Why reject Dutch help on the oil spill?

The Gulf Oil Catastrophe could have been averted. There still stands an offer from the Dutch for technology which could remove most of the oil now threatening the coast. Even Kevin Costner's idea worked and was rejected. Follow the links to find out why so many common-sense solutions were rejected. Outrageous.

Meanwhile, Team Obama continues to focust on things like climate change legislation instead of fixing problems in the Gulf. The Heritage Foundation provides a "to-do list" for the President. As Krauthammer said a while ago, Barak Obama doesn't do the mundane. He's a "vision" kind of guy, not a "boats in the water" kind of guy.

UPDATE:   The Government decided to accept some foreign help on June 29. MORE THAN TWO MONTHS AFTER THE FIRST OFFERS OF HELP. Reynolds started bumping the first link up repeatedly on June 26. The article is detailed and makes the government sound stupidly inflexible and partisan (support of unions over environmental concerns, etc.). I'm sure lots of other people picked it up, too. Maybe Ace's burning skull on June 29 was the final straw.

Of course, some of the delays were just the typical stuff you get with a big bureaucracy, rather than the immediate responsibility of the Obama administration.  Not so different from when volunteer professional fire fighters were delayed after Katrina in providing help with rescues while they waited around for workplace sexual harassment training.

Book Banning by US Government?

Following up on yesterday's post, the Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan, has argued unsuccessfully for a government statute which could, theoretically, be used to ban political books. Audio of the argument. AllahPundit does not seem to think that this argument, which was part of her job, necessarily reflects her own views, although he thought her performance was weak. Reason has more details, plus good questions to ask the nominee.

Other fun facts: She doesn't respect the current confirmation process for Supreme Court Justices. Makes sense. But she liked the Bork hearings, including, evidently, the vicious, totally unsubstantiated slanders by Ted Kennedy, which led to the current situation. She's apparently not a knee-jerk liberal, though she is extremely liberal on some issues. Most informed observers think she will easily get through confirmation hearings.

A day of ironies and contrasts

Ironies:  Robert Byrd (RIP), the Ku Klux Klan, the Supreme Court and Gun Control

Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of the Senate, died early this morning after a long period of ill health. He has become something a familiar figure to anyone who pays much attention to politics. The people of West Virginia will miss him.

A repentant recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, who filibustered against the passage of the Civil Rights Act, he demonstrated that change was possible.

He was also a Senate historian, which gave him a certain standing with other senators. He was extremely good at bringing pork back to his home district. Senate seniority rules are one of the great engines of corruption in this nation. But they lead to loyalty among constituents.

For many decades, he favored legislation protecting the coal industry, which is important in his state, thought vilified by today's Democratic Party leadership (unless the coal industry is in a country like China, where it is largely ignored while their "progress in green jobs" is touted as an example for the USA). (And we won't even MENTION the coal mines in North Korea.

The governor of West Virginia plans not to declare his seat vacant until after July 3, in order to avoid an election to replace him this year.  Update:  Some segments of the press laid the praise for Byrd on a little thick. Check the Trent Lott Moment link for a brilliant example of a double standard in the press and in politics, after reading what  Jim Geraghty said:

Remember yesterday morning when I told everyone to be on their best behavior about the death of West Virginia senator Robert Byrd? Yeah, sorry about that; I didn't realize the epic scale of the whitewash we were going to have to endure. I got through about midmorning, but somewhere around the headline "With Byrd's death, the era of statesmen fades"I found myself unable to resist wondering whether in his honor today all white bedsheets would be flown at half-mast.

I understand not speaking ill of the dead, but the mainstream media pushes it; the career of Robert Byrd may have set a new record for glossing over horrific past views and behavior, and for praising garden-variety corruption. . .

The other senators noted by the Star-Telegram as representatives of the dwindling "Era of Statesmen" in the Senate include Joe Biden - now Vice President, Edward Kennedy - vicious and fact-challenged concerning conservative appointees and policies even if hard-working and collegial with conservatives in the senate (and also a symbol of the benefits of power when one is facing criminal charges, concerning in particular the drowning of a certain young woman), and the ethically-challenged Chris Dodd - soon to retire after learning that he was unlikely to be re-elected.

By way of contrast to the whitewashing of Senator Byrd's past, the same day, senate hearings got underway for a Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, a liberal who who may have compared the National Rifle Association to the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan opposed the NRA's primary agenda (maintaining the right to bear arms under  the Second Amendment).  The KKK historically  supported gun control legislation in order to prevent black people from owning guns.  Ms. Kagan is a big supporter of gun control.

