo/Paul White, FILE)

It's probably a good measure of how much fun Bruce Springsteen seemed to have on the just-concluded European leg of his "Magic" tour that he dusted off a couple of rock 'n' roll classics.

As the sets got longer - a show that was running maybe two and a half hours in the U.S. got as long as three hours and 10 minutes in Oslo - first Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues" and then the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout" dropped in for a visit.

This is always good news - not because Bruce does them better than anyone else, but because 1) those seminal rock classics fit perfectly with what Bruce still does with his own music, and 2) they say that he's still a rock fan. You have to figure the main reason he plays "Summertime Blues," besides it being summer, is that if he were in the audience, he'd love to hear it himself.

And who wouldn't? (Note clever classic rock joke there.) Among the many great early rock lines, there will always be a place for:

"I called my congressman
And he said, quote,
I'd like to help ya son
But you're too young to vote."

It will be interesting to see if those classics, or others, make an appearance when Springsteen visits Giants Stadium July 27, 28 and 31, kicking off the final month of the "Magic" tour that ends Aug. 30 in Milwaukee. Some folks privately say they think Bruce's European audiences have been responding better than his U.S. audiences for a while now, and that, subsequently, he sometimes has more fun there.

In any case, Springsteen has a pretty impressive song catalog of his own. But like his pal Bob Dylan, about whom the same can be said, Springsteen has never restrained himself from doing someone else's songs if he's in the mood.

He's sung hundreds of other people's songs, maybe thousands if you go back to the live shows of the early days when he would sing Motown, soul and garage. As time went by, those songs from his own top-40 and rock radio youth were joined by folkier songs he discovered further on down the road, like Woody Guthrie's "Vigilante Man" or "I Ain't Got No Home."

Then there are the times he's joined artists he likes or admires on stage, like when he was part of the band behind Roy Orbison for the famous 1987 tribute show, or the night he helped sing backup behind Dion at the Garden.

Throw in the hundreds of jam sessions at Jersey shore clubs, and it's hard to think there are many early rock classics he hasn't played at some point. That absorption was just part of the music culture in which he grew up. That's why his band years ago became one of hundreds corralled by Chuck Berry to back him up when he came to town. Chuck liked to travel light and he figured, correctly, that everyone who had the slightest connection to rock 'n' roll knew his songs, so why bother hiring and paying a standing band of your own?


Bruce Springsteen performs during a concert in his 'Magic Tour' at Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona July 19, 2008.
REUTERS/Albert Gea (SPAIN)

In any case, the deal with Springsteen singing other people's songs is not to compare his version with someone else's, but to gauge how they fit in with his own songs. Does Bruce sing "War" better than Edwin Starr? No. Did it complement and enhance the music and messages around it in a Bruce show? Absolutely.

With that in mind, then, let's take off on a kind of fool's errand, which is picking the top seven Springsteen renditions of Other People's Songs.

And before you read the list and assume I forgot some major ones, which is entirely possible, I didn't forget about the "Detroit Medley." I know many Bruce fans cherish it as a pinnacle of pure rock 'n' roll excitement. I just think he's done better.

1. "Quarter to Three." It may have helped that he built elaborate stage raps around this classic Gary U.S. Bonds song, like about not eating a cheeseburger before you sing it. It definitely helps that by singing it, he helped enshrine one of the great party songs ever. But mainly, he sounded like he enjoyed it as much as Bonds enjoyed it, which seems almost impossible to anyone who knows the original. It's part of Bruce lore, and it should be.

2. "Jersey Girl." In contrast to the way "Quarter to Three" kicked matters into a frenzy, he used this one to slow things down. It would be a hot summer night and he'd work everybody into a sweat and suddenly the lights would drop and out would come this beautiful Tom Waits love ballad. A lot of people assume Springsteen wrote it because he took it over so thoroughly. He even added a verse of his own, though it's not as delicate and subtle as Waits' originals. But he understood the importance of the "sha-la-las," which mean just as much as the other words. He understood the girl about whom Waits was writing, too, and while his version is different from Waits', it's equally powerful. As an added bonus, it inspired a great line that Waits used many times in subsequent years about how sure, he wrote this song and Bruce sung it, but now, well, Bruce was just going to have to go the rest of the way on his own.

3. "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." Not a heavyweight, you might say. You'd be right. But he just does it so perfectly. This is the definitive rock 'n' roll rendition of a Christmas song, one of the few peers to Phil Spector's Christmas album. The rap is perfect, too ("Clarence, Santa gonna bring you a new saxophone?"), and mainly, it just so fits the exhilaration of the season. In fact, it fits any exhilarating moment. He threw it into a European set one night a few weeks ago.

4. "Who'll Stop the Rain?" No one sings this with the jagged edge of writer John Fogerty. Not even Bruce. But Bruce sings it mighty mighty well, and even though he sometimes puts it in a playful context - he's been known to use it as a show kickoff on a night when the skies are threatening - he also conveys its dark metaphoric warning. It may be the most unsettling cosmic question rock 'n' roll has ever asked, the global counterpart to "Will you still love me tomorrow?"


Bruce Springsteen (L), Little Steven van Zandt (R) and the E Street Band perform at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki July 11, 2008. REUTERS/Hannu Kivimaki/Lehtikuva (FINLAND).

5. "Trapped." Hardly anyone heard this when Jimmy Cliff first recorded it, but one listener - Bruce - was enough. A song of restless unease became, in Bruce's hands, a roar of pain - and it might not be too much of a stretch to suggest Bruce felt a little of it himself, since he broke it out on the "Born in the USA" tour that made him rich and famous, but also clearly made him feel like he might be getting shoved into an anthem-rocker box.

6. "Chimes of Freedom." A recent UK article on later versions of famous songs called this one of the worst ever. Here, as in signing the non-aggression pact with Germany in 1938, a Brit was quite simply wrong. Bruce picked this song, which is one of Bob Dylan's best, which is really saying something, to kick off the Amnesty International tour a few years back. The enduring version is one he performed live on a radio broadcast and then issued as a single, largely to help promote the tour. Bruce doesn't have a big problem with song envy, but you know he wouldn't mind having written this one.

7. "Pay Me My Money Down" and "Old Dan Tucker." Personally, I'd put the whole "Seeger Sessions" project here. Those two songs sounded especially fine in the live performance, but so, on any given night, did a dozen others, from Sis Cunningham's "My Oklahoma Home" to Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live." Springsteen added a couple of his own lines on that last one, turning a scratchy old lament into a message for modern times as well. The new-for-Bruce sound of the "Seeger Sessions" was a big part of their appeal, obviously, but the fact Bruce was poking into these great old songs at all helps explain why he's done so many versions of Other People's Songs from the beginning: He hears a song, likes it, identifies what he likes and figures out how to convey it to us. That may be easier with "Twist and Shout" than with "Oh Mary Don't You Weep," and it obviously resonates with a larger audience. But it's the same impulse and the same process and at the very least, it explains why this conversation is worth having.

