My French protest is over

French President Nicolas Sarkozy walked out of an interview with US CBS television news show 60 minutes, according to a clip of the show released Sunday in advance of the interview's airing. A clearly disturbed Sarkozy stood up muttering in French about the question, which was not heard, in a short publicity clip put on the Internet ahead of the 60 Minutes broadcast Sunday night.

Obama is catching on

From the New York Times:

Senator Barack Obama said he would start confronting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton more forcefully, declaring Friday that she had not been candid in describing her views on critical issues, as he tries to address mounting alarm among supporters that his lack of assertiveness has allowed her to dominate the presidential race.

Hey, Barack, not being candid is called lying in her case.

Committing the Truth and Regretting it

You just have to love Joe Biden, the senator from Delaware who is running for President. For years he has let his mouth get him in trouble and it is always precious when this happens. The latest came when he met with the editorial board of the Washington Post and was asked about the failure of the Washington, D.C. schools. We all know the reason, but leave it to Joe to admit it. Here is the account in the Washington Post. As you read it, imagine the reaction if he was a Republican instead of a known democrat bloviator.

After a lengthy critique of Bush administration education policies, Biden attempted to explain why some schools perform better than others -- in Iowa, for instance, compared with the District. "There's less than 1 percent of the population of Iowa that is African American. There is probably less than 4 or 5 percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with," Biden said. He went on to discuss the importance of parental involvement in reading to children and how "half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom."

Harry Reid explains fires in California

"One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday, stressing the need to pass the Democrats’ comprehensive energy package.

What about these Senator?

The Great Fire of 1889 (40,000 acres)
The Rattlesnake Fire of 1953 (1,300 acres & 15 firefighters killed)
The Laguna Fire of 1970 (175,425 acres, 320 homes and 8 people killed)
The Oakland Hills firestorm of 1991 (1,520 acres, 3469 homes & 25 people killed)
The McNally Fire of 2002 (150,700 acres)
The Old Fire of 2003 (91,281 acres, 993 homes & 6 deaths)

Dem Convention

I am not sure how they got this schedule ahead of time, but congrats to Dr. Tony


Democratic National Convention Opening Schedule:

Schedule of Events:

7:00 pm ~ Opening flag burning

7:15 pm ~ Pledge of Allegiance to the U. N.

7:20 pm ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

7:25 pm ~ Nonreligious prayer and worship with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton

7:45 pm ~ Ceremonial tree hugging

7:55 pm ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

8:00 pm ~ How I Invented the Internet - Al Gore

8:15 pm ~ Gay Wedding Planning - Barney Frank presiding

8:35 pm ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

8:40 pm ~ Our Troops are War Criminals - John Kerry

9.00 pm ~ Memorial service for Saddam and his sons - Cindy Sheehan and Susan Sarandon

10:00 pm ~ "Answering Machine Etiquette" - Alec Baldwin

11:00 pm ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

11:05 pm ~ Collection for the Osama Bin Laden kidney transplant fund - Barbra Streisand

11:15 pm ~ Free the Freedom Fighters from Guantanamo Bay -- Sean Penn

11:30 pm ~ Oval Office Affairs - William Jefferson Clinton

11:45 pm ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

11:50 pm ~ How George Bush Brought Down the World Trade Towers - Howard Dean

12:15 am ~ "Truth in Broadcasting Award" - Presented to Dan Rather by Michael Moore

12:25 am ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

12:30 am ~ Satellite address by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

12:45 am ~ Nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton by Nancy Pelosi

1:00 am ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

1:05 am ~ Coronation of Hillary Rodham Clinton

1:30 am ~ Ted Kennedy proposes a toast

1:35 am ~ Bill Clinton asks Ted Kennedy to drive Hillary home

This is good news

PHILADELPHIA -- Thousands of black men turned out Sunday to support a volunteer effort aimed at reducing violence in this crime-plagued city, lining up for several blocks to register.