Ironically, (update: or maybe not so ironically) the Supreme Court also ruled today that municipalities and states could not ban ownership of firearms. The racist roots of gun control were cited. Update: The Second Amendment is now "normal law".

Municipal gun control laws in America are extremely ineffective at controlling crime, anyway. Chicago's law, the basis of the Supreme Court challenge, was associated with very high murder rates. Many Chicago politicians and their friends got exemptions from the ban on possessing handguns, through some fancy manipulations of the law.

Contrasts:  Secrecy to hide collusion between certain members of the Press is important, secrecy to protect National Security is NOT important

Heard an interesting discussion about this book on Dennis Prager's program today. It is about the extraordinary recklessness of today's reporters concerning the safety and security of the United States and other Western countries. In the case of a program to uncover terrorist financing, the enemy was given details of how our program worked because it was an "interesting yarn". Dennis remarked that every once in a while, his breath was still taken away by something new he learned on his show. He said he would always remember the moment he learned about this extraordinarily shallow destructiveness.

Shortly after hearing about this, I learned that some of the damage done by the dying New York Times has now been undone.

Meanwhile, not long after reporters at the Rolling Stone got General McCrystal fired by breaking a type of secrecy agreement (reporting "off-the-record" comments) 400 liberal journalists at the Washington Post, New York Times and elsewhere, find themselves hoping to keep secret the correspondence on an e-mail list which they used to discuss stories which would further the liberal agenda. Andrew Breitbart describes one glaring example of collusion by the mainstream media:

Yes, the mainstream media that came together to play up the false allegations that the “N-Word” was hurled 15 times by Tea Party participants at the Congressional Black Caucus outside the Capitol the day before the “Obamacare” vote, is the same MSM that colluded to make sure the American public accepted the smear, and refused to show the exculpatory videos that disproved the incendiary charges of Tea Party racism.

Ezra Klein’s “JournoList 400” is the epitome of progressive and liberal collusion that conservatives, Tea Partiers, moderates and many independents have long suspected and feared exists at the heart of contemporary American political journalism. Now that collusion has been exposed when one of the weakest links in that cabal, Dave Weigel, was outed. Weigel was, in all likelihood, exposed because – to whoever the rat was who leaked his emails — he wasn’t liberal enough.

Update: The chance for some journalist to become a today's "Deep Throat" by exposing the corruption of the mainstream media. It appears that many liberal journalists consider privacy to be important only when it comes to them and the issues which they think are important.   Support for Sullivan's breathtakingly hypocritical position by other liberal journalists proves that being a liberal means you can never be called a hypocrite.  So long as you support the cause.

Indiscreet words like those of David Weigel, exposed by one member of the Journolist, should probably not be taken as seriously as the existence of such lists and their use to shape the content of the news. For a brief overview of this issue, glance through the search results here, back through March of 2010, when the Washington Post hired David Weigel to cover news about conservatives.  Ann Althouse corrects the record concerning defamation on Journolist.   Eric Boehlert works for the George Soros-funded Media Matters:

Eric B. says:

Althouse, a law school prof and very public blogger, was thinking out loud about suing the owner of Journolist to find out if any of the 400 journalists on the listserv ever wrote anything nasty about her in their private emails. (Ego much?)

Eric Boehlert continues to write about me like that even though he has no idea what the thing I wrote that he just quoted says. I cited a specific item of defamation against me that was published on the web and that remains there.

A journalist should know better than to be so careless with facts and language. But methods for manipulating language, even including changing the meaning of words, for political purposes is now taught in college. Journalism went downhill fast when schools of journalism started emphasizing the possibility for reporters to "make a difference" rather than emphasizing that they should report the news. No wonder so few people now trust the media.

Musical Memory

Remember life before those fascinating time-wasters, video games?

Of course, even back then, there were other possibilities.

Principals and Principles in Afghanistan

General MeChrystal made a very dumb move, allowing a Rolling Stone reporter hear derogatory comments about the civilian leadership. Is our military leadership getting worn out?

the punchy tone of the McChrystal quotes, coupled with Gen. Petraeus’ collapse in front of Congress last week, suggests that these guys are close to worn out. That’s not a good thing, and it’s an unfortunate contrast to our golf-and-politics-as-usual political class in DC.