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Ousting Jack

By Michelle Malkin
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
Thursday, July 24, 2008

A jaw-dropping political miracle may be on the horizon. No, I'm not talking about the second coming of the Obamessiah. I'm talking about the long-deserved comeuppance of troop-smearing, pork-feasting, scandal-tainted Democratic Rep. Jack Murtha of Pennsylvania.


William Russell

The 18-term congressman's challenger, staunch conservative Republican newcomer William Russell, raised nearly $670,000 in the second quarter. Earmark king Murtha scraped together a measly $119,000.

Russell's underdog campaign bested Murtha without the perks of incumbency, national name recognition, big PAC donations or mainstream media support.

Even more amazing: The challenger, a Desert Storm veteran and Army reservist who survived the 9/11 Pentagon attack, wasn't even publicly campaigning during the quarter. Russell, 45, is on active duty with the Army until after Aug. 1 and is barred from actively campaigning until then.

If all that didn't make this enough of an inspiring story: In February, a Pennsylvania judge ruled that Russell had failed to collect enough signatures to make the primary ballot. But he refused to give up on his goal of defeating Murtha. The GOP neophyte persevered on a shoestring budget and won more than 4,000 write-in votes in the spring to earn a spot on the general-election ballot. Russell's campaign manager, veteran GOP activist Peg Luksik, says most second-quarter donations were less than $50.

Russell's clear on where he stands. "I am a conservative," he says in his defining campaign statement. "I believe in the sovereignty and security of this one nation, under God. I believe the primary role of government is to provide for the common defense and a legal framework to protect families and individual liberty."

The excitement around Russell stands in stark contrast to grass-roots disgust on the right with Beltway Republicans who continue to push the party to the left in a brain-dead bid to "rebrand" the GOP. He has united pro-troops families, social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, Reagan Democrats and independents fed up with Murtha's culture of corruption dating back to his Abscam days in the 1980s.


Jack Murtha

(Murtha wasn't indicted in the infamous bribery probe but he was videotaped entertaining a $50,000 bribe from undercover FBI agents posing as emissaries for Arab sheiks trying to enter our country illegally.)

"The incredible story about Bill's campaign is that the $15 and $25 contributions are coming in from all over Pennsylvania and every corner of the country," Luksik noted on the Russell Brigade Web site. "This is K Street versus Main Street."

Russell decided to enter politics after hearing Murtha's slanderous 2006 accusations that Marines in Haditha "overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood." Seven Marines have been cleared or won case dismissals in the Iraq war incident Murtha recklessly adjudicated in the court of public opinion - with willing mainstream journalists swinging their nooses.

Perhaps that complicity explains the great media wall of silence around Russell's upstart campaign. Republican Bill Russell offers ethical, freedom-enhancing, pro-responsibility, anti-retreat, unapologetically conservative change they don't want to believe in.

The Soldier Voting Scandal

By Robert Novak
Chicago Sun-Times
http://www.sun-times.com
July 24, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rep. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, on July 8 introduced a resolution demanding that the Defense Department better enable U.S. military personnel overseas to vote in the November elections. That act was followed by silence. Democrats normally leap on an opportunity to find fault with the Bush Pentagon. But not a single Democrat joined Blunt as a co-sponsor, and an all-Republican proposal cannot pass in the Democratic-controlled House.


Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt (R)

Analysis by the federal Election Assistance Commission, rejecting inflated Defense Department voting claims, estimated overseas and absentee military voting for the 2006 midterm elections at a disgracefully low 5.5 percent. The quality of voting statistics is so poor that there is no way to tell how many of the slightly over 330,000 votes actually were sent in by the absentee military voters and their dependents and how many by civilian Americans living abroad -- 6 million all total.

Nobody who has studied the question objectively sees any improvement since 2006, and that is a scandal. Retired U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Charles Henry wrote in the July issue of the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings: "While virtually everyone involved ... seems to agree that military people deserve at least equal opportunity when it comes to having their votes counted, indications are that in November 2008, many thousands of service members who try to vote will do so in vain."

Henry, now an independent broadcast journalist, has personal experience with this enduring scandal. While serving as a Marine at sea off Iran, he received his 1980 presidential ballot too late to count. President Harry Truman said of troops fighting in Korea, "The least we at home can do is to make sure that they are able to enjoy the rights they are being asked to fight to preserve." But the U.S. military that has so perfected the art of war over the past half-century is at a loss to enable soldiers to vote.

A combat officer has enough to do without handling the votes of troopers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Defense Department Inspector General's report in March last year recommended "appointment of civilian personnel" as "voting assistance officers." The Pentagon brass rejected the idea.

I reported four years ago that the problems of 2000 overseas military voting had not been corrected for the 2004 presidential election. At that time, Under Secretary of Defense David Chu was put in charge of the problem. During massive turnover at the Pentagon, Chu remains in place -- best known among critics of the military vote problem for his chronic failure to return telephone calls.

Congressional attention to the problem has been scattered and limited mostly to Republicans such as Sen. John Cornyn, who earlier this year decried "a lack of will" at the Pentagon to solve the voting problem. Democratic interest about tackling the problem might be tempered by apprehension that soldiers will cast too many Republican votes.


Maryland Congressman Steny Hoyer (D)

Nevertheless, at least one prominent Democrat -- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer -- described himself to me as eager to deal with this problem. (Hoyer's home state of Maryland is one of the worst offenders, with ballots of only 4.1 percent of overseas voters counted in 2006.) Hoyer and Blunt, who have become friendly adversaries in a bitterly partisan Congress, conferred several weeks ago and agreed in principle on co-sponsoring a resolution aimed at getting the Defense Department moving.

Hoyer wanted the resolution to cover expatriate Americans as well as the military, and Blunt did not object. They turned the issue over to their staffers and went about the business of major legislation. Blunt had instructed his staff to seek agreement with Democrats but, if not, to introduce a resolution applying only to the military, which was the outcome.

One presidential staffer who is familiar with the situation privately dismisses the Pentagon bureaucrats as "hopeless." In a lame-duck administration counting the days before a troubled eight years finally end, American fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan deprived of their right to vote constitute the least of White House worries.

Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate Inc.

Music Review: U2 Reissues

U2: Boy / October / War

[Island; 1980 / 1981 / 1983; Island/Universal; 2008]

Rating: 8.3 / 7.1 / 8.9

Buy it from Insound
Download it from eMusic

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/142433

In 2008, it's nearly impossible to imagine U2 as teenagers rehearsing in a Dublin kitchen. Today, they're a powerful brand, a group with closets full of Grammys, more than 170 million records sold worldwide, stadium tours, membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a lead singer whose charitable initiatives have allowed him to hold court with some of the world's most powerful people.

It's funny, then, to think that the band is still the same four guys who first got together in 1976 to form the Larry Mullen Band. When David "the Edge" Evans, Paul "Bono" Hewson, Larry Mullen, Jr., and Adam Clayton released their first EP, Three, in 1979, they were still teenagers with an attitude and naïveté that didn't quite dovetail with the rest of the post-punk world. Even on their earliest recordings, they didn't sound like a band that could be contained by small venues. U2 had to be big.