Volunteers who join street patrols as part of the "Call to Action: 10,000 Men, It's a New Day" campaign will not carry weapons or make arrests but will instead be trained in conflict resolution, organizers said.

"Nobody else is going to magically come into this community and get it done," said real estate developer Abdur-Rahim Islam, a lead organizer.

A bigger Australian Navy?

Australia's opposition Labor Party has questioned the need for female sailors to be given breast enlargements paid for with public money.

An armed forces spokesman defended the operations, saying they were carried out for psychological reasons, not to make sailors "look sexy".

Brigadier Andrew Nikolic said the "holistic needs" of service personnel were considered under defence policy.

But he said breast augmentations were not routinely funded by the military.

"We do consider the broader needs of our people, both physical and psychological," Brig Nikolic said.

"But that is a long way from saying that if someone doesn't like their appearance, Defence will fund things like breast augmentation as a matter of routine - that is just not correct."

He was speaking after one plastic surgeon said he had carried out breast enlargements on two sailors, aged 25 and 32, for A$10,000 (£4,200) each.

Brig Nikolic said such operations were only recommended after a medical evaluation.

But the opposition Labor Party said it wanted details on the cases.

I want it to snow---hard

My current fantasy is that it will start snowing in Cleveland, Boston and Denver this weekend and not melt until April. This would be welcomed retribution for the greedy buffoons who have extended baseball into November. Except for the federal government, very little in America has deteriorated so completely as baseball in my lifetime. This is abated, of course, by the TV networks and they can starve too as far as I am concerned.

More on the Watson Comments

This is a very good essay on the reaction to James Watson's statement that Africans as a whole are less intelligent than some other races. Here is a sample:

What is "racism"?

..... Well, it cannot be discovered by analyzing what has been said about Dr. Watson but, rather, by what is usually left unsaid. As was the case with the reception given to The Bell Curve, critics tend to take the position that the issue should not be raised, much less debated.

....

All intellectual inquiry, be it scientific or philosophical, should be a search for Truth. This search must be sincere and remain unfettered by agendas or dogmas, and we do otherwise at our own peril.

.....This is why the politically correct thought police are so destructive. When they criticize a man like Watson, not only do they rarely say his statements are untrue, but the Truth of the matter doesn't even seem to enter their minds. No, it doesn't because they are blinded by their agenda.

The Truth is that the outrage here isn't Dr. Watson's remarks; they're either true or not. What's outrageous is that we're suffering under the yolk of those to whom Truth means nothing -- the practitioners of a dark faith. They don't care if a statement is correct, only whether it's politically correct. They hate the Truth when it contradicts their agenda, and they'll stop at nothing to still the tongues of those who would dare voice it.

Read it all.

Looks like the botox is wearing off

More on Dr. Watson

The suggestion by James Watson of Watson and Crick fame that blacks are not as intelligent as whites has now come full circle in that he has been threatened and forced to retract his statement. Here is the threat:
Anti-racism campaigners called for Dr Watson's remarks to be looked at in the context of racial hatred laws. A spokesman for the 1990 Trust, a black human rights group, said: "It is astonishing that a man of such distinction should make comments that seem to perpetuate racism in this way. It amounts to fuelling bigotry and we would like it to be looked at for grounds of legal complaint."
And the apology:
The DNA pioneer James Watson today apologised "unreservedly" for his apparent claim that black people are less intelligent than whites.

"I am mortified about what has happened," he told a group of scientists and journalists at the launch of his new book, Avoid Boring People, at the Royal Society in London.

"I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have."

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologise unreservedly.

Here is the situation for this and related racial distinctions that one might make. First, science is supposed to work by someone posing a question like whether or not there are differences in intelligence among races and then conducting well-designed experiments to answer the question. Well, the research has not been done to date because researchers are not allowed by society to do the research. As a result, you can't even ask the question. The main objection of the opponents is what do you do with the information---if the theory that there is a racial difference is substantiated? So, even though there is a lot of research conducted which is not "practical", racial differences fall into a special category. I think it is regretable, but it is what it is.