Conservative Opinion is largely lining up in support of civilian control of the military, in spite of Obama's very serious shortcomings concerning Afghanistan. Some think that McChrystal should stay, (after some stern discipline) and blame Obama for the undisciplined atmosphere (not much different from the larger society) in which verbal sniping between the military and civilian leadership has been common. Not that they're all happy with General McChrystalmon other counts: Michael Yon, reporting from the ground in Afghanistan, has been very critical of his leadership. Others have called McChrystal  "an accident waiting to happen".

The liberal media was pretty solidly lined up against President Bush when there was disagreement with his military policies (remember "Listen to the Generals?". But they seem to have re-discovered civilian control of the military now.  Naturally.

Why is our effort in Iraq more successful than the one in Afghanistan? One possibile contributing factor.

Update: Obama has replaced McChrystal with Petraeus. Roundup of reactions by The Anchoress. Most people think he made a smart move. But this situation is, indeed, full of ironies.

Why such a negative reaction to Obama's oil spill speech?

Peggy Noonan (one of a group of prominent conservatives who supported President Obama's election): . . . Americans get nervous when they have a snakebit president. They want presidents pn whom the sun shines. . .

It isn't Mr. Obama's fault that an oil rig blew in the Gulf and a gusher resulted. He already had two wars and the great recession. But the lack of adequate federal government response appropriately redounds on him. . . . The first weekend in May, when water was rough, contractors hired by BP to lay boom "mostly stayed ashore," according to a local official. "Shrimpers took matters into their own hands, laying 18,000 feet of boom," compared to about 4,000 feet by BP's contractors.

The administration's failure to take impressive action after the spill dinged its reputation for competence. The president's failure to turn things around Tuesday night with a speech damaged his reputation as a man whose rhetorical powers are such that he can turn things around with a speech. He lessened his own mystique. Reaction among his usual supporters was, in the words of Time's Mark Halperin, "fierce, unforeseen disappointment."

No reason to join the pile on, but some small points. Two growing weaknesses showed up in small phrases. The president said he had consulted among others, "experts in academia", on what to do about the calamity. This while noting, again, that his energy secretary has a Nobel Prize. There is a growing meme that Mr. Obama is too impressed by credentialism, by the meritocracy, by those who hold forth in the faculty lounge, and too strongly identifies with them. He should be more impressed by those with real-world experience. It was the "small people" in the shrimp boats who laid the boom.

And when speaking of why proper precautions and safety measures were not in place, the president sternly declared, "I want to know why." But two months in he should know. And he should be telling us. Such empty sternness is . . . empty.

He's not making many friends in the UK, either, with his rhetoric against BP.

A More Fundamental Problem:

It’s not necessary to ignore the misdeeds of British Petroleum to criticize the appalling performance of our massive super-State. Big Government and Big Business have become so entwined that any disaster on the scale of the Gulf oil spill, or the subprime mortgage crisis before it, will have both public and private agencies to blame. Suggesting that government cannot be criticized until every one of its private-sector ‘partners’ has been bankrupted or nationalized is a recipe for tyranny. We should study the example of BP and understand that only one half of the government-business alliance can call press conferences at will, addressing a media prepared to extend them unlimited credit for their good intentions. One of the reasons Big Government is so helpless in the face of an actual crisis is that it never learns anything, because it evades blame and consequence for its failures. The politicians who brought you the subprime crisis are richer and more powerful than ever before. The Gulf oil crisis may well end the same way.

The Danger of Government with Unlimited Power

George Will:

Today, as it has been for a century, American politics is an argument between two Princetonians -- James Madison, Class of 1771, and Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879. Madison was the most profound thinker among the Founders. Wilson, avatar of "progressivism," was the first president critical of the nation's founding. Barack Obama's Wilsonian agenda reflects its namesake's rejection of limited government.

Lack of "a limiting principle" is the essence of progressivism, according to William Voegeli, contributing editor of the Claremont Review of Books, in his new book "Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State." The Founders, he writes, believed that free government's purpose, and the threats to it, are found in nature. The threats are desires for untrammeled power, desires which, Madison said, are "sown in the nature of man." Government's limited purpose is to protect the exercise of natural rights that pre-exist government, rights that human reason can ascertain in unchanging principles of conduct and that are essential to the pursuit of happiness.

Wilsonian progressives believe that History is a proper noun, an autonomous thing. It, rather than nature, defines government's ever-evolving and unlimited purposes. Government exists to dispense an ever-expanding menu of rights -- entitlements that serve an open-ended understanding of material and even spiritual well-being.