Those earliest recordings are among the huge clutch of rare tracks-- studio B-sides, previously unreleased tracks, live shows, radio sessions, and remixes-- that populate the bonus discs accompanying these new reissues of the band's first three albums, 1980's Boy, 1981's October, and 1983's War. The first EP, included with Boy, isn't great, in part because the dry percussion is ill-suited to the band's (and particularly the Edge's) textural style; their debut album is another story. Produced by Steve Lillywhite, it opens with "I Will Follow", a surging colossus of a song that still ranks among the best tracks in the band's catalog. Bono's powerful vocals-- he got his nickname from a shorter form of Bono Vox (Good Voice)-- bring immediacy and energy to the album. And he was matched by the Edge's guitar playing, which he approached like a painter does a brush, using it as a tool to coat the canvas of the song with sound rather than resorting to basic riffs or simple strumming.

The version of "Out of Control" on Three had been dry and punky; the version on Boy is a near-anthem, with Bono's yelp transformed into an arcing croon and the Edge's slashing guitar grown into a huge, curling wave. "A Day Without Me" sounds like a rehearsal for an arena gig that was still years away-- the line "started a landslide in my ego" must have had different connotations back then for Bono than it does now. Lillywhite does a great job of capturing what made U2 unique (the Edge's remastering work is also vastly superior to the original CD transfer), and it makes sense that the band re-hired him for its rushed second album, convincing the producer to break his self-imposed rule of never working with an artist more than once.

That sophomore effort, October, is a bit of a wobble for the band. The sound is there, and even more fully fledged than it was on the debut, but the band were staring at a songwriting deficit after Bono's lyric notebook was stolen from a backstage room. Both their improved playing and lack of solid new material are evident on the album, a good-enough record that kept the band on its feet and signed to Island Records after a near-breakup. Here, Bono atypically relies on repetitive lyrics and at times possesses an uncharacteristic tentativeness. Opener "Gloria" displays some musical dynamism, but its Latin-language chorus tempers its anthemic qualities, with only the Edge's searing guitar to cover for the loss.

October does, however, nearly match its predecessor on several songs. "Tomorrow" is a beautiful ballad that gives Bono a chance to show his range, and nods to the band's homeland with its use of yearning Uilleann pipes, while the title track is a spectral, slow song that, unusually for U2, is grounded by a piano. Elsewhere, "Scarlet" is essentially an instrumental, the only lyric being Bono's repetition of the word "Rejoice", one of a handful of vaguely religious references on the album. "With a Shout" comes closest to matching the sweep of "I Will Follow" with its racing rhythm track and strange, dubby horn interjection, but doesn't quite have the hook.

October wasn't an affirming hit and, by its own admission, the band felt pressure to deliver on its third album, believing Island could cut them loose if it bore similar results. It doesn't take long to hear that the band was aiming for something different on War, which opens with a sharply staccato snare drum that sets up a startlingly martial beat. A piercing violin anticipates Bono's entrance: "I can't believe the news today/ I can't close my eyes and make it go away/ How long, how long must we sing this song?" The bass line is a dry, raw rumble, while the Edge slides back and forth between a funky scratch and his signature searching lines. "Sunday Bloody Sunday", pointedly named for the shooting of 26 civilian protesters by members of the 1st Battalion of the British Parachute Regiment in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1972, was an instant anti-war anthem and carried an urgency that outpaced even that of "I Will Follow".

The energy and insistence of the opener is sustained across the album. "Two Hearts Beat As One" and "New Year's Day" are thrilling, finally showing the intense passion Bono's voice was capable of imparting when he had the right words to wrap it around. Outside its three flagship hits, War was eclectic but still entirely U2. "Seconds" rides a hypnotic bass line to a final verse that conflates nuclear standoff with a dance craze; "The Refugee" aims for a sort of downtown NYC alt-disco vibe and is faintly ridiculous for it; "Two Hearts" nails a hard funk-punk groove; and "Surrender" features an early dose of the Edge's fractured slide guitar style. The propulsive "Like a Song..." perhaps sums up the album's immediacy with the opening line "Like a song I had to sing."

As much as these were songs that Bono sincerely felt, he clearly wished that the world was a good enough place that it wouldn't require them. On gentle album closer "40" he returns to a refrain from "Sunday Bloody Sunday", saying "I will sing, sing a new song/ How long to sing this song," regretting the need to sing about the world's ills. The U2 we've known ever since had arrived on War, and even today it sounds vital. As much as cynical critics and listeners often swipe at U2 for their earnestness, it's still refreshing to hear a band that cares so much, wants to be heard by so many, and isn't afraid to show it. As if to hammer home the point, the reissues each include contact information for half a dozen activist charity organizations.

These reissues nicely chart the progression of U2 from wide-eyed kids with a great sound to purposeful musicians and activists several paces down the path to mega-stardom. As products, they do everything a reissue should, presenting the original albums with improved sound in excellent, informative packages-- the 2xCD versions will reward committed fans with a handful of good-to-great live recordings and every available studio curio from the era. (It's admittedly weird to hear "New Year's Day" turned into a club track, but intriguing nonetheless.) Whatever some may say of them, there's no denying that U2 have been an enormously important band for nearly 30 years now, as well as an extraordinary force for good as the members have leveraged their fame to bring attention and funding to innumerable worthy causes. Even the biggest stars have to start somewhere, and these discs are a strong reminder that the best of U2's beginnings remain worthy of attention.

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/u2
- Joe Tangari, July 24, 2008

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Today's Tune: U2 - Gloria (Live, 1984)

(Click on title to play video)

McCain vs. Muslim Radicals

By Robert Spencer

http://www.frontpagemag.com/

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Muslim spokesmen in the U.S. are outraged over remarks made last Friday by Bud Day, a key supporter of John McCain. Day, a much-decorated Air Force Colonel and Medal of Honor recipient who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam with McCain, said during a conference call organized by the Florida Republican Party that “the Muslims have said either we kneel, or they’re going to kill us.” Day added: “I don’t intend to kneel, and I don’t advocate to anybody that we kneel, and John doesn’t advocate to anybody that we kneel.”

The reaction was swift. Saif Ishoof, president of the Center for Voter Advocacy, said that Day’s remarks were “perpetuating a form of Islamophobia.” Khaled Saffuri, the Executive Director of the Islamic Institute (which he co-founded with Grover Norquist), was also deeply offended. “‘This is as close to racist as it gets,” he declared. “These are cheap street tactics. Even if this is called a mistake or a slip of the tongue, it shows a bigger problem with racism. McCain and the Republican party should denounce this.” (Keith Olbermann also termed Day’s words “racism and religious hatred,” although neither he nor Saffuri explained what race Islam is.)

