A 2-step exercise in argument-evidence

Step 1: Read Michael Gerson's Washington Post column today on how, according to the Democratic Party of Louisiana (not to mention the Democratic Party in general) holding strong religious beliefs--and consciously accepting the logical consequences of those beliefs--is an unforgivable sin.

Step 2: Click on "View all comments" at the bottom of the column, and read page after page of liberal readers proving his point for him.

--Shack

Gonzales Gone

The attorney general is history.

What happens next is anyone's guess, but given that Bush is going to have to negotiate with Democrats over confirming the next AG...

--Shack

Reduce Global Warming: Don't Exercise.

I wish I were making this up.

From Times Online, via Constitutionally Right:

Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”

Better for the human body? Probably not.

But then, it's been a long, long time since the well-being of the humans living on this planet was a priority for environmentalists.

--Shack

Turning point or point of no return?

Something very odd happened earlier this week. The New York Times--the same paper that just recently handed down its Definitive And Infallible Judgment (TM) that the war in Iraq is lost, over, doomed, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera--published an op-ed claiming that this is far from the case.

The pollyannas over at NRO promptly convoked a symposium to discuss what this might mean--and as the title "Turning Point?" suggests, most took a rather optimistic view of the situation.

Color me a pessimist. I do not think it is a coincidence that the Times ran an op-ed like this, nor do I think it is a good sign.

The editorial board of the New York Times has, almost from Day 1 of the invasion, had one goal and one goal only with regards to Iraq: to get the US to pull out. Its editorials and columns have been working to undermine the American position there--by undermining the pro-war position here--with a single-minded tone and fervor that has been more than a little frightening to watch.

Even the token opposition columns/articles that normally bolster the paper's credibility by providing it with some pretense of balance have been, by and large, conspicuously absent...until now, that is.

I find that enormously significant.

It isn't that the Times' editors have been forced to provide an opposing viewpoint. It's that they believe they can afford to.

Even more than its "all is lost" editorial a little under a month ago, this is, I think, a declaration of victory (or, more accurately, defeat). The Times evidently believes that public sentiments have reached, not a turning point, but a point of no return--and that those sentiments are decidedly opposed to the Iraq war.

They believe they have finally succeeded in sabotaging this country's last and best chance to undercut Islamofascism in the Middle East.

All things considered, I'm hard-put to disagree with them.

--Shack