Read the whole thing.  It provides a fairly deep overview in a short article of the differences in philosophy which underpinned the thinking of the Founders and the Wilsonian progressives, ascendant in America today just as similar thinking is starting to lead to serious systemic failures in Europe.

Meanwhile, North Korea turns to Private Markets to Avert Second Famine.

Obama has Vision Concerning the BP Oil Spill

Charles Krauthammer:

Barack Obama doesn't do the mundane. He was sent to us to do larger things. You could see that plainly in his Oval Office address on the gulf oil spill. He could barely get himself through the pedestrian first half: a bit of BP-bashing, a bit of faux-Clintonian "I feel your pain," a bit of recovery and economic mitigation accounting. It wasn't until the end of the speech -- the let-no-crisis-go-to-waste part that tried to leverage the Gulf Coast devastation to advance his cap-and-trade climate-change agenda -- that Obama warmed to his task.

Pedestrian is beneath Obama. Mr. Fix-It he is not. He is world-historical, the visionary, come to make the oceans recede and the planet heal.

How? By creating a glorious, new, clean green economy. And how exactly to do that? From Washington, by presidential command and with tens of billions of dollars thrown around. With the liberal (and professorial) conceit that scientific breakthroughs can be legislated into existence, Obama proposes to give us a new industrial economy.

Krauthammer brings us back to reality in the rest of the piece and ends with.

That's why Tuesday's speech was received with such consternation. It was so untethered from reality. The gulf is gushing, and the president is talking mystery roads to unknown destinations. That passes for vision, and vision is Obama's thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches.

Rich Lowry on the bursting of a great "Liberal Hubris Bubble":

In his new book, The Icarus Syndrome, author Peter Beinart writes of “hubris bubbles” that infect American foreign policy after successes. In the domestic arena, liberalism has been riding its most expansive hubris bubble since Lyndon Johnson modestly declared on the cusp of the Great Society, “These are the most hopeful times since Christ was born.”

Those millennial expectations returned with the honeyed words of Obama. . . .

If landing a man on the moon proves government can do practically anything, what does it prove that it can’t get the right kind of boom to the right places and deploy it properly in the Gulf? What does it say that the Environmental Protection Agency couldn’t get its story straight on what kind of dispersant BP could use on the oil? What does it show that it took weeks for the government to approve the building of protective sand berms by Louisiana?

Is the Tea Party a 'Social Justice' Movement?

Via Instapundit, Timothy Dalrymple:

As I made my way on an April morning from Harvard Square to a Tea Party Express rally on the Boston Commons, a quotation and a question wound together in my mind. The quotation is a familiar one from William F. Buckley, that he would rather be governed by the first two thousand people listed in the Boston phone directory than the two thousand who comprise the faculty at Harvard University. Buckley was not condemning intelligence or intellectual achievement. He was expressing trust in the moral intuitions and pragmatic sensibilities of ordinary Americans, and indulging in a playful bit of sacred cow tipping.

The liberal aristocracy are apt to swoon not over intelligence -- which is found just as much in nurses, mechanics, and executives as it is in the halls of academe -- but over the appearance of intelligence, advanced degrees and faculty appointments, the trappings of an elite education. As Buckley understood, a graduate degree is all too often an elaborate exercise in the avoidance of common sense. Impressionable minds are encouraged to reject the conventions of broader society and conform to the trends and fashions of the illuminati instead, and to cultivate the superior disdain of the learned herd for the unlearned horde.

Read the whole thing. It includes insights into some of the several definitions of "social justice", many of them coming from a religious perspective. Dennis Prager would agree with the sentence in boldface above.

Update: Dr. Helen discusses F.A. Hayek's book Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 2: The Mirage of Social Justice.  Quoting Hayek:

I have come to feel strongly that the greatest service I can still render to my fellow men would be that I could make the speakers and writers among them thoroughly ashamed ever again to employ the term 'social justice.'

From the comments: Social Justice or a Just Society?

A Bad Day for Helen Thomas, a worse day for Israel

Jim Treacher:

If you think your life stinks, at least you're not Helen Thomas

Her virulent hatred of Israel is nothing new, apparently, but she went over the line this time. Interesting reactions by others in the press and in politics. Even President Obama condemned the idea of the ethnic cleansing of Israel. She's enjoyed a lot of deference, as well as political cover, from colleagues over the years.