I called this one and it ain't over

London's Science Museum canceled a Friday talk by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson after the co-discoverer of DNA's structure told a newspaper that Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence.

James Watson provoked widespread outrage with his comments to The Sunday Times, which quoted the 79-year-old American as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

The comments drew condemnation from British lawmakers, scientists, and civil rights campaigners. On Wednesday The Independent newspaper put Watson on its front page, against the words: "Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, says DNA pioneer."

A really fun backyard BBQ

Watch out below

Here comes another storm by the politically correct crowd. They must rally mightily to counter an observation offered by someone with credentials sufficient for the public to consider it valid. There are some ideas which simply can't be allowed to be debated or even studied scientifically because the liberals have already made up their minds and evidence to the contrary is not even thinkable. A teaser is given below, but read it all here.

One of the world's most eminent scientists was embroiled in an extraordinary row last night after he claimed that black people were less intelligent than white people and the idea that "equal powers of reason" were shared across racial groups was a delusion.

James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in the unravelling of DNA who now runs one of America's leading scientific research institutions, drew widespread condemnation for comments he made ahead of his arrival in Britain today for a speaking tour at venues including the Science Museum in London.

Sabotage

From Thomas Sowell.
Read it all.

People of Armenian ancestry in the United States and around the world are justifiably outraged at what happened in the Ottoman Empire -- and at subsequent governments in Turkey which have refused to acknowledge or accept historical responsibility for the mass atrocities that took place on their soil.

But the sudden interest of Congressional Democrats in this issue goes beyond trying to pick up some votes.

They want a resolution to condemn what happened as "genocide" -- a word that provokes instant anger among today's Turks, since genocide means a deliberate government policy aimed at exterminating a whole people, as distinguished from horrors growing out of a widespread breakdown of law and order in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

These are issues of historical facts and semantics best left to scholars rather than politicians.

If Congress has gone nearly a century without passing a resolution accusing the Turks of genocide, why now, in the midst of the Iraq war?

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this resolution is just the latest in a series of Congressional efforts to sabotage the conduct of that war.

Congressional Ethics

There is an interesting article today in the Washington Post. All this blather from the dems about how they were going to clean up the ethical mess left by the Republicans in Congress has resulted in a new set of laws regarding lobbyists and free meals and such, but as one might expect, there are "loopholes". For example, lobbyists can't take Congressmen to fancy dinners and ply them with liquor anymore. At a recent gala, however, over 100 congressional types attended a dinner at a cost of over $2500 per. How did this happen? Well, a charity sells the tickets to the lobbyists at a rate of say $25,000 per table and the corporation which buys the tickets with a wink and a nod tells the charity who they would like to have sit at their table. The charity makes the decision, of course, so it is perfectly legal for the exact Congressman to be assigned at the table where the request was made. Nobody is against charity, are they?

Read it all here if your stomach is strong.

A non-endorsement

"...Saying Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani"doesn't deserve to live," Palestinian terror leaders are threatening to harm the former New York mayor for his hawkish stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for his previous treatment of late-PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

"If I had the occasion to meet him (Giuliani), I would hurt him," said Ramadan Adassi, chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group in the West Bank's Anskar refugee camp. "For the sake of the American people, Giuliani shouldn't be elected. He is a disgusting guy and I think Americans must think very hard about their future and their soldiers who will be killed when they come to elect their leaders."

Now we need him to endorse Hillary.

Peace Anyone

It would be impossible to discredit the Nobel Peace prize anymore than to give it to Al Gore and the U.N.