In this Jan 10, 2008 file photo, George 'Bud' Day, a former Vietnam POW with presidential hopeful John McCain, reminisces about his long military career in his Fort Walton Beach, Fla., law office Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. In the decades since they shared a prison cell in North Vietnam, Day has remained a close friend of McCain and emerged as a staunch opponent of Democrats seeking the presidency.(AP Photo/Mari Darr-Welch, File)

Corey Saylor, national legislative director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), also called on McCain to distance himself from Day, stating that “CAIR would like to see Senator McCain come out and make a clear statement repudiating these remarks. We don’t believe they’re helpful at all in either putting out the campaign’s message or winning the hearts and minds in the Muslim world that America needs to be winning.”

However, a repudiation from McCain was not immediately forthcoming. McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said only: “The threat we face is from radical Islamic extremism.” However, a spokeswoman for the Republican Party, according to the Miami Herald, “said later that Day acknowledged he misspoke and ‘made an unfortunate mistake’ because he meant to say ‘terrorists’ and not ‘Muslims.’ The Herald itself took for granted that Day had said something wrong, calling his remarks a “gaffe on Muslims.”

Unnoticed, however, in the controversy over Day’s remarks was the fact that what he said was essentially accurate. While it is certainly true that not all Muslims are trying to “make us kneel,” there can be no legitimate question whatsoever that there are indeed Muslims who are engaged in such an effort. The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States is, according to a Brotherhood operative, engaged in a “grand jihad” aimed at “eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

What’s more, there is considerable reason to suspect that some of the Muslim leaders who have been most indignant over Day’s words are involved in this “grand jihad.” Investigative journalist Kenneth Timmerman wrote in 2004 of Khaled Saffuri’s considerable influence in Washington, and then noted that “some of the very people Saffuri introduced to Bush and Rove are in federal prison on terrorism-related charges. Others have been expelled from the country. Still other former colleagues and donors have become subjects of a massive federal probe into U.S. funding of terrorist organizations that is code-named Operation Greenquest….Saffuri’s ties to radical Islamists and apologists for terror are neither superficial nor coincidental.” And CAIR, of course, was in 2007 named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding case, and has had several of its officials arrested and convicted on terrorism-related charges.

Why was none of this been mentioned in mainstream media coverage of this story? It isn’t really surprising that it wasn’t, given the tendencies and perspectives of the mainstream media – indeed, it would have been more surprising if they had mentioned it. But Bud Day’s remarks should have been judged for their accuracy: are there, or are there not, Muslims trying to make us kneel? No one would have objected in 1944 if a military spokesman had said that “the Germans are trying to make us kneel,” and someone who took offense to such a statement on the grounds that not all Germans were pro-Nazi would only have been ridiculed. However, CAIR has shown in the past that the accuracy of statements to which it takes umbrage does nothing to mitigate their hurt feelings. And now the primacy of hurt feelings has been enshrined into law in Canada: as we have seen in the Mark Steyn trials in Canada, truth and accuracy is no defense against charges of “hate speech.” In a sane world, instead of taking offense, Islamic spokesmen in the U.S. would have been assuring reporters that they were working energetically within Muslim communities against those who wished to make non-Muslims kneel. But sanity is at a premium in the public debate on Islamic jihad today.

- Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His next book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, is coming this November from Regnery Publishing.

Surging for Obama

McCain's I-told-you-so strategy won't work.

By Jonah Goldberg
National Review Online
http://www.nationalreview.com/
July 23, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (left) waves to fans during a game between the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium July 20.

'Senator Obama didn’t support the surge, wanted to pull out, said that it would fail. I supported it when it was the toughest thing to do. I believe that my record on national security and keeping this country safe is there. And the American people will examine our records, and I will win."
That’s John McCain explaining why he’ll win.

He’s wrong.

He’s leading a loud chorus of conservatives and Republicans desperate to make the surge the defining issue of the campaign.

In an editorial for the conservative Weekly Standard, Fred Kagan (the primary intellectual author of the surge strategy) wrote: “It would be hard to design a better test for the job of commander in chief than the real-life test senators John McCain and Barack Obama have undergone in the last two years.”

It’s understandable why so many Republicans see the surge as an ideal political battleground. Outside foreign policy, McCain’s standing with the GOP base is shaky. The party doesn’t have many policy wins to brag about. And Obama doesn’t have much of a record to attack. Also, many hawks — often called neoconservatives — see the surge as vindication that they were right about the feasibility of the Iraq invasion from the beginning. It was President Bush’s bungling that was wrong, they say, not the war itself.

Whatever the merits of all that, there’s a problem. As political analysis, it’s nonsense.

Yes, McCain heroically pushed for the surge when the war was at its most unpopular point. Even more impressive, he favored a change in strategy back when the war was popular.

Within months of the invasion, McCain was calling for more troops and the head of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Later, when the Iraqi civil war erupted, al Qaeda in Iraq metastasized and Iran mounted a clandestine surge of its own, McCain doubled down; he argued that we couldn’t afford to lose and proposed a revised counterinsurgency strategy for victory. That was the same month that Obama introduced the “Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007.”

That’s great stuff for McCain’s biographers. But the catch-22 is that the more the surge succeeds, the more advantageous it is for Obama.

Voters don’t care about the surge; they care about the war. Americans want it to be over — and in a way they can be proud of.

Richard Nixon didn’t win in 1968 by second-guessing LBJ about the mess in Vietnam; he ran on getting us out with honor. McCain is great when talking about honor, but the getting-us-out part is where he gets tongue-tied. Obama, meanwhile, talks about leaving Iraq as though Americans don’t care about honor. That may have worked in the early primaries, but it won’t in the general election. Americans don’t like to lose wars.

Politically, the surge is a bit like the Supreme Court’s recent decision affirming the constitutional right to own a gun. Obama’s position on gun rights, a miasma of murky equivocation, would hurt him if gun control were a big issue this year. It isn’t, thanks to the high court’s ruling. That’s a huge boon.

The surge has done likewise with the war. If it were going worse, McCain’s Churchillian rhetoric would match reality better. But with sectarian violence nearly gone, al Qaeda in Iraq almost totally routed and even Sadrist militias seemingly neutralized, the stakes of withdrawal seem low enough for Americans to feel comfortable voting for Obama. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s support for an American troop drawdown pushes the perceived stakes even lower.

Recall that Bill Clinton, with his dovish record and roster of “character issues,” would never have been elected if the Soviet Union hadn’t collapsed in 1991. With the Cold War over, the successful Reagan surge (and Bush pere’s cleanup efforts) made rolling the dice on Clinton tolerable. The McCain surge (and Bush fils’ success at averting another 9/11) produces the same effect for Obama.

A silver lining for McCain is that Obama’s arrogance and sense of indebtedness to his party’s antiwar base have elicited a series of credibility-damaging zigzags on Iraq. Obama would do better to promise peace with honor as soon as possible, then quickly move on to economy talk. The subsequent bleating from the bug-out lefties would be useful testament to Obama’s rumored centrism.

Although the economy will dominate this election, McCain can still press his advantage on foreign policy. But not with I-told-you-sos. Re-arguing the surge is almost as counterproductive as re-arguing the war itself. Elections are about the future.

McCain doesn’t need to explain why he’d be a better commander-in-chief. Voters already acknowledge his superior judgment on foreign policy by huge margins. He needs to explain why, going forward, we’ll need that judgment.