But the violent "peace activists" on the ill-fated flotilla to Gaza were even more specific:

We can at least thank Ms. Thomas for clarifying that we now live in a world in which the Turkish Prime Minister accuses Israel of killing children on the beach and in which the doyenne of the White House press corps no longer recognizes Israel's "right to exist".

Charles Krauthammer: Israel is being asked by the world to commit suicide.

. . . The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, six million — that number again — hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized, and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists — Iranian in particular — openly prepare a more final solution.

Many of the ideas which informed Ms. Thomas' shocking statement are standard fare on college campuses. Is dishonesty concerning Israel destroying Academia and the Media?

Cassandra has posted an excellent, detailed piece on willful Ignorance and Blind Hatred.

What was the meaningful difference between Helen Thomas saying Jews in Israel should “go home” to Germany or Poland or America, and Joe Biden saying that refugee relief volunteers should just let Israel decide whether humanitarian supplies can go through to Palestinians who are imprisoned inside the Israelis’ blockade of Gaza?

Let's look at a few of the differences between Europe's treatment of the Jews and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. . . .

YouTube has removed the Israeli parody song about the Turkish "peace" flotilla. Reuters is doing their part to make sure that "The truth will never make it's way to your TV".They haven't managed to block these horrific images of life in Gaza, though. Or these. Compare to Darfur.

Here's one serious solution: Let Turkey have Gaza. And a question: Would Turkey allow an uninspected flotilla of vessels through with aid for its oppressed Kurdish minority? Time for Turkey to leave NATO? MARK STEYN on Israel, Turkey and the End of Stability.

Compare the world's reaction to Israel's boarding of the Turkish vessel and the North Korean sinking of a South Korean ship.

When Good People Do Bad Things

Dennis Prager:

Most evil is not committed as a result of unbridled lust or greed. And the sadistic monster who revels in inflicting excruciating pain on other people is relatively rare.

Good intentions cause most of the world’s great evils.

Take Communism, for example. The greatest mass-murdering ideology in history, the greatest destroyer of elementary human rights, was an ideology supported by many people who believed in moral progress and human equality. . .

When it comes to personal relations and even more so to formulating social policy, intending to do good is largely worthless. Given how much evil has emanated from human idealism, the heart is an awful guide to doing good. . .

Many of the destructive and foolish ideas of the Baby Boomer generation emanated from the Mother of Foolish Ideas — “You can’t trust anyone over 30. . . ”

The words above are challenging in today's Western world. Read the whole thing for thoughts on today's confused world and  "the war against wisdom".

When I first started listening to Dennis Prager's weekday radio program and his "Religion on the Line" program in Southern California, he was a Democrat and called himself a "passionate moderate" - someone who avoided extremes on both the right and the left. As the Democratic Party moved from classic liberalism back to progressivism and the Republican party moved closer to classic liberalism, he changed his party affiliation, and now calls himself a conservative, though his political philosophy hasn't changed much. "Liberal" and Conservative" don't mean the same thing now in America as the did in the late '70s and '80s. Check out his recent NRO archives for more challenges to the narratives promoted by today's elite class - in politics, media and education.

UPDATE: Related - Is the Tea Party a 'Social Justice Movement'? Some interesting thoughts.

A Presidency of Generalities, Abstractions and Images

A formerly-friendly mainstream liberal press is starting to ask hard questions and make hard observations about President Obama's Postmodern Presidency. Democratic congressmen are getting a bit testy over questions about the Obama Agenda. (But still getting some cover from the press).

When he was a candidate, making all those inspiring speeches full of vague, uplifting imagery, I thought that Obama would make a fine "ceremonial leader" of America - someone who had the potential to inspire people to follow their best impulses while leaving the day-to-day work of dealing with national and world events to a more experienced President. Now, with his insults to our allies, his  counter-productive overtures to our enemies and his preoccupation with fancy parties (leading to disturbing moments like this), I'm not so sure even about that role for him.*   Campaign-style speeches really seem to be his strong point.

But he "never" had doubts about deficiencies in his foreign policy experience when he was running for President. As a certain Soviet leader said about JFK (before the latter had some hard talks with Eisenhower), "Too young, too smart". (Obama started to admit to some doubts in January, 2010)

Victor Davis Hanson notes similarities between how the Obama's administration is being run and the largely consequence-free "La-La land" of elite American academia.  Are we being governed from the faculty lounge? Another academic comparison.