Political Intrigue

BestView doesn't usually concern itself with juicy gossip, but there is a story being ignored by the liberal media which begs for comment. It seems as if one Roger Altman, a close Clinton friend and a possible member of any new Clinton cabinet, is also a large owner of the National Enquirer which deals mostly in back alley gossip stories. The latest suggests that John Edwards had an affair with some public relations woman associated with his campaign.
This story is making the rounds of liberal blogs. It is the opinion of BestView that the story is probably not true for two reasons. If Edwards was a real threat to the Clintons and deserved their attention, he would simply have an accident or commit suicide like others who got in their way. Sex is not an activity which they feel is necessarily ignoble. The other reason we doubt the story is that Edwards is not man enough and his inclinations may well run the other way.

The Matthews Debate

For some reason the Republican candidates agreed to let Chris Matthews, the very liberal host of MSNBC's Hardball program to be the moderator in tonight's so called debate. This in spite of his obviously hostile and insulting performance in a previous debate. He asked, for example, for each candidate to give what they "disliked most about America". He recently announced that Bush had finally been caught in his "criminality". I don't usually watch these cattle-call appearances since they aren't real, but I will watch tonight to see which lets Jimmy Carter's former speech writer get by with idiotic and partisan questions. Any of them who don't seem able or inclined to take him on will not get my support.

Free Money

In typical liberal fashion at election time, some politician will offer free money to everyone. In 1972, George McGovern, arguably the most far-left candidate ever nominated, proposed giving $1,000 to every man, woman and child. Adjusted for inflation, that comes to almost $5,000 today. $5,000? Where have we heard that before? Well old Hillary wants to give that to every single baby born so they will have money to go to college. Lets look at this like Thomas Sowell did in "Inside American Education.

"The specific terms under which the government provides student financial aid virtually guarantees tuition escalation to unaffordable levels. . . . The federal formula . . . first determines the 'expected family contribution,' based upon family income, assets, number of children, and other measures of ability to pay.

"Federal aid begins where tuition and other charges exceed this 'expected family contribution.' A private college or university which kept its tuition affordable — that is, no greater than the 'expected family contribution' — could forfeit millions of dollars annually in federal money.

For example, if college X can provide a good education at $8,000 a year, while its average student's family can afford $9,000, then it loses opportunities to receive federal money. By raising its tuition to $12,000, it not only gets an additional $1,000 per student from their families but also an additional $3,000 per student from the government. In short, there is no incentive to keep tuition affordable and every incentive to make it unaffordable."

The cost? Clinton doesn't know. Will U.S.-born children of illegal aliens be eligible? No word on that yet. Who pays? Don't know. All we really know is it will not achieve its stated objective but it probably will appeal to Hillary's target audience which is mostly uneducated and doomed to superficial appraisal of her proposal.

Kill your golden goose

The loony left never fails. This time they want to expand a welfare program called SCHIPS (which provides health care for poor kids) to adults making as much as $83,000. That is not idiotic enough, however. In order to pay for the additional entitlement expenses they propose to raise the tax on cigarettes by an extra $0.61/pack. This makes some sense in that those who still smoke are not very smart, are also mostly poor and vote democrat. This is then a very regressive tax and the libs justify the tax by claiming that the tax will cause those affected to quit smoking, which if true would kill off the funding for the socialistic program they loudly promote. When this happens, you will find the money comes not from smokers, but from you.

Wow. Ann Coulter strikes again

On women:

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.

It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and 'We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care -- and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?'

On why global warming is religion on the left:

Because we can't prove them wrong for a thousand years, and I think the other thing about it is, it goes back to Chesterton’s statement: that when people stop believing in God, the problem isn't that they believe in nothing, it's that they'll believe anything. And that's what you constantly see with people who don't believe in God: They're always imitating the most ridiculous, primitive religions. And it is like a primitive religion, thinking if we just change these lightbulbs, we can change the temperature of the ocean. It's the craziest thing! Even primitive people wouldn't believe something that silly.

A Predictable Solution

There for a while it looked like the state of Michigan would have to shut down a large part of their government due to a budget impasse. At the last moment, however, they came to a solution which could have been predicted. They raised the income and sales taxes. Now that should help the economy.