— Jonah Goldberg is the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning and editor-at-large of National Review Online.

© 2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Media's guilt plays well for Obama and McCain

By John Kass
Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
July 23, 2008

Palestinian artist Walid Ayyub makes the final touches on a portrait for US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at his shop in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama flew into Jordan on Tuesday, stepping into the minefield of Middle Eastern politics to launch the public leg of his high-risk international campaign tour.(AFP/Abbas Momani)

The Drudge Report ran a juicy item about the fact that only one reporter showed up to cover Republican John McCain at a campaign stop in New Hampshire the other day.

Just one.

The lonely print reporter from the Manchester Union Leader stood on the tarmac, waiting for McCain's plane to land. McCain, obviously upset at being dissed by yet another meager media throng, didn't stop to chat.

"Did you ever notice that when John McCain is on TV he's always grumpy?" asked a colleague in the cafeteria who whispered, lest others denounce him for Barackian Thought Crimes.

"McCain's always made to look old and angry, a curmudgeon. And Barack Obama? He's always seen as presidential, cool, smiling, shaking hands," whispered the guy.

I believe this phenomenon is called liberal bias. And the country has caught on.

Since I mentioned it a few days ago, newspapers, Web sites, radio and TV news have been full of stories about media bias and outraged denials, recrimination and guilt. Always the guilt. Obama's people know we're guilty.

Guilt is what McCain is playing on, too, trying to shame journalists with a new video with dueling sound tracks about the Media Love that Dares Speak Barack, featuring MSNBC host Chris Matthews shrieking that when he hears Obama talk, a tingle runs down his leg.

Predictably, McCain blew it by selecting lame songs for his video. He should have used "Barry Angel" sung to the old dusty "Johnny Angel" or my personal favorite, "Oh-Bama" sung to the 1958 hit, "Oh, Donna," back in the Route 66 days when McCain was young and not so old.

Yet has anyone noticed McCain's complaining? No.

Because Obama might again work out three times in one day—the recent subject of a story explaining how he stays so skinny and young—and we'd cover all aspects of his beauty, again, if there is tape. And jealous old John McCain tromps alone on tarmacs in the night.

McCain is now cast as the crabby uncle who visits and shrieks there's no gin in your house. He grabs the TV remote control, turns off the cartoons and forces the kids to watch the ancient Mesopotamia special on The History Channel.

Just hope the kids don't dare tell uncle that Iraq doesn't border Pakistan. He'll nuke them.

Meanwhile, the Democrat Obama is treated quite differently. He's the Mr. Tumnus of American politics, the gentle forest faun of Narnia, with throngs of reporters trembling to sit with him at tea and cakes, like the little girl in the C.S. Lewis story, as he plays the flute, chanting "We Are The Change We've Been Waiting For." And nobody laughs.

You don't laugh because you can't make fun of Obama. The ground would swallow you whole.

He's still busy fighting off throngs of reporters, a cast of thousands as urgent and impassioned as in those old Hollywood biblical epics. This situation continues on his overseas campaign trip. TV anchors were all but ululating (which has nothing to do with sex) at his approach, desperate for interviews after he sank that three-point shot in front of American troops and hit nothing but net.

Who needs foreign policy expertise when you're so cool, you risk a three-point shot and make it on camera?

And when reporters weren't arguing about getting access to his fact-finding-tour-campaign-commercial this week, they were tossing rose petals before him, so that his feet wouldn't touch the ground.

OK, I'm exaggerating about the roses. There are no rose petals left, because the media used them all up on Obama during his battle with the Clintons. I guess they'll have to use palm fronds now.

I hesitated to suggest this is because of liberal media bias, because the last time I said so, I was frightened and intimidated by the angry left blog Daily Kos, which has discovered that I'm not liberal. One Kos reader suggested that he'd read my column in the Tribune only "if the headline read 'Tribune Columnist Beaten to a Pulp.' "

How nice.

I didn't know Chicago Machine Democrats and their pals in the Illinois Republican Party were such devoted Kosmaniacs. Happily, one poster didn't want me dead. Just half dead and pulpy and ready to listen to reason.

Though we disagree, you've got to admire the Hard Left's restraint and tolerance for different views, as long as those views don't compel them to fantasize you've been beaten to a pulpy mass.

Yet pulpy or not, the thing is, reporters are generally biased toward Obama. The denials are getting old. Old as McCain. According to a Rasmussen poll, half of all Americans believe the media will favor Obama in their news coverage leading up to the November presidential election.

Sadly, that half of Americans is wrong once again.

Because the election is over, isn't it? Obama is president, all we're waiting for is the transcending, when a beam of light shines on Chris Matthews' face, carrying him to the heavens, smiling, that tingle running down his leg.

jskass@tribune.com

John Edwards in a Feydeau Farce at the Beverly Hilton

By Roger L. Simon
http://pajamasmedia.com/
July 22nd, 2008 4:17 pm

Accusations: John Edwards (left) has denied he is the father of Rielle Hunter's child.

I want to start by bragging to you about how discreet Pajamas Media is. Over six months ago, we had wind of the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter love affair and love child and did not run with it. Most of this information was hearsay from people here in Hollywood, people who know Rielle. She was a long time hanger on in Hollywood circles before heading East to do political promo videos… and, yes, I had met her myself on a couple of occasions at parties. She was not particularly notable, of the tedious sort that bore you to death about their yoga instructor.

But now that the cat is out the bag, I will say what I wanted to say then. John Edwards–he of constructing a 28,000 square foot home while preaching about the two Americas and remonstrating about the environment–is one of the most reprehensible schmucks to appear on the American political scene in some time. And that’s saying something. That he played this game while his wife had cancer makes it contemptible beyond words. Now we know why he was always primping in the mirror. It is narcissism unbounded.

But there is a moral to this story - and I think we all know it. I hate the use of caps, but I think in this instance I will use them. DO NOT BELIEVE THE HIGH FLOWN RHETORIC OF POLITICIANS - ESPECIALLY WHEN IT IS HOLIER THAN THOU. THEY ARE LIKELY TO BE MASKING SOMETHING.

Oh, one last thing, for those of you who says it’s The National Enquirer, how do we know it’s true? I suggest you Google the “National Enquirer and OJ Simpson.” They broke most of the important stories on that case. In general, these days they’re vastly more reliable than The New York Times.

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Sanctuary Policy Made City Less Safe

Debra J. Saunders
The San Fransisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/
Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Edwin Ramos

San Francisco's "sanctuary city" policy - as it was implemented until recently - put the welfare of juvenile gang-bangers and drug dealers, who also were illegal immigrants, before the safety of law-abiding residents who are victimized by gangs and thugs.

As The Chronicle reported Sunday in a story by reporter Jaxon Van Derbeken, one beneficiary of that policy is Edwin Ramos, 21, who is charged with killing Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16 in a spectacularly senseless shooting spree on June 22. If Ramos is guilty, San Francisco political correctness and a federal immigration screw-up may have devastated a once happy family.