Update: MARK STEYN brings several related threads of thought together, comparing President Obama to the leader of the liberal party in Canada and to many leaders in Europe. WOW.:

So a man swept into office on an unprecedented tide of delirious fawning is now watching his presidency sink in an unstoppable gush. That's almost too apt.

Unfortunately, in the real world, a disastrous president has consequences. So let me begin by citing the Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Canada. . . .

Today, to be an educated citizen of a mature Western democracy – Canada or Germany, England or Sweden – is not to feel Canadian or German, English or Swedish, heaven forbid, but rather to regard oneself as a citoyen du monde. . . .  The U.N., Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Bono: these are the colors a progressive worldly Westerner nails to his mast.

You don't need to go anywhere, or do anything: You just need to pick up the general groove, which you can do very easily at almost any college campus.

This Barack Obama did brilliantly. A man who speaks fewer languages than the famously moronic George W Bush, he has nevertheless grasped the essential lingo of the European transnationalist: Continental leaders strike attitudes rather than effect action – which is, frankly, beneath them. One thinks of the insistence a few years ago by Louis Michel, then the Belgian foreign minister, that the so-called European Rapid Reaction Force "must declare itself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability." As even the Washington Post drily remarked, "Apparently in Europe this works."

Apparently. Thus, Barack Obama: He declared himself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability. But, if it works for the EU, why not America? Like many of his background here and there, Obama is engaged mostly by abstractions and generalities. . . . With one stroke of his pen, he has transformed the health care of 300 million people. But I suppose if there's some killer flu epidemic or a cholera outbreak in New Mexico, you losers will be whining at Obama to do something about that, too.

In recent months, a lot of Americans have said to me that they had no idea the new president would feel so "weird." But, in fact, he's not weird. . . . There are millions of people like Barack Obama, the eternal students of a vast lethargic transnational campus for whom global compassion and the multicultural pose are merely the modish gloss on a cult of radical grandiose narcissism. As someone once said, "We are the ones we've been waiting for." When you've spent that long waiting in line for yourself, it's bound to be a disappointment.

Steyn comes via Powerline: "Too Big, or Too Small?"  Something to think about.

Things change fast in American politics.  The pendulum swings wide here.  Many in the electorate seem to have a short memory, and tend to be swayed by emotions concerning events at the moment they vote, rather than developing and understanding of fundamental principles represented by various candidates. A shame. Time to start teaching young people to look beyond the immediate and beyond emotionally-rewarding feelings of the moment. A difficult task, in this day of instant imagery and information, when our media and universities are so dominated by "Progressive" thought.

Powerline again:

. . . this is the age of the college graduate, the age where 'brightness,' or the suggestion of intellect, is considered a fundamental requirement for even getting up in the morning. In order to be taken seriously, one must show the kind of mental agility popular with college admissions officers."

The scientific and political great men of the future, if we have any, will not be those who are popular with the college admissions officers of today.

* Update: Frank J. seems to disagree with me. Heh.

Rachel Carson Lied, Millions Died

The Sierra Club's lawsuit against DDT use helped precipitate a worldwide ban. If a right-leaning group had done something like this, it would be called genocide.

100 things you should know about DDT:

11. Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, "Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing."

[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]

More on DDT here and here.

Dengue Fever hits Key West. Details here and here.

President Obama's Instructions to his Grassroots Team

Elena Kagan's poll numbers aren't so hot.

Ann Althouse:

Barack Obama shows you how to call in to radio shows to voice your support for Elena Kagan.

Complete with "calling tips":

Some hosts may challenge your views. Stay calm and firm....

And "discussion points":

Elena Kagan understands how the law affects ordinary Americans, giving a great deal of thought to legal issues which profoundly affect Americans’ everyday lives – including freedom of speech and government policy making.

If you say that, maybe the host will say: "What do you mean she's given a great deal of thought to government policy making? What does government policy making have to do with being a Supreme Court Justice and why should I care about the large amount of thought that's been given? Has she thought well and what does she think about law?" If that happens, stay calm and firm! And say what?

It's what's up at http://radio.barackobama.com/

1. Listen, then call.

If you can't get through, don't worrky! If the show you call is busy or not accepting calls at the moment you call in, simply click "Give me another show" to find another.

2. Add your voice. (in other words, use OFA discussion points).

These points are only to provide extra information and suggestions.

Throughout her career, Elena Kagan has distinguished herself as an incredible legal mind and an unwavering public servant. Democrats and Republicans alike have praised her fair-minded approach to the law and her insistence that all sides be given a fair hearing before the law, including conservatives such as former Bush Administration lawyer Jack Goldsmith, Solicitor General for President Reagan Charles Fried.