In 2003, Ramos and friends assaulted a man on a city bus. He was charged with assault, convicted and placed in a shelter. City officials never alerted federal immigration authorities who, because of the felony conviction, should have deported him.

In 2004, four days after his release, Ramos tried to rob a pregnant woman. He later was arrested, convicted and sent to a city-run camp. City officials never alerted federal immigration authorities who, because of the second felony conviction, should have deported him.

In March, San Francisco police pulled Ramos over because his car had illegally tinted windows and no front license plate. Someone in the car fled, and tried to throw away a gun, which forensics later tied to a double murder. Ramos was arrested, but the office of District Attorney Kamala Harris failed to prosecute him.

After Ramos was arrested, however, the sheriff's department checked Ramos' immigration status - it was deportable - and notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials of Ramos, and this time ICE dropped the ball and failed to hold and deport Ramos.

What went wrong?

Whatever the "sanctuary city" policy was intended to do first adopted in 1989, the concept started as a way of letting otherwise law-abiding residents know that they could report crimes to police, send their children to school and see a doctor - without fear that local authorities would turn them into federal authorities.

At some point - Juvenile Probation Director William Siffermann says that it happened before Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed him in 2005 - Juvenile Probation staff decided that the sanctuary city policy commanded them to shield juveniles convicted of serious offenses, like assault and drug dealing, from federal immigration officials.

It was only a matter of time before gang members, including foreign-based drug cartels, figured it out - that no matter what they did in San Francisco, no matter how serious the offense, they need not fear deportation. They knew that The Special City's special politics would shield them.

Anthony Bologna, left, and his two sons, Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were shot and killed on Sunday, June 22, 2008 in San Francisco, Calif. Edwin Ramos, 21, of El Sobrante was arrested in the slayings. Photo Courtesy to the Chronicle / KPIX

The worst of it is: Prosecutors went along. The courts went along.

Violent repeat offenders were getting an easy ride. In Ess Eff, that was business as usual.

Newsom spokesman Nathan Ballard believes Newsom should get credit for putting an end to Juvenile Probation Department policy as soon as he found out about it in May. It's true, Newsom showed more sense than the geniuses who saw no better use of city funds than to fly convicted drug dealers to their home countries - rather than turn them over to ICE.

But it's hard to give Newsom kudos for not knowing what some San Francisco cops knew: that some drug rings had figured out a way to game the city's juvenile justice system.

Shouldn't the mayor have known? I asked former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara, now a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Yes, he said, "the mayor runs the police department."

And: "It's just incredible to think they were spending all that money to help criminals evade being deported."

And McNamara has no kind words for federal officials who were too busy to hold Ramos when they had the chance. For a year now, the folks at ICE have been telling me that recent arrests have been the result of concerted targeting of the worst offenders. Yet Ramos wasn't bad enough for them?

"What we're being beat up on is not fair in a sense," Ballard said. "The city did not give Ramos sanctuary. He was turned over to the federal authorities."

I guess Ballard wants critics to forget the two times Ess Eff's sanctuary-city policy shielded Ramos and instead direct their ire toward the feds. The feds, you see, screwed up and did by omission what city workers, until May, had been doing on purpose.

E-mail: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page B - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Myth of Consensus Explodes

Blog: Science

Myth of Consensus Explodes: APS Opens Global Warming Debate


Michael Asher (Blog) - July 16, 2008 9:35 PM
http://www.dailytech.com/

174 comment(s) - last by murphyslabrat.. on Jul 22 at 3:52 AM

Viscount Monckton gives a presentation during the 2007 Conference on Climate Change

"Considerable presence" of skeptics

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors"

In an email to DailyTech, Monckton says, "I was dismayed to discover that the IPCC's 2001 and 2007 reports did not devote chapters to the central 'climate sensitivity' question, and did not explain in proper, systematic detail the methods by which they evaluated it. When I began to investigate, it seemed that the IPCC was deliberately concealing and obscuring its method."

According to Monckton, there is substantial support for his results, "in the peer-reviewed literature, most articles on climate sensitivity conclude, as I have done, that climate sensitivity must be harmlessly low."

Monckton, who was the science advisor to Britain's Thatcher administration, says natural variability is the cause of most of the Earth's recent warming. "In the past 70 years the Sun was more active than at almost any other time in the past 11,400 years ... Mars, Jupiter, Neptune’s largest moon, and Pluto warmed at the same time as Earth."

Updated 7/17/2008

After publication of this story, the APS responded with a statement that its Physics and Society Forum is merely one unit within the APS, and its views do not reflect those of the Society at large.

O'S HEALTH RX: COVER ILLEGALS

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MC GANN
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
July 21, 2008

DEMOCRATS' single most important domes tic proposal - universal health insurance - may blow up in Barack Obama's face when voters are exposed to the deadly details.

Obama has said, proudly and often, "I am going to give health insurance to 47 million Americans who are now without coverage." But are they "Americans?"

That 47 million statistic includes illegal immigrants - who virtually all lack insurance. In fact, about one in four of those lacking insurance is here illegally. And they are, by far, the group most in need of health insurance.

About 15 million of the remaining uninsured are eligible for Medicaid but haven't signed up - mainly because they haven't gotten sick. When they do, they enroll in Medicaid and we pick up the full tab for their health care relatively cheaply. (About 80 percent of each Medicaid dollar goes to nursing-home care for the elderly, only about 20 percent for the medical needs of the poor.)

The rest of the uninsured pool? Virtually all the children are eligible for the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Some aren't enrolled because the parents haven't bothered, but most are eligible. That leaves about 20 million uninsured adults who are US citizens or legal immigrants. There are far better ways to handle their needs than to turn our entire health-care system upside down.

Care for illegals is the biggest unmet medical need in our nation, and Obama's program targets it squarely. But do we really want to give them federally paid coverage equal to what US senators get, as Obama proposes?

Covering illegals adds dramatically to the cost of any program - and would encourage more folks to enter America illicitly.

Obama's plan will likely have a horrific effect on some local health-care systems.

Illegals now get free emergency-room treatment for life-threatening conditions - as any other American who's entered an ER in an area with lots of illegals recently well knows. (Three-quarters of the illegal-immigrant population is concentrated in five states: California, New York, Florida, Texas and Illinois.)

But now they'd be eligible for the entire range of medical services, all free of charge. That would trigger severe rationing: bureaucrats deciding who gets to see an oncologist, who can have an MRI - and even who can have bypass surgery and who'd die for lack of it.

These decisions would be made not on the basis of legal status but on the brutal facts of triage: Treat the 37-year-old illegal with his whole life to live before you spend scarce resources on an overweight, diabetic, 80-year-old citizen with high blood pressure who smokes.

John McCain hasn't raised this issue, perhaps for fear of offending the Latino vote. But polling suggests the case against rationing of health care would be as persuasive to Hispanic-American citizens as it is to the rest of us. Nobody wants to die waiting in line - especially not behind someone who snuck in ahead of us.

McCain needs to hit the Obama plan for treating illegal immigrants to free, federally subsidized health insurance - and hit it hard.

Reconciling Evil With Faith

How could a good God let unthinkable suffering torment our world? It’s an age-old question that goes to the very root of who we are and aspire to be.

By Michael Novak
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
July 21, 2008

The New Yorker (of all magazines) gave a good number of pages early last month to a quite brilliant book reviewer, James Wood, for a long essay on why he could no longer be a Christian. Stories like his are widespread. They usually cite the natural evils that too often crash upon humans — in China a stupefying earthquake, in Burma a cyclone, elsewhere tsunami, or tornado, disease, flood, or cruel slow-working famine. They then add the evils that humans inflict upon other humans.

(Illustration by Keith Simmons, USA TODAY)

Virtually every family in America has suffered from painful evils, often bitterly and almost overpoweringly so: A promising young nephew in a major university killed in an auto crash; a wife, husband, or sister wasted slowly and painfully by cancer or some other affliction — drug or alcohol addiction; the Alzheimer's disease of an unrecognizing spouse; nightmares from brutalities suffered under distant dictatorial regimes.

One of the oldest accusations against God in the Bible and in every generation since has been that there is too much evil in this world for there to be a good God. The pain is so intense. The irrationality and seeming cruelty at times seem unendurable.

Of course, ceasing to be a Jew or a Christian does not wipe these evils away. They continue. They roar on. The rejection of God does not diminish evil in the world by a whit. In fact, the turn of Russia and Germany from more or less Christian regimes to boastfully atheist regimes did not lessen, but increased, the number of humans who have horribly suffered, by nearly 100 million. Even under atheist interpretations of science, the vast suffering under ferocious competition for survival, for a vastly longer era than was known, far exceeds the evils earlier generations knew.

An unusually religious friend of my daughter volunteered for a year's work among the poor of Haiti. Within weeks, she was so dismayed by the inexplicable suffering of the poor, and their defenselessness, that she abandoned her faith. It demanded too much of her.

This noble young woman's loss of faith did not lessen the poverty and pain of those she worked with. Besides, the reasons for the overwhelming poverty she encountered were not God-made but man-made. (After all, Haiti is by nature a very rich nation.) The secrets of how humans can create wealth have raised up the poor of many countries; somehow, the secrets passed Haiti by. One remedy the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did add, moreover, is to touch the heart of this compassionate young woman and many others like her, to bring remedial help and, in some cases, knowledge of how to produce economic transformation.

Faith for those who suffer

However that might be, those who suffer most from injustice and oppression seem to find more consolation and dignity in the Jewish/Christian faith than in any other worldview (even socialism). Judaism and Christianity seem very good religions for those who suffer because they bestow on them justice and dignity. The realistic point of Judaism and Christianity is that suffering is a normal part of every human life. Lamentations are a native language. But evil does not mean that God loves us less, or that all is lost, or that good does not win out in the end.

In fact, the poor also delight in the beauties of God's creation. On balance, even with their acute suffering, the poor also feel blessed. They sense the rapture of sunlight flashing across lake or ocean, and soft breezes at sunset, and the great starry sky.

For Christianity, the interpretive key to this world is the cross — the cross on which the Son of God died. For Judaism, it is the long, long exile and pain of the Jewish people. If God has so treated his only son, and also his own people, why should anyone else expect Easy Street? Suffering seeks everybody out. Death certainly does, Christian or not, atheist or not.

Worse, the world seen by evolutionary biology alone is even more rife with suffering, yet rather more merciless. That world is characterized by raw chance, accident and the death of about 90% of all species that have ever lived. Perhaps earthquakes, tsunami, tornado, disease and famine derive from chance, and signify nothing.

Nonetheless, the most disturbing evils are the ones deliberately created by free human beings — the sadistic guards at Dachau, Germany, who took pleasure in humiliating, clubbing and shoving to the earth those they bullied; and, last month, those two pitiable women in Compton, Calif. — a mother and her lover — who were recently found torturing the 5-year-old son of one of them by hanging him up with wires over the door, stabbing into his young body lit cigarettes, and starving him and beating him for months.

These shocking brutalities rock the shallow faith of those whose beliefs are rooted in sentiment and inheritance, rather than in reasoned argument. Many Christians are poorly educated in their religion; their formal schooling teaches them nothing about it. Some seem to think that the point of prayer is to be given everything one asks — or at least the important things. Such an expectation would turn God into a servant of their will.

When Jesus said: "Ask and you shall receive," he did not mean you will get what you pray for, any more than he did that night in the garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed that God would spare him from the agony of the flogging and the crucifixion he would suffer the next day. Jesus meant you will be kept above raging waters by the will of God, and given enough light and strength to transmute the evil you experience into good.

A world of chance?

Rebellion against a suffering world and the God whose great work of art it is is very common. When very sorely tried, many Jews and Christians such as the Psalmist (who again and again lamented the long exile and humiliations endured by his people) and Job (whose faith God tested by adding one affliction after another) have also wanted to throw off God, but a counter-question kept nagging them: Would a conviction that our sufferings are meaningless, and due to blind chance, ease the pain of the poor and the unjustly tortured? Raging against the night seems to be an evasion of reality.

Sustained public conversation about these matters — long, intelligent conversation — can help to diminish mutual misconceptions about the terms of this argument. That conversation could be critical for the future of liberty on this planet. Whether our lives are meaningless, or not, is not a trivial question.

- Michael Novak's newest book, No One Sees God, will be published in August. He is also author of The Experience of Nothingness, Belief and Unbelief, and The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism.

Posted at 12:16 AM/ET, July 21, 2008 in Ethics - Forum, Forum commentary, On religion column Permalink

Do as Al says, not as Al does

By Lorne Gunter, National Post
http://www.nationalpost.com/
Published: Monday, July 21, 2008

On Thursday, former U. S. vice-president Al Gore delivered a major address calling on his country to abandon all fossil fuels within 10 years. By 2018, U. S. electricity and fuel should come entirely from "renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources," he said. Tickets to the event encouraged attendees to "please use public transit, bicycling or other climate-friendly means" to reach the lecture hall.

So how did Mr. Gore and his retinue arrive? In two Lincoln Town Cars and a full-sized SUV that sat idling with the air conditioners blasting while the Gore party was inside.

It was 34 C in Washington. Al Gore can't be expected to get into an overheated vehicle after he's worked up a sweat telling others how to save the planet.

Remember, too, the Nobel prizewinning environmentalist lives in a Tennessee mansion that produces a carbon footprint 20 times that of the average American home. A sizeable chunk of his personal fortune comes from royalties on a zinc mine which had to be temporarily closed five years ago in part because the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled it one of the worst-polluting mine sites in America. Illegal toxins were frequently discharged into nearby rivers.

Mr. Gore's Live Earth benefit concert last summer flew scores of rock bands to stages around the world in carbon-spewing private jets. To cover the emissions from his own frequent use of private jets, Mr. Gore set up a company that buys carbon offsets, so that in effect he is paying himself for his carbon indulgences, writing off the expense on one hand, while pocketing the proceeds on the other.