Elena Kagan has received the support of every Solicitor General from both parties from the last 25 years. At the time of her nomination as Solicitor General, they noted her "brilliant intellect" and her "candor," as well as the "high regard in which she is held by persons of a wide variety of political and social views."

Elena Kagan understands how the law affects ordinary Americans, giving a great deal of thought to legal issues which profoundly affect Americans’ everyday lives – including freedom of speech and government policy making.

She has stood up for the rights of ordinary citizens and shareholders against corporations in her work as solicitor general. And even though she knew the odds were long, Kagan chose Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission as the first case she argued before the Supreme Court, defending campaign finance reform against special interests spending unlimited money in an attempt to influence elections.

Elena Kagan has shown she is a trailblazer throughout her career. Kagan was the first woman to serve as the Dean of Harvard Law School. She was the first woman ever to serve as Solicitor General. If confirmed, Kagan will be only the fourth woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

3. Report your call.

submit your report.

From the Comments:

Be polite, respectful, and clear. Remember, you represent Organizing for America.

"To the phones. Anne from Madison, Wisconsin, you're next on The Rush Limbaugh Show. (Have I mentioned that Anne is one of my all-time top-ten female names?)"

"Hi Rush! I'm calling on behalf of Organizing For America! Dittos from Madison!"

"You mean you're admitting your part of Axelrod's astroturf op? What gives?"

"I don't know! That's just what it says for me to say!"

Heh.

On BarakObama Twitter:

The grassroots movement that accomplished so much in 2008 is back at it again today—knocking on doors, working for change http://j.mp/9k3xcj

Link takes me to a "get out the vote" meeting site in Fresno. Interesting that his Twitter page is dominated by partisan politics rather than by messages directed toward all Americans.  Doesn't exactly fit the post-partisan image on which he so successfully ran for President.  I keep his Twitter feed and the White House twitter feed up on the sidebar of my blog.

Here's a novel idea: Move the Office of Political Affairs (created by Reagan) out of the White House.

Up on the White House Blog: "Ongoing Administration-wide Response to the Deepwater BP Oil Spill: June 5 and June 6"

When you waited over a month before a significant public response and you are dependent on experts from the company you alternately praise and demonize, you have to keep up on developments day-to-day in order to try to quell the media insurgency, I guess.

On White House Twitter:

The President announces James Clapper as DNI: "Four Decades of Service" Video/ transcript/ photo http://bit.ly/cATyNE

This nomination reminds Scott at Powerline of a great old Johnny Carson/Jack Web routine.

Incidentally, in 2004, Clapper apparently supported the view that Saddam Hussein had sent Weapons of Mass Destruction to Syria.

Both Kagan and Clapper seem to have held views contrary to Obama's in the past.

Too Weak to Fail

George Will on the bailouts of GM and Greece:

To understand the pertinence to America of events in Greece, notice General Motors' most recent misbehavior. A television commercial featuring CEO Ed Whitacre demonstrates the institutional murkiness and intellectual dishonesty that result when the line between public and private sectors disappears. . . .

Under crony capitalism, when government and corporate America merge, both dissemble.

"Crony Capitalism" (AKA "Corporatism") is a big part of what this book (published pre-Obama) is all about. And with the addition of "The Chicago Way", Crony Capitalism becomes an even bigger feature of American politics.

Will continues:

Now American taxpayers also own a little bit of a small nation. They provide the U.S. contribution of 17 percent of the assets of the International Monetary Fund, which is giving Greece $39 billion (the IMF also is contributing $321 billion to a "stabilization" fund for other eurozone nations with debt problems). So the U.S. government, which would borrow 42 cents of every dollar it spends under the president's 2011 budget, is borrowing to rescue Greece and others from the consequences of their borrowing.

Greece, whose gross domestic product is below that of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, is "too big to fail," meaning too inconveniently connected to too many big banks. Bailing out Greece really rescues European banks that improvidently bought Greek bonds. . . .

Read the whole thing for details concerning the idiocy of current European borrowing patterns, and comparisons to the situation in America. Plus the dopiness of the current position of the Greek communist party. And the uselessness of the value-added tax, which is a big feature in the finances of the "PIIGS", the European countries currently in the worst financial shape.

Germans are furious about being the biggest bailers in this bailout of a nation where tax evasion is pandemic. . . .