Apparently if the world is ever to reach the carbon-free future Mr. Gore dreams of, it will have to get there without Al's help.

But take heart, there is increasing evidence that man-made carbon dioxide may not be causing global warming. Indeed, there is increasing debate in the scientific community whether there is even any warming occurring at all. Mr. Gore might just be able to keep going from jet to limo to estate guilt-free (if not carbon-free) for as long as he wishes.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that seven mountain glaciers in northern California were advancing. They joined glaciers in southern Norway, Sweden, the New Zealand Alps and the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan. Indeed, worldwide, there are nearly half as many glaciers advancing as retreating.

How did the AP explain this? Well, all the shrinking glaciers it mentioned in its story were melting due to global warming, while the growing ones were "benefitting from changing weather patterns." Glacier melt is proof of a climate crisis, while--on the same planet, under the same global conditions --glacier melt is chalked up as a mere natural phenomenon.

Facts that don't fit the global-warming dogma -- call them inconvenient truths -- are to be dismissed as unimportant. Only those that feed the environmental hysteria are proof of something ominous.

So I'm sure they're entirely inconsequential, but here, anyway, are some anecdotes that cast doubt on the notion that emissions from our SUVs and power plants are dangerously harming the climate.

Greenland isn't melting. And while Arctic sea ice may have thinned in the past three decades by about 3% per decade, according to the U. S. National Snow and Ice Date Center, Antarctic ice (which is about 20 times as voluminous as the Arctic kind) has grown by 1% per decade,

Also, after last summer's record melt in the Arctic, this summer's melt in Antarctica was the smallest on record. And NASA satellites have found that Arctic Sea ice coverage this year is more than one million square kilo-metres greater than last year's, greater than the average of the last three years and 10-20 centmetres thicker than in 2007. According to observations by the Danish Meteorological Institute, we "have to go back 15 years to find ice expansion so far south."

Snow coverage in North America this winter was greater than at any time in recorded history. China had its worst winter in a century, and the southern hemisphere its worst in the past 50 years.

And while global temperatures increased slightly in June, through the end of May, the nine-month decline in temperatures beginning in September was greater (0.8C) than all the warming of the 20th century (0.6C).

All of this may prove nothing (although if these signals pointed toward warming, you can bet they'd be billed as proof a coming climate catastrophe). But they should at least give Mr. Gore comfort that he need not sacrifice his high-carbon lifestyle just to prove he can walk the walk.

lgunter@shaw.ca

Today's Tune: The Rolling Stones - Not Fade Away (1964)

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Aaron and Mays: Closer Than You Think

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
July 20, 2008

Associated Press

Willie Mays, left, and Hank Aaron were teammates in the 1973 All-Star Game in Kansas City.

A great week of All-Star baseball festivities ended fittingly with Hank Aaron and Willie Mays sharing center stage on Wednesday when Bob Costas taped a state-of-the-game panel for his HBO show, “Costas Now.”

Aaron and Mays were scheduled to talk for 15 minutes but wound up speaking for nearly an hour. They discussed baseball old and new and told wonderful stories about the game in the 1950s and ’60s. They frequently drew laughter, as Mays did when he recalled the compensation All-Star players in his era received.

“How much money did we get?” Mays said. “We got no money. We got a ring, and the ring didn’t fit.”

But the most significant part of the conversation concerned the competition between Mays and Aaron. There has been speculation since my childhood that there was longstanding tension between these titans of baseball. Some of it was rooted in the perennial question of the time: Who is better, Aaron or Mays?

The more accurate question should have been, Whose style do you prefer? Aaron was as steady as the rising sun; Mays was exciting. Who was best boiled down to a matter of personal preference.

I loved the way Mays played, and I respected Aaron. I favored Mays’s style but thought the world of Aaron, especially the way he endured the pressure of the assault on Babe Ruth’s home run record with strength and dignity.

Costas asked about the perceived tension in their relationship. Mays and Aaron, who were All-Star teammates and barnstormed together during the off-season to make extra money, took pains to deny that there had ever been a strain in their relationship.

“We got along fine,” Aaron said. “That is absolutely the furthest thing from the truth that I can think of.”

He added: “I fed off some of the things he did. I’d read the paper: He got three hits. I said, ‘Boy, I ought to be able to get three hits.’ But that was competition. There was no resentment, no animosity.”

Mays used Aaron in a more tangible way.

“I would borrow his bats,” said Mays, who would tell the clubhouse boy to take them from the Atlanta Braves’ clubhouse.

1964 Topps

Mays recalled how, at Aaron’s request, he spoke to a couple of the Braves’ young players, Dusty Baker and Ralph Garr, about what it took to make it in the major leagues.

Mays recalled telling them bluntly to listen to Aaron, saying, “Hey, you two clowns, take his advice because he’s going to keep you here.”

Baker and Garr complained that Aaron never talked to them, so Mays said he told them, “You talk to him.”

Mays said he congratulated Aaron after he broke Babe Ruth’s record and became baseball’s home run king.

“When he broke the record, I called him,” Mays said. “I said, ‘Hey, really nice going, man,’ and I said, ‘Just keep going.’ There wasn’t no long talking about ‘How did you do it?’ ‘What did you do?’ Nothing like that.” They were just friends.

Any lingering tension might have been caused by the complicated relationship between Aaron, Mays and Barry Bonds, Mays’s godson. Bonds’s pursuit of Aaron’s home run record amid persistent suspicion of steroid use would have been enough to strain any relationship.

Yet Aaron said he sent a congratulatory message to Bonds the night he broke his record. On Wednesday, sitting opposite Mays, Aaron paid tribute to Bonds.

“Records are made to be broken,” Aaron said. “I’ve watched many ballplayers my 23 years that I played. I watched Mays, myself, even watching pictures of Babe Ruth, there was absolutely no one that has been as intimidating as much as Barry Bonds has. I don’t know of anyone who has intimidated, who can turn a game around with walks, base hits or home runs.”

Without going into specifics about the steroid issue or other criticism of Bonds, Aaron simply said that it was unfortunate that “all of these things” put a cloud over Bonds’s career.

“I carried the record for 33 years,” Aaron said. “I carried it on my shoulders, and I carried it with a lot of dignity. I’m giving it to him, and I hope that he carries it the same way.”

Mays and Aaron are bound by shared experiences. They played in the Negro leagues, Mays with the Birmingham Black Barons, Aaron with the Indianapolis Clowns. Both endured the slings of racism, staying in black hotels or private homes on the road. Mays recalled playing a series of games in Hagerstown, Md., where the fans taunted him without mercy.

After two days of watching Mays destroy the home team, the public-address announcer said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I know you may not like that kid playing center field, but please do not bother him again because he’s killing us.”

Mays said, “That was a way of getting back, in my mind.”

Their stories could have gone on for hours, and the audience at the Skirball Center at New York University would have listened. So it was that on Wednesday, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays confirmed that, beyond their standing as national treasures, they are friends.

That’s good to know.

E-mail: wcr@nytimes.com