Why accept "austerity" (as that is understood in Greece -- no more annual bonuses of two months' salary, no more retirement at 53)? Suppose, after pocketing some of the bailout, we just threaten to collapse and make a mess of "Europe"?

Greece now knows the terrific strength of weakness. Beware of Greeks -- or any other people -- receiving gifts.

There are a few predictions out there that the entire world economy could collapse in the next few years --- REALLY collapse. Perhaps the examples of GM and Greece show us how this might become possible.

European Social Democrats could not change human nature

Victor Davis Hanson, currently touring beautiful Europe, pinpoints one area where the benevolent European wise men who thought they had engineered the "end of history" went wrong:

Vienna — Walk the beautiful streets in Munich, Strasbourg, and Vienna, and you can see why Europeans thought in the last decades that they had reached the end of history. There is not a soldier to be seen. Sidewalk cafes are jammed midweek with two-hour lunch-goers. Fashion, vacations, and sex dominate the ads and billboards.

Bikers, electric commuter trains, and tiny fuel-efficient cars zoom by in a green contrast to our gas-guzzling Tahoes and Yukons.

Naturally, there is a general sense of satisfied accomplishment among European social democrats. They believe that finally a quiet sameness across their continent has replaced two millennia of constant European warring and revolution. Now, everybody seems to get an apartment, a small car, a state job, a good pension and peace — and in exchange, all voice comfortable, center-left consensus politics.

But beneath the genteel European Union veneer, few remember that human nature remains constant and does not give even nice Europeans a pass from its harsh laws. . .

. . .  human-driven history is now roaring back with a fury in Europe. . .

. . . Only one question remains: At a time when Europe is discovering that its democratic socialism does not work, why in the world is the United States doing its best to copy it?

Read the whole thing. It's short. VDH has written recent books on the close similarities between current events and events which happened in ancient history.  Plus a novel.  It will be published by a big-time publisher.

A podcast or computer broadcast of the excellent interview with VDH which I recommended here can be found here (second item - choose to listen or podcast). He's our own local (well, regional) celebrity - recently Grand Marshall of a celebration in Kingsburg.

Take some time to listen. You can keep the broadcast on in the background while you work on your computer.  He speaks in an exceptionally clear and straightforward manner.  You will probably understand the world better as a result of the time you invest.  Particularly if you live in California.  Whether or not you agree with what he says.

Example:  Has it occurred to you that the United States (due to its huge, fast-growing debt to China) is now placing itself in the position of begging an emerging, totalitarian third-world nation for healthcare funding?

Money for Nothing

Michael Barone knows more about the American political culture than just about anyone. He has some observations about our current administration:

Anyone who has spent much time in Chicago knows the city has impressive civic and business leaders, talented and cultured people who creatively support charities (not always effectively - ed.) and the arts. But they also play team ball. . .

To some it may seem anomalous that Obama, who began his Chicago career as a Saul Alinsky-type community organizer, should have taken to the Chicago Way. But Alinsky's brand of community organizing is very Chicagocentric.

It assumes that there will always be a Machine that you can complain about and that if you make a big enough fuss it will have to respond. And that the Machine can always get more plunder from the private sector.

The problem with Obama's Chicago Way is that Chicago isn't America. The Chicago Way works locally because there is an America out there that ultimately pays for it. But who will pay for an America run the Chicago Way?

Read the whole thing.

Of course, the "Chicago Way" just makes the "money for nothing" mindset already well-established among our political classes that much worse. For example, there are now TWO AMERICAS:   Federal workers make twice as much as the people who pay their salaries. Three trillion in pension underfunding?  Aren't these supposed to be the people who care about "the children" whom they are making slaves to debt? Generosity with other people's money hurts people who are often "out of sight, out of mind" to the generous politicians handing out the largesse. And who could be more invisible than future taxpayers?

Also via Instapundit, a takeoff on this music video (with which people more "in touch with the popular culture" than me were probably familiar) "I want my MTV.". The PolitiZoid version of Money for Nothing may be a bit hard on Nancy "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it" Pelosi and her provocative giant gavel, but Harry Reid's kind of cute.  "Oh, Nancy Pe-lo-si"   "Director: Rahm Emanuel" Heh.

The power of denial and the end of trust:    "I want my MTV."

On a lighter note, Weird Al had some fun with the same paean to decadence in:   Money for Nothing/Beverly Hillbillies
He's very good at what he does.

Meanwhile, how's that "Money for Nothing" mindset working out for Greece?  Or for California?